I will say, like, the show came out, it was number nine on all of Netflix, the first day number six, the next day. And like the reception has been insane. Like way bigger than I ever thought. Like
how many how many messages are you getting up? Dude, I've given up on
like like I usually get about 1000 to 2000 messages a day just generally like including DMS emails, everything. Because I'm on my newsletter and all this stuff. When I open up Instagram in the morning it just keeps refreshing like
Over and over in my DMs.
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I
want to put my all in it
for me. What's going on man? We're live. What's up? Sam for meat from how to teach. I will, I will teach how to teach what am I saying. Why can't I think of the name of your
business? Your intro, you're giving me. You don't know the name of my company, you better try that
again. I will teach you to be rich. You know why? I confuse it all times because one of my favorite books of all time is Felix. Dennis has
And I always confuse you to his is how to get rich, well, right.
When you want to know something even more confusing, my new Netflix show is now called how to get rich
dude. What's going
on? What's
up? So you just had to show come out two days ago or three days ago, right? Yep. How has it on Netflix? Has it been? Are you like, have you noticed that like the revenue of your business, or the podcast downloads that you have? Are they going up?
The reception is like out.
Control. Well, I'll give you the numbers, but like I thought, I thought shows great. I did not expect for it to be top ten on Netflix. The number of emails, I've gotten, I just gave up on even being able to be on top of my DMs. It's just wild podcast numbers right now, the podcast is number 12 on all of the Apple. I'm very proud to say we have displaced Ben Shapiro, so, you know,
One bigot, at a time. We're going to take him down and number of social, media followers is fantastic. Just like the best. Part of all is people are posting pictures from their family rooms all over the world and it's like you can tell a lot by seeing a family room. You know, you can tell just a ton about someone's life and then you see the same show in every one of those photos. It's kind of like Cosmic, it's like humanity is all watching the same thing which is pretty
cool you are
What percentage increase of downloads per episode? Has your pod gone from
that? Well, it hasn't even been out a week, so I can't even tell you
yet. But well, you can look at your current, your current numbers. Can't you of the podcast?
I don't know, I guess I'm not as sophisticated as you.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean I would have thought that, you know, how to log into things but yeah, I understand I guess I overestimated, your ability
wasn't, I can only be good at a couple of things and then the rest, I'm pretty deficient at him.
So I
I've known your meat for a while now and I've been following you for. It feels like a decade. I don't remember what year you started doing it, but it feels like you've been. You're been, you were like one of the OG bloggers. So like basically, I
started about 20 years
ago. So it was 20 years ago. Wow. So basically, I know my best friend is Neville. I met him because I was a fan of his blog and I found his blog because of Noah kagan's blog. I found no occasions blog because of probably like Tim Ferriss and I probably found Tim Ferriss because of you. It was
This Illuminati of like business e, Financial bloggers, but a little bit, lifestyle lie, and you been doing that, you're like the OG. I remember you like would teach classes like you wrote a blog post, you would like help you hung up fliers on the Stanford campus. You know, I'm going to do personal finance class or something like that and then that kind of like parlayed into one thing which led to another thing. Now you have got this pretty big business, I've talked to a lot of people who work for you, it's a pretty like amazing company that you built. Then you came out with a podcast and
you told me, you're going to come out the podcast and I was like, okay this sounds interesting. Your little late to the game. You've been doing this for 20 years. Let's see, your podcast is actually amazing. You did something that I've always wanted to do but I don't think people would do it so basically you could explain it, but you like tell people, tell you all of their finances and they put their faces on the videos. So like it's not really not a mess, then you parlay that into you've had a, you know, all these books along the way you've parlayed that into a, just a brand new Netflix show. That's now, one of the most popular in the country. I mean, you've done a lot of stuff, right?
Love your intro. This is like better than any entry I can give myself. So thank you. It sounds so, linear the way you say it. Like, I sat at a chess board and just like mapped it out, but if you go into the details of it, like it's actually crazy for example. Yeah, I did hang up flyers and I did try to get my friends in the dining halls, in college to come to my free event and nobody came for like a year and a half. Nobody would come to my event. Like, I would struggle to get people to come to get a freak.
Class on money. And, you know, I got like a handful of people over a year and a half and the reason for that I later learned is that people don't really like going to events about money. It makes them feel bad about themselves. And so, I was like, okay, you know, when you're young and you're like really hungry, you go, this isn't working like the world needs to hear what I have to say. And so, like you can either give up. And sometimes you should or in my case I was like these kids are so lazy. They don't even want to come to a free class, I'm just going to start a blog and so that that's
The path. It wasn't like flyers and then Netflix show. There's like a lot of trying and failing in between the two. All right, let's take a second to talk about our sponsor today. HubSpot they have two new AI tools, that are pretty cool. Want to tell you about. So the first one is content assistant. So we know that contents key for driving Revenue because you write content, you can traffic the traffic turns into leads, and leads, turn and revenue, but not everybody's great at doing content. And so the content assistance
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But so you're only in your 20s when you're teaching that. I mean, what the hell did you know about
money? I had gotten pretty good at money actually. So I started my dad. You know, came from India as my mom did and my dad is pretty, pretty actually Savvy with money. He got me to open up a Roth IRA. When I was like 14, 15 years old, he helped me do it with a custodial account and I took my scholarship money, which I got for college that first check. And I put in the stock market. And I thought I was a genius 1999. Everybody's so cool. And
And I lost half of that pretty fast. Funny enough though, I kept investing because I was working at a pizza place. I was doing some sales thing and so I was investing, I used to think investing meant picking stocks, so I bought three stocks. When I was in high school, one of them, excite at home, bankrupt, another one JDS you. Why the hell was? I buying telecom stocks. I don't know, bankrupt and then a third stock of a little company.
Amazon.com, which I've held since then, and it's like awesome. Now, the lesson for that everybody. Listening everyone goes. Oh that's so cool ramit. So cool. I just got to pick the next Amazon and Sam and I go. No, you don't, you're never going to pick the next Amazon that was complete luck. Do not do that strategy. And the real, the real lesson there is don't try to pick individual stocks. Pick a nice Target date fund, or index fund, and then let it ride and you will have more money than you know what to do with.
And, of course, that's you and me if Sean were here, he would be telling us about some crypto shit that we talked about last time, which, of course, went down by 65%. And before we continue, I just like to give a big shout out to all the people on YouTube from the last episode, we did who they didn't like me very much. You know, they're the crypto guys, you saw the comment, I fucking read every comment, dude, I love it and they go, this guy's such an old fuddy-duddy and what I really want to do. Sam is come on here and and let's go to the comment section and just see what happened all these.
You lost sixty percent of their money. I wonder if they're wonder if they think the same thing. Yeah, anyway, it was a fun episode. Last
time we did, I don't know if you heard the episode, I always give Shawn a hard time because his opinion, in my opinion, on investing or totally opposites, but not totally opposites. But we agree with disagree on a lot, but on the pot, I was go shot. So look, if I made a bet with you, or like if I was a genie and I said, you can only you can start your own company, and invest your own money and your own company.
Yeah, but you can't buy crypto. You can't invest in start-up. You can't do any like cash flowing things, you can't do anything. All you could do is put it into this. The one thing we'll call it an index fund, but whatever it is, and you get a regular return of 8% a year. Now it's regular. It's not you know the theoretical bit is that it's 8% but it's right. It's lumpy but let's just say 8% every single year but you can't, you can't invest anything else other than your business, would you do that? And he was like, 100% absolutely not and in my head.
I'm like that's like the greatest thing on Earth. What are you talking about? That's the greatest thing.
Okay, I heard that episode I was laughing so hard. I loved it actually it's fun to hear two people with totally different opinions. I will say although I'm like you I'm a huge fan of index funds and average returns of seven to eight percent are actually phenomenal. If you understand, compound interest
and time. That is a lot of money. Does 8% double in nine years.
Approximately. So 72 divided by your return rate. If we say 10% nominal, it's about every 7 to 10 years at doubles. So yeah, you're right in the range and that doesn't sound like a lot. If you're putting in like a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars but what people forget is that you don't just put money in once you keep contributing. So it's like you've got a train that's going faster, and faster, and you're pushing the train. It starts to go really and a certain point. You can't stop the train. It's humongous. So anyway, I love hearing.
