Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en i get to see how they’re wired i get to see what makes them tick i get to see what they’re motivated by so now when it comes time to get great you know great effort out of them i know what moves the needle for them personally i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be so on this episode uh we’re talking to dan we’re asking about them asking about the episode we talked about we broke down the co-working space and we and we found like an interesting opportunity uh a founder started and sold the company in that space and he still said he would start another company in that space and thinks it could be huge which is a good sign we talked about this weird business called ice barrels and then we talked about the nike for recovery the nike of recovery uh which is a really interesting company great story and we talked about adam newman the founder of wework and how he’s got this like crazy hypnotic personality and i love learning about that i actually think it’s like something that you need if you’re gonna ever lead anyone and then i shared a steve jobs story i heard that may or may not be true i have no idea but it could be true it could be true that’s all i will guarantee all right that’s the episode um by the way if there’s like a follow button on your spotify do me a favor click that because we’re trying to grow the podcast and then click the subscribe button on itunes thank you it literally makes us like you only need like a handful of people in order to like go up in the ratings and it’s because of that i think so click it what’s up what’s going on cool shirt thank you me or dan dan got uh dan got a harvard shirt also so he’s part of the crew now oh there you go dan you look nice but i actually dan did you go to harvard i could see that yeah he looks like a harvard man i didn’t go to harvard but i have been to the bookstore oh all right same same same um what’s going on anything new uh yeah lots of new stuff but let’s jump in we have a bunch of topics today so we’ll uh we’ll spare people to small talk um all right i think they’d like that but that’s fine i’m down let’s get down to business uh where do you want to go first um you have something that you did a bunch of research on i want to go go to that first was it the co-working spaces you were going into what are you looking at yeah so oh by the way i see of ice barrel here interesting yes um i’m happy to discuss that um ice um co-working so on our trip ben made a suggestion he i i was one of us was teasing like we should do this we should do this we should do this him or you or me one of us but he he was kind of nailing down the point mentioned co-working yeah and i was like that’s kind of cool i think his quote was he’s like but here’s my big idea for the podcast uh take the mfm take my first million and uh and create like a network of co-working spaces that already exist just license the name out and offer the promotion to your members to be to be able to access them that was his idea yeah yes and i started thinking about that and i’ve always i wanted to get a little bit more into real estate and i thought it was cool and i just basically put the bat signal out there and i tweeted out who is an expert in co-working i want to learn and what i love to do for this pod i did this with this vending machine all i do is i get someone on the phone and i don’t want to bring them on the podcast because they mean they’re boring or they’re not good at this type of thing right but i basically just want to ask them tons of questions and that’s what i did and i took notes and so i found a guy named preston uh i actually don’t know how to pronounce his last name i know i never know how to pezic p-e-s-e-k so his twitter handle is preston pezik p-e-s-e-k and he had this company called spacious which he sold for um he sold the wework and i imagine he sold it for a lot of money because when i called him it was like noon east coast time and he was just going for a bike ride his butt so it doesn’t work anymore yes well it looked like he was in like a nice area of town in new york and he wasn’t working so i imagine it was a good deal but have you heard of uh spacious by any chance what was it okay does it still exist or they shut it down they shut it down but it was crazy interesting so the way so so we’re going to talk about co-working right now and we’re going to talk about where the opportunities are and where this guy where this guy thinks there’s opportunities and he has an interesting perspective he wouldn’t tell me the revenue but i bet i would imagine it was north of eight figures a year in revenue but spacious what it did originally was they would find restaurants that were only open at night or had most of their business from six to you know dinner time and they would do a co-working thing where they you would pay a little bit of money 29 i believe and you would get access to to use this restaurant as a co-working uh place so i’d heard of this before that there are restaurants that basically have prime locations nice interiors and they’re only going to be used during meal times and so the kind of pre-dinner service which is like your work day they were turning into this i i remember thinking oh that’s cool and i never heard about it again so i sort of assumed it didn’t work but what you’re saying is it started to kind of work and they got acquired no so what he was saying that it worked wonderfully but wework made him an offer so good he’s like i can’t refuse this um i don’t know if this guy i met he worked at a hedge fund before but maybe like you know he he didn’t come from a rich background and it was a big deal so i don’t blame them but basically it started by doing restaurants eventually it did retail so what that means is um you have uh uh some type of like ground level real estate and they would make a deal with the retail uh so retail uh real estate so not necessarily like it’s not like a lululemon store it’s like a store that’s typically used for lululemon they would make deals with them for as short as 30 days but it could be as long as six to 12 months where they would lease the place and then they would charge people 29 and you would try to get people to come in it’s called a a hot seat basically so like a pop-up yeah well you know what that is hot desking yeah so basically you don’t have you don’t have an assigned seat you come in and it’s sort of like first come first serve type of thing for the day so if i told you about this and you didn’t know anything about the business i imagine you’d be skeptical and think like this doesn’t this probably can’t work that well right i’d be like yeah it’s hard right uh you know it’s cool to have the airbnb for for for for co-working or for your for work i’ve heard of a lot of people try this people are trying this with your home you could take part of your home and turn it into a like a cafe for people uh to come and sit and have wi-fi and um i just felt like i never heard from any of these companies ever again i heard the idea and then likes crickets for the next two years so according to preston who started and exited the company he uh he may not start this because like i don’t know if i want to start another company but he goes i would love to invest in this space which is always a great sign if someone has started and sold something and still wants to go back and do it he goes it crushed it and i think that someone could still crush it he goes it’s just like a hotel uh four seasons can exist and also like um motel 6. a motel 6 like a lot of different brands can exist in this space but it’s incredibly lucrative and it can work wonderfully so for his spaces the way it would work is they would have at least 100 seats which means 100 place 100 areas that someone could sit so 100 seats and then they would have check-ins but they would aim to have 200 to 300 seats in a good location the target was 15 check-ins per month and if a location had