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 you would know more than i am but this guy’s tim and his brother i i’m not that close with them i’m friendly with them i’m friends with them but i’m not that close like i if you told me that they were worth over 150 million dollars i wouldn’t be surprised and they still act like they’re poor in kind of a funny way which i enjoy and they’re they’re super humble and they’re like super hard still and they invest in everything i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to today we’re gonna answer a bunch of questions uh but did you see trunks tweet about the guy selling the card no what is it trung tweeted out this video that he found from probably the 90s or probably from the 2000s early 2000s and it’s a guy uh who’s got like who’s like trying to sell you on his like business card that’s a big square and you open it up and it’s a pop-out and he’s just really intense but the video got it’s funny you haven’t seen this no oh well this won’t be any good then but the video got like half a million views and people are making websites uh about the tweet or about the video based off his tweet it was just funny do you see half a million views now or like he tweeted something that already had half a million views no it did now oh wow trung is a master of uh finding great content that guy is really good i have this like apprentice who’s working with me chris for uh content he’s been the red head guy yeah yeah he’s like kind of like shadowing me and he helps me produce my content and and he’s learning as he goes and um i told him i was like you know success is being trung so like that’s the level that’s the top bar um that’s that’s what you need to measure against here’s five examples of like awesome things he’s done and so he called trung he was like what’s your secret what’s your process basically drug was like oh you know like i kind of browse the internet a lot and you know there’s no way you can you know it’s like asking michael jordan how do you jump so high type of thing like it’s not it’s not easy to describe how you do the thing that doesn’t feel like a real process for you you know you’re just doing it native intuitively he’s a machine one time i called him at 11 o’clock his time he’s in vancouver and he was at the park playing with his son and i was like trung like i’m not trying to like get on you because i’m not your boss but like don’t you have work to do like and he was like bro i bro i got up at 5 am and i already wrote tomorrow’s email already i was like all right sounds good okay it’s a machine so i didn’t see this video is it worth talking about given that i didn’t see it or what it’s too long to go through basically okay people and myself let’s go to twitter after this and let’s go to trung t fan i think is his uh handle and look at his thing and he the funniest thing that he’s done lately is he owns onlyfans.com dude that slayed me it was so funny so he has only fans but he spells fans p-h-a-n like his last name and it’s just a network for only people with last name fan and i just thought that’s so funny for some reason it’s funnier than when i think that he came up with it yeah now we don’t like it so much all right today we’re gonna answer questions i uh we got uh it looks like we got like six pages of text questions so like dozens and dozens of text questions and then we got a few dozen uh audio questions like people calling in but uh some of the text questions were good i’m gonna start off um i’m gonna start i’m gonna read a few that i think are cool let’s do the first one this guy’s name is uh johnny volcky asks what are you both personally investing in right now by the way do you know johnny volk do you know who this is he i talked to him on twitter and he’s joe spicer’s buddy he lives out here in the bay area he lives like you know 15 minutes away from me he super successful e-commerce guy been an e-com for 10 years sold his company recently like i don’t know a month ago or something for tens of millions of dollars and he’s a big investor in my rolling fund and several other rolling funds and uh really like ultra nice guy so this guy’s super legit so he’s asking in so you want to go first i think you uh yeah i think you’re interested your answer is probably more interesting i’ll go first so right now the bulk of my liquid net worth is in publicly traded companies um i own a bunch of hubspot right now i own a bunch of airbnb besides that i don’t own anything else above 50 000 uh it’s all in um so you’re super concentrated in those two companies basically yeah but then i have more money in the s p 500 so like the total stock market index um i have i’m going to invest around 250 to 500 000 uh in the next probably 18 months in startups uh i had i owned six figures worth of uh into a variety of real estate funds including sweaty startup nick hoover um and then i own um my house uh and i’m in the process of buying multi-family properties so i would say i have like if you just broke it out you’re like perce you know roughly you’re like okay 70 is in the stock market really in the two companies you know where my wife works and when i work something like that no i i own way more just sp500 than i do hubspot and airbnb um but i would say that uh ninety percent of my net worth is in the s p 500 yeah oh wow okay so just like low low low cost index fund basically vanguard fund simple stuff and then my goal was to invest somewhere around one to three percent of my net worth over a period of time into angel investments gotcha uh cool and then some real estate mixed in real estate being you know the house you live in and some other you know projects other people are doing you’re not currently buying and like owning real estate at the moment uh i’m going i owe my house but i’m gonna i want to buy 16 units i also have i mean i’ll say like half a million dollars in cash just sitting in a checking account um which i think is too much money but uh i when i bought my car i just paid cash out of there and then i um i owned six figures of uh bitcoin and ethereum of which i owned most of that bitcoin from 2013 and i just bought like 75 000 worth of ethereum like a few days ago because you and a few others told me it was interesting nice uh by the way we got some criticism constructive criticism i would say which was like oh the last few episodes uh feel like you know rich guy’s talking about you know ways to make a bunch of money which um honestly good description for the podcast but but i get what the person’s saying because they’re like a fan and they’re like that’s me raising my hand because i think i basically was like oh this [ ] thing is cool and it sounds like a total ponzi scheme and so people are like what are you or we’re talking about like jack selling like a nft for like 70 million dollars so it just sounds like a little bit crazy um so i think you know although i think your answer is great because i like knowing how people invest their money i think it’s most people are very closely guarded with that info people don’t tell you what the hell they’re doing so you’re kind of on your own to figure stuff out and you don’t really have any data points triangulate because all the wealthy people