During the back and forth. I personally was 100% with you. I'm like 8% all day baby. I love average returns. That's fantastic. But, you know, some people, they think differently, or they get a thrill from investing, I don't get a thrill from investing. I get a thrill from, staying in luxury hotels, that's what I love. But my investing is very
boring. Well, so my money right now. I basically have, you know, I sold my company, HubSpot stock and a lot of that was. How about stock? Don't you
sell it for Sam? You gonna toss?
No.
Don't like talking about it Sam.
So transparent with every other number on the show except for how much money is in his bank accounts. And what's up with
that the reported number was twenty seven million and okay, no, it was more or less. It was, it was a right around there. But here's the thing is that, no, I'm gonna our, I'll reveal it a little bit, here's the thing, which is the sale. I received a whole bunch of HubSpot stock and six months or you guys can I think we sold February of two years ago so you guys can go look at it. I think the stock was
Eighty-seven dollars when we sold and then, over the next year, as a bunch of my stock was like, you know, I got it monthly or quarterly or something like that, as I was getting it, it almost tripled so doubled in half. So when it went up from $367, I think to 870 dollars. And so the price, like kind of materially change, of course, then it went back down to like 300, now it's back up but so the the price materially changed because of that. But here's the deal. So I own
But stocks I haven't sold a share, I didn't sell it when it was at its peak. I was like I'm just never going to log in and look at it, we own air B&B stock because my wife worked there and or works there. And we got a bunch of that. And then besides that, I just don't like the normal eighty twenty, whatever. I don't even know what it's called, the normal Vanguard index fund, and then like some type of like, you know, bonds whatever's the normal bonds besides that. Then there's a little bit of real estate but besides that, it's like nothing. I don't really own any. I've
Were actually sold the stock in my life and
some that's all. I
think it's awesome. So many of my friends mock me. It
is awesome. No, no, no. They don't know what they're talking about. They see they get the thrill out of tweaking, their asset allocation. And I go, listen, if it's a thrill to you great, but if they actually understood how much it truly cost them, they would be shocked. You actually deeply understand personal finance. So, you know, that kind of like making turkey dinner for Thanksgiving. Once you put it in the oven,
You let that thing, cook, do not fiddle around with it, you're just messing it up but it's really hard. Even for super smart people, especially entrepreneurs, who love control. They really feel the need to fiddle around and it's so counterproductive with investing. So you said side to really with
you. You said something awesome on your show which is people. Confuse, I forget how you phrased it but you said something about making money versus managing money. And when I first started making money, I was like, oh, great now, I'm very confident. Feel like, I'm pretty
Good at making money. I'm in the 99 percentile of income like making income and then I was like, well that's pretty easy I could do this real estate thing and I can do this deal and this thing and then I started getting into it. I'm like, shit, I'm not great at that because I'm creative and I can invent things from scratch. But when it comes to investing that's not always. It's more about like due diligence and about like running Financial might like for a real estate company. Often times it's more close to just being really good at Excel.
It is like, you know, inventing something from scratch. And you said that on the show the other day when I was watching and I thought that was like amazing and I didn't actually learn that until I've made a few expensive mistakes of managing versus make. That's cool.
Yeah, that's totally true and I think there's three there's making managing and spending all three very distinct skills and everybody primarily focuses on the first making money. I understand why people want to make more money. The managing money. Feels very dry.
Bye. And therefore people are incentivized and driven to make it sexy and mess up do things. And then spending, no one really consciously thinks about, you know, I always say people, everybody teaches us how to save, nobody teaches us how to spend meaningfully. So those three models would be good if anyone's really thinking about how to live a rich life specifically around their money. It's like think about those three models and think about what it would take to be really good for
each.
I don't, I'm not good at the spending thing, and like, there's been multiple times where I've called you and I'm like, I'm going to go to Europe and you go, oh, I'll tell you what to do, but only one rule no budget or I'll be like, I want to dress better and you say great. I have a list of cool stores, one rule no budget. And yeah, you're pretty dogmatic on a handful of things and you're
somewhere to you to you. I wouldn't say that to a school teacher, I say sure Rich dude who sold his company for a lot of money. So I go listen, if you're going to be, if you're going to be looking at the
Stags and and you're going to be looking through the money lens of cost. Imagine you put on a pair of glasses and its cost. I go, I'm not doing that with you. You're too rich. You can't be looking at Cost. There are other money lenses for a guy like you to use, which is totally appropriate. All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast, you should check out on the HubSpot podcast Network. It's called the product boss. It is, I guess where it's like, almost like a workshop style strategy, our around social media and marketing strategies that you can use to up level.
Yourself in terms of sales and any marketing strategies. So there's a couple episodes that you could check out. There's one called why being ready? Is a lie, which is don't wait, don't wait to take action. You'll never take action. You know, if you keep waiting the truth is you'll never be ready and they talk about why it's important to take that leap of faith and trust that new doors will open for you if you just go ahead and take action. So, check out this podcast, go listen to the product boss wherever you get your podcast.
But when did you feel comfortable spending?
Late 20s. I started to make it a practice to get good. Give you an example because Fitness we both love Fitness, dude. I fall all your videos. I'm like this guy. What are you doing? The combine or something? That was hilarious. So, Sam's posting all this like insane stuff, he's doing like 60 inch, vertical, jump, or whatever. It's like crazy. Your squats are like out of this world. I'm like God, this guy. How does he do it anyway? You know, I had to have a little fun with Sam so I go. Hey Sam, nice.
Five, squat, watch. You try practicing for a spelling bee ha, ha ha. Try something challenging said
God, you do, should everyone thought we were actually angry at each other? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're always been comfortable. I mean, like, did I just feel guilty buying a two thousand dollar like jacket? And also it doesn't necessarily bring me joy, which is a whole another thing. But I also definitely feel a sense of now that's like I think value that's by or that's a bad thing. But I
Don't I feel guilty? You don't have guilt around. Someday binding. No,
never, let's talk about why. So, when I was in my late 20s, I was like, okay, I want to learn how to get fit. I never knew about Fitness, when I was young, we didn't even use the word protein in my house. Like we it was not a thing, really?
Yeah. No. Like that's if you told my parents that a Coca-Cola has 40 grams of sugar them like, you might as well tell me there's a billion G because I don't know what that means. You know what I mean? Like at that mean.
Yeah. Okay. So same
So so now I'm like really confused because I'm like have a Sam looks so good. If he didn't even like more protein.
I learned like I went age. Well, I was a college athlete but in so I knew about Fitness and then once I started watching college and got fat, then I married a woman who like cared about this stuff and she kind of like taught me. She's like, hey, you know, just because it says low fat, that doesn't mean that that's good for you. I was like, oh true or that's what women live longer. Yeah, I'd like to sleep Jim. It's me like it's good for you. This is Quito, right?
Right? Like I didn't know, you know what I mean? It's like Go-Gurt is yogurt. Therefore it's good.
Totally. Okay. So when I didn't even like I didn't have the college as athlete thing. I did, you know, I did well in school or whatever, but when I when I graduated I said, I want to start like getting fit and it was like my mid-20s. I had a friend at work. I was like, dude, can you show me how to like work out? So, I was pretty skinny. I was a really skinny guy, and you here clues in the world.
It's with work or with Fitness or whatever the world gives you Clues as to where you stand and that can be true. Even in meetings, like if somebody shows up five minutes late repeatedly that's a clue. Maybe your lower on the power totem pole, and you've kind of got to learn to read the clues to know where you stand. And I remember multiple people when I was in college calling me skinny. Now as a guy that's actually not a good thing to be called, at least I didn't like it and so I just thought I'm genetically skinny, you know. That's
Just how I am skinny Indian guy, haha, but I didn't want to do it anymore. And so a friend of mine showed me how to work out and he was like, okay, do you like to eat like spaghetti? I was like, yeah. He's like do you like bread? I was like, yeah, he's like, do you like milk? I was like, okay, he goes. Hmm, yeah, you need to eat all of that and I was like huh and doubt that was just like oh what I thought I was doing was actually not getting me the goals I wanted. So I started eat more. I actually started track it and I realized what I thought.
I was eating was totally off-base, just common for all of us but it took me until my late twenties when I moved to New York and I get there in like everyone looks great. Just everybody looks good fashion, wise Fitness. I'm like, did everyone attend a class that I was absent for how the hell does everybody know how to hem their pants correctly? And so I lived right by a gym, it took me four months to get the courage to walk into that gym and say, I want a personal trainer, it had nothing to do with money, I had money.
