Intro: Ninjas Don’t Warm Up [00:00:00]
Sam: What does Nate Diaz say? One of our favorite fighters. He goes, “Stay ready so I don’t have to get ready.” Nate goes, “Warriors are always ready to roll.” Right? I’m a ninja. Ninjas don’t warm up.
Sam: All right, we’re live. Shaan, at the end of this next ten-minute opener I have for you, I’m going to need you to make a promise to me. And I need the listener to do the same to themselves. Now, before I get to that promise, let me tell you a little story.
Marcus Elliott and the Comfort Crisis [00:00:30]
Sam: There’s this guy named Marcus Elliott. I read about him in this wonderful book called The Comfort Crisis. Marcus Elliott is an interesting guy — you can Google him, he’s like this ripped older guy. He’s a doctor. His story is that he got his MD from Harvard, and he thinks he’s going to go down this route of being a doctor, but he kind of hates it, he’s not really into it. So he goes into sports — a world you know a lot more than I do — and he decides to work for the Patriots.
The Patriots had an issue where they had something like 21 hamstring pulls per year. They’re like, “Dude, our guys keep getting hurt, it’s losing us millions of dollars, help us out.” So Dr. Elliott helps them out and they reduce their hamstring pulls to only three per year. The MLB sees this and they’re like, “Hey, you’re the man, come do that for us.” He works for Major League Baseball and helps reduce injuries significantly.
Eventually he opens up his own facility where athletes — basically most NBA players, a lot of baseball players — go. He’s got this beautiful facility where they do 3D analytics. They look at your body and they’re like, “You have a weakness here, you have a strength here. Let’s capitalize on this. We need to fix this, otherwise you’re going to get hurt.” LeBron, all these guys go to him. So the picture I’m trying to paint: super data-driven, scientific guy, all about the numbers.
However, there’s this one thing I read about him that didn’t exactly fit with what he talked about, and it got me super invigorated. This is where the promise I’m going to need from you comes into play.
Misogi: The One Annual Challenge [00:02:00]
Sam: So there’s this thing called misogi. You’ve never heard of misogi, have you?
Shaan: I think I’ve been called one — a misogynist or something? Something else close.
Sam: All right. So misogi — it stems from this Japanese myth. Basically, there’s a story in Japanese mythology of this guy who goes into the underworld to save his wife. It’s this hard, tumultuous physical journey. When he gets done and saves his wife, he comes back to a waterfall and cleanses himself. It’s like, “I’m cleansing myself of this journey I just went through. I’m now a new man.”
A lot of people — including one of your favorites, one of my favorites, Jesse Itzler — have kind of taken this term and changed it to mean a huge physical challenge. Basically something that you need to do one day out of the year, but it takes 364 days of the year in order to prepare and get ready for it. And it changes the rest of your year because of how challenging it is. Jesse calls it kind of like his one big annual mission or challenge or adventure. His misogi.
I’ve been calling it “misogi” but it’s one of those words you read and don’t say. This is why it’s a myth — it’s rarely discussed and only read about. So I’m not exactly sure how to pronounce it.
Marcus Elliott gets super into this and he’s like, “We have to have our guys do this.” So he starts doing these misogis. He’ll drive to the mountains and just find the highest peak he can see, and he’s like, “By the end of the day I’m reaching the top and coming back down, no matter what.” He starts having his athletes do it.
One athlete who gets super into this is Kyle Korver.
Shaan: I don’t know too much about Kyle Korver, but he’s a great three-point shooter, I think.
Sam: I know nothing about him other than that he’s into this. Basically Kyle Korver becomes like a Dr. Elliott disciple, and they do crazy things. Here’s one: they carry an 80-pound rock underwater for three miles. They’re out in the ocean off Santa Barbara. There’s a rock at the bottom. You swim ten feet down, grab it, you can only carry it for about ten seconds, then you drop it, come up for air. They do that for ten hours until they complete 5,000 meters — 3.1 miles. Insane.
Another thing they do: in Santa Barbara there’s an island 25 miles away, and one day Dr. Elliott just calls Kyle Korver and goes, “Clear your schedule. Today we are paddleboarding to that island.” It takes them fifteen hours. They’re bleeding. It just sucks. It makes you want to quit. But the point of all this is to help you live life so you’re not sleepwalking through it. These types of challenges make you appreciate life. They make you a little bit disciplined. They make you purposeful.
