Hey, it's Sean before we get to our episode. I want to tell you about a podcast, you might like it's called business Made Simple. It's hosted by Donald Miller on the HubSpot podcast Network. So Donald Miller. If you don't know, he's the guy behind story brand which is an awesome framework for how to describe your company. And he's got this podcast that's teaching you about practical skills and business coaching and discussions with industry experts. So, you know, he's got episodes like how to escape a villain mindset or is word-of-mouth marketing dead or the framework that makes marketing easy. So, check it out. I think you'll like it.
All skills that can help you. It's called business Made Simple, get it wherever you. Get your podcasts and now it's time for my first million.
Why does everyone hate on getting rich quick? Get-rich-quick schemes are the best. I want to get rich quick. I don't want to get rich slow.
I feel like I can rule the world. I know, I could be what I want to
travel. Never. Look. It's actually colder here than the Arctic
Circle.
Wow, why do you live there? Well, I mostly live in Miami IRS. If you're listening to this, but I'm sometimes in a mountain town in the middle of nowhere. Sam. I saw you posted today that you've got about 20 acres in Texas, but I'm staring out at 95 Acres of Arctic winter, winter land right now. Is that cool or? No? I mean, I love I love it out here. I'm from
From here. So for me, it's it's it's slow living. It's nice. Yeah, I love it.
Is that why you look like a pilot right now in the cockpit? Or what's going on here?
I mean sahil makes style blue my co-host and my on the where it happens pod, we do it together and he always makes fun of this but I'm a gamer. So I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid to admit
it. Be who you are, man. Be who you are.
Our Greg. So you're here because I don't even know why you were taught. We weren't even. I don't even know what we were saying. We were talking about the Will Smith thing. You had some hot takes, Sam had some hot takes.
How can we start with anything else? But the bitch slap of the century Will Smith bitchslaps, Chris Rock for making fun of his wife?
We, I think we have a different opinion on each one of these things Sam. Give me your first. Where were you when it happened? How did you hear about it? What was your first take?
I was laying in bed and I hear, Sarah goes. Oh my gosh, you got to come down and watch this. This is crazy and I saw it. And here's the thing.
By the way, do you just go or do you? Wait, you ask? What is it?
No, I go right away. I can just go. All right, that's like that guy right there. So here's the thing. Listen, I tweeted about this right away. People are
Well, what would you do? The truth is maybe the same thing. I maybe would do the same thing, but that's wrong. And if I would have read up there it bitch-slap Chris Rock. I would have been tackled to take it away and he should too. That's what should have happened. That's it. Yeah, I wanted to see him tackle, that take it away or at least not allowed to be a stage for 5 minutes to it. Accepted award. That is ridiculous to be. I could not believe that happened.
Greg. Give me your, where were you?
What was your initial reaction?
So my girlfriend text me and she's like, you're not going to believe what just happened. Will Smith just slapped Chris Rock and then she's like, wait, I don't know if it was a slap. Maybe it was a punch. And so there was this confusion. There's this like five minute confusion, where people didn't know what it was. So, first place I go to is on Twitter. I'm on Twitter and I looked at the video and I was like, I couldn't believe it was happening, right? It was like, you remember when Janet Jackson with the whole Super Bowl?
Yeah, like I feel like I remember what hat where I was with 9/11. I remember what happens when the Janet Jackson boob incident of the Super Bowl. It's like o.j. And then Jay Smith. Yeah, now Will Smith, so I wasn't happy with the videos that were coming out, but I found the Japanese and Australian videos. Did you guys see those
for sure? And they uncensored uncut versions?
Yeah. Yeah, and, and that one where,
You got a better view of the punch. We were, you know, I needed a better view. It was
a it was a slap down. I don't how good your view was. It was a slap.
It was a yeah. Okay. It was a slap but would bug me about the whole thing. And I'm glad you invited me to talk about Will Smith because you know, that's why I'm here is I think that okay, obviously, it was a douchey thing of Will Smith to do but I was
Unimpressed with how Chris Rock wasn't able to make a joke of the whole thing and he could have made comedic history and he didn't and I expected more from
him. Wow. Disappointed with Chris Rock. That is not the take. I thought it was gonna come. That's why we bring Greg on for the the when everybody zigs you zag with the new take disappointed dude, Chris
Rock, crazy impressive. He took it man. He keeps a little kid. He took it. He didn't tear up. He didn't like when you get punched in.
Face, sometimes you're not like crying, but your eyes watery. None of that happened. He kept smiling and he was
a pro man who Sam, you know, what happens, if you get hit in the side of the head, what's the first thing that you feel or
hear? You your ears hurt? And you want to, like, grab your face?
Yeah, you hear this? Ringing buzz, like the sound you hear this? Just giant ringing, and then you gotta touch your face. He didn't touch his face so that you gotta give him respect for the chin that he
showed. Yeah, the round with that was a 10-9, Chris Rock
round, but then
Greg's right. Actually, he had I mean the world was his oyster with all the potential jokes that he could have gone with of the one-liners.
Like, I can't believe, I can't believe they had you in a lie or something like that.
Exactly. You know, I don't even know what the joke should have been, you know, Greg. What direction would you have gone with the joke?
I would have said and the winner to the biggest bitch slap award 2022 goes to
In
Smith. Yeah, exactly. Could have given him the Oscar for bitch laughs of the year. Wait, but mostly what was your take though? Okay. So I'm outside of a Cold Stone. Just gave my daughter some ice cream. We're trying to get back to the car. I don't know if you know how it is. Getting kids in the car is like that's the battle everyday. That's that's the battle. In fact, there's a great Louis c.k. Joke where he's like the greatest moment of any Father's Day is the like 30 seconds from when you close the door, and you have them in the car seat and you walk around the car.
Are back to the driver's car seats, like the 30 seconds of peace that you have in that moment. That's everything. So I'm trying to get in the car and my wife has stopped. She's stunned. She's doing the like, oh my God, face looking at her phone, almost to, there's like a cartoon character and I was like, why can't like whatever it is. It can't be, can't be much. And then she was like, no Will Smith just punched Chris Rock. I was like what? And so then I watch the video. She made me pull over. We were driving. I pulled over to watch the Japanese uncensored version.
Because we just had to like debrief it in the moment and I was Team Will Smith. I thought it was 'awesome. Frankly. The only part that I thought was not cool. The only part I thought was not cool was that when they first said the joke, he's laughing at the joke. So bro, you can't laugh at the joke admit that it's funny and then basically two seconds later build up this rage and then pretend it was so not cool when it was you were laughing. Like we caught you on camera laughing
wait to Jesus before that. You don't think that he should.
I'd have any
consequences. No. No, I didn't say that. He should have called. Okay? Sure. Okay. Sherlock Em Up, throw away the key, whatever you got to
do. No, no didn't times. I don't even think I'm not I don't even want to I don't want handcuffs. I know what jail just like a hey will you can't hit someone? You gotta leave like that would have been that would have been sufficient.
Well the thing they showed an in the don't know the Taiwanese cut. They had that the commercial break. I don't know if you guys saw this. Somebody comes running up to him. I think. Oh, wow, they're going to be like dude. What the fuck when you give get you out of here. Sorry. It's
Publicist, just immediately given him notes on how to, how to play this. And so, when he goes up for his speech, what do you know, the first line? He says is, you know, Richard Williams was a fierce like protector of his family. That's the publicist. Handing him, the feeding of the line of, how are you going to spin this to your advantage, who hates a guy, who protects his family? And he's like, I think it
worked but I watched his speech. I think he's losing it. So in a way, I feel sorry for him. I definitely feel a little sorry.
He looked at things off, right?
He looked a little off. He looked like he's kind of, he's getting a little little something's going on and I hope he could. I hope he works through it and gets back. And also there, dude, his wife, man. That's some weird stuff. Like what's going on like head. Did you see that thing called red table? That her show where she just like did a whole show with him on there? Talking about how she cheated on him and everything like that and that she went an award show with
his but I watch everything that's trashy like that. So yeah, I saw it. I saw it
twice man. So like that's weird to me a little bit.
So, there's like a, but this Dynamic is is weird. He's got a lot of pressure on them. I think he just kind of snapped. I think he's working through some stuff. But dude, but so I feel a little
silly. Everybody knows a couple that's like this where they're like, kind of toxic. They're like toxically in love with each other. It's like they got some weird Bonnie and Clyde shit where they're like the kind of like they like make the wrong decision. Sometimes they even like, you know, hurt each other's feelings, but then they're like, if anybody else ever tries to encroach they like with murder for them. And it's like, bro, there's the balance here.