But I knew that once I said that I would actually have to follow through and so I finally got the courage for months. I walk across the street, going to gym pick this guy. The random trainer who happened to be walking by. He was actually great strength trainer and I ended up training with him for about five years. And I learned so much before I switched over to bodybuilding and training a little different but that that was like starting to pay for value and I realized, oh my god, there are, you can get better results, you can get faster results. Sometimes
If you pay for a different restaurant, you get a better experience and that was important to me while at the same time. There are other things. I just don't care about and I don't pay for it at
all on the show. There was there's this couple there like maybe only 38 or 39 there. But there are grandparents I forget their names.
Yeah Monique and Donnell.
Yeah and I and they're very likable but I got so angry watching them because
On the show, they use it. And I hate this experience that, what you, what you did with these people. Because it happens to me, sometimes they sat down and they expressed everything they want in life or at least everything they want. Help from, they say, we struggle with this and you say, all right, here's the plan. Does everyone agree to as a plan? And they go, yes, we totally agree that this plan. This will help us get to where we want to go. That plan includes selling a whole bunch of stuff from a storage unit. It includes not spending a certain amount of money.
And so not buying, I think he was spending 500 or 600 dollars a month on video games or something crazy. And then you fast forward, two weeks later and he orders his big box and they open the box. And there's literally, like, eight pairs of jeans and like 120 dollar pair of shoes and you're like, what the hell? Man. We you said you wanted this. And we agreed that the actions are this and and then he tries to like justify he goes, but I need these genes and they're literally eight pairs of them. Then there's this other woman who
This one point, 1 million dollar house. She goes, you know, my kids are grown now, I don't need this huge house. I'm going to sell it and get a smaller house because I don't want to take care of this fast forward, a few weeks later. She sold the house. She went and bought a 2.2 million dollar house. That's even bigger and she goes. Yeah, but I need this and yeah, it pissed me off so much that these people were doing this and I was like, what the hell guys, where's the discipline in this? And I think that that's like a huge difference between like some
Opal in other people that likes achieve certain things. I just want to like nail it in their heads. Like you guys you realize how like you're you're a hypocrite to yourself right now. You know what I mean?
Well I feel. So I'll tell you, you know, when I was in my early 20s, starting with my, you know, showing people how to invest in stuff, I was super judgmental like super and it's like, oh my God, like you need to open up a Roth IRA. Do you understand how 7% compounds? And I could actually see people's eyes glaze over.
I could basically see their soul leave their body. I'm just like oh this isn't connecting, but I didn't know how to read the clues. I thought if I push him harder, if I show them another chart, they'll get it and I can tell you that that doesn't work and so when you're saying that you hated this I'm actually smiling because I kind of love that. I love when people say one thing and do another because to me it's like that beautiful contradiction of humanity, all of us.
Us say, we want something and we do something different and to me it's like a puzzle. Okay, I know that you're doing that in the domain of money, I totally get it. I've seen it a million times. So how can I figure out a way to reach you which gets you to see the contradiction and change your behavior? Not me to impose it on. You totally different View and I think much more effective. That's what you see on the show.
Yeah. Well, you are patient and like it just but it's still a
Angered me because I liked them. They're very likable and you want them to win. It's like, for me to show. It's kind of like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy but for like money, like you like route for like, it's like, oh, we're going from Zero to Hero or like we're taking like someone who's like, you know cute. But you know, we take the glasses off and all of a sudden she's a model. You know what I mean? It's like a like a high school movie but like you root for them but I'm like, you guys. This is so obvious these mistakes that you're making, it's angering me that this is going to make you not achieve what you want to achieve. And that like,
Earth me so much watching that not hurt, but it frustrated me.
Well, I like that. I like I want you and I want every all the millions of people watching it to feel something at that that alone is a win because money, we don't usually feel anything except overwhelm and shame. So I like that you're watching this and going God, it's so obvious. Now, I will say you have built discipline over like decades. You have been practicing at it right for a long time. Some of us don't even grow up with discipline in our lives.
I grew up with discipline around reading a spelling-book, literally for two and a half hours a day. I could do that and I did very well at that. But the discipline to be empathetic, I didn't really grow up with that. I was like a utilitarian type of guy. So I think that it's fun to watch them and like it's fun to watch. People have to find their own path to get where they're going. And you know what people are people, some people do it, some people don't, that's kind of the beauty.
We of humanity. Not everyone is going to succeed, and that's that's how it
goes. The other interesting thing was the same couple that I'm referring to, they had this. So these folks, I think their annual and their household income, maybe was 90 grand a year. And This Woman's about that this woman, quit her job to this woodworking thing, which is awesome. But they had this storage unit that I think cost $400 a month and we open up the storage unit and it's sorry folks. If you're listening it's garbage it was like an
Old used microwave. It was like plastic like toys and like containers from Target, like it was just junk like the amount at which they probably spent in two months was worth more than the entire stuff and it was like dude why aren't you some this microwave? And he was well I need it and that that also bothered me because
Two, Americans have so much crap. This couple I think is very, is, very normal. It's very average, and I was shocked at how much stuff people have and it made me want to go through my closet and just get rid of everything. I'm like, dude, we don't need any of his junk. Not only does it make you happy it brings you down. It was just so much stuff. Was that normal that you sent to you what's with so much stuff? Yeah, okay.
So I had never gone into people's houses until a few years ago with my business.
And I had had offers from producers and stuff to go into someone's house, but it was always this sort of, like, go into this couple's house and then, like, finger wag at them and tell them all the things you're doing wrong. It's just not my vibe. I don't want to do that. I'd actually asked him like what do you love spending on? Let's go. Do more of that. Come on. You want a nice bag? Cool. Let me show you how to get more and finally, there was a producer who is a friend of mine and she said, like, come on, you really got to come out. This one's special, so they drove me to New Jersey.
And I went into this young woman's apartment, it was a new apartment complex, very nice. He had a Jeep outside and the minute, she opened the door. I thought to myself, I should have done this 10 years ago because you can tell so much by going into the entryway of someone's house. Okay. At the time, I was living in Manhattan, most of my friends had somewhat similar Apartments to me, we kind of live in a similar way.
When I walked into her apartment, there were beautiful candles like nice dip, teak style candles, they're probably 15 or 20 of them. Those are very expensive, so I'm taking it in. Okay, cool. She loves Candles there was a gigantic TV, okay, that's pretty interesting. And I asked her to pull up on her phone and read off the top. Ten emails in her inbox. It was like Target Pier One, you know, whatever.
Stores. This starts to tell you a lot about someone. It's basically Clues and like you may see a living room. I see how much percentage of her net income is going to fix costs and I'm able to start to figure out what's really going on with her with folks like on the show, you could totally see the amount of stuff people have and after a while that stuff starts to control them. When I ask people like, what's your rich life? Almost nobody says, a bunch of ten dollar items from Target. I can guarantee that they might say, I love
Beautiful sweater. I love trips with my kids, Etc. I go cool. Let's spend more on that. And let's cut back on the stuff that you don't care about and that really resonates with people.
Yeah, it's just like, I grew up in Missouri. I grew up with in a very normal household, all my friends growing up were normal and then I go back and I look at like how I grew up and where my friend like oh my God, like my parents have a stereo that still has a cassette tape player like and I don't think they've turned this on in 15 years and it's like,
I'm like, hey, Mom and Dad. You should throw that away, it doesn't even work and they go. But, you know, we're going to, I'm like, you guys. You don't have a tape, you don't even have a cassette. Yeah, play anything. Like it's a
great. It's a great lesson is we have to be very, very conscious of the things we buy. Because once they come into our home and once they become part of our identity, it is almost impossible to get rid of them. And everyone listening is like, oh yeah, those those people. Why don't they just give it up and I'm going. Just look in your closet, you know, my wife is a personal stylist. She goes into
Closets, she helps him do closet cleanses. She does all their image and stuff like that. She will show me how many trash bags she fills with clothes to be donated. Sometimes it's a small closet, six trash bags, one client, I think 40 bags that were taken out and donated. It is really hard to get rid of stuff. That's why I you know for me I go I'm going to be super careful about what I bring into my house, clothes Electronics, whatever. When I get it I want it to be the best and then when I get the
I want to keep it for a long period of time, like, you don't have to do the same but I would say develop your philosophy as to what you're going to buy and how long you're going to keep it for otherwise, you're just going to end up inundated with a bunch of junk.
