I have felt like a little bit of a like pinch me moment where I've realized don't say that one pinch me yeah I will pinch you if you ever say that again and I'll just say ow Ow.
What's going on over there?
What has been going on?
We haven't seen each other in seven days and we've both talked to a bunch of interesting people.
Have you enjoyed your time away?
I have. By the way, people are like, why do they do these separate?
And it's like, dude, we live on the other side of the...
I live in California.
California. Sam lives on the far east coast. And so for us to do an in -person recording, it's like, hey, would you like to fly across the country for this day, today, just to record this podcast?
And both of us have little kids.
Neither of us want to do that.
So if you see us doing one -on -one interviews with people, don't worry.
Me and Sam are still good.
We just, we live really far apart.
Okay. So here's the deal.
In the last 10 days, both you and I have gone and done podcasts that have not come out yet.
I think this will come out before those with guests who are are incredible.
So I think all, I think all of them are either billionaires or soon to be billionaires, but that's the, the money is almost the least interesting thing about each one of them.
Like what they did and how they, how they roll, how they live is more interesting.
And we did them in person.
So for example, I went to Las Vegas, I went to Tahoe and I'm basically staying at the person's house and I'm hanging out with them all day.
And then the podcast is just kind of like a one or two hour recording in the middle of that day, but I'm I'm spending 12, 24 hours with this person.
And when you do that, you pick up a lot.
And neither you or I have talked.
But both you and I are kind of students of the game of life.
And one of the ways you be a student of the game of life is you don't just try to do all the experiments on yourself.
Right? That's a pretty slow and painful way to do things.
A faster, easier way is to go and get a little Costco sample of somebody else's life.
I've never had a fig before.
Let me try. Let's go try fig. Almond butter.
Is this something I like?
am I an almond butter guy?
And so I went and sampled these people's lives and you did too.
And so what I wanted to do, if you're down for it, is I think we each have three names of people we hung out with.
And I want to take the one thing that stuck with you that was not in the podcast. Man, we get to hang out with so many amazing people.
And it absolutely wears off on you.
Our world is business.
But frankly, I find just the money part to be a little bit empty.
And I life is more more more rich than just money but it just so happens that we like being people who are experts at their field and the field is business and so we've there's probably only 3 500 or 4 500 billionaires in the world and i feel like every year we get to hang out with like 30 of them and again the money is not the important part but the fact that it's just like so if there's only 4 500 people of all the people on earth who are in this category it's pretty exciting to be around someone who's the best at their field and it 100 wears off to you wears off on you, where you start normalizing being
in the, uh, 1 % of whatever activity you were trying to be in.
Totally. Uh, yeah. And your money point is right, which is even if we were just like, if I ran into Kobayashi on the street, I'd be like, this guy's the great, I'd be like, honey, this guy's the greatest hotdog eater of all time.
Now she wouldn't care to be clear, but I would be like, it'd be like meeting Kobe, right?
He's the Kobe of eating hotdogs.
And so, So, you know, excellence in any form is interesting to me.
And anybody who gets an outlier result in a field that many people go try to choose, because it's always interesting, how did you get that?
Because if you're interested in becoming an outlier in your field, you can actually learn from it in any field.
Anyways, so you're right that our quote -unquote job gets us access to this.
Now, the giving part here is we don't want to be selfish and just kind of keep for ourselves, you know, what we picked up.
So let's jump in. All right, so I go hang out with this guy, Hayes Barnard. Most people don't know who Hayes Barnard is, but his story is pretty crazy.
So the short version of his story is guy grows up, single mom, kind of, you know, from the dirt in – actually in Missouri.
And he ends up sort of hustling his way into a job, a sales job, then a tech sales job.
Then he ends up at Oracle.
Oracle. And he works for Oracle in the 90s when Larry Ellison was, you know, basically, he was flip -flopping between Larry Ellison and Bill Gates as like the wealthiest man in the world.
And so he becomes basically a competitive salesman.
And so he becomes a top sales guy at Oracle just by like working harder than everybody.
So he's like, I would just get in earlier.
I would stay later.
I would work every weekend.
Those guys, you know, most of the sales guys who were were doing well, by 3 PM, they would leave. They'd go play basketball or tennis or racquetball.
And I would just stay the extra three hours.
And I'd stay the extra four hours.
And I would just do that every single day.
And it just added up.
So he ends up becoming a top guy at Oracle.
But he sees that some of the other top guys at Oracle go leave and start these huge companies.
So Mark Benioff leaves and goes start Salesforce.
This other guy leaves and goes starts this other company.
And so he starts to think, hmm, maybe I'm like them, right?
And maybe I should go do that.
that. And so he leaves and he starts a mortgage company where he's like, maybe the same way I could sell complicated enterprise software using a call center and some online ads, maybe I could sell a mortgage, right?
Most people at the time felt that mortgages were too complicated.
Like you needed an in -person, a local bank branch with a local banker who's going to talk to you and hold your hand and all this stuff.
And he's like, I don't know.
I think think with like radio ads and a call center in Sacramento, I think I could just sell mortgages over the phone the same way I've just been selling Oracle databases.
Did he know anything about mortgages or?
No, but his friend from childhood is like best friend from like fourth grade or something like that.
He kind of knew a little about mortgages and Hayes knew a lot about selling.
So they leave to go start this thing.
In the 08 mortgage crash, he survived because they had been underwriting conservatively.
So they were the one mortgage company that was was not giving out subprime loans, so they survived the mortgage crisis.
But during that time, he diversifies because he's like, instead of just selling mortgages, what if I go into the energy business?
What if I branch? What if I diversify?
Instead of just selling mortgages, could we sell solar and help people with their utility bill?
So, what if I gave you a thing that's cleaner for the environment, saves you money on your electricity?
So, he starts a company that does that for solar.
Now, that solar company gets bought by SolarCity.
He ends up driving.
He's not actually installing the solar.
So SolarCity would actually go install the solar.
If you don't know, SolarCity was started by Elon Musk and his cousin.
And so he was selling the solar, and then SolarCity would go install it.
At one point, I think they made up like 50 % of SolarCity's revenue.
It was like insane.
He was driving so much revenue for them.
And so SolarCity acquires them.
SolarCity that ends up getting acquired by Tesla for $2 or $3 billion.
And, and then, you know, Tesla's gone on this crazy run and like, you know, whatever, 30x incentive.
So here's this guy, Hayes, who is, you know, he grew up nowhere in Missouri.
He has dyslexia and a form of dyslexia where he ends up flunking out of the first grade because he can't read properly.
You know, he works on a farm.
He's a subway sandwich artist. And somehow this guy's now one of the wealthiest men in America.
Okay. He's a self -made billionaire now.
So I go, I want to do a podcast with Hayes.
So I hit him up. I'm like, Hayes, would you do this?
I know you don't do a lot of these.
Would you do this? He says, yeah, sure.
No problem. Now the thing about Hayes though, is that Hayes does not do anything at like a chill level.
