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 people uh people dm us a lot of interesting ideas my reply to all of them they go what do you think about this i always reply with two things i always say it’s an amazing idea and then i say when are you launching i feel like i can rule the world i know uh let’s start the episode here um all right what um i’ve got actually two interesting things to tell you the first this company reached out it’s a famous publication that you know of and i don’t want to say it out loud yet but they want us to go to baja mexico to ride motorcycles and film a series on like a weekend adventures are you interested in that uh what for like they yeah what’s what’s the catch you want me to come out here and surf and ride motorcycles what’s in it for you they just have uh i guess i could talk about it i haven’t asked if i could talk about it’s just like it’s a without giving too much weight they have a just a web series that goes in like on tv it’s for web and tv they have a tv channel and they have this whole series where they it’s all about like nine to five workers like normal yuppy jobs and you have adventures friday to sunday so like what all can you do on a weekend uh okay all right uh that seems super up you know and kind of a while too but you know uh that’s that’s their suggestion do you have a better idea on like a weekend adventure it’s an adventure publication yeah i don’t do motorcycles that’s my only thing i don’t do motorcycles and after kobe i also don’t do helicopters but uh i love surfing surfing is a cool thing i suck at it but it’s fun so i would do that well if you come up with a better idea then then pitch it but they like it’s all paid for and everything oh okay great yeah let’s do that why not ah look at your fitness influencer life is already coming in handy so you the what i wanted to talk about was you’re getting really fit too do you and i think it’s pretty inspiring coming from an influencer like you in the fitness world that means a lot to me hardly but do you so do you think it’s do you have you has your body or i know your body has changed has your brain changed do you think in your attitude of course that changes first right yeah the attitude changes first the brain changes first the body changes you know slowly over time but yeah for sure but i um like okay if people if i took off my shirt you know nobody’s gonna be super impressed with me just yet but i’m pretty impressed with me and that’s kind of my own opinion i held in higher regard than anyone else’s so yeah i basically i went from like kind of like i don’t know was i would you be like he’s fat would fat was i fat i might have been fat i didn’t think of myself like a fat guy and i’d be like what the hell i look fat here i’m like every photo i look fat maybe i’m just fat that’s kind of what i reached the conclusion of at that time you were getting overweight i think that like i think that you know there’s like a like a like a definition of obese like you know it’s a body fat percentage and i guess if we use obese and fat yeah i would say you’re overweight but i don’t think you’re overweight now yeah so and and so now i’ve been training hard for like a year i started off doing two days a week three days a week and i just cranked it up to five days a week now with the trainer um it was always supposed to be five days a week but the days i was supposed to be doing on my own i was you know really half-assing it or no asking it so so i would say on average i was doing like three or four days a week before and now i’m doing five or six days a week pretty intense and i gotta say um i don’t know why you’re bringing it up so i don’t know where you’re going with this but it’s amazing and i can talk about it all day because it’s like the best thing i’ve done all year so you know if you’re if you’re if you’re listening to this and whatever investment you’re making right now in your health i guarantee you that if you upped that investment you would only thank yourself and uh that’s kind of where i’m coming from here is like yeah i’m i’m super happy with making this shift and it’s totally great i have this the reason i was bringing this up is i had this friend who is incredibly wealthy like i would have to imagine like 30 million dollars wealthy and um he he was like i want to get in shape uh what routine are you using and i’m like that’s a bad question who cares about the routine if i was you i would just hire a coach it’ll be like 400 a month and he was like wow that’s expensive and i’m like dude you’ve got one body in one life like i for me my fear is when i see someone who’s my age or 40 50 60 and their body hurts and they can’t walk and they can they like struggle to sit down on the floor or something like that i’m like that’s hell right like you’re just you’re in this you’re in this shitty home that’s falling apart and you can’t get out and i was like what you know you just bought this fancy house why not also buy a fancy body and not to like look good naked but but like feel good and so i was just thinking about it and i think we talk about investing and i’m like i think that’s that’s got to be the best investment for sure we have we have a mutual friend i can’t say the name on here because what they said is funny but i’ll share what they said uh so they’re wealthy they’re probably like i think they have like you know 100 million dollars you know in the bank and um and they said this thing they were they’re like always doing kind of like fitnessy stuff they’re not like you wouldn’t look at them and say oh yeah this person’s clearly like you know ripped out of their mind or they’re not just like super jacked it’s not that but they live a very healthy lifestyle and whatever wherever they go like in their day their workout is like a key part of their day and they don’t sacrifice it they don’t get they don’t get too busy for it and so i asked him about that and i said you know um man it seems like you’re really taking this seriously he goes uh yeah you know the way i look at it is if you’re rich you have no excuse to be fat you know what he goes look if you don’t have the money and you’re all you’re just you’re trying to support your family you got to work two jobs you got to shop at certain stores you know mcdonald’s you know you got to eat what you can afford sometimes okay fine like still you know not great and you know i i want you to not be in that situation but like i definitely understand he goes if you’re rich and you’re fat that’s on you bro and uh and that’s how i feel now it’s like when he said it i was like you know that’s actually so true which is if you had all the resources but you didn’t make the investment that matters uh that’s sort of silly right and so uh that kind of trick that kind of was one little seed that i got planned in my head i’ll tell you something else that’s been funny my trainer recently um so your app you’re absolutely right what you said which is it’s not the workout routine it’s not the it’s not what you do it’s not the workout program right it’s not like somebody has some secret formula for most people it really doesn’t matter like for most people even if you just walked 15 000 steps a day and you ate uh only maybe 2 300 calories you’re gonna like look pretty good and you’re gonna feel probably pretty good if you’re not working out five days a week that’s your problem it has nothing to do with the routine it doesn’t matter what you did in the routine like just start with doing any workout and then make it better over time and like yeah when you’re when you’re sam status then the actual routine does matter because you know you’re already at the kind of 99th percentile you’re just trying to optimize at the end and try to get certain details to pop so yeah then your routine matters but for most people it doesn’t matter but i’ll tell you something my trainer told me that was counterintuitive he goes um we were talking about like my body has really changed my arms have changed my chest has changed but my stomach still looks like the stomach of a guy who’s not super in shape like i don’t have like a six-pack that’s not in the kitchen bro so that’s what i said i was telling him i was like oh yeah but that’s all diet right and he goes he goes you know everybody says that he goes um they say you can’t out train your diet all the stuff he goes and i get what they mean he goes but i’ll tell you what intensity over diet all day and i go what he goes intensity over diet watch he goes don’t even touch your diet right now don’t worry about your diet uh don’t be feel guilty when you eat something don’t like count every calorie don’t go way out your chicken breast like don’t do any of that [ ] all i want you to do is commit to cranking up the intensity when we’re here in this this part of the gym so he’s like if you’re like let’s say zero to ten what’s the intensity of your workout today like on average i say uh you know it’s like an eight he’s like great all we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take that to a nine we’re just gonna make every workout at least a nine on the intensity level and some days we’re gonna be hitting nine and a half and some days we’re gonna even hit a ten but right now i just want you to focus on a nine and he goes watch what happens and he’s been so right which is that it was really hard to just change my diet but it was that much easier to just crank up the intensity in working out and it’s not that the intensity will all of a sudden shed my fat it’s that when i put the intensity in here diet becomes a much easier decision because i really like laid it all out during the workout part and so the desire to like throw it all away for you know this like pleasure these chips or this whatever like it’s just not there and now i at first i thought he’s full of [ ] i did not believe him but now that now that i’m actually trying it i just said hey let me let me follow what you say you’re my coach i understand what he’s saying and this is now applied to many other things in my life so now even in business we were i was talking to to ben about one of our business plans and it’s like oh should we do this or this or this it was all about the plan the how the route you know what is the strategy and i basically said [ ] the strategy let’s just take our intensity up you say what i said whatever strategy we’re doing let’s just agree that like right now we’re probably executing any of our strategies at a seven or eight let’s just execute any of these [ ] strategies at a nine and a half let’s just see what happens and this is just working in all areas of my life now because now when you put a nine nine or a nine and a half intensity you kind of like want to figure out the right plan right it’s like if i’m going to put in this intensity it better be on the right thing and your brain will solve the which path should i choose problem in a different way because of the intensity i don’t know if that makes sense but it’s a little no it does the this weekend i went to f1 formula one racing in austin it was like the hot thing to do and i went with this guy have you heard of uh what’s it called jungle scout you know jungle scout yeah yeah we’ve talked about it it’s the tool that basically if you go on amazon and you want to see what products are selling how much how much of this insta pot gets sold every week jungle scouts this little extension you can click on it’ll tell you what how much sales the products on amazon have it’s kind of expensive but it’s a cool product so it’s a big business like um you know if you just google it like i you you’d have to if you could put the pieces together that they’re not far from 100 million in recurring revenue big business yeah and started as a google chrome plugin which is interesting this guy greg he’s neville’s good buddy my buddy’s neville so that’s how i got brought into this thing i went with him and he’s very nice very kind easy to talk to but incredibly intense and here’s just a tiny example of when i see this and i’m like i i like i always see like whenever i’m around certain people i always notice this uh when intense people do things like this so for example the race that just ended some people i don’t know how they got onto it but they got onto the track i guess they just went on and took photos and he’s like let’s go and he just starts walking over and i’m like well there’s no like gate and like everything imagine like huge stands and then you walk down the stands and there’s like a fence that’s quite tall and he goes he’s like well let’s go i’m like there’s no there’s no gate and he goes no no we’re just gonna jump the fence everyone was staring at us he just walks up without hesitation puts his hands up there climbs up on this fence and just hops he goes come on let’s go and i when i’m i’m i don’t like confrontation that much i don’t like doing a lot of things that like people stare at me and i was like what you just did like you didn’t even think twice and i’ve been with people who are like really successful entrepreneurs and they’ll be like a line and of course this is like jackass just like a jackass move and they’re like no no we’re not waiting in line we’re just gonna we’re gonna walk in and we’re just gonna we’re gonna do this and uh that’s like an example of that intensity have you ever noticed like we probably have friends that do like dude you’re like this you’re an intense dude i’ve noticed this from you and the line example’s perfect when we were going to do our live show remember in miami and the airport was just packed i don’t know why it was like six in the morning the airport was so packed we got there early and we were still gonna miss our flight like the security line was like two miles long and we waited we waited we waited and then you were like you just like some switch flipped inside you that was just like okay we have all the reasons to like do do like just to miss this flight basically it’s like all right we got here early look it’s just a long line there’s nothing we could do uh you know the airport is packed it covered just it’s all that circumstance and then i literally we didn’t even you didn’t even say anything you were just like okay i’m gonna go and then you just left the line so you gave up your spot which was like a risk because we had waited for like an hour and a half you gave up your snuck into the the pre you go to tsa pre-check you’re not tsa pre-check you just hand the guy your ticket and he’s like bro there’s no pre-check on this and you’re like oh yeah my my wife pre-checked it was she we it didn’t print or you’re like you’re like i’m preaching he’s like look at it he’s like there’s no pre-check you’re like i’m pre-checked it just didn’t print right and then he’s like your will just dominated his and then you just got through the line and we were like come on sean i’m still standing there i’m like [ ] if i go and say the exact same thing that may work and so i i was like i need to crank my intensity up so i went and i bought clear at that moment i just i went and spent 200 bucks buying clear and then i like the clear will they’ll escort you to the front of the line and like take you through tsa and then it was like you called me and you’re like dude you got a sprint because you were at the gate you’re like you gotta so i didn’t have my shoes on because the security line or whatever so i’m holding my shoes didn’t have time to put it back on i’m in my socks and i sprinted to the gate like i’ve never spent it before and i hate running so i i hate ran my way all the way there but it was your contagious intensity another example we wanted to build our podcast studio and i was like we had kind of been talking about it and it got to that dangerous point that happens where you have an idea a thing you want to do and then you’ve talked about it but you’re not closing you’re just somewhere in the middle and this is where dreams go to die and i think most people it would just sort of like it would either fade and you just don’t do it or you kind of half-ass it and i remember like in a 24-hour period you just blew up my phone you were like dming me like pictures of every other podcaster you’re like how about this this this just tell me of these three which one do you want i like number two number two and i’m like yeah sure number two you’re like great number two okay i found the chair on amazon actually let’s drive to these three places and like let’s go pick it up today what time are you free are you free in 10 minutes i’ll be at your house and you came he picked me up we drove to ikea then we drove to another furniture spot that we drove to this bootleg spot in oakland and then while we’re at the bootleg spot in oakland it was like not really happening and then and we went to another spot and then literally the sales lady recognized your intensity she came up to us it was a big furniture store she comes up she goes you guys look like you’re you guys look like you’re ready to buy i don’t know what you said she said something like you guys look like you know what you want and you were like yes i’m looking for this red chair because i have a show and i want it to pop in the thumbnail and it’s gotta look like this and she like ran into the back and tried to find us one and then you like got the whole thing done and somebody meanwhile somebody was painting the whole wall you were like we need to paint the wall so you like hired some guy to go paint the wall over the weekend and by monday that was a friday by monday the studio was done and i share this because that’s a level of intensity that you i know you have that i’ve observed in all of my successful friends they have this this trait are not all i shouldn’t say some people are doing style but very common that people who are success have this level of intensity when they do something massive action and um it is contagious it’s contagious to the people around you and like the lady in the store um there’s a there’s this principle that’s kind of like this so i’m reading this book sorry to go into tanzania here but i’m reading this book you everybody’s heard of it you’ve heard of it think and grow rich by napoleon hill have you read love have you actually read the book years ago but it’s one of those books that you should reread every five years probably i should probably read it it’s pretty amazing i’ve had the book for like 10 years i never even opened it because i was kind of like i think i get the idea um and so i actually started reading it two nights ago and he tells a story of this guy who wanted to work with thomas edison he’s like this guy had a clear idea he’s like i want to work with thomas edison he goes to notice two things he said he knew exactly what he wanted not just like i want a job and a lab it’s like no i want to work with thomas edison this guy is an amazing inventor because the second thing is i don’t want to work for him i want to work with him as a business partner and so he’s like you know problem is i have no qualifications and i’m literally not even the same city and i’ve never met the guy i have no access to him i don’t know anyone who knows him but he didn’t let any of those limitations those limitations were sort of irrelevant to the guy so uh sure enough he buys a train ticket he goes to where thomas edison is he barges through the door and he says you know mr edison uh i’m here to work with you like i think you’re great and i think uh you know we’ll do great work together i’m here to work with you and edison’s like what the [ ] like you know we’re not even hiring but uh like and he said something edison has a quote in the book which is like even though this man had no qualifications and i had never seen this person he’s a complete stranger there was something about the intensity of his presence that told me this person has their mind set on something and they’re gonna make it happen and that sort of reminded me of this like common thing that’s i’ve seen in a lot of people and in myself in situations which is once you get to that level of absolute certainty and you carry yourself people will literally just start to respond to you differently because they just see this person is like on a mission they are a man on a mission and like i may i either need to get out of the way or i need to get behind them and help them do this um and that has like served me i have one crazy story that served me well but has that ever happened to you or have you ever seen that yourself or others yeah i call it being an animal and like paul graham or he’s the one who