00:00
Dave's back. And Dave's back in a big way. In a big way. Here's some things that Davis said. He says he has a six hundred million dollar real estate portfolio that is fully paid off.
00:10
So six hundred million dollars of real estate equity that he that he owns. That's kind of insane.
00:15
His media empire which is like, you know, the combination of his,
00:19
radio shows and then all of the financial,
00:22
like,
00:23
courses training, seminars,
00:25
all that stuff that they do outside that.
00:27
He says on their website makes three hundred million a year in revenue.
00:32
Alright.
00:33
We're live.
00:41
What are you talking about today? I've got a bunch of good topics. Let me bring up one juicy one.
00:47
Last year, or two years ago, you asked me a question. You're like, who do you admire? I think you asked me that. And I said this guy named Laird Hamilton. Laird Hamilton is this, like, beautiful surfer dude. He's like in fifties now. Basically, he's beautiful. Like, we're gonna we're gonna acknowledge that. He's got, like, beautiful wavy blonde hair and, like, a nice skin, and he's pretty ripped for his age. And he always was ripped, and he's like this tough guy that surfs a big waves and whatever.
01:10
He launched this thing called, what do you make fun of me? Cause I'm trying about this guy. This is not I don't even need to make a joke. You've you've done it all yourself here. Because he's a ken doll.
01:18
Like, this is, like, this is, like, objective. Like, I've just stating facts here. He's he's a human ken doll. He launched this thing called layered super foods. Have you heard of that? It's like a coffee creamer that's made out of, like, coconut, I think. Right.
01:32
Anyway,
01:33
I, they took the company public. I don't know why they did that, but they took it public at a three hundred or four hundred million dollar market cap. At the time, they were doing fifty million in in,
01:43
revenue.
01:44
Look up the company now. Can you look can you go and look up the, do you know what their market cap is today? Let me find it.
01:51
I know what it was yesterday. I don't know what it is today. Why would it be so different? Oh, wow. Nine million dollars.
01:57
Nine million dollars. So this company
02:01
I if you click, I have a bunch of notes here, you can click them and read them. But, basically, this company, they sell, like, a fair amount of, like, coffee creamer. So yesterday, I think it was eight point eight million. Dude, so listen, they have twenty million in cash. No debt at all. Their revenue is decreasing. So it, like, in q three, it was eight point eight million.
02:21
In q three of last year, it was ten point nine million. So what's that? Like, like a like a four times eight. So it's a forty eight million dollar or or fifty million dollar a year business, but it's declining. They're they have good decent
02:33
gross profit. They have an okay balance sheet, but, like, the business, for some reason, it's valued so low. I I'd have to dive deep into it and really look at the numbers, but it's kinda ridiculous. Right? So you were talking about wanting to buy a company. You've said this before.
02:47
This is your target, dude. You get to hang out with layered Hamilton. Sounds like it's your target
02:52
That sounds like this is, like, you know, those things where it's like, we're auctioning off a date
02:57
with Laird Hamilton. It's like -- A hug. -- what don't you buy this? Yeah. You you just bought yourself a nine million dollar hug.
03:05
Dude, why is this why is this company you haven't looked at this, but why is this company so cheap? No. I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much debt they have, but None. I said that. The so I read their report. They had their, q three report. They never understood. Twenty one million dollars in cash zero debt, zero debt. So I never understand when when companies trade this far below their cash value because, you know, the obvious question then is, Why do you not buy this thing for fifteen million and just wind it down and distribute the twenty million to yourself,
03:35
and make five million dollars you know, like, in the in the Or sell the inventory. They have, like, thirteen million or something in inventory.
03:42
Okay. Interesting. So, yeah. So I haven't, I mean, I haven't looked at this because you just mentioned But, but yeah, there's a bunch of these right now that are like this. There was one the other day that I that I saw that was kinda in the same same bucket, but there's a bunch of stocks that are down, like, ninety five percent right now that seem like, you know, interesting takeover targets.
04:01
And, we have a friend who was interested in doing this and so I made a list of, like, ten. I was like, here's ten that I think you could buy. Is this friend aggressive?
04:12
It's an aggressive friend. Got it. I know who you okay. I know which friend it is.
04:17
How tight is that, by the way? Just to be able to say This is an aggressive friend. And you're like, I know who it is. Does this friend would would this friend say to a a a bundling entrepreneur?
04:28
Your business is one Google away from me ruining you?
04:33
No. I don't think so, but maybe.
04:36
They they usually don't say things to to their to their faces like that. They, they're more just like an under under, like, you know, those sharks that swim only under the water, they don't put the fin out. He's more like that. Got it. Okay. But like wish dot com was the was the other example that that had recently seen that was like this, which is,
04:52
wish you know, pretty big brand name because they spent billions of dollars marketing this thing. Ten billion dollar market cap at one point. Now three hundred sixty million. So ten billion to three hundred sixty million has seven seven hundred million in cash with no liabilities.
05:07
You know, so so I don't know exactly,
05:10
You know, I don't ex I don't know exactly how you can buy these things. I think that's the the challenge is, like, to actually acquire the majority in doing so, you would push the price up because people would know what you're doing. So I think you'd have to make, like, a tender offer at a specific price that's, like, you know, what, whatever whatever, you know, some something above, but the, you know, the board will just reject it. They'll say we have more cash than that on the on the balance sheet. So we don't need to sell at this price. So I don't know exactly mechanically how somebody does this. I don't know if this is like,
05:39
you know, fantasy math where you're like,
05:41
dude, what shack was in the, you know, the hundred meter race. You could just knock people over. It's like, dude, that's not it doesn't make sense. It's not how things work in the in the real world. So, you know, this, like, idea of, like, public company takeovers is not something that I understand,
05:54
you know. Is that like a drunken conversation you've had, which is can check when the hundred meter dash? The one thing about this podcast is the number of on the fly analogies you have to create.
06:05
It just really brings. It's a that's a different skill. That's a different muscle yeah, the muscle's not not so strong yet. Still working on it. So anyway, layered super food. Interesting company that I was that I was eyeing layered
06:17
Maybe a little less hot in my book now, because as companies, we're totally eight million as a buzz at three hundred,
06:24
Now he's just a really hot fit guy before he was hot fit and rich. So
06:29
He lost the third leg of the stool? Yeah. He's still famous and famous trump's wealth in most cases in in most people's eyes. But
06:37
anyway Alright. Well, let me tell you let me tell you about somebody who is rich.
06:43
And somebody who is famous,
06:46
but he's not hot. The poof. Can I can I tell you
06:53
Are you familiar with Dave Ramsey? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very Tell me what you know about Dave Ramsey. I'm gonna fill in some gaps for you. So Dave,
07:00
He's like a fine personal finance guru. He's based out of Franklin, Tennessee. He's in his seventies probably now. He started as a radio host, where it was just like Dave Ramsey, like,
07:10
show, and then he parlayed that into, like, the Dave Ramsey network. So now he has, like, four or five hundred employees based out of Franklin, Tennessee, and they do, like,
07:19
four hundred or five hundred million a year in revenue where they sell like personal finance stuff. A lot of his I think he's pretty controversial because a lot of his, like, rules his lot of his personal finance rules are based in like biblical, like, rules. He also believes in like zero debt, and he,
07:35
He's pretty conservative. So people who are conservative aren't into him. Okay. Well, you do a lot more than I would
07:42
I lived in I guess the segment's over.