We had Neil Patel in the Pod and he liked people got so angry at him because he goes I spend, I think he said he spends two hundred thousand dollars a month in monthly expenses and he broke that down and then we had another person come on and do the same thing. I think I
I spend me personally, I think I don't have a kid. I think we spend 20 to 30 thousand dollars a month and I remember, like, when I was 22 starting my company. I spent two grand a month, including a rat, like nothing, and I remember thinking like 20 grand a month. I, I can't even, I can't even imagine what I would spend with 20 grand a month. Now that I spend 20 or 30 a month, I think. Oh, yeah, I can make a dent with 100 Grand a month, like I could, I could use that.
At anything above that. I actually think it's challenging but maybe I'll find my way. Won't one day? How much do you think you spend a month and have you found thresholds of like,
this doesn't feel any better than this lower number.
Oh, this is a great question. Well, I think that thresholds are to me less interesting than what are the things that I love to spend a lot of money on. And what are the things I don't care about and I'm like, extremely polarized and I actually want everyone to be polarized. So for me, the worst is, if people go, I spend a little bit here, I spent a little bit there or I try to cut back, five percent here and five percent there. I'm just like that sucks. That's not an effective strategy and it's not even fun. So you say
Concept of you say, don't do five dollar problems. Do thirty thousand dollar problems I think is that right? Don't
ask three dollar questions, ask 30,000 dollar questions and people go like, what are you talking about? Ramit? I go, let me explain. Most people agonize over coffee and can I get an extra dessert? And I go that's irrelevant. If you want to buy a coffee or to go ahead, that makes no material effect on your finances over the long term. But thirty thousand dollar questions are things like, what's my savings rate? For example, do I save and invest
Of percent per year. Okay, great. What if my partner and I make a agreement every year, we're going to increase that number by 1 percent. If you just made that decision alone, that's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, okay? More than all the coffee, you'll ever buy in your life combined. What's my asset allocation? That's a three hundred thousand dollar question. What is my debt payoff date? If you have debt, I guarantee you do not know the exact month and year, you're going to pay it off, you should know that. So for my spending,
I love talking about this because I always encourage people to, to come up with their money dial. What is the thing you love spending on? Should we just do this right now? Yeah, let's do this with you Sam. What is your what do you love spending on? What's the one thing?
Flying first class. So when I when I fly when I fly, I like to if it's above three hours, I its first class, I don't get enough of it. I don't I don't like fancy hotels, but I like nice airbnb's because I like Apartments over like a smaller Hotel.
Oh, I like spending on like when I like to go out to eat, I love leaving huge tip. So if it's a good service, I like doing like 100% tips, love it, I like toys. So like four-wheelers and motorcycles, I love Action, Sports, and things like that. What else do I like? And I like service at your gym. Yeah, I got my gym. So yeah, I so Jim would be somewhat like a toy but I love services. So I spend $400 a month for a trainer. I spend another six.
$100 a month for like a doctor who I can just ask, like, or sorry nutritionist. So I can ask questions, do nutritionist cleaners someone to come and cook. I love services and like an assistant someone who do my laundry, like all types of services, but not too many things.
Love it. Okay, great. So I think for everyone listening, let's let's highlight a couple things on that first question. Play along with us. So, what is the thing? You love spending money on most? People's answer is eating out. That's the number one money dial. Number two is travel. Number three is health and wellness. Number four is convenience. You basically have like all of those but that makes a lot of sense. You've been very successful financially so you've added money dials. Most people start with eating
In out. Okay fine. Pick one of your money dials which you would say is the one that gets you super pumped, super excited
services. So convenience, great,
love it. I'm the same convenience is my money dial. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. People think like I'm a serial killer when they hear how I dial all my stuff in but like, I don't care. That's what I love. Okay, here's the question number two, if you were to quadruple the amount you spent on that money dial, what would your life look like and feel?
Like
I think it would actually be awesome. So like for example right now I have a service that does my laundry and brings it to my door and then I have this wonderful woman who cleans my house, but she doesn't put my laundry away. And so I what I would love to do is just say, hey, I'll pay you more money. Just make sure that my closet is always organized and my clothes are put away because my clothes will just leave State like nicely folded on the floor in my closet, so small things like that or or like if my dog goes to the bathroom,
Outside like I sometimes I'll forget to clean it up and then I'll realize there's a bunch of it and my God, I gotta go clean it up. It's nice to have someone to come and just handle all that. So someone just to handle all types of cleaning and organizing my house. I would love that.
Okay. I think I like your answers, but I think you got to dream a little bigger. You could get all that with like a hundred bucks a week,
dude. II. Same space, everybody. Everybody
look at Sam's face. He's like lost right now. Go ahead. I'm going to take you with me on
this. I think I'm quite bad at, like,
Like dreaming big.
Yes that's why I'm here.
All right side. Say what do we do now?
What else would you do? I said quadruple, not at a hundred dollars
a week. I would have an assistant come to my home twice a week and we would go through my to-do list.
Love it. What else? Think about traveling? Think about cleaning your car. Think about how you travel with your family.
It would be awesome to fly private occasionally with my whole nucleus family, my nuclear
family.
And who would coordinate all of that
right now me?
Well, not in this quadruple scenario,
whom I do have, I'm going to say, Amanda me and my family went to go from st. Louis to New York around this date, hook it up. There's gonna be eight of us. Just tell me when to show up or have a car there,
love it, love it. And then you mentioned that you love tipping which I love to. I am a huge fan of huge tips. I've told people like part of your rich life, very likely should be generosity. How would that fit in like the person who cleans your house? What might you do in terms of
Spending more there,
I would probably. So like over Christmas I gave her a two hundred dollar bonus, I think would've been cool to say here's a thousand dollars. Just thanks. There you go. All right, love it. This is awesome. Okay, so for again, for everybody
listening, the question is, you already identified your money, dial the thing, you love now? What if you could quadruple your spending, now I'll tell you what, I loved about Sam's answer and then I'll tell you what was different about Sam's answer than most people's answer. So Sam was immediately like, oh, he knew exactly what he would do. He's like my clothes.
Sit on the floor of my closet, which, by the way is barbaric, Sam. That's reduce. Oh, he goes, I'm gonna get someone to hang them up. Okay, great. By
the way, a drink at all, I feel like most of my friends, my closest friends are Indians, the Indians that I'm friends with like novel. They're always Immaculate. There's never climbed of course. There's never clutter.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And they their clothes are. Yeah well it's that thank you for saying that Immaculate. I love that, I'll take that the immaculate
and I was just at Neville's house today and I'm like Neville you never have clutter
What're you just it's always, everything's perfect.
Wow, Neville my man. Okay, he's gonna be so happy to hear this, man. It's true. People talking about you behind your back and actually, saying nice
things. Now, it's
Immaculate. That's the best. Okay. What is different about Sam's answer than most people is that, you know, he's talking about fairly expensive things, right, private jet, Etc. Now don't let that turn you off. I'll tell you what. The most common answer I get is, I told you that people go eating out and I go okay, if you could quadruple your
Which is why I call it a money. Dial, you could turn that dial up like a Serial, what would it look like? And most people have the same linear answer? They go. Well, I'd probably have to go on a diet because I'd be eating out four times a week. Ha ha ha. And I go ha and then I go. Hey listen, would you still eat a chole and they're like they stop for a second and they go. Oh, probably not. It's a human tendency that we just take what we're doing and we do it times for same thing, but linear and I
I want to stop them. I want to dimensionalize it. I go. Would you still eat at Chipotle they go? No, I go. Where would you eat? And now they're thinking, there's a guy in d.c., he goes, I have a list of every michelin-starred restaurant. I go, who would you take with you and he gets very quiet. He goes, I'd take my family because they can't afford to eat at places like that and so when you're thinking about your rich life, it's so important to understand where you are today, what's important to you and if
You can spend extravagantly on that thing. What does it look like? Feel like smell like taste, like, because you need that crisp Vision. Otherwise, what are you working for? Why are you going to invest and save? And once you have that Vision, I want to take my family to New York. I want us to go to Central Park and all have a picnic there and you can see what you're going to eat. And then what you're going to do and it's just like so beautiful, it smells fresh in the fall. That's when it becomes much easier for me to say, okay, we know
Do you want to spend extravagantly on that? Now, show me what you want to cut costs mercilessly on so that is the way that we start to craft a rich
life. What does your you know your the phrase? Like everyone thinks or a lot of people imagine? See I will teach you to be rich and they think this guy's a douche and then whenever you change it and you say wait hold on a never. I've never heard anyone say that that's
actually well shotgun.
