00:00
If you got into Ethereum early on in the crowd sale, and you you bet on that thing at thirty cents because, you're a developer and you you really believed in this new programmable
00:10
blockchain,
00:11
you deserve your tens of millions of dollars. You deserve your hundred million dollars.
00:15
If you're rich because you bought like, a picture of an rock, you know, three months ago or, you know, a a computer generated squiggle. That's now worth a quarter million dollars. Fuck here.
00:28
Yeah. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
00:33
I put my all in it, like, days off on a road less traveled, never looking back. I'm looking at my,
00:40
my phone. I just got a text message because my my three nieces went back to the went to, you know, first day of school today.
00:47
And,
00:48
talking to one of them this morning, and I go, Ellie, how you know, how are you feeling?
00:52
First day ever going to a school? And she goes,
00:55
I go I go, how are you feeling? In one word, she goes, my heart is going fast.
01:00
I was like, oh, I melted.
01:02
I've melted. Your uncle is a puddle on the ground now. He cannot function anymore.
01:06
So that's all. Shout out to Ellie for her first day of school. Hopefully, it's going well.
01:11
That's awesome. That's a great one. Okay. Good. Can I start by telling you a quick story that I don't think I've ever told you, but I think you'll get a kick out of?
01:21
So
01:21
about
01:23
this is the Bitcoin one. We'll tell that one soon. But about
01:26
three years ago,
01:28
I so
01:29
I talk about solid times. I don't wanna, like, rub it or, like, continue talking about this shit because it gets boring. But basically, I don't do any drugs. I don't drink. I'm pretty straight laced. Alright. I've been straight laced for eight years. I don't do anything. I'm I'm I'm fearful of anything, but
01:43
I was getting really curious about,
01:47
psychedelics.
01:48
So, like, mushrooms,
01:50
MDMA therapy, ketamine therapy. I did what a lot of people did. I read the book how to change your mind by Michael Pollen, And I was like, oh, the this is great. I'm really interested in this. And so I found a
02:01
person
02:02
who was going to lead a an MDMA
02:05
therapy, like, session.
02:07
And so I went to dinner at her house
02:10
with my wife came with me, and it was, like, three other couples. And we went to this thing, and I was we were and she wanted to do, like, a a session to get to know people in order to determine if this was a good fit. Cause basically, what you do is you take a
02:23
dose of MDMA, and then, like, she talks to you. MMA Molly?
02:27
I think so. Something?
02:28
Yeah. I believe so. It's all or similar at least. I'm not I I I really frankly don't know, but I think it's, like, the same thing.
02:35
And we,
02:39
it's like a pill, I guess. It's a pill. You swallow it. Okay. And we go to this group,
02:45
and
02:46
I'm in this, like, the the the idea of psychedelics
02:49
for therapy, like, to, like, you know, for veterans, but also people who just want breakthroughs or who have depression. I'm on board I've got friends to do it. I love it. I don't really do I don't do drugs because I just don't feel comfortable doing it, but I really wanted to explore it and get and get to know these people and try this out. And I went to this group,
03:05
and
03:06
they were crazy hippy dippy, like super hippy dippy, but mind you, this is in San Francisco, and she had a really nice place.
03:13
And so, like, we start talking.
03:16
And
03:17
all of a sudden, it gets so hippy dippy and woo woo that she's like,
03:21
you know, like, this medicine needs to be free for everyone.
03:24
And capitalism is just ruining everything.
03:27
And,
03:28
like, you know, we need to live in a society where we can just barter and trade and, like, This way we can give it a medicine. Let me just guess. Sam triggered.
03:36
It starts a debate. It triggered so hard. And,
03:40
and then we start talking. We I'm like, in my back my head, I'm like, well, then why am I paying you, like, four thousand dollars for this?
03:46
But
03:48
Yeah. Refund me. Right? Yeah. So give my money back. And we start talking and like, this is just sitting in my head and I'm like,
03:56
oh, man. Four grand. This thing was four grand to do. Or twenty five hundred. It was like multiple thousands of dollars. I think it was closer to three or four thousand than it was two thousand. I forget the exact amount. Because you can take a family of four to Disneyland.
04:09
Get the fast pass, get the turkey leg, go get the Mickey Mouse ears and still coming under four grand. That's a real psychedelic experience if you want. Yeah. I look, I agree. It was crazy expensive, but, like, I'm trying to open minded. I wanted to explore this. I I just read the book. I was all enthused. But in my head, I'm just sitting there at this dinner with this in the back of my head. Thinking about this, I'm like, oh my god. Like, I can't believe, like, this is these people are so bullshit. And, and then I I asked her, and I go, what what did you used to do for a living?
04:35
She used to work at Lehman Brothers. At Lehman Brothers, and now has a venture capital firm on
04:39
the
04:45
died.
04:46
And this whole and and and I, like, when I heard this, I was, like, I started giggling and I was, like, well, you do realize that this is, like, Just ridiculous what you said earlier. Right? And I said this at the dinner. I'm like, you know, that's that's just like crazy. And they are also talking about how, like, this medicine needs to be available for everyone. And, like, they need to help the masses. And they're like, where are you from? I'm like, I'm from Missouri. And they said, oh, fly over country.
05:10
And I'm just like, oh my god. This is the most smug thing ever. So eventually,
05:14
I get into an argument with her at the dinner table, and she was just like, you know, I don't think this is a good fit. And I was like, I I agree. This is not a good fit. I can't do drugs with you. Not a good fit.
05:23
And so I can't can't even do dinner with you. Yeah. I can't even do dinner with you. Let alone, like, get high and talk about my feelings with you. Like, not gonna work. This is a horrible fit. And so I just I had to leave. I got kicked out. Like, I basically got asked to leave. And
05:37
they're like, Sarah, you're cool.
05:41
I I just wasn't in a good place. And so I got kicked out of the group. I wasn't able to do drugs with them.
05:46
And that was my experience with psychedelic
05:49
that was my only experience with, like, the psychedelic therapy. But
05:52
I think
05:53
that these style these retreat styles for psychedelic stuff,
05:57
Starting in, like, two thousand fifteen, I had friends that would go do Ayahuasca. You know what Ayahuasca is?
06:03
Oh, so I've heard Ayahuasca many times. So I know of it. I know kinda what the what the the why people do it? You should explain it anyways. But if you said, hey, this is like my dolly part and thing. I couldn't pick dolly part and out of a lineup. If you said, hey, draw Ayahuasca.
06:17
I mean, I feel like, I draw off some feathers in a in a in a bowl of liquid I don't know. What the hell is actually? I'll ask her. I don't think you're far off. Again, I'm total noob here as well, but my friends do it. I believe it's like a powder and you mix it with water. And you put it in a bowl and you and you, like, pass around, like, this thing and you take a drink out of it. And then you stay up all night, like, doing wild stuff. And that you a lot of times, they make it makes you throw up, and that's, like, part of the the journey and experience. It's freaking weird. But, like, whatever, I'm open to it. And I've been had I've had friends, like, start doing this in two thousand fifteen Now on Instagram,
06:51
I am seeing
06:52
so many of my friends. Go to South America, go to Mexico, all talking about, like, these journeys. I started listening to the health podcast.
07:01
And
07:04
I and I like to make fun of it because it's some basic bitch, but you wanna know what It's I'm on board. I'm so on board with this. I am totally on board with this, and I think that psychedelic retreats, like, I've been I read a Bloomberg article about them in, this guy in Jamaica, and they charge, like, the it ranges from twenty five thousand dollars to a twenty five hundred dollars to thirty thousand dollars. And they bring you to this, like, nice place. They get you they give you the the drugs. Like, it's a variety of sometimes it's Ayahuasca,
07:31
ketamine,
07:33
what's is it psilocylam? What's mushrooms?
