All right, can we talk about the stock market going down because I had to yell at a bunch of people.
I feel like I could rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like a days off on a road.
So basically the market dropped what, 5% this week and in our little circle jerk world, it felt like the world was ending.
So I guess the Dow had its worst day in two years.
SB 500 is down about 5%, so far this week as of time of recording.
And I think the tech stocks did a bit worse.
So Nvidia's down 12%, Google, you know, whatever, a couple of the tech stocks, which is more, maybe where we are at in a bubble did worse.
They gave back a lot of the gains that they've been having so far this year.
And so it was a bad day for the markets.
And by the way, I wake up, I wake up, but I think some people on the East Coast, you're on the East Coast, a couple of people in the group chat on the East Coast.
I do either says one of two things.
It says the world is ending with four or five likes on it in our group chat, or it says we're going to Valhalla boys.
It has four or five likes on it every morning.
And I really, I don't even check the market.
I just look at that text and I know directly is the arrow up or down, but it kind of gets to you that way of thinking.
It bothers me. I had to yell at my partner Joe because he just calls me, are you freaking out about this?
I'm like, freaking out about what?
He's like, the markets are just going down like crazy.
Like should we sell everything?
Like, what do we do? Like, my reaction was just like, this is expected.
Like, if you just buy index funds like I do, like there are ups and downs, but in general over five, 10, 20 year periods, you're expected to do that to go up and down.
And he just like freaked and I, and it made me angry.
Like it made me angry because I was like, I wasn't stressing, but now I am.
And this is not healthy.
And that's what happened.
Okay. So I had a similar experience.
Ben calls me. And he's like, dude, what are your thoughts on like the market?
First of all, are we only going to do calls when the market crashes about the market?
It's not a topic we normally discuss.
Okay. So first of all, I have no thoughts.
It reminds me of that skit back in the, the Dave Chabell skit where he was like, what is John Rool thing?
What's John? What's the event?
He's calling the line. What's, yeah, let's get John on line.
Let's talk about the market.
The second thing he was like, he goes, yeah, I, we should probably do nothing, but, you know, I did think like maybe we should do XYZ.
And he laid out some like new plan.
And the funny thing is I have been in a mode where I've just been trying to, I've understood that one of the most powerful things you could do is take a simple idea very seriously.
I'm actually going to do a whole episode on this, taking a simple idea seriously.
But in general, picking a few things that matter and then just simply doing them as well as possible and reinforcing it.
So I actually do a thing which is, I wrote out for the year, I said, here's the three big things, big shifts, I always call it, like three shifts I'm making this year.
I'm making this shift, this shift, and this shift.
Those are the three things that need to change in my life.
The rest of things are going great.
I don't need to talk about the things that are going great.
And every single week I write down that shift again in our Slack, I retype the exact sentence.
And then I say, what I'm doing today had how that ties to that shift.
And if I am going to do something today that doesn't tie to that shift, I just simply don't do it or with very rare exceptions to it.
So I've been doing this for a while now.
And I told Ben, I was like, Ben, so remember that thing we've been saying over and over again, but like, what we're doing this year, why we're doing it, why it's the right plan.
Did we need to add a disclaimer, which was unless the stock market crashes and then we're just going to throw all the shit out the window and suddenly change our decision making about all the things that we're doing.
And it sounds ludicrous to say it like that, but that's where his mind went in the moment.
And I don't blame him because my mind used to go there too.
And I've developed a set of rules for myself through making horrible, expensive mistakes, which is fundamentally when markets crash, just I've to assess like, A, it is the wolf at the door.
Do I actually have an existential crisis?
If so, okay, I'll make a shift my attention to this and change.
But like, if that's the case, it's because I somehow over levered or like really stretched myself to thin or like, I've made a huge bet that I should have never made in the first place.
So is the wolf at the door?
No. Okay, if the wolf is not at the door, simply do not react.
Just do nothing for 30 to 90 days and then see where you're left.
Hey, real quick, you know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual million dollar businesses, made their first million off an idea they heard on the show.
That is crazy, that's why we want to do the show.
And we want to see more of that.
One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, is there some kind of idea, database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about?
Well, the answer is finally yes, the fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50 plus business ideas and put them into a business idea database.
It's totally free. You go to click hubspot.com slash MFF and get the database for you.
All right. Now, back to the show.
Did you have reacted five years ago?
I can tell you how I did react five years ago, making mistakes.
So when COVID, actually even before COVID, I remember at the end of maybe 2019, 2020, we had just sold our company.
And my cousin who's a hedge fund guy and really all I know is like, this is my cousin, he's a hedge fund guy and our whole family thinks he's the smart stock market guy.
You know, people like in your family, when you don't really understand what people do, you just boil them down, you just categorize them into, well, he's the doctor.
So no matter what my issue is, let's call the doctor.
He's a hard doctor. I got a foot issue.
It doesn't matter. That's the doctor.
I'm the tech guy. It's like whether your router doesn't work or you need a, you're making a start of investment, just call Sean.
Well, this is the stock guy and he was like, you know, it's been a long bull market.
I'm moving business in this.
And so I went to cash. And I was like, yeah, you know, longest bull market in history.
I'm going to shift some of my allocation around because I got this one hot tip from my cousin, the stock market.
It's not funny how when you phrase it as wonderfully as we're in the longest bull market ever.
You're like, I don't know any of the evidence, but that was a great line.
I'm in exactly, exactly.
He told me something about a dead cat bounce.
Damn, that sounds fancy.
What is that? I'm googling.
It's like, I'm making decisions off a Wikipedia article.
I just read like bad things are happening.
Am I like when COVID happened?
I'm, you know, it's like, I don't know, it's global pandemic.