Now I'm just kidding. They say yeah.
They go they go. Yeah. Thanks.
The number one way, people introduced me on Reddit, is they go, hey, you should read this guy's book, it's called. I will teach rich. I know it sounds like a huge scam but it's actually not. And I, you know, it's been 20 years or whatever 10 years I go. All right. Fine, I
accept. Will you come up with this good line? That is 100% redeems herself which is it's about living like what's your rich life? Which is totally great because you're like no it's money's a component but like you're rich life to be anything and so that's actually quite redeeming your rich life. You said is like,
Convenience. So what is your like, I don't know. How do I say this? Without sounding lame, your convenience stack. Like, what is your? What is your like? Okay, what it? What's that look like and what's and what's your budget for that?
I have an unlimited budget sake. Come on. That are important to me.
Quit yankin my leg, quick be an academic. How much do you spend on month for like this amazing set up?
Well, I don't, first of all, I don't think on a monthly basis so you know, I don't want anyone to be thinking on a monthly basis except for your conscious spending plan. So in order to
Have a bigger perspective you think on an annual perspective, minimum? So for me I would spend well if I factor it all in, probably hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on convenience.
So 338 down for you is 300,000 or the right number or is it on the upper side of that?
I tried to say, let me give you an example. Like, if I stay at an amazing hotel which I love would that be part of convenience, it's quite pricey, or would it be part of like, luxury or
Perience. I don't know, but I'll tell you like, the big components of it. So I want to wake up in the morning and I want every single thing in its place so much so that if I go blind, I know exactly where everything is. So that means my food is ready, that means that my calendar. Invitations have the link in the same place, which takes me to the exact same thing. So I'll convenience my meetings are scheduled. When I travel, I have an assistant who's amazing when I travel
is that a dummy to a W-2 employee or
Or okay, W-2.
A very experienced seasoned executive assistant, who knows how to work with other Executives, who knows how to work with everybody in my life. So she would be responsible for everything from day to day meeting, scheduling haircuts, complex, travel planning, interacting with the travel advisor, things like that. And she knows my preferences. So we documented all, she knows if I'm flying a four-hour flight. This is the type of seat. This exact seat, I'm going to sit on
And what I love about having an assistant, as they become your, basically, your spokesperson, or your right hand person, and so they have to be able to interact with people at CEO levels, and at every level. So that that's super important for me, when we when I travel, I have a travel protocol gets activated. So it means like, she will handle my email a little differently. If I go if I'm going somewhere, I'll have food sent ahead to the hotel. If I'm staying in certain locations.
It's like healthy food. I can try to stay on plan as much as possible, things like that. So we over time we just document it and it just becomes like part of an sop.
Didn't you guys have like a program on like working with someone? Yeah, I
still have it. It's called delegate, and done. And this is like how to hire an assistant, like the 35, Plus things that my assistant does. And actually how to run our meetings, like exactly how we run, our weekly check-in meetings. Yeah, we have all that stuff, all templates.
It's
awesome. I'm gonna buy this. This is good. All right. What else
will give you a link for the show notes? But that's for people who are like, I want a cyst, a smoothie running system. I want an assistant who's smart. I'm not looking for the cheapest. I'm looking for the best and I want to empower them to be able to handle everything. For me, that that's awesome. What else, what else is there? Oh training. So I have a personal trainer. He's awesome. And like I go there and train with him.
Him. We have goals for the show, for example, I knew exactly what I wanted to look like. And it was funny because I went in to get fitted for some clothes, my wife was styling me and I went in and I was like, okay, this is the size. I'm going to be and I was way bigger than that size at that time. Were you when you're late
or muscle?
A little of both I was bulking, so I was more muscle but I still had put on some fat, and I knew I was going to start cutting and they were like trying to be very polite to me, but they were like, um, we would recommend you don't go like that small and I was like, listen, I'm a professional and I know exactly what I'm gonna and they were, like, trying to be really polite about it, but I could see them exchanging glances with each other. I was dying. I was loving it because you know, everyone says that like when you're going into
For a wedding fitting or whatever you like, yeah, I'm gonna lose like 15 pounds and like no one does.
So they're like, of course I was like telling you to lose weight but step on the scale and subtract 15, just be that. Yeah,
yo, I was laughing so hard because my wife, we've like, we've trained and like we know what, you know, kind of what we trained for our wedding, for example. So we know the process and I was very confident at my trainers. Awesome, Etc. And so, I went back in for the
First fitting. Nobody believed me. I was like just do what I said please. And then I came in for the next fitting and I wanted to play a trick on him. So I was like, from the fitting room, I was like, oh my God, this doesn't fit at all. But it actually like everything fit perfectly and so that is an example where like getting help write for convenience for, what's the look? What's the training protocol? That kind of stuff is important
was. It was filming the show. What you thought it was going to be, I mean, what's Sean's always wanted to have enough.
Click show. I mean, what do people? I shall talk to him about it. Yeah,
okay so I have filmed before like in a studio with my crew, things like that, this was completely different, like it was on a whole nother level. So I'll give you some examples the week before the show started filming, they finally found an office in l.a. literally 17 days before, and they designed it and they were like, come on in.
Walk through it and give us your feedback on the design. So first of all, they designed it in 24 hours. That means they took a blank office and put a full design in there. So I walked in and I was like, it looks like a white person is selling their Air B&B like it has like all geometric shapes on the like wood. I'm like, no, it's
not me like a live. Laugh. Love sign. Like a neon sign.
Yes, exactly. I was like, simplify so they don't ya.
Yeah, exactly. Work. Like, we're not doing this. No, not for a Netflix show. So then they were like, oh well, do you have any suggestions force? Of course, I had a Pinterest board of, like, interior design home offices that I pulled out, and my style is wood Stone Japanese design, minimalism and basically like an unlimited budget and they took one look at that and they just started laughing because they're like, dude what are you talking about? We have a budget. And we have like two days to finish this office. So anyway, we
Hashed it out. We came up with something that I think looks pretty good and when I went in the first day, the crew when I'm shooting just in an office, which is a totally controlled environment, there could have been like 30 people, that is huge. Multiple camera sound producers make up, it's
embarrassing.
I like having it so yeah it's like it's like you're performing it's like you're acting really not just like shoot the shit. You're not shooting the ship you know whatever you do. When you normally record your like having conversations, someone do to 30 people around me. I'm like dude, I feel like a like an animal in the zoo.
Yeah, well, it's funny. You say that I like day-to-day doing like, what we're doing right now? I love it. I feel really comfortable chatting with you, or doing an Instagram thing, but being in the Limelight, especially in public, or four things,
Like my birthday. I have never felt comfortable. I like actually dread it. It's and even for, for my, for yet, for my 40th birthday, I was dragging my feet. Like dragging it even though it's like rich life and like, I always loved bringing my friends and family together and my wife noticed this and she's like, like, what is wrong with you? And I go, I don't know. She did, I was so indecisive. She goes, you want me to just plan it for you? And when she said that was like, the magic words like, yes, please. Because this one thing in my life, I just feel so uncomfortable, doing and one.
Since she started to do it like it all took off. I was thrilled. So this show was like, for the first few days. I felt a little uncomfortable. The other unexpected part was
I'm going to people's houses. Okay, people open up their houses. It's the most intimate thing you can do in America is to open up your home and talk about money. Like most more Americans would be comfortable talking about their sex lives than their credit card debt. That's actually research. And so to really know how to make people feel comfortable with a camera crew and producers and all that that that took some learning but overall
All I thought the crew is amazing, they really helped me feel good and kind of come into my own.
Do you get paid directly to do it? Or are you hoping that like the is this is marketing for everything else? You do
I get paid? I get paid as Talent which is what they call somebody who would be a host. So Hollywood term is talent and then I'm also an EP or executive producer on the show as well. So that's great. There is yeah, yeah.
And well they fill you in on how many people watch
It or is Netflix? I think they're like, notorious for not like telling you stuff, right?
Correct. They they, there are some things that they release but they don't typically share actual numbers. I will say, like the show came out. It was number nine on all of Netflix, the first day number six, the next day and like, the reception has been insane. Like, way bigger than I ever thought.
Like how many, how many messages are you getting up? Dude, I've given up on.