07:46
Like, right? Like, Tennessee, how do you know this stuff? What's going on here? He also bought all of his buildings out any debt. So he owns, like, a campus in Franklin, Tennessee. Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't know. But Did I I don't know. Well,
07:59
spitted my food, but all right. I'm still hungry. So let's go.
08:04
The day he's sixty two years old. He was a realtor
08:08
turned radio host in the IDs from Tennessee.
08:11
So, basically, what happened is by his mid twenties, so this is, like, back in the eighties. So back in the But you you didn't know who Dolly Parton was. And she's also a Tennessee person. So, like Yeah. I guess I I lesson learned. I'm not coming at you with any Tennessee trivia anymore. You're a ringer of that stuff. So
08:27
by his mid twenties, he's got like a four million dollar property portfolio, real estate portfolio, and it's kicking off some cash maybe like five percent a year cash or cash return. So he's making two hundred fifty k a year off his real estate portfolio at that stage.
08:41
At this time, nineteen eighty eight, so the, you know, the year I'm born,
08:45
his bank basically revokes his line of credit and,
08:49
demands that he pays it back. And he couldn't sell fast enough. So he gets foreclosed on and declares bankruptcy. This is like the trauma of why he's like,
08:59
don't use debt. No debt. And he's like, debt back. Debt bad. Why? Why? Cause I burned my hand on the debt stove before this. And so he's like,
09:07
he's got no money now. He's, you know, his marriage is on the rocks. He says he's gonna be know, considering committing suicide.
09:14
But, you know, he gets back on his feet. So this is kinda like his story. So anyways,
09:18
today, fast forward to today.
09:21
Dave's back. It Dave's back in a big way. In a big way. Here's some things that Davis said. He says he has a six hundred million dollar real estate portfolio that is fully paid off. So six hundred million dollars of real estate equity that he that he owns. That's kind of insane. His media empire, which is like, you know, the combination of his,
09:40
radio shows and then all of the financial,
09:43
like, courses
09:44
training, seminars,
09:46
all that stuff that they do outside that.
09:48
He says on their website makes three hundred million a year in revenue.
09:52
I believe it. Which is absurd. You don't know any people that go to that? What's that? No. I don't have anybody that goes to this. So, dude, in the south, it's a thing. So I had Texas employees and, like, just like a normal couple where each employee makes or each wife and husband makes like sixty or seventy grand a year, you'll like pay to go to like a Dave Ramsey. Like he trains these financial advisors, and they host seminars. And you'll go to this, like, five day
10:15
weeknights thing where it's, like, instead of bible study, it's, like, we teach you how to, like, save and, like, invest like this. Yeah. It's like Jesus on the front and a P and L on the back. It's like, this new this new remixed Bible. I love it. And so he's coming.
10:30
This company Ramsey Solutions is
10:33
just absolute juggernaut. It is insane. So so, okay, let's break down now the media side. So He launches this thing in nineteen ninety two.
10:41
And, basically,
10:42
he's done content for thirty years about the same seven
10:47
steps.
10:48
It's like this guy's just been talking about the same thing. I don't know how he feels like hours. I've never listened to to, like, a full thing, but I don't know if he feels like four hours a day of radio. It's a good show. Just saying the same thing every time, like, well, you got debt? Pay that off. Right? So he's got these seven tenants. So here's his seven tenants. Alright.
11:05
Number one, you establish an emergency fund of a thousand dollars. That's your first baby step to financial freedom and Jesus Bliss.
11:13
Second one, you wanna pay off all your non housing debts ASAP starting with the smallest one so that he calls this a snowball. So don't pay off like the highest rate interest. Just pay off the smallest thing you can just to get momentum. Alright. I like that. Then you increase your emergency fund to three to six months of income. Then you put fifteen percent into a four one k or IRA, then you start your five five, you know, five twenty nine plans or whatever, like, the college funds
11:36
you pay off your mortgage and then you now you're fully paid off. You got your you got your safety net. Now you start to build wealth. And so
11:44
That's his, like, those are his seven steps. His company Ramsey Solutions is a
11:49
biblically based common sense financial education media company.
11:54
Not gonna lie. That's a bar. That's a bar. That's a bar.
11:59
You know, like,
12:01
you know, I was like, Hey, YouTube editor. Play that clip of, like, you know, JayZ, the first time he hears, like, the intro to, like, you know,
12:11
Tibilance playing him a beat, and he's like, oh,
12:14
nice.
12:16
That's how I feel when I hear this. The biblically based common sense financial education media company. So that's amazing.
12:22
Then he's got you said you talked about this, like, Nat, his Tennessee, like, Empire, he's got He's got a thousand employees working there. He oh, wow. That was a real estate. So he's got,
12:33
he owns I I don't know if this is correct. The researcher might have just gone off the rails. Dude, he owns a lot. He owns a lot. He owns two office towers that are too hundred million square feet. That sounds absurd. I I don't That's I don't that that's too much. That number's not real.
12:49
You know, we gotta get the researcher, you know, stop drinking your your product that you were selling from from from college.
12:57
But but he's got basically, like, you know, a fifty thousand square foot event center. He's got sixty acres of just like property land that he bought for ten million dollars. So owes a bunch of land uses that land to to run his kind of like, you know, you know, common sense biblical financial empire, out in Tennessee.
13:13
He's doing his show for three hours a day, five days. A week, people call in and they're basically like, alright, Dave. You know, long time listener, first time caller,
13:22
And, you know, there's part of it. That's the sort of, like, my first million. I actually think we should steal his stick, which is he goes like, they'll call him to be like, I I'm worth four million dollars and be like, how how old are you? Like, I'm thirty two years old. It'd be fantastic. Thirty four minutes. He's writing notes this whole time. And then he'll be like, how much debt? And they'll be like, I got my mortgage, you know, eight hundred thousand dollars, and you could just hear him, like,
13:43
just sit somewhere with a little a little disc.
13:46
You know,
13:47
It's like dad's disappointed in me. And then he'll be like, you know, I'm making this much a year. I put this much away and blah, blah, blah, and then he gives some financial advice, which is kind of the same at financial advice. Every single time, but somehow people, like, get really into this,
14:00
this thing. And then the other things he does, which is just these hilarious segments that he has,
14:06
so he's got everyday millionaires. So somebody calls in. He interviews somebody that's that's worth a million dollars, but then he has and this is good.
14:14
The debt free scream.
14:16
Have you seen this before?
14:19
Well, I I used to think that it was, like, the equivalent of ringing a bell, like, they're the yeah. He had like a he had a thing where people would call him, be like, I finally paid off my debt, and they, like, celebrate it. They celebrate it with the debt free scream.
14:32
I think there's things we could learn from this guy. I think we should steal some of this guy's stick.
14:38
And and and so he's he's he's really got go in here. Anyway, so you wait. You've never heard of him? No. No. I've heard of him. I didn't realize how rich he was. I just thought he was like someone's dad that gives basic financial advice because He's got the dad vibe. He's got the vibe of someone who calls diabetes, diabetes.
14:53
Like, that's what the you know what I mean? Like,
14:56
like, the thing above your head is definitely a rough to him, out of roof.