said he goes basically he’s like a lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups he goes basically the one word you want to use to describe them is are they an animal right and do they just get [ ] done and i remember like uh i remember talking to my friend jake who went and worked at this company called teespring which grew very very quickly and i was like what’s it like to work for walker the guy who runs it and he goes he’s an animal like for example we wanted to do this partnership and we had been working for weeks and weeks i’m getting in touch with these folks and he just googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting he goes guys watch this and he just calls them and goes hey can i talk to this one person uh hey this is walker i want to make this happen what do we got to do any like and that’s an that’s a very easy example dude i have almost the same story when i was in college i had i’ve talked a little bit about this before but my very first business idea was was to create the chipotle for sushi so the same kind of fast casual model but for sushi he done it for sandwiches for burritos for chinese food but nobody ever done it for sushi that was the idea problem was i know nothing about sushi i know nothing about the food industry i had in fact only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that and that’s why i even had this idea i was like oh sushi’s [ ] amazing how do i do more sushi in my life and um and so one day i skipped class and me and my buddy trevor we were sitting around at our apartment and i was like you know and trevor loves to watch food shows like chopped iron chef he just loved watching this food [ ] i never understood it because again i’m not a foodie i was like why do you want to watch other people eat food that seems like crazy to me um but you know i got hooked because the shows are great obviously and we’re watching a throw down with bobby flay and there’s a sushi chef that comes on and he’s like he know obviously he knows his [ ] about sushi otherwise he wouldn’t be on the food network he says his qualifications were like you know i’m in la i got my restaurant but i also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs so we were like oh this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs and he had like this swag to him and we had interviewed three chefs locally and they were all like you know think about like a traditional japanese sushi chef like zero kind of outward personality very traditional conservative and they just looked at us like you’re like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi like how dare you even suggest this fast sushi no no thank you and so we i saw this guy and he had he had a big personality which is why he was on tv and i said we need a guy like this i go and he’s and trevor is like yeah we’re going to find him i go he’s right in front of us we need this guy and he’s like okay and so he’s quiet for a second and trevor just googles his number he’s like she turns his laptop at me he goes here’s his number and that’s like you know challenge accepted like if your friend shows you that it’s like or you know it’s like hey that girl over there you gotta go now you gotta go approach that girl so i pick up the phone and i call and i don’t know why i said this i didn’t i didn’t have this planned but it’s exactly what you just said the guy walker said uh he picks somebody picks up the phone and i’m so used to getting the run around that i didn’t expect it to be him so i go i need to talk to philip yee how do i make that happen and then he goes so i didn’t say may i please speak to the truth which by the way that’s the right way to ask which is how do i make this happen it’s just exactly because there’s always it just came out and it came out because i had already worked myself into a state of intensity and i was kind of nervous and so like i was just in this heightened state and so that’s just what came out and he goes this philip talk to me and i hadn’t planned what the [ ] i would say after that and i was like oh i said phillip you’ve never met me but uh i’d like to start a business with you and i know that sounds crazy but if you give me 10 minutes um to hear me out here out my plans i think you’ll find it really interesting it might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in la it seems like you have a great thing going i think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up and he goes he goes what’s the plan how old am i at this time yeah i was a senior in college so 2021 wow and he goes what’s the plan and now i didn’t have a plan so i go i go you know what it’s going to be easier for me to email this to you what’s your email address and i bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him and later on you know so he a bunch of stuff happens he flies out to meet us uh we’re going to school in north carolina he flies to our college dorm basically and meets us we fly to his i live on his couch in he’s he like vets us but he basically puts us through the grinder to see are we the type of we want which i have i don’t know how the story is going to end but at that point to me that’s a success already it’s a success already we turned this joke of an idea into like well it might be a funny idea to you when i say i’m starting a sushi restaurant but uh you know this food network chef’s on board or he’s like kind of on board he’s talking to me at least uh he’s flying out here next week so we got to prepare for that i’m not going to class right now i got to prepare for my chef and so later months later when we we finally struck a deal with him we closed it down he’s like dude you don’t know how many people he’s like because celebrities eat at my restaurant he’s like you don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me they say oh this restaurant’s so small you don’t even have a liquor license you need to expand i’ll put up the money you need to expand he goes and i never did business with any of them and here i am with three [ ] in college and i decided to go into business with you and everyone thinks i’m crazy but you know why i go why he goes you remember what you first said to me and i was like no and he goes he goes you called and you said i need to talk to philippe how do i make that happen he goes that he’s like there was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy’s gonna do something this guy’s gonna make something happen and he goes he goes if you literally had not said that phrase i don’t think i would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say i want to start a restaurant with you i’d like to partner with you blah blah and i was like wow i didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference and i don’t think it’s the words i think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time that’s great i like that how did it end we partnered with him we go live on his couch we train in this restaurant in l.a and uh so you know first first day i go there he shows me um the process for making sushi so i don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi just like the yeah i guess so like they use that like a piece of wood a little bamboo there’s a bamboo roller basically but before you do any of that right so the seaweed lays down and you got to put the rice on it now the rice is sticky rice uh if you’ve ever had asian food you paint in these sticky rice so how do you use your hands how do you grab the sticky rice how do so there’s a little problem i i didn’t even realize there’s a problem right i’m sitting there watching him for an hour so first he says just shatter me sit here and watch me i say okay i’m watching him and he’s just making sushi and i’m kind of getting it but i don’t even know what i’m looking for right like any amateur when you look at something you don’t even know what you’re looking for you don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something and this is why he was a genius teacher one hour in he goes the next customer walked in and i’ll tell you who it was in a second he go he goes all right sean you’re up and he moves out of the way and i get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat and i don’t know anything about anything i’ve just been watching this guy i thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi if you’ve ever watched like what’s that giro dreams of super hero yeah it’s like five decades the tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor you then you get to touch the veggies then you get to touch the fish and the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegar rice it’s sushi is really about the rice not about the fish so um so i didn’t expect to be doing it and so one hour and he throws me the fire and not only does he throw me in the fire he throws me the fire with this guy who sits down and i look up and it’s daryl from the office if you ever watch the office it’s daryl and daryl’s a regular there so he kind of knew like wait wait wait wait wait wait wait daryl daryl from the office he’s the warehouse guy he’s the black warehouse oh black dude ben robinson i think his name is uh i don’t know that’s his name maybe that’s his name something like that but daryl i know daryl of course so so it’s daryl so i’m like oh [ ] i gotta make sushi and i make it for daryl and sushi it’s like the guy’s staring at you you’re two feet away from each other like there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it i’m making it in this guy’s face and uh and so here daryl philbin sorry and so i so i first i just freeze i’m just standing there and i’m looking down at the [ ] bamboo i have seaweed bamboo and rice and i’m like okay how did he do this and then i’m freezing and then he walks away i’m like [ ] okay i gotta figure this out before he comes back he comes back up to me he hands me a shot of uh of sake and he goes drink the [ ] shot and roll the [ ] roll sean and i so i take a shot and then i’m like okay i grabbed the rice cause i’m like i gotta spread the rice on the on the seaweed i grabbed the rice and immediately i know i’ve done something wrong because the rice is so [ ] sticky in my hand that as i try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed it’s like not gonna leave my hand i just rip the