It's like us against the world. They love this. Like, there's these us against the world couples and they're definitely one of them.
Yeah, it was messed up. Do you want to talk about Alex her mozzie her mozzie.
Moseys. Yeah. What did you do? You were like prob going deep on Alex from Asia? Feels like we are, would have been nice to do before. We had them on the Pod. You do it. Like Wow Let's go to later.
I had a call with them today. Greg. Do you know who this guy is?
I don't know. Who's that? All right, actually, I feel bad. I consider him a friend, but I don't I don't know if it's pronounced Mozy or mozzie. Alex. Her Mosey. Is it? No mozzie Alex for my city. It's one of those things where it's like to like you've known him for a decade. Yeah. It's like you can't ask him.
Now, you know, you got to be like I just call him Oz. My just go by myself because I
did one of my best friend's name to see Ava. I don't even know how to pronounce his last name. So I've been best friends with her for ten years. He's in my wedding. So
This guy Alex. So basically he had this company called Jim launch and it was really interesting because some people and I wouldn't call myself totally on that side, but I understand it is that appeared a little scammy, but actually, I don't think it's can me at all anymore. The end
of them. Have, you got to describe the guys look first,
so he's got, he looks like a straight version of the construction worker in the village in the village. Was it? The Village People? I mean, he looks like a construction worker. So he
As flannel he's got this beautiful thick, mustache, long, awesome hair. Like a like a Persian Samson and he is just yoked. He's jacked. He's huge. And he's like good-looking. And he just he's like, looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger a little bit and he created this business called Jim launch. And basically, you would pay either four thousand dollars for one thing or twenty thousand dollars for another thing. And it was her people who owned small gyms whether that's a CrossFit gym or personal training gym.
And he would basically, teach you how to make your gym better because he owned gyms and he would promise you. Something like you'll gain at least 75 thousand dollars in new Revenue, but for a lot of people, he averaged at they would improve by 200,000 dollars in Revenue, but the business model that he had was crazy in the results, were even crazier. So the business was about, by the time, the business was four years old. He bootstrapped it and had paid himself, 45 million dollars in dividends. And then, on the fifth year, I believe he saw.
Hold it and he netted something like 50 or 60 million dollars and so he was like, yeah, I paid myself 45 million dollars. So I had about 25 million, just in cash in the bank, then we sold and I never liked another 50 and that story alone is crazy. Is that right? Sean?
I don't know if those exact numbers, right? It sounds like you talk to him. So, let's go with that. I don't really know. But, but yeah, but do you got the product, right? The, the kind of the could, the hook or what's interesting is most gym. Memberships are like, you know, pain.
Twenty dollars a month and you get into a membership and like it's hard to sell people that and what he was ended up doing, was he was like, all right. Well people don't want to membership. What do they really want? They want to lose weight. They want to lose weight in 6 weeks or last, they want to lose weight. So they look good on the beach. All right, so I'm going to basically sell you a program that's going to make you look good on the beach and six weeks and he like he got good at selling for his own gym or he's like, oh I can get people to pay like 3 Grand up front for like a Fitness training package with nutrition meal plans and stuff like that.
At and then someone pointed out to him. I think like Russell Brunson or whatever the clickfunnels guy pointed out to him. Like, Hey dude, instead of just opening gyms and doing this yourself. You should just teach other gym owners how to do this. Like, that's a better product is helping a gym like add 100 Grand in Revenue in 30 days is a better product than, like, trying to open your own gym and use that method. So then he started doing that and that's kind of how you went. And now he owns something called Acquisitions.com where he'll like by your business. If you're doing not enough, 5 million or more Revenue,
something well, so he's buying course businesses and
Applying his methodology. And so, but basically what he sold was in, this is where things got. I went deep on I was like, how did this work? This is crazy. So he basically sold not a franchise but like an operating system and so he used HubSpot as his back end and he would get people to sign up to these ads that he was running. And you do non boarding and you pay 20 grand, you get four months and then after the end of four months, you could decide to stay in part of the group and it's forty five grand a year, but you get this after you sign up.
You get this checklist of things that you have to do. So it's like, raise your price to this. Sign up for this software. Use these emails, the shrimp campaign, get them, get this. Many people to sign up by doing X, Y, & Z. Here's the ad campaign that you can just copy and paste and already use. And then he had a Facebook group where all the members could talk. And that was it. That was the business. It was super simple and it was doing tens of millions a year in revenue and also tens of millions in profit and I thought this was crazy fascinating, and I wanted to ask you guys what?
Our, he told me a little bit, but what other niches would you use this for? And also does this model even interests? You, it seems pretty amazing to me. I've never heard of it. I think that if you did this for agencies, like digital agencies that this is a no-brainer. So, you know, we're, I run an agency called late check-out. We're about 50 people. So, we're starting to really hit some scale and the only say your Revenue,
I mean, I don't want to say my Revenue, but we have 50 people so you can do some of the mat yourself.
I will say that. Yeah, we work with some of the biggest brands in the world and it's very lonely to be like the CEO of an agency. Like I don't know if I'm overcharging or undercharging. I don't know if I'm you know, you know doing the right thing. Should I be doing more marketing less marketing? So like what? I pay 25 10 grand a month to for like something like this, like probably if the ROI is
there. Alright, let's take a quick break to talk about.
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Yes, basically a sales machine, right? So what each what he said was, if you have a business and you have whatever number of customers, you have, if I could get you more customers, that's clearly a value to you. And I think he basically tried to get like capture 10 to 20% of the value that he was giving. So, you know, if, if I'm going to get, if I'm going to generate a hundred thousand dollars in new incremental sales for you. How do I capture 10 to 20 thousand and I'm taking the risk. If I don't do that then I don't earn anything. I think that's kind of how we started it at least and so on.
See is a perfect one like that because every client you sign is cash in the bank and typically, the agency might be good at one thing, but not necessarily good at going getting new clients.
So what you just read this guy's book. Sean. Alex is book. I'm reading right now. What do you think
about it?
The book is good. The book is good. It's basically a, it's like a marketing book, right? So it's essentially a marketing but he does a good job of breaking things down. Being simple. It's not altogether new information. But but who gives a shit. It's like, it's good information presented. Well, and if you're running a business right now, it'll help you. Now the thing, I think that he over index is on his, like, he uses like the gym, launch example, really hard. So it's like, yeah, this is, this is clearly he talks about
He says you the secret to sales. Make somebody an offer, so good. They be stupid to refuse you. Okay, how do you do that? It's like, how do you get them to perceive that? There's a lot of value and that they're going to get in a short amount of time with a with a with not a lot of cost and that is highly likely to happen. And so his model was like Hey gym owner ion. I've worked with 100 gems on average. I could bring them each a hundred thousand in new sales. I can do that for you in 30 days, and if I don't do it,
If I don't hit that Mark, I don't get paid. How's that? So yeah, that is what he calls a grand slam offer because it's going to work. And if you bake, if you have a grand slam off, or you can win a lot of business. You can grow very fast, but I don't think that works at whole bunch of other product categories. I think it works in the, like, agency Consulting World, which is where he
was Services. I think it
works and services. Yeah, all service, you know, if I'm selling shoes online. It's very hard to create a grand slam offer for selling shoes because you know, I can't tell you how much more
This is going to make you rise. Already offers a lot lately. I'm telling you, it looks cool. You know that people might like your shoes. That's just fundamentally less compelling. So, I just think it's like really, really good for a service business, especially a service business that's in the business of helping other people make money, but like if like, for example, I wanted to send it to my accountant and be like, hey, you're charging me like five grand or six grand a year. You should really be charging 50 Grand. And if you did this method, I think you would have, you know, like ten times more clients.
And make 10 times more money off them. If you presented your stuff this way because you're an accountant, you're saving people money on taxes. You can basically offer a no brainer offer like this and take more value and grow your business faster. If you did it this way, but it doesn't work for everything. It's not that the takeaway.
I got the pit. I think the the pitch is is taking a consultancy from a consultancy and turning it into selling luxury. Like that's
Opportunity, for a lot of these people, right? Like, I think, when you look at Mackenzie, Mackenzie, is in a consultancy to me. Mackenzie is selling like a luxury multimillion-dollar contracts like that. You're buying confidence when you're buying right? A luxury product.