The world is ending. And people are talking about L shape recoveries or W shape recoveries or whatever the hell, like V shape recoveries.
I don't know what's going on.
I'm drawing on my notepad trying to figure out, oh, that means stock market goes up or it stays down.
And by the way, you know what it ended up being?
A K shape recovery. The letter they didn't even talk about at the time.
I was just saying all the smart money in a train, a K shape recovery where, you know, main street, main street went down.
It's got bogged down by inflation and assets soared.
And people were like, K, like, doesn't know.
There's multiple lines on that chart.
I guess. Let's hop up and down when we talk about like flattening the curve.
I'm like, I literally have to draw like an axis of like, wait, so what is flattening?
Like what does that mean?
By the way, the thing isn't drawing it out and trying to understand it.
That actually is the smart thing to do.
It's taking you know, poorly informed action, action was the mistake.
And so I ended up doing a bunch of things that I really never should have done.
I sold a bunch of things thinking that that was being safe and conservative, but it was actually a poor decision.
Being general, the number of poor decisions I've made simply from reacting versus responding.
And I define a reaction as making a decision in the moment based on an emotion that I'm feeling usually fear or greed, responding, being I have let the emotion cool off.
I've let that settle. And I am now choosing a decision that I'm going to make based off of some sort of logical rationale that I could write down and I could write down the counter argument for it.
And I want to look at my argument for and my argument against one of them wins.
And so anyways, now that's the short version of my current, my current for us is which I do not claim to be foolproof, but it's just a improvement over overdown mistakes I made in the past.
I found this great chart.
I think it was like starting in 1990 or 94, this chart breaks it down to if you missed the top gaining days of a market, what would your portfolio be like versus what would your portfolio be like if you just set it and forget it?
And it was something like, what was this?
I think the starting number was $10,000.
And so it was like, if you missed the 30 best days, you would have only $30,000.
If you missed the, which is roughly 83% less than if you just set it.
So if you just set it and forget it, you would have 181.
If you missed the 30 best days, you would have 30 grand.
And then if you missed the 10 best days, you would have 83 grand.
You know what I mean? Like you would, like I see this chart, like if you missed it.
Now I posted that chart and people are like, yeah, well, now do that chart with missing the worst days.
And I'm like, well, you'd have way more money.
But like if you have some magic balls that I can tell me, like, you know, we'll get that pole vault or guy with the huge balls.
Maybe he could tell me like, where is the worst day that I could time it and we're good.
You know what I mean? But like, like tell me where I'm going to die and I'll know not to go there.
Yeah. Like that's type of situation.
And so I'm team like, set it and forget it.
I also think that you have to look at VTI, the Vanguard Tourland X Fund.
We're still up like eight or 10% year to date, even with this little crash.
So like I still feel good.
Okay. Great. Good segment.
And then I'm going to talk about the stock market or it reminds me of like any time a, you know, a tech VC, suddenly is like a foreign policy expert or is like pandemic expert or whatever.
You know, I'm an, I'm a novice when it comes to investing outside of my realm, which is basically my realm is starting businesses or investing in private startups.
Those are the two things I actually, you know, have spent enough time in to feel like I know what I'm talking about.
Anything beyond that. I'm better off sticking to a, you know, maybe 20 type of strategy where I just just do just avoid huge mistakes and don't try to beat everybody.
Yeah. And if you look at how many hedge funds beat the market, it's something like five percent of them.
And so these are companies that have thousands of nerds just sitting around a computer to try and like beat the index and they still like the vast majority of them struggle.
And so that like whenever I see that stat, I'm like, yeah, don't try that.
All right. Dude, I got to ask you about the Olympics.
So you're my Olympics guy and I am famously not an Olympics guy.
I, I like watching them to be honest with you.
I just think the Olympics are an insane, an insane sport.
But I emailed you as part of my Friday newsletter thing and I was like, dude, what should I be watching for?
And you gave me a couple of tips, couple of storylines that made the Olympics.
I don't know, 10 times more interesting for me.
And I want to talk to you about a couple of the things that you, you brought up starting with this 1500 meter race.
How good was that? A race I did not even know I cared about.
I didn't even honestly know this event existed.
But can you set this up because you gave me storyline I needed to really care about this and it was incredible.
All right. So going into the 1500 meter.
So the 1500 meter is a 109 meter short of a mile.
So roughly 15 seconds of a mile.
So a really fast mile, let's say is four minutes, a good 1500 is three minutes, 44 seconds.
Going into the race, there was two clear favorites.
This guy named Yakup Engelbritzen.
So basically this guy, I call him the Justin Bieber of Track and Field.
So he was raised by his father and like, I think he has seven siblings of which two or three others are also elite runners, not as good as him, but elite runners.
And so he's raised in this family with his dad who's very disciplinarian and he's also his coach and he's like, they're raised to be great runners.
And in Norway, where he's from, they have a TV show.
So they're almost like a reality TV stars also in Norway because these three brothers are wonderful at running.
So this guy is the best. He's been the best since he was like 18.
He has, I think the second fastest or third fastest mile time of all time.
He has the World Record and the two mile.
The problem with them, he's kind of a pretty boy.
He's got these like cute tattoos all over his body and all the runners are a little bit arrogant and cocky.
You have to be like that in order to be one of the best athletes in the world.
But his cockiness comes off as more arrogance.
And it also kind of sucks because he's like this guy who's kind of been the best since he was young.
And so he's not easy to root for.
You know, he's like the guy who's had it all and he is the man, but he kind of acts like the man.
Now the other guy, he was going to race against this guy named Josh Kerr.
I've been lucky enough to meet Josh in Austin one time because I was friends with his manager.