So like, he was the most unshilled person I've ever been around.
Well, he's fun to be around.
He's actually extremely fun.
Like he's very funny.
He's fun. But like, if he chooses to do something, He doesn't have to do anything.
You know, he's only – and this is his thing.
He says, he's like, we play full out.
So, Sam, normally when we book a guest, especially, like, let's say one of the, like, more – on the higher end of the range of success of guests, what is the normal prep experience like maybe a week before?
Just walk through that.
Well, so sometimes we want to do a call with them.
But then other times if someone's really successful, you're, like, embarrassed to ask them, like, can I spend, like, an hour of your time just brainstorming?
And so sometimes Ari will call, sometimes one of us will call, depending on how successful they are, to not disrespect them.
And so it's quite challenging.
The more successful they are, it's like, can I waste an hour of your time?
Like, just prepare?
Or do I just show up with stories that I ask your friends, and hopefully it goes great?
Yeah, and sometimes we send them like a doc, which is like, hey, here's some – can you fill this out?
This will help us. And then I would say half the time they do fill it out, but half the time it's like they give us either nothing or half filled out, something like that.
at and we just show up we say all right we got to make it happen we understand we hope it works this experience was completely different so uh hayes not only calls me he calls ben two or three times before the podcast and he starts discussing you know what can we talk about tell me what what's what you think is going to be interesting how do we make this amazing he just keeps asking this question how do we make this amazing so instead of just saying what are we going to talk about that's the average question his was how do we make this amazing and he keeps calling back and And he's basically like,
when he says this, he's like, I don't say yes to many things.
But if I do say yes, I go all out.
And so first in the pre -pod prep, he's really active.
And he keeps asking, how's it going to be amazing?
This idea he comes up with, he's like, most of the time you sit down and people ask the same five questions about like, how'd you do it?
What do you think about AI?
Blah, blah, blah. Like these same questions.
And you get these robotic tech answers from these tech people.
And he's like, let's do it different.
So he's like, why don't you just come out to Tahoe, come to my house, and let's spend the whole day together.
Come do my morning routine with me.
It's amazing. You're going to love it.
It's going to be great.
All right, a few episodes ago, I talked about something, and I got thousands of messages asking me to go deeper and to explain.
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What's the right decision, knowing that you know my goals for the future, things like that.
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The link is below in the description.
Back to the episode.
And so we go to Tahoe.
And we're like, cool.
We'll be there Tuesday.
We'll see you Wednesday for the recording.
And he goes, awesome.
Be at my house at 5 a .m. Oh my god.
5 a .m. What are we doing here?
So we show up at 5 a .m. And he's like, boys, good morning.
He's already like, I'm like rubbing the boogers out of my eye.
And he's like awake.
And he goes, let's go down to the lake.
Okay. So we go down to the boat.
And And we take this boat out for two minutes into the middle of Lake Tahoe.
It kills the engine.
And we're like, okay, what's happening?
It's completely dark out, by the way.
The sun hasn't even rose yet.
He's like, so we're going to do my morning routine.
He's like, you're going to love it.
He didn't just say, like, I hope you guys like this or thanks for, you know, like, thanks for coming.
Like, I hope you have a good time.
He was just like, you're going to love this.
This is going to be amazing.
He basically brainwashed me before I'm even out there of like, I do love this.
This is kind of amazing.
He was so charismatic.
bad he was just having a good he was genuinely excited that's the thing he's not like trying to sell us on anything right like he's doing us a favor inviting us into his life but he was genuinely excited for us and he's like my friends are out here this is great you're gonna love this so he kills the engine he turns on he's like there's a little woo -woo but just would are you guys willing to play ball like just let's do this today and you'll like it so he puts on this breathwork routine and he's like i met this guy you know on an island with uh from the guy who You know, the guy who started Cirque
du Soleil, Guy or whatever his name is.
He's like, I met this kind of breathwork guru on his island and he's amazing.
I've been doing this for like 20 years since then or something like that.
And so, we do this 15 -minute breathwork.
And then he's like, all right, boys, stand up, let's go.
We jump in the lake and we do this kind of like cold plunge in the lake, basically.
And Lake Tahoe in the summertime is still freezing.
Yeah. So, we jump in immediately, like, you know, lose all feeling in my body.
And then he's like, okay, we're going to go down and do a breath hold down underwater and for a minute.
And like, this is going to be great.
It's going to feel like you're in space.
Open your eyes. Like, I don't have goggles.
He's like, open your eyes.
I was like, okay. And so we go underwater.
I open my eyes and it literally looks like you're floating in space.
He's right. By the way, can only hold my breath for, no joke, seven seconds.
I don't know what happened.
Yeah, well, when it's freezing, it's hard. So I immediately go down and I'm like, nope, I'm done.
And I pop back up. He's underwater, so he comes up and he's like, okay, let's do that again.
I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, I need a redo because that was, you know, pretty short.
So we do it again. And then he's like, you know what?
I heard this thing.
This is an amazing thing.
And it said basically that like, you know, as you get older, you really want to make the most of your life.
You guys are still a little bit younger than me.
You'll feel this too.
Like you get this sense of urgency about like you realize, you know, your friends start getting sick, you know, your parents getting older.
order. You realize like, you know, this time is not, you know, time is really precious.
And there's a time hack.
You guys want to know the time hack?
We're like, yeah, for sure.
What's the time hack?
And he's like, if you do something new every day, you sort of mark the day.
Because like, you know, if I ask you, Sam, what'd you do five days ago?
It's probably pretty hard to remember what you did five days ago, even yesterday.
It's pretty hard to remember.
And that's because when we're in these routines, and routines do serve us, but it causes all the days to blend blend together but if you do one new thing a day um it sort of marks the day you know you're not going to remember every single day but it makes that day more memorable she's like let's figure out what we could do new today and we're like we're like back on the boat shivering and he's like you see those rocks i always see those rocks when i do this routine but i've never gone out there you guys down to swim out there so oh my god yeah let's go i'm not gonna say no uh so we jump in the water
and we start swimming and he's swimming like you know a shark basically out there there we are like i'm like dying basically and behind me i'm like i don't even know if ben can swim i look back at ben like his glasses are like foggy i'm like well i don't know what's going on diego has like shoulder dislocation problems i'm like diego's for sure gonna dislocate his shoulder and just sink like a rock to the bottom of tahoe we're all dying and we're swimming from rock to rock like little kids he's like let's like playing tag basically he's like let's go over there all right race you to this one and we
go and he wants to get to the big he's like look at that big rock let's get to that big rock we go to the big rock he ends up getting the big rock jump off the big rock i had this great moment come back to the boat and this is all like before 8 a .m and he's like i do this every day and i remember just having this feeling which is like this guy basically lives his life at a level he plays at a at a like a full -out level he plays with a level of intensity on everything that he was doing whether it was like the podcast his morning routine like each of the things i would do at a seven he just does
at a ten and if you think about that like how does that stack every single day right like that extra three units of intensity that he puts in and by the way it's not like he's it's not like hard work in a sense like he's just like he just goes for it right he's having more fun he's willing to play more than us and we went and played pickleball with him we did whatever we did that day he was like this and um he told the story during the podcast of this where you know know he was a certain way but he's like once I worked for Elon and he worked for Elon for 10 years he's like it broke my frame of reference
because I was telling him I was like you kind of broke my frame like I have a morning routine but it's not like this right like I have a and I was like by the way it's not the money like yes you've got this beautiful was it a sick house oh my god dude unbelievable and to the point where he was like he's like yeah I prefer not to film this you know I'm not trying to show off I'm like yeah the people who try not to show off have the the things worth showing off, of course.