15:00
He's got that type of
15:02
Hundred percent on the dive in his thing.
15:05
Yeah. It's so good.
15:09
I need to now laugh for thirty minutes. I don't wanna do the rest of the five. That's that's his vibe. He's a little judgmental too, and he's like, this is the only way. Yeah. He's got opinionated. I mean, he's doctor Phil for money. He's, you know, he he's got his thing, which is like, this is how you do things and He's like a guy with a big belly who wears suspenders vibe. You know, I'm talking about like
15:28
like that
15:30
type of vibe. So he's not wrong. It just sometimes energy, I think, is a little bit judgmental.
15:35
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
15:38
Yeah, exactly. Okay. I'm I was gonna make a bunch of jokes about his I decided to
15:43
turn the other cheek or whatever he would want me to do. So he his his show is like nationally syndicated on radio, which I think is like the hack. So twenty million people a week apparently listen to this. I don't know how they -- It's huge. -- but, like, when I used to drive, I would listen to it all the time.
15:57
Yeah. Yeah. Of course, you did. Of course, you're his target market.
16:01
So, you know, he's basically carried by like six hundred radio affiliates. I think think that's amazing. So he's got his books. He's got twenty three best selling books. I don't know what that even means.
16:10
That's like their that's their I don't think that means. That's their personality. So he's got, like, his daughter does it now, and he's got these other people like Ken and Doctor John, and, like, all these other people that he's created as other kind of personalities or brands. They're called the Ramsey personalities.
16:25
So he's he's got them in. Anyways,
16:28
live speaking courses. They got an app. They have, you know, all kinds of stuff. It's kinda crazy. So let me give you some of his of his tweets. Some of his tweets are quotes. I want you to react to him with a hallelujah
16:40
or a, no brother, not for me. Alright. It's the first one.
16:45
If you're working and paying off debt, the only time you should see the inside of a restaurant is if you're working there.
16:52
A hallelujah.
16:53
I'll I'll give you that. Half hearted hallelujah.
16:56
That's fine.
16:58
If you come to work late and they're paying you, You're stealing. Don't steal and expect to be promoted.
17:03
Holly. Yeah.
17:04
I'm a capitalist pig. There's nothing socialist about me. I'd put my rep my receptionist on straight commission. If figure out a way. One hundred percent hallelujah. Love that one. Alright, Dave. Now you now you're talking my my style. Alright. Here we go.
17:18
If somebody calls in and they got more debt than their annual income,
17:23
he'll say that's a small shovel at a big hole.
17:27
I love that. Love that.
17:29
Dave.
17:29
Alright. With that?
17:33
Okay. Then he also says he quotes
17:35
he quotes the proverbs twenty two seven and states the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is a slave to the lender.
17:43
No. I think that that's wrong. I think that you can use debt, like, effectively,
17:47
to help you. Sure.
17:49
Carrie's a gun. The guy's guy's guy's awesome. Guy's awesome. And, I did not He carries a gun.
17:56
Carrie's a gun. He carries a a a a forty five with hollow point bullets according to himself. You know what a forty five is? That's a pretty big round.
18:04
Yeah. That's the biggest round I know of.
18:07
That's a big that that's a big round.
18:10
Yeah. So anyways, fascinating guy in his sixties that, like, I I could not believe his empire generates this much cash. Three hundred million a year is a is a pretty absurd number for this. Dude, and he's been doing that for decades. He just shows you how big the Tony Robbins empire must be. Like, Tony Robbins says this thing during his his things. He goes, my business is bringing over five hundred million dollars a year.
18:31
But I didn't know what that means because, like,
18:33
it's like when a ad agency guys, like, I've spent over a hundred million dollars,
18:38
you know, you know, hundred mill we've I've generated over a hundred million dollars in revenue. No, dude. You took a co the company gave you a budget. You pushed spend. Yeah. The average normal rate,
18:49
and you've done this ten years and you added up their total revenue number, like, that that's not you.
18:55
Or, like, you know, a lot of people will say they own a hundred million dollars of real estate. With and like, okay. Cool. You know, so what's your equity in that? And they're like, well, it's eighty percent bank loan. So the bank loan's eighty percent of it. And then, of the twenty percent down, I syndicated that out. And so I got a three percent broker commission on it, and I own two percent of the of the property. It's like, okay. Let's be a little more real about it. So to me, it was pretty stunning to hear that he's got a six hundred million dollar fully paid off real estate portfolio and a three hundred million dollar year business up higher if those numbers are to be believed. Could also see this being totally full of shit, by the way. No. No. No. No. No. No. It's not full of shit. It's definitely not full of shit. I don't have any way to verify it, but, like, I know his reach and I know that that is, like, very attainable. Antigod?
19:41
Yeah. Dude, did you just read a book on of the words Christians say? No, dude. This is so funny. It's just I I just have a a little special something to me today.
19:51
Either gonna get canceled or I'm gonna get a good laugh out of you. And is worth the risk to me.
19:56
Have you been south of the Mason Dixon line, man? Have you, like, been in the Midwest? Like, the Mason Dixon?
20:02
Apparently, You went to Duke, but Duke's not really the south. Yeah. I don't think my skin color's allowed south of the Mason Dickson line. I don't know what that is. Have you hung out in, like, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas Alabama,
20:13
you've never hung out in many places. Have you?
20:16
Hook out. There's just something to do there. Have you ever even been? I drove through, but I came to California. I had to step through the mud of the northwest.
20:29
You gotta go, man. You're so much. I was born in touch, Oklahoma. I all jokes aside. So, you know, I got my That's exactly my southern street cred.
20:36
Dude, that's, like, that's, like, when you burn certificate. Just because you've been to the airport, don't mean you've been there. That's, like, with this type of thing. You gotta get out, man. Even just go to, like, this sounds very
20:46
get out is right. If you're in Tennessee, you do gotta get out.
20:50
Dude, just go. Exactly. You're good. Drive an hour and a half north and go to a Walmart and just chill and just watch what people purchase and watch what they buy. You gotta get out of your little San Francisco bubble, my man. You gotta get out and see, like, there's three hundred fifty million people in America. This is, I gotta tell you a funny story. Yesterday, I
21:07
went to go I left my house for a meeting. So I go meet somebody very interesting. I might tell you about this later, in the pod. So I go meet somebody very interesting. And who?
21:15
I'm deciding if I wanna save it to do a bigger thing, or he's gonna come on as a guest, or maybe I'll tell you about it. I haven't decided yet. Do I know them?
21:22
No.
21:23
I I don't think because they're they're not in your world. Right? Like, you know about Dolly Pardon? You don't know about, like, you know, the NBA.
21:29
You know, so it's like a different different Yeah. Not a big baseball guy. So,
21:34
brought my, my wife and kids came with me. It was like a, kind of, kind of a long drive. I was like, oh, why don't why don't we all drive down there together?