07:36
Yeah. Yeah. And they, like, do this therapy stuff. I am so on board with this. And, unfortunately, my one experience was horrible, but I'm so on board with this. But it wasn't the drugs. It was the people.
07:48
Was the Hippigrates that that they're trying to get me to take this drug. Yeah. I'm, like, I, like, I can't trust you. Like, you're gonna tell me, like, you wanna solve you wanna, like, like, solve the world's problems and you're gonna make fun of me for being from Missouri. Like, that this is a bad fit. You know, just tell me your bullshit first. Dude, I I I have so many
08:05
Yeah. Exactly. It's like an AM. Maybe it's like, hi, I'm Sam, and I'm full of shit. Yeah. Alright. So so I have a bunch of thoughts about this. Where would I begin? First, Shout out to the guy who came to our live podcast show in Austin who is apparently
08:19
mushroom dealer. Don't remember his name. I remember that. Showed me some show
08:23
the the the guy loved to take out his phone and just show pictures of his he opened up his camera roll, not a single friend or family there. Just different exotic mushrooms in his hand. And they all look the same. They all look the same. He kept showing me the birds. I was like, yeah. Cool, man. Cool. The pile up there. Never never done mushrooms.
08:42
Couldn't couldn't tell. It was like showing me different bottles of wine, and I'm sober. Like,
08:47
yeah. Okay. It looks great. It looks fantastic. That one's that one's dark red. Cool. So
08:51
that's one thing. I just remember that guy when you were telling this story. Second,
08:56
I've I met this guy who's really interesting.
08:59
Did I tell you about this guy? Robbie Bent? No.
09:02
Okay. Yeah. So, so this is this is cool. Alright. So this guy so Robbie bent what's his story? So he's a founder of a he he's a startup founder.
09:11
He has this idea for
09:14
by the way, when I tell stories, I'm pretty sure, like, at least forty percent of them are just the details are completely wrong. But I always get the essence of the story right. So I'll I'll say that. So, Robbie, if I butcher your story, sorry about that. Alright. So I think he had a startup that was, like, This was back when cell phone roaming was a big problem. Like, you would go travel somewhere and you're if you, like, turned your phone on for one minute, you'd, like, spent a thousand dollars. So, basically, roaming was a problem. And so he was trying to build this, like, sim card company for, like, international roaming, like, an international sim card.
09:44
And raises, I think, like, twenty five million dollars or something like that.
09:48
And, you know, like, pretty soon after that,
09:51
like, roaming became, like, free or something. You know, something happened. The company, like, was pointless at some point, and he's like, oh, shit. Okay.
09:59
What do I do now? Come kind of fails. He's kind of in a funk. He's in a depression. And so I think he was,
10:06
he was I think he was depressed. I think he was using drugs. Sure exactly the story was, but it's kind of in a low place in life. And his friend is like, you know what? You need to go backpacking through your You need to go to South America, do some Ayahuasca, or he decides he's gonna do it. So he goes on this Ayahuasca trip. And he's like,
10:24
you know, same story as everybody who goes to man or South America for Ayahuasca. They're like, oh, life changing best experience. I think if you don't have a good experience, they must just kill you because I've never met anybody who didn't have a life changing experience. That's all positive. So so he's got this all positive experience, and he meets this person there also doing the trip.
10:41
And,
10:42
And they're, you know, I was hanging out together. And this guy's like, hey. Six, you know, so what do you do? He's like, oh, you know, Robbie's like, I just went through the crazy thing. I'm, like, broke. My company failed. I'm, like, in the dumps. And this guy's, like, oh, you know, I'm,
10:56
I'm actually creating his crypto venture capital fund. This is five years ago, six years ago now. And he's like, you know, I'm we're raising one of the first funds for crypto to invest in crypto.
11:06
And,
11:07
You know, like, a lot of these people we invest in, they're like, you know, great engineers or they're, if it's really into crypto, but they're not great at marketing.
11:14
So, like, maybe you could just help out some of my portfolio companies. Like, if you got nothing else to do, just come hang out with me and let's let's do this. And by the way, you should check out this thing called Ethereum.
11:23
And, and so he's like, oh Ethereum, what's that? They had just done its crowd sale. I think Ethereum was, like, at six dollars at the time. So Ethereum today is, like, thirty five hundred dollars as of this morning.
11:33
And,
11:34
and so he he starts organizing all these, like, meetups. So he's like, I don't know anything about crypto. But this guy said, get in. There's a lot of energy here, and he followed his gut after the Ayahuasca trip. I was like, hey, look, I got nothing to lose. So let me do this. And he starts organizing, like, basically a hackathons. And then with the hackathons, he gets engineers, and then he tells the engineers, hey, you should go work at these, like, portfolio companies potentially. So he's, like, kinda creating some value. He's just helping a bunch of people out. And he starts getting really interested in Ethereum because he's, like, that's where the most energy is. He starts organizing, like, all the Ethereum hackathons, and people are loving it. The Ethereum Foundation reaches out as, like, hey, you should come on and be, like, the first marketing person for Ethereum.
12:14
So this guy joins joins,
12:17
the Ethereum project, and he's the first kinda, like, marketer guy non technical person working on the thing. And he's basically building the community and the passion around it. He's hosting events and things like that. And so
12:28
he went from, like, the dumps. He gets into Ethereum, like, under ten dollars.
12:32
Ethereum runs up. And by the way, I was like, I asked him. I was like, did you, like,
12:36
How big did you bet on this? And he's like, well, I had nothing. He's like, but I took every dollar I had, and I put it into a theory of it. He's like, oh, I didn't have much. I already it's probably, like, ten grand or something like that. He's like, I think I borrowed money from, like, my parents, and I just put it all into Ethereum and it was, like, amazing for me. And so anyways, he he makes life changing money And, and after a couple of years in the crypto scene, he's like, you know what?
12:58
Crypto's great. I made a bunch of money doing this now, but I'm ready for my next thing. And he's like, goes back to his roots. He's like, that psychedelic trip, Ayahuasca trip was, like, so meaningful for me. So he, in the meantime, had been getting into all kinds of like different types of, like, kind of therapies. So he was, like, cold therapy,
13:17
heat therapy,
13:18
breath work, all these, I kinda, like, you know, kinda like these hippy dippy, like, sort of alternative ways to, like, improve your body. And so when I called him, I met him for the first time, he's on the zoom,
13:29
and his background is, like, this oasis.
13:32
I'm, like, oh, cool background, like, cool background image. He's, like, no, this is, like, my garage I built out. He basically built this in he's in Canada. He built this epic,
13:41
like, wood cabin looking thing. It's got this custom cold plunge you made. It's this twenty person sauna that he created because he hosts events there. It's got all this greenery. It's like a greenhouse. It's got this, like, musical stuff. And he created basically this experience where you could come. If you wanted to have one of these experiences, you could do hot cold therapy and it would take you through an intense cold plus heat, like, you know, you go back and forth between that, like a like a Banya bath type situation.