And so I'm like, even if I had that house, would I act like, this is an honest question I had.
I was like, even if I had this house and I had that boat and I had this little, like you get in this like fricking like Willy Wonka elevator to get down from the house to the boat.
And I'm like, would I wake up at 5am every day and do this?
No chance. I'd be cuddled up in bed with, you know, like I would be the little burrito tucked in with my, just my eyes peeking out of the covers at five in the morning.
But he does it, right?
That's like kind of the difference between him and me is that he plays full out.
And so that was just the big takeaway for me from that whole experience was...
Do you want to live like that?
Like, I think... So when I'm around...
I've been around people like this.
Like, they're crazy people.
And I think I admire so much about this and I want to take a little bit.
But I don't want to replicate that.
Like, I'm not a high -energy person like that all the time.
I'm only a high -energy person like that some of the time.
Hayes was like that all the time I was around him.
He's energy rich. Yes, I do want to be like that.
Because I think that, well, first, the feeling I had by 8 a .m., I was like, oh, so I've conquered the world already.
Like, what can you do to me today that's going to make me feel bad?
Is anything really going to mess with my mood or myself today?
It's pretty hard to do that when you conquer the morning like that.
But forget the morning routine.
I'm like waking up at 5 a .m. That's sort of secondary.
The point was, if you're going to do something, like just actually like do it fully.
And the thing you, the prerequisite for that is to be energy rich, to not be energy poor.
Like I went there because I'm like, oh, this guy's so successful.
He's money rich. And when I walked away, I was like, the money rich thing is a by -product and a complete secondary footnote to being incredibly energy rich. And two of the guys said the same thing.
I don't know if you remember this.
I said this when we went hung out with Mr. beast i was like this guy's like the energizer bunny and we were talking about like literally when he walks his walking pace is faster than the average human being by like you know two notches the two of the guys that came with us they're like do you see how fast hayes walked god was it hard to keep up with them he's like just literally has a pep in his step um and i think just i think being energy rich is one of the more attractive things like you see people who are contact rich it's like oh wow they know all these famous people you see people who are money
rich oh wow they got all these dollars in the bank account to me energy rich is very very appealing to give like an example of this guy Hayes he's not talked about at all he's very under the radar for how big a big of a big shot he is we're with you and me and a bunch of people were with Jesse Itzler who is a very gregarious loud personality in a great way like he is also energy rich and I remember being in this room with these guys in a sauna actually and Hayes took over the room because of his stories and his energy and one thing led to another and they are apparently hayes's hobby is that he
used to be into hip -hop and he loves to freestyle rap which is a very strange thing because this guy is like a he looks like me but like 55 he's just like a blonde hair missouri guy and he is an amazing freestyle rapper they went and freestyle rapped and he was beatboxing For like six or seven minutes, and they went and did this thing.
It was so good. And I remember talking to him and being around him.
And I don't think I've ever met someone whose oven burns that hot.
Like, he was on fire the whole time.
Yeah, exactly. He's an incredible dude.
The other amazing thing, by the way, hung out with him maybe 12 hours straight.
Did he work? He literally took the day off.
off so he was like he's like i because i was like dude hayes you don't got to do this man like i appreciate it but like you don't have to you know it's not like normal for a podcast to do this he's like no you guys came all the way out here i want to make the time you know i know i know you guys took time i want to make the time he's like i thought this would be i thought that would be so rude if i just show up we record and then you leave like no i want to make the time one thing that he that stood out he did not check his phone a single time in 12 hours and i told him at the the end I was like
is that normal like I know you're getting emails I know you're getting slack messages like just like all of us right like 10 times more than all of us you run a 10 billion dollar company he's the CEO of a 10 billion dollar company and he did not check his phone a single time and he's just like well you know like if I'm with you guys I want to be with you guys and if I'm working I'm going to be working and I was like well if you say it like that then yeah I guess I'm little bitch for yeah let me put this away then dude no amount of people or stories that i can tell or probably you also can tell
from that is gonna beat the hayes carl hang session that was really good did ben and uh diego have a great time too oh i think ben is at home making valentine's cards for hayes right now he's just like i love that man i was like i do too honestly i do too what do you yeah if you google his name too this is all public he uh like his side hobby was uh there's a famous hotel in Tahoe or maybe Reno. I forget exactly where it is.
And he owns it. And he was telling me about the renovation and everything like that.
And it was like an epic thing.
I forget exactly what the story is.
So the story is this.
He's in the lake doing the morning routine every day.
And he's like, I didn't think about like manifesting.
I don't even know what that word really means.
But he's like, I was in the lake and I was thinking about my life and like, you know, what I wanted.
I was full. I was just filling up with kind of like the feelings that I wanted.
and he's like and i see this hotel and there's this hotel that was kind of like on the you know over the hill a little bit it was on the on the other side of it he's like and it's two it's literally like one minute from his house and he sees that hotel while he's in the while he's doing his cold plunge in lake tahoe and he just decides looking at he goes i'm gonna buy that hotel i don't know how but i'm gonna buy that hotel and then he starts working on it he finds out it's owned by larry ellison his old boss right his old boss's boss's boss or whatever and he goes and he He purchases the hotel,
and they're turning it into a proper hotel in Tahoe.
And he walked us through the construction of it or whatever.
And even that, you know, he's architecting his life.
It's not like he's doing it to make money.
He was like, we're going to put a pickleball career, pool here, this here, this here, all these activities.
He's like, I want a place to do activities.
I want a place for my friends to come and stay during the summers.
Like, this will just make my life so much better if we generate this, if we make this happen.
Incredibly generative guy.
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All right, let's do the next one.
All right. Man, this is going to, you started off really strong there.
It's hard to follow.
All right, this person I actually just hung out with.
I didn't do a pod with them yet because they refused to come on.
So I'm going to say a little bit of information about them, enough to make it awesome.
None enough that I would totally blow up their spot.
But have you heard of the company Buck Mason?
Buck Mason. I've heard of it.
What do they do? Is that a jeans company now?
What is it? Sort of, sort of.
So they started in 2013.