seaweed and my hand is like a rice glove and he goes he’s laughing and he’s he goes you know every time before i roll the roll i dip my hand in this water and i clap he goes that clap is not for show that clap is you wet your hand and you clap and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hands so you just just enough so that when you touch the right it’s not going to stick to your hand and so i was like oh [ ] and then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever and so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him and like that same day if you ever watch lost the guy hugo from lost uh came in and he ordered food or whatever it’s crazy anyway so that’s that’s part of how that story ended have you heard of um i want to talk about intensity and billy of the week because i came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people i’ve ever read about have you ever heard of michael rubin michael rubin is that the fanatics guy yes so he’s interesting because he’s a young guy he’s probably not yet 50 but if he is 50 he’s early 50s and his name’s michael rubin he’s been a baller for years and years and years and so this guy is incredibly fascinating but not a lot of people know who he is i think he’s worth like 10 billion dollars like you know he’s worth a ton of money you know like jack dorsey money and yet he’s like pretty under talked about and so this guy listen to his story so i was reading reading about him so basically he’s in the news now but i’m going to explain his background so at the age of 12 he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents basement and then two years later at 14 he got uh 2 500 in bar mitzvah gifts and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents house and by age 16 he was already in 120 000 in debt and had to settle with creditors and his dad had a uh pay him give him bail him out for thirty seven thousand dollars and he was basically said like i’ll bail you out but you have to go to college and you gotta stop this nonsense so he goes to college but then after a couple of semester he drops out and he already has five new ski shops and it kind of kicks ass and he eventually sells it and then at the age of 21 he starts his business called kpr sports it’s an equi an equipment closeout company by age 21 it has a million dollars in sales two years later age 23 50 million dollars in sales at the age of 20 uh at 23 in 1995 he purged it purchased 40 of the uh women’s shoe company reika javier de breca who was around in like the 90s and early 2000s and then eventually he started this company called gsi commerce he kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called gsa gsi commerce and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing and he sold that at uh age like 28 for 2.4 billion dollars netting him 150 million dollars personally then a few years later he bought the business back and he formed three different companies the first was shoprunner have you heard of shoprunner no shoprunner basically was kind of like amazon prime but for all non-amazon stores so you could spend 100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores he started rue la la which you probably wouldn’t have heard of but i bet your wife has and then he has and then he started fanatics he sold shoprunner recently for 228 million dollars fanatics ends up becoming this massive business and so basically if you buy like a rams jersey um it’s made by fanatics and they basically work with the nfl they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports but here’s where [ ] gets really really wild so fanatics turns it now at this point i believe it’s three different large businesses so there’s the main fanatics business which is they basically have licenses with nfl mba mlb they make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise i think i believe if it’s not publicly traded it’s nearly publicly traded and worth 18 billion dollars the second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division have you seen that there’s just no news it’s called fanatics trading cards and so basically he raised 350 million dollars at a 10.4 billion billion valuation and so basically there’s companies like tops everyone knows tops they make cards i think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things but tops plus the other three big dogs in the space i forget what they are but if you’re listening into the baseball cards huge so collectively those make like two billion dollars a year in ebitda like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like 10 billion dollar trading card company it is pretty frothy but like it could if it you know can be a billion dollar a year in profit business totally and so he raised money for that and then he has the second thing called candy digital which is making nfts for sports and they just raised 100 million dollars at 1.5 billion evaluation and so he spun all of these off and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the new jersey devils the sports team pretty freaking wild and if you follow him on instagram which i just started following him he’s homies with meek mill uh and he like helped get him out of prison and he’s uh spends a lot of his time michael rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform incredib incredibly prolific very very very confident very fast moving very intense incredibly interesting guy seems like a good guy um for for him to come on the pod this guy this guy’s cool i’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and i like him a lot and i think what he did with fanatics is like i always view doing things in sports it’s like if you want to do sports and music it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like oh yeah i’m passionate about sports great you and you know 2.2 billion other people and so it’s really really hard to do what i’ll call obvious ideas in sports like yeah selling the merch selling jerseys selling shirts so for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me it’s very impressive and what i when i was watching interviews with them so gary vee is a partner on this um on a couple of his things like i don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake i don’t know what how the how the thing is but he’s he’s mentioned a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member something like that and basically i’ve hung out with gary maybe only three or four times including the time we had him on the podcast i’ve hung out with him in person and he has the same energy that i’ve noticed michael rubin has where there’s basically like this thing that i have and i think every human being even these guys they just don’t have a lot of it where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like well you know i can’t do this because of this this and this and i’ve noticed with gary he’s talk like one time he told me he’s like i wanna my next thing he’s like i’m going to create all these restaurants and they’re actually going to be completely free and the way they’re going to make money is amex or whoever is going to sponsor it um like he was just brainstorming he’s like but i’m going to do that and in my head i’m like well that’s really dumb i mean a free restaurant that’s the stupidest thing i’ve ever heard of um but i feel like nine out of 10 things he does i would say that’s a really dumb idea and they work and you know he said he’s gonna come out with these what’s his nft thing it’s uh v friends like if he told me i’m like gary this is really dumb or uh you know like that’s not gonna work and it’s been incredibly lucrative and very successful and they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like this won’t work for this reason or this reason it was just like well why not like it logically it makes sense i think this can work anyways this is very uh timely so let me tell you why by the way i’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where i’m thinking about something where i’m doing something and then somebody who’s uh like-minded they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way we trade these stories so same exact thing all right so i told you i’m reading think and grow rich there’s a section in there that i remember you know it’s just like stuck in my head and he goes to be successful one needs to be success conscious and i was like i don’t even know what that means i don’t think most people know that means but the interesting part is the second line that’s what he says after that he goes he goes and people who fail all fail for the same reason they take their current limitations as real limitations right they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re pursuing they’re feeling now and they treat them as real and what you’re saying is exactly that which is that everybody yeah oh i need to do this but i don’t have the time but i don’t have the money but i don’t have the experience but this person said they would get back to me and they haven’t gone back to me yet uh but this but you know the port is closed right now and so the shipment’s going to be delayed it’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment and what what successful people do really really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations they ignore all the limitations about themselves and even the thing when somebody says no to them they’re like okay cool like what does your boss think about that how about i talk to them let me see what they have to say how about i go to your competitor let me see what they have to say how about i ask you again but this time i’m gonna ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine now you’re gonna have a different answer and like they don’t take no for an answer on any front uh you know on their own limitations from they don’t take no from themselves and they also don’t take no from the world and um so i noticed that so i yesterday we were finishing up our workout and uh and we have a kind of like you know like it’s we trained the body but we trained the mind at the same at the same time and so we were talking about this i said man i read this great thing and i know i could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up and he goes oh that’s great and i go but you know what i