Encarta | Shaan Challenges Sam to Ignore His Limits, Michael Rubin is the Billy of the Week, and More

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People,

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people DM us a lot of interesting ideas. My reply to all of them, they go, what do you think about this? I always reply with two things. I always say it's an amazing idea.

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And then I say, when are you launching?

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I feel like I can root a word. I know I could be what I want to.

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I put my all in it like the days off on a road. Let's travel never look. Alright. Let's, let's start the episode here.

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Alright. What, I've got actually two interesting things to tell you. The first,

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this company reached out. It's a famous publication that you know of, and I don't wanna say it out loud yet. But they want us to go to Baja Mexico to ride motorcycles and film a series on, like, a weekend adventures. Are you interested in that?

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What for? Like, they, yeah, what's what's the catch? You want me to come out here and surf and ride motorcycles?

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What's in it for you?

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I guess I could talk about it. I haven't asked if I could talk about it. It's just like it's a the without giving too much weight, they have a, just a web series that goes in, like, on TV. It gets for wet and TV. They have a TV channel, and they have this whole series where they it's all about, like, nine to five workers, like, normal yuppie jobs and you have adventures Friday to Sunday. So, like, what all can you do on a weekend?

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Okay. Alright. That seems super up the alley and kind of up the alley too, but, you know,

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that's that's their suggestion. Do you have a better idea on, like, a weekend adventure? It's an adventure publication.

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Yeah. I don't do motorcycles. That's my only thing. I don't do motorcycles. And after Kobe, I also don't do helicopters. But,

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I love surfing. Serving is a cool thing. I suck at it, but It's fun. So I would do that. Well, if you come up with a better idea, then then pitch it.

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But they, like, it's all paid for and everything.

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Oh, okay. Great. Yeah. Let's do that. Why not? Look at your fitness influence or life is already coming in handy.

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So you the what I wanna talk about was you're getting really fit too. Do you and I think it's pretty inspiring. Coming from an influencer

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coming from an influencer like you, the fitness world, that means a lot to me? The

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hardly. But do you so do you think it's do you have you has your body or I know your body has changed. Has your brain changed? Do you think? And your attitude?

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Of course. That changes first. Right? Yeah. The attitude changes first. The brain changes first. The body changes, you know, slowly over time. But, yeah, for sure. But I,

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like, okay. If people if I took off my shirt, you know, nobody's gonna be super impressed with me just yet, but I'm pretty impressed with me. And that's kind of my own opinion, I I hold in higher regard than anyone else's. So, yeah, I basically, I went from, like,

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kinda, like,

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I don't know. I was I would you be, like, he's fat? Would fat was I fat? I might have been fat.

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Didn't think of myself like that guy being a monthly photo. And I'll be like, what the hell? I look fat here. Then I'm like, every photo, I look fat. Maybe I'm just fat. That's kind of what what I reach the conclusion of at that time.

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You were getting overweight. I think that, like, I think that, you know, there's, like, a, like, a, like, a definition of obese. Like, you know, it's a body fat percentage. And and, I guess, if we use obese and fat, Yeah. I would say you're overweight, but I don't think you're overweight now. Yeah. So and and and so now I've been training hard

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for, like, a year. I started off doing two days a week, three days a week, and I just cranked it up to five days a week now with the trainer.

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It was always supposed to be five days a week, but the the days I was supposed to be doing on my own, I was, you know, really half assing it or no assing it. So I would say on average, I was doing, like, three or four days a week before, and now I'm doing five or six days a week. Pretty intense. And I gotta say,

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don't know why you're bringing it up, so I don't know where you're going with this, but it's amazing. And I could talk about it all day because it's, like, the best thing I've done all year. So, you know, if you're if you're

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If you're listening to this and whatever investment you're making right now under health, I guarantee you that if you upped that investment, you would only thank yourself. And, that's kind of where I'm coming from here is, like, yeah, I'm I'm super happy with making this shift, and it's totally great.

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I have this. The reason I was bringing this up is I have friend who is incredibly wealthy. Like, I would have to imagine, like, thirty million dollars wealthy. And,

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he he was, like, I wanna get in shape. What routine are you using? And I'm like, that's a bad question. Who cares about the routine? If I was you, I would just hire a coach. It'll be like four hundred dollars a month. And he was like, wow, that's expensive. And I'm like, Dude, you've got one body and one life.

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Like, I for me, my fear is when I see someone who's my age are forty, fifty, sixty, and their body hurts. So they can't walk, and they can't, they, like, struggle to sit down on the floor or something like that. I'm like, that's hell. Right? Like, you're just you're in this you're in this shitty home that's falling apart and you can't get out. And I was like, why, you know, you just bought this fancy house. Why not also buy a fancy body? And not to, like, look good naked, but all but, like, feel good. And so I was just thinking about it. And I and I think we talk about investing. And I'm like, I I think that's that's gotta be the best investment.