Dr. Elliott has two rules for these challenges. Rule number one: you can only have a 50% chance of actually completing the challenge. He’s done challenges where he’s failed. The second rule — and this is an easy one — don’t die. That’s it. Besides that, there are no rules.
Sam: So here’s where it gets to my challenge for you. You’ve been talking about getting abs for like the last three months, and you’re doing great, you look great. I’ve been inspired by this because I see the YouTube comments — every single comment is about how great you look. I think you need a misogi. And so do our listeners.
Shaan: Does he list them somewhere? You said he’s been doing this for years. What are some options? I would have never thought of carrying an 80-pound rock underwater for three miles.
Sam: They can be fairly random. He actually chooses not to train a lot for them. But in your case it could be like, “Today I’m going to walk 30 miles.” And a lot of times you don’t want to plan for it too much, because then that gives you too much of an edge to actually get it done. Or it could be: you’re going to carry two 45-pound kettlebells for 10 miles. That’ll take you probably 12 hours. Or you’re going to ride your bike from LA to San Francisco. Just a crazy challenge with only a 50% chance of completing it.
So I need you to pick one. What about you? What’s yours?
Shaan: I’ve picked one. This August I’m doing a 50-mile running race, and I’m going to try to run it at a 10-minute-per-mile pace, which is really challenging for me. And the scary part is I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to finish it — I think there’s a good chance I get hurt just training. But I want you to pick one too. Let me tell you why I like this.
Anything where there’s a Japanese word that we don’t have in English — I always love those. The first company I ever started was called Wabi-sabi Sushi, and “wabi-sabi” is this Japanese word for basically finding beauty in the imperfection of things. We just don’t have that word in English. So I like this.
The second thing I like is the way he does it — it’s not something you’re training for all year that you know about. You kind of said it both ways: you prepare all year, and then you do the thing. But you also said he would just randomly pick a day and say, “Clear the schedule. We’re doing a really hard thing today.” It’s not about preparation. It’s about guts, courage, being in a ready state of mind and a ready physical state all year, so that whenever adventure calls you can answer it. I like that a lot more.
Sam: Yes. Jesse Itzler is the one who adapted it to the “364 days” framing — that was a beautiful phrasing. But it really is more about “are you ready to do this?” You have to be ready at all times. What does Nate Diaz say? Warriors are always ready to roll. Ninjas don’t warm up.
So I do like the idea of misogi. I’m down to do one. I want to brainstorm what a fun one might be, or I might just go the other way: sometime in the next three months I’m going to notice something, a challenge that kind of scares me, and that’s the day I have to do it. Cancel the podcast, cancel the meetings. I got to do this.
The Micro Challenge: 24 Hours Without Being Bothered [00:08:30]
Shaan: I have a challenge back for you. You gave me the macro challenge — the big, hard spectacle thing. I’m going to give you the micro. The micro challenge I’ve given myself many times and I’ve actually never completed it. I’ve tried many times.
I’ll be honest with you: the hard thing for someone like you is not actually that hard. You’re going to do this 50-mile thing and you’re going to succeed at it. That’s the thing about you — you know you can do stuff like this. That’s why you’re attracted to it.
Sam: Be honest. I’m attracted to it because I love the glory of getting it done and proving to myself I can.
Shaan: You believe you will get it done.
Sam: I believe I will get it done. Okay, agreed.
Shaan: Here’s a hard one for you. For the next 24 hours — or any 24-hour period — I challenge you to not be bothered by anything. Zero complaints and zero bothered for 24 hours. See if you can do it. It is so hard. I’ve tried this consciously for like three years, probably at least 50 times, and I keep getting closer each time. It really points out — I threw it all away for that? Because that little thing happened?
Sam: And is it just not saying it, or not even having the thought?
Shaan: Forget about saying it — that’s easy. You can’t have the thought. Don’t be bothered. Do not feel bothered for 24 hours. Because obviously, we all know logically we have a beautiful, charmed life. Anybody who’s healthy and living in the Western world — life is better than it’s ever been in all of history. Yet we are in our heads complainers. We’re annoyed by things, upset by things, frustrated by things we really shouldn’t be.
It’s a micro challenge. You get no medals for this, you get no glory for this. But I think it’s very valuable.