21:40
You know, nanny's out sick. Just drive down together. We'll go to McDonald's afterwards that my kids love like getting a happy meal toy. So it's like, we'll do that. There's none around us. We'll go go out there. So we go to this McDonald's kind of out, you know, I I've driven an hour away. We're going to this McDonald's out there. And,
21:56
There's a so I'm wait I'm like waiting in what I think is the line. But you know McDonald's kind of ambiguous with the line. There's not like don't have, like, the airport order at the checkout. Or you have the self checkout too. No. There well, there's, like, self checkout. It's, like, to the left and the right. Then there's, like, cashier in the front. And there's some people just waiting for their order. You don't know if they're in line or not. Like, you don't know what's going on. And so there's a guy in front of me and, the cashier is just, like, waiting. And I was, like, I was like, oh, you can go. She's ready. And then the cashier just goes, he doesn't have money.
22:26
I, like, peeked my head in front of, like, oh, yeah, sure enough. This is getting that money. And I was like, I thought it was such a funny thing for the lady to say, now he doesn't have money.
22:36
Like, that's so funny to me. Like, so outrageous of a comment. Like, why did she have to say it like that?
22:42
But it was, like, the most direct line is the answer. Like, not, like, No. You can go ahead. He's not he's not ready or he's not ordering.
22:52
He doesn't have money.
22:56
And he didn't even he just kept standing there. Just hoping that he could, I don't know, take someone's food that didn't show up or something. I don't know what he's doing. Was in the bathroom at the airport recently, and, there was, like, there's, like, a line for the urinal, but there was also, like, a line for the stall And the guy walks out to me and he looks at the the stall and he looks at me and goes
23:19
You wait to poop.
23:27
Yeah.
23:28
He
23:30
just said
23:35
the weirdest shit.
23:38
And then you have to answer too. Right? Like, you can't not answer at that point. Oh my god. Why am I why am I paying it playing into this It was just a dead face. It's just looking at it. He goes, you went to poop.
23:51
And I was like a twelve year old. I don't know why I thought that was so
23:56
Oh, my god. I have another business. Do you wanna talk about business or no? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.
24:03
We're idiots.
24:05
By the way, if you're listening in Austin,
24:08
we're doing an event Well, actually, we're doing two events, I think. The second one's not confirmed. The second one is Sean and I doing a live pod late April. We're gonna have more on that Right? Well, that's it's confirmed. We're doing it. We just don't know the venue yet. We don't know the venue yet. We need to know, is it gonna be three hundred people, a thousand or three thousand people. That's that's kind of the only thing that that we're missing here is how many of you will show up to this live show in Austin where we can we're gonna we're gonna put on a little show. We're gonna meet and greet, have some fun, maybe do a little private dinner, with some people afterwards. So so I think we should we're gonna do that end of April.
24:44
Where do they go to, like, sign up for that? Put the link in the description here. Yeah. And then go to What what's our website called m f m pod dot com? M f m pod dot com, which is like my first million pod dot com. And then we're we're doing another one. This one is not a we. This is a me. Sean's not coming to this one. It's just a casual hangout session. We're doing that.
25:05
Mid when is when is that? Oh, the week? Mid March? Is it
25:09
March fifteenth?
25:11
Wednesday, March fifteenth. It's free. You could just show up and we're just gonna hang out. And you can find that also on m f m pod dot com, or by the time this episode's air, heirs, I will have tweeted it so you can go to my, Twitter handle thus, Sam Pardon, see it. Sam, I'm in a great mood. Can I tell you why? Yes.
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I
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did something that I forgot is an amazing tactic and technique, so I'm gonna say it out loud here. So other people could do it, but also it's a reminder to myself to do it. Have you ever heard of something called flooding?
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No. Is that when you text someone a lot of no. I have no idea.
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It could be a lot of things. Don't area. It's probably something weird. But,
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here's here's how I learned about it. Tony Robbins talked about this thing. So he goes, somebody asked him to go, what's a, like, you know, marriage,
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like,
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advice or a thing you do in your marriage that, like, you know, makes it better. And he he basically had, like, two stories that I I really loved. I'll I'll skip the first one for now. I've told it. I teach it my course, but I'll I'll skip that one for now. The second one that he had said was he goes about once a month, we'll do something called flood which is basically us we sit down on the on the couch, you know, like we're about to watch Netflix or something else. But instead of just mindlessly
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vegging out to some TV.
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We
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watch videos or photos. We go of of some part of our some some era of our past. So maybe, like, this vacation that we went on or our wedding or whatever. And you basically you'll get this flood of memories and emotion that are linked and anchored to those moments.
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But most people don't, like, revisit it in a kind of, like, in in a, like, a, like, a conscious way or an intentional way like this.
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And
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I do this in two ways.
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One, I'll do it with, like, life photos or memories
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videos or videos or photos. The second one is
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this is the one I did before this, which is like a blog post or something. I will pull up a bunch of videos that were really funny to me back in, like, the day, back in college. Like, but back when YouTube was, like, the new shit
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EBOM's world. And, like, you know, things would go viral, but it was, like, yeah, EBOM's world. Like, things would go viral and, like, everybody knew about that that video. You know, whatever that Charlie bit my finger or whatever. But there's this set of videos that were so funny to me. And then not even that fun now that I go back and look, it's kinda like an old movie where you're like, Dang.
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This movie doesn't it doesn't hold up. It doesn't it doesn't have the same juice. Like, things are much funnier now. Like, tick the average TikTok is funnier.
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The best videos back in, like, two thousand and six. Which which videos did you look at?
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Okay. This is gonna sound, dump it. Have you ever seen this video?
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You know, twelve year old boy,
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disclaimer. Here we go. I've written this video of this cop pulling over this guy. He's got his hands above his head. It's like this. Yep. Yep. Yep. And he goes, he's patting him down. He goes, he goes, alright. Let me just check a packet. Hold on. Here we go.
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What what's this? And the guy goes, that's my penis. And he goes, that's your penis, and then he continues
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off. And this video cracks me up just the way it goes. That's my penis. That's your penis.
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And so there's that way. But then there's just a whole bunch of these that were like just goofy videos. Yeah. A lot of them were you know, the news anchor is interviewing some, like, that kid who, like, I like turtles kid or, like, the grape stomp video or, like, whatever. This is a whole bunch of these. And I watched, like, six of them, and they just cracked me up in this, like, way. It's like,
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a simpler time.
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Bit of mortgage. I didn't have it. You know, it's just literally that was like those videos were just took me back. They just teleported me. And so they recommend this this idea of flooding.
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You probably have done some version of this on accident, but, like, make it a practice. It's pretty awesome, and it just puts you in an amazing mood.
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This data is wrong every freaking time.
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Have you heard of HubSpot?
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HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully into Well, I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a test from three days ago. I totally missed.
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Hubspot,
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grow better.
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So I did it recently. So I'm gonna tell story that I where you and I were texting about, and I can't reveal what I was selling because it was kind of against the law, and I didn't know it at the time. But I toyed it out recently. Statute of limitations. Yeah. You were way past that. It's been more than ten years.
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Is that a real law?
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That's definitely a that's definitely a legal speech.
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Here's what we'll do. We we can mention I'll I'll say it was alcohol. That's all I will say. It was legal alcohol that I was selling. That's all I'm gonna say.
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I was like Sometimes you have to specify it was legal. Probably not a good thing.
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So, well, so here's the story.
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I tweeted out that I think I it it always bothers me when when people collect domain names.