14:07
And then the second thing he did was these, like, kind of facilitated
14:11
MDMA type I don't know what drug it was, but facilitated, like, psychedelic experiences where they have a doctor on-site,
14:17
and then they do this, like, group experience together and you're guided through it. Exactly like what you're talking about. Yeah. And I was like, dude, that's a great idea. I was like, because, you know, I'm a pussy. I don't Like, I kinda wanna have a life changing experience, but, like, with no risk, can you, like, give me that? And this is, like, the closest you're gonna get, which is, like, doctor supervised in a group of people with people who've done this for. And, like, it's for beginners, and it's not just go do drugs in the in the in this, like, sketchy place. It's, like, in a nice, beautiful environment with music and it's controlled. And he's like, yeah, dude. I put this up, like, I think he put it up on Airbnb as an experience or he put it up on groupon or some I don't know where he put it. We put it somewhere, and he's just like booked out his his little, like, garage is basically booked out, like, twenty four seven. And since then, he basically,
14:59
he's, he he's, like, his next thing or the way he, like, evolved it. He's like, still do he still does the live events, but to scale it up, he created this app called, inward. And so I invested in this thing. It's basically a breath work app. So I started doing this every morning now. The app's not even, like, fully out yet. Like, you just sent me, like You've been doing it?
15:18
Yeah. Because I'm in the I'm into Breathwork. I'd, like, kind of heard about wim wim hof and dabbled with that. And I went to this Buddhist thing once and, like, they do chanting, which is, like, form of, like, meditation to breath, things. Before too. It's great. And so you should let I'm gonna send you the SoundCloud link. And I had him come in my course. When I taught the writing course, I was like, dude, this thing's amazing. I use this now for my morning routine to, like, wake me up basically. So I was like, you know, teaching over Zoom can be the most fucking boring thing.
15:44
And so I had him come in and do a five minute session for the students at the beginning, and everybody was like hyped out of their mind by the end of it. Also, some people were like, yo, I'm like light headed. I need to, like, go sit down. I was like, yeah, yeah, that happens. But he has this five minute guided thing where it's like, dope music mixed with a guided,
16:02
breath work session. And he did in five minutes, he was like, waking everyone up. Anyway, so I'm pretty, like, excited about this. I thought his story was pretty awesome of, like, his little journey to get here. So I wanted to share that with you. So
16:12
let's just keep going. So I went to, when I would live in San Francisco,
16:16
these guys, I met these young guys on, they went to Stanford. They were
16:21
yeah. No. They, they
16:24
They, they these that did come out well. They they weren't that young.
16:30
These guys that went to these guys that went to Stanford, they basically I found this thing on Eventbrite, where they were doing,
16:37
like, it was very clear what was happening, which was it was two guys testing a startup idea,
16:42
And they either got someone to donate them a really big room,
16:47
or they, like, rented it for a very little amount of money I think someone just donated them, the this room. And one of them was, like, an enthusiastic
16:54
person or, enthusiast of breath work, and he they basically we all went there, and they put this eventbrite link up. We each paid thirty dollars, and thirty of us went there. So, what's thirty times thirty?
17:06
Nine hundred.
17:07
Okay.
17:08
Well, yeah, we don't do public math. And so Yeah. I take that out. I don't do public
17:14
math.
17:15
So I went to his I went to this guy and he the the lights were down, and they start playing this music. And, like, I went with my coworker. He was like, hey, I found this thing on Eventbrite. Let's go check it out. And we went to his his place and thirty of us did breath, like, a breath work session. It was it was have you ever been to a soulcycle studio?
17:31
I was gonna say. Yeah. It sounds like soulcycle. I thought like that. Yeah. It felt exactly like that. And it was the best business ever. And they were clearly I talked to him afterwards. He's like, yeah, we're just testing this out and we might turn it into a business. And they didn't do it. And they totally should have because it was way better than soulcycle.
17:47
Why? They had nothing. It was just a room with lights.
17:51
Sound, and you're sitting there, and they just hit play, and the guy guides you a little bit. He kinda talks to you, and it was awesome. I was like, I will at the end, you you you walk out with a high. So you've given people an experience. So we talked about this a while ago with the Simone Biles thing. We made a prediction that Next five years, mental fitness, not mental health, mental fitness, which is training your body and your brain to sort of like, be able to master your mind a little bit better.
18:18
And not just avoid
18:20
disease and illness, but actually be fit mentally.
18:24
This is gonna become more in vogue. I think that this breath work I think breath work is gonna be the new meditation.
18:30
I think that the same way that, you know, soulcycle
18:34
and Berry's boot camp and hot yoga have become these alternative. You know, we had the gym, which is this kind of cold sterile isolated solo one player experience.
18:45
And then you have soulcycle come in. It's like, no, this is multiplayer.
18:48
With a leader you just submit to, they just tell you they just shout and tell you what to do, and they're, like, they look heroic on the stage with their body and their their voice and their microphone.
18:56
And then we're gonna program you with this music that you can't help but feel like you just went to the club. We're gonna heat you up so you sweat because that feels good. You're gonna feel like you gotta work out in. And we're gonna guide you through a process. And whether that process is cycling
19:10
or it's boxing at rumble or it's Barry's boot camp and you're running on a treadmill, or it's, hot yoga and you're, you know, trying to touch your toes.
19:19
This is a model that works. It is an experience that you give somebody. It is a feeling It is a one hour guaranteed high that you get to you get to get without the use of drugs. And so,
19:29
so I'm pretty convinced that there's gonna be a breath work style
19:33
version of Berry's boot camp or or hot yoga that becomes just as popular as some of those other ones, perhaps even more popular. And I think that app that he's got he's building is gonna be like a calm, calm style app if they execute well because I think there's a big market for this. You know, these are sort of like ancient techniques. Completely agree. That can be modernized.
19:52
Another thing that stood out for during your story was, I've actually read about this. I've I there's this, like, recurring theme of people I look up to. So Chris Sacca, or is it Saka? Chris Saka. There's this, Israeli guy named,
20:04
VVie. Have you heard of VVie?
20:07
V v v so his,
20:09
his full name is, Aviv Nevo. So, a v I v space, n e v o. So this guy, he's an Israeli guy. He's probably in his sixty now. Sixties now. He kinda looks like sting. He's like this, like, good looking, like, Swave looking dude who's like in shape. He's probably in his sixties.
20:27
He came from Israel. His parents were wealthy. They died when he was young, gave him ten million dollars in the inheritance. He used that ten million dollars to invest in some stuff, ends up becoming the largest shareholder of Time Warner. And now is this like big shot guy who hangs out with, like, Bono and, like, he's, like, a JZ, like, they all looked, like, he's got, like,
20:48
spiritual guy, you could Google. I mean, there's a lot of, like, really interesting articles about him. He's kinda like the great Gatsby. So, anyway, there's him. There's Chris Sacca, another person who this I applies to is this guy named cowboy Saroney. Cobboy Saroney, Donald Roni. He's a famous UFC fighter. They all have
21:03
locations
21:03
outside of major cities So Cabway Saroney has a place in Denver. This VV guy has a yeah. He's got and this VV guy has a place right outside of LA, and then Chris Saka had a place in Tahoe, three hours outside of San Francisco. And their competitive advantage in getting into interesting deals is they have, like, interesting places that aren't necessarily expensive. VV's got his his place is expensive
21:24
expensive Donouts Roni's at first probably wasn't that expensive. Chris Saca isn't that that expensive. And he gets these, like, founders to come out to his place. He's like, hey, look, I have this cabin out in the woods. You wanna come chill and hang out. And he, like, shows them around and gives them this amazing experience, and that's how they, like, end up investing in different stuff. I actually think that strategy is amazing to have a place
21:42
just to live, you could live a little bit on the outskirts, and, like, everyone comes to you. They're on your terms because that's the best way to, like, get shit done. Is everyone on, at your house, on your turn, where you're the boss, they get to know you. I think that's a competitive advantage. I've thought about doing that in either Texas or New York where I'm staying now. Is getting a place that's, like, two hours outside of the main area. Dude, let's let's time share it. My my first million ranch,
22:03
I'll go in. I'll invest in it with you. We'll get five other cool people that we like and then whoever wants to retreat to the ranch at any given time can. It it would totally work. Like, I I think it's a real, like, a huge competitive advantage. Don't you?