Was this, was this the guy you asked to see his calves or to touch his calves or something?
Yeah. Yes. Yes. The, so Josh, I think he's from Wales.
I forget. No, Scotland.
Sorry. Is it Scotland? Whatever it is, it's part of the UK.
And so they run under British flag.
And so he is more of a silly quirky, like he's got like the British, like, shithead kind of attitude.
That's very likable. And interestingly, if the reason I talk about his calves, unlike a lot of the runners, he's still a really skinny guy.
He's not as skinny as the other runners.
And so we kind of sticks out, but he's like the man and leading up to this race, they've been talking trash to each other constantly.
And track appeal is usually a gentleman's sport.
No one talks trash and that kind is one of the race and widespreads.
Boring, they talk trash going into this race.
And so it was like framed as Josh and Yaka versus each other.
Josh is typically slower, but he all, he usually wins races because when in championship racing, it's not always the fastest person who wins.
It's the person who shows up that day and has the best tactics and comes through in the end.
Because oftentimes they go sort of slow.
And then the second half of the race is really fast.
So it's typically not who's fastest.
It's just who performs that day.
So we go into this race. And it's just those two.
We think that's what's going to happen.
It comes down to the last 200 meters, which is a half a lap.
So the last half a lap, it's setting up exactly like we thought where Yaka is in front winning the race because he's the faster runner and Josh Kerr behind him waiting to kick and beat him.
And Josh takes off and he's about to get Yaka.
And out of nowhere, this American Cole Hocker who's got the slowest time of most all of the other eight runners in the field comes out of nowhere and he wins.
And not only does he win with a hundred meters left, that's the last straightaway.
He's boxed in between Josh and Yaka.
And you see him try to take off and Jacob or Yaka is kind of black in him a little bit.
So he kind of pushes him a little bit, but he loses his momentum.
And that's really hard and running because accelerating is a hard part.
So when you lose the momentum, typically that's your one and only chance to do it.
Somehow Yaka goes just to the right a little bit.
So Cole Hocker can slip right through him on the inside rail and he beats him.
And not only does he beat him, Yaka fades to fourth, which is like insane.
Josh Kerr gets second and this guy Cole.
He doesn't just win, he runs the Olympic record, so the fastest time ever in the 1500 meter.
And he runs something like the seventh fastest time in the 1500 meter ever.
And he crushes his PR and it was one of the best races I've ever seen.
That was a great summary.
A couple of the things that I thought were fascinating about this.
So when he was doing the trials and the like the semis, like basically leading in, that guy Yaka had this strategy where he was so cocky, he would basically just start at the very back.
So the race starts, he doesn't really care.
He lets every single runner get the effect ahead of him.
And he would just hang back at the back and then like kind of the second lap, third lap, he would pass everybody and he would win the qualifiers.
And it was just a cocky thing to do, but it was also effective because he like he knew he could push the pace and he just didn't want to burn too much energy right at the very start.
The goal of the semis leading up, it's to win in qualify using the least amount of effort.
Right, exactly. And in the semis, him and Josh were going and it looked like at the end, they both kind of were feeling each other out.
It looked, it was the first time running felt like boxing where you could see, oh, they're kind of measuring each other's distance, their power and they're getting a feel for each other.
You could tell even in the semis, there was almost a moment where Yaka won, but Josh kind of realized like, if I had pushed this last 50 meters, I think I could have taken them, but I don't want to show them the full bag right now.
They did something that was very controversial, not controversial, but it's very, it's part of the story in running, which is when you are winning a race or you're at the end of the race, if you look around to see who's around you, that's like a cocky move.
And what you do is you see Yaka turn his head as if he's looking behind him.
It's like, I see you behind me.
And that's like the ads to the story, which is always fun.
Yeah, yeah, the runner's insult.
And so we, and so in the final, you what you were saying was amazing because he did the exact opposite.
He starts the race immediately in first place.
This guy, Yaka goes faster than anybody has planned in the first two laps faster than even afterwards.
I was reading some interviews.
It's a party. Fade so hard.
He's like, dude, I went way too hard at the start accidently.
Like I didn't pace myself properly.
I just got out, you know, kind of like the loss myself in the moment, lost some surgery.
You just went too fast at the beginning, pushed a pace.
And it was basically that part you talked about where the American dude tried to do to pass him, got kind of pushed back.
It looked like it was a complete wrap for him at that point.
It looked like there was no way you can get bumped back and then pass him again, but it ended up working out, which I thought was amazing.
If you haven't seen that one, go to YouTube and just type men's 1500 meter, watch the six minute clip on the NBC sports channel.
It is like straight out of a sports movie type of thing.
You know, like if you're an American, you watch that.
It is super inspiring to see this guy was a complete underdog.
Nobody was even talking about him.
It was just a question of which of these two other guys.
And then this little, the little engine that could basically pass them all at the very end runs the race of his life.
I thought that was amazing.
And the best part, dude, Paris has killed it with us, Olympics.
The best part is they have this bell right at the finish line of all the events.
And when you win an event, you walk over to the bell and you ring it.
And he goes over and he rakes us the bell.
And it was just like a really cool moment.
So like I was all about it.
I was screaming so loud I woke my kid up from a nap.
I was so pumped from this.
So yeah, I'm happy. I've been a distance running fan for years.
It's not the most popular sport because it's not that exciting.
I'm happy this existed.
It's good for the sport.
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Okay. So I have a couple other winners and losers I want to go through with you.
The winner for sure, Cole Hacker and the 1500 meter race.
I'm going to do another winner here.
Mixed relay. Another race.
I didn't even know existed.
It's new. Did you watch this?