Yeah, that's exactly right. He talks about that pretty extensively in the book. But I guess I so I have reading this book and I have to kind of like by to like my right-hand man on my left hand man. I have been and then I have this guy Andre and I told him as I guys, this good stuff in this book that we should be using. And so I created like a little mini book club inside of our company. To do this. Have you guys ever done that? Like I have you basically. I've been wanting to do this podcast while sometimes I listen to podcasts. That's a fucking amazing. And I'm what I want to do is just stop listening to
Self and be like, hey guys, we're going to do a meeting. But the meeting is US listen to this podcast and every time they say something good. I'm going to pause and we're going to talk about it and it might take us like six hours to get through this one hour podcast, but I'm telling you it's going to be we're going to actually apply The Thing versus just. I share the link, you read it. I read it. We each kind of move on with our day. We're busy. Have you guys ever done anything like this to like get more juice out of the fruit?
I have it. I haven't I've done a book club that I feel like book club is. It's like, you know, a lot of people go in the gym. It's like you start going to the gym and then you kind of like stopped like it's really hard to create a really well-designed book club that keeps people engaged. Yeah. We did book club is the same thing. No one fucking finish the book. So I actually think, if we all just listen to a podcast together, I might be a lot easier. So,
Easier. It's like when you go to school and the teacher brings in the TV, that's like how I would feel go to this meeting. I'll be like, oh hell yeah,
roll it in the TV, TV Magic School Bus baby, the, yeah, at Amazon, they do this to where, like, people write all kinds of Doc's, inside companies like memos plans, whatever. And then it's like, hey, did you read my plan? And then you're like, oh, yeah, either I kind of did, or I didn't very rarely, is it like, I read it. I remember it. I took notes on it, and I'm ready to take.
Action from it. And so at Amazon, they basically hacked that process which is the rule is you have to write if you're going to make a plan. If you're going to try to do anything. You have to write your memo, but the memo gets read in the meeting itself. So every meeting if it's an hour, the first 10 to 20 minutes are silent reading, everybody reads it together, at the same time and there's zero expectation for you to ever read something beforehand or after
what was that thank you for using
itself. Oh, yeah. It was it was huge like it also while you're reading you're taking notes because you know, right after
This reading period ends and Tony minutes. Like, it's a bit like school. It's like I'm gonna have to have something to say right? Like I need to have a need to be bringing something to the table from this. And so yeah, that was huge. And I think, I think way more companies should do that. It was like one of the few big company things that I was like, this is a process that is so much better than what I used to do that at our startup.
Yeah. Well, I think that podcast idea that you just had is actually fantastic.
Cool. Are we lost Craig for a second? But let's, let's keep going. Did you have anything more on her maziar you wanted to go
on? No, that's it. What do you
got? I was thinking about doing, I like a kind of like, a summary / Lessons Learned because I have a whole bunch of like, screenshots and highlights from the book. I might do a separate pot. That's just that, if you want to do that
down that I just, I just, I just bought the book. I've been watching a lot of us, YouTube videos. There's just something about this person. He's very interesting to me is very interesting. He's so transparent to the point where it's weird, almost like, I'm
Guy like you reveal so much. I don't believe, you know, I believe them, I believe him for sure. But he's revealing so much that I'm like, are you sure? Man? You want to be talking about this? This is crazy like you like it's just weird. It's just weird. Right? I mean, he talks like
quebecers think it's weird. I think it's smart and that's why I say like, do I believe this is not that? I think he's lying about anything. I think he's telling the truth. It's that when somebody is that forthcoming. It's sort of like, what's in this for you and I think clearly it's mantra.
To get you to trust me. And so I'm going to be like, kind of like explicitly transparent about something, because there's a, there's a motive behind that and I think that's okay, but I think a lot of people like wow, thanks dude for the favorites. Like there's no favors people do things because they have a motive. They want to build their brand in a certain way. They want to attract more readers or viewers or they're trying to build trust in a way so that they can get some Advantage, you know, then that's okay. I think that's a good thing. I do it to. I do it all the time. Yeah.
Yeah, I've gotten to know him over the past few weeks. I'm a fan, man. I'm a fan of Alex's, but what do you got?
Well, actually we should so Greg. I told you bring three or four bullets. I don't know if you had time to do that, but I have some if you don't have any but I'd like to use yours if you do because you're here, you're the guest
of honor. I mean, I always have a note file with some ideas. I can tell you, I'm not going to say they're great ideas. But let's let's start with that. And I love your feedback.
All right, let's do it. So once our restaurant two nights ago, saw that a bunch of kids were playing these like picture, like an Applebee's and picture, a bunch of vending machines. Like, you know, those games that you can play, I'm thinking nft vending machines. So you have to pay like 100 dosage to get in. You can win a board ape instead of winning.
No Collectibles, you're winning, digital assets. Is there a business to be created around that
you're talking about the thing? Where you would like the old ways, you know, you put your quarter in and there's a bunch of plastic balls. You get one out. You got this little shady toy and it's like I think in Japan they call these the gotcha games. Yeah, right. Like got your mechanic where you have this sort of variable reward. You might win the good thing, but you almost never win the good thing and then you kind of keep wanting to open up these boxes and see what you get
exactly that. But with Doge,
And when again
and then if he's inside
Greg, do you own any and lefties? Are you on board with us or no? Yeah, I mean I've got hundreds of NF tease.
That's crazy. Yeah,
I think the problem is don't I think not enough. People owned owes, you know, so I kind of feel like it's like you need to Apple pay quickly like instantaneously by doze and then you use it. Use it in the game. Basically like you need some way for their phone to just buy the thing and then just keep swiping their phone. But
yeah, I guess, like, what I'm particularly interested in here is like, what are, you know, in real life experiences that you can create that connect with?
Tiptoe.
Mmm. Yeah. Another version of this. By the way, because I Don't Need It restaurant anymore. I just deliver everything. So it's like, you know, a QR code that comes with doordash that I just scan and I get to play the game on my phone, right? Like, why do they need to buy a screen when I carry a screen in my pocket? So like really, all you just need is a QR code to do this game. You don't even have to build the, you don't even have to build the vending machine
necessarily. It's true. It's true.
All right. I got another one. So I moved out of my apartment December 15th. It's now March 28 and my landlord hasn't returned. My security deposit. Is that in America or in my underwear? Yeah, Miami. There's a bunch of laws around that California. Well, there's laws around it and Florida to and I Googled it. And there's a whole process, you can go into it. I'm sure it's probably
Not as intense as California, but you know, you have certain rights. There's a whole process that you have to go and eventually you go to small claims court, etc. Etc. Well, how much was it? It's a few hundred dollars, but it's just like the pain to like go through it. It's not really worth it. My security deposit is fifty seven hundred dollars. So what I really want to do is scare my my landlord basically, right? That's what I want to do. So I want to
I need to get his attention. That's what I really need to do. So I Googled, you know, sending a lawyer letter. I didn't want to call my lawyer because I was like at $750 an hour or whatever. It's going to cost like two grand for this lawyer letter. So the idea is a ninety. Nine dollar lawyer letter on demand, ghosts. Caref, go scare. Someone basically.
What do you think? Have you
Harry Potter? I love it.
Listen, we got to talk about the Shawn, you know, where we're I'm gonna go with this, right?
Do not pay going to Petty Court.
I like pie. Gordi. I'll pay
I'm but I'm gonna go do not pay great. Have you not heard it? Do not pay. Yeah, so is do not pay that service that like if you have a parking ticket you like send it to them and they like they deal with it and you get a percentage of it back or something like that. They do a bunch of stuff. But that is one of the ways how they started. How do you explain this company? Now, Shawn now that it's kind of, they have so many
features.
Yeah, I think it started basically. It's just trying to save you money from shit that you shouldn't have to pay for. You don't want to pay for it. So it started with like subscriptions. You're not using. All right, cool unsubscribing from a bunch of subscriptions. I'm not using. Then it became then they also added, you know, like go can test this parking ticket cause like, I don't know, 20 or 30 percent of parking tickets are like filled out incorrectly and you actually shouldn't have to pay and if we save you money, we will keep a little bit but it's just you do no work and you'll get they just keep a portion of the
That they get that they are in for you and then they expanded into like, 83-b election. Like, hey, we'll do that for you for your startup. So they're just like trying to do. They're basically just trying to eliminate the busy paperwork that nobody wants to do and they're like, we'll just take care of that shit for you. How would that feel? And a bunch of like, people like us, we're like, Millennials are like, just don't know how to do it. I don't want to do it. I don't like printing, things are going to the post office and like doing all this shit. Yeah, please take care of this for me. So it's a Time. Saver companies. How I think
about it.
