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 why does everyone hate on getting rich quick get rich quick schemes are the best i want to get rich quick i don’t want to get rich slow [Music] it’s actually colder here than the arctic circle why do you live there well i mostly live in miami irs if you’re listening to this but i’m sometimes in a mountain town in the middle of nowhere uh sam i saw you posted today that you’ve got about 20 acres in texas but i’m staring out at 95 acres of arctic winter winterland right now is that cool or no i mean i love i love it out here i’m from i’m from here so for me it’s it’s uh it’s slow living it’s nice um yeah i love it is that why you look like a pilot right now in the cockpit or what’s going on here [Laughter] i mean sahil makes sao blue my co-host on my on on the weird happens pod we we do it together and he always makes fun of this but i’m a gamer so i’m not afraid i’m not afraid to admit it be who you are man be who you are uh greg so you’re here because i don’t even know why you were talking we weren’t even i don’t even know what we were saying we were talking about the will smith thing you had some hot takes sam had some hot takes how can we start with anything else but the [ ] slap of the century will smith [ ] slaps chris rock for making fun of his wife we i think we have a different opinion on each one of these things sam give me your first where were you when it happened how did you hear about it what was your first take i was laying in bed and i hear sarah goes oh my gosh you’ve got to come down and watch this this is crazy and i saw it and here’s the thing by the way do you just go or do you wait you ask what is it no i go right away i can just go all right that’s the good guy right there so here’s the thing listen i tweeted about this right away people were like well what would you do the truth is maybe the same thing i maybe would do the same thing but that’s wrong and if i would have ran up there it bitch-slapped chris rock i would have been tackled and taken away and he should too that’s what should have happened i wanted to see him tackled and taken away or at least not allowed to be on stage for five minutes to accept an award that is ridiculous to me i could not believe that happened greg give me your where were you what was your initial reaction so my girlfriend texts me and she’s like you’re not gonna believe what just happened will smith just slapped chris rock and then she’s like wait i don’t know if it was a slap maybe it was a punch and so there was this confusion there was this like five minute confusion where people didn’t know what it was so first place i go to uh is on twitter i’m on twitter and i i i looked at the video and i was like i couldn’t believe it was happening right it was like you remember when um janet jackson with the whole super bowl thing yeah like i feel like i remember what where i was with 9 11. i remember what happens when the janet jackson boob incident of the super bowl it’s unlike oj and then smith yeah now will smith i wasn’t happy with the videos that were coming out but i found the japanese and australian videos did you guys see those for sure the uncensored uncut versions yeah yeah and and that one where uh you got a better view of the punch you know i needed a better view it was it was a slap though i don’t know how good your view was it was a slap it was yeah okay it was a slap but what bugged me about the whole thing and i’m glad you invited me to talk about will smith because you know that’s why i’m here is i think that okay obviously it was a douchey thing of will smith to do but i was unimpressed with how chris rock wasn’t able to make a joke of the whole thing and he could have made comedic history and he didn’t and i expected more from him wow disappointed with chris rock that is not the take i thought was gonna come that’s why we bring greg on for the the when everybody zigs you zag with the new take disappointment dude chris rock crazy impressive he took it man he took it he didn’t tear up he didn’t like when you get punched in the face sometimes you’re not like crying but your eyes water none of that happened he kept smiling and he was a pro man sam you know what happens if you get hit in the side of the head what’s the first thing that you feel right here you your ears hurt and you want to like grab your face yeah you you hear this ringing buzz and like the sound you hear this just giant ringing and then you’ve got to touch your face he didn’t touch his face that you got to give him respect for the chin that he shared yeah the round was that was a 10-9 chris rock round but then greg’s right actually he had i mean the world was his oyster with all the potential jokes that he could have gone with the one-liners like i can’t believe i can’t believe they had you and ali or something like that exactly you know i don’t even know what the joke should have been you know greg what direction would you have gone with the joke uh i would have said and the winner to the biggest [ ] slap award 2022 goes to william smith yeah exactly could have given him the oscar for [ ] of the year wait but honestly what was your take though okay so i’m i’m outside of a cold stone just gave my daughter some ice cream we’re trying to get back to the car i don’t know if you know how it is getting kids in the car is like that’s the battle every day that’s that’s the battle in fact there’s a great louis ck joke where he’s like the greatest moment of any father’s day is the like 30 seconds from when you close the door and you have them in the car seat and you walk around the car back to the driver’s car seat it’s like the 30 seconds of peace that you have in that moment that’s everything so i’m trying to get in the car and my wife is stopped she’s stunned she’s doing the like oh my god face looking at her phone almost to it was like a cartoon character and i was like what it can’t like whatever it is it can’t be can’t be much and then she was like no will smith just punched chris rock i was like what and so then i watched the video she made me pull over we were driving i pulled over to watch the japanese uncensored version because we just had to like debrief it in the moment and um i was team will smith i thought it was awesome frankly the only part that i thought was not cool the only part i thought was not cool was that when they first said the joke he’s laughing at the joke so bro you can’t laugh at the joke admit that it’s funny and then basically two seconds later build up this rage and then pretend it was so uh not cool when it was you were laughing like we caught you on camera laughing wait two seconds before that you don’t think that he should have any consequences no no i didn’t say that he should have come sure okay sure lock him up throw away the key whatever you got to do no no jail time i don’t even think i’m not i don’t even want i don’t want handcuffs i don’t want jail just like a hey will you can’t hit someone you gotta leave like that would have been that would have been sufficient well the thing they showed uh in the uh i don’t know the taiwanese cut they had the commercial break i don’t know if you guys saw this somebody comes running up to him i think oh wow they’re gonna be like dude what the [ ] we need to get you out of here sorry it’s his publicist just immediately giving him notes on how to play this and so when he goes up for his speech what do you know the first line he says is you know richard williams was a fierce like protector of his family that’s the publicist handing him the feeding of the line of how how are you going to spin this to your advantage who hates a guy who protects his family i think it worked i watch his speech i think he’s losing it so in a way i feel sorry for him i i definitely feel a little sorry he looked a little off right he looked a little off he looked like he’s kind of he’s getting a little a little something’s going on and i hope he could i hope he works through it and gets back and also there dude him and his wife man that’s some weird stuff like what’s going on like hey did you see that thing called red table that her show where she just like did a whole show with him on there talking about how she cheated on him and everything like that and then she went i don’t know but i watch everything that’s trashy like that so yeah i saw it i saw it twice man so like that’s weird to me a little bit so uh there’s like a butt this dynamic is was weird he’s got a lot of pressure on him i think he just kind of snapped i think he’s working through some stuff but dude but so i feel like everybody everybody knows a couple that’s like this where they’re like kind of toxic they’re like toxically in love with each other it’s like they got some weird bunny and clyde [ ] where they’re like they kind of like they like make the wrong decisions sometimes they even like you know hurt each other’s feelings but then they’re like if anybody else ever tries to encroach they like will murder for them and it’s like bro where’s the balance here it’s like us against the world they love this like us these us against the world couples and they’re definitely one of them yeah it was messed up do you want to talk about uh alex hermozy her mozzie mosey yeah what did you do you were like bro i’m going deep on alex from aussie i was like we are so would have been nice to do before we had him on the pod you do it like 10 episodes later i had a call with him today greg do you know who this guy is i don’t know who’s that all right actually i feel bad i consider him a friend but i don’t i don’t know if it’s pronounced mosey or mozzie alex hermosie is it no mozzie alex it’s one of those things where it’s like two like you’ve known him for a decade yeah and it’s like you can’t ask him now you no you got to be like i just call him moz i just go by maz because dude one of my best friend’s name is sieve i don’t even know how to pronounce his last name um so and i’ve been best friends with him for 10 years he’s in my wedding um so anyway this guy alex so basically he had this company called gym launch and it was really interesting because some people and i wouldn’t call myself totally on that side but i understand it