22:16
Well, I think it's cool. I think it's definitely cool. I don't know if it's a competitive it's a competitive advantage in that,
22:21
you can go deep. So there's this idea of, like, do you go wide or do you go deep? I would say most people go wide. I go deep in terms of in terms of your strategy with people. So what what is wide? Wide means you have a lot of light connection, loose ties,
22:37
you know, a lot of acquaintances, a lot of a lot of friends, but not a lot of friends that you could call when you need some or not a lot of friends who are gonna think of you first when they see something awesome.
22:47
And going deep is the exact opposite. It's having a group of, you know, ten or less people that you're like, okay, I would go to I don't go to war for you and you would go to war for me. And I think that both of us have more of this deep strategy than wide, where it's like, we have a handful of people that we just trust implicitly. I could give them my bank account and sleep well at night. And,
23:10
And because of that, we can share information. We can say, dude, so, like, how how do you do this? How much do you make doing this? How do I set this up? Like, what is this good for me, bad for me? You know, what do you think? Or a deal happens
23:23
and, like, this morning. I I I'm in a deal that's going really well. The start up deal is going really well. And a buddy texted me was just like, hey,
23:30
look, like, can get me into that. And I was like, Okay. I will I will put as much credibility as I can into this to get you into that deal.
23:37
And, and vice versa, if they if if they had something, then then then the same. And so I think that the Ranch style Escape
23:44
is a great tool for going deep. So Chris Saka talks about
23:48
he would
23:50
he had the the founder of Instagram early on.
23:53
He was, like, I think working out of dogpatch labs as his, like, co working space. He invited him up to his Tahoe cab and to come, like, work out of there. And I think he, like, stayed there for, like, a few weeks if I remember the story correctly, like, living in the guest house or whatever.
24:05
And then Travis Calanic, when he was starting Uber, the story is, yeah, he came to Tahoe.
24:10
We spent four nights or three three days together. He was we were in the hot tub just jamming on what what could happen. It's like immersion. By the end of three days, with somebody, like, you really trust that person. You like that person. It's so different than a meeting than a Zoom call and trying to have eight back to back Zoom calls. And we had, what's her name, Brie Kimel on the show, and she showed us her calendar. And it was, like, thirty minute zoom, then thirty minute zoom, then forty minute email follow-up, then twenty minute zoom, then and it's like, okay, that's one strategy.
24:38
I wanna basically say clear the calendar you know, let's go road tripping together. Let's go, you know, let's spend a day. Let's go to this MMA fight together. Let's have unique experiences
24:47
that are longer more in-depth and that build more trust. And I'll I'd rather do that with a few people than try to do it, try to know everybody.
24:54
Same. We're the exact same. I found it to be exhausting.
24:57
You wanna do a few topics here?
25:00
Yeah. Let's do it. Which one do you wanna do? You drive.
25:04
Okay. I'll do
25:07
Let's see. Let's do this.
25:09
Let's do the I I don't know. You wanna tell the story about the consultant.
25:14
Well, and I think that's probably the most interesting one. Alright.
25:17
I'll so I I I've not told you about this guy.
25:21
I don't think so. It's a pretty memorable story. Alright. So I have friend that I was I was talking to recently, and,
25:28
I'm gonna I'm trying to be a fair bit vague, but I'm gonna try and give as many details as I possibly can.
25:34
And, basically,
25:35
this person,
25:38
they had a normal job, a normal high paying job like a lot of people listening to this. They were a consultant at a at a large place, and they lived very frugally, and they were able to save a million dollars by the time that they were in their
25:51
lower to mid thirties.
25:53
And when this happened, this was around four years ago. Bitcoin,
25:58
was priced around twenty five hundred dollars, three thousand dollars when this happened. And this person is eccentric. They're crazy.
26:05
Even though, like, they have normal job and you would talk to them and you think that they're normal,
26:10
he
26:11
likes to bet. He just loves gambling, like, in a sense of, like, betting it all. Like, he he it's like, he that's just like in his DNA. He he's not afraid. I think you're a little bit like that.
26:20
Not as extreme, but definitely have a touch of that. And so
26:23
you know, he started talking. He goes, you know, I don't see any good place to invest this money right now. And I'm doing crazy amounts of research.
26:29
I'm gonna go all in on Bitcoin. And this was it was three thousand dollars, twenty five hundred dollars, we thought it was crazy. So he cashed out his four zero one k. He borrowed a little bit of money, and he used Kraken or something like Kraken to get massive amounts of leverage, like five or ten times leverage.
26:44
And he invested all of his money to the point where he had, like, four thousand dollars left of his one million.
26:50
All of it into
26:52
Bitcoin.
26:53
And recently, when Bitcoin hit its highway This was This was Bitcoin
26:58
after it had crashed from about twenty thousand down back down to three thousand. So it's not like it was just all on the up and up. No. And recently, when it got got to sixty thousand dollars,
27:09
his sum, his one million is it was worth about, like, ninety five million dollars.
27:14
And
27:15
and and You talked to him. You caught up with him? I I had a a a a mutual friend was with him and he and he called me and he goes, man, this guy
27:24
you, like, we were talking, you know, I was like, hey, whatever happened to this this person, and he goes, well, you know, I caught up with him. He's worth almost about a hundred million dollars right now. And it totally worked. And I was like, wait. What? He goes, yeah. He's got a hundred million dollars at Bitcoin right now and started with a million. And Did you know him when he was making the bet? Like, were you there? What the hell are you doing? Yeah. And I've and I went out to dinner with him, in two thousand and, when did the when three years ago was what, when did that when was that? I think I think twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen. I can't remember which one, but there was a a peeked, the twenty seventeen December or something like that, and then it crashed back down. We went out to dinner, and he was telling me about this. And I was like, you you're crazy. You're a crazy person. This is a horrible idea. Just invest in the index fund. You know, I'm really conservative. And I'm like, just in invest in index funds. You're nuts. This is a horrible idea. Do not do it. And he was enthused,
28:15
so enthused. I couldn't talk him out of it. And he was like, thinking I was crazy. He was like, what are you crazy? This is like, it totally makes sense. And I'm like, it doesn't. This is a horrible idea. Do not do this. And he did it. And so recently,
28:28
when when about four months ago, whenever it was at, like, fifty, sixty grand, it was worth close to a hundred million dollars. And I was asking about their lifestyle, like, not a lot had changed.
28:39
And it was just Cash out or leaving it let it run. Cash out a little bit. I think, like, ten or twenty percent, I believe. But still letting it ride. So now it's halved or I guess it's back up again. But Back up. Yeah. And and and the point of the story is basically
28:52
I am so enthused. The point of the story is a dude bet a million dollars and made a hundred million dollars. There is a little bit, but that's the point of the story. Let's be clear. The the point is is that, like, love that part of the story.
29:04
Crazy people exist.
29:05
I'm not one of them, and I'm happy that they exist. So we just did this episode with Remi and I align with the Ramit. We're both fairly conservative just like ten percent a year boring shit.
29:15
I love that these nuts these nutty people
29:19
are real and exist because that's where progress come from comes from, and I'm happy that they're real. And so that that yeah. I just wanted to tell that quick story because I I caught up with them recently. It's an amazing story.
29:29
So I
29:31
saw this, I saw this tweet. That was great. And, basically, what it said was,
29:37
Great to be great at investing,
29:39
just make bets that everybody agrees with dot dot dot later.
