My wife is like insane about this stuff. She has a drawer full of coupons. So we went to Costco this weekend because we had a twenty dollar off or something like that coupon. So it was still use coupons or coupons. I
feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
All right, what's going on? This is Sam, Sean's out with some surgery. I've been telling people he's getting a nose job. I don't know if that's true, but let's just pretend it is. But anyway, we are doing a
A quick 10 or 15 minute, Q&A session I asked some of the listeners and some of my Twitter fans what type of questions they had for me and we'll talk about it, let's get into it. So all right what's the first question? What do we
got? Let's start with one that's really timely. You're about to be a dad. Someone's asking what is top of Mind as you become a dad.
So I'm going to have a child of Ember. One, that's the due date will see a little girl what so in preparation
Nation of having this baby. I was like, freaking out about like just the actual like the physical, her physical well-being of raising her and so I read the biography of Lewis and Clark because I remember that Sacagawea had a kid like on that Journey or something like that. And so I wanted to read the book and so turns out she had a three-month-old that she carried like a little sack across America for two years in like, you know, in the winter and that kind of like encouraged me. Like I'm not going to hurt this baby so I'm not too worried about that.
I would say the biggest thing though that I am freaked out about is raising a spoiled kid and raising a kid that's going to be a drug addict. I'm very like, like that, like I genuinely have like a deep fear me. And so I've been trying to figure out how do I like, and I'm very healthy way with hold things from her. Like, how do I not give her what she wants? Just sit in order to instill some types of grit because the sounds kind of douchey, but I can give her anything she wants, like in terms of like physical stuff and
I'm really freaking out about how do I stay strong and not give her what she wants in order to create grit and how do I make sure that she's not spoiled and works hard? But my biggest fear is Raising like a kid who
Is freaking out over that or who like just feels like she doesn't need to work. And so my current thinking this has not been settled, but my thinking was just me, not my family. Me is the only thing that I'll pay for is free tuition and free medical for life and beyond that, give her nothing. That's kind of, like my current thinking. That's what I had growing up my parents paid for my school and I never had a
About getting braces or anything like that, and that's kind of like where I am now. I read the Titan by John Rockefeller and he was the richest person in the world. And his wife has this famous quote where she says something. Like the biggest joy that I have in life, right now is withholding from my children, things that they want because I know it's going to make them stronger and I'm kind of in that camp at the moment on how to do that. But I don't feel very confident on the right way that I'm going to do that.
But my fear is the outcome of a drug-addicted. Indulgent child who won't work hard. That's my biggest fear at the moment. And so I'm preparing by like getting my mind right on how to, like, with whole things from her and not given because I do give into a lot of things.
Is that a good answer? You have said some I am I
I'm a very withholding weather so I totally get in speaking of you being effing Rich, this is a next question that I personally am curious about its what's the biggest difference in your lifestyle now that your effing rich
I have nothing to do with picking these questions. I just want to say that I hate talking. I don't like that topic but I will discuss it so
Basically, before I sold my first company, I my four years of salary leading up to it was 20,000 a year, 20,000 a year. I think I paid myself 150,000 a year. And then the last year I think I paid myself three hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. So for the first while I didn't have a lot of money, I was I was I didn't have much and then all of a sudden I sold a business and I had enough
At first I did something that I advise everyone not to do which is I bought a few things I bought some real estate. I think that I bought a fancy car. I think that
that brings close to no happiness and might be one of those things that you have to go through in order to truly appreciate. But I think that if you do have a windfall, you likely shouldn't buy anything crazy fancy for the first year or two and just get used to it. But I've also learned, there's this like story about a the study about these people who studied amputees, and they found that after six months, the level of Happiness went back to
They were when they had both legs so you you get hurt, you lose your leg. You're bummed for a little while. After six months you go right back to feeling as good as you did with two legs. That kind of happens when I think when you make some money, but the biggest thing that it did was not what it could purchase you. But the biggest change is my confidence. My confidence went through the roof. I'm incredibly confident in my ability to start something and to see it through to be a success. I don't think that I have the
Evidence where I think everything I'm going to do is going to be a success. I think I still have paranoia that I'm going to lose everything and I still have massive fears about going broke. That is something that my therapist and I are working through still but it hasn't changed significantly. I think that someone had asked a question about monthly expenses. Before I sold, I think I was spending anywhere between ten and fifteen thousand dollars a month. My apartment at the time was four thousand dollars a month. I thought that was astronomical, I had
Girlfriend my wife now, we live together so those two thousand each and I was like, that is insane, two thousand dollars in rent, I can bet is just like, that's evil I thought. Now when I rent the place it's a bit more, you know, 10 or 12 or 13,000 sometimes when I go to New York for the summer. And so I increased my rent price my home that I live in in Austin. I paid 900 thousand dollars for it.