is it appeared a little scammy but actually i don’t think it’s scammy at all anymore he ended up waiting sam you’ve got to describe the guys look first so he’s got he looks like a straight version of the construction worker in the village in the village was it the village people i mean he looks like a construction worker so he wears flannel he’s got this beautiful thick mustache long awesome hair like a like a persian samson and he is just yoked he’s jacked he’s huge and he’s like good looking and he just he’s like looks like arnold schwarzenegger a little bit and he created this business called gym launch and basically you would pay either four thousand dollars for one thing or twenty thousand dollars for another thing and it was for people who owned small gyms whether that’s a crossfit gym or a personal training gym and he would basically teach you how to make your gym better because he owned gyms and he would promise you something like uh you’ll gain at least 75 000 in new revenue but for a lot of people he averaged that they would improve by 200 000 in revenue but the business model that he had was crazy and the results were even crazier so the business was by the time the business was four years old he bootstrapped it and had paid himself 45 million dollars in dividends and then on the fifth year i believe he sold it and he netted something like 50 or 60 million dollars and so he was like yeah i paid myself 45 million so i had about 25 million just in cash in the bank then we sold and i netted like another 50. and that story alone is crazy is that right sean i don’t know if those exact numbers are right it sounds like you talk to him so let’s go with that i i don’t really know but but yeah but you you got the the product right the the the kind of the hook or what’s interesting is most gym memberships are like you know pay 20 a month and you get into a membership and like it’s hard to sell people that and what he was ended up doing was he was like all right well people don’t want a membership what do they really want they want to lose weight they want to lose weight in six weeks or less they want to lose weight so they look good on the beach all right so i’m gonna basically sell you a program that’s going to make you look good on the beach in six weeks and he like he he got good at selling for his own gym where he’s like oh i can get people to pay like three grand up front for like a fitness training package with nutrition meal plans and stuff like that and then someone pointed out to him i think like russell brunson or whatever the clickfunnels guy pointed out to him like hey dude instead of just opening gyms and doing this yourself you should just teach other gym owners how to do this like that’s a better product is helping a gym like add 100 grand in revenue in 30 days is a better product than like trying to open your own gym and use that method so then he started doing that and then that’s kind of how he went now we own something called acquisitions.com where he’ll like buy your business if you’re doing i don’t know five million or more revenue something well so he’s buying course businesses and like applying his methodology and so but basically what he sold was and this is where things got i went deep on i was like how did this work this is crazy so he basically sold not a franchise but like an operating system and so he used hubspot as his back end and he would get people to sign up to these ads that he was running and you do an on-boarding and you pay 20 grand you get four months then after the end of four months you can decide to stay in part of the group and it’s 45 grand a year but you get this after you sign up uh you get this checklist of things that you have to do so it’s like raise your price to this sign up for this software use these emails this shrimp campaign get them get this many people to sign up by doing x y and z here’s the ad campaign that you can just copy and paste in order to use and then he had a facebook group where all the members could talk and that was it that was the business it was super simple and it was doing tens of millions a year in revenue and also tens of millions in profit and i thought this was crazy fascinating and i wanted to ask you guys what other he told me a little bit but what other niches would you use this for and also does this model even interest you it seems pretty amazing to me i’ve never heard of it i think that if you did this for agencies like digital agencies that this is a no-brainer so you know we’re i run an agency called late checkout we’re about 50 people uh so we’re starting to really hit some scale you say your revenue i don’t want to say my revenue but we have 50 people so you can do some of the math yourself um i will say that um yeah we work with some of the biggest brands in the world and it’s very lonely to be like this ceo of an agency like i don’t know if i’m over charging or under charging i don’t know if i’m you know doing the right thing should i be doing more marketing less marketing so like would i pay two five ten grand a month to for like something like this like probably if the roi is there yeah it’s basically a sales machine right so what each what he said was if you have a business and you have whatever number of customers you have if i could get you more customers that’s clearly of value to you and i think he basically tried to get like capture 10 to 20 of the value that he was giving so you know if if i’m gonna if i’m gonna generate a hundred thousand dollars in new incremental sales for you how do i capture 10 to 20 000 and i and i’m taking the risk if i don’t do that then i don’t earn anything i think that’s kind of how he started it at least and so agency is a perfect one like that because every client you sign is cash in the bank and uh typically the agency might be good at one thing but not necessarily good at going getting new clients so what uh you just read this guy’s book sean alex’s book i’m reading right now what do you think about it the book is good uh the book is good it’s basically a it’s like a marketing book right so it’s a it’s essentially a marketing book he does a good job of breaking things down being simple it’s not all together new information but um but who gives a [ ] it’s like it’s good information presented well and if you’re running a business right now it’ll help you now the thing i think that he over indexes on is like he uses like the gym launch example really hard so it’s like yeah this this is clearly he talks about basically he says you the secret to sales is make somebody an offer so good they’d be stupid to refuse you okay how do you do that it’s like how do you get them to perceive that there’s a lot of value and that they’re going to get in a short amount of time with a with a with not a lot of cost and that it’s highly likely to happen and so his model was like hey gym owner i on i work with 100 gyms on average i can bring them each 100 000 in new sales i can do that for you in 30 days and if i don’t do it if i don’t hit that mark i don’t get paid how’s that and so yeah that is what he calls a grand slam offer because it’s gonna work and if if you have a grand slam offer you can win a lot of business you can grow very fast but i don’t think that works in a whole bunch of other product categories so i think it works in the like agency consulting world which is where he was it’s services i think it works services all services you know if i’m selling shoes online it’s very hard to create a grand slam offer for selling shoes because uh you know i can’t tell you how much more money this is going to make you right so already the offer is a lot less i’m telling you it looks cool you know that people might like your shoes that’s just fundamentally less compelling so i just think it’s like really really good for a service business um especially a service business that’s in the business of helping other people make money but uh like if like for example i wanted to send it to my accountant and be like hey you’re charging me like five grand or six grand a year you should really be charging 50 grand and if you did this method i think you would have you know like 10 times more clients and make 10 times more money off if you presented your stuff this way because you’re an accountant you’re saving people money on taxes and you could basically offer a no-brainer offer like this and take more value and grow your business faster if you did it this way but um it doesn’t work for everything it’s kind of the takeaway i think i think the the pitch is is taking a consultancy from a consultancy and turning it into selling luxury that’s the opportunity for a lot of these people right like i think uh when you look at mckinsey mckinsey isn’t a consultancy to me mckinsey is selling like a luxury multi-million dollar contracts like that you’re buying confidence when you’re buying uh right a luxury product yeah that’s exactly right he talks about that uh pretty extensively in the book but i gotta say so i i am reading this book and i have two kind of like my two like my right hand man and my left hand man i have i’ve been and then i have this guy andre and i told him i was like guys is this good stuff in this book that we should be using uh and so i created like a little mini book club inside of our company to do this have you guys ever done that like have you basically and i’ve been wanting to do this with podcasts as well sometimes i’ll listen to a podcast that’s like [ ] amazing and i what i want to do is just stop listening to it myself and be like hey guys we’re gonna do a meeting but the meeting is us listening to this podcast and every time they say something good i’m gonna pause and we’re gonna talk about it and it might take us like six hours to get through this one hour podcast but i’m telling you it’s gonna be we’re gonna actually apply the thing versus just i share the link you read it i read it we each kind of move on with our day and we’re busy have you guys ever done anything like this to like get more juice out of the fruit i haven’t i haven’t i’ve done a book club that i feel like book club is it’s like you know a lot of people go in the gym it’s like you start going to the gym and then you