Sam: I think that’s a great challenge. And I want to wrap this up — I’ll spend two more minutes on this — but there are three challenges that are interesting, and also, these guys have turned these into businesses.
Three Anti-Comfort Businesses [00:11:00]
Sam: The first one is called The Speed Project. I keep seeing people talk about it. It’s an underground race — there’s no website, you can’t really find details, you have to apply, and I don’t even know how you apply. But it’s a race from Santa Monica to Las Vegas. You get four friends to do it. There’s no route. The organizers just show up at the start line and say, “All right, go — see you in Vegas.” The only two rules: you have to run the whole time, and you can’t go on highways. First group of people to arrive wins.
Sam: The second one — and we’ve talked about them — is called The Adventurists. They do this thing called the Monkey Run, where you’re on a mini motorcycle throughout Africa. Something like a thousand miles, takes about eight days. I met with the owners. They have amazing website copy. They’re doing millions in revenue. And I actually think this could be a potentially much larger business than it already is.
So the website — theadventurists.com — says “Giant adventure. Tiny motorcycle.” Great headline. Then it says:
“The Monkey Run is pretty stupid. It’s like a jungly, mountainy, deserty velvet glove of adventuring joy. So grab your sweaty hand and shove it inside. There’s nothing like the sensation of a monkey bike between thighs as you thunder slowly along dirt roads with absolutely no idea where you are. As you glance up, staring down at you like a baby ant in a tininess competition, might be some of the highest mountains on Earth. Imagine endless jungles lying in wait to punch your cheeky face with a fist of adventure. Imagine deserts that stretch far beyond the horizon at your woefully underpowered two-wheeled children’s toy. Behold, people. The mighty Monkey Run.”
Shaan: That’s awesome.
Sam: I think it’s like five grand and they do a ton of these. They’re picking up steam.
The last one is the craziest. It’s called the Barkley Marathons. It was created by this guy who has a nickname — Lazarus Lake. I don’t know why. Basically, he started this marathon — 100 miles in the mountains of Tennessee.
The reason he created it: James Earl Ray is the guy who assassinated Martin Luther King. At one point he escaped from prison. He was gone for 60 hours and only ran 12 miles. This guy Lazarus Lake was like, “What a softy. I could easily have done 100 miles on that route.” So he creates this 100-mile race inspired by the route James Earl Ray took.
They only allow 40 people a year to join, and they get thousands of applicants. It has a 60-hour cutoff. To get in, you have to pay a $1.60 application fee — for some reason, a dollar sixty. You also have to write a letter explaining why you’re good enough and why this matters to you. If you get in, he doesn’t send you a letter of acceptance. He sends you a letter of condolences. Just says something like, “This is the day you might die.” Great branding.
Shaan: Great branding.
Sam: And the registration fee — once you get accepted — is that you have to bring a license plate for some reason, and you have to bring flannel shirts, socks, and underwear. Because that’s what Lazarus Lake needs to live throughout the year in a van. And the race doesn’t start with a gunshot — it starts when Lazarus Lake lights his cigarette.
He made a video a few years ago where he goes — it was kind of clickbait — “Women are physically not capable of completing this race.” And he goes on to say why. Then he says, “If you think I’m wrong, come prove me wrong.” No woman had ever finished it. Well, this year a woman finally did. She’s one of, I think, only 18 people who have ever finished this race, and now she’s one of them.
He does this hilarious branding. Google this guy — he looks like a redneck hillbilly wearing Walmart camouflage and fluorescent red hats like he’s going hunting. He smokes cigarettes all day and just thinks up insane obstacles. The branding on these things is amazing. It’s so fun.
Shaan: I’m just on his Wikipedia page. Trail Runner magazine calls him “an evil genius, the Leonardo da Vinci of pain.” So good. His icon — him in the orange beanie lighting the cigarette — genius.
The thing I love is you have to try so hard just to even get to the starting line. I remember we did one of those Spartan Races or Tough Mudders once, and you have to climb a wall to get to the starting line. It’s before the race even begins.
Sam: You started this by talking about the Comfort Crisis. I think there’s something to this deep inner knowing that we’ve all become very, very soft. And people are willing to pay for pain — which sounds insane. But it also probably would have sounded insane back in the day when we all worked in fields doing labor. Like, “Yeah, you know what? At some point we’re all just going to sit at desks all day, and then there’ll be a place with heavy objects you voluntarily pay a membership fee to enter, just to lift heavy things.”
