00:00
When I I first hosted my, I hosted my first event in June and the event happened,
00:05
alright, decided to do it around June first, and the event went place seven weeks later in August.
00:11
And when I started, I had close to nothing. I had, a two hundred person email list. So there wasn't like this. Oh, it's easy for you. You have the hustle. No. No. No. It didn't exist. There was no website. There was just a domain name called Husslecut.
00:23
And
00:24
I hosted this event. In the first six weeks, it made about sixty thousand dollars in revenue
00:31
and fifty ish thousand dollars in profit.
00:34
And a lot of people were surprised by that. It was but it wasn't that hard. The second event, you can see here. I'm gonna explain that. So how did you sell the sixty thousand dollars of tickets during that process?
00:45
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it, like, days off on a road less traveled, never looking back. Today, Sean, let's actually jump right you. I think wanna do this bill of the week right away. Yeah. And then have a thing on events. Do you wanna do events? Or do you wanna save that? What do you wanna do today? I wanna do that. So I wanna do this billy of the week. I wanna hear your stuff on paid events, and then I have two
01:10
ideas. One is a cool idea I have seen, and then the other is a brainstorm of a of a potential idea. So I wanna do all of those things. So let's start with let's start with the billion of the week.
01:22
This one is very interesting. Have you ever heard of this guy before? Don't don't Google. I wanna tell you the story. So don't don't Google this guy. Uh-uh. Let me tell you the story. I'm just I I googled them. I'm just looking, oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
01:34
Young guy? Young guy. Twenty nine years ago. I don't know who he is. I'm Wow. Sam Bancman Freed. I think it's the way you say his name. And, when you if you heard him talk, like, I actually want you to, let's let's do a YouTube video for a second because he sounds like, you know, an absolute dweeb And I loved it. I was like, oh, this guy sounds like he would be a self made billionaire
01:53
by the age of twenty nine because he sounds like a genius. He sounds like a tech genius. Have you brought this person up to me for? No. I just discovered about two days ago. Okay. So what's this guy's story?
02:02
So
02:03
this guy, well, you know, I'll just come Sam for short, but
02:07
So this guy Sam, he's a he he he's a young guy. He's very smart.
02:12
He takes a job as kinda like a hedge fund trader or something like that. It's a group called James Street, I guess. And, I don't know. Forget these details. They don't really matter. Guys got a job in finance.
02:22
And,
02:23
He leaves, and he starts something called Alameda Research.
02:27
And it's called Alameda Research because he needed it to sound as legit as possible and not like, what it actually was. So what was it? So what this guy did was he was into crypto,
02:39
and there was this known thing in crypto where as crypto was getting popular, this is around twenty seventeen when the first big run up happened, and Bitcoin went, you know, from three thousand dollars to twenty thousand dollars and it crashed later. But during that time, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, Bitcoin was emerging.
02:55
And there was this as any new thing, there's these, like, kind of
02:59
it's like the Wild Wild West a little bit. And so there was this thing where in the US,
03:04
the price of Bitcoin lowest, let's say, ten thousand dollars of Bitcoin
03:08
And in other countries where,
03:10
the exchanges weren't built or the com the country had some regulations or whatever, there was, like, a premium for Bitcoin. There was more demand than there was Bitcoin available to buy in those countries.
03:21
Because you need, like, let's say like in Korea. There was a famous,
03:24
thing called the Kimchi
03:26
the Kimchi premium. And the Kimchi premium was that in Korea,
03:29
There wasn't,
03:31
kimchi, like, the, like, the, the food. So this was known as a kimchi premium. And, basically, it was, like,
03:37
whatever Bitcoin was selling for here, let's say it was ten thousand dollars. In Korea, it was trading for fifteen thousand dollars because It was that big. It was fifty fifty percent premium. And it fluctuated, obviously. And I think thirty percent was kinda like the average of the Kimchi premium over time. So everybody wanted this. So everybody, you know, any smart person saw, oh, wow. There's charge? What if I could just buy it in the US for ten grand and immediately sell it in Korea for fifteen grand or for, you know, thirteen grand. And so you had this, like, ability to flip it. And so a whole bunch of people were trying to do this, but there was all these problems. Right? Like, well, the reason, you know, the reason wasn't the reason there was premium because it was hard to buy Bitcoin to Korea. So one idea was you buy it in the US off a US exchange,
04:18
you go to Korea, and you sell it, but you're gonna sell it for in the Korean, you know, WAN, which is, like, the local currency.
04:25
But now you need to, like, the for the arbitrage to continue, you have to convert the Korean one back to dollars to go buy more go buy more bitcoin in the US. The problem was You can't convert the Korean WAN back to dollars easily because the government was very, like, type fisted regulations.
04:39
You couldn't funnel large amounts of money from the Korean one back to dollars very, very easily. So a whole bunch of people were trying to get this, like, pinata of money and they couldn't crack it. And what this guy did was he was like, okay. Fuck the Kimchi premium. He went for the Japan premium, which was far less appealing. It was only ten percent. But he's like, still,
04:57
If I can if I could trade a US Bitcoin for ten percent more in Japan every day, I'm making ten percent compounding daily.
05:05
And so he went through this, like, odyssey where for, like, a year,
05:09
all he's doing is setting up this trade. So he, like,
05:13
for actually, by the way, first, he when he was trying to figure out, could I capture the Kimchi premium? He was, like, doing calculations, like,
05:20
if I filled up if I chartered a private plane and I filled it up with a hundred people and I flew, you know, they buy Bitcoin in the US. I flew them all to Korea, And then they they, you know, sell it there. And then I could each one of them could convert some amount of that money, and I could fly them back. And every day, I could fly this plane back and forth between US and Korea. Like, could I make it work? And he was like, I don't think it works. So you wait. So you had to be there physically. It's not that you had to be there physically. You have to do all, like, all legs of the transact So you have to be able to buy in Korea or or, like, or sell your Bitcoin in Korea at the premium. But now you have Korean one. Now you need to convert that to dollars. And so how do you do that? You need to convert it there, but there's caps. They won't let you convert it because the way he described it is like, look,
06:00
he's like, what I wanted to do essentially was to be,
06:05
you know, selling five million dollars of Bitcoin for the local currency and converting five million of local currency back to US dollars every day is, like, if you if you just go to, like, go to Korea, go to Japan, go to wherever, and you say, hey, I'd like to it's like a one way flow of money. I have five million dollars of your local currency. I'd like to convert it to dollars and exit the country.
06:25
And they're like, okay. But where are you getting all this money? And why are you doing such a large amount? I'm like, what is this? Yeah. He's like, you know, if you if you go to bank school one zero one, that's like money laundering. That's what money laundering looks like. That that that is what money laundering
06:39
that is exactly what money laundering looks like. So he's like, even though I'm not money laundering, I'm buying and selling a good that's differently priced in different regions.
06:46
To them on the ground, to the bank on the ground where I need to do these conversions. It's shady. It's too shady. They won't let me do it. So he spends, basically, a year of his life where he's like, goes to Japan.
06:56
Now you gotta find,
06:58
you gotta do each each one of these was hard. So anyways, the the net end of this story is this guy's arbitraging
07:04
twenty five million dollars a day.
07:06
Of of this guarantee. He's making a ten percent compounding,
07:10
you know, margin
07:12
every single day. And this guy, you know, in the three years, basically, he's become a self made billionaire. He's worth ten billion dollars now, which is a combination of the money he made from the arbitrage trade.
07:23
As well as he then created his own exchange,
07:27
and, like, you know, so he has a trading company that's, you know, has made hundreds of millions of dollars of this arbitrage
07:32
And then he built the he used that to create an exchange, which is worth billions of dollars on paper. So anyways, this guy's worth ten billion dollars. No. He and his
07:41
because
07:42
the currency is called FTX. Right? That's his exchange. His exchange is called FTX. Sorry. Sorry. Exchange. And uh-uh,
07:48
that is is that basically an alternative to, basically, a more higher end It's, like, it's a more sophisticated coin base where you can do, like, derivative trades, trades on all different types of coal internationally.