kind of like stop like it’s really hard to create a really well-designed book club that keeps people engaged yeah we did book club it was the same thing no one [ ] finished the book so i actually think if we all just listen to a podcast together it might be a lot easier it’s a lot easier it’s like when you go to school and the teacher brings in the tv uh that’s like how i would feel going to this meeting i’d be like oh hell yeah we’re rolling in the t-bag magic school bus baby the um yeah at amazon they do this too where like uh people write all kinds of docs inside companies like memos plans whatever and then it’s like hey did you read my plan and then you’re like oh yeah either i kind of did or i didn’t very rarely is it like i read it i remember it i took notes on it and i’m ready to take action from it and so at amazon they basically hacked that process which is the rule is you have to write if you’re going to make a plan if you’re going to try to do anything you have to write your memo but the memo gets read in the meeting itself so every meeting if it’s an hour the first 10 to 20 minutes are silent reading everybody reads it together at the same time and there’s zero expectation for you to ever read something beforehand or afterwards oh yeah it was it was huge uh like and also while you’re reading your you know you’re taking notes because you know right after this reading period ends in 20 minutes like it’s a bit like school it’s like i’m gonna have to have something to say right like i need to have i need to be bringing something to the table from this and so um yeah that was huge and i think i think way more companies should do that it was like one of the few big company things that i was like this is a process that is so much better than what i used to do at our startup yeah well i think that podcast idea that you just had is actually fantastic um cool all right we lost greg for a second but let’s let’s keep going um did you have anything more on hermize or you wanted it to go on no that’s it what do you got i was thinking about doing like a kind of like a summary slash lessons learned because i have a whole bunch of like screenshots and highlights from the book i might do a separate pod that’s just that if you want to do that um i just i just i just bought the book i’ve been watching a lot of his youtube videos there’s just something about this person he’s very interesting to me he’s very interesting he’s so transparent to the point where it’s weird almost like it’s like i i like he reveals so much i don’t believe you uh no i believe him i believe him for sure but he’s revealing so much that i’m like are you sure man you want to be talking about this this is crazy like you like it’s just weird it’s just weird right i mean he talks like i don’t think it’s weird i think it’s smart and that’s why i say like do i believe this it’s not that i think he’s lying about anything i think he’s telling the truth it’s that when somebody is that forthcoming it’s sort of like well what’s in this for you and i think clearly it’s i’m trying to get you to trust me uh and so i’m going to be like kind of like explicitly transparent about something because i there’s a there’s a motive behind that and i think that’s okay uh but i think a lot of people like wow thanks dude for the favor it’s like there’s no favors um people do things because they have a motive they want to build their brand in a certain way they want to attract more more readers or viewers or they’re trying to build trust in a way so that they can get some advantage you know that’s okay i think that’s a it’s a good thing i i do it too i do it all the time yeah um yeah i’ve gotten to know him over the past few weeks i’m a fan man i’m a fan of alex’s but what do you got uh well actually we should so greg i i told you bring three or four bullets i don’t know if you had time to do that but i have some if you don’t have any but i’d like to use yours if you do because you’re here you’re the guest of honor yeah i mean i always have a notes file with some ideas i can tell you i’m not going to say they’re great ideas but let’s let’s start with that and i love your feedback all right let’s do it um so i went to a restaurant two nights ago saw that a bunch of kids were playing these like picture like an applebee’s picture a bunch of vending machines um like you know those games that you can play i’m thinking vending machines you have to pay like 100 doge to get in you can win a board ape instead of winning you know collectibles you’re winning digital assets is there a business to be created around that you’re talking about the thing where you would like the old way is you you know you put your quarter in and there’s a bunch of plastic balls you get one out you got this little shitty toy and it’s like i think in japan they call these the gotcha games is that right like gotcha mechanic where you have this sort of variable reward you might win the good thing but you almost never win the good thing and then you kind of keep wanting to open up these boxes and see what you get exactly that but with doge and winning nft’s inside greg do you own any nfts are you on board with us or no yeah i mean i’ve got hundreds of nfts that’s crazy i think the problem is doge i think not enough people own doge um you know so i i kind of feel like it’s like you need to apple pay to quickly like instantaneously buy doge and then use it use it in the game basically like you need some way for their phone to just buy the thing and then just keep swiping their phone yeah i guess like what i’m particularly interested in here is like what are you know in real life experiences that you can create that connect with crypto yeah another version of this by the way because i don’t need at restaurants anymore i just deliver everything so it’s like you know a qr code that comes with doordash that i just scan and i get to play the game on my phone right like why do they need to buy a screen when i carry a screen in my pocket so like really all you just need is a qr code to do this game you don’t even have to build the you don’t even have to build the vending machine necessarily it’s true it’s true um all right i got another one so i uh moved out of my apartment december 15th it’s now march 28th and my landlord hasn’t returned my security deposit is that in america or it’s in florida yeah miami ooh there’s a bunch of laws around that california well there’s laws around it in in florida too and i googled it and there’s a whole process you can go into it i’m sure it’s probably not as intense as california but you know you have certain rights um there’s a whole process that you have to go and eventually you go to small claims court et cetera et cetera how much was it uh it’s a few hundred dollars but it’s just like the pain to like go through it it’s not really worth it my security deposit is fifty seven hundred dollars um so what i really wanna do is scare my my landlord basically right that’s what i wanna do so i want him i need to get his attention that’s what i really need to do um so i googled you know sending a lawyer letter i didn’t want to call my lawyer because i was like at 750 an hour or whatever it’s gonna cost like two grand for this lawyer letter so the idea is a lawyer letter on demand go scarif go scare someone basically what do you think have you um i love it so listen we got to talk about this shawn you know where where i’m going to go with this right do not pay you’re going to petty court well i like penalties but i’m going to go do not pay great have you not heard of do not pay yeah so is do not pay that service that like if you have a parking ticket you like send it to them and they like they deal with it and you get a percentage of it back or something like they do a bunch of stuff but that is one of the ways how they started how do you explain this company now sean now that it’s kind of they have so many features yeah i think it’s start it basically it’s it’s just trying to save you money from [ ] that you you shouldn’t have to pay for you don’t want to pay for so it started with like subscriptions you’re not using all right cool unsubscribe me from a bunch of subscriptions i’m not using then it became yeah then they also added you know like go contest this parking ticket because like i don’t know 20 or 30 of parking tickets are like filled out incorrectly and you actually shouldn’t have to pay and if we save you money we will keep a little bit but it’s just you do no work and you’ll get they just keep a portion of the savings that they get that they earn for you and then they expanded into like 83b election like hey we’ll do that for you for your startup so they’re just like trying to do they’re basically just trying to eliminate the busy paperwork that nobody wants to do and they’re like we’ll just take care of that [ ] for you how would that feel and a bunch of like people like us were like millennials were like i just don’t know how to do it i don’t want to do it i don’t like printing things or going to the post office and like doing all this [ ] yeah please take care of this for me so it’s a time saver company is how i think about it and greg i had a landlord i had a 16 000 deposit this was for our office uh when covet our office lease just so happened to end right around when kovid was happening so we got really lucky and we just cancelled it and this guy would not give me the 16 grand i found out dude i got crazy on him i found out where he lived did i showed up at his house and he wasn’t there i found out where he worked and i showed up there and he wasn’t there and i used do not pay to send him like a like a letter and finally he got back to me it was like oh yeah you know just slipped my mind like he was like no big deal about it and i was like dude i’ve been howding you for six weeks man where’s this money and so they they have that feature where you just send a scary letter you send a scary letter and uh it worked and so uh we we i got my 16 grand but legally you’re supposed to get 16 grand plus interest which i did not get and i uh i thought about like fighting over this just out of principle because i love petty [ ] so i feel like the idea is really you know do not pay