Greg, I had a landlord. I had a sixteen thousand dollar deposit. This was for an our office when covid, hit our office least, just so happened to end right around when covid-19 appening. So we got really lucky and we just canceled it. And this guy would not give me the 16 Grand. I found out dude. I got crazy out of I found out where he lived and I showed up at his house and he wasn't there. I found out where he worked and I showed up there and he wasn't there and I use do not pay to send him like a like a letter.
Finally, he got back to me. It was like oh, yeah, you know, just slip my mind like he was like no big deal about it. I was like, dude, I've been how did you for six weeks, man, where's this money?
And so they have that feature where you just send us carry
letter, you sent a scary letter and it worked. And so we I got my 16 Grand. But legally you're supposed to get 16 Grand plus interest, which I did not get and I thought about like fighting over this just out of principle because I love petty shit. So I feel like the idea is really
You know, do not pay obviously is getting really big. It's like the unbundling of do not pay and it's taking this idea and it's like, okay. I'm going to run a bunch of Google ads against like getting security deposit back, Florida, getting security deposit back, California, and I think there's a big business to be created here, because then that's a, that's a good wedge to sort of expand a bunch of different
services.
And I think there's the other version. I think we've once said, which was like call my politician. There's all these things where it's like, oh this bill could get past, that's bad for crypto holders. Make sure you call your politician and let them know you don't want this. It's like I don't know and I don't want to call my politician and like who what if they pick up, what am I going to say? My name is like is all kinds of problems with this idea of calling. I don't like calling. Don't what happens if they pick of, you know, I really want to go down that road, but I
Happily, you know, sort of tip, you know, ten bucks to just have someone annoy the shit out of my politician about this issue that I care about. Like, if my donation funded, like 18 annoying calls, like if there's just a website that said, would you like to dip donate 10 dollars to the cause and that will fund 18 annoying phone calls from Sri Lanka to this politician. I'd be like fuck. Yeah, put me down for 20. And so I think that's the other version of do not. Do not pay his like go hassle for me.
That's awesome. I'm on board with that. Can you hear what else, you got. Greg my other one. It relates to law actually a little bit. So, you know, we've been an intron. I know you're into crypto. So I've been spending a lot of money on, you know crypto accounting and crypto law firms.
And I think that there's an opportunity to create a web three crypto accounting firm and a web three crypto Law Firm. But all you have to do is basically you find an existing Law Firm that understand Securities Law. And you're like, hey, you know, you your shop of ten lawyers, and you're like, you know, you understand Securities Law. Maybe there's some, you know,
Up leveling in terms of learning specifics about nft is ETC.
I'm going to be the like marketing engine for you.
You know, use things like the milk Road and use things like late check-out, and I'm going to send you leads. So the customer is happy because they're like, wow, this is like a web three related, you know, law firm and I want to work with someone. Who's, what does that mean? Oh, I don't know what you're using. Your using words that I don't have no idea what they mean. What is a web three related Law? Firm me? Okay. So let's just say you're creating a 10 ft project. But you want to make sure that you don't go to jail.
So let you don't do any SEC violations. Do you feel comfortable calling up your regular lawyer? Who's might not even know? What an NF T is? Or would you specifically want to talk to a law firm that lives and breathes web 3? It depends if they have what's it like for example, if I was, what's the term? If I follow something, my lawyer says, and they're supposed to be the expert and I get in trouble.
Sometimes I can like blame them. What's that called?
God, I can't remember that. I can't remember. But scapegoating ya know that it's like a, it's like a it's like when you hire a see, I'm like when you hire a seat. If you hire a CPA and your CPA screws. You like, blatantly, sometimes, you're not always, you can, you know, that goes that you're taking to account my god, dude. I thought he was doing it. Right and he's a CPA it. So like your CPA can actually get in trouble, not necessarily you. So, it depends if that lawyer has that, but, I don't know. I'd rather just go to a legal for a lawyer that
Special. Yeah, that specializes in this thing, but I don't know why you'd call it a web three describe what he said. A web. Three Law
Firm. Yeah, like they specialize and they know the laws around they specialize. And I thought you meant
like around this web 3, digital Law Firm. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All this is is like, I mean, this is a marketing challenge more than anything. And, you know, one of the hardest problems about running a law firm is, you know, or an accounting, firm is getting clients. And we talked,
But this with agencies, the same thing is true with, you know, law firms and accountancy firms. I think, you know, I don't know, the like, I don't know, the margins of some of these businesses, but I imagine they're quite big. So I think there's
something there.
So, I consider doing this with my before. I did the milk road. I was like, alright, what I want to do. Like I got this audience as growing rights. Like, Twitter's Twitter's pretty big now. It's I got an a quarter million followers newsletters growing. I could just like, you know, make no money off this. That's fine. How big was your news about ads in the newsletter? That's what's that? How big was the newsletter?
It was like a 30 40 k something. At the time, I can pour it in there. Yeah. Before milk Road and and I was like, I could teach a course. Oh, I did that. I taught a course. Like all right, that's cool. It makes way more money than ads, but it's more effort. And then I was like, you know, what's like the highest value business? What's like the best fucking business? And I was like, so I started making a list of like places where I spent a lot of money that I feel like they're just kind of like rinse and repeating the same stuff for me. And so I narrowed it down to two. I'll give
The second best one was accounting and I was like, I could just start a bookkeeping firm for for startups, entrepreneurs. We just in my own portfolio. If I invested in 45 companies last year, just within that, I bet I could get 14 clients of just companies that don't have a bookkeeper because most companies don't have bookkeeper speak, right off the bat. You were
considering starting a bookkeeping service. That's like, yeah. These are us
idea or anything I could do for you. That's a horrible idea for eight years. I was just going to be the marketing front end.
I wasn't going to operate it. I was just going to buy or higher like a good bookkeeper and be like cool. You're going to do the books and I'm just going to send you clients and you're just close the client and we split this 50/50 or whatever. And so that was one idea. The better idea is Insurance because insurance is like the best business of all time and because for insurance you don't even really do insurance. You just broker the insurance with another like carrier basically. And and most businesses don't have most like especially like e-commerce.
Is, as you need business insurance, and you don't know, exact, I didn't know exactly which insurance I needed. How much, how much coverage I wanted. Most traditional Insurance firms, don't cover e-commerce, which is insane to me. And so I was like, all right. Well, I could just do that. And so that was another one which is you know, startup / e-commerce insurance was another one. I basically did the math and I was like, I could make so much more money doing that than if I ever did like ads in my newsletter. If I all I did, my ad was say, hey, by the way, don't go to jail. You should have a
/, you know like, hey don't lose your business because somebody, you know, whatever chokes on the button.
Then what was your math here? They use Insurance. What would your mat that first of all, I think that's, I think you made 100% The Right Move doing what you did because those businesses do not fit your skill, set, or mine at all of, like, it shirt like that. Like, being on top of things like crazy amounts sweating, the
details here assuming either run it. I'm not gonna run it. You you're gonna be
Find a good person.
You and I both know that he's kind of leads. But all right. So what was your math behind it?
I don't know how to pull up all the spreadsheets.
But basically just with my existing audience sighs. I think meted out where it's like I could be easily clearing. It'll 325 million dollars a year in profit. If I like kind of like, hit all my
marks, tell me more about. This is actually really
beautiful, full capacity.
This is actually really interesting. So where we going to call it like Sean surance.
What was the name of
the name? Was the last thing on my mind? Okay, so I even talked to the, I thought I had this one lawyer. I want accountant, who I really love. There's just like Ukrainian woman. Who is like this? Like amazing account. She was the first account. I talked to that felt like they work for me and not like as a, they weren't just like an arc and so they were like, she was like, have you thought about this, you know, like does your business need a vehicle? Because I think right now it's just last week of the year. If you just bought a vehicle we can actually like depreciate that and use that against your books here.
Like she was giving me ideas that were completely legal, but she wasn't just sitting there and saying, yeah, if you give me all your paperwork and your receipts, I'll, uh, I'll file your taxes for you. It was the first person who is saying, wow, you paying a lot in taxes over here and over here. Let me just make sure I'm, you know, saving you money. And so, that was the first person. So, I was going to basically talk to her and be like, hey, should you do this? Like do you want to do this? Do you want to like, leave start your own firm? I'm sure you're scared of all that, but guess what? You have just do the things. You're really good at, which is doing people.