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That's a that's a pet peeve because I because I'm saying if you're doing that, you're doing the wrong stuff because people will say I'm gonna I've got this great idea. I'm gonna buy a domain name or even worse. They'll say I've got this amazing domain name. I should build something for it. I'm like, dude, don't build something just because they have a domain name. So anyway,
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I tweeted out. I'm like, just make money first and just use like a, you know, store name dot square space dot com for, like, the initial, like, hundred bucks in sales, and then go and get the domain name. Like, and someone's like, you can't do that. And I was like, oh, no, I've done it a bunch of times. I'm like, yeah, well, you're doing it because you have a name. I was like, no, I didn't actually in college tons and tons of times. In fact, I found this old website that I had, and it was,
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alcohol name dot wordpress
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dot com.
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Right. And I went and looked at the old stats, and it's getting five thousand views a month still on a WordPress dot com free
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web
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site in this it's a store, it's a quote, a store
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that is a blog post and a click to PayPal. And basically, what I did was, there was this really unique drink that was sold in Nashville. And for some reason only one or two stores were carrying it but this particular type of drink was popular across the country.
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And I thought, well, I should set up an online store to sell this stuff. And I did.
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And I made friends with the person selling at the the liquor store, whatever, and I go, hey, I'm gonna sell this for three x, the markup. I'll buy a bunch of it from you. So whatever, and I did it. And I didn't I'm an idiot. I didn't realize that, like, as this thing was growing, I was making, like, a lot of money, and I went told the legal team at my college. I was like, hey, I think my business is like working really well. Do I need to set up like an LLC or something? And they're like, Oh, you're breaking the law. Like, you can't you can't sell this without, like, a liquor license. I was like, but it's like a collect it's basically this that I was selling, it was it was a very rare whiskey that was in a very particular type of bottle. That was like a collector's item. And I thought like, oh, it's just like collector's item. I don't even know if people are gonna drink this anyway, it was making like a thousand dollars a day sometimes.
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And I looked at the old blog post that I was selling this, and it was hilarious. And it reminded me, like,
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of a simpler time when I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Yeah.
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And life was good. And I was building motorcycles in my living room. And it was working out well. So I was like
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I was building motorcycles in my living room, sleeping on the floor, and selling
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collector's
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illegally on the internet.
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It was a simpler time. You know, the American dream. The American dream. I was one of those kids that had you probably had this too. I didn't have beer. Like, you remember those college kids that would have, like, beer cases, the cardboard on their walls? Yeah. I wasn't that bad, but I did have an American flag. I definitely had the American flag. So I was pretty trashy. But, yeah, I was so I was looking at my like, blog that I used to do, and I couldn't even remember the password. And,
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so I flooded myself a little.
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I'm just flooding my pants today. It's great.
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Alright. The the good thing is, brother, this full if if you're not watching on YouTube, you're missing half of because Sam's wearing a Harvard sweatshirt
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while we tell these stories.
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We decided about someone
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illegal whiskey, way to poop.
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You made a bunch of jokes about the south. This is so stupid.
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Oh my god.
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Alright. I have something for you. So there's this company that's for sale that I came across.
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So check it out. Go to chambers dot com.
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Chambers.
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Okay. Yeah. Like that Harry Potter stuff, chambers. Chambers and partners. Is that it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
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Okay.
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Dude, check this out. So this website,
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they, I think they're mostly in Europe, but they are in America as well, is they put out these rankings once a month or once a quarter, something like that. And they go and they interview lots of I think they have two hundred employees who do this. Two hundred employees who go out and interview different lawyers they talk to your past clients,
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and they try to, like, see which cases you're winning. And it's all done manually. Like, there's not, like, a lot of, like, tech behind it. And then they create these rankings for, like, best legal firm or whatever like that or, like, you know, a good firm for this, a good firm for that, like different niches.
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And then they put out these rankings. And if you're a lawyer, you can pay money,
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and and get like a plaque. They'll send you a plaque And then, also, they'll allow you to use their, like, thing in the in the, like, when you send an email, it could be like voted a top lawyer by chambers.
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And you could do and you could do all that. Dude, this company,
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they do forty four million euros or yes,
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or sorry, forty four million pounds. So what's that real real money? That's like sixty million in revenue. Oh, boy. And then
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eighteen million in
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profit. And they're selling right now for close to five hundred million dollars.
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It's a crazy company because I've been for sale somewhere?
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Just like on a trade magazine for, media companies that I follow. It's like a small thing called Fash and flames because this cut that website. They cover, like, b to b media stuff because I'm, like, been obsessed with b to b data business. Of the b to b media thing? Flash and flames dot com.
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I love it.
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It's like my favorite site. I didn't even wanna tell people about it because I don't wanna I like how you tried to just mutter it.
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That's how you know it's a good one. It's a good one. Like, I'm a paying subscriber to it, which is, like, ridiculous.
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But, dude, these lawyers pay, like, fifteen hundred to four thousand dollars a year.
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And they said they have like no churn. They're like we have we no insurance from our from us because these lawyers want it for so much. These these lawyers want it for so much. And I
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I'm interested in this, and I found like eight or nine other businesses. They call them like databases or databases or intelligence businesses.
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And they're not really much tech, but right now, a lot of them are selling for eight to ten times revenue. And I found ten examples
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of companies that have sold in the eight to ten times revenue range for one of these data businesses. It's ridiculous. It's crazy. And this sounds like a scheme.
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Because what they do is they rank you, and then they go, hey, if you want, like, to make, like, a special profile
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on our website,
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we'll do that and it's forty five hundred dollars a year. And what we'll do is, like, once ranked, you could purchase this one pager where you get a profile on our site. It's almost like a Wikipedia page where they, like, one of their journalists just writes, like, two paragraphs, and it says, like, this legal firm is known for x, y, and z. And then you you could put that if you're a lawyer, you could put that in your email signature, and you're allowed to do that, and then people can click and see whatever.
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It's crazy, man. This is a caper. They're pulling it off, and I and I love stuff like this. You know, it's like J d power we talked about. You know how you know, they're smart because their logo
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is, like, it looks like a medallion, like, a like, it looks like a special emblem or award.
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Like, it's a c with this, like, I don't know what you call these, but like the petals
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going around it.
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Yeah, put this on the YouTube channel so that people could see it. But a reef. It's yeah. It's like a it's like a reef around it that, like, just looks like, you know, what the Olympics
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in Athens would would would award their, the top performer Right? So, like, you you they're they're really playing into the whole thing with their brand. So I think that's pretty cool. I have a business that's sort of like this. And and and their name is partners. I'm gonna create, like, something like this. Do you know? Or just partners?
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Manays and partners.
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You know? Like, we'll just do something for the people. You know, we break we rank best condiments. Manays and partners gotta figure this out. We could put this on a logo, but I love these rating businesses. What's the one you have that similar?
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So I was have you ever done, like,
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like,
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trademark search yourself.
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But no, what's that? Like, when you start a business and you wanna look up, is this a good name? What do you do? Do you pay lawyers, say, hey, just tell me if there's trademarks available? Do you do that later once you get going? I will do that later once I get going. Is there is there an importance to having a trademark?
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Yeah. Very hard to sell a company without a trademark. Did you sell the hustle without a trademark?
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I didn't have a trademark.