Like, like I usually get about
Seven to two thousand messages a day just generally like including DMS emails, everything. Because I'm on my newsletter and all this stuff. When I open up Instagram in the morning, it just keeps refreshing like over and over in my DMs and I'm like, what am I supposed to do with
this? I don't even know. You, you have been like, on, I've noticed on Twitter, I we've been friends for a while on Twitter, you've become more polarizing and I have a feeling
That part of that is on purpose. Is that true like you
mean polarizing because of
politics? Yeah but also like for example I agree with you for the home. So like you and I agree that buying a home you should do it because you want it, not because it's a good investment. Because the numbers show, it's actually not a good investment. It could be a good investment, but that's mostly Lux every once in a while, but do it because you want to and at best assume it's a great store of value. But it's not necessarily going to be like a wonderful return, you know? But like
Like you will tweet like look at this I think you'll say like look at this moron, they think x y&z. What are these idiots going to believe this?
Oh no, hold on. I do not say that. But I do say that I would never call
some. You say that about the political stuff you say that about political stuff. Sorry I but but you are harsh on the home-buying thing and you're all so harsh on other topics, you're not harsh on that thing. The home-buying think you're like you will call people morons for mostly political stuff I think but
Okay.
I guess I have something against right-wing extremism. So yeah. I'm pretty straightforward and direct about that which is like, I don't accept it and like fuck that and if Pete and I talk about raising taxes on the rich including me, I go. Yeah, we should. I should I pay historically low taxes. We should and people are kind of shocked when they hear a guy with money going. Oh, I actually enjoy paying my taxes. I feel really good about them and we should actually raise taxes people.
Like what the hell? They also feel shocked when they hear a money Guy saying, like buying a house actually might not be the best investment. So it's funny. I will say like when I talk about real estate, I definitely mix it up and sometimes people will go like ramit. You're so negative about buying a house and I go the fact that you think my advice which is run the numbers on the biggest purchase of your life is negative tells you how far the Overton window has shifted that if someone says
You should actually calculate the biggest purchase of your life that's being - I go. No, no, no, no, no. You have to run the numbers and as you and I know Sam a lot of times, it's like not that great of an investment index funds could often not always, but often outperform more. Also more
often.
Yeah, depending on City. And like for everybody listening, I lived in I've rented for about 20 years, I have made more money renting than I would have owning, and I've rented in San
Cisco New York La in New York. For example, I kept a very close eye on the real estate market. It would have cost me two point two times more to own the equivalent unit. Same neighborhood, same view, same size, same number of bedrooms 2.2 times and so if it was a three thousand dollar apartment, it would have cost like sixty to sixty four hundred a month. When you factor in all the Phantom costs, interest opportunity cost maintenance. I just took the 3200. I just put in the
And made way more money and less hassle,
but your political thing that's like on your list of things to do to stick out, right? You have a list here of how to stand out and you say unconventional, unconventional decision. Stand Out. Talk politics.
Yes, talk whatever it takes. Yes. That's what I'm s. Talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. So I had this YouTube video. I did many years ago which was like, why I don't talk about politics. I think it's still up on YouTube and I was like, hey guys, I am like, you know, I'm not going to talk about it and I had my reasons.
And 2016 happened. And I was like, no way. No fucking way not in the country. I grew up in where we have comments, like, let's ban Muslims until we figure out what's going on. I go, what the fuck? This is, this is crazy. I stand, you know what? I studied in college, right? I studied propaganda social influence and persuasion Cults. I studied that and I start to see the same Dynamics happening. Here I go, if I can't speak up,
First generation, successful guy, who was lucky, and also worked hard became successful, you know, in the ways business and all this stuff, if I can't do it, then who can. And so I started do it. And people flipped out the first few posts I made were like, stick to finance. I go. First of all, they always are the same type of people who tell me this and they expect because of the way I look, they expect me to kind of roll over and blow a hole. So, you're, you're right, you're right.
Right? I come right back at him. I got I'm not going to stick to anything. This is my feet and I'll tell you exactly what's going on. By the way, I happen to know a little bit more about this than you and they are shocked shy and I post their comments to me. It's quite Illuminating when you see so over the last like five, six years. I've actually had like thousands of conversations, thousands of political conversations, why? Because I actually don't get the chance to talk to people like this in real life. People who go like,
We should like cut all taxes taxes are theft and then I go, like tell me why, like what about the roads you drive on? Who should do that and I really get to understand get inside their minds and sometimes I post the conversations because I want you to see a lot of people go. We should like we should reason we should have conversations. I go take a look at these conversations like I'm very patient with them. But yeah, I do think that people are afraid to talk about their genuine politic or beliefs or to say like this is actually wrong because they're worried about what's
It's going to happen to their business. My business is based on my reputation and I go look if you're going to leave if if you don't agree that young people should have access to voting rights. Then don't buy my book, I'm totally fine with you leaving my community and I believe that
but you have a list of other things on here and some of the things I wanted to talk about. So what's the DNS list? Do not sell list? And how does that make you stand out?
So
Well, when you, so, let's the whole concept of standing out is the world wants you to be
vanilla. I sold my heart out your business. Have you noticed? I see, I see, I say that line all the time on this. Yeah, I still have a
appreciate you saying it. Okay. Thank you. Everyone. Make sure you hear that credit.
No, I give credit. But you, that line does the world want you to be vanilla? I use that all the time and I'm vanilla, by the way, I could say it. No, I
don't. Actually, I don't think so. Okay, look, vanilla means the world wants you.
To be like everybody else and it comes out in Peculiar ways, right? The world wants you vanilla they go Sam you're throwing money away on rent you should buy a place vanilla and now for some people buying a house makes perfect sense. But if you're 23 years old, you don't know where you're going to be in three years. It doesn't make any sense. The world wants you to be vanilla. They tell me ramit, you should stop cursing on your YouTube videos. I go. But that's how I talk and sometimes I hear stuff. That's crazy. What do you want me to say? You want me to stop because of the algorithm? No, I'm not living my life by an algorithm.
Rhythm the world wants you to be vanilla. When they told me ramit, you shouldn't sell programs. That's Cami. You should give it all away for free. I go. No, it's a profitable business. And I'm totally comfortable, charging, thousands of dollars for programs that are going to change your life, start a business, find a dream job. One of the things we did was we decided early on that. We are going to be highly selective about who we allow to be our customers. I remember
the highly selective. Yeah I did. You have a good guy so like
I'm going into credit card debt. Buying your stuff and you go. You're banned. You can't buy your stuff
anymore. Yeah, I know. I've been thousands of people, thousands, the DNS list stands for do not sell. And that's we have a very extensive list of people who we simply will not accept their money. So, policy number one is, if you have credit card debt, you cannot join our Flagship programs. Those are the expensive ones. Why two reasons one, if if you actually understood how credit card interest rates work, you would never
Spend two thousand dollars on a program. You would pay your debt off first, get financially comfortable, right? And then come back to us. And to the type of people who join with credit card debt, they often have a lot of pressure on like they go, this has got to work, I'm down to my last dollar. I go. No, you can't make huge changes in life if you have that kind of pressure. So slow it down. Here's a free chapter from my book and like, please don't join come back. When you're ready, we'll be here if they still join.
We bet we'd be at banned him for life. And I think for any entrepreneur listening, you don't have to do the same thing I do. But the point is, if you really Elevate yourself, you go, hey, I'm spending tons of time building the best product or service in the world. Therefore, I'm going to be selective about who I allow to join my business, like Hermes, very selective about who they allow to buy their Birkin bag. Think about elevating yourself, make sure that you're actually good enough to elevate yourself and then be selective it actually builds.
A much better and more profitable business.
You say, don't be the first mover. Wait to write a book. Start making money, follow your natural tendencies. So for example, I love slow long-term thinking so that's what you're going to do. And you'd so you'd be horrible at starting clubs in Miami. And then you have a framework of fast deep and long. What? So I agree with the first mover thing. The write a book thing. I actually agree with to writing a book seems like a pain in the ass by the way and what's not making money.
You mean,
well, I think that sometimes we people believe I need to build up like this huge, long audience before I start making money and that's actually what I did. And in retrospect it caused me a lot of hardship because I was writing for free in two thousand, four, five six. And when I finally sold something for $5, a $4.95 ebook, I was petrified of selling. I had a pretty decent sized audience.
And a lot of people got pissed off at me, really mad, because they basically saw me as the free information guy. And when I tried to redefine the Dynamics of that relationship, people do not like that. It would have been much better if I'd started off and I was like, hey this is actually going to be a business. It would have taught me like focus on the metrics that matter focus on things that matter. And it also would have set the expectation with my audience. So I went through a lot like I went through two and a half, three years of people unsubscribing from my list. Every day I was using.