So historically, America's greatest event is the four by four relay, which is a quarter of a mile, one lap for people each running one lap.
We've almost always been the best.
The mix relay, I think it's a weird event.
I think it's only lasted for two Olympics.
This might be the only second Olympics that we've done it.
And America, we got our ass kicked by was it Belgium?
No, the Netherlands. So the Netherlands, sorry.
This was a hilarious race because the way that the mix relay works is two guys to girls and they alternate.
So it's baton. You're you know, you're handing off the baton.
The American guy gets off to a good start.
The woman for the for the American team is standing in the wrong spot.
Did you see this? She was standing 30 meters forward.
And at the last second, the official was like, yo, what are you doing?
Wait, you see all the other people like in her leg of the relay, they're all standing literally like 20 meters back.
And she just spaced, she just spaced during the Olympics.
It didn't pay attention to where she was supposed to stand.
It's like if you lined up for a kickoff at an NFL game and one dude was just at the 30 yard line and everyone else is standing somewhere else completely into it.
That made no sense. The last second she gets into the zone where she's allowed to be.
So she didn't get de-cured, which would have been horrible.
But then the crazy part was this woman at the end.
The Femke Bull. Femke Bull is awesome.
Femke Bull is awesome. Femke Bull shoes.
I am thrilled by this athlete that I didn't even know existed 24 hours ago.
Femke Bull. If you haven't watched her, you got to go watch this woman run.
She just dominated the US in the last leg.
Is this Dutch runner who looks like she's not even expanding any effort whatsoever.
She's like AI, dude. She looked like fucking chat GPT grew legs and ran effortlessly ran the rest of this race when the rest of the humans were like sweating and trying.
Femke Bull, dude, I feel like in another life that would be your dream girl, Femke Bull.
I love her. I love her. She is my dream girl.
She's going to be, so she's like this life.
Hey, Femke. If you're listening.
She's a 400 meter hurdle specialist and she's going to race this woman named Sidney McLaughlin and Sidney is going to kick her ass.
But Femke's going to get second and it's still going to be a fun race.
That's my prediction. Wow.
Okay. Fighting words. I'm like a half citizen of the Netherlands after watching that race.
I'm in on that one. That's another big winner for me.
That race and specifically Femke Bull was a huge winner.
Can I do some losers of the Olympics?
Let me do one more winner.
This is a relatively new thing.
Starting in 2016, I think, in Rio, something like that, the Olympics did something cool.
There's a bunch of refugee athletes.
People who fled Iran, there's a wrestler who fled Iran because he was protesting and he fled.
He can't compete for Iran anymore.
There's a bunch of Syrian athletes, things like that.
What the Olympics do is they put these guys into this team.
I forget what they call it, but it's basically the refugee team.
They come into the stadium with the Olympic flag and I always cry.
I get really emotional when I see these guys come in because this is like the definition of the Olympics for me.
They pick athletes who are refugees and who have a shot at doing good and hitting the standards.
Anyway, they have this one boxer who is from Cameroon and she had a flea Cameroon.
It's the first time that one of these refugee folks has ever meddled.
He's guaranteed to get third place at least, maybe second place in boxing.
Her match, I think, is tomorrow.
That's amazing. A lot of these kids, well, they're young men and women now, but they, for example, fled Cameroon or South Sudan because they were being recruited to be children's soldiers, things like this.
They walk across a country to flee and now they're in the Olympics.
That's my favorite part of the Olympics.
Do they walk in with the Olympic flag?
What are they wear when they're at the Olympics?
I haven't seen this. What was that?
Beautiful. Historically, they wear blue Olympic jerseys and so they, and when they come in to the stadium, they all look different, because they're Syrians and then there's Africans and they all look different.
It's really cool to see this group of people who are all from all over the world, but have similar troubled backgrounds and they all come together wearing this jersey and it's really cool to see that jersey kind of unite them.
Yeah, I love that. Anyway, there's just a surprising number or maybe they just stand out when you hear the story, but there's a surprising number of Olympic athletes who were either like foster kids or adopt this, basically the blind side story, right?
It's like, oh, there's their parents and you're like, oh, that doesn't look like their parents.
Interesting. What's the story here?
And it's like, well, they had this incredibly tough upbringing, but then it makes sense at the same time.
It's like, if you're looking for the people who are like extremely gritty and the people who are going to overcome the incredible number of obstacles that it takes to become the best of the world at something, it kind of makes sense that maybe you were forged in the fire that way.
I remember, like, I was an athlete, I remember being really nervous before races, but you wouldn't, you'd be a lot less nervous if you came from a really hard life because you'd be like, this is easy to, this is like, you know, like this is nothing compared to what I experience.
It's like today's a day off of my normal life.
I'm running for a time, not running away from dictators, right?
It's like different snakes.
Yeah. And so that's why I love sports.
And so who are the losers?
So we got another one. So the winner, another winner we're marking here is the team refugee team and my honorable winners are the parents who adopted several of these foster Olympians.
Yeah. That may be my future future career.
All right. So some of my losers here.
And of course, I say this playfully because they're Olympians.
They're not actually losers.
I'll give you the most controversial one first.
Simone Biles and in general, gymnastics.
Can I give you my case? Can I tag here?
Can I give you my case on why?
I believe. There's something about gymnastics that just creeps me out, dude.
There's something strange and joyless.
There's not only the controversy that happened where a lot of sexual assaults, stuff was going on with gymnastics, but gymnastics seems so high stress, dude.
Like when she fell on the beam and like, there goes, you know, four years, there's something just they have to do this fake smile while they're doing their routine, but it's like the they look like the Joker dude.
That's not a real smile.
I've seen real smiles. That is not a real smile.