It. So my monthly nut or my monthly mortgage, and taxes. I think it's 5,000 or, or 6000 somewhere in between that with taxes. And so, I think I increase my span from like, 10 to 15 a month to like 20 to 25,000 a month. Maybe 20,000 a month when I'm not in New York. So I don't spend what I think is a significant amount of money. I don't have any car payments. I have two cars. A Tesla in a Mercedes. Those are paid off. I have a cleaning lady.
Comes once a week, that's 120. Dollars a week. I do some health stuff. So I have a fancy gym and I go to fancy doctors collectively. That's a thousand dollars a month. I don't own any jewelry. I'm wearing, I'm wearing a fresh clean T at the ten dollar t-shirt? I wear those constantly so I don't buy a lot of fancy things so my burn I think is relatively low. When I go out to eat, I don't look at prices and when I go to Whole Foods, I buy the fanciest stuff and that's
Basically, besides that, I budget everything else out. And so like
I have a, my wife is like insane about this stuff. She has a drawer full of coupons. So we went to Costco this weekend because we had a twenty dollar off or something like that coupon. So it we still use coupons or coupons but it has not changed significantly. I guess one significant thing. I hate flying. I do not like to fly at all. So typically if I have to go somewhere, even if it's like 12 hours away, I tend to drive. I do not like the fly when I fly now.
Now I fly business class and so that should make some 300 dollar, flight 800 dollars, something like that. But my increase expenses rent went up business class but I don't fly often and then my home doesn't have fancy Furnishing my whole house cost 30,000 dollars to furnish. So it hasn't really changed significantly other than my confidence. My confidence has changed significantly. The idea of like
Getting something from nothing that changed significantly.
How is that? Does that answer those two questions?
One loved every minute of it. So now you can get out of the hot seat on your personal life and I'm going to throw to the net and it was the most liked question. So what were your alternative business ideas? If you didn't do
Hampton,
So, I I'm, I think I mentioned this last podcast. There's this thing called ikigai that I'm totally bought into, I'm very fascinated with Japanese culture. Japan has this like this philosophy where I think, I said it last time. It was like a Venn diagram of like, what the world wants, what the world wants to pay for what you're good at, what you love doing? I try to find something in the middle. One thing that I'm obsessed about is data and numbers, I really am. Like I If you search, if you go to my personal blog, which
Don't judge, I started when I was 21 and I quit blogging there but I used to have this document called the CEO document and I tracked, hundreds and hundreds of people. I read lots of biographies and I tracked when they're born, when they started their apprenticeship when they found success and then like what the success was I made these like in-depth databases. I'm obsessed with databases, I'm obsessed with researching things. So I have hundreds of pages pages of
my notion document, where I deconstruct how different companies work. So I thought about creating a research company or database company. The the the reason I didn't start it was because I couldn't find an appropriate problem to solve for. So I have all these databases of information and I like to analyze them and figure out what they mean but I couldn't find a good use case or I couldn't find a reason why people would pay money for it other than it's interesting. But I sought out like for six months, like different companies,
Space. And I couldn't figure out the right like, go-to-market strategy. So I wanted to start a database company or research company because I love it. I thought about starting a media company. I do have a non-compete so I can't start like a business news email for another one year I think. And so I couldn't do that and so I kind of fell into Hampton because I thought it was a it was perfect in my little ikigai. It was like what? I'm good at what the world wants. But I was really obsessed with research businesses. We
Had Jason Yano inside the Pod, this episode of will go live, but he came the episode before this. And I asked him a lot about research businesses, I think they could be really big. I also think that there's not a lot of like, youngish entrepreneurs attacking that space because it's a pretty stodgy old space. That hasn't had a significant amount of innovation and I'm very, but I'm very fascinated by it. So research and data based businesses is what I wanted to do. One of my favorite examples is CB insights. I love CB insides, I love pitchbook. I love those companies, and I wanted to build something like that.
So you may know this but my beginning and business was being a copywriter and it just basically means figuring out what motivates someone and how to use the written word to take an action, get them to take an action or to think a certain way and the way that I learned how to copyright was, I did this thing called copy work and copy work. Is this famous technique? That's not really popular anymore but it used to be really really popular and you basically take writing that is great writing that you love and you write it out by hand and you copy it and you make notes of what particular thing that writers doing that makes it special. That's how I learned how to write I like.
Myself in a room for six months and I just did this for many hours a day, I created a program to make it easy so you could do that, it's called copy that copy that.com. You can go there and you can check it out to 10-day exercise, to make it really easy to learn how to write if you want. You can just go do this on your own. You can find great writing, it just literally, copy it by hand. I know it sounds crazy, but it works really effectively but I made something that makes it a little bit easier. So check it out, copy that.com and back to the
pod.