07:59
And that's like and that's like a proper company. It's a proper company with, like So all of this outreach research made hundreds of millions of dollars in fan of a few months just doing this one trade over and over again every day. So I'm gonna describe a couple of things, but he got on people's radar because he was the biggest donor to Joe Biden this year. In the campaign. He wrote a he wrote like a five million dollar check at the last, like, at the eleventh hour that let Joe do, like, you know, as part of this, like, you know, last minute blitz they did on TV ads in all the swing states.
08:27
Because this is kind of interesting. This guy is, like, very
08:30
His whole business philosophy is this thing called effective altruism, which is basically like, go be a greedy capitalist, go try to make as much money as you can, and your goal is to give at least half of it away while you're doing it. So he's got, like it's not like a philanthropist giving away one percent of his money or or ten percent of his money as a tie. His goal is giving away, like, fifty percent of his liquid liquid, like, net worth, you know, like, that he makes every year. That's his, like, kind of, like, his mindset. Where did he get the money to start this? So he started it with a very small amount of money, and it just compounded very quickly because he's, like, basically, like, getting ten percent extra every day. So I I don't know exactly where he got the initial seed capital or how big it was. He hasn't specified that, but he he did say at the max, they were doing twenty five million a day on the trade. Which basically, like, a a two point five million dollar, like, you know, like profit per day, that they were making on the trade. And so he describes
09:21
that okay. So
09:23
He's like, basically, if you wanna do this, you have to, like, break it down into small chunks. He's like, okay. So I need on one side. I need to be able to go buy a shit ton of Bitcoin in the US. So how do I get, exchange in the US? It's gonna give me really high limits even though I'm this dorky kid who's got no track record and I have no, like, collateral or brand name. And so he's like, finds a way to solve that problem of, like, being able to buy twenty five million dollars of Bitcoin in the US.
09:49
Then he had to, like, go to Japan and be he had to be able to sell a huge amount of Bitcoin there. Then he had to be able to convert it from the Japanese yen or whatever to US dollars And he had to do that all in the same day and wire transfer it all back to the US to buy it again the next day, to buy the full max amount to get the next day. So he's just cycling the money every day. And so he described, like, they would just the way that the the timing worked. It was always in the last hour of the banking day. That he would be trying to get all the wire transfers done to get the money back to the US so that they could execute tomorrow's trade. And any day that they couldn't get this done sound like.
10:22
Said he sounds like, I'm looking at picture. Oh my god. He sounds extremely genuine humble, high pitched voice, kinda like just a nerdy guy.
10:29
Who was, like, he accounted for about ten percent of all the Bitcoin trading himself, his Alameda research during that time period, I believe. Which is just, like, insane because he was moving so much money. Dude, I love these people. I love I love freaks. This guy is a freak. I love his setup. You know, his desk is him with six monitors hanging above his head. His neck is, like, cramped because he just needs to constantly monitor the spot price in the US. What's the price in Japan? What's the conversion of yen dollars? What's the conversion of dollars to yen? And he's and he's just constant. And anytime anything broke, it was just costing him tons of money. And he had always had to make sure nobody's gonna, like, stop his trade or stop the bottleneck. And then he's stuck with all this, like, Japanese yen and can't move it, or it gets seized by the government. And so he was, like, the main banks wouldn't work with him. So that's why he picked Alameda Research as a name to, like, be more legit. He hired, like, this, like, kinda like sophisticated guy like, who spoke the local language to be able to go talk to the bankers and be like, hey, here's what we're doing. He also, like, went to, like, these rural banks in Japan, not the main ones in the city. Is like, okay. These rural banks will take my business because they're, like, more open to what I'm doing than, like, the Citibanks that are, like, you know, have a have a tighter filter on what I'm doing. So anyways, I just thought it was super interesting to, like, he identified one arbitrage, like Money Ball style. And I'm dedicated, like, a year or eighteen months of his life to just hammering this one arbitrage and ended up making hundreds of millions of dollars. And,
11:51
parlayed that into becoming you know, his his paper net worth is ten billion dollars, and he did that, I think, four years total of how he built It's ten billion because the because the exchange is The combination of the the research account the the the trading company plus the exchange,
12:06
ten billion is what he what he estimates his his network to be a God, I love people this. I, I mean, that's astounding. There's very he's that's one of a kind, but I love people.
12:15
And I try to do this with the hustle with email addresses with an email list, but that's peanuts compared to this and what some other people do. But basically, who take a small tiny edge, kinda, like, silly thing and just amp it up on steroids. So I love that. I think that is the coolest thing. I love people who think like that. I think it's so fascinating.
12:35
I'd have to think some more examples of totally know what I mean. Right? Yeah. Absolutely. I've I've met this before with, like, people who make a poker bot. And it's like, what are you doing? It's like every day, there's tweaking this little bot that's running twenty four seven at the one and two cent tables of full tilt poker, and they have this, like, small edge, like, this, like, fifteen percent edge, and then they're just, like, tweaking the system. And it and what what it reminds me of is what happens a lot of times is people will go buy information. They'll go say, oh, I pay I pay Like, my my uncle does this. He was paying nineteen dollars a month for, like, this guy's, like, stock tips. I had to, like, sit my uncle down and be, like,
13:10
Look. Like,
13:11
if these are amazing stock tips, do you really think this guy's gonna give it to you for nineteen dollars? Like, no. Like, you know, if this guy really had an edge in the market, he would not need to make money
13:21
educating you. He would be pounding his advantage
13:24
and trying to make as much money as he can as long as that window exists.
13:28
And so, like, oh, I have another example of this. This guy on Twitter called Haralabob. Do you follow him?
13:33
No. Pretty fascinating guy to follow. So this guy is a high stakes gambler.
13:37
He's a professional gambler, which usually is a oxymoron.
13:40
Like, there's no such thing as a professional gambler, but he he was a professional sports veteran. And what he realized was back in I think twenty six I forgot it was twenty thirteen, twenty twenty five. I don't remember what it was. It's like maybe it was even longer than that. I think it might have been like fifteen years ago now. He realized that in Vegas, the books were like
13:59
they were so sportsbooks, it's kinda like hard to beat the house. The bookies are always like spot on.
14:04
And there's one type of bet called the, you know, over under. It's basically like in basketball. It's like, what's the total score gonna be? Is it gonna be? If you add up the total of both teams, is it two hundred more than you bet if it's gonna be over under that. And the over under is really, really accurate. But what he noticed was that,
14:20
he noticed two things. One was
14:22
The bookies did not take into account that actually in the first half,
14:26
like, in the basketball game, the second half, the score is usually higher than the first half because
14:31
At the end of the game, the team that's losing will start fouling,
14:34
because they're like, look, we have to try to get back in this game. So they'll allow you to save the the clock stops you get two free throws, and then I'll come back trying to hit to three. And so that's usually the end game for most most teams. Like, if you're down, you follow the other team, clock stops,
14:47
they score while the clock is stopped, and then I try to shoot threes to get back in the game. I'm pretty desperate. So what he noticed was that the total over under If you just divided it by half, that's what they would leave just fifty percent. That's what they were making as the first half over under. And very few people bet the first half over under because it's not that fun of a bet. It's like cares what the halftime score is gonna be? If you're gonna bet the score, you just bet the end of the game score.
15:10
So he realized it was a small edge where they thought they were taking the full score and dividing by half and making that the line. He's like, oh my god. This is almost always gonna be under. And he specifically noticed that these three teams
15:22
their coaches would, like, do that foul strategy way more in the second half. So he's like, okay. There's these teams that these coaches do this strategy more And the first half is, like, the my arbitrage. And he doesn't say shit to anybody. He just starts hiring people to go to the books. All the different What's this person's name? This guy, Harala Bob.
15:40
And I'm kind of, like, Harrahla. I'm kind of paraphrasing this for you. Spell that? H a r a l a b o b. Harrahla Bob.