29:45
That's so true, which is, there's a lot, like, baked into that, which is that ultimately Oh, was that my Shane Parish?
29:53
He tweeted something like it and then somebody somebody replied with a simpler version of it. Shane had had the original one. I think Sahhill, Bloom,
29:59
had the the the the the punchier one liner version of it. Yeah. And I thought there's so much baked into that, which is you have to remember that if you're gonna invest,
30:10
If everybody agrees it's a great investment,
30:12
then the price is baked in. Right? So ultimately, if you wanna have any kind of outsized return,
30:17
You have to be betting on something that not everybody is agreeing with you is a, is a good investment.
30:23
And so,
30:25
and so I think that's important. I think so I think that's important to know. And so when you're doing something, that doesn't mean everybody just distributes me. That's gonna be a great investment.
30:33
It's almost the opposite issue. If everybody agrees with me on this, then this probably isn't gonna be a great investment. It might be a good or solid investment. It's probably just not gonna be it's almost definitely not gonna be a great great investment.
30:44
So, that's how you kind of use that advice.
30:47
Yeah. I saw that. I thought that was good. Alright. What do you wanna do now?
30:51
By the way, on this, because the world's crazy and we're talking about, like, people just making a hundred million dollars on random bets. There's this great blog post that I think everybody should go read. I don't know how they'll link to because it's weird maybe put in the show notes. It's got a gray headline.
31:05
The everything bubble.
31:07
And it's written by FTX, which is a crypto
31:11
cryptocurrency exchange. We, we talked about the, the guy. He was our billy of the week once. This guy Sam Baconfried,
31:17
and who had also made a pretty crazy trade.
31:19
To build to get the bankroll to be able to do this to build this exchange. I think he's the youngest crypto,
31:25
billionaire or he's the youngest He's he's the wealthiest known crypto billionaire. I think he's got a net worth of ten billion dollars.
31:32
So he's
31:33
I think something like that. Somehow that's more than vitalic. I don't know how that works, but I guess so. So anyways, he,
31:40
it's it's just packed with data. So it basically starts with, like,
31:43
bubbles. People talk about bubbles. And, and it's like, what is a bubble? Right? Bub bubble is when you get this, like, sort of enthusiasm,
31:52
delusion, greed, and everybody sort of thinks that everything can only go up. And then, you know, then there's just pullback or a pop. And it talks about, like, the size of pops and,
32:02
and what how when they happen and how that's played out through different bubble times and where we might be in this thing. Then it talks about, like, maybe this is a bubble that will never pop. Right? Why would that be? And it's basically talks about, it goes through all the data around
32:14
stimulus. Right? So it's like, thirty two trillion dollars of stimulus has has happened globally just since COVID, which is the largest stimulus the world has ever seen.
32:24
In terms of a, even in terms of percentage of global GDP.
32:28
You know, global banks are printing
32:31
eight thirty four million dollars per hour
32:33
to buy bonds right now. And,
32:36
and twenty five percent of those bonds are negative yielding. So it's just, like, he starts to talk about all these different macro indicators and there's all these charts and graphs and and numbers, and it's very simple. And it basically talks about where are we at,
32:48
where are we at with with stimulus, where are we at with commodities like copper, aluminum,
32:54
wire used cars up forty five percent year over year. And then it talks about,
32:59
you know, what's happening in in the crypto market and equity market. And I think there's one great quote, which is basically it talks about, like, risk assets. So traditionally, you'd have like a risk asset, which is, let's say, bonds.
33:11
And,
33:12
bonds are like the safest thing. And so the the quote here, I'll just read this out, which is
33:17
because of the amount of printing, so the quantitative easing, because they call it QE infinity, which is basically, the central bank and the Fed just deciding to print an unstoppable
33:27
amount of money with no end in sight. So it says because of this, The
33:31
your savings account turned into your checking account. The bond market turned into your savings account. The equity market turned into the bond market. The venture market turned into the equity market, and the crypto market became the new venture market. Basically, like, everything shifted over one unit. So things that were low risk became
33:48
everybody seek higher higher risk and higher returns because the safe stuff was this sort of negative yielding. And so everything shifted over one notch. And I thought that was a good kind of observation. So anyways, there's a button. It's very you find a blog post that's this high density of of like signal to noise. I would go read this. It's called the Everything bubble. And so what's your what's your opinion of? I know that you're,
34:09
texting with me and a few guys earlier, you you have some strong opinions. What what's your opinion of what's going on with, like, the the NFTs and and,
34:18
all the rock, like, the the I don't even know what happened. I was joking around. I basically said, like, look, okay. If you got into Bitcoin early because you
34:28
you understood the difference between fiat currency and sound money and you're a technologist. You understood cryptography.
34:33
Like, props to you. You deserve.
34:35
You deserve your tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. If you got into Ethereum early on in the crowdsale and you you bet on that thing at thirty cents because, you're a developer and you you really believed in this new programmable blockchain,
34:49
you deserve your tens of millions of dollars. You deserve your hundred million dollars.
34:53
If you're rich because you bought like a picture of a rock, you know, three months ago or, you know, a a computer generated squiggle. That's now worth a quarter million dollars. Fuck you. That was my that was my point of view.
35:06
I, like, my level of respect and, like, the level of, durability, I think, that comes with these different waves,
35:14
I might regret this later. It might be that all these people, they just truly understood this intersection of technology, financial markets, and art in a way that I don't get and, you know, to basically, to get rich with Blo with Bitcoin early on, you had to understand,
35:28
like,
35:29
the, you know, the finance you had a certain economic understanding of the world and a technical understanding of the world, and you had to be sort of a little, you know, a little libertarian. You had to have those three to bet on it super early on. And for Ethereum, the same thing, you had to have a certain mix of technical plus financial, like, a savviness.
35:47
For this, it's basically like art plus finance,
35:50
plus technology
35:51
if you if you're gonna get rich during this. And I just feel like I don't know if it's my Twitter feed or if it's everybody's Twitter feed, but
35:58
I feel like half of the people I know have lost their mind. And,
36:02
and I know I sound like that sometimes crypto, so this is just one of them that I don't get, but
36:07
I really don't see the sustainability of this NFT market.
36:11
I think it is, like, it is built on greater fool theory. This is people that are not buying things because they like the art, they're buying things because they think they're gonna get rich. They think that the next person is gonna come in and buy it. I think there's a whole lot of, like, either, you know, wash trading or painting the tape which is basically when when two friends sort of pass something amongst each other in order to, drive up the price and then they sell it, you
36:33
know, And then the, you know, the next sucker comes in and buys it, you know, for because they think that's the market price. And I think that it could be one person with multiple accounts. It could be, you know, a handful of people that are manipulating these markets
36:44
I don't believe in the NFT craze in the same way that it seems like a lot of people in tech do. I think it's really cool technology. I think there's a lot of cool stuff that's gonna happen. But I think people are just diving into every freaking project,
36:58
and that to me seems
37:00
misguided in the the crazy returns that they're getting. Like,
37:03
I'm the hater, you know, sort of rooting for it to fail because I don't I don't get it. I'm not participating in it. And it just doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like a true value creation. It just seems like, you know,
37:15
delusion.