As you know, like tax strategy in accounting and I will get you all the clients that was, you know, the core premise, but, of course, I went down. I said, I created a free crypto newsletter because I just figured it'd be more fun,
dude. I think these are great ideas. By the way. I think you made the right decision, but these are actually, this is crazy, interesting. I wish you would have told me that your
wife tell you about a fucking genius idea. That came out of that. So, have you, I don't know if you ever like on-boarded. Well, like you've probably done some onboarding with some software that you're trying to use some company, you're trying to use. So, for example, with this with
Bookkeeping company, right? The one, I hired eventually hired for my e-commerce thing. They sent me this like, super long checklist. It was like, alright, great excited to work with. You, do these 54 things, and then we'll get started. Like, that will be the start of your journey that will get you to the starting line. It's like go to Shopify. Give us access to do that. You need to go to view, accounts permissions, add us there at us as a bookkeeper, but robot now, go to QuickBooks do the same thing. Now going to try to do the same thing. Now, going to Bank of America do the same thing, like it was just all these fucking steps is like then send us.
This then send us this and it just felt it was all done in Excel. Right? So I discovered the just don't want to basically takes that process. It just wraps beautiful user experience around it. And I saw it and I was like, this is so smart. I invested in instantaneously, didn't have a meeting with the founder. I was like, I totally buy it. In fact, any word you say is only going to make me less bullish on this idea because I already convinced this is one of the best ideas I've ever seen. So it's called doc. So it's doc dot U s--. I don't know if you guys have checked.
Out and Julie, and Julie Shapiro sent this to me after I was like seeing this problem. And coincidentally, he sent me the same idea. So here's how it works. So, basically, it just creates like, kind of like an ocean space. So, the company who's trying to onboard you, they just create this thing. That's like, it's like this, just a beautiful experience. That's like, hey, Sean, so glad to have you onboard first three things we need to do, are these three click the check box when you're done with them, so I'll know that you did it. If you have any questions just
It put it in the comment thing here or click this, to watch our tutorial from our library that we have about how to do it. And so it just turns that like back and forth, email, or like Excel spreadsheet, like janky thing into like, like workflow for a client and at a service to like on board each other and I was like dude that's a problem that like, I don't know like two million businesses a year have with every one of their clients. This is going to work. I think this is going to work. What do you guys think of this idea?
I love it. I just I just got a mortgage after my landlord stiff thing. And, you know, I go and Chase his website and I don't know if you've done this, but you guys go and Chase website. You go to the mortgage and there's like a thousand things to do. Plus you're like, transported back to 1996 because you're in this like, weird thing. There's like JavaScript breaking everywhere. There's like you like forgot about Flash and like flash is somehow in there.
My banker calls me and she's like, you didn't finish this one thing and I was like, yeah,
she's like I added it to your client portal. It's like dude. I don't get a notification. I don't know.
So yes. Yes. This is one of those no-brainer ideas. I hope that they stay actually embed like create an SDK. They do.
Okay. I think they don't know if they already do or they're going to be. That was like a big part of. Yeah, I was like this can
If inside of your app or whatever. So you you could just kind of like onboard people right there inside their
experience. This landing page is beautiful. This is a beautiful website.
Yeah, so it is absolutely beautiful. But I have a question for you for you guys because it relates actually to this and also Jim shark. And even the the lawyer stuff which is you know, sometimes when we're creating businesses, you can do one of two things. You can either like create something brand new which is like this or create like a new gem like a new way of, you know, doing something or you could like help existing people.
You know, do some marketing, make some money that way. Do you guys, you know, and the Silicon Valley Way is is very much like go raise a bunch of money invent, something new and it's really frowned upon to do, you know, the marketing piece of it and sort of positioning on top of it. What are your thoughts? And, you know, do you think about that a lot, you know, because I've been thinking about it a lot.
Say it again. You give us to examine. Give me an example. Give us do. So.
You know, my last company, the founder of 24 Hour Fitness invested in my company, and he told me that before the 1980s, there weren't membership-based, Jim's like it was a new thing.
And he invented the first one and it became 24 Hour Fitness. I think they sold for three or four billion dollars. It was a major success and then there's a lot of people who copied membership-based Jim's. That's an idea of going 021 creating an absolutely new product. Whereas what he could have done was created a gym shark of that era or whatever and consult it, Jim lot. Yeah. Exact Jim launch re and consulted to, you know,
No.
Add additional Revenue to existing, you know, trainers, Etc.
so the question is, do you know how often you are thinking about creating something brand new versus, you know, just kind of a money-making additional marketing layer on top
of
Sam. What do you think about that? I don't
think. I think of it as anything that I think of, I don't think any of its brand new. I think 00 Costa 0. I think about that. Do you agree? Sean?
No, I think there's sometimes do things but it's extremely rare, extremely rare, extremely extremely rare,
but I would even argue that. Most anything that's new. You could probably actually say, oh, well, it's just like a different version of
blank. You could trace back, right? So like let's take a Airbnb. For example, Airbnb was clearly like kind of like this breakthrough product became this huge success and it's like the category killer the category leader for sharing economy or whatever. And it's now it's like bigger than
Tells like then all hotels whatever, so it started off as a fringe thing. But there was like, Couchsurfing before that. And like, that was like a product that did a very similar thing, you know, and VRBO, and there's this other stuff that's like around it. So I think you're right. That is very hard to do something, completely original. Let me frame it slightly differently, which is it seems like what Gregg is almost saying is like
Do you want to go for, try to try to have either a new Behavior or an existing Behavior or another way of looking at? It would be, do you want to create a product or do you have a service company? Right? Like it's kind of to me, that in those examples is like, 25 minutes was of Newt, was like a new product you needed customers to go buy versus servicing, you know, trainers and whatever whoever else, that was, that's like a service business that's going to have great cash flow and doesn't require you to have this, like,
Winning brand new product, a new customers from scratch. Is that is that kind of? Is it more about the services versus
product? Is that the? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think, you know, Sean and Sam like, you know, having spent time in SF. I feel like when I got to SFI was all about new behaviors. That was really important to me and Shawn. I know that was true for you too. Because like blab, you're always pushing, you know, the envelope with like, you know, and Debo is like new.
You know, is there are you user interfaces and like new friend? Finding a new just like new ways of doing things versus, now that we're in our 30s, it feels like we're doing less and this is just an observation and correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like we're doing less of like the new Behavior type stuff and more of like, hey, let's just like iterate on this thing and like focus it on this Niche and and do that. There's this guy named Roger Dickie. I don't know him. I think Shawn knows him, right?
I never met.
I think Greg actually knows
him. Oh, right, so I don't entirely know his full background, but he used to do like a bunch of high-tech stuff. He you I know that he had the, what's the startup that helps you code stuff. It's like a new age. New agency was they called? Those are the G
gigster?
Kick
stir. Okay. And before gigster Greg, what was he doing? He was doing something like very traditional Silicon Valley, right? I just know him from Twitter. But yes, he was doing. He was the co-founder and CEO of gigster which was, which was huge but he did it through a really interesting way. I think he did it through a search lab. Do you guys know what a search lab is? And but I think before that like he maybe was at Zynga or something like like a like
he made like a mafia game or something like
that. Yeah, like something he made him off your horse.
That's what it was. Yeah. Okay. Mafia which at which, at the time was cutting-edge. Now his latest business. I think it's called Revolution, is it called Revolution made made made made, and they are renovating bathrooms. And as a recent homeowner, who needs to do bathroom. I went to the website and I was like, this is sick. I love this. I bid and it looks from the outside, like the company is just crushing it. I saw another guy, the guy who started Casper his name's Luke, one of the
Four Founders is name's Luke. I think he has a new business. That's also renovating bathrooms or maybe kitchens. And I thought it was interesting that these guys Casper, not exactly like Cutting Edge, but kinda like kind of new Behavior. Buying a mattress online. Roger Dickie, you know, definitely new behaviors. They're going to like these like older businesses and they're definitely using technology. But at the end of the day, they're not like real, they're not inventing anything new there. Just inventing may be a more efficient process. And in my opinion, those things are far more.
Interesting. And it's kind of intriguing to me that they're these guys are doing that as opposed to some new Cutting Edge
thing.
So so I'll give you my take on your question. Greg, which is in my 20s. It's like the way I traveled was that be like, oh, you know, fuck it. I'll go tomorrow, the spin the globe, put my finger down. Alright, I'm going to go backpacking through, you know, Eastern Europe, or I'm going to go to Australia and I'll be, you know, sleeping in a van type of thing and I wanted the adventure. It was actually the right move to do at that time because it's like, how do you get Max Adventure? Max sort of like discomfort and like out of your comfort zone.
