The Boldest Ideas We Heard This Week | My First Million

Not gonna lie, haven't heard a word since you said leverage to the tits.

I've just been waiting for us to talk about that.

Quick, quick break.

It was like, you know, today I'm gonna wear a turtleneck and I might try to say leverage to the tits.

You know, it's like getting a new haircut, you know?

Like affirmations, I can pull this off.

Leverage to the tits is my version of having bangs, you know what I mean?

I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like days off on a road less travel.

Never looking back.

Sam, it's just me and you.

No guess. This is nice.

Like a date night for us.

The kids are out of the house.

Well, let's debrief.

I have done a few things.

Do you want to go back and forth of the interesting people that we hung out with?

I have got like two or three.

How many do you have?

Yeah, I got three or four.

But I have a theme with mine.

I don't know if yours would fit this.

But the theme with mine is all people who are contrarians in some way.

And what I mean by that is not like contrarian like, you know, it's like an annoying kind of contrarian.

Not like, like if you call yourself a contrarian, it's like you're not contrarian, right?

Correct. Exactly. They wouldn't say this about themselves.

I would say it about them, which is what makes it kosher.

The way I would say it is they're all independent thinkers, meaning when I hear the stories of what they're doing.

I don't even want to ask about the thing.

It's like, how did you even think of doing that thing?

You know what I mean?

It's like, all right, before you tell me all the details, how did you even get into that situation?

Why were you even looking there?

Why were you even deciding to do that?

Okay, I can fit within that framework.

Okay, yeah, I'll go first.

So I hosted this dinner in San Francisco and invited maybe, I don't know, 15, 20 people to this thing.

You did? Yeah, yeah, exactly, I know.

You boys growing up, friends and hosting things.

In the city, you drove to the city and did this?

I drove to the city, yes, this is a true facts.

and so we go there and there's a guy there who I'm friends with, his name is Justin, Justin Coldbank and Justin is a tremendous investor.

He was an investor early on and like grub hub, Snapchat, Stitch Fix, like boom, like it's just like a bunch of companies that have done really well.

So let me tell you the story.

So I was talking to him about some of his big win investments.

So I'll tell you a quick one.

So there was a grub hub one, I was like, how'd you get it to Grubhub?

He said, oh, Grubhub was a, he said it was a funny story like they were doing well, but nobody knew them and I don't think they had raised much money yet.

And I tried to get a hole, cold emailed them, I cold, cold, called them.

I called the office, couldn't get a hold of them.

So he's like, so I just flew to Chicago.

I just hung out in the lobby till I bumped into the guys.

And I was like, Hey guys, I'm just really a believer in this thing.

Sorry to bother you but I'm not, I just really believe in this thing ends up doing that deal.

So, okay. A classic, classic meet cute.

So I was like, had the Snapchat one happen.

And he told this great story, he goes, I met Evan, and he's like, I will just never forget meeting Evan.

He's like, I walked out of that meeting being like this guy, he's one of them.

He's like one of the people that's going to build this like legendary companies.

At the time, I think he was still a student at Stanford, a student college.

And I go, was Snapchat taking off?

Was it like a rocket ship?

He goes, no, no, it was like really small.

He's like, it had maybe like 100, 150 ,000 users, wasn't growing fast.

And everybody on the outside viewed it as this It was like this silly little thing, it was like this toy.

It's like, oh, is it just used for disappearing photos?

Must be for inappropriate pictures or it's just a stupid college thing.

And he's like, I was like, so how did you invest?

And he tells a story.

So he's like, first I met Evan, I heard him out and he shared this story that he's like, Snapchat, people think it's about photos.

And when they hear photos, they think about Facebook and Instagram.

It's like permanent public photos that are for your memories.

And he's like, but actually we use photos for communication.

It's like, back and forth.

And so Justin goes, hmm.

So it's like messaging.

He's like, yeah, it's messaging.

He goes, okay. And so he goes home and he does some research.

He goes, I think everybody's been comparing this to Instagram and Facebook.

And because of that, the metrics don't look as good.

But if you compare this to iMessage, I wonder what this looks like, or WhatsApp.

So he hustles and he gets in touch with somebody at Apple.

And he's like, hey, I just have a good question for you.

If somebody sends an iMessage, message, how many, what percentage of them send an iMessage every day for the next seven days?

And they run the query for him.

Yeah, if you use iMessage, you can use it every day.

That's just how you use messaging apps.

He asked somebody at WhatsApp, same question.

He asked somebody, and then he gets in touch with somebody from Instagram.

And he's like, hey, for Instagram, if you post a photo, what are the odds you post a photo, you know, the next seven days?

They're like, well, super low, right?

He's like, okay, what about even just using the app?

I'm like, ah, it's just a reasonable, healthy number.

And he goes back to Snapchat, He asked him the number and Evan, like, he's like, I don't know.

Let me look it up. He looks it up.

He's got the I message number, and he's like, this is communication.

And he's like, and nobody, you know, nobody else was really that eager to invest and he was like, I got to go all in on this thing.

And sure enough, he did.

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And you hang out with him and he told you that story at dinner?

Yeah. Did you have any other interesting people at at your dinner that you want to talk about or no?

Yeah there's a couple guys.

So there's one guy, Will, who's coming on the podcast, Will O 'Brien.

He's an Irish guy. And he's coming on the podcast because he had this sentence that caught my attention.

He goes, the ocean is the ocean is the next space.

The ocean is the next space.

He's talking about, well, you know, how recently all these, you know, there's a bunch of investment now in space tech.

So space X obviously first.

But then after that, there've been more and more companies that have been funded Varda and others that are all about rockets and satellites and getting, Getting to space, mining asteroids, mining minerals, whatever it is.

And he goes, the ocean is the next space.

Like, the ocean is this other vast, mostly unexplored, mostly untouched by tech space.

And he's building an ocean tech company.

And he told me about four or five other ocean tech companies.

And it was a finger to the lips.

You got to come on the podcast and talk about them there.

Don't waste this at a dinner, okay?

That's actually a really interesting concept because right now space is hot.

robots so hot right now having a moment is oceans the new it girl I'm looking for it bro I'm looking for it I'm like what's gonna be hot is it like is she like the hot girl who just has like glasses on for some reason she's still the nerd and then someone's gonna like take your glasses off I'd be like make over done.

You're the girl. The rom com where all you had to do was take her hair out of the ponytail and pick off the glasses.

You're now beautiful.

Is that the ocean right now?

Yeah. Who is that? That's Callie.

No. She shows up at prom.

Who's the new girl?

That's not a new girl.

Imagine them giving their pitch to their LPs to their investors.

We pick off the glasses.

Ladies and gentlemen, have you seen She's All That?

How about dad thinks I hate about you?

dad, my friend, let us introduce you to our new Oceans startup.

You get it. That's great.

He's just thinking a lot and living in a space that is sort of right under your nose but you never really think about.

That's pretty cool.

Alright, you want me to tell you about something I hung out with?

Yeah, give me one. Alright, so we had this guy on the MoneyWise podcast like a month or something ago, and he's like, it is 60, his name's Steve Houghton, he's a billionaire.

I had a great time talking to him on the podcast.

And on the podcast he was talking about like making money and all that traditional career shit, but.

He's a billionaire from what, by the way?

Yeah, so he says it on the podcast, he's worth something like two billion dollars.

He made his initial money doing door to door sales, selling something.

And I forget what he sold, but he made like 100 grand.

And with that 100 grand, the savings and loan crisis hit.

Do you know what that was in the 80s?

I don't completely understand it, but basically a bunch of cheap land became available.

He got leveraged to the tits and bought all this property and that made 3 million.

The 3 million he then bought some storage units that turn into like 9.

And then using that 9, he bought a bunch of, they say oil and gas, I don't know like these Dallas guys like say oil and gas, but basically that means you buy Least rights meaning you like not gonna lie haven't heard of words since you said leverage to the tits I've just been waiting for us to talk about that I'm trying it on it.

Was it okay? I'm trying to get on just it was like, you know today Hey, I'm gonna wear a turtleneck and I might try to say leverage to the tits.

Like, you know, it's like getting into a haircut, you know?

You know, like affirmations.

Yeah, yeah, this is my version.

I can't pull this off.

Leverage to the tits is my version of having bangs, you know what I mean?