don’t want to talk about what they’re doing with their wealth unless it’s with other really wealthy people and so i think it’s great you said that but i’m also as you were saying it that was just ringing in my head of like some guy being like why are you guys just talking about money but it’s like well that’s also the theme of the podcast in a way and that was also the question i’m trying to answer it truthfully but also when we started this podcast when you started this podcast a year and a half ago or two years ago it really wasn’t a bunch of rich guys talking about it was a bunch of hopefully soon to be rich guys talking about stuff and we’ve been talking about the same stuff the whole time yeah oh you mean us yeah yeah yeah cause yeah and also i put this out there in the manifesto when i started this thing which is i i think it’s unfortunate that talking about money and how to make money and what you do with money to make how you make your money more uh earn you more money i feel like it’s unfortunate that that’s taboo um to talk about like it’s like kind of like a it’s like kind of like low class or something to talk about because look the reality is most people want more money um and people try to signal and say oh it doesn’t matter and all this stuff i know a lot of people that want more money most people in my life if i had the option would you like more salary or less would you like more in your bank account or less like the answer is more and if if all the people who have money are really guarded and don’t talk about it and don’t want to seem like they’re bragging well what that really does is it kind of like just traps the information from others so that’s kind of like my overall view of it i know you’re similar because i remember being kind of stunned when we first became friends and you just facebook messaged me you’re like um like how much do you make it’s like whoa whoa bro like what’s going on here but i was like okay you know ballsy question the reason why that i actually dislike that view that’s or if someone criticizes you for about money it’s because they are making the assumption that because you have money or because you don’t you are somehow better or worse and in my opinion like i don’t just because you have money i i that’s you have no intrinsic value to me like you either are interesting or you are not interesting and what makes you interesting to me is that people are just they try ambitious stuff and they do neat stuff oftentimes that’s correlated with money but it’s not always like i knew this lady who would do these amazing art exhibits where she would like paint gold phones and like just do interesting stuff and i was like wow that’s super badass that’s so bold of you to try that she wasn’t wealthy at all but i thought it was so cool right so to me it’s about uh just being an interesting person i don’t really care if it’s money related or not but oftentimes it is right for me i have like three or four different uh life games that i’m very interested in like let’s say right now i’m interested in the fitness game and i’m a total beginner i’m a white belt at the fitness game and so i have a trainer he’s like more like a black belt you know look at his body look at his lifestyle he’s extremely healthy and so i want to learn about the fitness game i like learning about the happiness game how do you be like a happy person how do you control your mood how do i master my mood i’m really interested in that i think about that a lot talk to people about that then there’s like the money game and then there’s like the making things that people want game and i like all these games and i admire the people who have done well in them and i’m better at some than others where i’m like a total beginner and in some i’m like you know a blue belt or a purple belt where i’ve done something but i’m by no means at the end so anyways that’s a tangent but uh to answer john’s question did you want to say something else about that no i answered to answer john’s question uh i’m kind of similar i i tweeted out my like holdings a while back maybe i’ll do that again i need to go back and recalculate but i tend to hold about 10 of my wealth in cash um i think cash is being devalued and i don’t want to hold cash cash doesn’t earn you know cash sitting in the bank is nice for a rainy day but it doesn’t earn you more money um right the 0.001 i get from wells fargo or whoever is not going to like help me um i have a good size stock you know basically i would say beyond that it’s almost like 50 50 of public equities so stocks um and you know crypto right now and uh i and oh and then angel investing so i’m angel investing currently through the rolling fund four million a year but that’s not my money uh that’s mostly other people’s money and i get a carry on that i get a 20 carry of the profits so that’s kind of like investing but i’m not investing my own money there and i’m looking at real estate right now but the problem with real estate for me has always been a i’m a beginner at that game and b um i don’t want to sign up for more work so i’m looking for ways to get real estate that’s i directly own but i don’t have to do a ton of work and those two are kind of uh at opposites with each other i don’t invest in other people’s real estate funds right now has your uh net worth or like your total portfolio increase a significant amount since your deal because it seems like you’ve like weren’t very active before and now you are very active and has that helped you it has increased because uh you know the stock stock market’s been doing amazing last few years and then with the deal you know like where we when we got bought the amazon stock price was 18.50 amazon stock price today is 3 100. so just while working there you know you get pretty significant gain in your holdings there and because we got bought like a large chunk of the rsus were just in that one company so that did well uh crypto bitcoin has done extremely well ethereum has done extremely well so those have like really worked and then um kind of like the side hustle money from podcast email newsletter stuff like that um sponsorships that sort of thing has been really nice so that that’s that’s actually picked up as well where i wasn’t doing that before um so i’d say yeah but i would also say um what really changed was my attitude like i just started acting like a guy who’s got 100 million bucks for better and for worse like i take like bets that are kind of too big for my bankroll sometimes and that’s a risk and i you know might pay the price but i sort of just started carrying myself and acting like and basically making decisions like what if i wasn’t worried about money what if i wasn’t worried about you know going from a to b you know like what if i just knew that i’ll get to b pretty much regardless how would i bet if that was the case and so i started making slightly larger bets and just being more active uh whereas before i was a little more conservative with how i was investing which is a huge difference in our philosophies i’m way more conservative than you way more conservative um and uh i don’t think i was telling to bray you he was like because i told him i started angel investment he was like who do