Max spontaneity, all that stuff. And and then like now it's like, we're just like a Sandals resort that I can take my kids and like, you know, I just want to sit down. I just want to place, I can go sit. That's not my house and leave. This is basically the extent of my adventure right now and so similarly like that's my hope. My business career was the same, it was like at the beginning is like yeah, I'm going to build the next social network. I'm gonna build a dating app where you eat, you might die or am I resisting these crazy ideas? Like every idea was like, trying to be
Be crazier than the last. It's like, you know, and it all appealed to me that way. And now I'm like, cool. I can sell a product that I, you know, me important product from China and sell it through a Facebook addict. Click three buttons. I can just sit in my chair, do that. I don't really need a staff. I don't really know. I'll just kind of Outsource this and that'll was gonna write a newsletter and I'll just write it in my browser and then that's it. Like, I don't have to like become the next Mark Zuckerberg. I just need to get to like enough people.
I'm making a few million dollars a year in living, a sweet lifestyle. Like that's, that's a win, you know, and that's a, and I don't have to manage anybody. And I don't have to, like, stress out about this thing, and I don't have to know how to code. I don't have to do any of these things. Oh, yeah, great. And so, I basically a now of, in the, the sort of Sandals Resort part of my career and I mean, that in the best way possible, which was back, then I was like, almost like intrigued by the degree of difficulty and now I'm completely pulled off by the degree of difficulty. And instead. I just do the thing. That sounds like,
Like what's going to be easy? Simple fun for me? And and you know, I'm just going to go that route. And so I am much less interested in like inventing the next big thing as I am like, crafting a dope lifestyle doing something. I enjoy and like Bellamy feels
like, but do you think that's going to change when your kids get older? So when your kids become eight, nine ten, maybe eight to like 16. They think that you are the coolest guy ever or if they don't think that.
Maybe it's on the other end of you wanting to be think that you're cool and you want to impress them. And I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I'm like, do I think that my attitude will change when my kids become 5 6, 7 8 and I want to impress them. Do I think like instead of just like having a sick lifestyle? I'm like, oh man. I want to do something like that. They are proud of. You think that's going to change.
Not because of that reason, I do think it's going to change, but not because of that like I don't think your kids think you're cool based on like your business success necessarily. I don't, I don't really think that that's the main, the main way, that kids think you're cool and I even if it was, that's not why I would do something. I would just have more free time. Right? Like, when my kids go to school, that's gonna be like a fucking game changer. It's like, I'm going to get a third of my day back that I, you know, I don't have today. And so when they go to school, I have a lot more bandwidth if I want to do something more.
Tense, I can ratchet up the intensity and the difficulty level if I so choose at that time right now. Like do before I do this podcast, like I'm not, I'm not like, you know, researching every detail for the 20 minutes before this podcast. Typically, I'm like reading this book called Goofy's adventure, to my daughter, putting her down for the map. You know, like that's how I prep for this pot. Like 20 minutes before is like I'm literally reading Disney books. Putting my daughter to bed in time to come back out here, right? So it's like,
There's a lifestyle, I like, right now, that's doing this. And so, I'm optimizing for that. I think in five years. I'm going to be picking a very different challenge than I'm picking today, just because it'll be time for another chapter and I'll probably be like, I, that lifestyle shits boring. I want to go do something big or I'm going to be like, fuck business, business is stupid. I'm gonna go like, try to write a comedy show and I'm gonna like try to sell a show for TV. I don't know. I'm going to do something else with my life. Every five years. I want to kind of reinvent myself in terms of what I'm doing.
So,
You've come a long way, Sean. So, one of the first times I met you, you invited me to the Beebo launch party and I invite, I was like, can I bring a plus-one? You're like sure. I bring this friend who is visiting and we walk into this Warehouse or something in San Francisco. I mean, we have to like walk up stairs and like, where was it
Shawn?
This in a, you know, like a car manufacturer car repair. Yeah, like like a garage is like, for car repairs. What if? I don't know, I forgot how to speak English. But like, basically, Michael had bought one of those like, got rid of all the like car maintenance stuff and just turned it into like his man cave and he hadn't filled it up yet with his like fancy cars and cool shit yet. So it's just an empty Warehouse in the middle of San Francisco, downtown, San Francisco and we threw our launch party there before he filled it.
So I'm there.
With one of my buddies from this small town in Quebec the guys never left his town basically in his entire life. So he had Land San Francisco, staying with me, gets into this, you know, car shop or whatever, and it's like dark and there's smoke. And there's lights everywhere and then you walk in and there's all these people and there's lights everywhere. And he like literally whispered to me and he said is Kanye West coming to this. Did he say?
Say yeah said yeah, and it was like one of those moments like I'm sure a bunch of people of like watch The Social Network when it's like Justin Timberlake is like talking to, I guess it's Mark Zuckerberg and the club and it's just like it's intense and it's like Larger than Life and you were kind of like living that lifestyle in San Francisco. Not like, I mean, I'm painting, you is very plain.
And I won't tell your 100% Playboy, but in the sense of like you were living that lifestyle, you were doing that like Zuckerberg thing. And now you're, you know, you're kind of doing the complete opposite and my question to actually both of you, but particularly for Sean is, if you could redo it, would you have done more?
More of these product bets that are. There's, it's really less risk. Like, for example, milk Road, like there wasn't that much risk there? Yeah, let's yeah, let's be real, right. So like, I feel like people, like, worse now that we're in our 30s. We're focusing on different niches and we're taking things that are working different communities. And we're just pushing that out there with, you know, low product dress. Would you have done that or do you think that you needed to do these crazy bets in your 20s to be where you are today?
I have a very easy answer but I'll let Sean go first. No, no go. No, I want you to go first. I want to hear what you're going to say, Playboy, Sean
as Playboy shot. By the way, for that. I flew in this painter that I had met and he did it. I don't remember that. She did a live painting, where he he's painting, this like abstract thing. He's break dancing while he's doing it and there's a guy had seen at a, at a fair in Greeley. Colorado, many years before that. And I was like, Hey, dude, I have like a like, I'm a company that has like a bunch of funding.
You want to just like fly out for this party and do something. Don't do that thing. You did at that little Town, Fair do it in front of a, like, a hundreds of people at this thing and he's doing it and then hit the end. He spins the canvas. And what look like this crazy abstract thing was he had painted like a fucking Bob Marley upside down and it's like he does this like whatever he flips the thing, and then he's like, Donna, he slaps, it with his hand. It's full of paint and it was like, that was the moment and I was just like that. Party was dope. That was a dope party. Actually, now that I remember it. So, do I regret it? Well, now that I think about that,
Do you know? I don't regret it. That sounds pretty awesome. I'm glad I did it because I'm happy with where I am. Now, having said that, there were so many things that I did foolishly during that time and I'm not just talking about like, you know, do you know I wasn't as good at this thing as I am now, it's like no, like there was so much opportunity right under my nose and I was blind to it and like one of the biggest, like, scary things for me now is like, what are those things today that are right in front of me? That I'm too stupid to see. Just like
I was too stupid to see it seven years ago. When I was doing that. Other thing, for example, Greg you were in our early Mastermind groups and the founders of calm were there and they were talking about how hard it was and how they're just, you know, it's just Alex. It was just kind of like, yeah, it's hard to raise money right now, trying and and we were just like, dude, it's cool out man. You should stick with it. He's like, yeah, I'm going to just keep going. And like, that's a two billion dollar plus company now. And we were helping him like, dude. Why didn't we cut the check?
You were there, too. I don't know. You didn't take the kind of check either. Did you?
I remember at the time, like, if I'm being honest, like, I felt that it was too Niche. Like, I was like, we were like shot and you, and I were focusing on like, we were doing stuff stuff.
That was gonna be exactly one, a choir leader. He's got the huge company, there was so many of those are in our masterminds itself. I think Loom was in there. That's a billion dollar company.
Company and I remember kind of like trying to Mentor shy it and be like bro, like you know that don't worry. You'll figure it out isn't maybe it's not this one. But like when you get to your real game, you're gonna be like good because of this experience, you were friends with him too. Like did you invest in that?