All right, so makes a bunch of money, oil and glass and land, got it.

Okay, so you didn't just talk to him on the podcast, then you went and you did an absolutely normal human thing to do after the podcast.

you invited yourself to his family reunion or something.

Well, after the pod, I was like, could I come over?

Like, could I come and just like hang out with you?

And he was like, yes, absolutely you can.

And so basically he lives in Dallas.

He has this huge mansion.

I know that because I look the way I look, a lot of people think that I know about like skiing.

But I don't, but he was like, I have a ski in, ski out house.

which I didn't even know what that meant.

I've never skied in my life and I had to like figure all this out, but we went to Utah.

At his huge mansion, it was a ski in -ski -out thing, which if you do ski, that's like a fancy thing or whatever.

And I learned a few things.

The first thing that I learned, I had no idea, but his three daughters are famous.

So his, sorry, his wife and two daughters are famous.

So his wife is Jen Houghton, she's got an Instagram called Turtle Creek Lane, I think she has 1 .5 million subscribers and basically your followers.

And basically what she does is she decorates their home and like the most crazy, over -the -top way.

Like, so for example, for Christmas, like, it looks like a Christmas doll house, but that's like her real house.

And so she got famous doing doing that via Instagram and then brought in the other two daughters to do, you know, their schtick, which I actually don't know what their schtick is, but I know that a million people follow them because when I was around them, I was like, they're just living, and people are just like, love watching them.

Were they just like snapping content constantly, or what?

No, that's funny. They weren't.

I mean, they did a bit, but it wasn't any different than anyone else who has like a thousand followers.

Or like, it was not obnoxious.

And they actually had mentioned that they worked with you on a company you invested in, and they were like, his company that he invested in, they did a great job of hooking us up.

So they knew you. Yeah, yeah.

One of them, yeah, for sure.

But I didn't know, maybe from their...

I think they do a good job in their personal, the daughter's personal content.

It doesn't look like I'm the daughter of a billionaire type of thing, right?

It's super relatable.

It's fun. It's easy to follow, easy to like.

So I didn't know that they were like these famous people.

The second thing I didn't really know, I didn't know they're Mormon, but they weren't just Mormon.

He was like King Mormon.

He's on the board of BYU.

And so I, I think I learned this the first morning when Sarah and I get up at sevenam to go hang out and everyone, we're sitting around the kitchen and we're just kind kind of like patiently waiting for them to get the coffee ready.

You're just vaping through being in the kitchen.

I'm just sitting in this kitchen.

And we're like, do you guys do coffee?

What's up with that.

They had to tell me that they don't drink coffee.

And they were like, but we went and bought coffee beans to accommodate you.

And we have this coffee machine.

We even went and bought a coffee machine.

We don't know how to use it.

But it's over here.

And I don't even know if they bought the right beans.

They literally had never gone through this experience.

Which is like, imagine not knowing, Like, do you get the beans, do you get the grounds?

What device do you need to ground the beans?

Is this the right machine or is this like, there's five different types of machines they didn't know?

And they went to accommodate us, which was hilarious.

But what I learned with the Instagram stuff is, dude, middle America moms, who's they're following, so much more profitable than doing comedy bits for millennials or Gen Z.

You know what I mean?

They made - They kill it and they would like posts like these gummies that they got or this candy or this other Widget that someone had sent them and they were like showing me how many of the products that they sell and it was the craziest Thing I've ever seen like it was like why other the people listening to this podcast They're like, I want to do things for the trader economy.

No, just do it for Lisa in Oklahoma mother economy Oh my god it was it was crazy they were like super Mormon and I'm not into religion.

I don't like religion in particularly, but I learned a lot.

And the one thing that I learned was they like explicitly stated their values.

So like, you know when you're with your family and you'll make jokes with your sister, like, yeah, you know, like, you'll bring her down, you'll be like, hey, you said you're on a diet, why are you eating that?

Or like, you just like, you just like mess with her.

Like, just teasing.

there was not one bring them down joke." And I was like, and I asked them about that.

I'm like, you guys have it made fun of each other once.

And they were like, well, like, you know, we're taught in this religion that you gotta treat, like, you know, you got to be Christ -like and like he doesn't make fun of people.

So we don't make fun of people.

And they had like all of these, like, I would ask them a variety of different questions.

Why don't you do this?

Why don't you do that?

And they all had like very explicit answers.

It wasn't ever like, ah, it just feels good, or I don't know we just kind of do.

It was all like, well mapped out.

And I thought that was really cool to be like super intentional about living.

When I asked them, I was like, why don't you guys drink coffee?

And they're like, well, we're taught not to, like, you know, try not to be addicted to things or try not to like overly rely on stuff.

And I was like, all right, that's a good reason.

And so it was crazy to learn all that stuff.

But here's let me tell you this last thing that I learned from this family.

It was like a 15 ,000 square foot house.

And I learned that.

You know, you've heard me talk on this pod and I think you feel the same way about like owning stuff in a big house is kind of like it's like that's a lot of work.

I don't want to do that.

It's such a life hack for like being around your family.

It's the greatest thing ever.

And I've noticed this amongst this family, but also a bunch of other really wealthy families that if you can acquire a home that's big enough for your grandkids and everyone's super comfortable to stay there, they will want to stay there more.

And thus you will spend more time with your family.

And we didn't have a private chef.

We didn't do anything, almost the entire weekend was us just sitting around a kitchen table and we like cooked our own meals and just hung out.

and it was like the way to live.

Was it awkward being at their family reunion or was...

Dude, they were like, come on in.

That might be even more awkward, they're so nice also.

God, what did you do?

They were so nice. I just think these guys are nice all the time.

And I asked them, I was like, why are you so nice?

And I was like, why do you guys have so much fun?

Like, they had activities like we went.

They're like, let's go in the coal punch and then get into the hot tub.

And then we're gonna go do like, they had like activities planned that they all did as a family.

I was like, what are you guys doing?

And they were like, We just want fun to be the center of everything we do.

Yeah, this is amazing.

This is like the opposite of like, when you're a bad kid in school and they take you to like jail and they wanna shock value, like show you what your life could look like if you just keep going down this path.

Yeah, I just got hugged really hard.

This is like the opposite.

You're like, hey, you wanna see what a really healthy family dynamic looks like?

I'm gonna take you there for a weekend immersion.

It was the healthiest family dynamic.

I have never seen anything like this.

And then they have a subreddit.

There's a subreddit dedicated to making fun of them.

And it's, have you ever seen this?

So, first of all, do you know why there's so many Mormon influencers?

Basically Mormons are explicitly told you should journal.

You know, journaling is a good way to reflect on life and it slows you down.

That led to Mormon mommy bloggers.

Which they're like inherently kind of interesting because they're really into like, I think Mormons are told they need to prepare for the end of the world.

Fucking awesome content, right?

Like talking about like your packing system for like all your nuts and stuff.

Like, that's really good content, parlay that into Instagram.

And that is one of the reasons why there are so many freaking Mormon influencers.

And I didn't know that, but they have, and so because of that, they have a whole subreddit.

It's called like Turtle Creek Lane Snark or something like that.

And every time that they would post something, people make fun of them for the silliest stuff.

Like one time we were like in the house and like one of the kids was eating a piece of cheese.

and like for some reason a two -year -old shouldn't have cheese, I don't know why, but that was a post that someone made fun of them.

Or there was one time where Sarah, my wife, made it in the background of one of the photos and they're like, who's this person?

As if she was like a new cast member.

And they like were Googling her and like listing out her name.

It was crazy and I asked them, I was like, does this stuff bother you?

And they just, it totally like, they were like, no, what they care about us is their business, it doesn't bother us at all.

And so this family had the most positive outlook on life And it it did wear off on me to be honest like, you know, I'm not about to go and like Become a Mormon or anything but I want to hang out with them a whole lot more, right?

This is wild. By the way, didn't he get in like a helicopter accident like the next week or something that week after?

Yeah, he he his he on the podcast on Monday wise.

He talked about how much he loves flying helicopters I don't know all the details but like three days afterwards.

They were flying a helicopter I think he was he's flying it himself in this particular case, he does.

But in this particular case, he was the passenger and they got in a wreck and it was not good.

And he survived, he's gonna be fine, but it was a bad wreck.