that 29 that comes out to be around 90 000 a month and uh the profit margin on that could be about 40 percent right so one low and that and that profit margin includes the the person manning the location and then rent so quite lucrative and he was like yeah we we could crush it and he was like you could definitely bootstrap this into a smaller location but he goes i think that there’s a lot of space for this and if you’re gonna do it raise as much money as you possibly can and i think a person could build a business that makes a hunt or makes a billion dollars a year in revenue so how is this different than just we work right like isn’t this just i’ll explain so the problem with wework basically it’s long so so here i’ve tried to break this down into a framework and so the reason why a lot of co-working doesn’t work now we’re talking about uh what’s it called hot desk hot desk is different than quote the traditional when you think of traditional co-working you probably think of like a freelancer or a small business owner who wants to spend 300 a month to have a desk all the time at a at a wework so let’s just call that the traditional we uh co-working and the way that that worked is basically you sign an agreement for 10 years for a lease and then you go and do arbitrage where you find all right if i’m spending this much in my lease per square foot i’m going to subdivide it and i’m going to rent it uh for a short term but there’s here’s the issue long-term liability meaning your 10-year lease with a short-term uh income stream a short-term rental agreement and so the people may only stay for two three four months because it’s a month-to-month lease that you’re renting to your and he goes he goes basically you just get churn and it’s just hard to keep up with that and because things can change like a pandemic where everyone works from home yeah and he’s like that it just doesn’t work and so what we did was we took short-term liability meaning a lot of their places can um kick them out at any time but they had so many of them and it was considered like a pop-up that it was okay and so it didn’t matter if a place closed for a little while because they can just go somewhere nearby in that building um or in that area and so it worked out really really well okay i um i don’t know if it’s because i didn’t talk to this guy or what but i still feel a little bit like yeah you know same [ ] different toilet um as far as like i’m not sure i’m not sure i don’t i don’t fully understand why this is that much better than traditional co-working and i think traditional co-working is you know kind of marginal marginally good or maybe i’ve just seen some disasters right breather uh breather raised a ton of money and looked like they were the next unicorn and i think so ended up selling for three million dollars so they sell to three million dollars for i don’t know like you know i i have like an uncle who could have bought breather right so so it didn’t have like a fantastic exit what wework is also run into problems that i think were not just the pandemic but um this arbitrage model was sort of thin so i don’t know i’m a little bit skeptical but okay where do you see the opportunities beyond that’s okay if you’re skeptical to be honest i’m skeptical too but i still think it’s cool but i’ve got another angle here yeah so co-working i asked him but co-working sounds more interesting because i want that lo i want that like more uh i want that recurring revenue and i don’t want to open up like loads of locations how do i make that work he goes well the best way that you can make that work is you’ve got supply and you’ve got demand and the the supply being um i’m probably gonna screw up my supply and demand so actually let’s just skip that part uh but basically you have your consumers so your people who want to come and rent that place he was like that’s actually not that important what’s important is that you pick good locations and you do the real estate part well but um what if you could figure that out which is like kind of straightforward but still a lot of work you have to figure out how to make your consumers incredibly sticky and the only way that he could find that can make it sticky is you have to have shared interests so for example do you know the wing yeah yeah the female co-working space he says that that’s a great business and the reason is is that there’s likely not gonna be the reason why you need to be sticky is you need someone to be willing to stay there for over a year right and so he goes shared interest is the best way and he goes how do you come up with shared interest you go to facebook groups you go to meetup.com and you just find like whatever is like people have like a fan base so it could be like uh women it could be different minority groups it could be fitness enthusiasts he’s like i think that there’s a huge opportunity for people in co-working as long if you can make it sticky so people working on similar types of things they don’t want to leave their their office that’s where you have a a really good business whereas we work it didn’t really have that as much right so maybe an mfn co-working business could actually work but maybe not yeah maybe maybe you know one interesting thing i don’t know if you saw there’s a bank that did uh co-working inside of it i think chase bank or well it was awesome i used to go there all the time well which one was it uh capital capital capital one or whatever the capital one is it the capital one chase i think is is is the parent there so you used to go there so why were they doing that they just wanted foot traffic in the branch or what so here’s the other thing is that co-working actually can actually be a great customer customer legion so another way is if you want to go in the co-working business it could actually be far more interesting if you’re a software i i joked with my guys at hubspot i was like guys we should do this so if you’re a software company i actually think there’s an interesting play here to have a co-working or if you’re a bank something that you are trying to get freelancers or business owners and you have a super high ltv of tens of thousands of dollars it actually i think could be interesting to do this yeah like i wonder why doesn’t uh you know every every tech company spending so much money recruiting engineers um and like just recruiting in general why not just have space as a recruiting tool so so you basically rent out space even if you break even or are slightly unprofitable you would make up for it in the actual recruiting of people who are there because they’re in your orbit they you know they’re in the uber office in the uber co-working ring uh you know area and they get to eat the food and whatever else and sure enough you’re just absorbing talent uh you know as you go as part of that i don’t know if it’d be worth it but it is uh that’s i don’t know those are my thoughts on co-working i don’t have a ton of thoughts i think that wework is great as a real estate company um and by great i don’t mean like it’s bulletproof obviously the pandemic was sort of the worst possible thing that could happen to any co-working um you know co-working company but i i mean i do believe most most value in real estate is by uh change of use so you um you buy a thing that’s valued at uh warehouse you know uh square footage and you convert it into self storage and you make more per square foot um that’s what we work with doing it’s the same fundamental model as uh self storage but they were doing it with people and uh and i think that that business if not sort of managed by a lunatic probably wouldn’t have got as big as fast but also would not have had the fall it did and um and i’m curious to see how this shakes out i would be shocked like a lot of people love to [ ] on wework they think it’s a terrible business well i would be shocked if 10 years from now there wasn’t at least two or three multi-billion dollar co-working uh companies out there