obviously is getting really big it’s like the unbundling of do not pay and it’s taking this idea and it’s like okay i’m gonna run a bunch of google ads against like getting security deposit back florida getting security deposit back california and i think there’s a big business to be created here because then that’s a that’s a good wedge to sort of expand a bunch of different services and i think there’s the other version i think we’ve once said which was like uh call my politician there’s all these things where it’s like ah this bill could get passed that’s bad for crypto holders make sure you call your politician and let them know you don’t want this it’s like uh i don’t know i don’t want to call my politician and like who what if they pick up what am i going to say like there’s like there’s all kinds of problems with this idea of calling i don’t like calling what happens if they pick up you know i really want to go down that road but i would happily you know sort of tip you know 10 bucks to just have someone annoy the [ ] out of my politician about this issue that i care about um like if my donation funded like 18 annoying calls like if there was just a website that said would you like to donate 10 to the cause and that will fund 18 annoying phone calls from sri lanka to this politician i’d be like [ ] yeah put me down for 20. and so i think that’s the other version of do not do not pay is like go hassle for me that’s awesome i’m on board with that can you what else you got greg my other one it relates to law actually a little bit you know we’ve been and then sean i know you’re into crypto um so i’ve been spending a lot of money on you know crypto accounting and crypto law firms and i think that there’s an opportunity to create a web three crypto accounting firm and a web three crypto uh law firm but all you have to do is basically you find an existing law firm that understands securities law and you’re like hey you know you your shop of 10 lawyers and you’re like you know you understand securities a law maybe there’s some you know up leveling in terms of learning specifics about nfts etc i’m going to be the like marketing engine for you you know use things like the milk road and use things like lay check out i’m going to send you leads so the customer is happy because they’re like wow this is like a web 3 related you know law firm and i want to work with someone who’s what does that mean i don’t know what you’re using you’re using words that i don’t have no idea what they mean what does a web 3 related law firm mean okay so let’s just say you’re creating an nft project but you want to make sure that you don’t go to jail let you don’t do any sec violations do you feel comfortable calling up your regular lawyer who might not even know what an nft is or would you specifically want to talk to a law firm that lives and breathes web three it depends if they have um what’s like for example if i what’s the term if i follow something my lawyer says and they’re supposed to be the expert and i get in trouble sometimes i can like blame them what’s that called god i can’t remember that i can’t remember but scapegoating no it’s like a it’s like it’s like when you hire a c it’s like when you hire a c if you hire a cpa and your cpa screws you like blatantly sometimes you’re not always you you can you know that goes you’re taking to account like ah dude i thought he was doing it right he’s a cpa so like your cpa can actually get in trouble not necessarily you so it depends if that lawyer has that but i don’t know i’d rather just go to a legal for a lawyer that special yeah that specializes in this thing but i don’t know why you’d call it a website he’s describing it but he’s had a web three the law firm yeah like they specialize and they they know the laws around they specialize in i think you meant like around this web three not a digital law firm yeah okay yeah all this is is like i mean this is a marketing challenge more than anything one of the hardest problems about running a law firm is you know or an accounting firm is getting clients and we talked about this with the agencies the same thing is true with you know law firms and accountancy firms i think you know i don’t know the like i don’t know the margins of some of these businesses but i imagine they’re quite big um so i think there’s something there so i considered doing this with my before i did the milk road i was like all right what do i want to do like i got this audience that’s growing right it’s like twitter’s twitter’s pretty big now it’s like i got a quarter million followers newsletter’s growing i could just like you know make no money off this that’s fine how big was your new ads in the newsletter that’s what’s that how big was the newsletter it was like at 30 40k or something at the time i could put something in there yeah before milk and uh and i was like i could teach a course so i did that i taught a course i was like all right that’s cool it makes way more money than ads but it’s more effort and then i was like you know what’s like the highest value business what’s like the best [ ] business and i was like so i started making a list of like places where i spend a lot of money that i feel like they’re just kind of like rinse and repeating the same stuff for me um and so i i narrowed it down to two i’ll give you the second best one was accounting um and i was like i could just start a bookkeeping firm for uh for startups and entrepreneurs just in my own portfolio if i invested in 45 companies last year just within that i bet i could get 14 clients of just companies that don’t have a bookkeeper because most companies don’t have bookkeepers you were considering starting a bookkeeping service that’s like the worst idea boring thing i could do for you that’s a horrible idea because i was just gonna be the marketing front end i wasn’t gonna operate it i was just gonna buy or hire like a good bookkeeper and be like cool you’re going to do the books and i’m just going to send you clients and you just close the clients and we split this 50 50 or whatever and um so that was one idea the better idea is insurance because insurance is like the best business of all time and because for insurance you don’t even really do insurance you just broker the insurance with another like carrier basically and um and most businesses don’t have most like especially like e-commerce businesses you need business insurance and you don’t know like i didn’t know exactly which insurance i needed how much uh how much coverage i wanted most traditional insurance firms don’t cover e-commerce which is insane to me and so i was like all right well i could just do that and so that was another one which is you know startup slash e-commerce insurance was another one i basically did the math and i was like i could make so much more money doing that than if i ever did like ads in my newsletter if all i did in my ad would say hey by the way don’t go to jail you should have a bookkeeper you know like hey um don’t lose your business because somebody you know whatever chokes on a button what was your match what would your mat first of all i think that’s i think you made 100 the right move doing what you did because those businesses do not fit your skill set or mine at all of like it sure like that like being on top of things like crazy amounts sweating the details i’m all right so what was your math behind it i don’t know i have to pull up all the spreadsheets but basically just with my existing audience size i think they netted out whereas like i could be easily clearing you know three to five million dollars uh a year in profit if i like kind of like hit all my marks tell me more about this is actually really full capacity this is actually really interesting so what are we going to call it like sean surrents what was the name it’s gonna be something i don’t know the name was the last thing on my mind okay so i even talked to the i had this one one accountant who i really love there’s this like ukrainian woman who’s like this like amazing account she was the first accountant i talked to that felt like they worked for me and not like as a they weren’t just like a narc and so they were like she was like have you thought about this you know like does your business need a vehicle because i think right now just last week of the year if you just bought a vehicle we can actually like depreciate that and use that against your books here like she was giving me ideas that were completely legal but she wasn’t just sitting there and saying yeah if you give me all your paperwork and your receipts i’ll i’ll file your taxes for you it was the first person who was saying wow you’re paying a lot in taxes over here and over here um let me just make sure i’m you know saving you money and so that was the first person so i was going to basically talk to her and be like hey should you do this like do you want to do this do you want to like leave start your own firm i’m sure you’re scared of all that but guess what uh you just do the things you’re really good at which is doing people’s you know like tax strategy and accounting and i will get you all the clients that was you know the core premise but of course i i went down i said i created a free crypto newsletter uh because i just figured it’d be more fun dude i think these are great ideas by the way i think you made the right decision but these are actually this is crazy interesting i wish you would have told me that you’re can i tell you about a [ ] genius idea that came out of that so um have you i don’t know if you’ve ever like onboarded well like you’ve probably done some onboarding with some some software that you’re trying to use or some company you’re trying to use so for example with this with this bookkeeping company right the one i hired i eventually hired for my ecommerce thing they sent me this like super long checklist it was like all right um great excited to work with you do these 54 things and then we’ll get started like that will be the start of your journey that’ll get you to the starting line go to shopify give us access to do that you need to go to view accounts permissions add us there add us as a bookkeeper blah blah blah now go to