15:48
And so, and now he works for Mark Cuban. He works for the Dallas Mavericks, I think. He works for Mark Cuban because he, like, got a big personality on Twitter because he was a sports veteran. And, like, the way he made all of his money was, like, He had identified over these, like, ten years of being a sports veteran. He found, like, three different edges. One was he just, like, went super hard on the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. The second was this first half like, a first half over under bet that was just mispriced. And he just took that mispricing, and he just went all in on this mispricing. Wow. That's crazy. Any time a sports book would limit him, he would then, like, pay a guy, but, hey, go walk up and bet twenty five thousand dollars of this game, please. And then he would, like, do that. He had, like, people betting at all the sports books all the different casinos at the same time so that he could be betting the type of money he wanted to bet to maximize his advantage while this arbitrage existed.
16:34
And so, anyways, I love people who find these arbitrages and then, like, the lengths that they have to go through to maximize it. It's like the movie twenty one where they're counting cards in Vegas, and they're, like, strapping cash to their body walking through this airport
16:47
because they, like, need to go, like, pounce on this edge.
16:51
You used to have this guy who worked for you named Steve or Steven, I think. Yeah.
16:56
He and then he so basically, what if I remember correctly, what he did was he would create these I don't know if he created your boss, but, like,
17:04
So he would buy a a really small Twitter handle that was called, like, today in history, and it would just tweet, like, a picture of what happened fifty years ago, you know, JFK was shot. Then he would buy, like, a cool car Twitter one where it was, like, here's all interesting cars. And then, like, I can't believe it. It can fly, which is, like, weird flying devices that when you look at them, they look silly. And he eventually bought, I believe, hundreds of them to the point of where he built a business. So he would did one of he did two things that were interesting. The story you told was he goes, basically, I control the internet. Let me show you how. By the end of the talk, I'm going to have
17:40
x trend. Yeah. Like, I'm gonna have this internal one from the audience. He'd be like, say, and people like gobbledygook. He say, alright. Cool.
17:47
While we're talking, in thirty minutes, we're just at a clock here. We're gonna check Twitter in thirty minutes. And then sure enough, Gabli Gook would be trending on Twitter the number one trend in all of Europe because his accounts would all start talking about Gabli Gook in meme format. And it would just, like, start to go viral, basically. And nobody even knew what he meant.
18:04
And he he parlayed this into getting sponsorships.
18:08
And Now I don't know if you know him anymore. I don't know him at all. Yeah. But I I I read about him and I and this company went public. It went public in a really shady ways. So I don't know if I believe everything. There's there's something about it. I don't have too much evidence. It's just a roll up of a bunch of bunch of media companies.
18:24
Something was weird about it, but basically, I think it went public in England for, like, two or three hundred million dollars market cap. And so it turned him into quite wealthy. Quite wealthy person. I think you just released a book called,
18:35
what is it? Happy, sexy millionaire. Sexyaire. Yeah. So go by Steve's book.
18:40
So, anyway, pretty interesting. The same principle. He found mispriced assets. So I remember the first one that he,
18:46
discovered was one that was, like, shit freshmen say or is, like, like, but, you know, whatever the the the UK slate for that is, it's basically, like,
18:54
a me a parody account that tweeted out funny things that freshmen say on a college campus. And what he found, the reason it was mispriced was most of these accounts were made by accident
19:04
by somebody who was eighteen years old and sixteen years old and they were bored at home, and they just made a, you know, like Harry Potter, you know, Harry Potter jokes Twitter account, and it gets to a million followers, and they don't know what to do with it. And then they kinda, like, they get paid, like, seventy five bucks on Venmo to, like, shout out some app or, like, they get paid, like, two hundred dollars to, like, say, a protein powder or, like, or they would make a blog selling, you know, like, protein powder and they would just like, try to funnel some traffic to that, but it didn't, like, make sense. It wasn't very sophisticated.
19:34
He needed he needed promotion for his business. So he was working with these guys. Then he realized, screw my business. This is just a really powerful promotional engine.
19:43
We used him, early on when he was, you know, we brought him on and he was part of my team. Used him and we became the number one app in the UK, number one app in Europe because
19:53
we used his, like, network to, like, talk about our app. And what he had the insight was was that you don't say, like, our app was Bebo at the time. So he it wasn't go download Bebo. It's a great app.
20:04
No. He's like, that shit doesn't work. I was like, well, we need that. And we need the link in there so we can track how many clicks he gets. He's like, no. That's not how people talk on the internet. I was like, okay. So tell me, what do you mean? He's like, you gotta think, like, what you wanna do is we have so many accounts that we want somebody when they scroll on Twitter, they see Bibo mentioned, like, seven times and that they don't even nobody's explaining it. Nobody's selling it to them. They just realized why is everyone saying this thing Biba? What is that? And then they go Google it or they go search for it. And then they actually download the app because they think this is what's hot. This is what people are talking about. He's like, so we'll Right. What we'll do is we'll make content that's like,
20:38
you know, My mom when she sees me check Bebo for the fiftieth time today, and it's a meme of the mom throwing your phone out the window. And it's like so the implied
20:47
meaning is that Bebo is this addictive app that you keep checking that your parents hate that you keep checking.
20:52
Well, what is that app? Why would it why would this person check that app fifty times? I don't even have that app never heard of Right? And so that was the genius of his marketing, like, tactics at that time.
21:02
And then he had the, like, audience to back it up. So they got spotify and Microsoft and all these companies to pay them tons of money because anytime they needed to spread the word about a new thing that they were doing, This was the most effective way to reach a bunch of people, a bunch of young people. And so then he parlayed that. He started, right, launching his own consumer brands. So if they have a bunch of food accounts, They would launch like a food subscription product, or they had a bunch of fitness accounts. They would launch like a women's athletic wear, you know, like, company. They didn't all work, but man, like, crazy ass, like, business that came, you know, out of nowhere. If you if you wanna go research it, it's called social starts. Right? Social chain.
21:37
Social chain. A Steve, what's his name? Partly? Yeah. You should follow him on Twitter. He's a great follow.
21:43
Now he tweets out just like, I don't know, inspirational shit all the time, like motivational Yeah. He's like a mini Gary V although He's like a better theory V, to be honest with you. Probably a getter. Yeah. I was gonna say he's probably Do you have him, like, five years and he's gonna be much bigger than what Gary V is today, I think. If he sticks with it. But,
21:58
yeah, and there's some articles that are cool. If you go search, like, the twenty one year olds that control the internet, there's, like, a vice article, like, twenty two year olds to control it. Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed? Yeah. The Buzzfeed advice did, like, crazy articles about them. I mean, at one point, they had twenty five employees that all under the age of twenty two years old, and they were all just managing these media accounts, and they were just making tons of money. And they, like yeah. It was insane. Built like an office with like a play pen inside and, you know, like No. It's a good art.
22:25
So do you wanna talk? Okay. So I was doing research. I'll bring you showed me this and and I feel that people did. Basically,
22:32
our most watched recent video is something
22:35
I you you've you've kicked ass on Instagram. I think I've got the YouTube prize so far.
22:40
But because our most watched article or most watched video is on paid communities. I think the title is
22:47
how to make twenty million dollars a year doing a paid community, something like that.
22:51
Because we talked about a company that does that. And now we'll make this title, like, to make, like, a million dollars, or how to make a hundred thousand dollars a year doing a paid event.
23:01
And, Abray, you asked me to talk about it. So I came with a few bullet points. So You wanna talk about paid events? I want to because this is how the hustle started. So this is like your roots.
23:10
And, also,
23:11
we're starting to play in hustle Con again. And I have a feeling now more than ever is the time to plan a paid event, in person paid event, because I think you can you can do really well. There's gonna be very little competition, and people are really eager to go. We've talked about it in the past, about events. But so Sean, if you go to the my the million dollar brainstorm document,
23:31
You'll see I'm highlighting my name.