It just seems incredibly stressed.
It seems like a joyless sport and she is so dominant, which is amazing, but there's something uncanny about it.
It's like watching an AI video where you're like, this looks beautiful, but there's something inhuman about what I'm watching here.
There's something joyless about gymnastics.
Dude, is it weird? You're judged in a sport on like your appearance and your smile.
Like I think that's weird.
I think that's weird. Like, wait, if one of these women didn't smile and just had like a plane face, I think she would get hurt.
Did you see our YouTube comments?
Everybody's judged on appearance.
Right now. It's weird that it's like sports.
I'm going to get ripped for everything I'm saying and mostly the way I look.
I think it's weird. I also dislike sports that are mostly judged.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. It's a gymnastics was a rough watch for me.
Also, can't tell the level of difficulty.
It all seems hard. They all look absolutely incredible and it's like, well, no, this one was clearly for tense of a point worse than that one.
And so it is kind of an unwatchable sport also because everything that all the athletes are doing looks super human to me.
Whereas a race, there's something just so pure and primal about a race.
It's like that person ran and won.
And I could tell who won and lost in gymnastics.
I really can't tell who wins and loses at all.
So in skateboarding, that's now an Olympic sport.
And I like to skate. You get points.
So there's like your regular stance, so you skate all the time.
And then you get more points if you do a switch, which is you put your not dominant foot in front.
You know, you switch around.
It's freaking weird. Like who cares which footed you are?
Like why do you get, well, like what if you're like, you know what I mean?
I always thought that's weird.
And it's similar with gymnastics.
Like if you use like, like who's to determine what's more challenging if you use like your less dominant hand to lead, I think it's weird.
That's why I'm not a fan of it.
But it takes the SATs with my left hand, do I get an extra hundred points?
So that doesn't make any sense.
Right. Or like with the dive patch.
So I think that's strange.
Okay. Other losers that I have this pole vault guy going viral.
Does he got a big slong? Yeah.
Okay. He picked the wrong contest.
Yeah, exactly. Dude, if I see another meme about this guy, I think I'm going to get a little bit of a guy.
Everybody had the same joke.
It's actually not even him.
It's everybody who made the same exact joke of like he actually won.
Come on. Basically, a guy went up on a pole vault.
He cleared the bar, but on his way down his dick hit the bar and it fell over.
Yeah. It sucks. That sucks.
No, he won. All right. Last one is a winner.
No, Eliles. What do you have to say about this?
The guy wins what seemed like the closest 100 meter race.
They didn't know even realize that he won until it was finally like the camera in like a 90 analysis realized that his chest hair crossed the line first.
Noah has a little bit of a problem.
He's an amazing athlete.
I think he's a great guy.
He's real cringe. So you'll have to, if you pay attention, he's going to be run the 200 meter, which is his better of head.
And he's probably going to win because he's great.
He's got a cringe problem, which is a, he's the, you know, what are they calling you?
I see the triple C. He's a three time, he's a three time champion.
The third medal is for a cringe.
Yeah. Yeah. So he's the cringe champion.
No, Eliles has a little bit of an issue with that.
Were you surprised, impressed by the finish?
I thought that he was going to get second.
Yeah, I was surprised that he won.
I was surprised that he won.
Here's another thing. I was surprised that the Jamaican guy who got second, you should look, look up how big that guy is.
People don't realize those.
These 100 meter runners and these 200 meter runners, they look jacked and ripped.
And they look jacked and ripped because they're like mostly naked and they're like flexing, right?
You always look better when you're like working out.
But if you look at their body weight and their height, they're pretty lean, small guys.
They're actually, it's like, you say bolt with six four or six five, but the only way, like 190 pounds, it's actually not that, not that huge of a guy.
The guy who from Jamaica just beats, just beats to a guy.
I was shocked that he did as good as he did.
He's like, you're saying bolts prosia, right?
He's like a training with him or something?
Well, Jamaica's a small ass country.
They all train with similar coaches.
So no, no, he's not good enough to be called his proje, but he's good.
Okay, fair enough, fair enough.
Okay, two questions for you.
Number one, do you believe that any of these guys are clean?
Yes. I tend to be optimistic.
I also thought Lance Armstrong was clean though, but I tend to be optimistic.
I think beating drug tests is fairly challenging, but I think they're clean.
Yeah. Right. Before you asked me for my investment advice, I advise you to look at my portfolio.
Yeah. Like I was like, I thought Lance was clean.
So you know, right. Okay, second question.
What's left to look forward to rest of the Olympics for me?
Because the Olympics are also a complete, the other loser is the Olympics programming, how impossible this is to follow and watch.
If you didn't tell me, Hey, here's three or four storylines that you should pay attention to that I could get emotionally invested in it and understand what I'm looking at when I look at it, which, which event to pay attention to.
This would have been impossible to even enjoy.
So what's left to enjoy for me?
So the men's 200 will be fun.
So here's a sleeper of an event.
There's a kid named Quincy.
There's a grown man named Quincy, Quincy Hall, who's in the 400 meter dash.
She potentially is going to win.
Then there's younger Quincy, who's a 16 year old kid who looks like a 16 year old kid.
You know, a lot of like 16 year old prodigy athletes, they don't look like children.
He looks like a child. He got fourth at the 400 meter trials in America.
You have to get top three in order to go the Olympics.
But he got fourth, which means he's put on a relay.
He's probably not good enough to be in the final four by four.
But if you watch the prelims for him, when America is in the four by four, watch this young kid Quincy.
He's 16 years old. He's like darling.
He's got the perfect type of charisma where he's composed.
But he still talks like a child.
That's going to be really exciting.