so like you can [ ] on the space you can share it on wework but in reality i think that there are gonna be winners in that space let’s talk about the the lunatic real quick so you just said it was worn by a lunatic if you’re one of this is probably even more fascinating so i went and did a lot of research on this and i talked to people not this guy but other people who knew adam or worked with adam yeah so wework was run by this guy named madame newman he was like crazy maybe not always in a bad way probably mostly in a good way and i talked to a bunch of people and i narrowed it down and i basically said what makes this guy so great so basically they are explaining to me they’re they go adam was here’s like a quote from this woman i talked to adam adam was unique on a one-to-one convo it was like looking into it when i talked to him it was like looking into a mirror and seeing myself but that mirror was a megaphone of my best self he made me believe that i was the best and i could do anything and i asked him i was like was he’s dyslexic isn’t he and they go yeah i think he is i’ve noticed that dyslexic people rank so high on having this ability to and this sounds negative and i don’t mean this negative to manipulate people and to manipulate them into believing that like like to con to persuading and leading and they and they just said he would i would tell himself and he would echo it back to me but for some reason i would believe it and i believe that i was the best that i possibly could be and he made me feel that anything was possible and i think that that is so fascinating and even more interesting than we work did you watch the wework documentary on hulu did you no i i did uh because you know you get to sort of see firsthand what’s the guy like cause he’s on camera it’s pretty raw it’s from you know it’s footage from when he when we work with sort of still on the rise and um and yeah it was sort of this cult of personality around him he didn’t seem particularly charming or anything like that but i think the thing i’ve seen with this is some people are so irrational in their belief right like it takes some irrationality to do anything because if if you’re just perfectly rational you look at your current situation and you’ll say this is what it is and anytime something else you know what a goal or a vision or a dream it will look completely irrational and so we all have a little bit of irrationality in us otherwise we wouldn’t have goals we wouldn’t have dreams um he was like sort of 90 10 90 irrational maybe not even 10 rational maybe it was just 99 1 uh irrational to rational where from day one he was saying what this was going to be how amazing it was going to be how this investor was going to give us all every dollar that they had how this customer was going to have the greatest experience of their life and he believed it with every bone in his body and when you encounter somebody with that kind of certainty it is very like addictive and sort of like intoxicating um because if they believe in themselves that much there’s really two ways to go some people become haters because they don’t have that sort of self belief in themselves and then other people sort of become followers and they they join in because they’re just like being around that level of certainty so that was pretty cool i love it by the way you know when i watched that fire festival documentary yeah i felt the same way i was like first of all badass vision fire special was a great idea with and it almost worked god-awful execution and it almost worked it was so irrational that it almost overcame rationality but it didn’t it failed in the end but most people point and laugh and i think that that was you know like kind of an amazing swing that was more impressive than that failure was more impressive than most people’s successes as far as i’m concerned i thought there was a big big audacious vision got a bunch of people on board almost pulled it off um almost might be a little generous but uh you know at least what i mean is like he rallied people around like almost in the sense of like it could have yeah sold all the tickets got all the big names on board right like right you know and and it wasn’t fraud like it wasn’t uh intentional fraud from what i remember like it wasn’t like i think it was but that’s okay that that that’s like not entirely important i mean i do think that like there was fraud but like there was a true belief of i can i can pull it off right there’s fake it till you make it and then there’s fraud fake it till you make it is hey it’s not there yet but i believe i can pull this off we’re gonna do it we’re gonna find a way if i just tell them this if i tell them it’s already booked then we’ll figure out a way to get it booked you know intention matters i actually when we hung out this weekend i felt not the same thing but a little bit of that with you where you like you didn’t say these any audacious things but you have this sense of belief it’s like well yeah why not like you went and met with people that i’m like really you’re doing that yeah just talk to him i’m gonna do this like you do do you know that you have a little bit of that in you as well you you have a more of a i think you and this this is not insulting you are because you’re like emotionally healthy you’re not like adam to where you have to say i’m gonna take over the world in order to feel good do you know what i mean yeah so like you’re very confident you’re you do [ ] almost because you just like it’s more fun than it is out of a of a personality deficit of like i have to be on top and so it’s a little bit more healthy but you have that same magnetism do you realize that right i do realize it because i try to do that and you know once you try it something for like five years straight you stop having to try you know effort effort is what creates effortless so i put an effort into it and now i don’t have to try that anymore it just happens and the reason why the reason i know i did it was because i was very conscious about it the reason we both love conor mcgregor and why i think really any fan loves conor mcgregor is not because of the way he throws his left hand when he punches it’s because the guy had this ludicrous self-belief when he was literally on welfare you know as a as a failed plumber in ireland and he was talking about how he’s going to become you know the largest you know i’m going to become a two-weight world champion the biggest sports star on earth number one on the forbes list and then guess what this year where he landed number one on the forbes list he’s the number one star in combat sports you know two-weight world champion achieved and so those of us who got to see that rise it’s yeah we’re happy for connor but really we’re happy for ourselves that holy [ ] this guy with just literally nothing but self-confidence self-confidence drove him to work because he believed that he could achieve it so he was motivated and then when he worked plus the self-confidence you know overcame all the odds and had it maybe i can have some of that too put a little bit of that in my drink that’s how i felt about it and so you know i don’t care about becoming a two-weight world champion but i have my own versions of those that i just sort of decided why would i why would i doubt myself right what’s that see what’s you can see what’s written behind me this is my uh this will be one of my sunday stories so i don’t want to i don’t want to spoil it but the the teaser is the teaser for this sunday story time with sean is doubt doubt if you’re gonna doubt anything doubt doubt um and so that’s how i feel now so how do you feel confident uh well you start to doubt doubt you you start to lack lack you start to doubt having lack you start to lack having doubt that’s that’s where you want to get to in order to have that sort of unshakable self-confidence what’s that conor mcgregor had that forbes saying yeah the two-weight champion uh what what what’s