Like, I mean, I missed, I missed, it was called Autos are called open test dotco and that's what Loom was originally. And it, you know, it felt like
You know, when you're doing your first start up and it just feels so shaky because you're it's your first time doing all this stuff. Like that's what it felt like. And so it was, you know, and then also the The Narrative at the time was don't invest in other people's startups. You got, if you, if you want to make it in Silicon Valley, you got to give laser focus. So I, you know, my mistake in my 20s was, I came to San Francisco and
You know, I listen to all these VCS with all their narratives and I did it. And if I were to redo it, I would frankly just be doing what I know which is doing, like, what I'm doing now, which is like focus on communities doing agency Services, you know, focusing on niches and, and web, you know, yeah, just build an experiment and not have the biggest exits in the world.
I there was, like, 10 examples like that. Like, I remember Alex McCall came over one day and he
We're catching up and then he went on to start. Clear and remember think this guys, fucking amazing. I should invest in this clear. Bit thing and I like went over to his office and he like hung out. I was like about to meet the guys was like, I love the energy of this office man. Like if I just couldn't do anything, besides feel this office. I would be like they're building a winner in here. That's also like a, I don't know if it's a billion, small, 200 million dollar company. He told me at the end, he goes. Oh, by the way, I'm buying up. I was like, what else are you doing? Finally. I started asking more questions. Like what else you doing? He's like, oh, I bought up some stripe shares.
The stripe shares available for like 2 billion dollars. I'm buying a bunch of Stripes years. I think it was him. Maybe Josh Buckley's one of them and he's like a Brian up, stripes for 2 billion. Let me know if you want in and I was like 2 billion to me. I was like, well, that's like the most a start-up is worth like a billion is like the top of the mountain. So like to me, it was like, oh, there's no upside left. You know, I didn't like, think from first principles about, like, everybody knew stripe was fucking amazing. It was like the best startup in the whole bike, you know, in Silicon Valley and I had this opportunity go by stripe here, is that two billion and
thought how late I was I was like man. I wish I could have got in earlier and now like, you know, the things I would give for stripe shares at 2 billion. Now, like I said, it's like that's already like like 100 x, you know, from from there and that was proven, right? Forget that then there was all the services we were using like for Condors my CTO, he'd be like, oh, this is cool. Cool product. Let's use this in our Tech stack. If I had just invested in all the bills. We were paying for like software. We were using like pager Duty and elasticsearch and snowy.
You know, like one after another those were all huge winners. They were pre-ipo. So first was investing. The second was like project selection. So you like your time about Greg. I did the same thing. I was playing by the rules of like I was playing by other people's rules. Meaning like what was considered cool at Silicon Valley was to be like a product guy who was building with a cool product taste and was building like, you know, like new markets and like going for the big billion dollar prizes and I met Sam
Like I'm writing this newsletter is free. I might have like newsletter. I was like, yeah, but like, are you going to do a start-up someday? That's all. I felt about it right now. Sam's company sells for more than more than what my company sold for. In the end. He
goes, he goes. Look, you're a good. But basically like you're showing up to a knife fight with a knife and I wish you would show up with a magic wand that would just murder the competition of like sounded cool, right? I was like, that's a great analogy. That's a cool story. But like, I don't know, man, I think
The bath kinda I think it might achieve the desired outcome, which I'm trying to do here. Which when I started I was just trying to be financially independent by the age of 30. That was the only goal.
And so so like if I could go back and just whisper three things about like just strategist strategy, like forget life advice, just strategy advice. I would have said invest in all the smart people, you know, like it'll it'll work out. If you don't have the money to go convince somebody that you have a bunch of really smart friends that they should give you money to invest in that.
That in the first thing, the second is invest in all of the expenses on your PL. So go find all the places. You're spending money and go try to invest in all those companies that will also do fantastically. Well, you'll make more on that than your own company. Okay, if you really want to do your own company beyond that. Fantastic, that's great. You're going to build up skills and you got a lottery ticket there, that might work. I would have just said like don't try to be Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network. Like, think about what like like basically. There's open your eyes to the problems and
The opportunities that exist today and so like, you know, whether it was like e-commerce or Shopify apps or like these sounded small at the time, but they sounded small because that's where they were early. And like, at that time. I needed a VC to, like, stamp their approval. That this was a good Market or opportunity which by that time is pretty late because with the VC doing they're looking at, what companies are raising huge rounds, which means like four years ago. Those were great opportunities. Three years ago. Those are great opportunities. And so, I wish I had just kind of been more eyes wide.
Unlike what projects are available to you and like the things that sound kind of nation funny. Those are actually better signals for you than the thing that the VC is saying is going to be huge or is already huge because it's often, you know, those companies to start our like you're in an absolute dogfight and it's just like one winner out of 100 is going to emerge versus other things where like you could basically take no product risks. No Market risk, so I had a friend Vishal. Tell me this one.
He goes, I invest in companies with no product Market, fit risk. I had never heard somebody say that. I didn't even make sense to me. I go. What do you mean like every startup is product Market fit, right? So you guys know it's not what a goes. He was the one who convinced me to buy Bitcoin initially as well. He was like Bitcoin is going to be the, you know, the biggest thing in the world. He's like, I just put up basically all the money I have in the Bitcoin was like what the fuck? This is like back in 2016. 15. Nobody was really saying that back then. So for the product Market fit thing, he goes he goes, for example, I just invested in a company.
It's making a robot that makes pizzas and it makes pizza. It makes a perfect pizza. Every time 24/7 at a lower cost than a human being can do it. He goes. I don't know if they can either because there's a ton of engineering risk. Like they may not be able to technically do it. But if they can do it, they're Zero Market risk, every pizza shop will want this overpaying. An employee to make imperfect pizzas only in certain hours call in sick and blah blah blah like it for a higher cost and I was like, oh shit. That's true. There are things that have zero Market.
Ask and I was taking like maximum Market risk before. So like that's the other strategy is like, you don't have to take as much Market risk. The thing you're doing now, Greg is like, way less Market risk. The thing. I'm doing with milk Road. I had like, Zero Market risk, basically, and there's just like, there's a lot of money. There's life-changing money that can be made, and a lot of fun that can be had without taking on unnecessary. What happened to that Pizza Company.
I think they're still in engineering risk mode. They got like a big contract from Domino's but then their CEO got in trouble for something, so they hired a new CEO, something something something, you know, like again, these are legit engineering risks of not like, that doesn't mean they will all work. But like what I'm doing with a newsletter is like neither technical risk Norm Market risk. Yeah.
Operational risk is just. Are you going to are you going to be able or wanting to do it for a long time? Which is yeah. We're just gonna, you know, that's a pretty good.
Thing to try to overcome, right? Yeah. It's really tough. You know, I remember coming to San Francisco and and hearing all these narratives and these beasts he's telling me this and also entrepreneurs sort of repeating a lot of this stuff and I will say it it's tough to go against what these stamps of approvals say to do, you know, like you have to tell yourself every day like and I have to do that to like when I started a Services business, all my, most of my Silicon Valley for
Friends were like a Services business like an agency. That's what you're going to do after you know, like and you just kind of have to push forward and really just remember that.
You know, just because, you know, certain people on Twitter, say, a certain thing or Sequoia and recent, a certain thing, doesn't mean you can't have a great. Like I would say, you can have a better lifestyle, not being Mark Zuckerberg then being Mark Zuckerberg.
Yeah. Exactly.
Catholic Pro brown bear shit in the woods, right? Obviously. Yeah.
What's that? A brown bear. Shit in the woods?
Yeah.
That's a sampar special needs is a result.
Is that the number seven sample? Especially? I just ordered because I think that got it
doesn't brown bear shit in the woods. Yeah, that's why people listen to this podcast though, for a couple of Sam's party. Except our specials. Did you just what did you say? Did I? Did I disorder and sandbars, my phone number seven because I think I just got it. Yeah, that's good. By the way there I made a joke recently where
Sean, you go. Yeah, so there's these short Traders and I said, oh, yeah, it's all Izzy and you just like, totally skipped by it. And the people that comments on YouTube or like I think the joke was funny but it was definitely funny that Shawn just ignored him.
No, people were like, dude. How did you not acknowledge that? Absolute gem on time on target? You were, you were
quick with that one? Yeah, it got no love and the commenters pointed it out.
You're the new Chris Rock man. You're the new Chris Rock. You're a better version of Chris Rock. Thank God. This is digital. He's gonna bitch slap me right in the face, dude. I can't believe that happened. I'm buddy. Like, right after this. I'm gonna go see. I can't wait to see. Will Smith apologize.
Oh, yeah. He's for sure. Gonna come out something. By the way, the Forum on his lap. If you look at the photo full extension crossbody. I mean, like, do you. I've never slept anyone. If I tried to stop someone once, I'm not going to have perfect form that.