2013 and they started in 2013 selling something very simple a t -shirt and their goal was just to make the best t -shirt I'm actually wearing one of them right now and they didn't they tried to raise money he was like I tried to raise as much money as I could that I got lucky because I was horrible at fundraising and I could raise no money and so they bootstrapped this company I think it actually started with like a Kickstarter or some type of auction like that like a pay and then will make it type of vibe and they build this company and over time they've grown it and grown it and grown it and I
suspect he didn't tell me but I suspect they do somewhere in the $150 million a year a year range and he has 42 stores now so when you go to buckmason .com what do you see yes well I see this is like this nostalgic I see this like video of these these guys from, what is it, maybe like the 80s?
I don't know what era this is.
It's like a California cowboy 80s vibe, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And I see a bunch of t -shirts and collared shirts and jeans, pants.
So I love this brand, and I became friendly with him because I've DM'd him to get him to come on the podcast, and he refuses to come on.
And I ask him why, and he says, I just want the brand to be the face.
I don't wanna like it too popular.
I don't wanna be the face of the brand.
I want the brand to be the brand.
which is always like whenever I hear someone say that I'm like oh you're the best you're you're gonna win you're amazing yeah like oh so you're yeah whenever you hear someone say that it's like okay so you're absolutely going to win and you have the right attitude and so he started this company in 2013 and clothing companies are a pain in the butt you and I know people in this industry we know econ guys it's really really hard and it takes a long time I think to figure it out but basically, they got to the point in 10 or 15 years now, it's 2013, so 12 years, where it's really starting to fire
on all cylinders. He's grown into 52 stores.
And I started talking to him about the history and everything like that.
And I started realizing, it's not that crazy to do this.
Like, it's really hard. But I was thinking about every project that I've started since 2013.
So in 2013, I had just graduated college.
Do you remember where you Was 2013 sushi era?
No, no, that's when I moved to San Francisco, Monkey Inferno. So what was sushi era, 11?
Yeah, 2010 and 11. So imagine you starting a sushi store in 2011 and you were chained to that company and you just had to stick with it.
You had no other options, you just had to.
I have a feeling it would be a huge success and I have a feeling that if I had done the same with whatever I was doing, that there's definitely a world world where I would be five or 10 times more successful than I am now because of just compounding, of sticking with something.
And I sort of felt, first of all, 12 years, it sounds like not a long time.
But when I thought about, well, where was I in 2012, 2013?
And what all have I jumped from thing to thing to thing?
And should I have just stuck to one thing and done that the entire time?
And where would I be now?
Because he was telling me his story.
And I love where this guy, Sasha, his name is Sasha Cohen.
I love to hear the story where he is now, which is like, I've got this amazing team, we're firing on cylinders.
I just get to work on the really exciting projects and it's just going great.
Cashflow is not an issue, whatever, etc. It doesn't feel like that leading up to it, obviously.
It's really, really hard. And the majority of the time, I would think you'd want to quit.
And the majority of the time, I would think a guy like him, he didn't say this, I'm guessing.
If someone offered to buy the company from him at different weeks throughout the year, I bet he would have said yes, just because it's it's really freaking hard but i just remember thinking like i wish i had the foresight to stick with this yes like i wish i would have i i regret that a little bit when i see where i'm like i don't i don't exactly want to pay the price that you had to pay because that was really hard but when i see where you are now it seems very attractive yeah that's a great one um honestly actually that was pretty common amongst all the people i've met with actually two of them
even even said this they go i have very high pain tolerance and what they were the reason why they were saying it was actually not as a brag they were like you know one of the problems is i have a really high pain tolerance so i will keep doing something even when it's not you know quite right or not obvious there probably was a better way or a better idea i could have done i don't know i'm just that's who i am i just keep going uh hayes even said this kind of off the record i was like dude what do you what do you think is the difference about like you know you you and a bunch of other people
were like, you know, what I was really interested in was, and I probably didn't say this right, but when we were talking about the morning routine, he said he has a different friend come and do it with him every morning.
And so he was like, yeah, yes, whatever.
It's like Tony Gonzalez did this with me yesterday, the hall of fame tight end.
And then he was like, oh yeah, over the week, he's like, oh, he had this thing on his knee.
And I was like, what happened to your knee?
You got cut up there.
He's like, yeah, I was mountain biking with, I think his name is Lyndon, like the Elon's cousin from solar city.
He's like, we were were mountain biking yesterday we went you see that mountain we went all the way over there i was like god this guy's so active he's unbelievably active this man but also like he's hanging out with hall of famers he was talking about elon and his son went and worked at spacex and he's like i was like oh you didn't have him come work with you and he's like no i wanted him to go see what it's like to work with elon he's like i just wanted him to go like it took me a while to go see what the the hardest working person who tackles the biggest problems on Earth, you know, I worked
10 years of my career, 15 years of my career before that happened.
I wanted my son to see it like right away.
But yeah, just incredible stick -to -it -ness for all of them because I'll do my next one.
Yeah. So, the next one is Hormozy.
So, I go to Las Vegas and I hang out with Alex Hormozy.
And a lot of people know Hormozy because he makes so much content.
I don't think, I actually think Alex Hormozy doesn't get enough credit.
Every time time I hang out with them, I think, dude, you're really wise.
Like this is not a facade.
Yeah, he's actually very legit.
So, okay. So I have a bunch of things that I could say as my takeaway, but I promised one.
So here's my one of Hormozi.
Student of the game.
Okay. So what does this mean?
We're talking and I asked him, I said, you know, I get a lot of emails, but you put out so much more content.
You have a much bigger audience.
You must be getting a hundred emails a day from entrepreneurs who want want some advice from you or want some help or want you to invest. And then he does these workshops every weekend with a hundred entrepreneurs.
So I was like, so you're seeing another maybe 500 plus, maybe a thousand plus entrepreneurs in your workshops that are in person.
And then you have all the deals that you look at, maybe another few thousand deals that you look at probably looking, he's probably meeting, I don't know, 5 ,000 entrepreneurs a year at the minimum.
And I was like, what do you think is the mistake?
The biggest mistake you see them make.
I ask him this, and he says, they're only studying their business.
They're not a student of the game of business.
So what do you mean?
He goes, well, when you start a company, you're very, like, narrowly focused on your business, your industry, your business model.
So he's like, you know, Sam, you were doing the Hustle newsletter.
You probably knew a ton about newsletters, right?
You knew everything about other newsletters, and you knew everything about maybe the media industry as a whole.
and I think you're very good about being a student of the game but I would say most people were probably, you know even one -tenth as curious as you but then you might also have gone and looked at the events business and then the SaaS business and other businesses to try to understand like oh, is that a better business to be in?
And actually you started in the events business then you went into the media blogging business and then you found your way into the newsletter business and you were like that's a better business to be in and now you're in a paid community business that's actually a better business to be in than even the one before.
And the reason why is because you're a student of the game of business, not just your business.
And Alex basically was like, I made this mistake.
You know, I was basically a gym operator.
I had a one gym and then I had two gyms. I had three gyms and I was going to own and operate gyms. And I got really good owner operating a gym.
But the best thing he did was he went to this mastermind.
I think Russell Brunson was there.