yours uh i’ve always said this i want to have a one percent of the world’s population uh consider me someone who is you know like they’re one of their favorite teachers somebody who who who they’ve learned from so the version of that that i saw was that math teacher that guy beat you in india who sold out a stadium he had a stadium full of people come to watch him teach i thought that was incredible and you know you start to see it into reality right we just did a live show okay it wasn’t it wasn’t 70 million people it was 300 people it was 400 people showing up at our live show right but but you start to see that come to come to fruition of like okay a year ago that didn’t exist that who’s to say a year from now that’s not 3 000 people who’s to say you’re from that it’s not 30 000 people right like that seems entirely believable to me and i’ve sort of envisioned it and so when it happens i won’t be surprised i’ll be pleased but i won’t be surprised and i’ve actually heard stories about a lot of these people so um i’ve talked to a lot of the early employees one of my good friends his name’s will he was like number 40 or something at uber and he tells me stories where he was like uh he’s like i just felt like anything was possible it was i felt like i was in in war and my co-workers were were my fellow troops and i loved it i felt like there was constant action and we were in this together that had this similar type of vibe i’ve heard who else have you heard that from um i mean hear from a lot of like fraudsters obviously but yeah who else it’s the sword that cuts both ways right you know if you spot it you got it that’s that’s sort of the way that most of these things work all the extreme strengths come with a corresponding evil right just like facebook a technology that connected everybody in the world and then guess what you know like [ ] chaos also from connecting the spread of information has never been easier we can spread you know and a student in india can you know has more access to like knowledge than the emperor did you know 100 years ago well guess what they also have access to fake news and porn and all these other bad things right like that’s why it’s funny whenever somebody would criticize crypto and say oh it could be used for all these bad things all that tells me is that this can be used for extremely good things also because there’s a duality with all of those and so that’s how i think about you know this extreme confidence if i was gonna rank i would put at the top if you if you think about what’s the most intoxicating desirable thing when you meet somebody the first number one i would say is a sense of peace when you meet somebody who’s truly happy like they’re not like bubbling over with with joy but they’re just happy you know when they’re at rest when nothing is going on or even when you know quote unquote bad things are going on i think that is when you see that it’s really hard to like you just want to be around that person you want to be like that person and who have you met anyone like that my trainers like that like just the other day uh he came came to our house i think i won he trained me for 80-90 minutes then he trained the next person and trained next person so he was going from 1 p.m till 7 30 p.m which doesn’t sound like a lot of hours but when you watch what he’s doing like he’s not just sitting there like on his phone while you’re working out he’s fully on motivating you changing the weights demonstrating the thing bringing that excitement talking to you whatever he’s got to be like switched on performing and so it was like hour seven he hadn’t eaten anything he hadn’t had a sip of water uh you know he hadn’t had a single break and it was just one person and it wasn’t even expected by the way it was just somebody who was like at my house was like oh can i get a session in he’s like come on in and so bye wait wait wait wait wait you just had people coming in to your house like my mom was over and she she wanted to work out normally she does it on a different day but she he was like all right yeah jump in i’m here and so what happened was by the end of it um he so so i walk into the garage where he where he was cleaning up the like kind of like the workout stuff and he’s got this huge smile on his face me and my wife we walked out because we were gonna go for a walk and uh we see him he’s smiling he’s laughing i don’t even know nobody was there i don’t know what he’s smiling he was just smiling and then he was putting things away and he just looks at me he goes part of time and i don’t even know what he was talking about i have no idea what he was thinking about but he just was like in that mood and he was this huge smile and i go man i told my wife i go man you know how i am at the end of a work day like when i work hard and i feel like i really exerted effort and i had to go above and beyond and do a little extra that day i become like such a whiny little brat like i’m like i’m so tired i need to eat i need like like i did so much now you know i know you need to do that work i’m i’m done um and i become the sort of like entitled little brat about myself and you know and i’m like crashing and i felt like this guy was just like i mean to come at me and be like party time like i don’t know what he was even thinking about but that’s not the way i end my work day when i feel like i worked overtime so what’s number two then you said happiness the next one is the is the is the sort of self-delusion it is the like irrational confidence in self when you meet somebody like that that is intoxicating even if they are not successful so like i intentionally have not put rich and famous people on this list yet because i’ve had experiences with both you meet a really successful person you meet a really famous person you meet somebody who is completely happy or somebody who is you know truly believes in themselves even when you’re like dude there’s no way you’re gonna pull that off and they truly believe it they’re not just boasting they’re puffing their chest out to me that is you know that’s a drug to be around somebody like that because i want to be like that i want to be truly happy i want to be truly confident and um and they they don’t even have to try to show it it’s just like it’s on their face it’s in the way they walk it’s in the way they talk and um and i can contrast that to the way i think and i see oh that’s the gap that’s where i want to be so i think those are the two most i guess like intoxicating things in people what do you think is that the same for you or is that just a method yeah and i know a bunch of people like that and i’m in both ways i’m like i’m exhausted i can’t be around you anymore but then i crave it constantly and i crave you when you’re gone yeah yeah you know what i mean like i’ve got like when my friends talk about working with travis so like are you gonna go work at his new company they’re like he’s trying to recruit me and i just can’t do i can’t go to war again but i’m just too worn out but like i miss it every day so it’s like a it’s a duality there but yeah i completely agree with you and i’m actually um reading this book yeah the laws of human nature uh in order to like learn a little bit more because i used to study this stuff constantly i would read books on influence and persuasion because i was i can’t build anything so i just have to be a leader of people and i’ve got to like persuade people to do this because i i can’t do it i don’t have the ability so i i got to bring some attributes to the table and so that’s my thing oh there you go dan’s reading it too so what do you so like i read the laws of human nature by robert greene which is about like how to like influence humans a little bit and how we think i uh how to win friends that influence people and i like think and grow rich for self-confidence is there anything you like i don’t know so book wise whatever maybe i don’t know but this you just reminded me of something i read yesterday