I think he'll be the youngest American track I feel the athlete ever to go to the Olympics.
My mind only has room. MkBull.
So I really, look at my notes here.
I've just put boxes around the name Femke Bull.
16 times as you've been talking, because I'm not really thinking of anything except for her.
I mean, she's good. She's going to get her ass beat in the 400 meter hurdles.
But she's a wonderful second place winner.
So watch Quincy in the four by four relay prelims.
He'll be a runner and that will be a really exciting.
Okay. One last question for you, a runner.
These, one of the things that they were talking about was like, yeah, I had to recover from that 100 meter thing to be ready for the 200 or whatever.
Like no, a lot of us are talking about this.
I understand that in theory, but also this is a 10 second race.
They run it and it takes nine seconds.
You really need to, like you have two days.
Is that really hard to recover from nine second race?
No. So yeah, it is because you get to score from that.
They do the, so to run a race at a big championship, you have to run three races.
So one, one sprint race is actually three.
So the quarter semi race, the semi in the final are usually always on the same day.
So that final happened, I don't know how many hours, but the same day as the semi final.
So he had ran that morning as well.
And when you run sprints, it taxes your central nervous.
And then you get to the system, which is different.
So you basically, it's sort of like, if I were to say, like, hey, you have to do this box jump squat 20 times in a row and you got to go for max height.
You're going to be this type of sore where you're inside.
It's like you feel like your nerves hurt, not necessarily like your aerobic system.
Do you know what I mean? This is like how when I get done with this podcast and I go hang out with my wife and I'm just like, I need to just not talk for a while.
And she doesn't understand.
She's like, you talk for a little while.
You talking, you're tired from talking.
I need to tell, I need to go with this synthetic nervous system explanation, just a confuser to make it acceptable.
And that's how it feels.
Like if you go and do like a explosive workout, it's like your, it's like your inside.
So it's feel depleted. It's kind of a weird feeling.
I guess I'll take your word for it.
Never going to do it. All right.
That's the Olympic segment.
Thank you, Sam, for making that interesting for me.
All right. So listen to how ridiculous this is.
So I remember in the 90s, when I used to go to dinner with my family, I was just a kid and you would get to the hostess stand and she would say something like, do you want to be in the smoking or non smoking section?
And we look back at that now.
We think that is ridiculous.
I cannot believe that existed.
Well, I often ask myself that question now, which is in 20 years, what am I going to look back?
And it's going to be sort of like the smoking versus non smoking section question.
And that my friends is why I love the A16Z podcast.
They look at how technology is changing so quickly and how you can stay on top of it.
The podcast is put on by VC firm and Jason Horowitz is one of the best firms out there in the world.
And so they're able to see all this amazing information that people like you and I, we don't normally get access to and I love hearing steps opinion on it.
So they look at topics like autonomous vehicles, the science behind drugs, like ozemic and things like that and the security behind LLNs and how it's on all of our devices and whether we should be freaked out or not.
So check it out. It's called the A16Z podcast.
It's hosted by Steph Smith, one of my favorite people on earth, again, the A16Z podcast.
You can find it wherever you get your podcast.
All right. So let me tell you about a story and I want to hear something.
I have a question for you on how the story ends.
So in 1929, there's this guy and he starts this company where it's very odd.
He basically is cleaning the rags and uniforms for circus performers.
Every strange start, but that's how this company starts.
And he turns that into a business and he calls it ACME industrial laundry.
And he kind of scales that up, but not a lot.
It's a very small business, but he scales it up to where he starts doing laundry for other uniform businesses.
Now he started that in 1929 by 1960, his son, who's 21 years old, comes into the business and he's like, hey, dad, I would love to work for you and maybe take this over one day and the dad's like, yeah, sure, let's do it.
And it does okay, but inevitably there's a little argument between the father and the son.
And so the father calls the son into the office and he's like, hey, look, man, this isn't working.
And the son's totally expecting him to be like, you know, you're fired, you're out.
And the dad goes, look, this isn't working.
Here's the keys, man, you run it.
Let's see what you can do.
I'll step out your way. Let's see if you could pull this off.
And so this son, he's at the time, 21, 22, 23 years old, his name's Richard, he takes control of this business.
And he's like, let's grow this sucker.
And so in 1960, when he takes it over, it's doing $180,000 in revenue, which is something that like $2 million today has 12 employees.
And he's like, look, we're going to like focus on doing laundry for companies who need cleaning supplies.
So like extra rags. They're basically just washing rags and he grows it and it works out well.
And he grows it at the point where after I think eight years, the business grows from $200,000 to $1.6 million a year, which is the equivalent of like $15 million a year.
And he's growing this business and it's a, he's now expanded into laundering company uniforms, which is a very strange thing to get into.
I didn't even know that existed.
But he grows this sucker for the next 50 years.
And now they've renamed a company to Cintus.
Have you heard of Cintus?
Yeah. Feet are trucks. I see their trucks all the time too.
And I'd have no idea. Okay.
So go to Cintus MarketCap.
Just Google that and look at what it says.
$75 billion. Wow. It's a $75 billion company.
And their main business is still on, now they, they laundered uniforms, but they also supply the uniforms.
So they make uniforms for all types of businesses.
You know, like you'll see, like, if you see like a typical janitor outfit, that's a very easy one, but it could be restaurants, it could be anything.
And then they rent to your uniform and they'll longer it for you.
But then they've expanded.
So like if there's a fire extinguisher in the bathroom of a restaurant, it probably has come from them.
If there's cleaning supplies, it probably comes from them because once they made inroads into a business, they're like, hey, along with your uniform, we're going to sell you all these other things.
And so I think they do something like eight or nine billion dollars a year in revenue.