And like, if you go to their Instagram, you'll see all 10 other family members like surrounding him at the hospital.

And so yeah, he's gonna have a lot of issues to deal with, but like, this was like the kindest, sweetest family I've ever been around.

Do you know Raleigh Williams?

He came too. And it was like me and Riley Williams and then the Houghton family and Riley Williams.

His kid was amazing.

She's 10 years old.

And I was, she was the most articulate little girl I've ever talked to.

I was like, how how'd you learn how to talk this good?

And she was like, I, you know, for the church.

They teach us how to do like a homily.

That's what we call it, the Catholic church.

I don't know what the Mormons call it.

We talk in front of like 500 people at church.

And she was like, in doing that, I learned that Anita like, and like told me like all like the principles to like speaking confidently.

And I was like, you're the greatest person.

I was like, I'm Navy, my next daughter, Navy because of, because of you.

But this frickin family was awesome.

It was so, I fell. Honestly, like I was in a reality TV show, but there's no drama.

There was zero drama.

It was like the happiest thing I've ever seen.

And the husbands, by the way, are the managers of, so the husbands are the managers of the two daughters.

They were like one guy was like, yeah, I used to work at Amazon.

I helped create, I think Alexa or something like that.

But then when I saw the potential for like this influencer stuff, I quit right away and now we make and they told me how much money and it was just an astronomical amount of money It was crazy.

So that was my weekend with a billionaire Mormon family and it was awesome All right, let's take a quick break because as you know, we are on the HubSpot podcast network But we're not the only ones there's other podcasts on this network too.

And maybe you liked them maybe you should check them out one of them that want to draw your attention to is called nudge by Phil Agnew and And whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you can make, the new habits you can do, the small decisions you can make that'll make a big difference.

That's what that podcast is all about.

Check it out, it's called Nudge.

And you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, where can we go from here?

This might feel like a let down after that.

Let's see. All right, I'm just gonna give you three numbers to pick from.

I have three people on this list.

Give me, you want number one, number two, or number three?

Number one or maybe I could rapid -fire these and then you could tell me which one you want to talk about okay Hanging out with my friend James courier he's we did a podcast together.

It's gonna come out soon He has this one bit that I just really liked so he's all about his fund is called NFX as a network effects He's all about network effects like nobody on earth knows more about network effects than this guy And he has this great blog post in this thing that we talked about which is called like your life on network effects I hadn't really thought of it this way But the contrarian thing he said was he was talking about leaving San Francisco.

So we had a bunch of friends who we used to hang out with that have moved out of San Francisco during COVID because they were like, oh, everything's online now.

So we'll just leave and then it'll be like good for taxes.

And he goes, he's like, everybody, personal choices, do whatever it's like.

But if you wanted to be here and you left because of taxes and because you thought it's same same on Zoom, he's like, that's idiotic.

He's like, you're just gonna save 13 % your taxes and you're gonna lose 13 X.

You're gonna make 13 X less money on that same money saving decision.

Moving for taxes when someone tells me they do that, I think they're stupid.

I think that's a foolish thing to do.

Do you agree or disagree?

There's a lot of people that do that.

I think it's foolish.

Sorry, they're not stupid.

I think that decision's foolish.

Or rather, I don't agree with it.

That decision and actually several other decisions they make are probably also stupid.

Don't you agree? Like the point of succeeding is to do what you want, not to have to move to Puerto Rico.

If you want to live in Puerto Rico, then great, do it, but if taxes is the number one reason, I think that that is, what's that phrase?

You can't see the forest and the trees or something like that.

I mean, I kind of agree that's why I'm still here, but yeah, so I thought that was interesting, and he talks about your life on network effects.

His idea is basically if you could take all your decisions you make and instead of thinking of them as things you did, or decisions you made, or just like events in your life, if you looked at it as you either joined a network or you left a network, you either added into a network, or you subtracted out of a network.

So for example, where you choose to go to college, it's not just a college, it's not just an education, you're picking a network to join, I joined the Duke alumni network.

And that that alumni network is going to have certain benefits down the road, it's also It's also gonna lead me to maybe certain careers that that network tends to go towards, which is like Wall Street, finance, things like that.

Where you live, obviously, is a huge one.

So like what city you live.

If you join the Hollywood network, you're gonna be joining a certain lifestyle, certain career opportunities, et cetera.

And when you leave, you're opting out of that network or you're getting yourself away from the white hot center of the network.

Even just skills you pick.

Like let's say you wanna learn...

You learn marketing.

Well, you're actually joining a network of other people who know marketing and that's what you're gonna hang out with.

those are the opportunities you're going to get.

And that's sort of the next decisions are going to be heavily influenced by the initial network decisions that you're making.

And did that make you reflect on the decision that you've made?

Or thinking that you did the right thing or the wrong thing?

Or how will you implement this?

Because that makes me, I don't regret.

I don't regret. I moved mostly because of family, only because of family.

But I do wish I was it which is its own network, right you like opted in to your own per like, you know Your own par family, you know network or whatever, you know, you opted into you opted to like Be more dense there and you're connectivity there which is gonna be great for your family raising and all that But you opted out of the tech network of San Francisco Let's say which by the way if I could live anywhere like if family weren't to thing it would wanna it would either be an SF Or a suburb like a 20 minutes away but I would live there in a heartbeat.

And what did that make you feel like?

Well, he kind of points out, he's like, you know, there's some things that you don't choose, like where you're born, right?

Things like that. But then there's, after that, it's a lot of what you start to choose to do.

And even little things like, you know, language is a network.

So, you know, if you're in China right now, like choosing to join the English network is actually like a really powerful decision you can make that's gonna like completely change is the trajectory of your life, being able to do that.

If you start to look at things, English is not just a language, it's a network.

It's a network of people who all can communicate with each other using certain syllables and words and vowels and phrases, right?

Money is a network, right?

So joining the Bitcoin network early on turned out to be a really profitable decision because you picked, hey, we're a bunch of people who all believe that this thing is gonna be valuable network, right?

So it just made me more aware of that.

It made me, you know, why did I host that dinner in San Francisco?

Partly because James was like, One of the big mistakes I made earlier in my career was I got successful and I kind of siloed myself.

I kind of just wanted to do my own thing on the edge of network.

He's like, it was great for creativity because I was just in my bunker just doing my thing.

But it was terrible because he's like, I turned down that lunch meeting with Travis when he was starting Uber.

And I was too egotistical to take that job at Facebook early on when Mark was trying to recruit me.

Because I just thought I'm going to be off in my own land creating my own little castle over here.

And he's like, again, fun for creativity and for learning, but a little bit foolish to how extreme I was with that.

Like, uh, and so, you know, for me, for example, I'm, I moved 45 minutes out of San Francisco.

That reduced a lot of the serendipitous meetings that I could have in the network, in the network of people that I like to be around, interesting, ambitious people.

Would you move closer then?

Well, I don't, I don't think I'll move closer cause like the family networks out here and it's just better, like the school that we're in and all that stuff is better out here, But I'm like yeah I could definitely drive to SF twice a month and have like host a dinner, do a couple of live podcasts with people there, that would be great, and that's not that much of an effort, but just to stay, just to keep one, almost like in the diagram, right?

One line connected to the white hot center of the network.

Yeah, and I mean you live near a BART, right?

I do but BART's a network I don't want to be a part of.

You're opting out of that one.

Yeah, I'm opting out of that one.

All right, I have another person.

And so, uh, basically I don't speak at conferences unless my wife wants to come with me, if Neville wants to join and do it with me.

And if Nick gray will attend those, those three things have to happen.

You know, I do my entourage all three or one of them, all three, all three have to happen.

All three have to happen.

Your like I only green skittles that's your writer.

That's my writer is Sarah's got to begin.

The reason I try, I don't, I don't like traveling, but I'd like to travel if it's for a conference.

because I loved going somewhere.

In the first two days of conferences, the next few days are fun because you meet someone at the event who's gonna tell you cool shit to do and also I just like doing some of my friends.

And so I went and spoke at this thing called the newsletter conference, which was pretty wild because 15 of my ex -employees were speakers and are all, like, many of them are millionaires or making a whole lot of money doing newsletter stuff and that, like, made me feel proud.

But I met James Altucher.

You know who James Altucher is?