23:34
I actually listed all oh, you're on your phone. So it might be a little challenging, but I've actually listed a whole bunch of our old profit and loss statements from our events. Right. If you hit metrics all time, you can actually see our all time metrics. Although, actually, this only goes to two thousand eighteen. So it's not all time. It's missing three years, but,
23:51
you can kinda see the data. You can see how much money we're making, and we are making
23:56
in the first in the first year of business about,
23:59
I think,
24:00
I think about five hundred thousand dollars with, like,
24:04
eighty four percent margin in our first year business. And so let's talk about events. So,
24:10
and this won't this isn't gonna gonna be a a a ten minute segment here, probably. But, basically,
24:16
the when I I first hosted my, I hosted my first event in June, and the event happened
24:21
Alright? Decided to do it around June first, and the event went place seven weeks later in August.
24:27
And when I started, I had close to nothing. I had, a two hundred person email list. So there wasn't like this. Oh, it's easy for you. You had the hustle. No. No. No. It didn't exist. Yeah. There was no website. There was just a domain name called Husslecut.
24:40
And I hosted this event. In the first six weeks, it made about sixty thousand dollars in revenue
24:47
and fifty ish thousand dollars in profit.
24:51
And a lot of people were surprised by that. It was but it wasn't that hard. The second event you can see here. I'm gonna explain that. So how how did you sell the sixty thousand dollars of tickets during that process?
25:00
I'm gonna explain. And and so I just wanna give a little I'll give one more bit of context. Second event, I think it made about a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollars in revenue and something like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in profit. And I did these events six months apart apart. Right.
25:15
I would basically host an event, go travel
25:18
when I needed money. I would host another one. And so I was starting each time with close to zero dollars.
25:23
So so let me explain to you guys, a little bit about how I started my events. And what I would what I would do if I was starting again, which is basically if I was starting again, I would do mostly the stuff. But I think every everyone in the next if you're listening, if you're willing to spend eight weeks working forty hours a week dedicated to this, I think you could make at least a hundred thousand dollars profit.
25:43
Starting probably in
25:45
September because that's when,
25:48
I think events conferences are gonna be okay. So, anyway,
25:52
the the biggest thing that you have to do here is your email list is the most important thing. So the hustle con dot com, I launched that website on June six. Okay? And within just a few weeks, we are averaging around a, a thousand of two thousand unique visitors today. And the email list jumped from about two hundred people to about twenty five hundred people in seven weeks.
26:12
Keep in mind, at the time, I didn't even have a Twitter. So There was no Twitter. I mean, there was, but I didn't use it. And so what I would do is hustlecon dot com was basically a landing page where I explained what the event is, and then you'd enter your email. And that was called the front door. The side doors were all these blog posts. So I would write two to three blog posts a week on each speaker I would post that on hacker news. People would come to the website, be at the side door. Only
26:39
five percent of them would say this is saying, what's this website? And they would click the homepage, and I would collect their email there. And then once I collected their email, I would send them a variety of other blog posts that I had written. And at the end of each blog post that I sent them, it would say p s, this person is speaking at Hussicon on, August first and September you can get a ticket right now for ten percent off if you buy in the next twelve hours. Right. By the way, the next twelve hours, that code was working all the time. There is no
27:04
It was always the next twelve hours. The countdown clock, there's a simple plugin that you could buy, and it just starts to shows up. Yeah. So sorry, guys. I'm sure everyone knows this now, but I don't even Shopify wasn't popular at the at that point. So,
27:18
not everyone had that technology, but that's what we did. Pretty easy, pretty basic. And in doing that, I think an example of the blog post, because I remember, like, I remember vividly, the one you did about eye cracked,
27:28
which you kind of did, like, as I'm info infographic. I remember the one pandora would do. But explain what yeah. Explain what you did and, like, also these were speakers. So you got speakers to agree. Legit speakers to agree before you even had an audience or anything?
27:42
Yes. Which is the second thing I'm gonna talk about is how to land a speaker. But for the the blog post, I basically would just use Forbes, business insider, all these places, and just write a biography on the person. But I would do it in an interesting way. And eventually, what happened is we would create infographics. So I had John who worked there. And I would say, John,
28:00
here's the here's the bulleted points of their life. Turn it into an infographic, please. And that's what we did. We had infographics.
28:07
It could have been a blah blah post, which is what I used to do. We this time, we made infographics, and it worked quite well. And it was basically
28:13
I read the book made to stick, and I just copied that. So I took, information about their company, and I made it really easy to understand. So for example, Pandora, streams,
28:22
this amount of music per hour, which is the equivalent of x, y, and z. They the reason why they are able to do that is they're one of the first people to launch on phone.
28:32
And then I, like, I just tell that story.
28:34
Pretty simple. I thought it was simple, very effective.
28:38
Now that's how we got our initial sales. Now the thing about sales for events, it's incredibly stressful. The reason it's stressful is typically
28:47
twenty percent of your sales come in the first five to seven days And then twenty percent sometimes more, thirty percent of your sales comes in the last, like, four or five days, which means that dead time. So you're you you won't you have to kick you gotta kick ass right out of the right out of the gate. So your first long series, you need to kick ass your first email long series, you need to do really well. Then there's a fair bit of dead time and it feels we're failing. We're failing. We're failing. And then the last ten days or so, you get a wave of sales, and it all comes down to the last minute. And it is incredibly nerve wracking, and anything could ruin it. For example, a pandemic or if there was like a terrorist attack, if there was,
29:28
bad weather, as simple as bad weather, you're fucked. And so you've been working for seven weeks. Now, eventually, in our case, a whole year on this event and you're screwed. So it's very stressful.
29:38
But the way that you can actually make more money, and this is something that I didn't learn until later on, for the tickets, you actually wanna charge higher than you're than you think let's say you wanna make a hundred thousand dollars and you wanna get a thousand people to pay you a hundred dollars, you always charge two fifty. And then you give more you give discounts in order to get to a hundred average sale price. And so you wanna, in my opinion, you wanna be very generous with discounts but you wanna charge a lot of money. So it anchors it at a high at a high price. Yeah.
30:07
Correct. And one other thing that you wanna do is you wanna run this like an ecomm site. So for an ecomm site, you say, well, I wanna make a hundred grand this month. Therefore, I need to get,
30:18
you know, a hundred thousand people to my, a hundred thousand high quality people to my website, of which three percent are gonna convert. I know three percent are gonna convert because I'm constantly tinkering with my landing page. The average sale value is gonna be x dollars. Therefore, this is how I do it. Now I just need to get people to my website.
30:34
That's what a lot of conference people don't do. That's what you should do, and it works quite well.
30:40
And then finally, time is one of the best ways to create sales. So
30:44
you have to give discounts early on,
30:47
n at the end, and you and the goal is you wanna have five, three to five tiers of pricing. So you want to have early, early bird, and then early bird, and then middle bird, and then you're late. Okay. Seriously, this is the last reminder you're late. Like, you Because if you actually look so can you actually see,
31:07
if you log into that doc, I actually put a chart of my very first event, from July twenty four. You're gonna see big spikes.
31:15
Every single one of those big spikes was a new ticket tier ending.
31:19
And there's a direct core between the amount of revenue that I made that day and the amount of, like, the tier ending and,
31:28
me sending an email blast reminding people and I would email some two or three times a day in order to remind them. Wow.
31:34
And so so when you were going to hacker news for traffic, were you going anywhere else and is that where you would go today if you were doing it again?
31:42
Well, if I was doing a tech event
31:45
if I was doing a tech event, yes. Okay. Will go to hacker news. And what's and see if there's a lot People will say, like, you know,
31:52
you know, when I post on hacker news, you know, I get, you know,
31:57
no traffic. I get downvoted. I get what, you know, I get removed because it's like Well, I would say the obvious or not the obvious, but cut maybe obvious is, well, your content might suck.
32:07
But I would say you I would actually write
32:10
content or invite speakers
32:12
who's who I knew I could write about, that would go viral on hacker news. And also if you post ten times, only three times it will go viral, but those three times, you'll get, like,
32:23
on hacker news, like, a hundred thousand views. And so that it's like a hits driven business. So you gotta post a ton actually for it to work. And so you I remember when you were doing your events. Okay. It goes sixty thousand, hundred, three thousand. I remember you were basically, like, yeah. Hussicon brings in five hundred thousand dollars.