37:16
I completely agree. I'm freaked out by it. We're on the exact same page. It it it, like, the And by the way,
37:24
I was gonna say when I when I say that, like,
37:27
I will still buy a few n f t's. Because I'm a I'm a believer of, like, when I have this strong of an emotion,
37:32
it's a signal to me that that's where I need to go lean in and learn. Now, I don't go crazy with it. I will make small bets. I'll talk to people. I will be open minded because I've felt this way many times before and been wrong. I felt it and I've been right, but I felt it and I've been wrong. And so all I know is that that means there's something really interesting going on. I will still play in that field. I will make small bets I'll meet a bunch of smart people. And if something changes my mind, I'll go make a big bold bet, but I would say, like, the thing that seems off to me is,
38:03
you know, it just seems like every third week, there's a new crypto project. Like, yes, just yesterday, there was this thing called loot. Did you see this? Well, what is that? I don't understand it. Explain to me.
38:13
So here's what I know about it. The, the founder, you know, you know, this guy, Dom Hoffman. He created vine,
38:19
and then he created,
38:21
some other shit since vine.
38:23
I don't know if he was with H. Maybe he was H. Yeah. Maybe maybe he was.
38:27
He's one of the one of the vine founders early on. So he just released a new project yesterday called Loot.
38:32
And so instead of it being like a,
38:35
you know, a crypto punk, which is like a little eight bit character
38:39
or
38:40
you know, an ape from forty forty eight yacht club, which is like a, you know, monkey, a picture of monkey.
38:45
This is
38:46
a black square with, like,
38:49
I don't know, ten words of white text that make no sense. Just gibberish. It's just computer generated gibberish.
38:55
And that's the whole NFT. And just yesterday, you could just All you had to do was pay the gas fee, which means just pay the processing fee to, like, mint one. So it came out, Ben saw the tweet, Ben minted one.
39:06
And,
39:07
I think today, it's worth ten to eighth, which is about thirty thousand dollars. This is in one day. Oh, way. He paid he paid, you know, probably under a hundred dollars to mint one of these, just to just the processing fee, basically, you know, fifty bucks or whatever, the gas price.
39:20
And then today, I think the floor is like six or six or ten ETH, which is like, you know, three hundred and thirty thousand dollars.
39:25
For this black square that will say like lions,
39:28
mountain spiking,
39:31
diagonal line,
39:32
castle,
39:34
you know, valorant. You know, it's like, well, doesn't mean anything. Right? And then and it's it's like open IP, you can go, like, you can build, like, games on this cool stuff you could do on top of it, but, like,
39:44
it's so hard to wrap my head around, like, this. And it just feels like every third day, there's, like, a new one.
39:50
And,
39:51
and this is where I'm, like, the old guy on the lawn shaking my fist. You know, like, you kids don't understand the meaning of hard work. And usually, I'm the one laughing at the old guy you're saying that and just saying, you don't get it. In this case, I don't get it.
40:03
Do we wanna keep hating on stuff and go to whoop?
40:09
Yeah. Okay. This is the play what what do you call it? The player haters ball? This is the player haters ball episode because I have another one that I that I can hate on.
40:17
Let's let's do let's do whoop first. Go ahead. Yeah. So,
40:21
well, you you go ahead. Go ahead.
40:24
I'll I'll frame it. Whoop raised two hundred million dollars, a series f, whoop, which, if you don't know, is like a wristband,
40:29
like a kind of health tracker, fitness tracker thing you wear. I have one. I lost the charger, so it's dead right now.
40:37
But it's basically like a little Fitbit you wear. And it tracks your sleep. It tracks your exercise. It's like
40:44
I think that the the word on the street with whoop is basically amazing marketing.
40:48
And product is, it's like,
40:51
you know, not the most accurate, but who gives a shit. And, basically, they charge you, you know, some amount for the band, and then there's a monthly twenty, thirty bucks a month or something like that. I think the the the band
41:02
right now, the band is free and it's thirty dollars a month for if you subscribe for the year or something like that. You have to subscribe in order to use it.
41:10
Yeah. So that's whoop.
41:11
And then same thing. Eight Sleep, which is a a bed that tracks your sleep. And it can kind of it can it's thermo regulating so it can make you cold. I had one. I returned it, because I wasn't super impressed by it.
41:23
They raised eighty six million dollars at a five hundred million dollar valuation. So what do you what's
41:29
I think I know based on the way you you started it, but
41:33
My the reason I put it on here, I wanted to know, are you a believer or are you, like, you know, where do you bet that these end up? How how much do you believe in these? How much was the valuation?
41:43
I don't know. I think whoops over a billion dollars is my guess. I don't. I would have to think I would have to see the Yeah. Whoop is three point six three point six billion dollars.
41:52
Oh. Oh, and and and also the wonderful kiss of death SoftBank and then Kevin Durant and other athletes are investing. You you know, that's, that's called the sucker round. It's not called the series f. It's called the sucker round. So the Eight Sleep thing, I'm well, check this out. Look up right now. What's Casper's market cap right now?
42:12
So Casper, one between one and three billion dollars is my guess.
42:16
Let's see. Oh my god. Way worse. Two hundred million dollars. Okay. So Casper has a market cap right now of two hundred million dollars. We had the founder of Casper speak at Hussicon. Awesome guy. Great story.
42:28
Really great business when it was just getting started. Made a million dollars, and I think it's first week.
42:33
They raised
42:34
prior to going public around two hundred and fifty million dollars, I think. As of this second, they have a market cap. They went public of two hundred million dollars. So they are worth less than
42:46
the amount of money that they raised. And Point five x of revenue.
42:50
Point five x of revenue.
42:53
I think
42:54
that for Eight Sleep, I I I and I think that that is a good valuation for Casper. I'm on board with that because it's really hard to do. I think that that is what's happen to Eight Sleep. Whoop, I think, is a little bit different because it has subscription revenue.
43:08
You know, I I I'll buy, like I think I think Eight Sleep's trying to do the same thing. So they don't just sell you the mattress. They sell you the subscription
43:15
with the mattress.
43:17
They're like they won't they think the bowl case is it's Peloton.
43:20
It's a piece of hardware.
43:22
Everybody sleeps. You sleep eight hours a night. You can optimize your sleep and have some such good health impacts for you. Right? Like, all true
43:29
And,
43:30
you know, mattress industry is big. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna sell the best, you know, connected mattress, and then we're gonna charge you a monthly subscription on top of that. That's my guess. I think they might hurt No, man. I think that's a really hard argument to make, but,
43:44
yeah, that's expensive.
43:45
That's it. That's an extension. The Tesla of beds says their their ad.
43:49
I,
43:50
the
43:51
so when we first when we were getting the hustle going, this company called QuIP advertised with us, and I used to write these advertorials.
43:59
I'm not sure if I made this up or if I stole it from somewhere else. That's the toothbrush. Right?
44:03
Yeah. And I wrote the and I when we were getting started, I used to write these articles, and I wrote this one article for hint. And the headline was, like,
44:12
I forget what the headline was, but it was great. Like, and it got, like, ten million views, five million views, and they spent so much money driving traffic to it. And so if you go to outbrain
44:21
and you scroll down and you see these little articles,
44:25
you see these little articles on the bottom of CNN and it says like a headline, you would see the hustle's article, and I wrote that article, and it was called, like, it was, like, it was, like, hint? Yeah. It was called, like, it had the word sweetie. Like, sweetie, this is never gonna work, said this one Coke executive
44:38
or something like that. Or what what was it?
44:41
Do you see it? I'm trying to trying to find it right now. And so I wrote an article like that and it crushed. Then Quip saw, and they're like, that's great. Right one for us. So I wrote one for them, and I called them the Tesla of toothbrushes.
44:52
And that crushed, and they said they spent a ton of money driving traffic to them. Now I'm not gonna take credit for it. I actually think I did copy it from someone, but I don't remember. Now the Tesla of, of, like, a bed, the Tesla. Oh, shit. Is it's it's it crushes it. What do you see the article? What was it called? Did why didn't you start a DDC brand? I feel like everything every bone in your body was made to build a brand this. I'll tell you why. So,
45:17
allbirds
45:17
filed to go public today. I was reading through their s one. Here's why I didn't start a DDC. I think it's fun.