you think’s gonna have a better portfolio and i was like that’s kind of interesting and i and the answer was like my answer to him was i think my portfolio has a higher chance of being pretty good whereas sean’s portfolio has a higher chance of being amazing or zero right uh yeah i think that’s true that’s that’s definitely true i i guess like the style of who you admire sort of dictates what you do what blueprint you create so like for example i was really inspired by like chris sacca’s approach to how he went from like you know he’s like me he’s like a bit of a degenerate gambler like he went you know he took like his law school money and then like was tr day trading in the stock market during the dot-com boom wrote it up to like a 10 million like took 25 000 and turned into like 10 million dollars and then went in the whole four million dollars like that was like a crazy degenerate gambling run if you haven’t heard me talking about my bets in crypto and you know i used to play poker like i’m obviously i have a gambling problem also right and so you know i have that risk and reward profile but then the other thing he did that i thought i was pretty inspired by was he you know he bet on somebody who he believed in which was ev williams when he started what became twitter and then when he saw that it was a winner he like went all in in a way that most people do not most people would have let their 25k check sit and been really excited and fingers crossed i hope twitter becomes a thing he likes started he quit his job basically started showing up at the office every day being like how are we going to make this thing grow i want this thing to grow he went and personally was fundraising for the company even though he wasn’t even a part of the company but he was out there pitching investors to invest in twitter and then he ended up buying billions of dollars of twitter stock uh before it went ipo and was their i think first or second largest shareholder at ipo and made billions of dollars off of his twitter holdings because he knew when you have a winner you got to go all in so what i’ve seen is in technology the winners get really really big and so you kind of want to like play small bets initially and then follow on really hard and like when you see something that actually works be really bold uh in the way you approach it and like hey if you strike out i i kind of just think about it like this i have a lot of faith in my skills even if i went to zero today i think in three years i’d be right back where i want to be we’re right back where i am today so like i don’t feel like there’s a huge risk in terms of that but anyways that’s a little bit off topic for one question all right let’s do the next one which was a question that i actually have for you as well update us on your rolling front fun is it what you expected are you more or less bullish on it it is not what i expected in that i didn’t really think too much about it before i started it to be honest which is you know i’m kind of impulsive i was just like oh yeah that sounds like a cool idea let me try it and see what happens but um i thought okay i already angel invested this is just going to be that with some bigger checks or you know do a few more deals um but i would say now that i have to deploy a million dollars a quarter i actually have to carve out more time i have to like consciously go and invest in more companies so it’s it’s more work than i thought initially but uh i brought on romine i brought on zach ben helps me with it and so they do a lot of the heavy lifting like for this week’s this this year’s yc batch you know zack himself referred in 22 of the companies he was the number one i think referrer into yc so he knew a bunch of the yc companies before they even got in we looked at those deals and then romine basically and him went through every single deal on an air table vetted them made a list of the interesting ones did meetings with them and then brought the like most interesting seven to me and were like hey we think these are the ones to do and so that that like i’ve been able to handle the additional so it’s more work than i thought but i found really good people so that’s helpful who’s this guy zach zack is a young engineer he was a yc founder himself that company didn’t work out he currently uh so i met him because he listens to the pod or i don’t know i don’t know how he reached out but he’s like hey i heard you’re thinking about rolling fun i’d love to help i just want to see a bunch of startups and help a bunch of founders while i think of my next thing and uh and it just turns out he’s just like super well connected with the like young founder community and so because of that he’s like referred a huge number of people into yc and into on deck and uh so he’s got this really great network and he’s like able to like see things earlier than most and so i brought him into the fund and and uh gave him a chance to hey now you can have some upside in this in this thing that’s badass um and then are you more bullish or less um more yeah like the same i don’t know i was uh i have a friend we have a mutual friend sully who uh he wanted to get involved in a business of mine and he goes he said he texted me something because i was like i was like kind of i don’t know is this i don’t want to give up equity but like you know um i think you’re worth it uh yeah so so basically he goes um he goes look uh if i try i win and with this i’ll try and uh and so i just loved it i was like i’m just gonna learn a lot from this guy’s philosophy and business he just has a zero of the doubt and fear gene i think that’s a new experience you would know more than i am but this guy’s silly it’s him and his brother i i’m not that close with them i’m friendly with them super hard working still yeah and they invest in everything so these guys are interesting they’re two brothers yeah and silly’s the same way actually when i first met him i met him at you you hosted the hustle con dinner at my office this is how crazy the world works this is like one of those you can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them when you look back you reached you cold emailed me saying hey i want to host a dinner at your office i didn’t know who the hell you were but you made a strong pitch you said i’m going to have all my speakers for my conference there you can you can you know meet all of them i was like all right fair deal you can use my office at that dinner i meet suey sue’s now my best friend we’ve done tons of deals together you know like that wouldn’t have happened if i hadn’t said yes to something that was kind of a random thing that’s funny at that dinner i was like dude this guy’s amazing i’ve never heard this guy’s name before why don’t people in silicon valley know this guy so i started googling him i find the story that back in the day he sold his he had this company that was like building facebook apps and he sold it for not a ton of money but like you know good for any normal person like two million or three million dollars between one and three million dollars kind of what it sounded like and uh and so and then what did he do with the money he was like he had been building on the facebook app