And it's subscription revenue.
So it's like a huge company.
Why is it subscription revenue?
It's uniform rental. Right.
Yeah. It got you. It's called RAS.
You know, like rental as a service.
I don't know. It's just that's just what they do.
They sell uniforms or they rent uniforms.
And so they're able to get like these subscription businesses.
And then it's also like real recurring revenue because they'll sell you all this other stuff and they bet inroads.
But as the business was taking off, Richard Farmer, his name, he starts getting old and he's like, I need to figure out a way how to like keep this within my family.
And so to this day, the family, the farmer family still owns something like 20%, I think maybe 18% of the business.
And like he was like, I made it my mission to create this like generational thing.
And I've trained my children to help take this over and to make decisions as it comes to giving away our money, but also governing the company.
I don't. A family member isn't the CEO, but they're still like involved.
And so the reason why I look this guy up is I'm very fascinated with how you could pull this off where you could keep your family in the business.
I think that it's very hard and it's high risk, high reward.
And so I've been like studying all these families who have pulled it off and these guys have.
And from the outside, there's a dozen other examples of people who have crashed and burned and this has not worked.
My question to you, is this a thing that you aspire to have?
You know, you're one of your three kids kind of take things over or you pass the baton to them or do you not care about this?
Because I've talked to a lot of people and it seems 50-50 of people who are like adamantly in favor and other people who are just like, I don't give a shit.
My answer is really split.
I don't aspire to do this, meaning it's not something I'm planning to do or really want to push on anybody.
Do I think it would be awesome?
Yeah, totally. In the same way where like if my son plays basketball as his favorite support, that's going to be awesome for me because I love basketball and I could coach him and I could help him in a way that I couldn't if it was tennis or not sports at all.
So it's to me, it's a bonus, it's not a plan.
I do think about this stuff because on two ends of the spectrum, on one end, I've met way too many rich guys who talk themselves into working too long, working too much with this like, I'm just doing it all for my kids.
It's like, kids just kind of want you at home actually.
This one spends a ton with you right now, they don't really care whether you leave them $12 million or $22 million or $40 million.
It's not like your kid right now doesn't care and also giving them more might actually be a disservice to them back to the conversation earlier about Bell Day Olympics and what does character come from.
So I think that it's really dangerous to talk yourself into, I'm doing this for my kids.
So I refuse to let myself do that.
I think anybody who says that honestly is lying.
I think you're doing it for yourself and you use your kids as a justification to why you're doing that.
As my general opinion and so I just took safeguard myself from ever lying to myself in that way because it's such a sexy lie right.
Who's going to say anything bad to you?
You can never get checked right?
There's no checks and balances.
If you just say I'm just doing it for my family, do it for my kids.
And so I think it's really important for myself to not lie to myself that way.
If my kids happen to want to be interested, happen to have an interest or appeal to it awesome, I will be super excited and can't wait to do that.
I do hope that that happens, but hope is you know, not a plan, not a strategy.
On the other hand, I'm on vacation and one of the best moments of my day yesterday was I went to a water park.
Do you have to be in a water park like in the last 20 years?
Dude, Nick Gray rented a water park for his 40th birthday, but in order to save money, he rented it from 7am to 9am.
And so me and a bunch of 40-year-olds went to his birthday party where we had a whole water park for ourselves.
He said, 7am. Have you been to a water park?
No, it's just two full of pee, man.
It grosses me out. I know.
I was absolutely disgusted by being in that pool with so many people.
Dude, somebody like Tweety Bird shirts?
No, not for me. Yeah, they did this thing where they, because I'm in the kids section and they take a break at the top of the hour for five minutes as a potty break.
Like, hey, this is the time.
Take your kids to go and pee.
That just brings more attention to it.
Nobody left the pool. And I was like, nobody's leaving right now.
There can only be one explanation for this.
It's filthy. But there was one beautiful thing amongst the disgust, which was while we were walking in, you know, there's this dad.
He's pulling like a wagon.
Like, we need a kid. He's just bringing so much shit everywhere.
And his kid was walking next to him.
His kid's probably like seven years old.
And he's walking in front of us and he stops like ten feet ahead.
And it's like a really narrow path.
And normally, like, my like, flaw as a parent is I'm very impatient.
It's like, you're like really like fussy and like annoyed easily when I'm like beyond like a four hour stretch of my kids.
I just become like cranky.
And so this guy stops. I'm ready to be cranky.
They do something really, really awesome.
I realize why he stopped is because his kid asked him something.
And the dad who was the kid was like kind of like look kind of athletic.
The dad didn't really look super athletic.
Look like, you know, typical waterpark American, let's say.
And he, but he was showing him.
He goes, oh, when you're doing that in soccer, he's like, when they come at you this way, what you want to do.
And he was showing him how to use his feet to like not have the ball gets stolen.
And the kid was not like making eye contact.
He was processing it. He was watching the dad and he was processing.
He wasn't saying a whole lot back.
And the dad was trying to just show him something.
And in the moment, the basically, it's like a dad teaching his son something.
And I don't know. I'm gotten pretty soft.
But like that kind of like touch me for a moment.
I was like, this is so amazing.
This, this dad just teaching his kid this little thing like just being able to pass down one little bit of information.
And the kid so earnestly processing it.
Because there's so many things you tell your kids that they're not listening and they don't care.
They don't want to know and they don't want to listen.
They don't want to take their vegetables, basically.
But the kid genuinely cared and it meant something to him.
And you could tell the kid had had like a bad experience.
It was trying to figure out how to overcome the bad experience.
And I fucking loved it, dude.
And it just made me for the rest of the day, I just found like all these little pockets, little moments to like have a different conversation with my kid.