don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great because what what it really means when i say this and we’re like yeah yeah yeah that that’s true is we kind of do this thing where we’re like yeah that’s true uh other people [ ] that up but you know not me yeah um there’s like this inherent like yeah other people really need to get this but they don’t get it i get it so i said no no screw that just like we just did reps in the gym on our you know shoulders and and lats and whatever else i said let’s get a rep right here i say what’s a let’s get a rep right now what’s something that you want that you just have some random limitations that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it honestly you’re just not even aware of it you’re not even like saying it out loud once you say it out loud you’d probably find a solution to it but you don’t really do it i said i’ll go first i said man ever since i went worked out at sam’s gym i want my garage gym to feel like that i already had the weights i’m already doing the workout but it doesn’t feel the same his gym feels amazing to be in he’s got the floor finished properly he’s got this he’s got the fan on the wall he’s got the music system it just feels great i want my gym to feel like that and i said i want that and what’s my limitation i hired this one contractor he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote it’s like well i could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now but like i just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something i wanted and i told my trainer so you got to do one now what’s what’s something you want that you have a limitation i said let’s get a rep and this is a very powerful way of thinking which is when you get advice don’t just be like yeah advice let me write that quote down let me tweet that quote out it’s like no no apply it in the moment get a get a rep doing the thing and so uh so let me ask you let’s do it live what’s the thing you want in your life and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like it’s not being realized fully right now it could be anything could be something your relationship work-wise money-wise fitness-wise whatever something small something in your house whatever um and then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that gary vee wouldn’t that michael rubin wouldn’t um okay this sounds silly it should sound silly it’s perfect because it’s usually the silly things i’ve had a fear of camping for a long time and i want to spend more time in the wilderness because i like the idea of it but like i’m kind of afraid of like being out at night time in the woods by myself or with like a small group okay great so you you want to camp and then you’re afraid and then so if you shine the light what’s the what’s the limited what’s the thought that goes into your head is it i don’t have x or i’m afraid of why what is it i’ve just not i’ve just i’ve not bought like uh camping equipment i’ve not looked at where to go i’ve not told a buddy or two that i want to go do it and and i’ve not take i’ve just not planned anything make it more personal why haven’t you planned anything uh what’s called fear fear of what fear of being out at night in the wilderness by myself and that’s the perfect stopping point because whenever you say the fear out loud it sounds really [ ] stupid it’s like i’m afraid of being outside at night by myself like first of all i’m not scared i’m not gonna be by myself i’m gonna be with somebody because more fun with friends secondly like whatever it’s not that scary i could do it uh right so like that’s the best part of like when you finally find the thing and you say it out loud it just sort of dissolves because it’s like well that sounds silly like it doesn’t have it doesn’t have as much power once i say it out loud once i shine the light on it’s like scurries away well you got to get your gym set up then it’s not that hard i sent you the link i know yeah i have everything the the limiting thing was i don’t know how to do home improvement projects like i’m not handy dude do you know how to cut like a slice of bread that’s all you have to do when you lay down floor you just kind of look even easier than that i was like i could pay this guy to do it okay that’ll solve my problem oh that guy’s not responding okay and then i just let it fizzle there it’s like what no i want this i want this why would i why would i just let this wait and we we all agreed that the one common demand in most of the things you want is you’ve come up with an excuse to wait um like i’ll give you another example i hope he doesn’t mind me saying this but i had this guy who kind of was like an apprentice for me for a few months and i basically was like he was like hey i want to learn about content and stuff like that i said cool you come help me research and write stuff and i’ll teach you some things and after a few months uh he went on his way and was like cool go out there in the world and since then he i think i could say his name so this guy is this guy chris i don’t even know how you say his last name chris has look i don’t know it’s crazy last name redhead guy who works at goldman red hat guy exactly so he was a college student at the time so when i was talking i was a student at yale and uh it’s nice guys i’ve talked to him super nice guy after he did the apprenticeship he grew his twitter following from i think like 2 000 followers he just hit a hundred thousand followers yesterday or two days ago and he texted me he’s like dude i hit a hundred thousand like thank you you know i learned a bunch of stuff you showed me kind of like what good writing looks like and i was like dude that’s honestly it’s [ ] amazing like you’re a college kid and you did that like that’s that’s super impressive and he’s like you know but i’m thinking about like where do i go from here i said well it’s real simple like what do you want like i’m not i’m not going to tell you what to do next like what do you want to do next and then go do that thing it’s really that simple and he’s like oh you know i want to start a company and i said okay cool so did you take that banking job that i was telling you not to take he’s like yeah you know i’ve been here for a little bit i don’t think that might that might not be the long thing long-term thing for me i think i want to start a company someday i said oh you’re waiting he’s like yeah i’ve just you know like i said okay why don’t you just quit your job and go do he’s like well you know and he gave me another reason for waiting i said okay so why don’t you just go do it and he goes well i you know if i did do it i’d want to do it with my friend he’s really really smart super smart guy but he has to wait a year because he’s graduating he’s not graduated yet so you know i thought i’d just wait you know a year i said wait a year huh 10 of your 20s you’re just gonna give away wow with precious asset just pissing it away huh uh just waiting huh wait wow and i was just like and he’s like yeah you know and then also you know i wanna i’m making good money right now i wanna save up so i have enough runway you know money money is always like you know it it does matter at the end of the day i said how about this how about instead of telling me a bunch of reasons why you’re not going to do the thing you want to do you just start telling me some reasons you are going to do the thing you’re going to you want to do try that it works much better trust me and i was like kind of a dick about it but it’s really that [ ] simple and i notice and it’s not just him ever i know this because i do this i’m guilty of waiting for [ ] or coming up with reasons to wait and so whoever’s listening to this that needs to hear this don’t wait my trainer says wait wait wait is a weight on your back and stop waiting so uh i had a friend who and and we could move on after this but i don’t know if people i think people will like this but i had a friend who on i do this all the time so if i have friends or people who i care about in on april 5th i’m at the point where i’ve saved enough money to move forward with the prototyping process i feel like i found the right engineer to partner with it’s a decent amount of money but i think i could do it i want to know what your thoughts are on how to launch this i text it back i go uh if i was you i would do this this and this right this morning i s i texted him this was april 5th i texted him today how’d the idea turn out he said too expensive for me to commit my life savings the cost and manufacturing and marketing of a physical product were way big and much bigger compared to starting a software or internet company oh wow so you started a software company lol no i love it i was about to say i’m figuring out what to do and what i’m going to stop being a worker be and then i’ll probably um i can’t say i’ll probably quit after blank ipos right don’t even know what city i’ll be in next year and it’s never gonna happen it’s never gonna it will never happen no no it will never let’s imagine lovingly for this guy it is gonna happen it’s gonna happen once he stops thinking that way right once he stops being that way once he changes that’ll change and so i or she i don’t know i don’t know what it is but basically yeah there’s a um there’s a funny thing with that and you know i i i always wonder like do you be a dick or do you kind of like empathize if you care you be a dick and why is that if you care well like look it’s like look do you want this or not and and often times i say to people i’m like do you really want this i don’t know if you actually want this and i think that you just think it’s cool to want this and i don’t think it’s cool to want to you want to either do or you don’t right you want to talk about like if you just want to talk about it just tell me you just want to brainstorm right or you just want to shoot the [ ] but if you’re telling me that you want this then i’ll i’ll hold you accountable actually i’ll i’ll say why haven’t you done this right my trainer he goes uh he goes you know i treat people the way they told me they want to be so you want to be fit right so then if you’re going to complain about doing these sets well the guy who’s fit does this so i’m going to treat you from the place