platform so he had been seeing that like his app was growing really quickly and his app wasn’t a great business it was like you know those like silly facebook apps but he’s like facebook is not silly so he basically took a bunch of that money and just pl he was like chris saka he aggressively started buying up facebook stock back then before it was public and then he did and he went to you know in florida and he bought a bunch of real estate and i just thought wow this guy’s really like conducting himself i at that time i was just kind of like i thought of myself as an entrepreneur but i acted more like an employee like i wasn’t playing the game to win i was playing with these like invisible handcuffs on me like i saw these companies that were awesome i didn’t even go try to invest in them and like when i saw that this guy when he knew something was good he was like how do i take all the money i have and put it into this facebook thing i believe in this and simultaneously i’m gonna build my next business now you know right away and um and so i just really admired him and i thought that that was a great example to follow he’s a hustler um and i like him a lot too let’s go to the next question which is this is we’ll answer this one quickly what uh do you not talk about or do we not have the chance to talk about because low priority or off topic that you wish you could talk about for me it would be i love talking about ufc um i’m a big fitness guy so i love sports i love weightlifting and i like running and i wish we could talk more about like uh fitness stuff but i don’t think it’s on topic and i’m not an expert on expert on it yeah if i could do a podcast shooting the [ ] about basketball or ufc that’d be awesome uh but nobody cares what i think about the nba or the ufc really um so that’s one and the other one i think would just be like i do kind of bring this in sometimes but like it takes up a lot more of my life than i let show here on the pod which is like on the pod i’m just talking about a bunch of different business ideas ways to make money in reality i’m not just like doing that all day what i spend a lot more time thinking about all day is like my mindset so what is my life operating philosophy as i go about my day to be like the happiest and best person i can be and it’s just kind of cheesy to talk about and like no one kind of gives a [ ] but like i give a [ ] a lot about it and i care a lot about it and i think a lot about it but i don’t really talk a lot about it i do i think about that stuff too yeah but it is silly to talk about and it could be embarrassing particularly if you’re still working through stuff right it’s cool to talk about that i found when you’re in a small group of people or you’re in front of if you’re in person with some people because you can get a sense for do they give a [ ] about this or not right and it’s also like kind of personal uh on a podcast you you might record that thing for an hour and you’re like i have no idea if even one person is going to like want to hear that or maybe they’ll just all turn it off what’s uh you guys are awesome at coming up with incredible ideas knowing how to execute them what would it take for one of you to pull out of twitch or i guess in my case hubspot now and pursue it full force that’s actually a great question and i have a i think is a good answer um go for it which it which is um first of all starting a company is really hard and i’ve like joked but i’m kind of serious i don’t know if i’m ever gonna do it again maybe maybe not right or at least like who knows what i’m gonna do you know i thought it would be cool just to like retire and not work uh and we’ll see if that’s cool uh or not i don’t know but um i think that the answer far or the answer should be but it is not enough of i just think this is cool so like why are you doing this because it’s [ ] cool and i think that when i find something where it’s gonna be like oh this is badass this is like there’s not like for me there’s often not like a mission where it’s like let’s save the world or let’s it’s like ah it’s just kind of badass it’s just awesome like right there’s not there is no logic other than this is this is this is cool to me and when i i found a few things that fit that but i’m still on a mission with hubspot and i want to make it great and after that then i’ll pursue the next one i get i don’t like doing what i think sean you do this a little bit and a lot of people do i don’t like starting lots of little stuff i prefer to dedicate my life to something and i’m very cautious about what i’m willing to do that with because you probably can only do that three to four times in your life and so um there’s a few things but i’m not i’m not finished with this chapter yet and that’s why i haven’t done it yeah that’s a great answer i uh similarly i basically was like all right well what’s this chapter of my life and uh so when we got acquired i was like well i want them to feel like like glad that they did this acquisition you know what i mean like i want them to be like yeah that was worth it you know and for myself also i was like well cool this is like a transition let me like try this new thing let me work at a big company never done that before let me have this like big cushy salary type of thing like never had that before i was kind of just eating [ ] you know like doing my own my own startup like sleeping on kind of an air mattress before and so um so basically i was like all right if my 20s were about starting my own company and just trying to figure out how to be an entrepreneur what are my thirties going to be about and i’ve decided it was two things i said i want to you know live a great life like with my family so you know popped out two kids in the last like 18 months and so that that’s actually like my project is being a dad and and having kids and spending time just being there you know for that and not trying to be like oh i must because like you said now i know what it takes to start a company i know how all-consuming it is so you’ve got to choose wisely the second thing with choosing wisely is my 30s are about building a family and then it’s building a project i don’t want to sell which is basically like i totally agree how do i build my next thing same thing you said this is something i want to do i’m not doing it because it’s the best business idea or it’s the hot opportunity or whatever but uh what it you know some the thing that i just want to keep doing that i don’t want to get rid of i don’t want to sell it i just want to build it let it compound for 30 40 years and i love doing it and it’s the thing i’m uniquely good at doing and i thought okay maybe i’ll dabble in some different things to figure out what that is and i feel like i found it which is like ironic i found it where i wasn’t looking i started this podcast for a different reason but i what i realized was oh i really like this thing where i can be kind of like perpetually curious like i could just be curious about the world i can learn a bunch of [ ] and then i just share what i’m learning and i’m kind of like a teacher and uh through the podcast the email newsletter through experiments like all access pass or i’m gonna launch some courses