And so like, you know, later that day we were like parking the car and I was like, tell my son I was like, come, come back to me.
He's like three years old.
I did the thing like illegal thing you're not supposed to do.
I like put him on my lap and like, I don't like drive in the parking lot to like park the car.
But like you get to sit in my lap while I was driving it.
Like, this is like 50 feet or like whatever.
I told him I said, my son does this really cute thing where he goes, he'll do something.
And then like an hour later, he'll go, daddy, you know why I might do that.
Like, you know why? I said I wasn't going to eat that.
And he just keeps all these.
I was like, you know why?
Am I punched her? And it's like, then he's got some explanation that never even makes sense.
But it's so cute. And so like me and my wife, whenever we fight, we do that now.
It's like, you know why?
My was an asshole earlier is because I, whatever.
And so I told him I go, you know why?
Might let you drive just now.
And he goes, why? And I go, because I'm teaching you how to be a man.
And he goes, okay. And I'm like, go tell your sister when you go back to say, you know why I got to go do that?
Just that is teaching me how to be a big man.
It goes in the room and he goes, hey, bless you.
You know why? Why, daddy, let me drive?
Because he's teaching me to be a big human.
You're just going to watch what?
Dude, that's awesome. I'm excited for my kids or older enough that I could try to do that.
And I'm totally going to do a ton of them.
And yeah, I'm thinking about the same thing too about children and like what it means to like bring them in if it's at all possible.
And I do believe that what you said was true of it is mostly a lie that we tell ourselves of why we are grinding it in for them.
It's so we can feel fucking dope and powerful.
Yeah, exactly. By the way, I didn't answer your question fully, which is if they're interested, yeah, a lot of people don't want to do it because they're like, oh, working with families messy, working with friends is messy.
I learned one thing on this podcast episode, I don't know, one of the first 20 episodes with Mike Brown.
He said, I asked him about, he brought his brothers into his business.
And I was like, was that a good idea?
Your brother's in and he looked at me like I was like, I was asking him, like, are you sure you're drawing a drink water?
It's pretty wet. And he goes, my view of life is you find the people you love and you do life with them.
And then that became like fucking central to my core.
Over like in that split second, I like changed as a human being.
I was like, oh, okay. That made total sense to me.
And that's the answer, right?
Find the people you love and I do life with them.
And I will hit up people and I'll like try to find an excuse to just do a project with them or do a trip with them or do a something with them.
Like that has been so fruitful.
And in one of my businesses, we brought in, you know, I do business with my wife.
We brought in my sister into a business.
I've done so many of, I've done a business with my two best friends.
Like that has become just an operating philosophy that has served me very well.
And like, yeah, there are times where it doesn't work out well.
So what? That's like everything.
There's no full-proof strategy.
But the upside of finding people you love and doing life with them is so much higher than the downsides of when it doesn't work out in my opinion.
But right. And that's how I feel about this podcast, by the way.
Like, you know, when we met, I always loved hanging out with you.
It's like, Sam's this crazy combination of really smart, but smart about things that nobody else I know is smart about those things.
Like he knows about this fucking family, apron rental businesses.
You know, like you just have a trillion of these things and you're also really fun and funny, which is super like, which I learned to appreciate was very rare in people.
Like, the more kind of successful you get, the more serious people get.
Whereas you were one of these people are the more successful you got, the sillier you got.
And I was like, dude, I just want to have this guy in my life somehow.
Right? Like, how, I don't know what the excuse is.
You moved away, but I'm glad this podcast became like an excuse to do that.
Well, I'm glad to. And by the way, to the people listening, that shit takes work.
Like I particularly like you and I, like we give and take to make each other happy.
But I would imagine it's the same thing with children in business where it's like, I know this is the wrong thing that we should be doing, but I got to let the kid like fuck up.
You know what I mean? And I think that's really hard to do.
Dude, there was a great quote.
I don't know if I'm allowed to quote this.
I think I am. And I went to that event for the tiny event in Canada.
Chris Andrew Wilkinson and his partner Chris, they, they on tiny, the whole code, the whole code has like 40 companies inside.
They're doing a session about hold codes.
And somebody asked them, they were like, hey, I'm setting up my whole code.
I'm in your one. And I just want to know like how much support do you guys have from the back office?
Like do centralized finances?
So I think that could be really good.
Like cost savings. Plus easy way to have oversight.
And do you centralized legal?
What do you all, what do you, what do you guys centralized to get the most synergy?
And their answer is, Chris was like, based up till now, we've done, we, we centralized almost nothing.
And he goes for two reasons.
Number one. So he had a, he had a smart reason.
And then he had a great quote.
His smart reason was he goes, whenever we own the financials, it felt good because we felt in control.
Problem was we were in control.
The CEO looked at the numbers and was like, those are your numbers.
Those aren't my numbers.
I don't know. My target is, I don't know what those numbers are.
I'm on the receiving end of these numbers.
And that's a good point.
The second thing the quote he said, he goes, we wanted all of our companies to be able to run without us.
And the only way to do that was to just completely, you know, that's not completely neglect, but like to neglect them to not offer support and services.
And he goes, the children of deadbeat dads grow up tough and independent.
It was like a grown in the audience, but I was like, like that, like that a lot.
It was like, it's brutal.
Like, you know, like it's the, the kids that grow up in a like harder environment that are tough and independent.
The refugee, the refugee team of the Olympics.
Exactly. And I thought that was such a good quote and the great answer.
He said he goes, by the way, now that might not be the answer.
Now we might end up centralizing more as we're now a public company and all the others.
There's other reasons to do it out, but what got us here and what worked for us was that.
Alright, that's the part.