45:24
I think a DDC brand is, like, the hardest thing, that one of the hardest things that you could do in business. It is so challenging.
45:32
I looked at their the Alberts s one. Here's why
45:35
commerce kinda sucks. The more revenue you you you make, the less money you have. It's such a pain in the ass. Am I wrong about this?
45:44
Yeah. You're wrong about this. Let me show you something real quick. That's crazy, dude. You I I I think these DTC companies are are such a pain in the ass to run. Can you see this number? AJ, hang
45:57
on.
45:59
Come on camera. Focus on that. There it is.
46:05
What else? That's that's the last thirty days.
46:08
So your your business has made
46:11
sales in the last thirty days?
46:13
That's right. That right. Congratulations. It's not that hard to build these businesses. It's okay. It's a lot of Shlep work. There is a lot of Shlep work. Right? Like, I spent hours yesterday trying to find a forklift for the warehouse, but the the electrical and the building doesn't support the battery that we need. And I'm like, where do I get this forklift from. I'm calling forklift providers. Turns out, by the way,
46:33
great business to be in. Just selling used heavy machinery like forklifts.
46:38
And there's a lot of room for, like, building an aggregator there. But,
46:42
but, yeah, dude, if you have the marketing chops you have,
46:46
it's like it's like where do you plug in that if you're a plus at that skill, and I think you are, like, your writing skills and your advertorial skills, your marketing skills are so strong.
46:55
If you had plugged that in on a D2C brand,
46:59
and by the way, this is we are
47:01
one year and one month into this business.
47:04
That's crazy.
47:05
And that's in a month, basically.
47:08
So Okay.
47:10
How much how much cash do you have in the business bank account?
47:15
Good amount. Yeah. A lot. Why?
47:17
Because are you buying a shit ton of stuff for November
47:21
and December? Yeah. We have a we have a bunch of inventory. Yeah. We we do spend a lot on inventory.
47:26
But there's,
47:27
yes, it took cash.
47:29
So I put in when I started the business,
47:33
I put in a good amount of money. So I put in So do you have you wow. You don't wait. And you don't have to say these numbers, but do you do you or you can? But do you have more money in the business bank account than you started?
47:47
No.
47:48
We so we have a line of credit, basically, that we we use. So since then, we've basically pull that out, use the line of credit.
47:55
But what I'm I guess, the the point yes. It
47:58
but, yes. We you do have to to wait some time to be able to pull profits out because while you're scaling,
48:05
great. This month is profitable. You're gonna reinvest that into
48:08
either marketing or inventory for the next month. So, yes, you are cash poor for a while,
48:13
but you do turn the corner. Like, this month is a is a turn the corner type of month where, oh, good. Like, there's actually leftovers
48:20
after you reinvest everything in growth and all that. And so I think that if you have
48:26
a good product. If you have a really truly great product, then Do you think that you have a great product?
48:31
We do. We have a great product, like a truly great product. And so
48:35
and so when I think when you have that, you're not just like is you're not just an arbitrage, you're not just a drop shipper. It's just taking some shit from a, you know, random shit off of all the express and and and sending it to to customers and trying to capture your margin. Like, we spent a lot of time on product development, things like that.
48:50
To get it right, and we also use the product ourselves. So so it's not like so so we have to live with any issues with the product. So I would say
48:59
you,
49:01
you can turn the corner and also there's a bunch of different companies that have popped up that lets you float money. So, like, let's let's just take a normal DDC business. Here's how it can work. You can,
49:11
let's say you rank Facebook ads You put the Facebook ads on a credit card. Cool. Your Facebook ads should be returning more than one x,
49:19
you know, within seven days. How much you have thirty days? Thirty.
49:24
It depends on your product and your your your brand and all that stuff. But let's say you're returning one point four x, or you might be returning two point five x, whatever. Different brands do a different if you're doing three x, you're you're you're amazing, you're laughing. If you're doing one and a half x, you know, you're alright. You're doing okay.
49:39
So let's say you, you do that. You're you're paying back your ad spend in seven days, but you don't pay your credit card for, let's say, thirty days. So all of your marketing spend, you should be paying should be paying itself off. You don't need an external investment to do that. Okay. So now you have to deal with inventory.
49:55
Well, for inventory, you have supply you have terms with your suppliers, so you don't have to pay for it all upfront. As we get bigger, we get better and better terms with our suppliers.
50:04
In addition to that, there's all these companies that have popped up like Clearbank
50:08
or Settle or whatever, WAV Flyer, different companies that will basically say, cool. For one percent interest,
50:15
we will crunch your inventory financing for you. We'll pay all your kind of accounts, payable for for you. And so one percent is one percent per month is not cheap,
50:25
but that basically replaces the need for external investment.
50:29
And so then
50:30
by the time you have to pay your bill for your inventory, you've already received it and sold it.
50:36
And so if you do those two things,
50:39
you can manage cash flow well. You your ads pay themselves back before your credit card bill is due, and your inventory pays itself off before your inventory bill is due, and you just pay a small vague on insurance. So there's a lot out there now to help you scale. And I think a business
50:55
these businesses, I think, sell for about one x revenue,
50:59
which is, you know, maybe four or five x times EBITDA.
51:04
And do you think that, what do you think's gonna happen with it? Do you think you'll sell it? Or is this something that you wanna run for and own? Is this like a family business that you wanna own forever?
51:12
Yeah. I like running it. So and I definitely think we can grow it more. So, you know, if we could do this in one year, you know,
51:19
let's give it four more, and let's see where we can take it. I do think that there's, like, some amazing thing about these companies, which is you probably if I had a guess,
51:27
have I I I don't know how you quantify it because you have so many projects, but you probably have a skeleton crew.
51:32
Right? Yeah. Like, this doesn't require
51:34
there's no office.
51:36
You know, there's there's some employees. The the biggest thing we have now is we we brought the we, you know, we do our own warehouse. You could also not do that. You could use a 3PL,
51:43
you know, you know, pay somebody else, basically, to to do your fulfillment for you. And, and then you don't have any crew there. So so you don't have that headache.
51:52
So so you could do this with a pretty small team of people. There are people doing this with, like, like, I think you know, we had we did an episode with the founder of Native Deoderent. I think he was the only employee for, like, the first I don't remember what it was, maybe five to ten million revenue. Yeah. And then, you know, and then and then he hired a customer service person, which is basically
52:14
you know, you could hire somebody for six dollars an hour overseas to answer your customer service emails. And that's your first hire. Then you might hire another one of those people. Then you might hire somebody for operations to deal with, like, supply chain. You know, but, so so it depends on kind of, like, how complicated your business is, but,
52:29
yeah, like, you don't need
52:31
This is, I would say, I think it's probably whatever you had with the hustle. This is probably one fourth the manpower you need for that. It is cool. I look, I think there's a lot of I was down on it, but I there are a lot of cons. I think there's a lot of pros as well. The cons. It depends what what month you catch somebody. Catch them in a month where the Facebook,
52:50
algorithm is not treating people well, and they're crying. You know, the business doesn't work anymore. It's like it went from great It was a money printer, and now it's a money suck. And there's nothing you could do about it. Facebook just changed something.
53:02
Or there's a pandemic and you can't you can't order anything.
53:06
Or shipping containers went from three thousand a container to twenty thousand dollars a container.
53:10
Okay. Now, you know, how does that mess up your margin? And and that where everything stuck in the port.