And they basically were like, you're a 10 out of 10 entrepreneur going after a two out of 10 opportunity.
Like forget opening and running gyms. it sounds like you're amazing at getting a gym to have no members to go to like a ton of members why don't you sell that create a sell the sell the ability for any gym to fill up their uh to get more members and so then he's like ah okay that's smart and he goes and he learns about other business models he realizes that he should do this thing called gym launch where he would fly to a gym and he would basically say hey look if i can get you 500 more members can i keep the first month of their membership, and then you are, you know, the six weeks of pay that they're
going to pay up front, and you get to keep all the recurring membership behind that.
They're like, all right, sure.
He's like, I have no risk to you.
You pay me nothing.
I'll run my own ads, but I get to keep what I kill, and so that became gym launch, and that became the thing that was really, really successful, and now he's in a better business, you know, like, let's say private equity, and he's buying SaaS companies, so he's gotten into an even better business than that, right?
Private equity is a better business, and so he's like, I think most people aren't a student student of the game of business.
And so, and at the end of, we basically talk for, I don't know, two and a half hours.
We do like a two -part episode.
And he had, before that he had done two podcasts.
So this guy's done like, you know, basically eight hours straight of talking.
And where I think most people would be like passed out on the floor or just ready to go home or just want to go eat or like, just be like, can you guys get out of my office now?
He was super curious still.
And he's asking me a ton of questions after the pod.
And he asked me a question.
He's like, like, you know, what would you do differently if you were me?
And you know me, I can't like hold my tongue.
So I'm like, yeah, honestly, like I think this, and I gave him a very blunt and honest answer of like, I think you're amazing at this, but I think this part of what you do doesn't do you justice.
I think it actually makes you look, it's like bad for your brand.
And I think you shouldn't be doing that.
How did he receive that?
Extremely well. And this is kind of like kudos to him for A, being curious, and then B, being not defensive.
And so he texted me the next morning.
i didn't even give him my number but he gets my number from somebody and he says this he goes i just want to say thanks again for the pod i've been thinking a lot about what we talked about at the end then he goes it's hormosy by the way and then he goes um i'm gonna make some change some content changes i appreciate you caring enough to say something i thought that was just like a really kind message but also like you know a testament to him for for being extremely open minded and being a student of the game and being like having that mindset of i'm here i'm gonna going to try to learn something
for every single person I meet that's just such a positive attribute to have in general.
I'm good friends with a guy who bought one of Alex's companies.
So Alex started this thing called Alan Software.
My friend was the buyer of it.
And that is an interesting place to be in.
So the buyer of your company, they know the truth.
They know all your dirty secrets.
they do everything and i was like lloyd um this is when alex first started getting popping before we ever even had him on the pot i was like lloyd is this guy legit like this seems too could be true and to this day lloyd is like he's the smartest person i know about business like he like knows everything about alex that's what due diligence is and he is knows everything and he still is like this guy's the best when i need advice it's like your doctor's giving you a colonoscopy he's like yeah he's got a great gut yeah he he and and so that like tells a lot uh about him and what's funny is alex
comes off as a very serious guy and he is a pretty serious guy but he's a lot more fun like i'm able to have fun with him whenever i'm with him he's way more fun than he uh gives off that was one of the things i told him i was like you come off so serious but you're actually you have a great sense of humor you should show that and show yourself having fun and not just like i paint the windows black and i grind right there that is part of you but there is another part of you and i think you don't really do yourself justice and like uh not showing that side uh this is so funny as we were uh texting
my friend lloyd uh just texted me about alex a compliment about alex the same guy i'm referring to this just out of the blue just now out of the 1249 this is it's 1252 right now he just he just texted me a thing about how Alex uh just gave him some great advice which is pretty funny that's pretty awesome did you um their seminar business so basically a lot of people don't know this but acquisition .com either buys or invest in companies whatever pretty normal but they also have like a seminar business which is like on paper if you were to think about it like the worst business to be in oh you're
selling your time for money yeah yeah they own UFC's old headquarters and people spend spend five or ten thousand dollars to come for a three -day like seminar and uh according to alex but also i just like ran the math and you could like see like the schedule how full it is i think that thing is killing it so that was my runner -up takeaway which is turn your there's a business a more practical business lesson turn your cost centers into profit centers so he said two things about this the first is the on the workshops that you're talking about are the seminars ours.
So he was like, well, we're doing acquisition .com and we're, because of that, we're talking to all these companies and we're diligencing all these deals.
And I'm basically, that's a big cost to me, right?
I'm paying, I have a team of people that's diligencing all these businesses.
We meet the entrepreneur, we ask them a bunch of questions, we dig into their business and, you know, we're only doing one deal out of every so many, right?
So he's like, all the others are just the cost of doing business and it's costing me a few million dollars a year.
So he has the idea, like, how do I turn my cost center into a profit center?
So he's like, well, let me just try this so he says all right i'm gonna invite whatever 50 entrepreneurs out to our headquarters come spend two days with us we will dig into your business we'll learn what's working what's not working and we'll help you sort of unblock and like you know maybe if you're a great fit like you know we should have a conversation but like this is really about understanding what's going on in your business how to unblock you okay so that's what they did and basically he turned a thing that was losing him a few million dollars a year of people cost cost, into, I think,
like $10 million plus a free cash flow.
And he said the same thing about content.
He goes, I don't make content because I enjoy it.
I make content because it builds my brand.
And I was like, oh, really?
I do it because I enjoy it.
I like doing this. He's like, well, he's like, the way I think about it is this.
In the old world, let's say the TV era or the radio era, you had to spend millions of dollars of your money to build your brand in the consumer's mind.
the crazy thing about social media is you get paid to build your brand so he's like yeah like i make all this content i'm building my brand but i'm making money doing that so again he turned a cost center into a profit center on the content side too he and but he loves it by the way he absolutely loves it i think you and alex actually have very similar attributes which is uh you both like teaching yeah and so like i've been talking to him i've been buddies with him for a little little while and we'll just be talking about what's up what are you doing and he's like oh i'm making a google document
for my staff on how to sell better or how to do this like he loves process and he loves teaching yes yeah yeah that's that's and the part i think he really loves is writing um like actually like writing out the stuff like almost in textbook style all right uh you want to do another one or you want me to go all right here's a quick one do you know the company zapier yeah i do zapier was founded in 2011 another company by the way that was founded way it's way older than I thought so zapier is a company that um they now they're basically an AI company like they make uh ways for you to connect uh
different AI stuff so like if you're you can be like you know make a whenever I get a calendar invite do this and use chat to do it whatever they started 2011 now I think they do something like 400 or 500 million dollars a year and revenue.
And they've only raised a million dollars of funding.
And they founded the company out of Jefferson City, Missouri, which is the capital of Missouri, near where I'm from, the smallest town you could think of.
It's like nothing. It's like when you think of in the middle of nowhere, Missouri, you're going to think of Jeff City.
And I met Wade because years ago, I used to host this event called HustleCon.