“Well, they must be crops we’re lifting.” No. “What are they?” Just metal. “So you lift it, then what?” You put it down. Three sets of five. What are you talking about?
Shaan: These are just the modern-day gyms, right? These extreme challenges are just the modern-day gyms. And the beautiful part is not only do you get the pain, you get a story to tell. You get the social cred — which is the key part of all these businesses.
I heard a quote the other day from the CEO of a luxury brand. He goes, “The definition of luxury is dominating your customer.” And I was like, that’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard.
Sam: Say that again. That’s an MFM classic right there. Who said this?
Shaan: I heard it on the Acquired podcast. I think it’s attributed to the guy who runs the LVMH group — Bernard Arnault. He says, “Luxury means dominating your customer.”
What does that mean? Ferrari — to buy a Ferrari, you have to get on a waitlist. If you want to sell your Ferrari after you’re done with it, you can’t — you’ve got to jump through all these hoops. If you want to buy a Louis Vuitton bag, in many cases you have to set up an appointment just to go purchase the thing.
I heard this quote and it’s changed so much of my thinking. It relates to these races. Making your customer jump through hoops to acquire the good makes it so much more valuable. The problem is that’s really hard to pull off. But if you can pull it off — if you have the will and discipline to take that risk — it creates a true cult.
Harvard as a Luxury Brand: Ivy League Merch in Asia [00:20:00]
Shaan: I’d like to tell you about a luxury brand I was going to bring up anyway. When you think of luxury you typically think of what — Louis Vuitton, these fashion brands. How much does a Louis Vuitton bag cost? A cheap one, maybe $2,500? A really expensive one, 20 grand?
Sam: Let’s say five grand on average for an LV bag.
Shaan: Five grand. Okay. Maybe child’s play compared to some other luxury brands. You talked about Ferrari — average price point is what, 250 to 300?
Sam: Yeah, that’s what I’d guess.
Shaan: Okay. So I have another luxury brand that costs about $200 to $250K. Do you know which one I’m thinking of?
Sam: No.
Shaan: Harvard. Colleges — top flight universities — are part luxury brand, part daycare, part education, part insurance policy. Shout out to Peter Thiel who first pointed this out.
I want to use this to talk about a fascinating business. There’s a tweet — somebody pointed out one of the great examples of “niches and riches.” This guy is in China and opens up a college merch shop. He walks into this shop and it’s busy as hell at all times. They’re just selling Harvard sweatshirts, Yale sweatshirts, Princeton sweatshirts to Chinese people who don’t go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, and have no intention to. It’s just a luxury brand being promoted there.
He goes, “I want to import American college merch into China. This shop sells Harvard and Stanford branded hoodies.” And they’re printing millions of them.
Sam: When I lived in China — I finished high school in China — you know how here you have Kaplan and other SAT prep courses? In Texas, where I went to school, maybe 20% of kids were doing SAT prep. That’s my experience. In China, it was six out of every five. Every single kid did SAT prep. Every single kid wanted to go to US universities. Every single kid and their parents revered these American university brands.
And in America you could sell officially licensed college gear. It does okay — it’s not the best niche to be in. But it’s just a great example of finding a niche where the market is actually bigger somewhere else. You take the water to the desert. This guy took these luxury college brands over there. He’s doing it right now.
Shaan: I’ve seen the demand for elite US universities as this Louis Vuitton-style symbol. Do you want to know a little bit of history? This is very weird. I recently read a book called How Japan Saved American Fashion. The story is basically: after World War II, America takes over Japan. The Japanese are like, “These Americans are going to crush us.” But America’s rule at the time was to be kind and buy goodwill. So the Japanese start becoming friends with American soldiers, learning about American culture.
For some reason, this guy named Kensuke Ishizu creates a fashion brand and calls it Ivy Prep fashion. He sees old pictures from the ’50s of Brooks Brothers ads — one of the American soldiers has them — and he goes, “Wow, everyone who lives on Harvard’s campus must dress like a Brooks Brothers magazine. We’re going to make this popular.” At the time, the Japanese were conservative with their dress, and the prep fashion was considered slightly less conservative. So he makes this a huge thing. It becomes a massive company. And that’s one of the reasons why, in some Asian cultures, Ivy League prep is popular.