quickbooks do the same thing now go to stripe do the same thing now go to bank of america do the same thing like there was just all these [ ] steps it’s like then sent us this then sent us this and it just felt and it was all done in excel right so i discovered this basically takes that process it just wraps beautiful user experience around it and i saw it and i was like this is so smart i invested in instantaneously didn’t have a meeting with the founder i was like i totally buy it in fact any word you say is only going to make me less bullish on this idea because i am already convinced this is one of the best ideas i’ve ever seen so it’s called doc so it’s doc.us i don’t know if you guys have checked this out and uh julian julian shapiro sent this to me after i was like seeing this problem and then coincidentally he sent me the same idea so so here’s how it works so basically it just creates like kind of like a notion space so the company who’s trying to onboard you they just create this thing that’s like it’s like this is just a beautiful experience that’s like hey sean so glad to have you on board first three things we need to do are these three click the check box when you’re done with them so i’ll know that you did it if you have any questions just put it in the comment thing here or click this to watch our tutorial from our library that we have about how to do it and so it just turns that like back and forth email or like excel spreadsheet like um janky thing into like like workflow for a client and um and a service to like onboard each other and i was like dude that’s a problem that like i don’t know like i don’t know two million businesses a year have with every one of their clients this is gonna work i think this is gonna work what do you guys think of this idea really well i love it i just i just got a mortgage um after my landlord stiffness and you know i go onto chase’s website and i don’t know if you’ve done this but you go a gun chase website you go to a mortgage and there’s like a thousand things to do plus you’re like transported back to 1996 because you’re in this like weird thing there’s like javascript breaking everywhere there’s you like forgot about flash and like flashes somehow in there uh my my my uh banker calls me and just like you didn’t finish this one thing and i was like what she’s like i added it to your client portal it’s like dude i don’t get a notification i don’t know i don’t go check that i hate that place i [ ] hate that place yeah so yes yes this is one of those no-brainer ideas i i hope that they they actually embed like create an sdk they do okay i i i think that i don’t know if they already do or they’re going to but that was like a big part of yeah i was like this can live inside of your app or whatever so you know you uh you could just kind of like onboard people right there inside their experience this landing page is beautiful this is a beautiful website yeah so it is absolutely beautiful but i have a question for you for you guys um because it relates actually to this and also jim shark and even the the lawyer stuff which is sometimes when we’re creating businesses you can do one of two things you can either like create something brand new which is like this um or create like a new gym like a new way of you know doing something or you could like help existing people you know do some marketing make some money that way do you guys you know and the silicon valley way is is very much like go raise a bunch of money invent something new um and it’s really frowned upon to do you know the marketing piece of it and sort of positioning on top of it um what are your thoughts and you know do you think about that a lot you know because i’ve been thinking about it a lot say it again give us two examples i’ll give you an example my last company the founder of 24 hour fitness invested in my company and he told me that before the 1980s there weren’t membership based gyms like it was a new thing and he invented the first one and it became 24-hour fitness i think they sold for three or four billion dollars it was a major success and then there’s a lot of people who copied membership based gyms that’s an idea of going zero to one creating an absolutely new product whereas what he could have done was created a gym shark of that era or whatever and consulted gymlock yeah exact jim long sorry um and consulted to add additional revenue to existing you know trainers etc um so the question is do you know how often you are thinking about creating something brand new versus you know just kind of a money making additional marketing layer on top of sam what do you think about that i don’t think i think of it anything that i think of i don’t think any of it’s brand new i think zero is close to zero i think about that do you agree sean no i think there’s sometimes new things but it’s extremely rare extremely rare extremely extremely rare but i would even argue that most anything that’s new you could probably actually say oh well it’s just like a different version of blank you could trace back right so like let’s take a airbnb for example airbnb was clearly like kind of like this breakthrough product became this huge success and it’s like the category killer the category leader for sharing economy and whatever um and now it’s like bigger than hotels like than all hotels or whatever so it started off as a fringe thing but there was like couch surfing before that and like that was like a product that did a very similar thing you know and vrbo and there was there’s other stuff that’s like around it so i think you’re right that it’s very hard to do something completely original but let me frame it slightly differently which is it seems like what greg is almost saying is like do you want to go for uh try to try to have either a new behavior or an existing behavior or another way of looking at it would be do you want to create a product or do you want to have a service company right like it’s kind of to me that in those examples is like 24 fitness was a new was like a new product you needed customers to go buy versus servicing you know trainers and and whatever whoever else um that was that’s like a service business that’s going to have great cash flow and doesn’t require you to have this like winning brand and new product and new customers from scratch is that is that kind of is it more about the services versus product is that the yeah exactly yeah i think um you know sean um sam like you know having spent time in sf i feel like when i got to sf i was all about new behaviors um that was really important to me and sean i know that was true for you too because like blab you’re always pushing you know the envelope with like and bebo it’s like new you know user interfaces and like new friend finding and new just like new ways of doing things versus now that we’re in our 30s it feels like we’re doing less and this is just an observation and correct me if i’m wrong but it feels like we’re doing less of like the new behavior type stuff and more of like hey let’s just like iterate on this thing and like focus it on this niche and and do that there’s this guy named roger dickey i don’t know him i think sean knows him right i never met him i think greg actually knows him oh right so i don’t entirely know his full background but he used to do like a bunch of high-tech stuff he i know that he had the uh what’s the startup that helps you code stuff it’s like a new age new agency what’s it called those are the g gixxer get gigster okay and before giggster greg what was he doing he was doing something like very traditional silicon valley right i just know him from twitter but yes he was doing uh he was the co-founder and ceo of giggster which was which was huge but he did it through a really interesting way i think he did it through a search lab do you guys know what a search lab is yeah and but i think before that like he maybe was that zynga or something like like a like he made like a mafia game or something like that yeah like something he made awards which at the time was cutting edge now his latest business i think it’s called revolution is it called revolution made made made made and they are renovating bathrooms and as a recent homeowner who needs a new bathroom i went to the website and i was like this is sick i love this i bid and it looks from the outside like the company is just crushing it i saw another guy the guy who started casper his name’s luke uh one of the four founders his name’s luke i think he has a new business that’s also renovating bathrooms or maybe kitchens and i thought it was interesting that these guys casper not exactly like cutting edge but kinda like kind of new behavior buying a mattress online uh roger dickey you know definitely new behaviors they’re going to like these like older businesses and they’re definitely using technology but at the end of the day they’re not like re they’re not inventing anything new they’re just inventing maybe a a more efficient process and in my opinion those things are far more interesting and it’s kind of intriguing to me that these guys are doing that as opposed to some new cutting edge thing so so i’ll give you my my take on your on your question greg which is uh in my 20s it’s like the way i traveled was i’d be like oh you know [ ] it i’ll go tomorrow i’ll spin the globe put my finger down all right i’m gonna go backpacking through you know eastern europe or i’m gonna go to australia and i’ll be you know sleeping in a van type of thing and i wanted the adventure it was actually the right move to do at that time because it’s like how do you get max adventure max sort of like discomfort and like out of your comfort zone you know max spontaneity all that stuff and um and then like now it’s like where’s like a sandals resort that i could take my kids and like you know i i just want to sit down i just want a place i can go sit that’s not my house this is basically the extent of my adventure right now and so similarly like that’s my hope my business career was the same it was like at the beginning it’s like yo i’m going to build the next social network i’m going to build a a dating app where you you know you might die or whatever this is like these