I has to have slapped before because you don't just wake up with perfect form on a slap like that. Like the just look at the extension. Tell me, that's not, it's the best 12,000 slip.
Is a habitual slapper, man. These guys before we gotta, we gotta stop this guy before he gets out of control. I wonder he's definitely slept before, as he was, walking up the catwalk there was like, five seconds there. So I wonder what he was thinking. Like was he like, you know, what am I gonna punch him? I'm gonna slap him, like, I'm
Wonder what was going through his mind. I think I saw a rocker a little right
now. I've done that before to my sister. We're like, I knew I was mad and I started to charge. She's five years older than me. So I was like, you know, a kid at the time and I knew I was mad and I had a produced something, but I had no plan. And so I had like three steps to improvise the plan. I remember this. And she'll, she always tells a story. We were in the kitchen. And I was pissed because she made fun of me. And I'm 56 years old. And I was walking and I am in the kitchen. I just
Butter knife. And I gonna shh. This is the end. And like she was like, the end of Y as like dead and like nobody knows what happened after that. We both just black that she thought it was hilarious. That I said, like a movie line like a loser and I was holding this butter knife. I don't know. What I was going to try to do, but it wasn't going to work. She's she could overpower me at pretty handily at that time shopping for a
special.
All right. That's the episode, The
Way great. You said something done Eddie. I want to, I want to leave with, with Greg got my wheels turning even while we're joking. My wheels are still turning about what you just said about the narrative. Here's my challenge. Each of us. What's one narrative that you think actually, you should be going counter to that narrative. Like there's a narrative that we hear as entrepreneurs as people and kind of Tack and like what do you think is the like, actually, I don't know. Maybe it's this other.
Instead so if anyone has one do it, but I otherwise I'll give you
one. Yeah, go for it.
So mine would be I'll give you two. There's the inside crypto. There's a narrative that's basically like all. There's all this Innovation happening at this. It's like the next protocol. The next token. The next whatever.
I'm pretty sure that if you just buy three or four things like if you buy Bitcoin, if I put Luna in there now just by those three and you just chill either. All of crypto is going to work and those will work amazingly or cryptos not going to work and no matter what you did, like if those fail, if those don't go up dramatically in value crypto just didn't work and none of the shit will work. And so I think actually a basically, like
While
the best strategy was Bitcoin and chill. And now it's Ethan, chill. I basically think it's still the same. I think it's like, buying two or three tokens and not even needing to know. Anything. More just chilling on. Those is probably the best investment of the next like 10 to 15 years, going to outperform everything during that time. So I think like going deeper down the rabbit hole and like learning more. He's actually going to fuck up your Returns versus just buying the the main ones and just holding for like ten years not thinking about it. That's one. And then the other is
I think that Angel Investing doesn't make much sense anymore and I say this as somebody who Angel invests like the valuations are so high. That like if I think about like that same money going into like one of these sort of boring cash flow, businesses is so much better for your life. So if you're like an individual angel investor and you have let's say a hundred thousand dollars, you know, or three hundred thousand dollars if you want to go put into like a basket of 20 startups.
It's like are you sure you shouldn't just buy like like get an SBA loan and go by like some random website that's already producing profit and that will pay itself off in two years or less. And and now you own this cash flowing asset. Like I'm pretty sure that's just going to do better. Did I have okay, I agree or than a basket of Angel
investment the, the known, the our friends, who have all crush it on Angel Investing, you know, they means they made their Investments five or eight years ago and it was different. It is it's outlandish at the moment. So I agree with that. I think for my
that I think that it's actually
I think that I think that you only have a few swings in your career and a lot of people are like, oh, you should be patient and you've got a lot of time to do certain stuff. I actually think you should try. You should dedicate your twenties to getting your first significant win because after that life gets a lot harder you get a lot less energy. You're a lot smarter, which is actually bad you actually it's kind of good to be kind of ignorant and not enough people. I think I'll
Oftentimes people's go, the other route where they go. We'll just go join something for a little while and learn in my opinion, F at your 20s, dedicate it to getting a win and get it. Even if it's relatively small and do it as fast as possible. Because after that life is a lot easier.
I'll give my what Shawn
I was gonna say. Give the moist quote about getting rich
quick. He goes. Why does everyone hate on getting rich quick? Get-rich-quick schemes are the best. I want to get rich quick. I don't want to get rich
slow.
I got to real quick. So,
I got off the phone with a friend of mine who works at Facebook. He told me this morning. He told me that he works roughly 90.
90 to 120 minutes per day on average. Ah, ha ha ha. I thought you gonna say 90 to 120 hours a week. He
that's the best when you measure your work in minutes.
He texted me. He texted me today said it was 9:00 12:00 a.m. He said, 912 am finished work for the day through 12 minutes. And so they'll put us in
a group chat. I want him to text us every day, just the timestamp of
when. So that's what, that's what I told to do. I did you need to create like a Twitter and on.
Hound Twitter that's and so, I'm going to stay tuned do that. But I think that in your 20s, like potentially, go work at Facebook, go work at Google, get those high paying jobs. I think that, by the way, I think, I think that's a good way to get a win, get get, you know, do that for a few years while you're, you know, do you're doing your, you're learning on the side like join it, Dow build a community, build a newsletter, do whatever you want to do. It would really speaks to you.
While you're, you're not, you know, yeah, so you're making money and you're learning.
What more could you ask for and then my and you know, just because you gave a crypto one, Sean, I think that and I spent a lot of time in nft lines and wept real and to I think that nft is are going to 99% Freedom. It it's going to be a free freedom and thing. I think the idea of selling and FTS will be a very small thing.
Okay. So what happens?
Why would I give away something for free? All right. What's my incentive? So what happens after its freedom? A
so, yeah, I mean, you know, okay. So the idea right now. It's like people are selling and FTS and projects for .05 2.2. Let's say, on average for some of these, you know, 10,000 pfp projects. I think that that's going to burn out at some point and I think we're starting to see it burn out a little bit. And I think that, you know, I did.
See, the hundred thieves
drop.
Yeah, they what do they do? Exactly. They did a much
smaller amount. So they basically, first of all is in gaming and Gamers, hate and FTS. So the fact that they did a successful gaming and ft launch like obviously kudos to them, but basically, they won this championship and they were like, okay, in order to get this like collectible. You can go grab it. It's free. We're not saying it's going to be worth anything, and they got 700,000 people to collect this, collectible.
And it was like a trophy and then they make money on if there's value, right? So if it grows in value, they get royalties.
And I think that's what you're going to see a lot of is like creators and and big communities, basically doing Freedom ants. Even though people seem, you know, people today think that selling and empties is the future. I don't think so.
Right,
by the way, I'm gonna change mine to just simplify it instead of starting a company by existing business. I think that is the most overlooked obvious thing for a smart person to do, is, how do you take your Market risk to essentially zero? You buy a business that's already working and profitable. And you just say cool. I'm a better operator than this person, or I know about a different form of operation than they do. And so I can grow this using Facebook ads, or I can grow this using Outsourcing, or I can grow this using, you know,
Or whatever it is. So you hear almost no narrative. You her tons of narrative around the genius Visionary start up start a new thing. Building a new project, launching a new thing and like, you here, like one or two examples of people buying businesses. And I think that for most smart people, buying a business is a far better idea than start.
Yeah, but when you're in your 20s, somebody might lose my push back to. That is like when you're in your, let's say early twenties, like do you know, like you're saying that now but I think like,
Yeah, you do need like that operational experience. And that's where my point is. You got to like it's worthwhile to just potentially take a high-paying job and then on the side kind of like experiment and
do stuff.
Yeah, that's true. I'm not really limiting my to the twenties. I think I'm still making mistakes of my 30. So I'm assuming other people are doing. I guess it's more. Like what narrative do I hear? Now? That's easy to float along with that. I'm like, you know what, actually I don't think I just think this is true and like that's the one for me, which is like for most people who want to be entrepreneurial, they default to starting a business and I think actually maybe should be the opposite. Maybe you should default to taking on an existing business and growing.
It and only create a new thing if you like actually have a new invention in mind. A new idea that really you can't shake in your head versus like just starting a new start. I like that because because you want to be an entrepreneur, right? All right, I think we lost Sam. We gotta go. All right, Greg. Thanks for coming, man. Where should people find you
Twitter at Greg? Eisenberg or on our pod where it happens?
Or in the
mountains of Canada. The mountains of can't, unless you're the IRS in which case, he's in Miami at least 180 days. At least.
All right. Yeah.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know, I could be what I want to
travel. Never looking
back.