He ran this business for ten years without ever going to America. When he finally gets to Harvard, he walks around and goes, “Why are you all wearing cargo shorts? Why aren’t you dressed like the magazines?”
Sam: Have you ever hung out with Asian friends who just came over and they dress way nicer than you? They wear better American fashion than Americans do? That’s kind of what happened. They took American style and cranked it up to the extreme — more American than Americans. They’re the American character as opposed to what Americans actually are.
At Duke — and Duke is kind of the Ivy of the South — there was a guy named Bobo. I don’t know his real name, I think his last name was like Bobadilla or something, but everybody called him Bobo. I think he was in the international dorm. This guy would always walk around dressed to the nines — the vest, the blazer, khakis. He never wore shorts. Never wore athleisure. He had a rolling briefcase that he took to every single class. No backpack. And he had this kind of beret-type cap. At first we all kind of laughed at him. But by week three we were like, “Bobo looks pretty fly, actually.”
Shaan: That tends to happen. I’ve had a bunch of Asian friends come over and I’m like, “Dude, you are dressed as if you read an American magazine and thought that’s how we all behave.” And they look way better than us.
Corporate Merch Business Idea [00:27:00]
Shaan: This gave me an idea: how do you put a 10% remix on something? Did you see the McDonald’s merch I put in my 52 Tuesdays thing?
Sam: No.
Shaan: So there’s this guy on Twitter — I don’t know how you say his name, it’s like the most French name I’ve ever seen, Gam Huen or something — he’s the senior marketing director at McDonald’s, the ex-head of social. He tweeted this thing out and there’s this jacket that just looks so fly. I’m like, “Oh my God, I want this jacket.” I never wanted a McDonald’s jacket until this moment. I must have this McDonald’s jacket.
And it kind of gave me this idea: if you take high-fashion streetwear design and apply it to licensed IP that’s usually pretty low-end casual, you get an interesting result. He did it with McDonald’s. And when I saw this college thing I was like — the college gear that pretty much every store sells is the same. Sweatshirts, hoodies, sweatpants, t-shirts. Nobody takes that same IP and does it in high fashion or streetwear.
Sam: Yeah, streetwear. I agree. I actually own four or five different Ivy League sweatshirts because I got so obsessed with this. I took tours of a couple of them. I always tell people I toured Harvard once — I bought a Groupon. I’m completely into this. I’ve got my Stanford one.
Shaan: I want to do this with company brands. I want to create a rogue merch company that does absurd merch for tech companies. All corporate merch is the same — hoodies, t-shirts, backpacks, vests, socks. Same stuff. And it all tends to be pretty cheap. I thought it’d be interesting to have a merch company called the Absurd Merchandise Corporation, or the Ridiculous Merchandise Corporation.
What you do is you make categories that don’t exist yet. For example — when you were at The Hustle and you guys did ad sales, did your sales team have a gong?
Sam: Yeah.
Shaan: And you bought that gong and it’s kind of an unbranded gong. I think somebody should make: the sales gong, the deal trophy, the Series A ring — like a class ring or an exit ring. If you sell your company you get a ring. Like a limited-run item. And then you do categories other merch companies don’t even touch, in limited quantities at high price points. And then on top of that you do super high quality, high price point corporate merch — the McDonald’s jacket equivalent. The vintage throwback tech brand stuff.
Sam: Like a really cool old Apple or Microsoft thing. Remember how Apple used to have the rainbow Apple? How Microsoft had the four colored squares? The retro vintage throwback stuff — I went on Etsy the other day looking for this and I bought a bunch of vintage retro tech things. There’s not a lot out there.
But I was inspired because I went to dinner with our buddy Greg Eisenberg. Greg shows up and he’s got this jacket on. I haven’t seen Greg in a few years. Greg is like mood music — if you hang out with Greg, your head starts to nod, almost like there’s music playing. You’re just in a good mood. You’re like, “Why is my foot tapping?” It’s because there’s a Greg Eisenberg within 10 feet of you.