crazy ideas it’s like every idea was like trying to be crazier than the last it’s like you know and it all appealed to me that way and now i’m like cool i could um sell a product that i you know let me import a product from china and sell it through a facebook ad i click three buttons i can just sit in my chair and do that i don’t really need a staff i don’t really you know i’ll just kind of outsource this and that all i was gonna write a newsletter um and i’ll just write it in my browser and then that’s it uh like i don’t have to like become the next mark zuckerberg i just need to get to like enough people where i’m making a few million dollars a year and live in a sweet lifestyle um like that’s that’s a win you know and that’s and i don’t have to manage anybody and i don’t have to like stress out about this thing and i don’t have to know how to code i don’t have to know any of these things oh yeah great and so i basically am now in the the sort of sandals resort part of my career and i mean that in the best way possible which was back then i was like almost like intrigued by the degree of difficulty and now i’m completely put off by the degree of difficulty and instead i just do the thing that sounds like what’s gonna be easy simple fun for me and um and you know i’m just gonna go that route and so i am much less interested in like inventing the next big thing as i am crafting a dope lifestyle doing something i enjoy and like me feels like but do you think that’s gonna change when your kids get older so when your kids become eight nine ten maybe eight to like 16. they think that you are the coolest guy ever or if they don’t think that maybe it’s on the other end of you wanting to think that you’re cool and you want to impress them um and i’ve been thinking a lot about that lately i’m like do i think that my attitude will change when my kids become five six seven eight and i want to impress them do i think like instead of just like having a sick lifestyle i’d be like oh man i want to do something like that they are proud of do you think that’s going to change not because of that reason i do think it’s going to change but not because of that like uh i don’t think your kids think you’re cool based on like your business success necessarily i don’t i don’t really think that that’s the main the main way that kids think you’re cool um and even if it was that’s not why i would do something um i would just have more free time right like when my kids go to school that’s gonna be like a [ ] game changer it’s like i’m gonna get a third of my day back uh that i you know i don’t have today and so when they go to school i have a lot more bandwidth if i want to do something more intense i can ratchet up the intensity and the difficulty level if i so choose uh at that time right now like dude before i do this podcast like i’m not uh i’m not like researching every detail for the 20 minutes before this podcast typically i’m like reading this book called goofy’s adventure to my daughter putting her down for the nap you know like that’s how i prep for this product 20 minutes before is like i’m literally reading disney books putting my daughter to bed in time to come back out here right so it’s like there’s a lifestyle i like right now that’s doing this and so i’m optimizing for that i think in five years i’m gonna be picking a very different challenge than i’m picking today just because it’ll be time for another chapter and i’ll probably be like oh that lifestyle shit’s boring i want to go do something big or i’m going to be [ ] business business is stupid i’m going to go like try to write a comedy show and i’m going to like try to sell a show for tv like i don’t know i’m gonna do something else with my life every five years i want to kind of reinvent myself in terms of what i’m doing so you’ve come a long way sean one of the first times i met you you invited me to the bibo launch party and i invite i was like could i bring a plus one you’re like sure i bring this friend who’s visiting and we walk into this warehouse or something in san francisco i remember we had to like walk upstairs and like where was it sean it was in a uh you know like a car manufacturer car uh repair yeah like like a garage just like for car repairs whatever i don’t know i forgot how to speak english but like basically michael had bought one of those like got rid of all the like car maintenance stuff and just turned it into like his man cave and he hadn’t filled it up yet with his his like fancy cars and cool [ ] yet so it’s just an empty warehouse in the middle of san francisco downtown san francisco and we threw our launch party there before he filled in so i’m there with one of my buddies from this small town in quebec the guy has never left his town basically in his entire life so he had landed san francisco he’s staying with me he gets into this you know car shop or whatever and it’s like dark and there’s smoke and there’s lights everywhere and then you walk in and there’s all these people and there’s lights everywhere and he like literally whispered to me and he said is kanye west coming to this did he say yeah he should have said yeah it was like one of those moments like i’m sure a bunch of people have like watch the social network when it’s like justin timberlake is like talking to uh i guess it’s mark zuckerberg in the club and it’s just like it’s intense and it’s like larger than life and you were kind of like living lifestyle in san francisco not like i mean i’m painting you as very playboy and i won’t say you’re 100 playboy but um in the sense of like you were living that lifestyle you were you were doing that like zuckerberg thing you’re you know you’re kind of doing the complete opposite and my question to to to actually both of you but particularly for sean is if you could redo it would you have done more more of these product bets that are uh there’s it’s really less risk like for example milk road like there wasn’t that much risk there yeah yeah let’s be right here right so like i feel like people like we’re now that we’re in our 30s we’re focusing on different niches and we’re taking things that are working different communities and we’re just pushing that out there with you know low product risk would you have done that or do you think that you needed to do these crazy bets in your 20s to to to be where you are today i have a very easy answer but i’ll let sean go first no no go no i want you to go first i want to hear what you’re going to say playboy sean well i was playing bullshot by the way for that i flew in this painter that i had met and he did i don’t remember this he did a live painting where he he’s painting this like abstract thing he’s break dancing while he’s doing it and this is a guy i had seen at a at a fair and greely colorado many years before that and i was like hey dude i have like a like i have a company that has like a bunch of funding like you want to just like fly out for this party and do something dope do that thing you did at that little town fair do it in front of like hundreds of people at this thing and he’s doing it and then at the end he spins the canvas and what looks like this crazy abstract thing was he had painted like a [ ] bob marley upside down and it’s like he does this like whatever he flips the thing and then he’s like done and he slaps it with his hand it’s full of paint and it was like that was the moment and i was just like that party was dope that was a dope party actually now that i remember it so do i regret it well now that i’m thinking about that party no i don’t regret it that was pretty awesome i’m glad i did it because i’m happy with where i am now having said that there were so many things that i did foolishly during that time and i’m not just talking about like you know oh you know i wasn’t as good at this thing as i am now it’s like no like there was so much opportunity right under my nose and i was blind to it and like one of the biggest like scary things for me now is like what are those things today that are right in front of me that i’m too stupid to see just like i was too stupid to see it seven years ago when i was doing that other thing um for example greg you were in our early mastermind groups and the founders of calm were there and they were talking about how hard it was and how they’re just you know it was just alex it was just kind of like yeah it’s hard to raise money right now i’m trying and and we were just like dude it’s cool app man you should stick with it he’s like yeah i’m gonna just keep going and like that’s a 2 billion dollar plus company now and we were helping him like dude why didn’t we cut the check you were there too i don’t know you didn’t cut a check either did you i i remember at the time like if i’m being honest like i felt that it was too niche like i was like we were like sean you and i were focusing on like we were doing big stuff stuff that was going to be yeah exactly later he’s got the huge company uh there was so many of those so in our masterminds itself i think uh loom was in there that’s a billion dollar company and i remember kind of like trying to mentor shy and being like bro like you know that don’t worry you’ll figure it maybe it’s not this one but like when you get to your real game you’re gonna be like good because of this experience you were friends with him too like did you invest in that like i missed i missed it was called uh uh what was it called open test dot co and that’s what loom was originally and it you know it felt like you know when you’re doing your first startup and it just feels so shaky because you’re it’s your first time doing all this stuff like that’s what it felt like and so it was you know and then also the the narrative at the time was don’t invest in other people’s startups you got if you if you want to make it in silicon valley you got to give laser focus so i you know my mistake in my 20s was i came to san francisco you know i listened to all these vcs with all their narratives and i did it and if i were to redo it i would frankly just be doing what i now which is doing like what i’m doing now which is like focused on communities doing agency services focusing on niches and and and web you know yeah just