in the future like i my lunch school like basically i want to do things like that something that lets me just be really really curious and learn a bunch of things and try a bunch of things and then share as i go because that’s what i would do if i if i let’s just say if work couldn’t pay you money how would you spend your time that’s how i would spend it so might as well just do that as my work and so that’s what i think i’ll do next which won’t look like a traditional startup or company and i agree with that uh i want to do something that i never want to sell um so i’m in the same boat uh the question is directed towards you but i’ll give you my answer really quick which is sean how do you balance side hustles while performing at twitch my answer to that and i’ve said it before is i don’t ballot i don’t do anything on the side um and frankly i have no idea how you do it our good friend ramon is able to do it really well i get some people can do it i personally can’t do it and i don’t even try and uh i’m not ashamed about that yeah yeah there’s different ways to like kind of organize your time like you see this from elon musk or jack dorsey running two multi-billion dollar public companies at once as ceo right kind of a crazy thing that kind of seemed impossible before and i would say i do it two ways one is i throw more hours at it so like i don’t take weekends off like i work seven days a week i don’t work all day all seven days a week but i my weekend is just like my weekday they’re the same construction so all of a sudden i got an extra 16 hours on the weekend where i can do things same thing at night like i don’t watch a bunch of like tv i stopped watching like you know nba games stuff like that like i basically was like look i can cut that out and that’s two hours a night that instead i can create content right or like when i do the podcast everybody else at the back when we started this everybody would go down to the cafeteria at twitch for lunch i would walk across the street the studio was your office was literally like 50 steps away from from twitch i would walk 50 steps away go to the hustle office we would record from 12 to 1. everybody else is eating lunch i’m recording a podcast cool i’ll eat lunch on my desk like later it doesn’t matter right so there’s these little pockets of time you can unlock that’s the first bit second bit is hiring i bring on people so when i say i’m doing x it’s rarely just me doing x ben or zack or romine or chris or i have a whole bunch of people that i say hey i’m doing this interesting project who wants to do it with me and they’re like i find great people who want to do interesting things together and i say cool what’s in it for you do you want money do you want learning do you want like rep you don’t want to build your network what do you want out of this i’ll make sure you get it and they let me like i said be in two places at once because i could be doing this and they could be doing that what’s your burn on all the like because whenever i hear you say you got all these people i’m like damn yeah that must be a lot uh monthly yes my burn is expensive it’s expensive but the things now bring in money so it’s it’s okay it offsets it but like uh but the angel investing doesn’t bring in money and that’s not angel investing i don’t pay salaries it’s only carry so it’s splitting the upside so they have they they get they i took some of my my 20 carry and i took it down and let them have more carry so um which you know for them is fine because they make money doing other things so they’re like cool this will pay off in five years that’s great and i get to like learn a bunch about investing i get to put together a portfolio so if i want to go get a job doing this or i want to start my own fund i’ll have a track record to point at and say no i i did these investments before i’ve been doing this for years so that’s kind of like what’s in it for them um so i do have a you know significant burn i would say it’s like 200 to 300 000 a year of like people cost do these things my goal is for them to break even um but if not like that’s what money is for money is to be invested in things that will grow and so i kind of like just look at it like an investment and uh it’s worked out so far where the side hustles more than pay for the money i put in um now the last thing is basically an acknowledgement and i talked i was pretty transparent with the people at twitch which was like look i operate not on a nine to five strict schedule like cool i’m just gonna punch the clock for 40 hours a week no no uh i’m here to do this mission you want this job done great i’m gonna get that job done here’s the trade i i can make sure this job gets done you don’t ask me how and when and where and why and how you know like all the time uh like not in such a like confrontational way but like it’s an understood agreement like they know what i do i’m very open about like hey i have a podcast i have a newsletter like the ceo of twitch subscribes to the newsletter and like will dm me about it like sometimes right i’m not hiding any of these things they know i do these things they know they take some time but they’re okay with that trade because i deliver the goods in my projects and so uh my trainer told me this one day because i told him i said i’m feeling a little bit guilty like you know i wonder i really like these people i don’t want them to feel like i’m shortchanging them he goes well do you deliver the goods i was like well yeah like i perform like they they get the results they want okay well you’re that dude and i was like what do you mean he’s like he’s like they don’t pay you to sit in your chair for certain hours they pay you to deliver the results and so uh just make sure you deliver the results and if you’re delivering the results in less time that’s because you’re that dude maybe not everybody could do that but you could do that and i was like oh man what a pep talk that was uh you know made me feel good about something that i was feeling you uncertain about or uneasy about before and you’re on paternity leave now right yeah so that helps too yeah exactly yes and that’s you know like big companies understand like look you if you have a kid my first kid i only took 10 days off which i really regret i should have uh i should have took the whole leave and so this time i decided i’d make i’m gonna make sure i take some off and this time my family actually really needs me there whereas the first time i was like i don’t know what the hell i’m gonna do here uh my wife’s kind of got it under control let me go back to work and so this time i kind of realized that the idea of like oh this project is so important and like if i take this time off then you know let me do it i’ll take time off later later never came and that was a big lesson for me like don’t don’t put important things off till later do them now um who’s the worst person this is such an interesting question clay bert uh i bet you i know who that is uh who’s the worst person you admire [Laughter] do you have one for this yeah well like i it’s a great question and it’s you can get in trouble answering this one um i’m gonna tiptoe a little bit around it because it’s just weird but i actually