Okay, this next question. I love although it's painful for me even to ask it because it's really it cuts. Deep. This comes from our what was the most painful thing? Someone told you and how did it change
you?
Okay. I saw that question and I was trying to think of a good answer. My answer is boring.
So my best friend is the same snuggle Medora. I met him because he had a great blog on copywriting and one year in 2013, I think it was 14. I called the email them and I said, Neville, my name is Sam. I'm going to host this conference and I want you to come and speak and I'm gonna pay for your flight. I'm going to take care of your accommodation. Well the conference is really like 15 of my friends hanging out talking and I bought him a 250 dollar Southwest flight and he slept on my couch and we became best friends after that.
And when he was there at my, my couch, I gave him a towel to like, take a shower and it was like a moldy towel, and he was like, dude, you are disgusting. You're acting like this bachelor, 23 year-old which you are but like you need to be a man, you need to get your act together. This is disgusting and I remember that changed my life when he and so I like got together. Some of my like my my domestic skill set. I also like I was like, I need act like a man. I need a dress better.
I need to like be more appropriate like I got to get my act together so that helped me a ton. He also doubled. Does this a lot? He criticizes me all the time but in a really nice way or he's like I'm gonna tell you this because I love you, but I'm gonna give you feedback. And another thing was when I met this woman that he was like, dating or maybe one of his friends, I think was one of his friends. He was like you're asking way too many intense questions. The first time you meet someone you need to chill and quit talking about work and that was like, painful to hear because that was my identity. And so that changed how
I had conversations and so he's done a good job novels. He is six years older than me so he's kind of done a good job of like being my brother a little bit and like teaching me how to like act like a man so that was like a good thing. I remember when I started my first company the hustle and this CEO of a large multi-billion dollar. Media startup that everyone knows, I'm not going to call him out, he told me I go, I'm gonna start this thing called The Hustle. I think it could become a huge thing.
He said this will never make more than a million dollars a year. Just come and join my company and I was so hurt because I admired this guy so much and my admiration for him turn to hatred, not really hatred but like rage. I was like I want to like I want to destroy you now.
And the reason I thought that was because I was so hurt. My feelings were so hurt. This guy, that I admire, just totally shit on me and he was wrong, but I believed him for, like, six months, I like doubted. Everything I was like, this is stupid, but he told me that he won't even remember saying this this guy, by the way, he probably made, he thought it was like an offhanded comment or something like that, but it hurt my feelings so badly. That I remember that, like terribly. And then the last thing was, like, anytime a girlfriend has ever like broken up with me that like, that is always like,
Young me. I'll remember that for four decades. Like I'm still like trying to like prove them wrong. So like I'm pretty sensitive to like rejection. Yeah.
For sure the most painful moments always come from high school. I think everyone can agree with
that. Yeah, like high school and college girlfriends where you're still trying to figure out yourself a little bit and they like and you get and and there are right like you're not doing things the right way but and they're rejecting you. It's like it's the most painful thing ever
girls were so brutal.
Okay, this next question is from Caitlin. What is one trendy business model? You think is over
height?
I think the nft and web three stuff is just complete nonsense. I think it's inferior entrepreneurs slapping their web 3 name on crap that no one wants and hoping that it's going to work. So, but everyone knows that now, I think, what's overhyped? I think starting a newsletter is really popular right now. Most people don't realize it is a treadmill. It is very challenging to create new content. Just like this podcast, it's hard. This is a hard job.
Get because I think I'm good at it, or I'm decent, but it is very challenging, any type of content business, very, very, very, very hard to do for like two or three years and newsletter, the newsletter space significantly different than when I started. It is way more competitive way more challenging. So I think that is a bit overhyped. Although, I would still start one because I like it. I think that most of the people in the space are not going to work. And it's pretty bad, their content stinks because it just a
It's a repeat of what already has existed. So I think that's quite overhyped. I would say getting popular on the internet can be awesome because you get an audience. But in general, I think that creating businesses based off your like getting popular on Twitter and Instagram and things like that. I think it's incredibly empty feeling for most people and I think it's complete nonsense and your time would be spent building a company or focusing on your family, then getting popular on social media.
I think it's empty. I think that it's like small boy stuff I just and I find it incredibly uninteresting and there's many days that I regret trying to like become popular on the
internet.
Okay, are you up to do one more? Well, do one more. Okay, this one comes from and Jared's doodle. He is moving to San Francisco. He's curious about this idea of proximity to power. So he's moving to SF with the clear intention to start a company and Surround himself with high Achievers. His question is, what did you do when you arrived, or what did Sean do? When he arrived in? SF to start laying the foundation to meet interesting people and business. Builders
Moving to a big city when you are young and have no family, I think is absolutely awesome my time, I lived in SF for eight years, I got angry at the government and I left because it was dangerous, otherwise I would still be there in a heartbeat. I have no problem paying the high taxes in order to live there. I think it's a beautiful place. I would still even go back there today. If my wife wanted to maybe so 100% worth it. I loved it. What I did when I got there.