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Yeah. Typically,
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it's very hard to get acquired without owning your name because it's a giant liability. So for example, like, if somebody else owns the trademark,
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if you get six years in, you're gonna have to change your name because the more valuable you get, the bigger your exposure is for them to say, I own the trademark of this. You have to change your name or
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or But maybe my name I mean, it was called the hustle. Maybe it too broad of a name. You know what I mean? Well, I don't know. There's probably some troll out there who listen to this and be like, hey, hang on. Let me go get this guy. So
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I'm I'm past the reps at warranty. Like, the escrow has been paid out. So There's a great,
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there's a great,
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story. I think, the early episode where Moiz came on and told the native story. So it's like, I don't know, episode ten of this podcast.
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Moise tells a story about, like, when they try to sell native,
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they they got in trouble with this. So they go there. They have a deal to sell native.
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And as they're doing the diligence or like as they're prepping for the diligence, they're like, shit. We don't have the trademark for native,
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native deodorants.
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And they're like, okay. Well, let's just get it. And they're like, well, you can't get it because somebody else owns it. They're like, what? Who owns native deodorant? There's no other native deodorant. Look, I have the domain. And they're like, Well, no. There's this guy. I think it was like someone in Palo Alto. If I remember this story correctly, I might be butchering a little bit of this, but somebody in Palo Alto was like kind of like a true patent troll type that owned the name to it and owned a bunch of names like this. And they were like,
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and he's like, okay. I guess I can go buy it off them because they're not doing anything with it. He goes to them, tries to buy for, like, whatever, twenty k. They're like, no. Like, he's like, okay. Yeah. Whatever. It goes up two hundred k. No.
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And, like, the guy wanted millions of dollars for this name because he knows your business is valuable. You need this name. You're gonna change your brand name for your consumer package good. That's like, you know, you can't change Doritos to be called, you know, like, like, fluffies, you know, tomorrow. It doesn't work. You lose a lot of value. And so
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they were, like, going back and forth. I forgot exactly how he got resolved. I think he ended up buying it for two million dollars or something like that. Or Voice it. I think so. Or,
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something else happened where they, like, threatened to they were just like, alright, screw you. We're not gonna do it at all. And the guy, like, realized it was, like, his last ditch effort and, like, and they ended up getting it for whatever. Some amount. You know, I forgot I forgot what it was, but they acquired it in the end. But, yeah, anyway, so So I've had this problem with the business of mine, which is that I I'm I'm like you. I'm like, oh, I don't need a fancy domain. I don't need a fancy name. Let me just start the business.
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And go. And then I start and it goes and it gets popular. And then I'm like, okay. I should probably, like, incorporate the company and do, like, payroll
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and do, like, all these things I should I, you know, I should've been doing the importing, but, like, I didn't wanna
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do all that stuff if there wasn't, like, a real business here. And so then you try to go back and some things are easier than others to correct going backwards.
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One of the things that's hard to correct is if you chose a name that wasn't right, you know, you have a problem. And so with one of my businesses, I had done the actual search myself. I should have just paid a lawyer to do it, but I went on the US PTO search website which I don't know if you've ever gotten there. It's like, you know, imagine like a government. It's like the DMV website. And so you go there, you try to search, and I search for our brand name, and nothing came up.
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But it turns out there's like a fancier way to search where it's like, yeah, that brand name or, like,
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with an s at the end or, like, with associated other words that would make it too close.
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And I didn't know that. And so I remember being so frustrated with this interface. And I was like, somebody should make a because this is a it's a public database. Like, somebody should just make a more consumer friendly layer on top.
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And then I found a business that does this, and I got in touch with the guy who who does this. So there's a business called trademarkia dot So it's like trademark with I a. So trademark here dot com.
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If you go to it, all of a sudden, it's like, like, if you just compare side by side, like in the YouTube chart, you should do take US PTO
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and try to find even where do you go find search for trademarks and then, like, how that looks versus this where it just says search eleven million trademarks for free,
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search your thing. Example, Mickey Mouse. And it's like, you can just type in your brand name. So, like, if I typed in, you know,
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the hustle.
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I'm gonna search for this, and it's gonna tell me what trademarks exist for this. Who owns them? This company kills it. What categories are there? Okay. So so HubSpot HubSpot owns it now. So it says the hustle, HubSpot owns it. It's pending,
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and it was filed December third twenty twenty two. When did you sell?
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December third.
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When did the two two years ago? What would that be? Twenty one?
42:08
Yeah. So two okay. So Wow. So they Yeah. I didn't own it. And
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they also it also looks like you abandoned one in twenty twenty.
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So, you know, some somebody did the subtraction on your team, maybe tried it and it didn't get it or whatever. It tells you what class it's in, etcetera, etcetera. So it's a great great little thing, and you could search for, like, associated names or whatever. It's a great website.
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And so I reached out to the guy who owns it. I was like, dude, this is a and so I I I said,
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Trademarky is a great great idea, brilliant interface.
42:40
You know, yeah, props to you.
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And he goes,
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so the guy lives in the Bay Area, actually, and he goes, yeah, it's a really cool website.
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You know, we have five million in ARR.
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And I can't, you know, if, we never raised VC five million in ARR. It was kinda declining from the peak, but I just came back the company. Remove the subscription. I got big plans now. You know, I wanna talk to you about it. And, you know, he's gonna try to make this, like, he wants to go for, like, the billion dollar outcome. And I was like, dude, I think you have a five million dollars cash cow,
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that you could probably get to, like, eight or nine with just like some simple tweaks and, like, you know, chill. Like, that that sounds awesome.
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But but I thought this is a really cool website. Again, it's just a simple,
43:23
like, These businesses are everywhere, man. These businesses are hidden in plain sight. And in this case, it took a public data set. It just put a much more user friendly wrapper on top versus what you were talking about with chambers is they created their own data set and then have then they own that proprietary data.
43:40
It's called,
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you know, on,
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who was it? Anan from CBM sites was on, and he was like, no. We just like taking public data that's messy, and we just make it a little bit easier to, yeah, we just make it clean.
43:53
By the way, my first million is owned by Advanced Magazine Public Public publishers, which is a big company in New York, and it's a entertainment services, namely an online non downloadable video series featuring star athletes explaining their life as millionaires. I guess that's that GQ thing, which I search or where I see when I search on YouTube. But, anyway,
44:14
Bad ass. I love this. In fact, you wanna hit I'm gonna go trademark this before this episode comes out because now somebody's gonna go squat on this.
44:22
Do you,
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and,
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A funny story about native deodorant. I've always remembered the story I never brought it up to you. So
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You and I, the hustle's office and Twitch's office was just a block or, like, fifty yards from each other. So
44:37
if you know, there's there was, like, turny or whatever you were, and then you were to the left. If you go to the right, there was a little cafe
44:44
that was lovely that I that I really liked And I believe Moiz, the fa so native deodorant is a company called, native deodorant. They sell deodorant. It was sold for a hundred million dollars in in cash, and it probably does hundreds of millions now. And it has, like, a really cute branding. They make shampoo. They make everything.
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And I remember walking by this lovely cafe and I thought,
45:04
this cafe is called native two, and their logo looks
45:08
just like native deodorant.
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And
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I realized that Moi's worked nearby.
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And so
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I put kinda two and two together. So if you Google NativeCo SF -- Yeah. -- you'll see a little you'll see a little cafe.