you told me you want to be and hey you at any given time you can come and say i don’t want it anymore i change my mind i want this instead cool i’m happy to change my tree i’m happy to treat you differently when you tell me that you have changed your mind that you don’t want to you don’t want this anymore you want something else you are totally in the right to there but let’s be clear i’m always going to ask you did you change what you wanted because if you still want that thing then i’m going to keep treating you like the person who gets that thing and that person doesn’t do or say these things and so i’m not going to entertain it i’m not going to be the shoulder to cry on i’m not going to be the one who sympathizes and pats you on the head and says i understand why it’s tough for you why it’s so hard because it’s not so hard for that guy and so be that guy think that’s an amazing idea and i always say it’s an amazing idea uh yeah it’s always great amazing like you’re just asking for permit you’re just asking for permission so i’m gonna give you permission amazing there’s no reason why this can’t work oftentimes there’s a lot of reasons it doesn’t matter when are you launching right and uh i do this mine says sounds cool right they say i have this idea what do you think i would love to hear your feedback your thoughts happen to jump on a call i don’t even reply to any of that i just say sounds cool let me know when you launch it so i can check it out i always say the same thing and sometimes i i’ll reply months later like i’ll save certain conversations and i reply do you want to talk about one more interesting thing on the list i have one thing from this de beers thing i’ve just yeah i’ve been dying to hear it okay so okay so let me tell you this story this kind of blew my mind i got to open up my notes for this because i i did you know proper proper research for this um so why don’t you put your notes in this document so i can see that it’s just really long it’s like two pages of notes so i didn’t want to blow it up for this but uh let me just tell you this story i got your full and undivided attention you can’t even read the thing you gotta listen to me say it all right so somebody in my family is uh was thinking about getting engaged soon so the whole like engagement ring process was going on and they were asking like you know all the questions you have because you don’t usually you don’t most people don’t buy a ton of diamond rings or something like that so they’re kind of like you know what’s the budget uh you know that i see there’s these four c’s cut clarity you know which one should i care more about uh blah blah blah so and and then they did this thing they went to a jewelry shop and they tried some i said just go try some on see what you see what you what you like and uh so you’re not gonna buy it from there but go to a nice shop to try things on so you can see what shape you like what color you like what different prices will get you that sort of thing and they go and they came back they said hey you ever heard about this lab grown diamond thing and uh have you heard of uh yeah yeah yeah yeah basically they’re i mean that’s all it is it’s diamonds grown in the lab right so just the way that like now you have um you for many different types of products for meat they’re trying lab-grown meats so what if instead of farming animals and killing them and you know contributing to a lot of you know global warming you could just take a stem cell from a cow shoulder and grow a filet mignon right that’s the promise and there’s a company called memphis meats that’s doing it and it takes it looks identical to the meat to a steak it tastes identical because it is identical cellularly molecularly it is identical to a normal steak now the problem right now for meat is that it costs like ten thousand dollars a pound or something crazy so you know it’s not economically feasible yet and um and then there’s this company i was looking at potentially investing it’s called vitro labs and they’re doing this with leather they’re saying hey instead of killing animals for leather what if we could have a cruelty-free leather let’s just grow the skin in a lab and they’re signing deals with you big name luxury brands you know they’re the sort of who’s who luxury brands that they want to offer a vegan product but they don’t want to sacrifice the quality of the material so they said hey let’s get you an identical material molecularly matching material for that okay so i’ve been interested in this lab-grown trend and diamonds was the latest one so i said oh interesting diamond it’s not the new it’s not new it’s actually much more commercially forward it’s like out there and people buy this stuff it’s growing in popularity compared to meats and leather which are kind of like still in development so um so i started looking into it i was like i was like is this kind of like [ ] or what’s going on and here’s what i found the diamond industry itself is mostly [ ] and a lot of people know this but i dug into some of the history here’s what here’s what i found that kind of interests me before 1870 like diamonds uh weren’t even like they were not even a a a considered rare so i’m sorry plentiful sorry before 1870 they were rare because we didn’t know where to find them so like you know the maharaja in india would would have it in his crown or you know some egyptian person would have it in their in their garment but it was it was so rare that you didn’t even see it around it wasn’t even a thing it wasn’t even businesses around it but then in 1870 they find this huge deposit in um i think south africa and so now diamonds become this like they realize oh diamonds are actually not in short supply there’s tons of diamonds they found this huge thing and so all these miners go in like a gold rush basically and they start mine they start establishing diamond mines in south africa and then like six months later a year later they all realize like [ ] there’s now too much supply we’re flooding the market with this stuff and it’s we’re all going out of business nobody can afford um nobody can afford to to run the mine because we’re we’re flooding so much supply so the miners but no so the miner’s like damn it if everybody else just stopped i could make a bunch of money but it’s like the prisoner’s dilemma nobody wants to be the one that stops so they all keep going and they all put each other out of business and so there’s this guy cecil rhodes that comes around and cecil rhodes starts buying up the mines he’s like i need to aggregate all this supply in south africa so he starts aggregating it all and basically buys mines from one of the farms is called something something that the brothers were called de beers that was their last name so it becomes the de beers like mining and exploration group or something like that some name like that so that’s where de beers the diamond company comes from and so de beers became this over the next hundred years de beers becomes this monopoly they control ninety percent of the supply and the reason diamonds are considered rare is because de beers owns all the supply and they just limit how much they produce from the mines they could produce 10 times more but instead they intentionally restrict supply at the mining level then they this is so monopolistic as crazy so then they created this group of 200 people only 200 people were allowed to buy from them called site holders and they said oh you were invited so so we control all the supply so we decide who we sell to and we only are going to sell these 200 and then you can go sell to merchants now we’re going to so they could kind of hold these 200 people accountable and say hey why is this person over here selling at this low price cut them off and like just cut you off and if a new mine popped up they would go like the mafia and they’ll go into sort of like through violence intimidation or like even just like market tactics they would basically like put the mine out of business and take it over so like let’s say you discovered a mine that had a bunch of yellow diamonds they would flood the market with yellow diamond supply crush your economics you’d go out of business and they’d take over your mind and so they would just find whatever you produce and they would just flood you and so um so all the way up until about the year 2000 they owned 90 of this thing i was like i was like why is this so if it’s not rare where does the value come from and so the story is basically diamond mining wasn’t big business right away it was looking at okay business good business and then it started to like kind of like plateau and p it wasn’t really growing that fast so in 1936 they say we got to do something we got all this diamond production but where there’s not enough demand now for the diamond production so they go down madison avenue and they find this ad agency and they find this one guy so everybody who loves diamonds today and every girl is demanding a diamond engagement ring it’s because of this guy george locke back in the day and they hire this guy and they say look we need you to create demand for diamonds and at that time before 1936 people were not even giving diamonds as an engagement ring it wasn’t even like rings weren’t even an engagement process it was like very rare that people would do that most people just kind of did an engagement as sort of a different sort of agreement and so he does a big study and he says okay look um what we need to do is this we need to get men to buy the diamonds for women and we need the women to believe that diamonds are the way that your man can show you so for women it’s like if you want the man to say he loves you we need diamond to represent love diamond equals love that’s like one side of the board they said on the other side men the bigger the better the more expensive the diamond the more of a man you are so it became diamonds and they came out worth it and it was it was like some like ridiculously obvious statement that they came out with right so they had a bunch so they’ve done like um uh diamonds are forever is was named i think one of the most uh i think was named the marketing slogan of the century or something like that of the last hundred years it was voted that diamonds are forever was