And you spoke there, a bunch of other people spoke spoke there and wade showed up wade wasn't supposed to speak until like two o 'clock and he showed up at like 8 a .m and him and i sat backstage the entire time and we for two days actually it's a two -day event he sat with me the whole time and the reason he sat with me is i would have all the speakers come to the green room two hours in advance and i always lied to them and i think you know the story where i would say you have to come for mic check but of course there there is no mic check.
The mic works perfectly, but we just wanted to hang out.
Like there's no mic check for a conference.
Like you just put the lapel on and it works.
It works. I would tell people, oh, you have to speak at three.
Make sure you're here at one for mic check.
The reality was, is I just wanted to hang out with them backstage.
And there was one time, like I distinctly remember, it was like Casey Neistat, the founder of WeWork.
It was Wade from Zapier and then like the founder of ClassPass and Tucker Max, if you know Tucker Max.
And we were like all in a room and i was like how wild is this and i wouldn't say a word i would just listen to all these conversations people were having and wade was with the one guy who stayed the entire time with me and we just sat and listened to people talking and it was so fun and that's how i got to know wade i had him on the pod uh last week because i wanted to see how he's using ai and it was crazy this guy because he's wade's a billionaire so wade is probably 35 years old i think he started the company when he was a senior in college.
And I think he graduated college in 2011.
Zapier, they did a funding round, I think three years ago at a six or $7 billion valuation.
I asked him where they think they're going to be in five years.
He told me a billion in revenue.
So I don't know what that means the company's worth, but I know that it means that on paper, he's a billionaire.
And I was like, why are you living in Jeff City, Missouri?
He was like, it's where my family lives.
And I like it here.
And I was like, wait, does anyone know how big of a big shot you are there?
He's like, No, the people here don't use Zapier.
Why would like, so they have no idea.
And I was like, Well, do you have like a fancy house?
Like, do you stick out?
He's like, No, like, no one has any idea.
Like, I'm just like a guy.
And I thought that it was so cool to see.
Because I was hanging out with Sasha, this guy started Buck Mason, a very cool brand.
I was hanging out with Eric, who spotted ramp and is the hottest thing going.
and everyone knows in the tech world what Ramp is.
And it's one of the fastest growing companies.
And people know Zapier and everything, but they don't know Wade, the founder.
And it was so interesting how he was just a guy.
And he was just a guy.
That's all he was. And he very had that every man mentality or every man vibe.
And he came on the pod to talk about AI and he was just like Dharmesh.
He was a nerd, like he was in the weeds and he loved it and he was incredibly passionate.
And he didn't have a fancy webcam.
him it was him and uh it looked like a small very small office in his house and it was just totally unassuming and i loved it and so i think my biggest takeaway with him was how passionate he was about this game that he turned into a career and how inspired i was that he was was not flexing and he truly like it was the opposite of haze where not that haze flexes I mean where haze is just full of energy and he's like I want to manifest I want to do this this was the opposite it was an introvert nerdy guy who just did what he loved and it just it worked out and he just was really happy go lucky
and it was really fun because I'm used to these haze guys I'm not quite but like these like alpha like let's get it let's get after life let's manifest let's let's have fun.
Let's do this. And it's awesome to get the opposite of that.
Because I think when people listen to this podcast, I hope one of the takeaways is that there's a million ways to get done what you want to get done.
There's a million ways to achieve your dreams. There's a million ways to get rich. There's a million ways to go to where you want to go and where you want to go can be anywhere.
And there's there are maybe some best practices, but I can give you tons of examples of people doing the exact opposite and they're just as happy and just as effective.
So that was my my big takeaway with wade i like that yeah there's a you know you get to create your own little heaven on earth and that's one of the cool things when you go and you meet these people you get to sample what they chose for themselves and you pick up like oh i really want that or in some cases oh i really wouldn't want that you know uh there was one guy who won't be won't be named not in this trip but in previous one where this huge house and fancy cars and all this stuff but also like like, huge headaches with all of that.
Oh, I got to get this repaired and this, and then that car got a scratch, and then this has this.
And it was like, man, you own these things, and then they own you.
And it's like, oh, wow.
Definitely for me, that would be a total trap to fall into.
Good. I'm glad I saw it firsthand so I can avoid that.
Whereas with other people, for them, that is their heaven on earth.
They want that. They actually prefer that trade -off.
And so you want to, it's good to sample the different sort of styles so you can get a feel for what you think is gonna work for you.
Because I think people have this idea of like, oh, you just got to do what you want.
Reality is you don't know exactly what you want until you're even exposed to certain things.
And then you sort of develop taste about what it is that you like and what it is that you, how you want to be.
You can sort of, you can modify yourself based on what you're exposed to.
So you guys know this, but I have a company called Hampton, joinhampton .com.
It's a vetted community for founders and CEOs.
Well, we have this member named Levon and Levon saw a bunch of members talking about the same problem within Hampton, which is that they spent hours manually moving data into a PDF.
It's tedious, it's annoying, and it's a waste of time.
And so Levan, like any great entrepreneur, he built a solution.
And that solution is called MoKu.
MoKu uses AI to automatically transfer data from any document into a PDF.
And so if you need to turn a supplier invoice into a customer quote or move info from an application into a contract, you just put a file into MoKu, and it autofills the output PDF in seconds.
And a little backstory for all the tech nerds out there.
Slavon built the entire web app without using a line of code.
He used something called Bubble .io.
They've added AI tools that can generate an entire app from one prompt.
It's pretty amazing and it means you can build tools like Moku very fast without knowing how to code.
And so if you're tired of copying and pasting between documents or paying people to do that for you, check out Moku .ai.
M -O -L -K -U dot A -I. All right, back to the pod.
All right, so let's do...
I'll do Eric Lyman.
So for those who don't know, Ramp is a company that does credit.
It's basically a credit card for startups.
They're worth something like $10 billion.
And I think they do $800 million in revenue.
Eric, who's the founder and CEO, is 35 years old.
And it's just absolutely breathtaking how fast they've built this company because I think the company is only four or five years old.
It's brand new still.
And my biggest takeaway, I had two takeaways.
The first is that he was so nice.
So if you Google Eric Lyman, nice, there's all these posts that talk about how nice this guy is.
But it's very - Did you go home and do that?
Did you Google Eric Lyman nice?
Well, I was like, surely everyone talks about like, he was the kindest person I've ever met.
Like when he looked at me, it was like, I was the only one in the world that mattered at that moment and like I talked to Ari I go Ari who Ari only talked to him on the cell phone and I go Ari was this guy the nicest guy you've ever met and he goes when he talked to me I fell in love like I like I wanted to keep talking to him he felt it felt like I was the only one that mattered to him at that moment and he did such a good job and like he wrote a follow -up email and he wrote like I was truly blessed with by our conversation I am so thankful whatever he was so nice but what what I found strange
was you don't meet people who are nice and intense.
And so I asked him a question about something.