love learning about dictators um i like i read a ton about dictators there’s actually a podcast called dictators so like i like learning about benito mussolini i’ve read a lot about hitler i’ve read a lot about fidel castro um who else um so i think i got in trouble with this before because i remember i was in school and i took a history class and the question i asked the teacher was look this sounds so messed up what was going on back then that sounds totally screwed up like how did this guy come to power and he explained like well here first you have to understand the state of germany at the time blah blah blah he goes the other thing was that like honestly he i forgot who hitler’s second in command is but he’s like kind of like a famous guy for like his almost like his persuasion prowess like his marketing prowess yeah uh joseph uh gib uh yes yeah he’s like the head of propaganda he made movies exactly i forget his name he’s not a famous guy he’s like his number two guys the head of propaganda exactly and they did very simple things like everybody else was putting out like i forgot like their flyers when they were running for whatever present whatever their equivalent of president was was like all in color so he did everything in black and white to stand out or if everyone’s black and white he did color he just did a whole bunch of things and i found it really interesting like oh oh yeah go gobbles dr goldberg joseph yeah yeah joseph yeah yeah yeah yeah so so they had movies made and they used entertainment to kind of like get their message across get the story across they had like um a whole bunch of like this they distilled down their philosophy into these like really catchy nuggets and so there’s all these things that i thought wow that’s like if you just abstract good and evil away the skill of accomplishing a very hard thing which is like getting millions of people to follow you there’s a lot to be learned from that and i kind of was like oh that’s really cool and people were like dude you said hitler’s cool like you’re like you’re awesome yeah yeah and that’s that’s the point i’m getting at which is like it’s so fascinating that someone can convince and in my opinion like a lot of dictators i’m like man if they just like move that early on like clicked it a few notches to the left and then that trajectory would have like put them in a totally different atmosphere i’m like man it like it but it is fascinating how someone can come from nothing and just create something whether it’s an idea a business a piece of art whatever like i love that like idea of manifesting and even though it’s horrible and the worst thing on earth and i wish they’d it never existed i always have been fascinated by like a guy like che guerrera or someone who was just like or uh what’s his name benita mussolini who i just read about like this wasn’t like supposedly a poor kid and somehow he convinced all these people these to do all this horrible horrible um and that like to me is fascinating how he just bent the world around him and like that’s just crazy that hey people buy into that stuff and it’s crazy that someone that he had the courage to do that which sounds like i’m glamorizing these people i’m not at all but hopefully you guys understand the nuance here and and why it’s kind of intriguing yeah uh this is two things one um when i met i’ve talked a little bit about my friend vishal the guy who’s kind of like a young guy who i’m like this guy’s definitely gonna be a billionaire and he’s also kind of like totally hell-bent on becoming a billionaire and he lets every part of his other life go like what we were talking about earlier where i was like well on the podcast i talked a lot about business and money but like in my real life i’m doing i’m really actually more passionate about these other things i spend more time on he’s the opposite whatever he talks about here he’s 10 times more obsessed with it outside of this and i love him for that and i remember when i met him he was he he was like send me this documentary about like this like warlord in africa who just like just like they get like the absolute like gang gangster [ ] this guy did he’s like i love this movie i love this guy i was like oh it’s kind of like heinous crimes you know he’s like oh no it’s crazy they told me the story about this guy who became the emperor of china and he started off like as a like an orphan like servant and then ended up by the end of his lifetime as the emperor of china i forgot his name but like one of the ancient emperors of china was like started off as an orphan boy with not a dollar to his name and then like rule i mean it sounds like uh genghis khan or something yeah and he was like and like not just like got there like it’s not just a hero story like he also like you know like slayed his enemies and like enslaved people or i don’t know what he did but like it wasn’t all you know just like underdog you know it wasn’t just david and goliath and he told me that story and i was like you’re a maniac but um you know i actually would love to invest in you because that’s the kind of like maniac you want being a founder of these companies like somebody who is wired a little bit differently and uh as i remember hearing that but anyways the phrase you say that’s like every great man is also a bad man yeah that’s kind of true everybody i like my favorite comedian is louis ck who i believe is currently canceled for you know like doing something gross in front of a bunch of women or whatever you know like and i don’t think that’s cool but i love louis ck and i still love louis c.k and like i think he’s awesome um as a comedian i didn’t say he’s an awesome character you know that’s an awesome human being and i want to be like him no i think he’s an amazing comedian and i love his comedy um conor mcgregor you know i had a poster behind me of him you know painting that i had made of him behind me for half these podcasts he’s been accused of sexual assault he’s been you know he people say he’s on drugs and he’s kind of a [ ] and like other things too he’s an amazing fighter and i love his drive of how he went from like a plumber on welfare to the wealthiest fighter of all time and he said the whole time from the very beginning that’s what it’s going to be he called it and there’s videos of him when he’s alone in his bedroom not even a professional yet and he says i’m going to be the greatest and here’s what i’m going to do i’m going to do xyz and he did it all i admire that but i also think he does a bunch of scumbag [ ] and like i’m okay with that trade you know so there’s like a bunch of people that are like that i was traveling me and sarah one time were driving by uh chick-fil-a and we were like i want to get that do you want that and she was like yeah i want that so bad and we were and she was like but do we want to support them uh this was right when they like did some stuff uh anti-tank marriage yeah and uh we were like well my taste buds don’t really know if you’re homophobic so i think we’d be it’s okay i think we could like the chicken but also or it was something maybe we were at some place and they had the chicken there and i was like i don’t think my taste buds could tell if