Yeah, he's been on the podcast.

Yes, he's a, what is his, like, he's an author?

And what is his, like, title in life?

I think James might be the craziest person that I've met in the last six months.

So if you google James Altucher, you're gonna see that he's, like, the thing that sticks out is his hair.

He's got this, like, crazy haircut.

And in real life, he sort of looks like a rock star.

Like, he kinda like, like, he's not trying, but he looks so different that he looks super cool and awesome.

And so James is the type of guy who, well he's got the story.

I don't know his full background but he's like, created a startup, made a bunch of money, blew it all on stocks or bad investments, did another startup, made a bunch of money, lost it all and now I think he's on like Mountain Three and he has a thing called choose yourself financial.

It started out just as a newsletter where he would just write about his interesting opinions and things like that.

He sold a portion or all of it to Agora.

Agora is a large newsletter business that makes something like one or $2 billion a year in revenue.

I don't like their company.

I think that they have like 15 or 20.

Basically, it started in the 80s as one newsletter.

Now they have like 20 and they acquire other people's newsletters.

And I think they do a lot of nefarious stuff.

So I'm not trying to promote those guys, but now they're not all bad.

And he sold to them.

And now he's their highest or one of their highest earning newsletters.

And his newsletter, The Truth Yourself financial did 130 million in revenue last year.

And it's like crazy.

The numbers are crazy.

Very profitable. And he said all this on stage.

Everything I'm saying is public.

And so I hung out with him and his wife and we had a great time.

And he said one thing to me, he said it like in passing and I was like the record skipped.

He was like, yeah, you know, like I love DoorDash because you know, like I don't leave my house for like three or six weeks at a time.

And if I need a pen, they just bring me a pen.

I was like, er, what, did you just say that you don't leave your house for like three to six weeks at a time?

And he told me he's like, yeah, like sometimes I just get so into something that I literally will not step foot outside for like four weeks at a time.

But he said like five other things like that, where he just was so fascinating.

And it was proof that you know how like, I think it was in the Peter Thiel, It's like real...

what's his book called?

It's zero to one. He said there's like a graph, where it's like a bar chart or something like that, where it's like extreme success means that you're likely gonna have extreme personality traits and those extreme personality traits like come off as weird or undesirable in many settings.

You know, you could be like Elon, which means you're gonna be kind of mean sometimes.

You could be like Albert Einstein, which means you're like forgetful all the time and like where two different socks or whatever, like he has these examples.

James is that guy. He very much has the brilliant, but forgetful and quirky scientist vibe to him.

And it was just wild seeing him just have normal conversations because his opinion and the way he looked at things was 100 % fresh and different from how I looked at the most normal things.

For example, when he said he didn't leave his house, I was like, that's horrible.

He's like he was shocked that I was criticizing him and which is pretty funny because you know He should live his life and be happy and that made him happy and it was it was like or in the green room He was playing chess the whole time with steph smith who was also there I was like you guys know each other and and they're like Well, we've never actually met but we play chess like constantly together online And he meets a lot of his friends playing chess online and there were just so many The little tidbits about this guy that made him so fascinating to me.

And by the way, if you saw, if you know Agora, you know, they're famous for these like long form sales pages and like incredibly aggressive advertising.

Do you remember in like 2020 or 2019, James's face was everywhere?

He was like, I hate that.

I hated it, I hated it, I hate our landing pages.

I hate how long they are, I hate how they look too aggressive.

And he was like I tried to write differently and like make my own landing pages, none of them could ever convert nearly as good as like the craziest shit that they would write.

So, did he make a ton of money off that Agora thing?

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Or maybe the, yes. And also, I think the answer is and is still.

And is still, okay, gotcha.

All right, I like that one, James.

I have another one that's less weird, but more sidequest -y.

So, Sheil, Sheil Manat, who came on the podcast recently, you can see his episode.

The number's crushed.

Yeah, he did really well.

We... So he was at the dinner too.

And she'll tell these stories and you're just kind of like, if you just listen to the stories, you're like, wow, this guy's fascinating.

You would never know his day job because Sheil is an epic sidequest -er.

So his day job is he's a VC.

He invests in FinTech companies.

that's his job, and there's a lot of that.

The weird thing is that if you listen to him, he's like, oh yeah, I'm taking courses or whatever.

I'm getting certified to be a travel agent now, so I can access all these travel discounts.

He's been doing that.

He's like yeah, I actually looked at buying the ambassadorship position for like being an ambassador of a country because it has these perks.

He's like basically like your friend who's like really good with credit card points, but for everything including credit card points.

By the way, I think on the podcast, he gave us like pretty good credit card point tip, but he just has like all these Epic side quests.

He's gone down over and over again.

He's like, yeah, I got married in the Metaverse and like Taco Bell sponsored it.

And hey, guess what else I did, you know, I started this auction company to go and buy and sell like the domain endings like dot app and dot photography.

Like that was his business.

It's like these aren't even normal, Even his businesses aren't normal businesses.

They're just weird side quests that made money.

I think his side, Wait, is Bissell his?

Is that it? Yeah, Bissell was another one.

He's like, oh yeah, like, um...

So the story he told on the thing was he was like, I was interested in this like food delivery space, it got really hot, sprig, et cetera.

I was ordering from all of them, but I just thought, there's no way this thing's making money.

So then as a side quest, I signed up and became a driver for a month and I drove around and it was, it was amazing.

I met all these people and I learned the model And I realized that this thing's never going to make money.

And he was right, Spriggan out of business, cited all the others that were doing it.

And he's like, but we could do this other thing, Thistle, and I got my friend to do it.

And now Thistle is like, I forgot, what did he say on the podcast?

It was like an absurd number.

I think it was like 100 million plus.

Yeah, 100 million plus of revenue.

And I was like, wow, this guy is just always on side quests.

So for example, he was talking about, he's like, oh yeah, Mr. Beese posted this video about like, I'm on this abandoned island or whatever.

Like this, this abandoned island.

I'm the only one here and there's nothing here, blah, blah, blah.

And then she was like, hold on.

I've been to that island, but without the video, like, and he's like, no, wait, that's not abandoned.

There's like a, there's a bar, like three minutes away from where he is.

And there's this motel.

So he tweeted about this and then Jimmy calls him is like, hey man, like, what are you talking about?

Like that isn't abandoned island.

He's like, no, it's not.

It's three minutes away from a bar.

Like, he's like, no, technically it's abandoned.

if you look at XYZ," and I was like, this guy just constantly gets himself into situations...

Wait. Jimmy called him because Jimmy felt his integrity was under attack?

Yeah, and he was like, did you give Jimmy my number?

I was like, no, I didn't even know this happened.

And shielded back down.

He was like, no, that's not in a abandoned island.

Or were they both right?

He's like, where are you were?

He's like, look at it three minutes away.

There's a place. There's a pub.

It's not abandoned.

And I think technically maybe there was something where it's like the, like the border or like, I don't know, I don't know what this, I didn't get into the details.

Obviously I don't give a shit, but I just thought it was amazing that there's people that just do things for their own amusement and I'll bring this home with a little TikTok I saw it.

It was a TikTok was, there's like this TikTok had gone viral and I'm glad it went viral because it means that other people are similarly really attracted to people who just dude do shit for their own amusement and really for no other reason.

So the, the TikTok that went viral was I forgot the name of the dance, but it was basically like shout out to my boy Willie for spending all of our bachelor party weekend trying to learn this dance.

And I guess there's like some dance and he's like this awkward looking white guy and there's like two black friends trying to show him how to do this dance.

And it's just like everywhere they went during the bachelor party, he's just practicing this dance just to like see if he can learn it in a weekend.

And like he starts off really bad.

And by the end, he's actually like pretty good at the end of the weekend.

And then they cut to the wedding and he's doing the same dance just for fun on his own, on the side of the dance floor, like not part of a performance, just like just doing this thing over there and I respect that, I think I respect that more than I respect like someone's achievements in life.

I kind of respect people that value their own amusement as the highest order bit and I think Sheel is an example of that.

Like the shit he does, he's not doing it because there's some outcome he's seeking, he's just amused by it and therefore like follows it and he ends up in these situations that at the end become really good stories but I don't think that's why he's doing it.

I think, you know we've done close to 700 of these episodes.