Was I went to meetup.com and I went to Crazy amounts of meetups. I also did I started an event. So I created it's so funny. See Ava because it's be. So save is one of my best friend's. See if it has a business that does like close to 100 million a year in Revenue, we've had them on the Pod, you guys maybe have heard of him. He so I created this book club called the anti MBA and the idea was we're going to read one book per month.
We're gonna break it up into quarters. So week one, we're going to read a quarter and discuss it week to that the second half or whatever and I would have an expert come in on the books topic. And we would just shoot the shit with like 30 or 20 people on this book. And I posted ads on Craigslist, on meetup.com and where else? I think I bought an ad in the newspaper for like $200. Like, I just posted these ads and see Ava, was one of the people who replied. And after doing that,
For every week for about a year, I had an email list of like, 2,000 people who were like following this book club online because I would write out my notes from the meeting and doing that book club changed my life. So I just hosted a book club and it was awesome. It was so good. It was such a fun way to meet interesting people. And so, that's what I did in order to meet interesting people, as we just read cool books and we brainstorm and talked about them, most people, by the way, didn't even read the book. They just wanted to talk about it because I wrote notes that
Time on like I wrote a summary on the book so that changed my life. The way that I met Sean was, I had this event called hustle Khan and there is this article on TechCrunch about monkey Inferno, which was this incubator that Sean ran and I saw a picture of the, his office and it was magnificent and I cold email Sean and I said, hey man, I'm hosting this event. Can I host the pre-dinner at your office? Well, we'll take care of all the food. I'll even hire someone to clean it up. But can I just like
Oh, sit at your sick office. And in exchange, you can come to the dinner and meet all these wonderful speakers and attendees and he said, yes. And that's how I met Sean. And so, I think what I did was I think more people should do is you just reach out to tons of people? And I would say, don't even reach out to like, Ballers or people who are like ahead of you, find other peers who seem like they got the juice, who got the Charisma, or who have who seem like they're going, someplace, like, for me, it was Ryan Hoover. Ryan Hoover started. This thing called Product hunt, we were buddies before he even started it, and
I've got lots of friends that are now incredibly successful where we were just all like, losers, who were ambitious, but we had nothing and I did a good job of like cold emailing, those types of people and we hung out a lot and we just, I became wonderful friends with them and it was through my book club. It was too cold, emailing Twitter wasn't popular. I don't even have a Twitter back then, so I just cold email tons of people and I would highly recommend. That's what you do. Is find peers who you think are going to go places and you guys all try to succeed together.
ER, and you try to be pretty selfless in the sense of like, like when I hosted my events, they all volunteered to help me out when they needed something. I help them and so just like succeeding together, I think was a really big deal. Now, the issue is that takes like 10 years or 15 years, but it's worth it and you're not doing it, just because someone's got to be successful. Like, I had friends who are artists and like, they financially weren't successful, but it was just people who were, like kicking their dent in the universe. And that was addicting to be around that and we all kind of did it together. And
That's what I did. I had a book club, the anti MBA is what it was called because I was so jealous of the, I didn't go to a fancy school. I mean, when I moved to San Francisco, I took a bus or a train out to Stanford because I was like, I want to see what this shit's about. Like what's so special about this place? And I felt like it. Aw and I was like so jealous that I didn't know what Stanford even was when I was in high school. So I was like, I need to create my own Stanford because I'm jealous of all these people that went here. And so that was kind of the idea is the anti MBA was free and I organized it. So,
So I would suggest book clubs meetup.com, I don't know as meetup.com soaping. I bet you it is right now. When I was in San Francisco, I went there like six months ago and there was in someone someone like recognized me and they go Sam. I love the Pod or hosting a day. I meet up and a hackathon right now. Do you want to come and my wife and I were like yeah, let's go. And so we just like you got a car here and we were like at the farmers market and they're like yeah I was like, all right, come on work, I'm going with you and so we went to this guy's meet up and it
Magical. I met all these AI people who I knew nothing about and it was magical to be in those meet ups at these places where you have like a homogeneous group of people working on something that is not mainstream, it felt really magical so I would say go to those
events. Great awesome. Book club, another thing that you and Oprah have in common. I love it. Yes.
We have a lot in common me and Oprah.
So there were a lot of other questions we didn't get to, but we'll do another one.
A little later.
Let me know if you guys like this stuff. Peace.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know, I could be what I want to.