you’re homophobic or not so we could probably eat it um all right let’s answer a video question a lot lately i’ve been thinking trying to hire my friends as operators of sorts and i’m just worried about like damaging that relationship like i think it’s an awesome idea being able to choose who i work with i’m just concerned that all that friendship could uh go away when there’s something as important as like business and money involved um i have a pretty strong opinion on that which is no i think you actually shouldn’t in most cases don’t do it in some cases it makes sense but in most cases i actually think it’s a bad idea and i also have myself failed at doing this a little bit but i actually don’t think you should be friends with your co-worker or your friends with your employees if you’re a manager you shouldn’t be friends with your employees if you’re a business owner or ceo i actually don’t think i think you should be friendly but i think you should be really careful about being friends with your employees um and so my opinion is no i also think that like you probably disagree sean or maybe you do but like even if they’re if you’re worth your co-workers and anytime in the evening and alcohol shows up i think you should leave i don’t even think you should be in the same room um so i’m pretty strict about that although i am friends with a lot of my co-workers so i don’t exactly follow all this but i i think that i’ll might regret some of that we’re opposites on this so uh you know what’s funny i always try to be friends with my employees and i feel like they don’t want to be friends with me so i’m like yeah i’m like yeah i’m trying to be friends with them and then i’m like oh that’s weird you guys all got together that saturday and like oh yeah i was just at home coulda could it come yeah well what’s funny is like when you like start a business and you work a lot like you don’t really have that many friends like i’m friends with you and jack and ramon and like four i’ve got like four friends but my co-workers are like i’m like will you guys be my friends i’m with you all the time and i don’t get invited to anything either yeah so i i realized pretty quickly uh they don’t want me around uh and i was like but it’s weird i’m such a good guy and so anyways that part didn’t work not because i i didn’t intentionally try not to be friends with them they just didn’t be friends with me back that’s okay the main thing for for me on the hiring side is um i would say hire your competent friends so um my very first business i started i started with two of my best buddies from college and we were just like yeah we’re gonna do this ah we you know well there’s no ceo there’s no hierarchy here we’ll all just make decisions together we’ll all split the equity perfectly equally we didn’t really like put too much thought into it because we were just like 21 year old kids didn’t really know much about anything and like fast forward a year later we had to have like a very uncomfortable conversation with one of the guys which was like hey dude like i feel like you’re not pulling your weight and he was trying but like we were just like you’re kind of just doing this part and like we feel like we’re doing these other eight parts and in retrospect i don’t even know if that was really true but it definitely was an uncomfortable conversation and i could see the downside of it but what i would say is like the the saving grace for me has always been i only have hired my competent friends and competent friends do two things one is they perform so you don’t have this you’re not just hiring a buddy because you’re your buddy you’re hiring this person because they’re good but you only know them because they’re your buddy the second thing is they are reasonable and they will unders they will understand if you’re really clear up front about like look here’s the dynamic like we’re buddies but sometimes i’m gonna have to tell you if i feel like the job’s not getting done and i actually i want you to tell me too if you think that’s true like are we okay if it’s gonna be kind of uncomfortable like we’re not just gonna be able to just shoot the [ ] like we gotta also have these two modes that we can operate in and i wanna make sure like you’re on board with that so i’m i think with it with a little bit of good communication up front you can get the big benefit which is it’s way more fun to do stuff with like companies are hard they take a long time it’s like a really long road trip and you want to be in the car with people you really like and so whether those were new people who you just happen to enjoy great or they’re people you already enjoyed who you invite into the car because they’re your buddy and you want to do this company with them i think when it works when you do it with your friends it’s the best and uh when it doesn’t work it’s even worse than if they were they were not your friends so you got to take the good with the bad but um we had a podcast with this guy on this feed called mike brown who you introduced me to him i met him at your yeah he had a successful business then he brought both of his brothers on board and i was like why did you do that let most people say you know don’t do business with family it gets messy he’s these are my brothers i love these guys i want to see them every day i want to hang out with them i want to win together i want us all to win he’s like i if he’s like i feel blessed that i got to set this up where i get to do business with my best friends and i was like well when you say it like that like what the hell am i thinking about that’s obvious said that sounds great and so i think there are downsides but i’m of the mindset of if you pick competent people you won’t regret it um all right we’ll do a couple more fast questions someone asked who could squat more weight i think i think me sure that’s definitely you i have uh i have osgood slaughters in my knees if you if you have it you know if you don’t have it you don’t know but because of that i don’t squat i can’t i never squatted my whole life because uh of that issue um okay this is a deep one it’s cool we’ll answer it what are your biggest insecurities uh both what are the biggest insecurities both of you struggle with uh i’ll say i’ll go first sometimes i’m i get incredibly insecure that anything i make won’t be good enough because i move too fast and i just do surface level [ ] and i don’t treat it like a crafts like a craftsman enough and i don’t like think things through i get pretty self-conscious when i meet really smart people who i meet a ton of them through this job i’m like oh my god this person’s iq is just like they’re so much smarter than me i just cannot keep up like because uh so i i’m insecure about that i’m insecure um that i um like i didn’t go to stanford or like a fancy school and when i meet people in the in crowd like when we meet guys like andrew chen who who who works in andreessen horowitz i’m like dude like i kind of want to be in the in crowd but like i don’t want to work that hard to do it and i just don’t care that much but i wish i did i feel a little insecure about that um um and i feel uh i get insecure because i’m pretty loud and that sometimes makes people not