32:38
Of revenue and, like, three hundred thousand of that is profit or even more sometimes, you know, if I recall correctly. So
32:45
Is that typical that it was so profitable or were you doing something different than the average event host?
32:51
Yeah. So when we would,
32:53
towards the third, fourth event, we could easily make
32:57
seven hundred thousand dollars, I think. Maybe let's just say easily. Five hundred thousand. I forget the exact But we are making seven figures a year from events. And, yeah, we could do fifty percent margins, but the margins get smaller as we actually grew. And so it was actually more profitable to do some of these smaller events, but we did a few things that made us profitable. The first,
33:16
I paid I'm
33:18
oh, I'll say it. It's against the contract, but I'm gonna say it. I paid Casey Neistat money to speak at Hussle Con, which is no surprise. It's like you could just Google what a speaking beat is. But Besides that, I've had probably three, four, five hundred people speak, not once did I ever pay for another speaker, not one time. Now what I think I did do a few times is I would pay for their flight, but I I would pay economy. I had Sam Yagen, who's the CEO of match dot com or was, who's
33:45
very wealthy, I'd paid a three hundred and fifty dollar flight from Chicago to San
33:51
Francisco.
33:51
Then maybe I think we got him a hotel, but I think it was just a three fifty flight. And he actually we reimbursed him for that, and he would email me to remind him. Oh, you guys told me oh, me the three fifty. So We didn't pay for any speakers other than Casey Neistat. The second, I use a shit ton of volunteers
34:07
because There's these kids, some are not necessarily kids, but,
34:12
people who will email you once you have an event to volunteer. There's a whole crew of them. One of the free and they wanna be around you and,
34:21
they do the work.
34:23
They do the work, and it's fun for them. It's a lot of fun to be part of something.
34:27
We would schedule it so they could go see some talks, but they didn't really even care about the talks. They just wanted to be in the mix. It was exciting for them. And so these these people love doing that. I use volunteers for everything. Now the third part is actually important, and this might get some flack, but I would never work with or I would try my hardest to avoid union venues. You wanna avoid union venues and ticketmaster venues. Because if you work at a a lot of venues sign contracts with Ticketmaster
34:51
or something like that, and you have to work with Ticketmaster.
34:54
F that. Sorry. Take a master. You guys, I don't wanna work with you. And so the goal is to work with in a some place that isn't bogged down by that. Or bogged down by a union because there were some places where I would say, alright, I want my volunteers to be at the door and they would say, nope. You have to have our union guy do it. We charge fifty dollars an hour, you have to have ten of them. Right. Yes. Uh-huh.
35:14
So so I remember you had the sickest venue in Oakland.
35:18
So right outside of San Francisco,
35:20
And it's the Oakland, whatever the the what's the theater called? The Parabrio? Theater.
35:25
This thing, it looks so grand.
35:27
I remember you were like, dude, guess how much this cost us. I don't know if you could say, but it was amazingly
35:32
affordable, like, to to rent anything. Like ten or fifteen grand. Ten or fifteen grand rent out for the two days. Including all the people. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so, you know, when you're doing an event that's bringing seven hundred grand, like, and you you needed a a kind of like a notable
35:46
nice big venue
35:47
I thought that was I I I thought that thing would be a hundred thousand dollars. Right? Like, my wedding venue cost that much, you know, and it was, like, just for me to get married. It wasn't even, like, a business, you know, I wasn't, like, couldn't host thousands of people. And there's a few things, which is we I for hosting conferences in places that typically aren't used to hosting conferences. So I would do it there. I did at the brava theater in,
36:09
San Francisco, which I think don't remember exactly. I'm pretty sure that was three thousand dollars I hosted an event there, and I made a hundred grand band. So I would do it in venues that typically weren't meant for conferences. And the reason why is if you go to a hotel tell. Or if you go to a conference center, they're gonna charge you for the union stuff, which is gonna add up really fast, which is actually gonna be probably two x the price of the hard cost of the venue. And they're gonna charge you something like fifty dollars ahead for meals because you have to use their caterer, and that's something I would avoid like crazy. Instead, I would find local mom and pop places, and I would call them. And I would say,
36:41
eight dollars a meal. I need them prepped and ready to roll in in a box. Can you do that?
36:46
And I will get loads of cool people to do that. Now the thing is is that in my opinion, the food, that's really that important when it comes to a conference. Some people would debate me and say, it's actually really important. I got the cheapest shit I possibly could. And I thought it was fun enough. And then that morning or that night or the night before, we would go to Costco and we would buy every single Danish that they had and we would rent a truck and bring it there. And that's how we did stuff. I did it on, really cheaply. You don't always have to do that. But if you wanna make a lot of profit early on in your career, a great way to do it. You also had vendors that were like, like, I I make a keto breakfast bar. You're like, great. You're providing breakfast for everybody. You know, that's your
37:21
you're paying me for marketing and you're giving away free goods to my, you know, oh, you make vitamin water or whatever, like, some you're the you're the startup that wants to be the next vitamin water? Well, here, you need to be here. And Now that's the third that's the fourth point, which is the way to make money is
37:35
you get stuff for free. So usually,
37:38
when I or when I first started, I only typically had revenue from ticket sales. That's actually foolish. As you grow, usually fifty
37:46
fifty
37:47
ticket and sponsors as your revenue. Early on, I didn't charge people that much in sponsor money instead. Anyone that emailed me the head free stuff,
37:54
they would say, hey, we wanna sponsor you or,
37:57
I would email people and say, hey, instead of sponsoring us, just bring your stuff. I've got three hundred great people who are gonna be there. Will you come and bring six hundred bottles of vitamin water or whatever it is? And they would say, absolutely, I'm there. And I would say, awesome. I'm not charging any money. I just want you to provide free stuff. People did that. We got someone to pay seventeen thousand dollars for the lunches because all they did was hand out free stuff, and they would just get a little bit of business from it, and it would be worth So we got tons and tons and tons of free stuff. Right. So the point of I actually didn't provide anything.
38:26
And that is actually quite effective. And then a few more points,
38:30
A lot of times, your sponsorship money is gonna come in the second year because the first year, you wanna just invite the sponsors there, and they're gonna see that it provides value and that you're the real deal, and you'll follow through. And they'll sponsor you the second year. You have to sell the second year sponsorships and sometimes the second year tickets immediately,
38:45
like the day of or or twenty four hours after when you're in the heat of the moment. They're seeing everything. Wow. This is great. Oh, people are loving us
38:53
next year. Are you in? Title sponsorship?
38:57
Exactly. And you wanna do that right away. And the big guys, like the Intuit and the Microsofts of the world, everyone else plan that cycle, actually.
39:04
They'll play that cycle two years out. So you can actually book your two, three, four. Sometimes it's it's that crazy. And you could get hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars from them. And so if you're gonna just so don't worry about getting not getting sponsors the first time, you'll get them, the second time if you do well. And finally, a few points on speakers. So for content,
39:23
I didn't pay anyone. But what I would do is I would try to land the I would put all my work in early on to get the biggest speaker I possibly could right away. Right. For exam, I I convinced the founder of Pandora, Tim Westergen,
39:34
to speak. And he was one of the first people I had. The truth is I kinda lied about who else was coming. I said all these people were all these other people were coming to speak, none of them had had actually committed. But once Tim said yes, then I went to all those other people, and I told him Tim was coming, And they, again, said yes. And it was way easier to land bigger name speakers because I got the wailing. Yeah. So so and you've actually published
39:56
your cold emails that you sent to speakers. I think on either your blog or Neville's blog. So if people search, what do they search for to go find those? I've I have copy pasted those many times already
40:06
because I'm like, this is great. How how Sam did this? Yeah. Just,
40:09
Sampar,
40:10
Neville cold email. Yeah. The the yeah. And you'll see it. And that stuff worked well. And I don't wanna hear this nonsense. If you're showing us if you're gonna start event, well, you already knew everyone.