there’s a quora story about this guy who interviewed at apple with steve jobs have you ever read the story no oh sorry i’m pulling it up right here so you can uh you can have the link but i was shaking my head no yeah podcast bro we got to have audio um so um okay so so there’s this thing so this guy uh writes this anonymous thing this might be by the way this might just be straight up like fan fiction so uh so like if i fell for some fan fiction you know my bad either way it was pretty inspiring this guy goes yeah i was at mit and um uh you know i was getting recruited by apple and i didn’t want to work at apple i wanted to go do something else i don’t know stay in school or like go to a different job he was like but you know people told me like okay just go apple go go interview see if you get the job see if you get an offer like that’s good for you so he goes to apple and he’s uh he’s sitting in the interview and sure enough like they’re asking a bunch of questions that just make him be like if this is your question i just definitely don’t want to work here and then he’s like then i heard this sort of like um sound on the other side of the like kind of the glass door or whatever the mirror and uh and uh you know steve jobs walks in and uh steve jobs walks in and he kind of like dismisses the vp who was like doing the interview and he looks he’s like he sits down he doesn’t look at me he looks at the sheet of questions and he’s just reading them he’s like like i don’t know five six seven minutes go by he hasn’t introduced himself he hasn’t said a word to me he hasn’t looked up and made eye contact he is just reading this list of interview questions and he’s like kind of scoffing at them as he’s reading them and he’s just like you know muttering kind of like like you know stupid uh and so he and he basically that you know sort of the long story short is he goes um you know how would we ever expect somebody interesting to uh to work with us when we ask the most uninteresting questions and so he’s like muttering that and so he um he he puts the paper down and he looks at the guy and he goes who are you and you go the guy kind of like answers like most people would or whatever he’s like you know i’m tom i don’t know his name let’s pretend he’s tom you know i’m tom uh you know you know i’m interviewing for the job here yeah i know what you’re doing i said who are you who are you he’s like uh you know honestly i don’t even really want this job like you know like i’m not that interested in working at apple he’s like he’s i’m not asking if you’re interested in the job i’m asking you who are right so he’s like going back and forth and the guy’s like look you know whatever he tries to answer the question and then steve’s like why don’t you want to work at apple and he goes uh honestly you know i just blah blah steve goes like take a walk with me right and steve jobs famous for like these walking meetings so he he’s like okay like i guess so you know and he said he takes a walk with him and so they they walk around the sort of campus and he’s like you can literally see like it’s like he’s got a like a gravity field around him like everywhere he walks people just clear the path uh because they don’t want to like talk to him they don’t want to like get in his way bother him or anything like that he’s like we’re talking and he’s giving me the whole spiel like you know we’re making some really great stuff here like we’re really really great like you won’t believe er just like kind of the like steve in the keynote he’s doing the the kind of like build up he’s not telling him anything yet uh but he’s telling him it’s really great he’s like you got to meet john johnny ive right you can be johnny and they go into johnny ive’s office and he’s showing him cool stuff or whatever anyways the story ends with with the guy sort of like getting wrapped up in the like intoxication of steve jobs he’s like dude i told you i don’t want to work here i don’t want to work here and steve jobs is like um give me a it’ll be the best month of your life um uh i will you know i’ll pay you three times what your normal rate would be for the month you know for one month i’ll make you pay you triple we’ll get you a car or an apartment or whatever else um just say yes and like say yes and we’re it’s done the guy’s like okay and he’s like fantastic and he’s like jennifer uh jennifer will help you from here and like jennifer yeah you know like whatever he like goes and introduces or he he leaves the guy for a second he’s like okay jennifer’s gonna help you jennifer now knows all the details about this whole situation asks no questions um you know has him sign a thing he’s like what’s my job title it’s like you’re a steve hire he’s like who do i report to i guess you’ll report to steve we don’t know uh don’t ask those questions those are not questions you want to ask steve and is like um okay cool but like uh i don’t live here i live in pittsburgh so i gotta like move my stuff like um or no no he’s like he’s like you know i i just have kind of my suitcase with me they’re like no no steve’s arranging all of your stuff to be moved here he’s like well i don’t know if i’m gonna stay the month he’s like that’s okay we’ll move it back if you decide not to steve prefers he wants you to have your stuff here and your apartment is across the street here’s your keys and a car will be there waiting for you and he’s like this was like an hour of total time had elapsed and somehow like the world had moved to make steve’s like wish come true and i don’t know again this might just be fair do you think this might just be fan fiction and even if it is i [ ] love it it’s a great like you know random ass tech fan fiction god i love that but if it’s true how [ ] cool is that i i i find it hard to believe it’s so and also there’s no [ ] point to the story right like i read the story i was like what’s the point of this story i didn’t know it stuck in my head and i told you now and you know tens of thousands of listeners and i still don’t know what the point of the story is excited from how [ ] cool is that if that happened i think it’s sick and i’ve and and and to bring it back to like these personality things um culture to wrap it up any i mean you’ve got a good personality uh what do you any resources for like improving that i’ll tell you one thing i do i think that the whole cult of personality ego thing that might work for some people where they’re like i’m great this place is great we’re gonna do great work i think that works i find that to be really hard in practice to like uh execute with a straight face and so the thing that i use as like maybe my stepping stone towards being more like that is i i do this exercise with anybody i work with um and in fact you know we met dan in miami this was the one dan wanted to chat about ideas for the podcast because he’s trying to do his job he’s like hey i have a bunch of ideas for how we can grow the pod and make it work better and we did that normally what i would do when i first bring anyone onto the team is i basically do like a dream exercise with them i’m like okay come to this off come to the come to the whiteboard room we go to the whiteboard and they expect me to like kind of outline their role or talk about the project i’m like no no same sort of thing who are you who you’re trying to be by the time you’re done here this this job this job is like getting into a car right you’re gonna have a bunch of it’s going on a road trip you’re gonna have a bunch of other people in the car with we you know we’re cool it’s gonna be a fun hang the music is good the vibe is nice roll up the window you’re gonna feel it feel the air going through you know through your hair okay we’re trying to get to some destination and your job is not to be like focused on the car making the car as great as it can be you’re recognize that every business every experience is just a vehicle to get you to some other like destination for yourself