She would be in my top 10 of people who I admire most.

I think that Sheila, did he like people, I don't even know if we mentioned this one.

Do you know that Sheila's in a Justin Bieber music video?

Of course he is, why wouldn't it be in Justin Bieber music video?

Like I was watching from the outside.

So I think the way it happened was during COVID, Sheil created an online version of Bachelor, like the Bachelor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I watched this, it was great.

And what was it exactly?

It was during COVID.

It was Bachelor on Zoom.

I think it was called the Zoom Bachelor or something like that.

Sheil, the Bachelor.

And there's a bunch of women that would pop up and then he would like eliminate, give out roses and eliminate them and then he pick someone in the end and they went on a date or something.

And somehow, I could be confusing all the stories, But somehow this it was like it was a hit it was awesome and then He then there's a video of him where he's turned around like this and it looks like he's making out with someone like this Yeah, so he I think he was I'm watching those all from outside I think he posted that video and then he turns around and he smiles and he looks so happy and that clip made it into a Justin Bieber music video.

And if you go and watch the music video, his clip, Sheil's clip, is the best clip.

And - I have it, I have it.

It's there. What was it called?

Like love yourself?

Was it love yourself?

And he's like, it looks like he's making out with someone, but this is it.

Play it, play that clip and like watch that.

Oh my God, it's so funny.

Turns around, he's got a huge mustache for some reason, and he's just cheesin'.

Do you know another crazy thing about him, by the way?

You know the podcast startup on Gimlet Media?

I think he created that.

Yeah, yeah. I think he did.

He had his hands in it, maybe we'll say that.

We'll say that, yeah.

He just has had, he's had so many weird things happen to him.

Let me tell you another one.

Another person who I think is doing their own thing.

So my buddy Furcon, who you know, he's also been on the podcast.

So Furcon and I try to, we were co -founders.

We tried to start a bunch of companies together for like six or seven years.

And I know Furcon super well.

So, one of the things about Furcon is that he is just a grinder and it doesn't matter how successful or wealthy he's gotten.

His last company, AppLovin, is a $100 billion company and it's absurd.

Why is it taking off so much, by the way?

AppLovin for years, it was sort of a joke because when you would drive in San Francisco, they had billboards where they were trying to recruit engineers and the name AppLovin came out.

Right, or we still associated it with McClellan.

And it was like, is this a real company, you know what I mean, and now it's one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Yeah, exactly. So he's been...

Furcon has been early into a bunch of tech things, right?

He's basically a hackers hacker.

So he was really into crypto before crypto was cool.

I remember literally being at the office and he was not paying attention because he was buying into the Ethereum ICO at like, you know, 17 cents or something like that.

I was like, Ethereum, literally like dorkiest fucking name.

Never going to work.

So I didn't buy because your boy's a genius and that's why I'm a podcaster now and he's a billionaire.

It's for kind of billionaire now or… I don't know.

I don't know if he is or is it.

But he started a hundred billion dollar company.

I don't know. He's not like three zip codes away.

Maybe he's two. I don't know, he's getting close.

So he got into crypto early on and then when Web 3 happened, remember when web 3 happened and everybody was like like piling into Web 3 and Furcon was building a company in that space literally this company's called third web and he was just really into the actual like technology behind it he's like oh I think I can make these tools easier to use for developers and blah blah blah blah dude one time he like did a talk on remember the raspberry raspberry pi yeah yeah and like he he likes one time spent like 45 minutes explaining to me all about it and he knew everything about it yeah yeah he knows

everything about everything.

So he's and the second thing he got really into was VR, so he bought me an Oculus just because he was like, I don't want to tell you about this and like hope that you go try it out here.

Here's the new oculus headset.

Go home and put this on.

Okay, uh, that's that's that's that's that's the friend you need.

And so I go home and I put it on, I'm blown away, and I'm like wow, this thing's getting really good.

And then I think he bought me like another one when it got better.

And then I started buying them and I'm like, I'm paying attention to VR.

But you know, So I'm like every other lemming out there.

It's like I pay attention when shit gets hot.

And Furcon, the reason why Furcon is so great is because he doesn't pay attention when things get hot, he's like in the hardcore nerd bucket where he's like I pay attention because it's interesting to me.

I don't care if it's popular or not.

I don't care if it's hot or not.

I don't care if it's here or not.

I wanna be on this train the whole time.

And so he was telling me about his, so he's got this lab called Effing.

And he was telling me first about third web about how it was growing and how it had real revenues now.

I was like, oh wow, that's great.

Then he's telling me about VR.

And like, Sam, like how many people do you know that are interested in VR right now?

Like everybody who is interested in tech is interested in AI.

Where's your Oculus sitting right now?

Dude, where's the biggest pile of dust in my room?

I think it's back there.

It's, yes, gone. Same.

My, I mean like I did, I did what everyone did.

They got it. This is awesome.

This is gonna change the world.

It's gonna change everything.

Uh, I don't know where the charger is.

It's in my drawer somewhere.

Yeah. Just go back to scrolling on my phone.

Yeah. And he didn't do that.

He's like he would tell me we would hang out, and he's like I'm working in VR today, once a week.

I go co -work in VR.

I'm like what? And so guess what?

His interest in VR, there's not it's not popular right now.

In fact, they went to a VR conference, and the VR conference was like, you know, crickets basically.

And he sends. Is VR the new ocean?

It's the old ocean.

That's the problem.

it's not the same as the new tag.

And so our buddy Huber, who works with him, goes there and he wears a T -shirt all black that just says, I invest in VR, huge on the front.

He's like, dude, it was like being the only girl at like a prom or something like that.

There was like, everybody was interested in him because he's like the only guy left investing in VR.

And he's like, dude, it's actually kinda working.

He goes, you know, if you look at the top 15 apps, like the top 15 apps in all of the Oculus store, these three guys over here own three of the top 15.

He's like, they're printing money right now.

Like, this thing is amazing.

Yeah, it's not like, it's not the hot thing right now, but like, I don't know, if you can make $10 million as like a small team building these apps and you're the frontline of this and you're the only people who are like specializing this technology, like good things are gonna happen.

So it just kind of reminded me of like, you know, all the money is made either and being sort of right on time, But timing is super hard.

And so the same way that Warren Buffett was like, don't try to time the market, focus on your time in market.

Ferkon is doing the like, the tech, the engineering version of time in market, where once he's interested in something and he believes in it, he doesn't let his interest go in and out based off of like, you know, popular sentiment or VCs or exits or anything like that.

It's just based on is the tech getting better or not.

And I think that's just such a strong thing that's going to help them be super, super successful.

To all the young people listening, who are looking for a thing to do, I feel like that story is maybe a life -altering.

This is a very good premise, and I'm on board with this premise.

I do think VR, it's actually, and it's not ...

This isn't a secret.

Mark Zuckerberg, who has a really good ratio of getting things right, has said, this is the thing.

And also, do you know who also loves VR?

She'll she'll post the videos of who are not it's not VR but the the metal Or what's it called the Ray bands Ray bands?

Yeah, he loves those Ray bands and It's very clear how there's like, you know, that's on the same ballpark of a VR and how this can all work All right Shawn here with a quick public service announcement for any tech founders out there You know listen getting customers is your number one priority and to land bigger customers is one of the things that people don't talk about is that big customers need you to pass security compliance checks.

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Alright, back to this episode.

That was what I was going to bring up next, so I love those too.

I have them, I bought some for my sister, just like for her birthday recently.

And that is a great product.

It's actually, like, do you have them, by the way?

No, I'll go buy them right now.

What do they do? Like, what's the point?

The very first easy thing is they're basically AirPods.

So people don't really realize this.

At worst case scenario, you just bought a pair of AirPods that you're probably not going to lose.

so the audio from the like the glasses the part that goes behind your ear it's not in your ear but you can hear like music podcasts whatever super easily so the audio is the the AirPod type of feature is great and then the camera right like hands -free camera if you have a kid like for kids this thing is incredible because I wear them to like my daughter's like soccer games or whatever and so like you know the moment passes so quickly with kids and if If you're fumbling, get out of your pockets, unlock, Face ID, nope, nope, type in my password, get the camera app, oh, but it's over by then, right?

And you're now looking through your phone at life versus your glasses, that's where you're already looking, it's on your head, it's on a swivel.