Weber at the time so you can see the reasons that they unsubscribe. So every morning, I woke up. There's like 75 people there like you suck. You're a sellout. And I was like, wait what? I still give away 98% of my stuff for free. I'm selling a five dollar ebook and they were Furious, and that was my fault. Not theirs.
We I have so many people who ask me. They're like I'm gonna do a newsletter. When do I monetize? I usually tell them or a podcast. Whatever. I usually tell them like this is a huge generalization. But for a news
Letter, maybe, when you're at five or ten thousand people, then you could have an atom at. If you could have an ad in it, if you're just selling like product fucking do it right away like day one, have it in there and they're like I should do it. That early it won't. I like turn off my audience I'm like you know you won't but you need that money in order to do more shit and I'm like, also if you turn off your audience doing this, it's the wrong thing. I remember Casey neistat Casey neistat, my favorite, you know, he's, I love him. She had this
Where he said I was, he talks about money and he goes, I was like at Peak Fame and like 2016 and he goes, I was still broke because even though I had also, even though I had all these downloads people thought I was famous, I didn't have any money and he goes, I thought I was being a cool artist by not having YouTube ads on, but I went back and did the math and that was like four or five million dollars a year that I was missing out on and I was fucking broke and I was an idiot. So if you're an artist out there, don't be
You fool take the money because then you can keep doing more
art. Listen to Sam, I wish I had learned that Sam like early on. I did not had the same sort of thinking, like, oh my gosh. Monetizing will turn people off. And what I didn't realize is, first of all, if you're turning them off by trying to make a living, then you've got the wrong audience, better to know that early than later and a lot of times people actually like it, like they want to know what you recommend, so that was interesting, but most of all, if you have money it
Abel's you to Build a Better Business. Better people, better design, better Talent better, all of it. And I didn't get that for a few years. I wish I
had will wrap up in a second because I know you we're at the hour, but one last question, which is sometimes people come to me and they'll be like, you know, my personal brand is really tied up in my company's brand and that will make it hard because maybe I want to sell my company. So have you ever thought about
Selling. I will teach you to be rich. Would you ever sell it and is it sellable being so tied to you?
I don't think it's sellable in the way that I would need to maintain my reputation. I have had some interest in selling the business. I remember, I got invited. I was at a party in New York and this kind of mysterious guy comes up to me and he had a very generic name and he was like oh nice to meet you. But
I knew a lot about my business, like, more than any normal person would know. He knew like the way I structured. My funnels, he knew basic conversion rates. I was like, who in the hell is this guy? He goes, hey, I'm gonna be in town in a couple weeks. I'd love to get together for breakfast. I was like, cool. So, you know, I was like, pretty young guy. I was working at a coffee shop, stuff like that. He invites me to the Four Seasons in Midtown for breakfast. What the hell?
How to tickle your hand? Every man, you like fancy
hotels. Yeah, I was like, hmm. Okay, let's go. So we get there and it's four people including me at the table three other can Ambush him. So I was like cool. Like this is weird but like let's let's do. I don't know what's going on here. So I chatting with the guys very nice and one guy's kind of like silent and the other guy is sitting there with his arms crossed and just listening I'm trying to figure out like what's the power Dynamic hear, what's going on and
At one point, one of the guys, the guy with the crossed arms who wasn't saying much, he mentioned that he like vacations in North Carolina or something like that. And I go, oh, like, how far is the place from the airport? I don't know why I asked that question, but we're talking about it and he said something like, oh, it's like a five hour drive. I go. Wow, that's a long drive. He goes, oh, I don't drive. I take a helicopter. Bingo. Oh, got it. Okay God, now, I understand what's going on. So they wanted to buy.
A percentage of the business over 50% and they wanted to, you know, basically hyper monetize it. Now my business could make a lot more money if I got more aggressive with my offers. We don't really run Facebook ads. So for us to win on Facebook, we would need to get much more aggressive than were willing to like, I have a brand. I have a reputation. Also I already have the name. I will teach you to be rich. I actually love when people come. They expect to get this Hard Sell and they're like, oh this guy went to Stanford. He hasn't
Click show like, you can get his book A lot of it for free, like it's, you know, it's it kind of you're like, oh, I'm surprised. I didn't sell, I told him Point Blank. And I even thought to myself, like, what would I do with the money? My life is great. I had an assistant, I had a trainer. I was like, I'm good, like what am I gonna do with extra money? I'm actually really glad I did not sell because the business went through a big growth spurt in the next few years. But now, I have the dream that I love. I have a 100 percent boost.
My business. I work from home. My team is amazing and like I get to go on talk shows like this, talk about my philosophy and then people email me with their success stories. I'm like dude it does not get better than this. I appreciate every day that I have this
business. Is there any Financial or business goals that you have as a North star? Where you're like, you know, in 10 years, it would be cool if we did this.
I mean, I guess I didn't expect Netflix to happen.
I was not gunning for it, it just happened. So I wanted to reach more people, that was my goal and I've now reached more people in the last week than I have in probably 10 years which is like my I still trying to sit with that so I probably need to recalibrate where I want to go, but I'll tell you like one thing I know like from doing the podcast is when I started the podcast, I sat down, I wrote a vision document, I never really do this, and I wrote it because I knew that we were going to have to get a lot of people.
Involved like editors and guests and everybody and I was like, you know what, I need to just write down my exact Vision. So I was like here's what the podcast is. Here's 20 sample head titles that I want to do. Here's the type of people. Here's what it's not. It's not a podcast about compound interest calculations. And when I wrote that, I realized that the number one, the podcast has to be fun for me. If it's not fun, I'm not doing it and I would imagine you have a similar thing. Like once you make a
Certain amount of money you go. Okay, like what is the other meaning? It's got to be fun. And if it's not, or it's not like reaching the right people,
I'm just not into it when I you, you know, for everything bad he's done. He said something amazing, which is Kanye West said something he goes. I do dope shit and or he do there. He was, there's a story of him with Dave Chappelle and Dave. Chappelle's, you know, kinase backstage at Dave Chappelle Show
Someone calls Kanye and David is retelling the story in. Dave goes our kind of goes hey yeah, I can't really talk right now because I'm backstage with Dave Chappelle watching never seen before clips of the show right now. And then he goes, yeah because my life's dope and I do dope shit and they just hung up at a and then he like and then he like you know like this in the past couple years he gave this interview, he's like money's cool but like I just want to do dope shit.
It did he like keeps repeating this? Like,
listen, I need to start talking like this now, I'm like look like what kind of celebrity shit do I need to say now that I have a show like what I need to know? Meanwhile, I'm just this internet. Dork who sits on Twitter? I make a joke about real estate or asset allocation. And then I'm like, all right. That was a good day. I go take a nap on the couch. I'm like, hmm, I gotta learn what these guys are
doing. Well me and Shaun have a joke but I truly live this way. I'm like, what am I 12 year? Old be proud of the shit that I'm doing now. You know what I mean? Like, am I do his like, I've
We
talked about this, it's it's crazy when you said it like that would my what your 12 year old self or my 12 year old self. Like I heard you say this. The other day I went home. I told my wife and I told her like my 12 year old or even 20 year, old self would not believe it would not believe that I'm married to you. Would not believe that we travel the way we travel that. I have a business like this, like a team that's like awesome.
You can like talk. No ever to
UK shit. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah. By the way, I'm
getting these DMS from celebrities like athletes. You know, I don't know anything about sports, right? Say, and they're always
like, I saw you tweeted. You're like, I'm from the Phillies, or something.
Yeah, I'm from the Eagles. And I'm like, is that a basketball team and like, they don't even reply about this is for this world, like all these. Oh, dude is so funny when, when, when Maddox email me, when the
First time they email me, they were like, oh, hi. Like, you know, we'd love to talk to you about a project. Do you have representation? Or should be like, speak to you directly and I was like, what the hell is a representation? Like I didn't even know what they were talking about. Like I didn't have a entertainment lawyer, I didn't know how to find one. I went on Google. I literally typed entertainment, lawyer and I looked through the list, like that's how I found it, entertainment lawyer and like, I had to learn this industry.