build an experiment and not have the biggest exits in the world so there was like 10 examples like that like i remember alex mccall came over one day and he we were catching up and then he went on to start clear i remember thinking this guy’s [ ] amazing i should invest in this clear bit thing and i like went over to his office and we like hung out i was like about to meet the guys i was like i love the energy of this office man like if i just couldn’t do anything besides feel this office i would be like they’re building a winner in here and that’s also like i don’t know if it’s a billion it’s multi-million dollar company um and he told me at the end he goes oh by the way i’m buying up uh i was like what else are you doing finally i started asking smart questions like what else are you doing he’s like oh i bought up some stripe shares this stripe share is available for like two billion dollars so i’m buying a bunch of striped shirts i think it was him maybe josh buckley is one of them and he’s like i’m buying up stripes for 2 billion let me know if you want in and i was like 2 billion to me i was like well that’s like the most a startup is worth is like a billion is like the top of the mountain so like to me it was like oh there’s no upside left you know i didn’t like think from first principles about like everybody knew stripe was [ ] amazing it was like the best startup in the whole like you know in silicon valley and i had this opportunity to go buy stripes at 2 billion and i thought how late i was and i was like man i wish i could have got in earlier and now like you know the things i would give for stripe shares at 2 billion now like that’s already like like 100x you know from from there and that was proven right forget that then there was all the services we were using like furcon who’s my cto he’d be like oh this is a cool cool product let’s use this in our tech stack if i had just invested in all the bills we were paying for like software we were using like pagerduty and elasticsearch and so you know like one after another those were all huge winners that were pre-ipo um so first was investing the second was like project selection so like you were talking about greg i did the same thing i was playing by the rules of like i was playing by other people’s rules meaning like what was considered cool in silicon valley was to be like a product guy who was building who had like cool product taste and was building like um you know like new markets and like going for the big billion dollar prizes and then i met sam who was like i’m writing this newsletter it’s free i’m gonna have like newsletter ads and i was like yeah but like are you gonna do a startup someday like that’s how i felt about it right sam’s company sells for more than more than my company sold for in the end he goes uh he goes look you’re good but basically like you’re showing up to a knife fight with a knife and i wish you would show up with a magic wand that would just murder the competition i’m like sounded cool right i was like uh that’s a great analogy that’s a cool story but like uh i don’t know man i think the math kind of i think it might achieve the desired outcome which i’m trying to do here which uh when i started i was just trying to be financially independent by the age of 30. that was the only goal um and so so like if i could go back and just whisper three things about like just just strategy like forget life advice just strategy advice i would have said invest in all the smart people you know like it’ll it’ll work out if you don’t have the money go convince somebody that you have a bunch of really smart friends that they should give you money to invest in that that’ll be the first thing the second is invest in all of the expenses on your p l so go find all the places you’re spending money and go try to invest in all those companies that will also do fantastically well you’ll make more on that than your own company okay if you really want to do your own company beyond that fantastic that’s great you’re going to build up skills and you got a lottery ticket there that might work i would have just said like don’t try to be mark zuckerberg from the social network like think about what like like basically just open your eyes to the problems and the opportunities that exist today and so you know whether it was like e-commerce or shopify apps or like these sounded small at the time but they sounded small because that’s where they were early and like at that time i needed a vc to like stamp their approval that this was a good market or a good opportunity which by that time is pretty late because what’s the vc doing they’re looking at what companies are raising huge rounds which means like four years ago those were great opportunities three years ago those were great opportunities and so i wish i had just kind of been more eyes wide open on what projects are available to you and like the things that sound kind of nation funny those are actually better signals for you than the thing that the vc is saying is going to be huge or is already huge because it’s often um you know those companies to start are like you’re in a you’re in an absolute dog fight and it’s just like one winner out of 100 is going to emerge versus other things where like you could basically take um no no product risks no market risk so i had a friend vishal tell me this once he goes i invest in companies with no product market fit risk i had never heard somebody say that it didn’t even make sense to me i go what do you mean like every startup is product market fit risk you guys know it’s not like what he goes he was the one who convinced me to buy bitcoin initially as well he was like bitcoin’s going to be the you know the biggest thing in the world he’s like i just put up basically all the money i have in the bitcoin i was like what the [ ] this is like back in 2016 15. nobody was really saying that back then so for the product market fit thing he goes he goes for example i just invested in a company that’s making a robot that makes pizzas and it makes pizza it makes a perfect pizza every time 24 7 at a lower cost than a human being can do it he goes i don’t know if they can because there’s a ton of engineering risk like they may not be able to technically do it but if they can do it there’s zero market risk every pizza shop will want this over paying an employee to make imperfect pizzas only in certain hours call in sick and blah blah like it for a higher cost and i was like oh [ ] that’s true there are things that have zero market risk and i was taking like maximum market risk before so like that’s the other strategy is like you don’t have to take as much market risk the thing you’re doing now greg is like way less market risk the thing i’m doing with milk road had like zero market risk basically and there’s just like there’s a lot of money there’s life-changing money that can be made and a lot of fun that can be had without taking on unnecessary what happened to that pizza company i think they’re still in engineering risk mode they got like a big contract from domino’s but then their ceo got was in trouble for some things that they hired a new ceo something something something you know like again these are legit engineering risks so i’m not like that doesn’t mean they’ll all work but like what i’m doing with the newsletter is like neither technical risk nor market risk yeah operational risk it’s just are you gonna are you gonna be able or wanting to do it for a long time which is yeah you know that’s a pretty good thing to try to overcome right yeah it’s really tough you know i remember coming to san francisco and and hearing all these narratives and these bc’s telling me this and also entrepreneurs sort of repeating a lot of this stuff and i will say it it’s tough to go against what these stamps of approvals say to do you know like you have to tell yourself every day like and i have to do that too like when i started a services business all my most of my silicon valley friends were like a services business like an agency that’s what you’re gonna do after you know like and you just kind of have to push forward and really just um remember that you know just because some you know certain people on twitter say a certain thing or or sequoia or andreessen say a certain thing doesn’t mean you can’t have a great like i would say you can have a better lifestyle not being mark zuckerberg than being mark zuckerberg the pope catholic bro a brown bear shits in the woods right obviously yeah what was that a brown bear shit’s in the woods yeah that’s a sampard special that’s a vampire special is that the number seven sample specialty i just ordered because i think i got it the brown bear [ ] in the woods yeah that’s why people listen to this podcast though for a couple of sam’s parts and sample specials did you just what did you say did i did i just order a sambar smartphone number seven because i think i just got it yeah that’s good by the way uh there i made a joke recently where shawn you go yeah so there’s these short traders and i said oh yeah how tall is he and you just like totally skipped by it and the people in the comments on youtube were like i think the joke was funny but it was definitely funny that shawn just ignored him no people were like dude how did you not acknowledge that absolute gem on time on target you were you were quick with that one yeah it got no love and the commenters uh pointed it out you’re the new chris rock man you’re the new chris rock you’re a better version of chris rock thank god this is digital he’s gonna [ ] slap me right in the face dude i can’t believe that happened i’m gonna like right after this i’m gonna go see i can’t wait to see uh will smith apologize oh yeah he’s for sure gonna come up with something by the way the form on his slap if you look at the photo full extension crossbody i mean like do you i’ve never slapped anyone if i tried to stop someone once i’m not gonna have perfect form that guy has to have slapped before because you don’t just wake up with perfect form on a slap like that like the just look at the extension and tell me that’s not the best 12 000 smith is a habitual slapper man he’s a perfectionist this guy is