the best marketing hook created because it created this like demand for diamonds so why is that so so there’s a bunch of like aspects to this so first how did they build demand well it was basically in old school influencer marketing so they decided all right we’re gonna make diamonds look like the gift of love and so they went to hollywood and they went to all the producers and they said we will give you producers here’s a beautiful diamond for you to give your wife here’s a diamond for you for your for you on your bracelet or your necklace your earrings or whatever and they basically said hey we will give you these diamonds for free producer but you need to have a scene in your movie the climax of your movie where the man professes his love for the woman he needs to open up a box with a diamond ring inside and then she needs to have an amazing reaction like she needs to be won over because the guy did that and so they went to all these movie producers and the movies now all have these scenes and you could go back and watch this montage of before this nobody was doing this in movies all of a sudden every movie this was the key scene the guy pronounces his love for his w for the woman and gives her a diamond and she says oh my god i love you too it kisses him back and so they like used that kind of inception then they went to fashion designers and i said hey wouldn’t it be a shame if um if if if you didn’t say that the trend next year the big trend is that diamonds are in would let’s call it the trend to diamonds so they created this thing called the trend to diamonds and they just got all these fashion designers to ambiguously say there’s a trend to diamonds so now you have the the high art people saying this and then you have hollywood showing it and that was like the main sort of brainwashing mechanism of of the world at the time no social media no nothing and so then they said so then you know the ad agency starts getting uh you know clever they’re like all right how do we make the diamond proportionate to the man’s success what if it was you have to spend one month’s salary on this and they went with one month salary and then they upped it to two months salary and then they had an advertising campaign that said um how do you make two months of salary last forever buy a dime oh man amazing right and then and then they were like okay look but hey we all know that diamonds are actually not that rare right so we can’t have people reselling these so they said oh uh first of all if you make it the the the ultimate gift of love the woman won’t want to sell it the guy won’t want to sell it and then even if they do here’s what we’ll do dealers the you the merchants who sell this you cannot take diamonds back because diamonds even though they are like seen in the world as like a store of value it’s like oh just jewelry it’s like you know jewelry is kind of like a safe way to store your wealth it’s like a car if you take a diamond out of the shop it’s lost 50 of its resale value and the dealer doesn’t want you to know that so they won’t even make you an offer to buy it back so they banned merchants from like making offers to buy it back because they didn’t want the merchant to tell the customer hey once you buy this thing it’s worth half uh and so they said don’t even make an offer and um and so they kind of like killed the resale market and then they created this diamonds are forever campaign so that you would not want to sell your diamond and they did this country by country so like you can look in any country you can see this chart so it’s like the u.s goes to this curve where no one’s buying diamonds that like 75 percent of engagements are all through diamonds and then uh 90 it gets to like 90 something percent our engagements are done through diamonds in japan they they’re like oh we have no market share in japan they go they do the same marketing playbook there it goes from five percent of brides have a ring to 60 and 20 year in a 20-year period and de beers own 70 of that market share right and then they started creating other marketing gimmicks like the right hand ring it’s like if you’re an independent woman you know you don’t want this ring on your left hand that shows that you’re kind of owned by this man wear a right-hand ring you need a diamond on your right hand that says that’s the right hand ring the 25th anniversary ring the upgrade ring like you know just show that you’re doing better than you were before and so they created all this like they literally [ ] created the demand and they restricted the supply it’s kind of unbelievable um so that’s kind of like the that’s amazing the core of it there’s some other stuff like you know there’s like sort of the blood diamonds thing which is like the bad pr around it which is that these diamond mines were a kind of shitty conditions to be in um but b they were like basically using profits from the mine to fund like war in the area like militia war in the area so that was kind of like you’re basically funding conflict in a way and so the diamond industry tried to like after that movie blood diamond came out they tried to like clean up their image but then lab grown diamonds started coming out and so the lab grow diamonds come out it’s like oh [ ] so first they created a marketing campaign that says real is rare and they basically were like if it’s real that’s what makes it rare which is what makes it valuable so if it’s a lab-grown thing that’s nothing and they refuse to acknowledge it they refuse to sell it they refuse to care about it but customers were like dude this is it’s indistinguishable from a diamond the naked eye cannot tell what’s a real diamond like mine from the earth or made in a lab because materially again the composition is the same it’s not like a fake it’s not like a fake diamond it’s the same material it was just grown in a lab rather than growing in the earth and so i always get the the shane co commercials right and they say like you don’t want to get them from a lab from a lab it’s it’s just like every other one right they’re all exactly exactly it’s not special and so the problem is it’s still growing in popularity because they sell for about 30 of the price so you can get like a way bigger ring that looks identical to a diamond ring that is made of a diamond um but it just happened to have been like it’s like do i want my coffee sourced from you know canada or from philippines or from africa like it’s kind of like where is it sourced so some people care but it’s growing in popularity so then de beers and the diamond industry they like did the last kind of like stone cold killer move for years they were like lab grown is fake it’s [ ] don’t buy it and they but it was just growing in popularity anyways so they were like all right [ ] we gotta do something else so then they create this up called lightbox and they start producing lab grown diamonds everyone’s like oh my god does this mean that lab is legit and they’re like no no no no no lab is for people who can’t afford diamonds so we’re going to sell ours so they undercut the price like crazy so normally a lab grown diamond will cost like 30 or 40 of the cost so it’s like a 50 60 discount and but they started pricing theirs at like a 90 discount of a real diamond just to ruin the market value of the brand perception of labrador diamonds and they said this is for they said they came out in a statement they said this is for emotionally shallow events like a sweet 16 or like a quinceanera party buy the buy the lab ground for that don’t you know so that this is their latest tactic to try to like keep up this big myth this big lie that diamonds are this rare valuable precious gem and it’s like actually just complete [ ] this is amazing research this is a good one this is a very good story and what but here’s the thing where we are uh maybe it will change is us in our 30s we all do the same thing which is right before we get engaged we say this is [ ] i will not stand for this i will not pay this amount of money right my budget i’m going to set it really low i’m going to get a fake one or i’m going to get a lab girl like i will not buy into this and then you get into it and you say [ ] it’s going to make her gonna make her happy yeah and we all refuse to buy into it and well more and more people are starting to to go the other way um but but yeah it’s it’s amazing that this is still the majority right given now that lab grown is visibly identical and you can get a way better better looking diamond for cheaper price uh it’s amazing that that like the re the utility doesn’t overwhelm but like the branding is that embedded it’s that strong after so long and actually there’s one other part which is that eventually you know the diamonds do um the the beers did lose their monopoly i should say so like in the year 2000 they basically broke up the monopoly because they’re getting a lot of public pressure as a monopoly the the buyers were kind of sick of being like constantly threatened uh by de beers and then people found new minds in australia and all these other places where they couldn’t like you could kind of just in africa you can kind of like coerce people but in australia it’s a lot harder to like go coerce some a minor in public to like just [ ] give you their mind and so um and so they’ve changed their business strategy so and the last factor by the way is there’s this guy the family that kind of like created the real monopoly is the oppenheimer family and they’ve run this thing for years first guy oppenheimer are they they’re they’re very wealthy so the business i think is like a 10 billion dollar business i think they sold half the stake for four or five billion uh recently and i also think they own like 50 of louis vuitton or something like that they own some other stuff too but um but anyways they couldn’t the the in the family there’s no one to take it over anymore uh no one wants to run the business nobody another young generation they didn’t want they don’t want their business there’s nobody there’s no air and so they’re like [ ] there’s no air business is still good but it’s getting harder and we don’t have somebody to fight it and so they actually switched strategy so they broke up the monopoly and now they shifted from like 90 market share to 30 