So I’m hanging out with him and I’m like, “Is that an IBM jacket?” He’s got this 1980s IBM windbreaker jacket. Awesome. Doesn’t quite fit right. I’m like, “Where did you get this?” He’s like, “I was in Japan.” Of course. He goes, “I was in Japan on a train, sitting next to this older guy. We had a great conversation, and at the end of the conversation he gave me his jacket.” That is the most Greg Eisenberg thing to do — strike up such a great conversation that somebody gives you their jacket.
So I told Greg, “We should turn this into a thing that exists in the world for no reason but is awesome. Next time you have an amazing conversation with somebody, you give them the jacket. And they have to give the next person the jacket. Let’s see how far it goes.”
I want to start this. I bought one off Etsy. Next time I have just a lovely, spontaneous, serendipitous conversation with a stranger, I’m going to give them the jacket and say, “The next time you have a conversation that leaves you lit up, you must give them the jacket.” And I’m going to make a Google doc — “Jacket handed to Japanese man on train, [date]” — and just see how far it goes.
Shaan: You better buy cool stuff or the person will be like, “No thanks, I’m good.”
Sam: It’s yours, you can keep it.
Marissa Mayer’s Shine App [00:33:00]
Shaan: Dude, pick one of these other topics. Some of these sound like they might be funny.
Sam: Okay, I’ve got a funny one. Some people are going to be like, “You shouldn’t make fun of this,” but that’s what this podcast is. Honest conversation among friends. Did you see the Marissa Mayer app launch?
Shaan: No. What happened?
Sam: Oh my god. Okay, so Marissa Mayer — you know her backstory? One of the first 20 people at Google. Climbed her way up, got wealthy. Famous for testing 42 shades of blue for the Google search button to find the optimal one. She created the product manager program at Google, which trained a bunch of people who went on to Facebook — this whole long family tree of PM talent. Then becomes CEO of Yahoo. Supposed to have incredible product chops. Yahoo kind of falters, so people are like, “Was she good, was she bad?”
Then I haven’t heard from her in a little while. She comes out of nowhere and posts a Twitter thread. It’s like, “You ever been at a party and somebody says ‘share that photo with me’ and then they don’t? Well, I’m going to solve that problem with my new app — Shine.”
She creates a photo sharing app in 2024, which is the most 2012 thing possible. The last time anybody heard from Marissa Mayer it’s like she was frozen in time, and somebody thawed her out, and she just made the same app you would’ve made in 2012 when the iPhone was first popping and people were doing photo sharing apps.
She posts this thing and it has thousands of retweets. Some people are like, “Oh, this is cool,” and a lot of people are like, “Why is this the ugliest app I’ve ever seen?” Just look at the pictures. Give me your reaction.
Shaan: She may be past her prime in terms of knowing what’s cool.
Sam: Basically the thing looks like a test flight app. Everything is rectangular. The buttons are too big. The colors are too boring. The font she chose — somebody retweeted it and goes, “Okay, cool, but why does it look like an Indian wedding invitation?” Which is so spot on. The font literally looks like the Aladdin font. It’s crazy.
Shaan: Why is she doing this? Marissa Mayer is probably a billionaire, or at least hundreds of millions. This seems beneath her.
Sam: I mean, it’s fun to build things. I think she genuinely felt this problem — group photo sharing at events is still actually hard. You go to a party and you want to see everybody’s pictures and it’s not easy to do. There was a famous app called Color that tried to do this way back. Many people have tried the same app.
Maybe it’s time. Or maybe it’s time to hire a designer. One of those two things is true and we’re going to find out which.
Shaan: I like her. I hope she wins. I’ll leave it at that.
Sam: I like this woman a lot too. Oh, did we do a good cop / bad cop thing there? That was nice.
Shaan: My personal belief is: if you put out a product and the product looks ugly, it’s not mean to point that out. There’s a lot of people saying this. I found it very funny. I wish her well. I have nothing against her personally. She’s obviously very smart, more successful than me, smarter than me — all the usual disclaimers.
The Monkey on the Back: Management Framework [00:38:00]
Shaan: Okay, so me and Nick Huber are part owners of Shepherd. We do these workshops together. I went in thinking, “Okay, what are we going to do?” He’s like, “No, no — let’s add real value. Let’s talk about the stuff we’re doing in our companies that actually works, that’s not obvious. Like, your life before you did this was one way, and after was better.”