40:19
No. I know everyone because I hosted the of these events. That's why I have a huge network, not because, I had them before I started this event. Yeah. And so so I think,
40:29
I think what you just said is like a mountain of gold. I think people would pay you thousands of dollars to hear that. How do you do this? You know, as a consultant or a course or something like that? I think you you you gave them the goods for free on this pod, which I think is is amazing and that's what we're all about. The other thing I would say is
40:47
I think there's it's not just about making money doing this. The way I look at this, if I'm if I'm twenty two years old and I don't wanna have, like, the traditional career,
40:56
This is how you bring luck to yourself.
40:59
You go host the party. You go host the host the event. That's how Sam built his world class network. That's how Sam made a bunch of friends. That's how we met. You know, like, that's that's how these things happen. You bring luck to you by going and taking a bunch of action, and all you have to do is be the hustler who connects a bunch and do it in a topic area that you're interested in. So if you're super interested in like biohacking, then you create the biohacker con's conference, don't need to know anyone. You just go figure out who are all the biohackers that I need to speak here. How do I get in front of biohackers? Well, I need to create content about, you know, biohacking and I need to get that in front of people using Reddit or Hacker News or some other source.
41:34
I need to collect emails, then I need to keep telling great stories. And at the end of each of those stories, I need to say, hey, If you like this kind of stuff, there's a thousand people like you, including these big names at this event come, you know, like, buy your ticket now to join.
41:47
I think you one hundred percent should do that. And I think if you're gonna do it, start planning now, and it will change your life. And it's actually not that hard. Yeah. Now last thing, but I'll I'll wrap up. I'll wrap up with this. We've had Ryan Beagelman on the podcast. I actually did you see that email? I sent you. Sean that one.
42:01
So in two thousand and seventeen, I called people who worked at Ryan's company. Ryan's company was I mean, I guess it was the other way around. My company was basically
42:09
Ryan Biegelman's company for tech and business and entrepreneurship new news. Ryan Biegelman ran this thing and started this thing called BizNow Media, which was basically what my company is For real estate. The hustle, but for real estate. And so they did about eighteen million dollars in revenue the year they sold in which they sold for about fifty, sixty million dollars. Seventy five employees. The revenue was made up a third from media. So a third from advertising, a third from an event ticket sales, a third from sponsorships,
42:35
the,
42:35
average revenue
42:37
per event
42:38
team member was around three hundred thousand dollars. They did two hundred and fifty events around the year before. They sold with the average ticket price being eighty thousand eighty dollars. And they wouldn't do an event unless they could make eight thou ten thousand dollars in revenue. Most of the venues that they got were free. And a lot of times, programming was very short. So an event would start at seven AM. It would kick off for an hour of breakfast schmoozing, followed by a ninety minute session for panels and discussion. And then hanging out and talking, and then you'd be back in your office by ten thirty. And it was very effective. And that's my final point about events, which is the content. Actually, not that important. All the speakers do and all the content that you're you're gonna have. All it does is it brings the a particular
43:21
like minded person, and the value is from that people or those people being there. And the content is basically just a way to, as marketing to get the right people. And the way you know that that's true, if you go on YouTube, you can go watch all this talks from Hussicon, like, all the years, they're all on YouTube, and they'll have, like, two thousand views, three thousand views. You would think, oh, if people are coming to hear these great speakers,
43:42
they're willing to fly and pay, you know, basically, it's thousand dollars all in to go have this experience if you're from out of out of town,
43:49
which I think a lot of people are, then wow, you know, ten times more people should be just consuming the content for free from the comfort of their own home. Nope. It's not what happens. People don't actually take the, like, it's just like same thing with Coursera. They have Harvard's All of Harvard's courses online. If you want the Harvard education, you can go get it for free right now online. Turns out people don't want the Harvard education. They want the Harvard label. In the same way. People don't want the content from puzzle con. They want the experience and the network and the kind of serendipity that can happen by going out there and getting amongst it with a bunch of other people and, like, putting yourself in that position. That's really the value that you get.
44:24
Sorry. That's what I should say. That's the value you're providing to the per person who's deciding to come. Don't fool yourself into thinking they're coming to hear this mind blowing content. Although, there is this, like, Shiraj, you put up where You say that's why you're coming and they say that's why they're going, but that's not really what's coming out of it.
44:40
That is that is absolutely correct. And
44:42
I'm showing I I actually if you put this thing if you pull this thing up, Sean, called I don't really wanna share this publicly, but you can look at it. It's called event metrics all time. I've listed forty six events that we've done. And I I list out how many people showed up, how much revenue came from tickets, and how much revenue came from sponsorships.
45:01
There's this one event series that we came up with called two x. It stands for, like, two x chromosomes, meaning women have two x chromosomes, and it was evening event that we host from nine PM until,
45:13
I don't know,
45:14
whenever it ended or sorry, seven PM to nine PM. And we would get a sponsor to pay for it, and we would invite these people to come. The first one had four hundred people. I'm pretty sure towards the end,
45:24
we would get a thousand people So here's one. This one had nine hundred and eighty two people coming. We did twenty four thousand dollars in revenue, seven thousand dollars in sponsors,
45:33
thirty one thousand dollars in,
45:35
total revenue.
45:36
And then it looks like sixteen thousand dollars in cost. Frankly, we probably didn't even need to spend that much. And we made fifteen grand in profit. And then we would host that almost monthly in a variety of cities. We would do LA Chicago yada yada yada. One night, could make you fifteen grand, do that twelve times a year, then you launch a paid community on top of that. You're you got yourself a multi million dollar business inside eighteen months. If you just rinse and repeat this, it works very well. While building a great network,
46:05
and being kind of the hub in between all these different people, The downside, of course, is that event planning fucking sucks, events are stressful. And,
46:13
like, you know, it takes years off my life every time I have to do an event. So I hate events but I love this business model. I love that you laid it out for the person who gets energy and, like, wants to do this. Right? Like, for me, the nightmare job would be wedding planner.
46:27
But for some people, they dream of being a wedding planner. And so for people who find that fun, they they they like that version of stress, that flavor of stress,
46:35
I think you just laid out a pretty amazing playbook.
46:38
Okay. Yes.
46:39
Hopefully, it's a good plan.
46:41
Someone can go do it. And, by the way, if you just Google the hustle two x literally, like, the number two and then the word, and then the letter x, I think what does it say? We did
46:50
we did,
46:51
in two thousand eighteen from that event series, which is just I think we only want we did about two hundred thousand dollars in revenue and a hundred and ten thousand dollars in profit in twelve months. From launch to the first year, it it's pretty good. Anyway, that's that. That's that's information on paid events. Do you wanna do one idea before we go? I'm kind of excited about this. Yeah.
47:12
So yeah.
47:13
Okay. Have you heard of this company future fitness future fit? Yes. I have. You tried it? I was I I tried it. I was one of the I I think I was one of their early users, and they did a good job of
47:25
onboarding me, hand onboarding me, you know, nicely,
47:29
but the product didn't stick with me. But I do think it's a good idea.
47:33
Well, so I don't know exactly how it ended up being, but when I first signed up, it wasn't that unique, but it was slick. It was just you have personal trainer. So I would pay them a hundred dollars a month. A personal trainer made a plan for me, and I would tell them what sports I cared about, what I wanted to be good at, and I would talk to them, I think, weekly,
47:51
about my athletic or about my progress.
47:54
That's what it was when I first signed up, but it was all tracked via a a watch. And they would send you an Apple Watch. Yeah. So, okay. So I think, I think it's evolved a little bit. So, basically, what future fit is is it's your It's a personal trainer. It's really, like, an accountability coach. And that's what I'll call this bucket of ideas I wanna brainstorm within,
48:12
of accountability coaching. So future fit basically says, hey, okay, a personal trainer is like a hundred dollars per session.
48:19
You know, so so let's say it's a hundred and fifty dollars per session in in big cities like New York or SF. And then, you know, a gym membership is, like, fifteen dollars a month. Right? So you you have this, like, big discrepancy there where one is, like, one session is over a hundred dollars. The other one, a whole month is fifteen dollars.