uh and then they started rolling out their own retail stores and profits have gone up but they’re kind of like their um you know their control has gone down their power has gone down and i would have to if i had to bet you know i’m a i’m a very amateur historian and so i’ve read a lot of these stories if i had to bet i would bet that once you break up a monopoly for a family-owned business i would argue that the odds that the odds are that the family are now actually going to get richer it seems like it’s just what do you mean well so for example standard oil this is the same thing in the 1920s teddy roosevelt said nope standard oil you are the beers of america you own 80 of oil production you can’t do it anymore so they broke it up into five or eight different companies and some of those companies are exxon mobil um bp right um conoco and like five or six other companies that you probably know of um and it made rockefeller get significantly richer because he owned a small stake into each one right and they all competed with each other and they boost their revenue boost their profits and they all made and he made significantly more money because of that and that was a the big source of his wealth was when they broke up the company and i would say that if facebook and instagram had to compete with each other um it would actually make zuckerberg richer same with youtube and google if they had to compete it would probably make them better and thus the owner’s a little bit more rich exactly i i agree that’s why when people talk about breaking up facebook it’s like well you know what this is going to do right like they’re all going to become more valuable and the services will become better but it does open up more room for competition whereas when they have a absolute stranglehold then you know it may not be as as lucrative and it may not be as good of a product but it’s very hard to break break in um yeah that was great that was well there’s also like an opportunity here right like as i learned this i was like okay i know this is not new but if i just sample the population it’s like on one hand you do two surveys one survey they did was hey did you know about lab grown blah blah blah here’s what here’s like look you can’t tell the difference look it’s made of it’s actually the same material composite it’s the same material as diamond it’s just grown from lab rather than mine in the earth and hey you don’t have to worry about the like ethics of the mining because it’s not not mine from the earth 70 of like millennials are like yeah i’m totally open to that that sounds great but then at the same time the market share hasn’t caught up yet and so i think that even though this is not a brand new thing i think that people could create a really valuable brand like i’m curious if somebody listened to this that wants to go and basically take an education based approach to selling this because i think the more you educate people the more they wanna like the more willing they are to buy and if you’re the one who educates them you get that first right of refusal to sell them sell them their first lab grown uh diamonds and i think i would bet that millennials won’t do this but what’s the generation after that z i believe they would and the 18 because you know they’re so um politically correct and they’re very they they they have a high [ ] detector i believe and for me and my friends a lot of us were like this is not the battle i’m going to choose right i’m just gonna i’m just gonna you know buy my way out of this and and we’ll fight a different battle right with them i don’t i would argue that there’s a good chance that something like that could happen i don’t think it will happen now but i think in 10 years when the 18 year olds get in their 20s and 30s uh and i would bet money i i would bet my money i think that could work as well so i’m bullish on this too yeah that’s great um all right do we want to do it this is a good story that yeah we um that that this has got to be our our youtube click that was a very well researched and very good story good job very much so that’s the episode we’ll see let’s see if this one’s a hit i think it was kind of interesting what do you think ben i thought it was great the de beer stuff is super super interesting um and uh and the intensity stuff uh the the sushi story was great loved it it’s good of intensity you dunked on somebody this week you said did you really can you dunk how tall are you he’s mormon of course he can dunk so i’m six four apparently it’s like the basket isn’t isn’t it isn’t it the basketball love uh of the like whenever all my mormon friends they it seems like they always are playing basketball on sunday all of our churches have uh basketball courts in them and so uh even like non-mormons play basketball in our churches a lot now are we talking about 64. you could do windmills or we’re barely scraping the dunk through or whatever uh so you know like when i was younger when i was in high school i could do like tomahawks and and 180s and like pretty good dunks but you know over the pandemic i didn’t i didn’t play basketball for like almost a year and a half so i didn’t know if i still had it and last night i just drove i was going down the lanes actually a buddy of mine jumped with me and i wasn’t planning on doing him like that but i was just i was there and i had to do it i dunked on him can you please send me a video of something like this and i would share it i’ll tweet the evidence i don’t think you’re a guy that would lie at all but i would love to see this i don’t think that you’re a guy that would even exaggerate a little bit yeah i would love to see this i don’t have the video of me dunking on the guy but i sure i have video of me dunking so i can yeah can i send it to me i would share that in a heartbeat i would love to brag about that i i are you’re 6’4 we’ve never seen ben in real life by the way you’re 6’4 yeah last company i worked for was all remote and uh we had a off-site we all met each other for the first time and everyone was blown away they were like oh i didn’t know you were so called one like i if i was one person at the company told me she’s like you have short energy i can’t believe you’re tall wow i know i dude i saw this really hilarious tick tock yesterday where this girl just goes oh i’m i go around on live streams and i just uh give people compliments for i call it i i go uh we love our short kings and she goes to tall guys streams like normal height our taller guy streams and she goes we yeah we stan our short king we love our short king with kissy face and the guys and she clipped together their reaction and they’re just they’re all like we love our show king and they get excited they’re like wait what i’m six i’m six i’m six and a quarter like i don’t know who you call a short king and then like and everybody gets like super butt hurt about it right away it like really [ ] with their brain and she goes it’s hilarious just call them like my short king ben please send me a video of you dunking on fools i would love that that would make that would make my day i’ll send it to you right now sean sam how tall are both of you i’m six i’m six ones yeah we’re we’re both uh we’re both uh of similar height and weight i think i mean like when when when people meet both of us they say you guys are much bigger than we thought and i would say that when we’re together we look big and tall and sean you look taller than you are i think too oh good i don’t know what that means but i’ll take it it’s better than me called a short king well i think it’s because you got big hair that’s right that’s right you know what i don’t get do you do you guys feel tall at six foot and six foot one no i don’t know if you feel average height right like to me that’s like six foot six but like if you look at global averages or even american average like the american male height is like only five nine right or something yeah yeah it’s like it’s short you guys are super tall which i don’t know there’s a disconnect well then you’re a giant i guess so yeah by that logic no i don’t i don’t feel tall i feel uh i feel thicker than the average person that’s for sure and you are so ben uh when you dunked on the guy did you like scream what did it feel like i mean i’ve never dunked on anyone i’ve only i’ve dunked a volleyball once that’s the closest i ever got it was like actually not even i could see something smaller i mean that’s pretty good that’s that is pretty good that was like in high school uh so wasn’t great the guy was a friend of mine i had we had been playing some pickup at a mormon church actually and i just won like four games in a row and i think people like morale is pretty low so i just played it cool i didn’t say anything i just kind of randomly by the way i’m not being prejudiced it’s a thing that mormons it’s like i’ve always known that there was basketball courts at the church and it’s like your church is like a community event right you hang out there after church yeah we have weekday events there sometimes especially for like youth and like yeah people play basketball there yeah yep yeah so it’s a thing it is a thing sam’s it’s a mormon thing to go dunk on someone politely as you did like it’s such a morning to politely just like and then like to drink a coke [Laughter] i mean i don’t too right a lot many latter-day saints many many members of the church do drink a lot of soda because you don’t drink coffee or tea um but i don’t yeah whenever i go to utah like i’ll go to the drive-thru at these like soda places and they’ve got the best sodas like the weirdest combinations i love it so i’m mormon man i’m an honorary member i hope sam are you a coach or pepsi guy coke die coke zero all the way all day ben coke or pepsi i’ve i’ve actually never had either in my entire life what oh amazing that’s amazing okay great i saw this great reddit thread that was like brands uh if their slogans were true like it was like truthful brand slogans and the pepsi one was um is pepsi okay it’s like the thing at the restaurant you order a coke and then they hit you with is pepsi okay um all right that’s the episode let’s see uh we gotta cut those into clips we had a bunch of good ones see ya like i can rule the world i know i can be what i want to