I like seriously from the ground up and then it took me like a couple of years to truly, start to scratch the surface, because in Silicon Valley is very different, the way my first meet someone, they'll take a meeting. Yeah. It's like, but dinette the industry Dynamics are different like subtle things. Like, for example, Engineers are kind of regaled as like, the most valuable. Okay. Well, what's the equivalent in Hollywood? That's not obvious from the outside and what are the like, cultural mores? It's not obvious. So dude, I'm
At the very beginning of Learning this stuff, but it's actually really cool to be a student of a new industry and learn like, oh, that's how things are done here. And, oh, there's actually kind of a reason
why we've just gotten popular enough. Now that some of the agents, you know, the Whatsit CAA and I forget the other three. Yeah, there's like two or three of them where they're actually starting to talk to us and I I'm incredibly turned off by the whole process. I find it to be very off-putting and I
I like I have to remind myself all, you know, there could be a reason why this exists and then I start talking to him, like, well these guys seem pretty nice and they're making a lot of sense, but then the in back of my head, I'm like, these people are fucking sharks. They're going to steal from you. They're going to like, feel like like your enemy. Like, it's like this hard dichotomy.
Wait, we gotta talk about this. Like, if you ever want to like, chat about it because I know I know these folks. And do you like it? Hold a would get
Yeah that's like a weird question. Are they legit is like is a recruiter legit. I mean it depends for what I'm going for. Yes I'm if you you know you're in a unique perspective because number one you have this huge podcast you and Sean have built this amazing thing and like the personality. The events you've built is like crazy. I mean I watch from the early days and I've really gotten into your podcast in the last year and I'm just like, oh, you guys are like firing on all cylinders.
Ders. You would have no idea how
guys do best, how how fast it is. By the way, our events are way more half-assed anything
really, dude, the
themes. Look incredible. It's great. They're great. But like, if they're thrown together really you just show up and just like
hang fuck, that's insane. Okay, anyway, it looks great and then you're, you know, you already have money. So you're not like super profit-motivated unless it's like the right opportunity, it's you and Shawn, you got HubSpot involved. So there's a lot of unique things but one thing I learned in Hollywood is
Take the meeting, always take the meeting, which is different, because I turned down, nine out of ten things, I'm just like, nope, nope, nope. But if you want, it's all relationship-based way. More than Tech way. More just to give you an example, a lot of lawyers PR firms in Hollywood. They will not even take your call even if you're ready to hire them. Like you have a fat check, they will not even take your call. If you're not referred by an agent or someone else like
that.
The mind-blowing that pisses me off. You know, I love Jay Leno Jay, Leno has this odd. You're not into cars. I don't think, but he's got this really cool show called
just having a Honda Accord not count as being into cars.
Unfortunately, not my friend, it does not, but he's Jay. Jay Leno has this thing called Jay, Leno's garage. And he tells you the history of the car and white school, and he's got those funny bit where he talks about Ferrari. He refuted, Jay Leno, probably has 500 or 1000 cars and they're all like historical and important and he goes, someone was like why aren't
There any Ferraris? Here he goes. I refuse to buy a Ferrari Ferrari. He goes why he goes because they you have to get on a waitlist and you have to like get on a waitlist to buy one in order to buy the next one. So in order to buy like, for example, let's say there's like a GTO 250 which is like a 30 million dollar car, they only made five of them whatever. It's like this really rare car and it's like art and he's like I would love to own one because I think they're awesome but they make you buy the entry level 1. Then you have to get on a waiting list, to buy the next one and you can't sell it. You have, you do all these rules?
I refuse to bow down to that bullshit, and I'm not going to play that game. I just want to. I just now he's like, I realized it's not like the Everyman. I'm not like the Everyman but in some regard, like, I just don't want to like, jump through the Hoops. I just want to say, if I'm willing to give you money, please let me have it. And so, I refuse to buy a Ferrari for that reason. Same machine, and you're just like her mess. I'm like, dude, I'm not gonna go on the fucking list by this shit that's bullshit.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I respect that. He is like, no, I'm not going to play that game. I love that. At the same time, I
I also understand why a luxury business does that. So there's a couple of great books on luxury and and there's this phrase, when the CEO of Volvo sees, two Volvos on a city block. He's happy when the CEO of Porsche or Rolls Royce, he's to, he gets worried and I think that that's right on luxury is a totally different Beast. It's a totally different way of marketing. You don't want too many people to have it. And so you create these
Barriers by the way, I listen to this, this Rolls-Royce podcast so I'll I love. I'm not like Rolls-Royce to me. The look of it is a little gaudy for me and also I'm not really a car guy but one day I'm going to buy a sweet car like it's going to be amazing. What people can be like this fucking guy told maybe Bentley maybe Rolls-Royce. Like I love the craftsmanship of it. The Perfection of it and that's like that's one of the reasons. I love beautiful clothes like they're handmade.
Made hand-stitched everything is absolutely perfect. I've gone to the factory in Italy where I saw the absolutely beautiful well-lit Factory floor and I saw them making these beautiful cashmere sweaters and I go, I appreciate that. They are paying well that everything is done by hand. They have a school in Solo Mayo where they're teaching the next generation of Artisans and Craftsmen that's fantastic. So I have a love of craftsmanship. Anyway, I'm listening Rolls Royce came out with a podcast, which is genius.
Because if you're going to buy a five hundred thousand dollar car, you're going to listen and research every Last Detail you can about the car and I just I'm obsessed with the details of the leather and the color matching and you know if you get a custom color on a Rolls Royce it's now your color. Nobody else can ever use it from Rolls-Royce if they want it. They have to ask your permission to use it. I'm like, okay, that's cool. Not for me today. Maybe someday one
day. What's the? Let's wrap up here but uh,
Tell me what's the, what are the luxury books? I want to write them down. I want to read them
too. All right, so one of them is called the luxury strategy. Another one is called cat fur on luxury.
And those are two that will get you started. I think those are really good ones. Cool. What are you reading right
now? I'm reading a lot of stuff about the mob about the mafia. Okay, so I like crime stuff. I am. What else have I read recently? It's lots of crime stuff. Unfortunately, I'm reading a book on Joseph, Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy, you know father of JFK. He's a really controversial person. He basically got rich off.
Trading then became the first head, the SEC made insider trading illegal incredibly unfaithful to his wife, but kind of a really good father. So a lot of like interesting things, a lot of people don't know that Joe Kennedy was like the seventh richest person in America. So JFK was like, not just wealthy, but really wealthy. So I'm reading a book on him and I'm reading a book on the American capitalism between 1910 and 1920. It was highly unregulated. So like the Andrew Carnegie's of the world, Jay Gould, John Rockefeller.
Are they were really fascinating because it was like super Cutthroat and so I'm rereading about. Yeah, let me just share what I'm reading
right now. To one is called unreasonable. Hospitality. And in, that's the guy who used to run a very high-end restaurant in New York. Another one is called customers for life. This is by a guy who ran an auto dealership just like really nitty-gritty business. I just love that. I got one called the power of the past. This is awesome for anyone to listen to my podcast.
You'll hear me talk about money and class classes. Not really talked about in America, but it exists. It's the power of the past by Jesse's tribe and then color of law is when I'm rereading on real estate redlining and race in history. So anyway, those are a couple few books. I'm reading or me. I like this.
Yeah, dude. I was just thinking I'm just sort of note. I should have a podcast just on books, just asking like, interesting people what they're reading and why?
Oh dude, I would
I would love that. Well, I've just said we just had the best
listener and I'll definitely come on. That's a great
idea. Yeah. I because that's always like one of my favorite Parts is ask people with a reading and why. But dude, I appreciate you doing this man. You're the man. I have thank you for your friendship, thank you for doing this. Congratulations on the show, it's freaking awesome. My wife and I were watching thank all day yesterday. Really, oh my God. I sent you the video of us. Sent me
that.
Dude to know that you guys are watching this, which I spent like years doing, kept it quiet for that long and to know that it's like inside your house. And the two of you are connecting over it. Like honestly the highest praise for someone who creates anything. So thank you. It means a lot. It was
awesome and I appreciate you doing this. Thanks for everything. Thank you, dude, that's the Pod.
I feel like I can rule the world. I
know I could be what I
want to put my all in it.
Never looking back.
All right, everyone, that's the end of my first million. However, I've got good news. You see, if you liked this episode, we actually have another podcast. The hustle is another podcast, it's called The Hustle Daily Show to daily podcast. That has everything you need to know about business and Tech and only a few minutes. It's awesome. Our best writers, like Zack Crockett are behind it. It's incredibly fascinating. I listen to it daily so check it out. The hustle Daily Show.