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You'll see their yelp page. They've changed their logo to
45:27
green, but it used to be yellow or sorry. It used to be blue. The exact same as native deodorant. And so I have a feeling
45:34
that he was just thinking of, like, good branding. This. And I was, like,
45:39
This is I remember thinking, dude, boys, they're ripping off your brand. Are you doing it? Exactly.
45:45
And now it's realized the obvious.
45:47
He was like, so Alright. I need a name. Looked out the window, saw it. It was like, that's my name and my logo now.
45:54
That's mine.
45:55
If you go to this go if you look up native code is exactly the same. It's exactly the same.
46:02
And it used to be blue. It looks like they're It looks like they're It looks like they're -- It's exactly the same. -- like nivea blue.
46:07
It was it it was the same white background with the same blue. And now it's green. It looks like they closed in COVID and they moved to a new location, but that old location that we were at, It was the same logo, and it was called Native Co. And I think Native Deoderant was The domain was also NativeCo for him.
46:22
Yes. It was. It was the exact same thing. And so he must have been just walking down the street. And he goes, like, yep, that's me. That's mine now. You know, it's just like there's that meme on the internet of, like,
46:34
a stick figure handing an item to another stick figure saying, hey, I made this. And then the second stick of figure looks at it and goes, I made this. That's basically what just happened. And, I don't think I've ever, like, said this to him, but I would love to hear what his rebuttal is, but he one hundred percent
46:50
stole
46:51
the entire branding, the name, the everything from this company. I don't know if stealing's the right word, but kinda. I mean, that one looks like stealing. It looks like he actually wear. To took a screwdriver
47:02
took off took their sign off their office, moved it across the street and put it on his office. It's the exact logo. I remember seeing that for years at being like,
47:09
And I just never, like, put two and two together. I didn't realize he worked there, but I was, like, wow. They're really ripping off his branding.
47:17
No. That's that cafe has been there for years. I remember walking by it for years. Well, now they're shut down. That's I mean, this is, like, everything that's wrong in society.
47:25
You know, he sells his business for a hundred million dollars. Poor Cafe,
47:29
you know, shuts down,
47:30
you know, you know, sadly during COVID during the pandemic. This is the way the world is going. Dude, have you seen people ripping us off? I don't know if you've seen this, but No. But that's cool. In the next two weeks, you're gonna see Twitter threads, LinkedIn,
47:43
short videos on TikTok, other podcasts.
47:46
Talking about the exact same stories that we tell here. There's like this group of ten people that just take our content.
47:53
And then they just see the exact thing. And they just tell that exact same story that they're gonna be like, dude, Dave Ramsey. Dave, how Dave Ramsey built a six hundred million dollar empire animation.
48:04
This. That. And then they're just gonna be like literally steal our stick. It's it's kind of annoying.
48:09
I get it.
48:11
Michael from our future has done it a few times. Yeah. They do. Yeah. He he's one of the ten that that does this all the time. Who are the other nine?
48:18
I mean, I don't even really wanna give them shine of of doing that. You know, this is, literally, if you're one of those people, just, you know, this is have your own silent embarrassment. There's nothing wrong with sort of like taking ideas and remixing them.
48:30
But what most people do is they just take the same idea. They just tell the same story. Same way we that we already told it in their own Twitter thread or their own LinkedIn and and whatever else.
48:39
Which is fine, but like give credit at least if you're gonna if you're gonna say the same thing, be like, oh, I was listening to my first million, and they told this great story.
48:46
Check it out. Right? Now, yeah, that that's, I think, a slightly better way to do it.
48:52
But, you know, whatever it is. It is what But this is why so I have a new project. I'm actually gonna announce it in about a month or three weeks. This is why I didn't announce it. I've been working on this for almost a year now. I didn't wanna announce it. Copy cats. Everyone everyone talks about building public. I hate building in public. Building in public is not cool when you're popular. Building in public is really cool when you wanna get popular. Yeah. Exactly. But once you already have a following, I don't wanna do it. Like, the Milk Road, did you guys have a bunch of copycats?
49:16
Yeah.
49:17
Yeah. Tons.
49:18
There there's like
49:20
there's tons of embarrassing ones that are out there. There's, like, people that literally just took the same exact newsletter, and they would some people would translate it. So they're like, oh, I'm, you know,
49:30
leche leche
49:32
whatever. And it's like the Mexican mail code, and then it would translate it to Spanish and just like Google Translate and then publish.
49:39
There's another one that
49:42
There's one I don't know if I wanna put this guy on blast, but,
49:47
someone who tried to buy the milk road and failed Yeah. I know. Then just tried to copy it in his own, like, way. And did you get to say the the funny thing is they very rarely work.
49:58
They don't. And it's like kind of surprising. Why don't they? Where I I kind of expected them to work.
50:04
Like for example, when people take our content and then write a thread about her LinkedIn. And, like, it does pretty good. Like, that that kind of works for them. Otherwise, they wouldn't really keep doing it. But the copy of the whole newsletter thing, like, for some reason, that doesn't really work. I'm not sure I'm not a hundred percent sure why. I'll explain why. I know why. Do you wanna know the so basically, if for people who have been raised on the internet, they have a very high bullshit detector. And do you wanna know the best way to circumvent
50:28
someone's bullshit detector?
50:30
No. Don't bullshit. You don't bullshit.
50:33
Don't bullshit. That's how you circumvent that bullshit detector. You don't bullshit. And people could sniff this out. And so if they read something, And it's like, dude, you're like a not cool older guy trying to act like a cool younger person. I know that this is not good. Like, this doesn't work. I told you about the n q r. Right? The the the KFCs in China, not quite right. It's like, dude, it's the same menu.
50:55
Like, this is this is the spicy chicken sandwich, and it's like,
50:59
that's not quite right.
51:01
And people it just doesn't taste right. The taste buds reject it. Now
51:05
I believe that when it comes to if I use one product and then somebody tries to copy it. I'm like, why would I want the shitty copy? I'm just gonna keep going with the original.
51:13
But in markets where you're you're reaching a new audience or people who haven't heard of the original, I'm surprised it doesn't work. And I think my theory of why it doesn't work in those cases I think you're right when it's, when people have tasted the original that they don't really want the the shit. Or when it's, like, community community brand,
51:29
like personality driven. You know, it's that one moat that Peter Tiel doesn't understand. Fran.
51:34
Yeah.
51:36
The one the as burger proof
51:39
Yeah. That's better than one as per group,
51:42
whether we have. So, you know, the the one thing that I think is
51:46
is true, which is like this like iceberg theory, which is which is like if you look at an iceberg, like, the part you see at the top is like, you know, five percent of the total mass that's there. And so what I think people get wrong when they try to copy a business is that they only see the top the five percent.
52:01
And they're like, okay. I'm gonna copy that. But they don't know what goes on underneath. They don't know that basically
52:06
the uncopiable thing is the the people, the personalities, the engine underneath that's coming up with the creative ideas. That's coming up with the next marketing thing because this one starts to decline. And so I think that's the part that's typically hard to copy.
52:21
But honestly,
52:22
I'm surprised
52:24
that
52:25
more of them don't work because
52:27
if you're sufficiently talented, I think it I think it
52:30
Sadly does work more often than than it doesn't.
52:33
We should do an episode where we talk about the things that people have copied and it's become better than the original.