slapped before we gotta we gotta stop this guy before he gets out of control i wonder he’s definitely slapped before i wonder as he was walking up the catwalk there was like five seconds there so i wonder what he was thinking like was he like you know what am i gonna punch him am i gonna slap him like i wonder what was going through his mind i think he’s always rocker a little right now i’ve done that before to my sister where like i knew i was mad and i started to charge she’s five years older than me so i was like you know a kid at the time and i knew i was mad and i had i had a i have to do something but i had no plan and so i had like three steps to improvise the plan i remember this and she’ll she always tells the story we were in the kitchen and i was pissed because she made fun of me and i’m five six years old and i was walking and i am in the kitchen i just grab a butter knife and i go nisha this is the end that was my statement and like she was like the end of what i was like like nobody knows what happened after that we both just blacked out she thought it was hilarious that i you know said like a movie line like a loser and i was holding this butter knife i don’t know what i was going to try to do but uh it wasn’t going to work she was she could overpower me pretty handily at that time special all right that’s the episode by the way greg you said something don’t edit yet i want to leave with with with greg got my wheels turning even while we’re joking my wheels are still turning about what you just said about the narrative here’s my challenge each of us what’s one narrative that you think actually you should be going counter to that narrative like there’s a narrative that we hear as entrepreneurs as people in kind of tech and like what do you think is the like actually i don’t know maybe it’s this other thing instead so if anyone has one do it but i otherwise i’ll i’ll give you one yeah go for it so mine would be um i’ll give you two there’s the inside crypto there’s a narrative that’s basically like oh there’s all this innovation happening this it’s like the next protocol the next token the next whatever i’m pretty sure that if you just buy three or four things like if you buy bitcoin eth um i put luna in there now just buy those three and you just chill either all of crypto is gonna work and those will work amazingly or crypto’s not gonna work and no matter what you did like if those fail if those don’t go up dramatically in value um crypto just didn’t work and none of this [ ] will work and so i think actually a basically like for a while the best strategy was bitcoin and chill and now it’s ethan chill i basically think it’s still the same i think it’s like buying two or three tokens and not even needing to know anything more just chilling on those is probably the best investment of the next like 10 to 15 years gonna outperform everything during that time i so i think like going deeper down the rabbit hole and like learning more is actually going to [ ] up your returns versus just buying the the main ones and just holding for for like 10 years not thinking about it that’s one and then the other is i think that angel investing doesn’t make much sense anymore and i say this as somebody who angel invests like the valuations are so high um that like if i think about like that same money going into like one of these sort of boring cash flow businesses is so much better for your life so if you’re like an individual angel investor and you have let’s say a hundred thousand dollars you know or three hundred thousand dollars that you want to go put into like a basket of 20 startups it’s like are you sure you shouldn’t just buy like like get an sba loan and go buy like some random website that’s already producing profit and that’ll pay itself off in two years or less and uh and now you own this cash flowing asset like i’m pretty sure that’s just gonna do better dude i agree than a basket of angel investments the the the our friends who have all crushed it on angel investing you know it means they made their investments five or eight years ago and it was different it is it’s outlandish at the moment so i agree with that i think for mine that i think that it’s actually i think that i think that you only have a few swings in your career and a lot of people are like oh you should be patient and you’ve got a lot of time to do certain stuff i actually think you should try you should dedicate your 20s to getting your first significant win because after that life gets a lot harder you get a lot less energy you’re a lot smarter which is actually bad you actually it’s kind of good to be kind of ignorant um and not enough people i think all often times people go the other route where they go well just go join something for a little while and learn in my opinion f that your 20s dedicated to getting a win and getting even if it’s relatively small and do it as fast as possible because after that life is a lot easier i’ll give my what sean i was going to say give the moyes quote about getting rich quick he goes why does everyone hate on getting rich quick get rich quick schemes are the best i got i got two real quick so i got off the phone with a friend of mine who worked at facebook he told me this morning he told me that he works roughly 90 90 to 120 minutes per day on average i thought you’re gonna say 90 to 120 hours a week he yeah it’s the best when you measure your work in minutes he’s texting me he texted me today he said it was 9 12 a.m he said 9 12 a.m finish work for the day 12 12 minutes and so you know put us in a group chat i want him to text us every day just the time stamp of winning so that’s what that’s what i told him to do i said you need to create like a twitter a non account a twitter that’s and so i’m gonna stay tuned do that um but i think that in your 20s potentially go work at facebook go work at google get those high paying jobs i think that by the way i think i think that’s a good way to get a win get get you know do that for a few years while you’re you know do you’re doing your you’re learning on the side like join a tao build a community build a newsletter do whatever you want to do it really speaks to you while you’re you’re not yeah so you’re making money and you’re learning what more could you ask for and then my and you know just because you gave a one sean i think that and i spent a lot of time in nft land and web 3 land too i think that nfts are going to 99 freedom it it’s going to be a free freedom and thing i think the the idea of selling nfts will be a very small thing okay so what what happens why why would i give away something for free or what’s my incentive so what happens after it’s freedom in so yeah i mean you know okay so the idea right now it’s like people are selling nfts and projects for 0.05 to 0.2 let’s say on average for some of these you know 10 000 pfp projects i think that um that’s going to burn out at some point and i think we’re starting to see it burn out a little bit i think that you know did you see the hundred thieves drop yeah they uh what do they do exactly they did a much smaller amount so they basically first of all it was in gaming and gamers hate nfts so the fact that they did a successful gaming nft launch like obviously kudos to them but basically they won this championship and they were like okay in order to get this like collectible you can go grab it it’s free we’re not saying it’s going to be worth anything and they got 700 000 people to collect this collectible and there’s like a trophy right and then they make money on if there’s value right so if it grows in value they get royalties and i think that’s what you’re going to see a lot of is like creators and and big communities basically doing freedom ins um even though people seem you know people today think that selling nfts is the future i don’t think right by the way i’m going to change mine to just simplify it instead of starting a company buy an existing business i think that is the most overlooked obvious thing for a smart person to do how do you take your market risk to essentially zero um you buy a business that’s already working and profitable and you just say cool i’m a better operator than this person or i know about a different form of operation than they do and so i can grow this using facebook ads or i can grow this using outsourcing or i can grow this using you know code or whatever it is you you hear almost no narrative uh you heard tons of narrative around the genius visionary startup start a new thing building a new project launching a new thing and like you hear like one or two examples of people buying businesses and i think that for most smart people buying a business is a far better idea than starting yeah but when you’re in your 20s my pushback to that is like when you’re in your let’s say early 20s like do you know like you’re saying that now but i think like yeah um you do need like that operational experience and that’s where my point is um you got to like it’s worthwhile to to just potentially take a high-paying job and then on the side kind of like experiment and do stuff yeah that’s true i’m not really limiting mine to the 20s i think uh i’m still making mistakes in my 30s so i’m assuming other people are dude i guess it’s more like what narrative do i hear now that’s easy to float along with that i’m like you know what actually i don’t i don’t i just think this is true and like that’s the one for me which is like for most people who want to be entrepreneurial they default to starting a business and i think actually maybe it should be the opposite maybe you should default to taking on an existing business and growing it and only create a new thing if you like actually have a new invention in mind a new idea that really you can’t shake in your head versus like just starting a new startup i like that because because you want to be an entrepreneur right um all right i think we lost sam we got to go all right greg thanks for coming man where should people find you twitter at greg eisenberg or on our pod where it happens or uh in the mountains of canada or the mountains of canada unless you’re the irs in which case he’s in miami at least 180 days out at least all right