and so like what is that for you who are you today and who do you want to walk out of here as and i start getting them pumped talking about themselves and um usually people have a very hard time even having a vision for themselves right it’s like it’s normal to have a vision for the company and a mission for the company 9 out of 10 people maybe 99 out of 100 people don’t have a vision for themselves or a mission for themselves right and uh and how crazy is that like yourself is a lot more important than than the the corporation you work for and so i try to like sketch that with them and that does two things one is um they realize that i care about them as a person uh and i’m here to like i’m gonna help them get where they wanna go right and then the second thing is i get to see how they’re wired i get to see what makes them tick i get to see what they’re motivated by so now um so that’s the thing that’s a thing i do that’s like kind of in this realm i i i feel like i’m taking notes i dig this [ ] do you want to um just bang out a few quick ideas you want to start with you want to do let’s do the top barrels let’s do can i tell the story about hyper ice and then we’ll talk about the ice barrels go for it had you heard about hyper ice before do you know this what is it so it’s this thing you might have seen if you’ve ever seen anybody who’s an athlete and um after they work out or whatever they’re wearing they’re not like going in an ice tub anymore they’re wearing this black thing that’s wrapped around their legs that like is pumping some air or compression or cooling into their like onto their body yeah um you know the first time you see it they it looks weird right they’re like kind of like it’s like they’re the michelin man they have did you discover this from the guy who tweeted at us no who tweeted ass oh someone was like i want to send you guys hyper eye stuff oh no way uh maybe he listens to the pod that would be amazing but uh i don’t know i just saw this because um a random random story but like i saw it because in the nba games now you always see nba players all of a sudden for the first time ever when they go to the bench to rest they don’t just sit there and rest right like it used to be you go sit down and rest the camera doesn’t even show you then the camera starts showing you because they want to show your facial reaction and then what happened in the jordan era was he’s always drinking gatorade right he’s a sponsored athlete gatorade gatorade gatorade inside the cup of gatorade is probably water but like he’s holding a gatorade cup always right because gatorade wanted to be the way you refuel your body you know as a drink right they wanted that that that niche and by partnering with all the sports team it was sort of a genius thing right uh when the super bowl ends they dumped the gatorade on the coach right they created these uh branding moments and so now every year at the super bowl hundreds of millions of people see the gatorades uh you know canister how genius is that i saw a new thing that caught my attention and it was lebron went to the bench and he took this ferragun looking thing out he started you know like self-massaging using this gun on his leg to like recover while he was resting and i was like oh that’s cool and it wasn’t a theragan it was like a different device so i went looked it up as thing called hypervolt and hypervolt is made by hyper ice so what is this company so it’s the same company that makes those those cooling like uh straps or i don’t know what you would call it like this giant black thing you put it’s a sleeve you put on your leg around your leg and it’s like a way to ice your legs after you work out and so here’s the back story there’s a guy who’s like a teacher and a high school basketball coach and um he was you know sort of always he was just a coach and he was sort of thinking about recovery because you know you get into your 30s and now when you’re after you work out or after you play basketball you’re gonna like not be able to walk great the next day and uh so he was sort of experimenting like is there anything better than just icing like basically he thought to himself what do the pro athletes do he’s like they ice they ice their knees they ice their ankles and if you watch them do it it always looked the same it was like a giant bag of ice yeah with an ace bandage around the top of it and it literally looks like a wounded person right like you look like you’re hurt if somebody was to draw a cartoon of somebody with a bum shoulder they would draw this giant ice bag on the top and um and you know and and basically uh bandage wrapped around it so he’s like that sucks like you’re not like broken uh you’re recovering could we make recovery look cool and be more efficient so he starts trying to design a ice wrap that’s less inconvenient and looks cooler so he’s like oh it’d be cool if it just like you just strapped on to you and it wasn’t a bag of ice that was like you know getting wet everywhere if it was just cold and um you know so he starts working on it and his friend is a guy who trains with kobe or he’s like a the coach of a little college that kobe used to train at uh irvine in the summers and so his friend sees his thing and goes dude you’ve got to show this to kobe and he’s like oh okay yeah sure and he’s like you know a week later he’s like dude i told kobe kobe was icing his knees after after we did a workout and i told him about your thing he wants to see it can you come so he goes he shows kobe and kobe says two things he’s like first you know some product feedback like when we’re icing uh you know the pressure keeps escaping out of the top so like it’s not working it’s not compressing tight enough so can you fix that the guy’s like got his notepad out he’s like yeah yeah for sure and kobe’s like also um the name [ ] sucks he’s like oh uh okay uh hyper ice you know actually i named it after you your favorite chew and my favorite shoe is like the hyperdunks uh by nike so i thought hyper ice and kobe’s like name sucks and uh but he ended up keeping it and so he ended up doing product development with kobe and kobe made him a deal with kobe goes look if you can make it better than my current thing i’ll wear it on the bench so you’ll get free kind of exposure you know from this thing you see these pictures of kobe with icing his shoulder using hyper ice so kobe does it people see it on the bench more athletes started asking more lakers start asking for it now other teams players start asking for it he builds a brand around this and what he’s building is nike for recovery so which is like the greatest that i mean that’s wonderful that’s wonderful because that um calm he says that he wants to be the nike for meditation or nightmare for the mind yeah and that makes sense i get that i think that’s cool i think this is even better it’s even better exactly because what is nike nike was all about the performance when you’re on the court when you’re on the field wear this you can run faster jump higher blah blah and then that became a super competitive space how do we get you to perform better right wear this wear this under armor you know um you know use these cleats whatever it is um but nobody was really he’s like you would see them wear all this gear sell billions of dollars of merchandise by wearing it on the court and then when they got off the court they were using ace bandages and plastic bags of ice what is a brilliant um insight brilliant right [ ] he’s like dude i had no no intention to go into business i was a happy teacher and coach but like you know i just sort of stumbled on this path really and so now hyper ice they do they have the ice product they have the theragun type product i’m looking at it and and i like this company because their shit’s expensive and i would consider we’re going to talk about another thing that’s expensive i would consider buying this because i think expensive good health equals good yeah like when i see