All you do literally, if something's going on or something's interesting, you just tap the thing and it starts recording.

And the video looks great, by the way.

It's really, really good.

So, if you're traveling, if you're out and about, if you've got kids, if you're at a sports thing, if you're at a concert, this thing is amazing.

And so awesome to me.

These are the three.

There's the future.

I think meta knows this they're like investing in it very heavily I think it's interesting because it's kind of uncontested right now Like maybe Apple will get in the game Maybe if they still have like the juice to do it snapchat seems to have fallen out The famous like I forgot what the thing was called magic leap those guys died or are dying and Humane pin died right like all that stuff.

Is this kind of dead?

and I think Facebook has this sort of uncontested right now and And the thing I was going to say though is, I remember when I was in San Francisco, this company called Leap Motion got bought.

Do you remember Leap Motion?

Yes. Did they, did it become a video game or like a part of a video game?

They got bought by Facebook and what they were doing was they were, they were like, it was like this thing you wore on your wrist and then you could just move your hands and do like hand gestures to control a computer essentially.

They never really found product market fit because guess what, not a lot of people want to sit in front of their desktop and like hand gesture, like the minority report, replacing the mouse and keyboard wasn't super sick, I guess.

Yeah but it's pretty sweet if you have some physical disability, which, I mean, there's a lot of amazing applications I would imagine.

Maybe but you still gotta use your hand and your arm, right?

So it's the same thing as like a mouse really.

But the team that was working on it was cutting edge at this kind of gesture control.

And guess what? Being the best team in the world at gesture control or another example of this was they got bought for, I think, a hundred million plus.

Another company that got bought for a hundred million plus that never hit product market fit was the company that was working on face masks.

So remember when Snapchat came out with those face filters and it was super hot, like the dog face filter.

Bitmojo? No, it was, it was called masquerade.

What's the name of the company?

And so masquerade, I think it was like a European company.

It was just a small company, and again, got bought for like a $100 million plus, and then Facebook bought another company that was doing a very similar thing, or maybe I'm mixing up who bought masquerade.

But I guess my point is being at the leading edge of just the tech, you get two shots to win.

If you make the breakthrough app that actually does get product market fit, then you get to win in the billions.

If you're just the most hardcore tech team at building good functionality and working on these new platforms, your team of 10 really strong engineers, if you could actually build a strong team, your floor becomes like a $50 to $100 million company.

I don't think most people realize this.

I think most people think starting companies really risky.

Yes, but there are less risky versions of this.

And right now, if you were working on the meta Ray -Bans platform, which like today, there's no app store for it.

There's nothing, but guess what there's gonna be, right?

Like that form factor is for sure going to exist.

And there's for sure going to be apps that are built on it.

And so if I was a pretty hardcore tech team, or if I worked at one of these big companies like, let's say I was at Facebook or I was at Snap Spectacles and I was on that team, the smartest thing you could do is spin out with your five smartest friends and be like, Hey guys, the floor of this company is a 50 to a hundred million dollar company.

And the ceiling is like a billion dollar company or two billion or whatever it is.

And all we're going to do is we're just going to live at the cutting edge of this.

And we just have to survive five years.

We have, we need time in market.

Like we just have to survive five to five years in order to like be there.

And we're going to just work out all the kinks about the spatial recognition, about getting gesture control.

Correct about all these little tech problems that you need to do to make things great.

Because either you're going to do it and crack the app, or they were going to buy you, because you've solved a bunch of gnarly problems.

There was, I'm reading this book called Digital Gold.

It's about the, have you, you know, that it's a, that book, it's about a Bitcoin and the founding and like the early community and things like that.

I don't think I've read that one.

It's great. There's not actually that many books written about like the early characters, which is why I wanted to read it, because we had Nick Bilton on, and we did American Kingpin about Silk Road I was like, these stories are really fun.

And now I know of a lot of the early characters at Bitcoin and them talking about going to their first conference.

And on the first conference there was like 50 people there and it was like a shitty restaurant and just like all these stories of yeah, like this checks all the boxes of early crowd of just nerds who are regarded as freaks.

And no one takes them seriously.

And then one legitimate financier is like, okay, there's something here.

And then another one and then another one.

And then there's a controversy, but they overcome it.

And then it's just like, it fits all the stereotypes of these types of stories.

And what you're describing is like that same thing.

It's like a group of weirdos.

What did we say about, I had some guy pitch me a company that I thought was really stupid and now it's huge.

It was like, this product is dumb.

Oh my God, people are using this, they're dumb.

Oh my God, everyone's using this, I'm dumb.

You know what I mean?

And that's like how you go through, that's the process of some of these things.

And when you're talking about these Mediglasses, you're talking about VR, you're talking about Oceans, I'm like, oh my God, there's a story here, that's story there.

It's the same pattern over and over again.

It's a really fun pattern.

Speaking of crypto, I have three crypto things for you real quick.

Number one, James on the podcast tells this story about, because he wrote this blog post long time ago, He tells, he tells a story about how, um, his friend thought he was Satoshi.

And the reason why is because how flattering.

I know, by the way, like, so some of my friends, who may get a long shot, you think I'm Satoshi?

No, I could never. What an honor though.

Um, but the thing that he was saying was, uh, he wrote this blog post that I, it's on his blog still it's called one currency to rule them all.

It was about one world currency, about creating a digital world currency.

And he tells a story on the podcast about why he, why he was interested in that, how he was interested and what, what happened.

So he was like him, um, I forgot who it was.

It was, it was him.

It was Philip Rosedale who started Second Life, which was by the way, like still to this, you know, basically Second Life to this day is probably the best.

Execution of a Metaverse.

Like they had like millions and millions of players, they lived their lives in there.

they formed relationships and marriages.

They had like, they have their own currency in their like - Is it, is it his own thing still?

I don't know if Second Life is officially like diet.

I don't know if it's still going, I'm not sure, but like at the time they had Linden bucks or whatever, Linden dollars, and was like a whole thing.

So him and Philip Rosedale were like interested in this.

And then it was, there's a famous VC, I'm forgetting the name now, but he tells the story about a famous VC.

And they used to meet once a week and they would talk about like, okay, how are we going to build this world currency?

and they were like, here's what it needs to do, and all the things that Bitcoin eventually did, they're like, it needs to have this, it needs to have this.

And then what they did was they went to the lobby conference, which if you know is like this 100, 150 % conference.

you break out in a little group.

I went to the last year of the lobby conference.

It was awesome, it was all internet OGs.

It was so cool. So they were at one, I guess, and their little breakout conversation was about this.

They were like, hey, I think there's a need for this.

And he bought the domain blue .com.

BLUE .com. He was going to launch it.

It was going to be called Blue.

And the dollar is green, and this currency was going to be blue.

And they had the whole thing sort of planned out, I guess.

But they were like, they couldn't figure out if this ever becomes a thing, the target on our back is going to be too crazy.

We can't do this. And the problem was, they were like, we've already talked about it at lobby.

And he's like, once we realized this thing would need an immaculate conception, that it would need to be totally anonymous or sadonomous, like a start and nobody could know who did it, they're like, we blew it.

We set it at the lobby conference.

There's 14 other people now who have heard us be interested in this.

And when the white paper came out years later, Philip called him and was like, dude, I can't believe you.

Like you cut me out.

No way. He's like, have you seen Bitcoin?

And he's like, yeah.

He's like, that's you, right?

He's like, no it's not me.

He's like, I thought it was you.

If any of the, if it was either of the two of us, be you, you're way more technical.

He's like, no, it's not me, who the hell is this?

How cool is that? That is awesome.

That is one of the great, greatest stories I've heard.

It's weird that multiple groups of people start working on the same thing independently at the same time, isn't it?

And they had the same conclusion that it had to be an anonymous creator.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, what the other crazy thing you saw this Jack Dorsey like is Jack Dorsey, that was the stupidest thing, man, like, there was some compelling evidence, But then what they did was they completely like spoiled the broth by putting in there Jack loves wearing Japanese clothing like as like examples of why he is Satoshi.

Do you know what? I mean?

I don't think that was that bad.

What's wrong with that?

there was like multiple pieces of compelling it's supposed to be compelling evidence that says like Jack wore a who is Satoshi t -shirt to the to the Olympics like it was just like ridiculous stuff No, I thought it was uh, I thought I thought it was ridiculous.