48:34
But then there's something in between. And what these guys did was they said, well, look,
48:38
for a hundred fifty dollars a month, you're gonna get a fitness coach. And they're not gonna come, you know, they're not gonna be with you, you know, like, sort of spotting you while you do your bench press. They're gonna be spotting the accountability of you actually working out. So what they would do, they would ask you about your goals,
48:53
then they would send you a customized workout plan based on your goals. And in reality, they just have a huge library of workouts. It's like, oh, guys who wanna build muscle. Here's a bunch of workouts to choose from. You know,
49:04
woman who wants to have tone, but, okay, you know, here's a bunch of workouts to to to use. So the trainer sends you a a workout that's, you know, for you based on your goals. And then they'll kinda text you and be like, hey, did you get that workout in?
49:16
And, they also connect to Apple Watch so they can kinda see if you did it and they can say, hey, great job or they can be like, hey, what's up, man? Like, don't don't let go of the rope. Like, keep keep going. Like, we said we wanted to do this. Keep keep doing this. And so I think this is a a very smart idea and a very smart business model, which is basically
49:34
the core thing that stops most people from being fit is the habit of fitness, the habit of exercise.
49:40
Yes. If you work out with a trainer, you can get more out of every workout. But for most people, the bigger problem is just sticking to the workout, like, schedule
49:48
and routine and actually, like, not just feeling lazy and not going to the gym. You know? And so I like that they basically accountability is the primary feature of this app. And so I I like that. There is knowledge. There is technique, but it's packaged around accountability. So I was talking to,
50:04
Ben,
50:05
and, I write him in and then he was like, you just had a kid. I'll say, how's it going? How's how's baby life? You know, you're getting any sleep. He's like, actually, we hired,
50:13
A sleep coach.
50:15
Same model. Oh, woman woman in Texas. And she basically
50:19
what's it called? So she's just like an independent person. There's not even like a service. So we talked to before about Patel, which is, like, my friend Damien who's who's starting this company to do this. So he just used, you know, somebody he found that's, like, known to do this in Texas, And so he just said, great, like, you know, here's kind of what we're doing today. Like, here's my here's my current, like, routine.
50:38
You know, we'd like to be getting some sleep and here's my rough schedule. Here's my wife's, you know, rough schedule. So we'd like to make it work. We don't wanna have the baby cry it out. So that's, like, our constraints. So they, you know, your coach basically downloads your goals and your, kind of, like, your limitations,
50:52
your constraints. And I said, great. I got a program for you. And he I was like, oh, wow. What's her technique? He's like, honestly, it's like, not that much. He's like, you know, just
51:01
he needs nap at this time specifically. And, like, during these times. He needs to stay awake. So make sure you're playing with them or you're feeding them. You're doing something then. Don't let them fall asleep. And then, like, at this time, you're gonna put them to bed every single night. And, like, you know, when he cries, you're gonna go in for this many minutes and whatever. It's like a little bit of a coaching on the technique. But he's like, honestly, it's not the technique. He's like, it's just the accountability of, like, She asks us, okay, what time did he nap? What time did he wake up today? What time how did he sleep last night? And because we keep having to report to this lady, it forces us to not like
51:30
throw in the towel and just be like, oh, man, like, I don't know. I give up. Just let him sleep if he wants to sleep right now. It's like, no. Our coach told us he needs to stay awake during these daytime hours. That he's gonna sleep well at night. And he's like, dude, it's amazing. He's now sleeping eight hours a night. He's two months old. Like, life like, the first month was so rough, and the second month is so much better. Just with this coach. He's like, and it's not even like anything that we couldn't have just Google to schedule. He's like, it's how having this woman who we're accountable to to maintain the schedule.
51:56
Is much more important than, like, just taking a schedule off the internet of a in the same way. Like, you can go download a workout off the internet, but this coach helps you stay accountable to actually doing those workouts. So I thought okay.
52:08
Yeah.
52:09
Let's break this down a little bit. Let's talk about what this could work. So I actually use a service call. Do you have your phone on you?
52:15
Okay. Go to my body tutor dot com. My body tutor, like a tutor, like a like a, you know, like a coach tutor. Right. Look at that website.
52:26
How ugly is that? Oh my god. So I used the amount of nineteen ninety I'll just describe this. I'm on a well, it looks like a nineteen nineties website. It says the at the very top, it's like this awful logo, and then it says celebrating two thousand and seven to two thousand twenty one, fourteen years. So that, you know, this has been around for a while. I guess, two thousand seven. Yeah. And so what it is, it's a guy named Adam Gilbert, and he's got a variety of people who are on the,
52:48
on the payroll, and you pay I was paying five hundred dollars a month. And all I would do, it was very simple. I would every time I ate a meal, I would take a picture and he would comment on it. Once a week, I would do a twenty or ten minute phone call, and they would say, how's it going?
53:04
And the stress that knowing I was being watched Right. Made me change my habits and I got and I lost weight. It's almost like when you're writing in a Google doc, that stress makes you do it. That's what this is. Right. When you see somebody else's cursor there. Okay. So so I just started using one because I was like, oh, when when we when you told me about this, I started looking into, like, okay, where else could you do this? And I thought, well, it's anywhere you have a goal,
53:28
and that the goal, like, it's not that you need, like, some specific strategy that no one's ever heard of. It's like, no, you kind of even even know what to do. It's just helpful to have somebody who's on your side in your corner supporting you and keeping you focused, keeping you on track. And so productivity. I think is a big one. So,
53:46
you're probably like me. You know, you have, like, goals for what you wanna do, and probably everybody listening to this is, like, you know, I wanna make five more sales this month. I wanna get five new clients. So I wanna grow twenty percent this month or I wanna, like, grow my email list to five thousand people or whatever. Matter what your goal is. You have a goal. I wanna get promoted.
54:04
So you you have a goal. And then, like, your progress is basically, like, sometimes you need tactical help, like strategic advice. But really, what I what I've found for myself is that you just need pressure. I need accountability. I need to make each day count. And if I just get, like, you know, like, twenty five out of the thirty days a month to count, I'm gonna actually hit my goals. But if I'm, like,
54:26
kinda had off day there. I was distracted. I went down this rabbit hole of doing this other thing. Oh, I got stressed out or, you know, like, whatever. If I lose four of those days of, like, I didn't actually, like, make the most of that day. Now I'm down to, like, twenty days out of the thirty. And I'm, like, I'm off track. I didn't get my goal. And then, like, what's that difference of, like, staying on track towards your thing and and off is, like, for me, it's accountability. It's why I work well with a co founder because a co founder helps you, like, every day, you're kinda focused on, alright, what do I need to do today? Do I get it done? At the end of the day, did I, like, make enough progress or not? Like, that sort of thing. And so I found this service. So You can do this, actually, if you want. Anybody who's listening to this. So you can basically go and,
55:08
it's called, what's called, we focus. And it's basically you and your coach, and it helps you focus on getting to your goals, for your professional goals. So anything you wanna do with your work or your projects. And so you just text this number. Right? I'll I'll put in the description. It's four three four four three four five zero five four seven six nine. I'll put it in the comments, but, basically, it's four three four five zero five Grove is the kind of like the the handle of it. And you pay a hundred fifty bucks a month, and you basically get a coach. And the coach basically just takes you At the first, it's like, alright. What's your goals for the month? Alright? It's it's it's April. What would make for a great April?
55:41
And honestly, just question is actually pretty powerful because you gotta, like, articulate it. You say something, but then you realize like, oh, I wanna really make progress on my book. Well, what does bank progress mean? Like, you wanna have a draft of that's, like, a hundred pages. Would that be the goal? And so they help you, like, actually set a good goal. And then on a day to day basis, they sort of, like, it's kind of like the manager you need. It's like they kinda nag you enough to make you get it done, but they're not annoying about it.
56:07
And this is wifocus
56:08
dot app. There's no app. There's no there's no website. There's no app. No. What's the It's just a phone number. It's literally just a phone number attached.