that and it like loves music equals good expensive equals good right yeah like everything i their branding is tight it’s a well executed thing so let me give you some numbers last year 100 million in revenue is what they said they were projecting 200 million this year it raised last year at a 700 million valuation so it’s gonna be you know if this continues to work this will be a billion dollar plus company that was started in the way that i just described how [ ] cool is that story i love that story and i love this concept we have an idea you have an idea and i have a couple other ideas about what else you can do here but here’s the framework the framework is athletes are the one of the greatest marketing vehicles of all time go look at the shoe companies if you want proof of that uh go look at gatorade go look at who mcdonald’s and coke will sponsor it’s the top athletes even though they’re obviously not eating mcdonald’s and drinking coke in order to perform their best but that’s that’s they’re the best marketing vehicle and the native placement is what matters so it’s one thing to say you know i’m holding a coke and or you know mcdonald’s in a commercial it’s another thing to watch them actually drinking you know from a gatorade cup during the thing or wearing hyper ice after they train because that’s feels real it feels like this is what the pros this is what top performers actually do so looking at the pregame and the post game how much more is there if you walked into a locker room before and after a what are all the other things you’ll see them doing and then how could you turn those from unbranded moments into branded moments right beats by dre is a perfect example of this beats by dre sold to apple for three billion dollars one of the reasons why is they made headphones well all right there’s already a bunch of headphones out there there’s sonos there’s sennheiser there’s all these other ones and um what beats by dre did was they gave it to all the athletes that they you know drew was had the kind of hip-hop roots and then all their commercials if you remember was colin kaepernick showing up to the game the fans are booing him he puts the beats by dre on he goes into the zone he can’t hear the noise all he hears is his music and then he goes to the game right they intentionally always put it in the lockers of all the players so when they’re doing their interviews they have headphones around their neck they have headphones hanging right behind them right they’re walking into the arena that has become like before every nba game you they show the walk-in what is lebron wearing uh when he walks in so those become branded moments where maybe you can build products around that and he obviously got all the right people to invest i’m looking at the crunch base it’s all athletes fernando tatis ricky fowler doc rivers deandre jordan uh what’s that one uh naomi osaka osaka yeah uh this guy’s gonna crush it this is the greatest thing ever and so tell me about this ice barrel thing because i think you have a cool story around this uh so i was at a friend’s house i’ve talked about him he lives a few doors down from me and his name’s andy and he started this company called student loan here i believe and he sold it for a lot of money 60 million bucks and i was at his house for lunch my wife and i and he had this huge barrel and i was like what the [ ] is this thing he goes it says company that i just bought a large stake in and i’m helping them get their [ ] right and it’s this barrel that you hop into and it’s just an ice barrel that’s all it is is a nice barrel but there’s one pretty shocking thing about it it’s two thousand dollars so like i’m in this text group with you well set this up in in the way that that you’re you’re you’re an athlete right people saw the quads they saw quadzilla in the in the twitter funny that picture right they saw the quads uh you were a track jack athlete when you were done training did you ever ice yeah did you do ice baths yes and what did you do for in your post game if i had walked in the locker room looking for startup ideas what would i have seen you doing oh i mean you’re just sitting in the ice bath you’re just sitting there the ice bath made of it’s not a barrel well they use like trash cans typically like literally like you’ll use like a shitty trash can or you’ll use these massive plastic buckets but typically like a trash can right so it’s this unbranded thing that the athletes are doing to recover and it’s like this literally like a 64 gallon black trash can which is kind of gross of an idea that that’s what do i do to recover i get in a [ ] trash can right so like that was the opportunity to make that sexy and cool in a branded moment and that’s what these guys did it’s a giant cool looking like barrel so you know it’s like like a like where you would store like whiskey or something like that and there’s actually a few reasons why i think this is going to be big so the best example i could think of is yeti there’s two examples yeti and weather tech weather tech makes floor mats boring silly thing i buy whenever i buy a car i immediately buy weather tech maps yeah right away and they like you think that these are like kind of forgotten things same with yeti yeti was just you know everyone has a coleman cooler growing up they just made it cool and they like are 4x more expensive than the nearest competitor and yet we all do it and this what’s it called ice barrel. basically if i was going to distill their formula it’s like double the value quadruple the price right like that’s the way i would i would like describe it plastic thing but the reason why it’s cool is those trash cans if you’re like a a big guy like i kind of am like you can’t like push down on the thing otherwise it’s going to like collapse yes and so you gotta like getting that sucks and it’s and it’s inconvenient it’s not that inconvenient but it’s inconvenient but for the type of person that ice baths like if you’re gonna like make it a little bit more convenient and it’s two grand i’m like [ ] it whatever i don’t care like like five hundred dollars and two thousand 000 is like kind of like the same thing to me a little bit when it comes to like health and fitness right so i’ll buy it if i if i’m into that and so it doesn’t really look that spectacular but when your shit’s two grand you don’t need to sell that many of them i mean if you’re selling 40 a day what’s that 40 a day is 80k a day in revenue times 30 uh that’s uh 2.4 million dollars a month which is 36 million dollars a year you got to sell very little and that’s kind of why i like this business i think and and i think i talked to him about it i i he says it costs a lot of uh because it they it costs them a lot of money right so like it’s a pretty interesting business are you bullish on that i love that idea i wouldn’t have been as bullish until i looked at it through this through this lens now i see now i see the value the other ideas that i think are like this so if i was gonna be like okay what else what else can i do um we’ve talked before about saunas i think saunas are going to agree saunders are just going to keep exploding in popularity 100 agree joe rogan is kind of like the lebron in this case who’s been touting them but a lot of athletes use saunas i had one kind of like i had to keep one on amazon for a grand it was called the barcelona yes exactly so uh i want you know like where is our spanish sponsorship i’m waiting for my home sauna sponsorship uh you know i think a lot of people are gonna install home saunas there’s also other like technologies like that like i forgot like red red light therapy and some other [ ] like that i don’t know what they are but i like to always educate me and then sell me right that’s what you got to do if you’re i tried buying a um sensory deprivation tank so i used to go to this place in the mission in san francisco and i’d pay 50 and you like sit in this thing that kind of looks like a tanning