You didn't think it was ridiculous Uh, first I did because I was like jack dorsey.

No way uh You know There's this deck, right?

Do you read the deck there's this actual full slide deck about it There was a bunch of good points.

There was a bunch of good points about it What I think is I didn't know I did not know that jack was like In those early cipherpunk communities back when he was like 15 years old or something like that You know what I mean?

Like he was actually in that like whoever started this thing Was likely in that really small community of about I don't know 1500 people that were on this early mailing list.

Well, he was and he would he was I didn't know that so that was kind of New information was okay interesting Other things that I didn't know so there was like There was like a lot of the timing things with when he was starting Twitter and when he was like Basically the timing of when Satoshi was active and then when Twitter took off and then when he stopped when he left Twitter And he was like I'm excited about new things, and then And then all of a sudden he tweeted like, someone needs to create this thing or that thing.

And it was like right when the Satoshi was creating that thing.

Like there was all these like weird coincidence in timeline.

But then there was other stuff where he was like, look at the code here, that sounds like Jack's favorite restaurant in San Francisco, or Jack said he wants to be by the U S mint for his office, which Twitter was therefore and I just thought it was a huge reaches.

There are huge reaches.

And I don't think it's true, uh, but I thought, wow, this is a lot of stuff about Jack Dorsey that I didn't really realize.

And like, you know, for example, um, you know, one of the, uh, I think the, the biggest reaches of the thing where they would look at like strings of the transaction IDs or whatever.

And it'd be like, see, this says, um, D two MP dude, in two mint Plaza.

That was his address.

All right, I don't think just cause D two MP showed up in the middle of aervatives.

of a string doesn't mean that, uh, that he's saying, you know, one dude, SF, one DSF, that's right.

You know, it's like those were the ones where it's like, okay, I don't think that, that stuff is, uh, that stuff is true.

It's like trying to like figure out if Tupac still alive.

Like, did you hear what that he said?

She took shot me. Like he said it in the song.

You know what I mean?

I would definitely go read this deck.

The deck was very entertaining and it was presented in a very like serious way and I just appreciate the seriousness that which somebody took, uh, took this, uh, this research, um, By the way, that tube in Plaza, that's where we were for the dinner.

And so I was like, and there was the same day that the thing dropped.

I was like, Hey, this is maybe I'm the crazy.

Maybe your Satoshi.

That should be the takeaway.

I'm not a take away.

I've got one. I've got one more thing for you.

Go to geezos .com. So CHSI, CH, sorry, start over, geezos .com.

All right. I spelled it all wrong and you still got there.

What is it? Is it chisos?

Is this Spanish? Chisos boots you see the boots incredible craftsmanship.

I see Cowboy boots.

Yeah, so I own a pair of these boots.

I have no steak in this company.

Nothing I just think it's cool.

I and the the founder is part of like I Recently became friends with him, but it's part of my friend group in Austin He was like friends with Nick and I met him once a choice to Nick His name is Will Roman and this company bought a thousand dollar pair of cowboy boots I think 500 500 or 600 dollar pair a year, like a while ago, and this company, he owns the whole thing, and he was explaining to me we were hanging out, and I was like, dude, this is a good story, can I talk about it, so he gave me permission, but the company does low seven figures in revenue, and the way it started was he worked

in tech, like at a normal tech company, quits his job, moves to Mexico to learn, because Mexico's where a lot of great boots are made, spends years there, learning the craftsmanship.

Like, apprenticing?

Yeah, apprenticing, he's like, I wanna learn how boots are made, and I want to make bespoke boots.

That was his dream was to make bespoke boots.

He's a Texas guy. He kind of looks like a cowboy.

And he quits his tech job, moves, learns how to make boots, creates this company called Chizos, and he was telling me the other day, he didn't say this, but I got this read on him, that he's a little burnt out.

He was like, the company's growing 10 to 15 percent a year.

I own the whole thing, and he was expanding his vision.

He was like, there's Tkova's, which are kind of cheap, but they sell hundreds of millions of dollars for the boots, it's a startup.

And then there's like bespoke boot makers who are just mom and pop stores.

He's like, I want to be a little bit closer.

I want to be closer to bespoke than to Kova.

I don't want to be cheap.

Like I need the highest quality and I refuse to sacrifice that quality, but I want to build this into a huge company.

And I was like, do you spend on marketing?

Do this and he's like, no, we don't do anything.

I just make the greatest boots and I Google the boot name, Chizos boots, and like Reddit and all these other companies or all these other like forums are talking about, this is the best boot on earth.

And I see all this, it starts formulating in my brain and I'm like, this is it my friend, you have it, like the hard part is done.

Like surely there's some type of nerds out there that could help make this company big.

But I thought I'd bring this to you because I criticized the D to C world a bit when I have that criticism often about this world and how there's not enough emphasis on product creation and story and things like this.

And it's mostly just arbitrage.

And I came across this and I was like, that's an example of something that I think, And I think, I don't know anything about this world, but I think could be blown up and be made pretty huge.

Yeah. This is really cool.

By the way, great branding by this guy.

So like - Dude, hands everything good.

Go to their website.

It's very clean and like this sawed in half video.

Like what I like about this is, A, I love that story of moving to Mexico to like apprentice and actually like learn the craft.

And I just kind of want that to be like a TV show.

But the second thing is sometimes the people who are really good at making the product, can't show it.

There's a little story.

So Ben's brother bought into a restaurant or like help co -found a restaurant where they live in Phoenix.

So we go there for lunch and we're there and it's his brother and it's, and I was like, so why did you do this?

He's like, well, the chef is amazing.

He's like recognized as like one of the best chefs.

So he's this great chef.

He's like, I just really believe in this guy's product.

And I thought we could turn it into a business.

The problem is when you partner with these artists, sometimes they don't a know anything about how to like convey that or show that and b they just won't compromise like price or quality or whatever.

There's uncompromising.

He's like, bro, like we need to, um, like we need to make this, like we're so expensive compared to everybody else, like that's a, but nobody really, uh, uh, is it we're so expensive and that's hurting our business.

And I was talking to him and he's like, he's like, for example, he holds up these tortillas.

He's like, you know, these tortillas, like these tortillas costs this much.

I forgot what it was like, whatever.

Let's call it. This is two bucks is $2 a tortilla.

Most people get their tortilla.

It's like 20 cents.

And I was like, well, why?

And he's like, because he demands that every morning we get fresh tortillas that are trucked in from Mexico.

And I was like, wow.

That's awesome. Why don't you tell anybody that he's like, what?

I'm like, yeah, you should like tell people the, we truck our tortillas in fresh from Mexico every morning.

I gladly paid $2. if I knew that, your problem isn't that the chef is not willing to compromise and cut costs.

Your problem is that you're not marketing this in a way that actually tells the story of why this food tastes better than anyone else and why this is fresher, why this is more authentic, why this is better, why this is higher priced.

And so that became like a little, like one of our core things of my little team, me Ben Diego, we talk about this all the time.

We go, we call it the tortilla principle.

It's like when we look at businesses that we're either gonna buy or own businesses.

It's like, where are we trucking in tortillas fresh from Mexico?

And are we doing a good job of telling that story?

And almost always the answer is no.

Like, the things you do in your business that are like the blood, sweat, and tears to do something great, you take for granted because they just seem like table steaks for you, and you're not even telling the world about why you do that or what you do there, why you're different than anybody else, why you've gone the extra mile there.

Yeah, Joe Sugarman, one of my favorite copyrighters, he was like, I used to sell so many of these particular watches, I forget which company, he was the Casio maybe.

And they were like we, and he was like, we make this out of this aluminum, or they were like, the Casio was explaining to Joe Sugarman, the copywriter, how they make their watch.

Cause he was like, tell me everything.

So I learned. And he was like, yo, we use a space, the space grade aluminum to make this watch.

And he was like, wait, so this aluminum is strong enough for spaceships?

He's like, yeah, but like every watch company ever uses the exact same stuff.

He was like, so? And then they were like, And then this quartz movement is special for this reason.

But again, every company uses that.

He's like, space age, aluminum, precise quartz movement.

And that became, that is what sold a lot of Casio watches.