So I’m like, “Great, I’m gonna shine here.” We get on, and Nick tells a story that’s so good I’m like, “Where the hell did he get that from?” I had to follow that and I was like, “Oh yeah, I do metrics and KPIs.” Nick’s thing was so good I didn’t need to say anything.
Nick comes in and starts talking about a monkey on a desk. He told this story, and only recently I heard it again and realized — Nick got this from Harvard Business Review. It’s the number one or number two most-sold article they’ve ever published. And I thought, “Oh, that makes so much more sense.” Still all credit to Nick for teaching it to me.
Here’s the idea. It’s a rookie mistake almost everybody makes as a manager or CEO. You build a company, you’re in charge, you start to hire people. In your mind you’re like, “Great — I hired these people, now they’re going to take care of all these things. I’m going to have less work.” But of course every first-time manager learns: we all pretty much suck at delegating at the beginning.
What happens is you hire somebody, they come in trying to do a good job, and they use this analogy of the monkey. The monkey is like a problem. An employee walks by your office, knocks. “Hey boss, can I come in for a second? We have this situation, this problem. What do you think we should do?” And you’re like, “Okay, it’s not an easy answer. Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.”
What this guy points out is that sounds very reasonable. But what’s happened is they took a monkey — their problem, their responsibility — and by saying “let me think about it, I’ll come back to you with an answer,” you’ve let them give you the monkey. The monkey is now on your desk.
Next guy walks in. “Hey boss, wanted to get your opinion — I’m thinking about doing this.” And you’re like, “No, no, I don’t like that. Let me edit it, let me fix that for you.” Monkey’s off their plate, on yours. If you have five direct reports and all of them give you one monkey a week of some unsolved problem, by the end of the month you have 20 monkeys crying in your office. You’re like, “What the hell just happened? I hired all these people but somehow I have more work than before.”
So the article talks about how to actually handle that situation — how to delegate so that at the end of the day they own the problem. First, be very clear: you own this problem, not me. That means you’re responsible for executing it, for the results, and for the final decision. If you need input, you can schedule time with me — you can’t just walk in and drop this problem off. We’ll have scheduled time to talk about it. You don’t get to hijack my time whenever the problem exists.
Sam: Right.
Shaan: Second, make sure they understand it’s their problem, not yours. Nick’s point is that people are scared to do this. What if they mess up? But in the long run it’s great — you’re going to find out quickly whether someone is capable of solving their own monkeys. If they can, you should promote them, invest in them. If they can’t, you know it’s not the right fit. Over time you only have competent people who can take care of the monkeys themselves.
Sam: I started to see it after that — every time an employee would come in with a problem, I’d quickly differentiate between “do we need to talk about this now or should we schedule time?” And secondly, how do I make sure they’re not just giving me the problem? My instinct is to be a problem solver, a doer. I trust myself more than I trust anyone else. So my instinct is just to do it myself — “just this one time.” But that “just one time” mentality never ends.
I don’t catch me as a regular one-on-one meeting type of guy. Right now I probably have two. One is with my assistant. What I tell her to do: I created a filter. Anything that comes into my inbox or anything I say in passing that is non-urgent — she puts it all together into one doc, we schedule one hour, and we knock them all out. Because I hate when I have to stop what I’m doing on a big task and address one little thing. Eyeglasses prescription. My kid’s elementary school asked for something. A K-1. Random requests.
So I said — unless it has to be addressed right now, we do them all on Wednesdays. There’s one doc and we make a game of it: how many of these can we knock out in one hour? I just make decisions on the fly. It doesn’t interrupt anything else I’m doing.
That meeting, plus one with the CMO of my e-com business — those are my only two standing meetings.
Shaan: I think your business arrangement with Shepherd might end up being pretty good. I won’t name the names, but one of your competitors just raised money at a $300 million valuation. And they showed how much revenue they’d added in the last 12 months, and it was jaw-dropping. I had no idea these things could be as big as they are.
Sam: Yeah, the companies that have been doing this for four, five, six, seven years — they’re benefiting from remote work becoming normalized. Having offshore talent is just smart. It’s no extra organizational cost. Second, during zero-interest-rate times everything was about growth, growth, growth. Nobody cared about profits. Now everybody cares about profits. One of the biggest costs to every business is labor, and if you can reduce your labor cost even by a few percentage points, all of that drops straight to the bottom line.