bed and it’s filled with water and salt and you just float for uh like an hour and it was quite nice i loved it i tried to buy one i was like sure i was like you know i’ve got space what i’ll put one in my garage how much is it it’s like 20 000 or i mean it’s like a [ ] ton and it doesn’t have to cost that much money so so here’s the why why is it i don’t need a full body tank that works but if somebody made a dope helmet that was go to the place of silence it’s like what you go in this thing and you’re not gonna hear a [ ] thing or you’re gonna hear specific sounds like you know like calming sounds whatever it is um i think somebody could sell a helmet that is gonna like basically change your state sort of like the sensory deprivation idea um as just a helmet i think that would be kind of cool as a random idea all right ice barrel what else so we got sauna we got ice barrel we got sensory deprivation here’s another one i bought these little things uh so man i could go pick them up but they’re basically these little inflatable um pods so it’s like a little inflatable uh plastic thing that i saw lebron using so lebron has his like warm-ups that’s become part of the television programming as they show lebron before the game what is he doing to get ready and i saw he was always standing on or kneeling on these two little clear plastic things and one time when he was recovering from injury the reporter kind of showed lebron’s been using this thing it’s this instability ball and the idea is like a bosu ball basically you when you stand on it it gives you an uneven un like uneven surface right because most of our weight training we are on flat you know hard stable surfaces but then when you do athletic things you’re not always landing at the exact yeah as that so he does his training on top of that he does all his warm-ups there and it like warm ups all his sort of little micro muscles and microfibers they all get activated when he just spends time squatting on this hand standing on this balancing on this same thing with steph curry for his ankles he does the same thing and so i think that little products like that can work uh ben sent me another one of these that’s like a medicine ball that’s filled with water so you take a traditional piece of equipment like a medicine ball it’s just hot it’s just you know solid and heavy when you put water in it and you move it from side to side the water you know your arms move and then the water sloshes in that direction and then if you’re trying to move back the water is moving one way you’re moving the other so it’s a good resistance training and so i think water-based uh water-based training things if the athletes are doing that i think that’s kind of interesting and people want to buy what the athletes buy the other is braces knee braces ankle braces shoulder wraps wrist wraps you know like anything that is um like injury prevention i think could be sexed up because they are usually uh pretty like basic stuff right now there’s a when you’re talking i’ll keep googling but there’s a so you know how when you get surgery you uh have your head like you’ve never had this but you know like if you’ve ever seen your parents or friends get like a shoulder surgery you have to keep your shoulder in this like particular type of cast where your arm stays up high the l yes so there’s this brand that is a startup that is like remaking those and it’s called like what was it called it’s like champion sports or something where they did a whole thing around these soft casts so like when you have like a walking boot they made like cool walking boots and that’s actually a great one it’s like a cooler walking boot and they built this business all around this and that’s actually really interesting as well there was a woman who uh i don’t remember the name of it but i’ll try to find it maybe we’ll put it in the show notes there’s a woman who uh was like a designer of some kind and she got like paralyzed and went in a wheelchair and then she like changed her life mission she designed herself like the coolest looking wheelchair that didn’t look like you know you’re you know if you’re younger like how do you make a wheelchair look slick it had like cup holders a place for your phone it was just like nice looking it wasn’t the kind of like blue and metal like kind of look that you see at a hospital and she just made like an awesome looking wheelchair and it’s like hey look if you’re in a wheelchair um like okay but let’s make it as good as we can and she was like this is my new life mission i thought that was pretty great too by the way it’s called game ready check it out go to gameready.com it looks like they’re acquired um they were doing 35 million dollars a year when they got acquired this is the ice thing yeah wow it only got acquired for 65 million dollars but yeah go to game ready they it’s they have ice stuff but they also have like post surgery equipment uh kind of interesting right yeah same ways i think that i think there’s an opportunity the brainstorm would be go hang out with an athlete follow them pre-game post game during the game during timeouts and just look for what are all the things that everybody’s doing that’s unbranded and then can you make a higher quality branded version of this can you create um you know can you and then you use that marketing strategy of the trickle down you give the athletes the coolest [ ] other people see it and you sell it to the wannabe athletes you’re not making the money from the athletes themselves you’re making the money off of right like ice barrel what they need is they need they need you to see this in pro locker rooms and then he then they need every high school to be like oh that’s what you know that’s what the lakers used when they’re recovering or that’s what the you know the um the patriots use in their locker room dude i feel like um i i gotta email this guy and be like hey we’ll just give you a shout out we’re definitely gonna get this guy’s sales it’s a small company i don’t think they i think it’s only like two employees they’re definitely gonna see a bump from this and we’re gonna have to ask them how many people bought because iceberry.com uh just go there right now and buy their [ ] and actually by the way it’s not two grand i got it wrong it’s uh 1200 yes 1200 uh yeah they’re like thanks for the shout out [ ] you uh you made it seem even more expensive than it is yeah i thought it was two grand it’s 1200 maybe the big one is 2 000 anyway it’s cool it’s a cool thing i’m excited to actually see how this works their their website looks pretty slick what is this i don’t know this looks great so those are some ideas uh yeah i think that might be it peace out we actually have like way more but we’re going to save those for later yeah dan what’d you think yeah so i like the episode i like the co-working section i think you guys bring a unique perspective to and having worked and we work it’s exciting to know that there are some i guess new opportunities and that whole concept isn’t going to die uh with wework what was it what was the absolute best part of the episode the best part of the episode i like the recovery stuff i have one of the knockoff um like uh hypervolts or whatever i like using that i haven’t done a uh an ice barrel before but i have some friends that have done like those like cold chambers or whatever you do like the two minutes inside yeah you know what else blows that up by the way wim hof wim hof has gotten really popular in like you know some knee circles i guess but uh he’s all about cold cold submerging yourself and cold would you pay 3500 to go to his house and train with him wim hof you can do it maybe i i s it’s something like two or three or four thousand dollars i think i would do that it’s not the money it’s more the time like yeah if i had a little bit of time yeah i would love to do that that’d be great what i want to i put my all in it like no days off on the road let’s travel never looking back