In Casio, the makers, it's called the knowledge complex. When you know too much about it that you think that that's not interesting.

And Joe Sugarman, an outsider, a copywriter was like, no, this is so interesting.

And that's what someone needs to do.

Google, Will Roman, that's the founder.

Dude, look at his website.

You started your story with, this guy worked in tech, had an everyday job.

Wasn't perfect. Quit his job, moved to Mexico for three years to learn the art of boot making.

Guess what? Not on his website.

I know. But three years of life, three years of marketing collateral that he's not using.

That's 1 ,000 days of his life that he's not putting on the website.

Even if you click down the more tab, it's like more our story, you go to my store.

It's like true, small business.

Hi, I'm will. I'm a hardworking guy passionate about crashmanship.

Guess what? Everybody says that.

Guess what everybody hasn't done?

Moved to Mexico for three years and apprenticed in this boot factory.

I was like, I was like, Will, do you use Reddit?

He goes, uh, I don't really know how to work here.

I go, let me show you something.

If you Google, What's the most comfortable cowboy boot Reddit?

The top post, someone asked that and chisels, the top line, it says, this is the most comfortable boot I've ever worn and there's 117 comments agreeing with that top post and he's like oh, that's awesome He like saw that I was like are you insane man?

This is it. You have it.

This guy doesn't have a tik -tok Is that right?

I don't think so. Does he not know that like every niche?

Nostalgic profession is now like the coolest kid on tik -tok like if you plant like Beats or something like that.

If you have a beat farm, there's like Victorian porn where it's like people like very like You know like old doll dresses like you know what I mean?

Like there's like the weirder the better and the more physical real world the better go look at epic gardening right like if he wants to do this like go go teach people about this because show them the process show them how the factory looks like show them Cutting a boot in half like stuff like that I think would be would be just fire on on tick -tock and I only brought it up because I this story was amazing I also wanna go on record as this might be another of our feather in the caps.

Where we called it moments.

Because I do love their boots, it's so good.

And I love meeting people who 80 % of the work is done.

This other part, a lot of people can help you and get it done.

By the way, definitely not that 80 % of the work is done, because actually 80 % of the work is the marketing and operations, but they did the one hard thing that others aren't really willing to do.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

I mean, it's a great product, like the product is good.

We did this in my Sushi restaurant.

So the restaurant that we started, we started as an online, a virtual restaurant.

But before Dordash and Uber Eats, but we create a website, we would drive people to the website and you would order sushi and we would make it in a commissary kitchen and we'd deliver it to you in under 20 minutes.

And so we had our menu and we'd meet with Dan Ariely, do you know who that is?

The author. Yeah, he wrote this book called Predictably Irrational.

So he's a behavioral economist.

And he just happened, he was a teacher at Duke, we were Duke students, so we get in with him and normally companies pay him, whatever, six figure, seven figure contracts to consult with him.

He's willing to meet with us cause we're just like three dumbasses that we're at school.

And we go, Dan, we wanna drive more sales.

You're the guy, what should we do?

Show me your menu. We show him the menu.

He goes, oh, okay, you wanna make more money?

Um, you want more people to buy from you?

Raise your prices. Go what he goes.

Uh, but like, you know, we thought we could make it more accessible, more affordable.

That was the whole pitch.

We won the business plan competition by telling people, we're going to make sushi more accessible, more affordable.

He goes, yeah, but when somebody looks at this, they just see cheap sushi.

Um, so guess what people don't want, which is the worst sushi?

Cheap sushi is the worst type of sushi, exactly.

So he's like, that's not what you want.

And he goes. And so we, and because we were, the reason I bring this up, we were an online restaurant.

So we could literally A -B test.

Now we didn't have the tooling, we weren't like smart enough to even know what an A -B test was.

I didn't even know the phrase, but we would literally switch it by day.

So we would do day one, we would smell Menu A, day two, we would show Menu B.

And we would look at the number at the end of the day and be like, how do we do?

And so we raised prices.

And not only did revenue go up, but conversion rate went up.

So we actually converted more cost rates and more money per customer.

It's like, oh shit, okay.

Dan, what else could we do?

He goes, sushi and the wine industry, I forgot the name he had for it, but he goes, they create their own language around their products.

And we go, but that's why it's so inaccessible, I don't understand what any of that stuff means.

And he goes, exactly.

But if you do know what it means, you feel smart and you feel like an insider.

And we were like, what?

He goes, so we tested three, three models of language.

So we had what we had before, which was what we thought the accessible version, right?

The Philadelphia roll, salmon and cream cheese wrapped up tastes great, right?

That was like, literally how we used to write.

And then we have the next one, which was language.

He's like, same Joe Sugerman principle.

He's like, um, do you freeze your salmon?

And we're like, no.

Awesome. Fresh never frozen Atlantic hand hand caught salmon or something like that.

Right. Same roll, same salmon, more words, boom.

Conversion rate up.

Oh God it works. This is true.

And then we just kept doing the same thing with the whole menu.

And it showed me two things.

One, man, restaurants should really A .B.

test their menus. And I don't think they do a good enough job of this.

And B, the same thing can be sold just with better words, with better marketing and dramatically change your business.

It's not just something you slap on at the end and that's good enough.

It's like, no, you will get this multiplier on success Based on how well you do this one thing.

It's not just like a 10 % improvement It was like a 2x 3x type of improvements you could get by stacking these on top of each other What was your cute way of explaining cream cheese?

I don't know. I think we might have just not even not even mentioned it.

Just put it at the end And a smooth, you know, the other stuff Yeah, I remember like and the funny thing was with salmon it was like we were so excited about fresh never frozen salmon, it was like our calling card.

Not like those other guys, frozen, frozen salmon.

And we used to go in further, we don't even have a freezer in our restaurant, that's how fresh this is.

And then we met the chef and he was like, you need to freeze the salmon, it kills the bacteria.

We were like, oh shit, sorry.

Whoops. Well, and also - From flash frozen salmon to kill all of, all of the bugs.

And like, all, like, have you ever seen the documentaries when they when the Japanese catch the salmon that they're gonna use they drop it into the boat that has it like it's a freezer like they freeze them like No, Flash frozen.

Yeah, so like I remember like learning of that.

I'm like oh shit. Everything I've been told to is a lie Um, all right.

That's it. That was a good pod.

What do you think? Yeah, I mean this was a good it's a good catch up, it's fun to find hang out fun to talk and I feel like I Don't know if other people feel this way, but And just debriefing interesting people we met and the way their mind works or the little schemes they got into, is kind of my favorite thing.

Well, I stole it from you where I actually started writing, like I'll write notes right after I meet someone, even if you don't refer back to it, it's pretty good, it's good.

All right, that's it, that's the pod.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no day's off.

on the road let's travel never looking back Hey Sean here i want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvie story one of the great ad men he said remember the consumer is not a moron she's your wife you wouldn't lie to your own wife so don't lie to mine and i love that you guys you're my family you're like my wife and i won't lie to you either so i'll tell you the truth for every company i own right now six companies.

I use Mercury for all of them.

So I'm proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across my personal account, my business accounts.

And anytime I start a new company, it's my first move.

I go open up a Mercury account.

I'm very confident in recommending it because I actually use it.

I've used it for years.

It is the best product on the market.

So if you want to be like me and 200 ,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury .com and apply in minutes.

And remember Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank, banking services provided by choice financial group and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC.

Alright, back to the episode.

[The Art of Contrarian Thinking and Unconventional Success]-[The Boldest Ideas We Heard This Week]

📋 Summary

Embracing the Contrarian Mindset: Lessons from Unconventional Thinkers

1. The Power of "Network Effects" in Life Choices

2. Ocean Tech and the "Under the Nose" Opportunity

3. The "Tortilla Principle": Marketing the Unseen

4. The "Hardcore Nerd" Approach to Timing

5. The Virtue of Amusement

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Art of Contrarian Thinking and Unconventional Success]-[The Boldest Ideas We Heard This Week]

📋 Summary

Embracing the Contrarian Mindset: Lessons from Unconventional Thinkers

1. The Power of "Network Effects" in Life Choices

2. Ocean Tech and the "Under the Nose" Opportunity

3. The "Tortilla Principle": Marketing the Unseen

4. The "Hardcore Nerd" Approach to Timing

5. The Virtue of Amusement

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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