And the last thing: people are now more open about it. It used to be kind of a douchey thing to say “I have an assistant.” But a lot of people are now more open — “Here’s what I did, here’s how it’s benefited me, here’s how I set it up.” That gospel started to spread. And companies like Shepherd repositioned what it means. It went from “I just used Fiverr, can’t believe it worked” to “your team is your team — it doesn’t matter which country they’re in.”
Cubby Beds: Bootstrapped Special Needs Smart Beds [00:50:00]
Sam: All right, let me tell you about something. In 2017, this guy comes to my office. I was running The Hustle — we had only been going about a year and a half but we had some hype, so people started talking to us. This guy named Caleb reached out to me. Caleb was originally my account manager at Sailthru, which is what we were using to send emails. I get lunch with him, thinking he’s just going to upsell me on Sailthru. Turns out he’s like, “Hey man, I’ve been working on this idea. Nights and weekends. I’m going to make a bed for kids who have autism, Down syndrome, a variety of things like that — because they need a special bed. One that helps with sensory issues, has a camera that can be tracked more easily.”
And I was like, “All right, Caleb. That sounds cool. Do you have a kid with autism? Is that what inspired you?”
He was like, “No, I’m unmarried. I don’t have children.”
And I was like, “Well… this is a weird problem to solve for. God bless you. Start a newsletter, nerd.”
About a week ago I see this guy who joins Hampton. He reaches out. He goes, “Hey, you remember me?” I go, “Caleb, of course I remember you.” He goes, “Well, that thing you told me was silly — Cubby Beds — it’s a thing now. And we bootstrapped the entire thing.” He sends me the website — cubbybeds.com. It’s amazing.
Sam: I cannot believe he pulled this off. He shows me pictures. “Here I am in my garage assembling the piping. No factory wanted to take us on, so I just had to buy a bunch of piping to make the original bed.” They sold a bunch of them. The beds cost five to ten grand, and people’s insurance pays for it. At this point he’s going to do many tens of millions in revenue this year.
I think this is proof that: A) you shouldn’t listen to me — I told him it was stupid, so don’t listen to me, or don’t listen to anyone. Just do the thing. And B) this is just awesome.
Shaan: This is amazing. Smart beds for special needs. The thing looks incredible. I don’t know why this is special needs only — I would love to sleep in something like this. This amazing cocoon of peace and solitude. Padded walls. This is amazing.
Sam: It’s better than Eight Sleep. Better than Purple Mattress. Better than all those companies. I love this company.
Shaan: The price is — you said five to ten thousand?
Sam: I think it’s around $14,000 actually. And they don’t always put the price on the website because people’s insurance pays for it, which is a whole other beast. Can you believe this guy pulled it off? Would you have had the same reaction as me back then?
Shaan: No. I would have seen the genius in it and invested on the spot. I would have told him, “You’re a legend for doing this.” You and I are not the same.
Sam: Bring your ideas to Shaan, not me. I’m a hater.
I gotta give this guy a shout out. I think it’s awesome. He reached out saying, “I haven’t heard from you in like eight years — isn’t this crazy?” I love that it’s covered by insurance. I’m sure that was not simple to figure out. A $14,000 bed.
Shaan: What are all the features?
Sam: It has a camera system — good for safety monitoring. It’s a contained thing with soft walls so you can’t get hurt. It vibrates. It has lights that dim with the sunset and come up with the sunrise. It has speakers in there for meditation and breathing patterns. It’s pretty cool. Completely bootstrapped.
Shaan: I honestly think somebody should make this for adults. Am I wrong? Like, should there not be a version of this for the Huberman acolytes who need to optimize their sleep?
Sam: Yeah. I told one of our mutual friends who is definitely on the spectrum, and his immediate reply was, “Yeah — they need to make these for adults. I want one.”
I went to Rob Dyrdek’s house and he has this nap pod in his office. It’s like a giant helmet — you lay down and your chest up is in this cocoon. I don’t know if it works, but if something like that actually worked, I would definitely pay for it. That company should exist. If somebody’s making something like that, please reach out.
Shaan: I think a blanket and a couch will suffice. But what the hell do I know — clearly I’m wrong.
Sam: Congrats Cubby Beds. Good job.
All right, maybe we wrap up.
Shaan: That’s the pod.