He goes, look, Ramp is 2 ,053 days old.
And we're only just now, and I was like, wait, what did you just say?
He goes, yeah, Ramp is 2 ,053 days old.
And I was like, you know exactly to the day how old Ramp is?
He goes, yeah, of course.
Like I'm trying to get this done by this amount of time.
Like I know exactly to the day.
And I just find it very very strange that you can be both incredibly intense at having a company and intense about life.
And also a very generous, kind, nice person.
Those two things typically are not in the same package.
And so my big takeaway with Eric was how you can be not a jerk, you don't have to be, you know, a big, like, pumping your chest, big ego, highly confident guy, you can be very soft, you can be really kind, but also a complete killer and savage.
savage it's a weird dichotomy but you can be both um yeah i talked to him before i think i've told the story before i bet i met him many years ago before he ever started ramp and also super sweet guy and then what they did the other thing i've said before is i can't believe ramp won in that same way because at the time i remember that brex was brex looked like the runaway winner it was the yc company it was based in silicon valley it had raised a bunch of money i think it launched earlier than ramp and it just seemed like ramp this company out of new york just seemed like the natural second place
winner and um instead ramp has crushed it and actually brexit is the second place winner in that space or third or whatever and he had a whole answer to that so most people when they start a company it's like it was cool or i had this problem or whatever he had a four point list where it was like well because i asked i asked the same question i was He's like, Brex was already around.
This was already around, whatever.
And he's like, well, the Frank Dodd Act or something like that was passed, which meant this, this, and this.
And that also meant, and then he had like, it was a four -point list and it was incredibly intentional.
And he's like, I saw at Capital One, it took this many days to approve an account.
I figured if we could reduce that to only 7 .3 days, and since there's this many potential businesses in the world, if we do that and we do this many businesses per day, it was It was like incredibly detailed and exact and precise way, which isn't typically how I think about building a company.
A lot of times it's like off energy or like vibes, like this feels a certain way.
He did not have that at all.
It felt like everything was like, it was very intense.
Amazing. All right, let me do one now.
This is a more practical business one, I'll say.
Was this with your brother -in -law?
Yeah, it's my brother -in -law, Sanjeev.
Okay, so this episode, I think this one will have come out already.
ready. But in the middle of it, he tells the story where, okay, so the headline of this is this guy, basically my brother -in -law has built a real estate portfolio.
He owns basically over a billion dollars of real estate that he accumulated in about 10 years with no outside money.
And so like he had like lenders, but no, no investors at the time.
He's incredible. He's just like an absolute animal at what he does.
And I always knew he was smart and I always knew he was like really like ambitious and was like, you know, he's just a winner.
I, that part, I know know i've known the guy for 10 plus years so like how about the fact that you're as successful as you are and you're uh you're you're second place in your own family maybe third i think my wife's dad is a pretty amazing guy too so yeah he he wins and not not not just the success way but the guy's a saint uh so yeah he wins it in his own way all right so what is it about this guy that i picked up so the story the short version of this story is he um he goes to law school gets his mba MBA, first interns with a lawyer.
So he's working on actually the Scott Peterson case, like the Lacey Peterson, whatever.
But he has two internships.
So that's one internship.
He has a second internship with a real estate guy.
He's like, the real estate guy, he's at home at a good time.
He's in his kid's life.
He's got passive income.
I'm like, this seems like the better model.
I'll go towards that.
So he goes to real estate.
He has no money, and so he can't buy any real estate.
So he starts off as a broker.
He does his first deal, makes 60K.
But by the the time he's like 25, 26, 27, he's making millions of dollars a year as a broker.
He'd be like, cool, you got this empty space.
Let me lease it for you.
You want to sell this?
Let me be your buy -side broker and your sell -side broker, and I'll lease it for you.
I'll get all three.
I'll bag all three commissions.
Somewhere along the way, he basically makes a mistake.
And he's like, yep, this is where youth and ego catches up with you.
So there's this one guy who's like, he's like a jack -in -the -box franchisor.
So he's got like, I don't know, 30 jack -in -the -boxes or something like that.
And so my brother -in -law, Sanjeev, is doing deal after deal with him.
And so finally, the guys are like, at some point, instead of just leasing the place to him, the guy would say, I want to be over there.
So he'd say, okay, cool, I'll buy it.
I'll build it for you, and then I'll sell it to you.
So I'll buy, I'll develop it, and I'll sell it to you.
And the guy's like, cool, I want these 20 locations.
So he goes and he takes out $15 million of debt to go buy 20 locations.
Like, you know, three days after it closes, is you know that guy gets popped for like he didn't pay his payroll tax or something he goes to jail and so now my brother -in -law is on the hook he bought he borrowed $15 million and now has these like 20 locations or whatever that need to be jack -in -the -boxes that the deed is tied to that guy's name that guy's now in jail he can't develop them so he's basically kind of screwed and you know he doesn't want to declare bankruptcy so he decides he's going to try to pay off $15 million even though he has nothing and so he's like okay how How do I do this?
So he's, he's just like depressed.
And his wife is like, you know what?
Like, I don't know.
I've never seen you like this.
You need to go to the gym.
I don't know what we're going to do in business, but just go to the gym so that you, you know, get out of this funk.
And he goes to the gym.
And when he's there, he, um, this guy, he, he always used to see working out there at night.
He used to work out at like 11 or midnight at night.
Cause like after work, he would go there.
But today he went there in the daytime cause he doesn't have shit else to do.
And the guy who he always sees working out, it's like behind the desk.
He's like, yo, you work here?
He's like, yeah, dude, I own the place.
He's like, what? And he's like, yeah, come check out the office.
And when he's there, the guy tells him like he's ready to sell.
He actually wants to sell the business.
And my brother -in -law works out a deal to basically buy the business from the guy with no money down because a little bit of money down.
He pawns his wife's wedding ring and they go all in that, you know, they're at this point they're living in their like parents, like his old childhood bedroom and they owe 15 million dollars.
And they're like, I don't know how we're going to get out of this pickle, but I'm going to basically i'll use the cash flow from this gym to just pay the monthly thing we owe and then we'll try to open up a second gym maybe and we'll figure out how we do this anyways he ends up building like the largest private gym chain 82 gyms in california otherwise your brother -in -law like really is he jacked yeah he was one of the first like indian bodybuilders basically in college he was going to go pro and then like you know he decided not to like go full -on um but yeah he He was huge before.
He's big now, but he's like, oh, this is the deflated version of me.
And I was like, wow, that's crazy.
So again, whatever this guy chooses, he does with like crazy intensity.
So with real estate, I was like, so how did you, okay, all that you told me so far is the gym business.
How'd you do the real estate side?
So this is the business lesson.
So he's like, you know, along the way, when I would go lease these gyms, I realized I had a little bit of leverage, right?
I'm coming in, I'm as the big tenant in the shopping center.
And so I just added to the lease an option to buy.
And he's like, I just added a no -risk option, whereas I have the option to buy within five years or whatever.