56:15
And so they they have these, like, coaches.
56:17
Wow. Okay. So I can't be more than I was using it. And so so I was like, okay. What's the number? So you just gave me four three four five zero five four seven six nine. And so, anyways, they have, like, a wait list, I think, but you I got let in recently. So so, basically, you you pay hundred fifty bucks. And then what happens is the coach will basically say in the morning. They'll be, like, alright. Like, we said your goal was, let's say, to, you know, grow revenue by twenty percent this month. And you said you're gonna do that by,
56:42
like, ramping up your sales efforts. So it's like, alright. Cool. Hey, man. Hey, you know, it'll be like, hey, Sam, like,
56:47
like, let's get it today. Like, you know, what what would make today a great day how what would be really satisfying at the end of the day if you've done what? And you're like, oh, I wanna make, like, ten ten sales calls. Like, alright. Great. And then, like, in the evening or the afternoon, they'll check-in. They'll be like, you know, like, remember, keep, you know, keep the vision in mind. We wanna get there, like, go for it. Make sure you get those ten in today. At the end of the day, they'll they'll text you something that'll be like, you know, hey, did you get the ten calls in? You know, if not, you know, what do you think held you up today? Let's reflect on it. Or if you got it, it's, like, awesome. Like, you know, high five plus, like,
57:19
think back to one of those calls where you really kicked ass, like,
57:22
Like, what made it kick ass? And so it just helps you and you can put in as much or as little as you want. So if you just want it to be like,
57:29
just check-in with me once a day or once a week, It'll do that. But if you want it to be, like, more reflective, like, I like it where it's like,
57:36
alright. Let me let me think back on my day. Like, what's what's something I could have done better today? So I actually disagree with you strongly on this one. This is far too broad. I would wanna make it incredibly narrow. So, for example,
57:50
we guarantee you're gonna be a better writer or sorry, the service to make you write more. Right. And you have to log in every day. And if you don't get a thousand words, you get,
57:59
you get your coach yells at you. Like, dude, what the fuck? Do you even want? Do really actually wanna be a good writer because you're not writing.
58:05
And so I actually would make it far more vertical specific.
58:08
For golf. So relationship, I think, could really actually work. Yep.
58:13
You know what I would do? Another one, I would just call it gratitude. Right. I'm gonna make you happier by hey. Why didn't you write what you're
58:19
why didn't you write here what you were thankful for this morning? What the hell?
58:24
You could tell gratitude.
58:25
What else? We sub you sub relationships. I actually don't know how you would do a relationship one. Well, I think I think for I think for relationships, it's like, you know,
58:32
people think relationship is when people say they need they want a better relationship, what they're really saying is,
58:37
fuck my partner does these
58:38
things and it annoys me? Why don't they just not do those things and not annoy me? And in reality,
58:43
to make a better relationship, it's like you need to be the best version of yourself in the relationship. And if your partner agrees to do the same for themselves,
58:50
like, you'll have an amazing relationship over time. And so, in this so what you would do for relationships is you would basically say, awesome.
58:57
What is the best version of you you're gonna bring to your relationship? And it would just coach you on you doing your part and not doing tit for tat measuring. Oh, I'll behave if I I'll be great if they are great. It's like, well, that's a recipe for failure. It's I'll be great because that's who I am. That's what works in in the context of being a great boyfriend, great girlfriend, great husband, whatever.
59:16
Okay. So that could work for relationships. So we've,
59:20
diet and fitness is easy. I think that's easy. Yeah. You know, you have to run, you have to hit the smile list. Anywhere you have a goal. So it could be, like, as narrow as people who are training for a triathlon, but I know a lot of people hire, like, a marathon. They hire a marathon coach who helps them, like, structure their ramp up running and all that stuff. So it could be as narrow as any it's anything of a goal on. So the reason I like this one is because my I have, like, goals when it comes to work. Right? And I know that if I can just if I can be a little bit more productive every single day, if I could be a little bit better at my projects, make a little more progress every day, hundred fifty dollars in a month is like nothing compared to the value I create by actually doing better in my project. So it's anywhere you have a goal, fitness, diet,
01:00:00
relationships.
01:00:02
And so, you know, whatever those goals are for people, I think that accountability coaching is gonna be a bigger thing because It's like anywhere that there's a, like, so for example, relationships. You have a relationship therapist or a couple's therapy. Right? So you have this thing. You could go pay hundred fifty dollars an hour
01:00:18
or you could read a ten dollar book. Well, now there's something in the middle. It's like a human on the other side, but you don't have to pay a hundred fifty dollars an hour. You pay a hundred fifty dollars because they're digital and they're managing multiple clients this way in a light touch model. Same thing with fitness. You can have a personal trainer or you can have a gym membership or this is the thing in the middle, your accountability coach. So same thing with, you know, work. You can have an executive coach who's, like, you know, thousands of dollars as your as your CEO coach, or whatever your job is, if you're not a CEO. You have an executive coach, or you could go read a management book. Well, this is something in the middle. It's a way for you to be better at work with accountability
01:00:52
that's the model I see here. And I bet there's a bunch of areas where this could apply.
01:00:57
How big do you think future fit is? Future fit says that they're they're trying to get to a thousand coaches this year. They've raised thirty five million dollars,
01:01:06
series b. So I think they're, you know, they're probably doing fairly well. They're kind of in that Peloton model. Right? They just need, like, you know, if you're making a hundred fifty dollars subscription per month, it doesn't take that much to be at fifteen million dollars, you know, a a a year of of revenue. It doesn't take that much to be at a hundred fifty million dollars a year. Like, it isn't a chi these are achievable numbers as you get like ten thousand subscribers,
01:01:26
hundred thousand subscribers type of thing. I don't know what their subscribers So the issue is churn, though. The issue is, of course, churn. Yeah. Because and I think that's why the harder the goal,
01:01:36
the more the churn. This is the unfortunate part of this business. It's like fitness.
01:01:41
People fall off that horse. And even if your product is great, Sometimes they just stop wanting to work out eat right. You know? So I think diet is gonna have a lot of churn. I think fitness is gonna have a lot of churn.
01:01:51
Work. I think we'll have a little bit less churn, but maybe, you know, still we'll have churn.
01:01:56
Relationships. I don't know where that would fall. But I don't know. I find this pretty fascinating. So And I I'm trying it for a few days. I like it.
01:02:04
Have you invested in future fit? No. I invested in fitness AI, which is a AI version of it.
01:02:09
I wouldn't invest in future fit because of the churn. That was that would be something I'd be concerned about.
01:02:15
But I would love to own one of these companies. Yeah. Totally. I've I for sure would like to own it.
01:02:21
Do we wanna do one more? No. I gotta run.
01:02:24
Alright. Well, Do by the way, do you know that we get criticized for Irish Goodbye? We just end the podcast.
01:02:31
It's our thing. I actually do the same thing with my family Like, if I'm talking to my mom or my sister, like, there's no, like, okay. Well, you know, I'm gonna go run to the store now. So it's been great chatting. No. It's like, gotta go bye. Or I'll just be like, bye. And I'll just hang up the phone. Yeah. I do the exact same thing. They never imagined. And they can do the same right back to me. You don't even need to tell me why you need to leave. If you need to leave, You just yell by and you hang up before I reply.
01:02:54
I do this at gatherings too. I don't I I actually don't say goodbye. I just walk out. Yeah. I do that too. Because I think it's think. Goodbye's are pointless. Like, what's the point? It's just like, I don't know. It's just a lot of effort for something that's uncomfortable for me to do and, like Yeah. Once I've decided, I'm moving on to my next activity. Like, I've moved on already. It's too late. I'm here. I'm there. I'm not here anymore. I'm gone.
01:03:15
Right. Like, I gave you the beginning in the middle. Don't need an end. The ending's stupid. You just need the it's it's pointless.
01:03:21
Alright. So that's the end of the podcast.
01:03:30
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
01:03:34
I put my all in it like a day's off on a road. Let's travel never looking back.
00:00 01:03:41