52:39
Like, there's stories of the Samware brothers. So it's these three brothers in Germany, and they have the company called Rocket Internet, and it was a clone factory.
52:47
And they basically it's a it was publicly trading till recently, but the reason they started this company was they, like, cloned Amazon
52:55
and all these other companies, Zapos, Uber, things like that. But before they started a company, started that company, they cloned
53:01
other things, and they sold it to the original. So they cloned eBay in Germany, and they sold it back to eBay
53:08
for ninety million dollars in, like, three months. And then they were gonna do the same thing with groupon.
53:14
But they,
53:15
got bigger than groupon, and they realized,
53:18
oh, wow. Once you get huge, this business sucks, we gotta offload it. And then they tried to do that with Zappos, the shoe company, but they got bigger than the original Zappos. So the bigger they were their market cap was larger, so they couldn't sell it. And they, like, this is their whole strategy. It's a very fascinating strategy. And so far, it's not panned out for them other than, like, Hello Fresh. They did HelloFresh and they copied Blue Apron, and HelloFresh worked. Right.
53:40
Yeah. I think,
53:43
there's an art to there's an art to copying. And this is there's a whole whole I think we could do a whole podcast about, like, if you're gonna copy, here's how to do it. Here's gonna do it in a way that feels good to your soul, feels good to customers, actually works, and is not just going to, result in like a massive waste of time. So I think there's there's a bunch of different little factors there. I think one thing the Sam War brothers did. One of the factors, for example, is
54:04
they
54:06
they
54:07
did the same business in a different country. And so I think, you know, geographic,
54:12
geographic differentiation is important.
54:14
I think that's one that that that you can you can copy and make things work when you do a geographic difference.
54:21
But then there's some traps with that too that we could we could talk But, alright, where do you wanna where do you wanna finish up? I think we should well,
54:28
there is one thing that we should do. And
54:30
Yeah. I forgot about that. You're aware of it. I think I'm aware of it. I can't seem to find my pen,
54:35
but I need it. That's okay. You don't need you don't need a pen. So, basically I thought I'd decide something. Some sort of a game. You do. But you you sign it, but just with the click of a button. So, basically, at this podcast, my first million, our content unlike every other content on YouTube, it's actually not for free. Right. Not a free podcast.
54:51
It's not a free podcast because what you have to do if you've seen one more than one episode, you have to do this thing called the gentleman's agreement, which is it's called that because we're not there. I'm not behind you to stare at your screen. That's why -- Honor. -- it's a gentleman's agreement. It's an honor code. You have to basically go and click subscribe on YouTube because we'll get more subscribers. That helps the algorithm. We get more views, and then we'll do more dumb stuff for you. So it's called the gentleman's agreement. More than one video, you have to do this. Everyone's doing it. I have a, addendum to the gentleman's agreement. Came from a, from a listener.
55:22
She pointed it out. She goes, not only have I signed the gentleman's agreement.
55:27
I've
55:28
signed the lady's understanding.
55:30
And I What's the lady's understanding?
55:32
You know, there's not many phrases that will stop me in my tracks, but I was stopped in my tracks. The lady's understanding, I thought that was For now The lady's understanding, that's actually when you also click subscribe
55:44
on the iTunes or the iOS Pod iTunes on the podcast app and the Spotify act of the ladies understanding.
55:50
Go to that extra mile and give us the ladies understanding along with the gentleman's screen. So since we started doing this gen so two things about the gentleman's agreement. Number one, It's funny because we're talking about copying. You stole the shtick from somebody and we're trying to make I stole it. He called me, by the way. And he was like, isn't that awesome? It works so good. And he invited me to go to a UFC five You did it right because you gave credit to him.
56:09
You put your own spin on it and, yeah, you you credit most importantly, as being like, this guy did this awesome thing. And I was like, wow. I I gotta try doing this.
56:19
So, you know, you credit him and that's cool that you guys are are going to see a fight together. That's that's amazing. Now it's cute. The second thing is
56:26
we have
56:27
grown a lot since we did this. So we started doing this. We were at you the first time you did it, I believe we had a hundred forty five thousand subscribers on YouTube? It's like a month ago. We have yeah. That that was like, yeah. Maybe forty five days ago, something like that. And now we're at a hundred eighty thousand. And the people who watch the YouTube videos, they know this. I in fact, I'm looking at a tweet right now, which he goes, he goes, at he just mentioned us. He goes, Watching on YouTube is better than Spotify. Yeah. No. Shit. I told you this. It is way better to watch the show on YouTube. And in fact, what I think we should do to really, like, juice the agreement to even
56:59
add more,
57:00
you know, see appendix a of the gentleman's agreement, I think we should do a piece of content that is only good when you watch it. So so here's my here's my proposal to you, Sam. I think we should do basically like
57:14
Yeah. Sam's gonna be shirtless.
57:16
I'm with a screen share.
57:19
But I think we should screen share us going through, like, a pitch deck and making it to take one from average to awesome or like good to great.
57:27
And just show how we would tweak the copy, how we would make it looks like better. We'll use a real one. And so I think we should do that and put that only on the YouTube channel because it would only make sense to see it. No. I think that Well,
57:37
you should log in to chase dot com.
57:40
And, show show your checking account. Oh, okay. And it will react, but we won't say the number. That's genius.
57:47
You know, this is why
57:49
You complete me, bro. I gave you a shitty idea, and
57:54
you gave me the old yes and. Well,
57:58
we're gonna go to chase dot com or whatever, Bank of America, whatever you use, and you're gonna just we're gonna watch you log in, and we're just gonna react. And that's it. By the way, the yes, and is the corneas thing that the startup world tried to take from from like the cool, like, you know, people who have actually funny world.
58:13
Because, actually, it's a
58:16
no,
58:17
but
58:18
which is what you just did there.
58:20
No. But we should do this said is is a better way to be honest.
58:24
In in prod people are are one step below a capella people in terms of the nerds. So, like, there's no way we're cool at improv people. You ever been around around a dip an improper person is, like, being around someone who does crossfit, you know, like, just stop talking about it. I can't stand in prod people. They're exhausting. It's like,
58:41
It's crossing. What's that muscle?
58:44
Dude. I I Theo von said it's like, like, a blind Jack Russell. You know what those are? It's like that dog does yapping everywhere and when it's blind, you just can't stop. It's going all over the place. That's what I feel about an improper person. Yeah. I think you're I think you're right. I did improv so I can confirm. This is correct.
58:59
And you're correct. That is below acapella,
59:01
which is below everything that's actually
59:05
Yeah. A capella is the worst of the worst. I remember hanging out with people from New England and they were like, we're bragging about A capella and I was like, dude, shut up. Why are you talking about that? You know what people to know? And, they were like people hang out with each other, and they're, like, ordering or they're, like, waiting for their food at the table. And then one guy's, like,
59:22
And then it's like,
59:24
like, I started, like, harmonizing. It's like, dude, you gotta stop. Like, you know,
59:30
If I hear the lion king, so I'm one more time, I'm gonna put a bullet in my head. That's why I feel, but I don't want them with these people.
59:37
I've ever trapped on a subway and, like, this they do a flash bomb around me and start singing. Oh, those
59:43
are above. Flash bomb people are are are above the I could probably I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna start vomiting just to out out outrageous them in that moment.
59:54
That's the pod.
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