I can buy this at $4 million.
And at the time, that sounded like a high price for the guy, so the guy had no problem putting it in, free option.
And he's like, and by the way, I have no money and no plans of how I would ever buy this place, but why not?
Why not take an asymmetric bet where I have no downside, but I have possible upside?
And so his start in real estate was, he's working at the gym, and a guy comes in to buy the building.
And the guy assumes that he owns the building, which he didn't.
And he's like, we would make an offer somewhere around the ballpark of $7 million.
Oh, got it. And so he's like, oh, amazing.
And he's like, cool, I have an option to buy this for four, but I don't have any money.
So I actually cannot physically buy this, but I'll do a double escrow.
So if you agree to buy it on this date, it basically is like, I'll sell this to you for seven, I'll take the seven, I'll give this guy four, so I'll own own the place, and then I'll buy this and I'll sell you this thing.
I'll keep $3 million as my profit.
It's the old, hey, mom says I can go if you say yes, or she'll say yes if you say yes.
Right, exactly. And so he got his, the entire Empire Lady built was because he baked in one asymmetric bet, one no risk option.
I thought that was kind of inspiring.
Like, you know, and he, by the way, he probably had 10 of these that didn't pan out, but the one that did got him his start.
He took that $3 million, and then he used that to buy and buy and flip, buy and flip, buy and flip, buy and flip.
But he compounded that over 10 years into a billion dollars of real estate from that one option.
And I just thought that was just like an incredible lesson or takeaway to have. And by the way, now, so I invest with him now.
So I'm able to like, it's probably my biggest investment of the past two years has been investing in his deals.
And I'm just getting incredible returns.
And one of the reasons why is because he keeps doing the same model.
So he just, he's the master of de -risking.
So he goes into a, let's say there's a shopping center with like, you know, two big vacancies.
So he'll, while he's putting it under purchase contract, he already has leased it.
He has a signed lease and a signed purchase contract.
So the same day we buy, he has the tenant in place and he sells the thing.
And so we get these incredible returns because he's de -risking all these properties so far in advance.
It's like a, it's such a, like the same, it's like, you know, you find one unfair advantage and then you just keep playing it.
Does he have an awesome house?
Oh, he's got a crazy house.
His house is crazy.
Real estate guys always have, obviously, amazing houses.
There's one other little hack that he had that I liked.
I think that's another tidbit I think people can take.
So I was like, when he's doing these things, I'm like, dude, how do you do this?
Like, you were buying these properties.
There, you know, maybe there's a vacancy or whatever.
And like, how are you cutting these deals beforehand to get them?
You know, oh, I know the buyer at Trader Joe's.
I know the buyer at whatever, Chipotle.
I know the buyer, the real estate guy at this place and I'll get it under contract.
And he's like, oh, it's just relationships.
And he always just said this vague word. Oh, it's, you know, real estate's a relationship business.
And I hate answers like that, that sound like general.
And so I dug in with him and I was like, I was like, tell me how you approach this idea of relationships.
And he said this great thing.
He was like, you know, if you think about the word commercial real estate, it sounds like this vast universe, like this huge industry, right?
Right. He's like, the trick is, how do you make a big thing feel small?
Like, how do you break it down into an achievement, like into a chunk that you could actually, you know, you could actually digest. So he's like, kind of, he's like, one day I sat down with a piece of paper and I realized, all right, who do I, who's my ideal person to know?
He's like, well, it's a national retailer who's still expanding and growing, and they don't want to own their own real estate because I'm a developer.
I want to own the real estate.
I want to lease it to them.
And he's like, once I did that I realized there's actually like I don't know 150 names and he's like I took this big idea of commercial real estate which felt like an ocean and he's like I turned it into like a little goldfish pond 150 he's like I could I could fit 150 people in this room I could meet 150 people over the next two years if I tried and I could form a relationship with them and I could they could I could get so that they know me and I know them and they'll call me and I'll call them when we have something that fits and that's literally what he did and I just thought that was like
a a great, like, I don't know how, I don't know where else you could do that in other businesses, but I suspect that that idea of taking something big, but then reframing it and realizing it's actually much smaller and more achievable than you think is probably something that applies to a lot of businesses.
Is he a billionaire or billionaire -ish?
I would say like -ish, not there himself, right?
Because, you know, if you own a billion dollars of real estate, in his case, I think like 40 or 50 % is equity and the other half is like debt.
So, you know, on paper, paper you know that's whatever that's let's say 500 million dollars i don't know i'm just i don't know his actual thing to be clear but like hundreds of millions of dollars net worth of the six people that we talked about five of them are there or give or take give or take there and i just think that that's i think it's crazy i think it's crazy i don't know how many billionaires are in the world five or ten thousand i'm not sure whatever is like forbes has i would like multiply it by like some number uh and it's crazy that over the past 10 days we hung out with five of them
or something like that and get to learn from these people and again i don't i'm almost embarrassed when i say the name my first million because what i tell people i'm like you know it's actually it's not always about money it's actually about like things greater than that and um because i do think life's richer than just money but it is interesting to be able to uh rub shoulders with people who are are in the 0 .001 % of their field.
We're lucky. Yeah, and also, I think now we're a little bit like, oh, it's not about the money.
But us 10 years ago, very much one of the main goals was like, yo, get that money.
Get that money and then figure out that money doesn't make you happy.
Sure, I believe you.
It's not the end -all be -all, but I still want it.
I'm still going to try to get it.
I'm still going to try to make it happen.
It's definitely awesome.
Yeah, exactly. It definitely seems pretty great to have, but I'd rather have it than not have it.
and uh so you know i think as much as we're like oh you know like i think both are true like it is true that there's a lot more to life but also to these people and like you know you pick up a bunch of different things but also it is kind of crazy to to make that happen and um it's fun also to make that happen you know if if business is your sport well how are points tallied they're tallied in dollars right there's a guy um i don't pay attention to golf but i'm sure you do but do you you know scotty is it shaffer shaffler uh he won what did he win this weekend the u .s open yeah uh i don't know
anything about sports but i know that i saw like his one -year -old kid like crawling up the green to give him a hug and a kiss after he won so i guess scotty like won he set the trophy on the ground and his kid crawls up uh to to play with the trophy and nike took out this amazing ad the best ad ever it was a two -page ad or two like swipes the first one says a picture of scotty holding his son and it says you've already won and then the second slide is but another major doesn't hurt doesn't hurt uh and i think that's that's kind of like the takeaway here is like uh yeah it feels good to like i
i've won already like i have a loving family i feel secure it doesn't hurt to you know succeed a little more and i thought that was such a great ad and i thought that was kind of a representation of this episode that was a beautiful ad wasn't it oh my god like nike is at the top of its game when it does stuff like that uh it was pretty good um all right that was a good episode 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 days off on the road let's travel never looking back all right my friends i have a new podcast for you
guys to check out. It's called Content Is Profit, and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo.
After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue.
In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit.
So you can check out Content Is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.