53:15
It had I mean, all these things have happened. Right? Like, all of these, we've had theft. We've had, Facebook ad changes. We've had container costs go up. We've had our stuff sitting on a boat at the port for three weeks, and it's just floating there.
53:28
You know, we've had to go get line of credit. We've had to do a lot of things in this amount of time.
53:33
But, so I'm gonna say that's why I said there's a lot of Shlep work. It's not clean and easy, like, doing a podcast and and just having a bunch of people listen to it and make money. Like, this is a lot easier. A lot more fun. But those can those can get bigger. And I I guess I don't even remember how I started this, but basically I was just saying, dude, I can't believe you haven't built one of these.
53:51
It's insane to me given your skill set. So maybe maybe I will one day, and we'll wrap up with this in a second. But let me ask you one more question because this is interesting to me. Because so you've done
54:01
a social app that is, like, the most poppy cute thing ever and had mild had some had some mild success. You've also have family that are mega successful
54:11
in real estate. We have interviewed all types of people. You now have an ecomm thing that's
54:16
like appears to be a, like, potentially a home run. What would you if go back now to,
54:23
ten years prior?
54:24
Your, you know, you know now. What do you think you would like to do? That's a hard question. That's a really, really hard question.
54:34
Okay. I'll I'll rank I'll give them it's like the Oscars. I'll give them some awards. Okay. So,
54:41
most likely to succeed goes to
54:45
real estate. Congratulations. Come up and get your prize. If I had just said, cool.
54:50
I'd like to be worth you know, a few million bucks, you know, in my twenties, by by the time I end my twenties, I wanna be worth a few million dollars, maybe, you know,
54:59
liquid, maybe a couple million on paper. I could have, you know, ten to twenty million dollar net worth. I could have done that in real estate.
55:08
With pretty much, like,
55:10
no luck required. Right? Most likely to succeed is real estate because there's no luck required. It's just hard work, blocking and tackling, doing the things.
55:19
So that's real estate, but I wouldn't go do it myself. Like, if I could go back now, I wouldn't switch paths to that. But I would have told myself, hey, look. Here's here's one option.
55:30
And, the award for absolute worst idea goes to
55:35
trying to create the next social media app. You know? Yes. I This required maximum difficulty, light highest luck
55:43
factor
55:44
trying to catch lightning in a bottle.
55:46
And honestly, the prize okay. It would have been fucking sweet if we had invented Twitter or YouTube. I gotta admit. That would be amazing.
55:54
But I can be dressed as happy
55:56
not having done it. And, yeah, I can name all five guys who've done that. So, like, you know,
56:02
that's that's not the path. Okay.
56:05
Then if if I say, alright.
56:09
You know, sort of like medium return, this is the the mediocre playbook, you know, the the sort of mild success playbook.
56:16
Pretty good chance of a pretty good outcome,
56:18
but kind of a lot of work. And, you know, would I do that?
56:22
E commerce
56:23
is the answer for that one, which is, like, e commerce is one that
56:28
I think you can definitely make work if you just keep trying.
56:33
It's kind of a pain in the ass, and
56:35
it's never gonna be
56:37
the most fun or the most successful.
56:40
Right? However,
56:41
However,
56:42
e com of of maybe all three of those, I think, is the most exciting.
56:48
Though exciting. No way. Most excited have been running ads and seeing cash. Like, that is so exciting. Okay. That that that loop is fun. That I I give you that. The feedback loop is instantaneous
56:59
and it's and it's monetary. It's not Real state. Reviews. Real state's not very, like, real state can be kind of fun, but I wouldn't I wouldn't call it. It let's not like an adrenaline, like a dopamine rush.
57:10
Right. So, okay. So if I was gonna go back and convince myself of anything, it would have just been to say this.
57:16
Look, you could you could win in all these different ways. Every flavor works. The choose the one with the most fun journey. Clorney. Yeah. I know this is cliche, but choose the one that's gonna be fun before the success comes.
57:30
Basically, in that case, you win win. You have fun while you're doing it. Because you have fun, you keep doing it. Because you keep doing it, you get good at it. Because you get good at it, you eventually win. And,
57:39
Look, all these things, they as long as they leverage, you know, either,
57:43
either, like, physical real estate or the internet, the scale is big enough. You you you don't have enough money. You don't need to worry about money ever again. And so I would have advised myself to say, look, there's some pretty interesting shit going on and these, like, new waves like genomics,
57:58
you know, biotechnology,
58:00
cryptocurrency,
58:01
just go dive in, become a there's no experts because the things like a year old Go become an expert, meet all the cool people doing it, take a bunch of invest in shit and build build in that space.
58:12
You know, create a podcast talking about that stuff. Like, just do all the things in that space. You know information. So you know podcasting, some media, you know information, like courses, and you know, crypto, you know, investing. So, I mean, you have a pretty eclectic,
58:26
I I think the the
58:27
of all of them, I've had the most fun doing the podcast, the media thing.
58:32
And, really, it's more of just like, do the thing that doesn't feel like work to you. Do the thing that feels like play to you. Alright. So, like, imagine you already had the money, but you still were gonna work projects. What would you work on? That my answer was
58:44
I would wanna, basically, like, I would wanna make content based on stuff I'm learning, stuff I think is cool. I think it'd be really fun to have an audience.
58:51
I find it, like, energizing. I don't feel I don't feel like it's work when I have to do the podcast or prepare for the podcast.
58:57
And,
58:58
and yeah, it's it keeps me kind of like on my toes because I gotta come up with new stuff to talk about, so I gotta keep learning. So so that's, like, that was the most fun path for me. So I would have done that or I would have similarly done this in a domain. Like, this is a general podcast. I would have done the same thing, but, like, encrypted. Like, if there's these guys that do this podcast called bankless, that you seen them? No. Is it awesome? It's like
59:19
yeah. It's cool. I mean, I don't listen regularly, but, like okay. Defi is this new thing. It's this new wave do is this new wave. There's so much to learn about, so much to talk about. So these guys, they went in. They created a podcast called bankless. And bankless is basically about
59:33
Great name. Great name. And they just talk every week. They're just like, oh, here's the new shit going on in the world of defy. Here's the new thing to talk about. Here's the ups, the downs, the prices. Because of that, they're building a good community around them. They can make money off sponsorships. They're seeing a bunch of stuff. If they're smart, they're investing a bunch and getting equity in all those businesses.
59:49
And eventually they should launch their own branded business in there. Maybe it's an exchange or an ETF or something else, with that following. And so that's kind of the playbook I would do given my strengths and what I've seen. But, like, yeah, try it all I've tried a bunch of these different things, and that's that's what I think.
01:00:06
This is good. I think this is, I think maybe we should end here. I think this is a a a sick episode. I was thoroughly in, like, I was enjoying hearing hearing hearing the stories. Hopefully, people will enjoy it. What do you think? We gotta title this one. This is the play of haters ball. We will try next time to to hate on less stuff, and we will talk about stuff we'd like more. But it's alright. This is this is the episode that we hated on everything. Well, I'll pat ourselves on the back here. We don't default to hate most of the time. Like, right. Like We hate on everything except for ourselves. We compliment ourselves. No. We we we typically are not haters. I I think I default to optimism, so do you on most everything. We want it all to work. But,
01:00:44
yeah, I I feel you. And I complete I agree with just about everything you said.
01:00:48
Alright. Don't. Okay. I'm gonna go eat a steak and a salad. Enjoy myself. Alright. That's the pod.
01:00:59
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
01:01:04
I put my all in it like a days. All done a role. Let's travel never looking
00:00 01:01:11