take me as seriously as i think they should so those are mine those are really good ones and i think very relatable probably for most people um mine i would say i don’t even know if there’s insecurity as much as like because when people say insecurity it’s usually like what’s something you worry about but it’s not really true but you kind of worry too much about it i think mine like is true it’s more like here’s your weakness here’s your you know your um your weakness or your flaw i would say like and something i i kind of worry about which is i don’t really filter myself um and i so i just talk a lot and i don’t really think about it before i do it i don’t really think i don’t even filter myself with actions like like i said with a rolling phone i was like oh that’s cool let’s do it can we do it today let’s do it now i don’t want to think things through and so um i would say the fear i have and the insecurity i have is around actually like hurting people’s feelings like sometimes i could say stuff that’s inconsiderate or um or hurtful in some way or like you know too opinionated and no nobody asks for your [ ] opinion type of thing um so i i’m kind of conscious of that like i would say i’m pretty self self-conscious about that that’s the word not insecure i’m self-conscious while i do that and i don’t really like that part of me that like i will say things and do things that i don’t really think about how that how other how others will feel about it um and also like when i meet people like our friend ramon who’s so considerate i just feel so inconsiderate in comparison and i’m like oh i want to be that way but man i’m like the opposite and like you know i’m like i’m like a knuckle dragger i’m just like yeah a neanderthal so i feel really bad about that and then i would say like the other minor insecurity is like am i just wasting my talents like so when i meet people who are doing really amazing things like scott harrison you know he’s been on a 15-year mission to bring clean drinking water to the world i went with him to africa and we went to a town where they had installed one of water wells and literally the town was like it was like a parade that scott was here they literally thought this guy was jesus and uh he kind of like looked like jesus in the moment i thought he was jesus at the moment and like he’s totally humble he hated that they were celebrating him he was there like not for that reason but um that’s the reality of the impact of his work is he literally changes like the lives of entire like towns essentially in africa and um and so then when i see that i’m like what am i wasting do i need to do this silly e-commerce thing do i need to do this newsletter who gives a [ ] you know and so sometimes i feel really small about the way i decided to use my time and my talents i completely agree with that compared to other people um last question uh when are you guys gonna do since covet is pretty much in the past when is the next meetup going to happen i’m actually doing a meet so i’m driving to st louis to spend a week with my family there and i’m stopping in oklahoma city because that was just like the middle ground and i tweeted out so i’ve got like 30 or 40 or 50 people i forget how many people rsvp’d for a breakfast in oklahoma city and if you’re down sean although you just had a baby so uh imagine we’re going to wait a little while i would totally be down of doing like a two-week tour or something where we go from place to place to place i don’t know if we could drive i don’t know what you’d want to do but i’m totally down like a two-week yes totally agree i think like if we just said all right this fall we’re gonna go on tour we’re gonna go to these seven cities seven cities in seven days or seven cities in ten days or something like that and we just like set up the events i would love to do that uh i think that would be amazing we just hired a community manager her name’s april um and she set this event up for me i just said hey i’m going to show up in oklahoma city can you get like can you book me a hotel and uh set up like an eventbrite and i’ll tweet it out and um well we can have her do that and help help us you uh do something really great that i think you should tell people which is when you you hosted events but you make the themes great so like you used to do this thing called pizza and 40s um so can you give me i don’t even know what other ones you’ve done but like tell the people of some of the different events you’ve done because i think it’s really smart when you set those events up people want to come and yeah they behave differently because of the theme of how you set up because i’ve been to a lot of silicon valley networking events are boring as [ ] you don’t want to go and when people go they’re all like surface level level like they you know it’s not a fun place to be they don’t let their guard down your events are very different so can you what are some of the different themes you’ve come up with do you have a theory on why that works i don’t have a theory i just think it’s fun uh i do it for the what i said earlier in the episode i it just because it’s cool that’s the only reason why so i do the anti-mba that’s a book club where we get an expert to come in and discuss the book’s topic um i’ve done this sounds douchey to say but like i don’t even drink so that’s why it’s funny but we have this thing called pizza and 40s so the speaker gets a 40-ounce beer because a 40-ounce beer takes like an hour to drink and as and so we only would have pizza because we were poor and that’s all we could afford and we would give the speaker a 40-ounce beer they’ve got to drink the beer and when the beer’s done the talk’s done and the answers get a little bit wilder as they get deeper into the beer we did 2x which was focused on women telling their story it stands for 2x chromosomes um we had like did you go to the one that we had in the marina no what’s that um we used to do 2x at this thing called palace of fine arts and we had like literally 2 000 women in san francisco it probably was like the largest contingency of like uh uh tech women probably in the world or in the country it was kind of interesting um so we did that what else do we do hustle con con con uh which is con con is the startup the content conference i thought com con was a funny name what else uh anything else have you do i feel like you’ve done some breakfast thing before have you done a breakfast thing rise and grind yeah we did rise and grind um which was we were talking about different stuff in the morning over and like a grind like coffee like coffee but also like working hard you’re good at this you’re good at coming up with kind of a catchy name and a catchy theme for people to get behind uh and the vibe is very different so i think if somebody’s doing it like that doesn’t take any extra money it just takes like a little creativity and like you’ve made your thing better and cooler more fun for you to do more fun for people to come to more fun for speakers to attend because it’s different than the average thing so long story short uh maybe late summer if you’re down yeah i’m definitely down all right great that’s it we’ll do it what travel never looking back [Music]