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For sure.

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Have a we have a mutual friend. I can't say the name on here because what they said is funny, but I'll share what they said. So they're wealthy. They're probably like, think they have, like, you know, a hundred million dollars, you know, in the bank.

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And,

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and they said this thing, they were, they're, like, always doing kinda, like, fitness y stuff They're not like it wouldn't look at them and say, oh, yeah. This person's clearly, like, you know, ripped out of their mind or they're not just, like, super jagged. That's that's not that. They live a very healthy lifestyle. And whatever wherever they go, like, in their day, their workout is like a key part of their day and they don't sacrifice it. They don't get they don't get too busy for it. And so I asked him about that. And I said, you know, man, it seems like you're really taking this seriously. He goes,

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yeah. You know, the way I look at it is if you're rich, you have no excuse to be fat.

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I go what? He goes, look, if you don't have the money and you're all all your you're just you're trying to support your family, you gotta work two jobs, you gotta shop at certain stores. You know, at McDonald's, you know, you gotta eat what you can afford sometimes.

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Okay. Fine.

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Like, still, no, not great. And, you know, I I want you to not be in that situation, but, like, I definitely understand because if you're rich and you're fat, that's on you, bro. And, and that's how I feel now is, like, when you said it, I was, like, you know, that's actually so true, which is if you had all the resources, but you didn't make the investment that matters,

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that's sort of silly. Right?

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And so,

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that kind of trick that that kind of was one little seed that got planted in my head. I'll tell you something else that's been funny.

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My trainer recently.

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So you're app you're absolutely right in what you said, which is it's not the workout routine.

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It's not the It's not what you do. It's not the workout program. Right? It's not like somebody has some secret formula.

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For most people, it really doesn't matter. Like, for most even if you just walked fifteen thousand steps a day and you ate, only maybe twenty three hundred calories, you're gonna, like, look pretty good. And you're gonna feel probably pretty good. If you're not working out five days a week, that's your problem. It has nothing to do with the routine. It doesn't matter what you did in the routine. Like, just start with doing any workout and then make it better over time. And, like, yeah, when you're when you're Sam status, then the actual routine does matter because,

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you know, you're you're already at the kinda ninety ninth percentile. You're just trying to optimize at the end and you're trying to certain details to to pop. So, yeah, then your routine matters. But for most people, it doesn't matter. But I'll tell you something my trainer told me that was counterintuitive. He goes, I

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we were talking about, like, my body has really changed. My arms have changed. My chest has changed, but my stomach still looks like the stomach of a guy who's not super in shape. Like, I'm I don't have, like, a six pack. That's not even the kitchen, bro. And so so that's what I said. I was telling him I was like, oh, yeah. But that's all diet. Right? And he goes, he goes, you know, everybody says that. And he goes,

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they say, you count how I'll train your diet, all all the stuff. He goes, and I get what they mean. He goes, but I'll tell you what, intensity over diet all day.

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And I go, what? He goes, intensity over diet. Watch. He goes, don't even touch your diet right now. Don't worry about your diet. Don't be feel guilty when you eat something. Don't, like, count every calorie. Don't go way out your chicken breast. Like, don't do any of that shit.

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All I want you to do is commit to cranking up the intensity when we're here in this this part of the gym. So he's like, if you're, like, let's say zero to ten, what's the intensity of your workout today? Like, on average, I say, oh, you're just, like, an eight He's like, great. All we're gonna do is we're gonna take that to a nine. We're just gonna make every workout at least a nine on the intensity level. And some days, we're gonna be hitting nine and a half And some days, we're gonna even hit a ten. But right now, I just want you to focus on a nine. And he goes, watch what happens. And he's been so right, which is that it was really hard to just change my diet,

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but it was that much easier to just crank up the intensity in working out. And it's not the intensity will all of a sudden shed my fat. It's that when I put the intensity in here, diet becomes a much easier decision because I really, like, laid it all out during the workout part. And so the desire to, like, throw it all away for, you know, this, like, pleasure, these chips, or this whatever, like, it's just not there. And now I am at first, I thought he's full of shit. I did not believe him. But now that now that I'm actually trying it, I just said, hey. Let let me let me follow what you say. You're my coach. I understand what you're saying. And this is now applied to many other things in my life. So now even in business,

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we're I was talking to to Ben about one of our business plans. And it's like, oh, should we do this or this or this? It was all about the plan, the how? The route you know, what is the strategy?

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And I basically said, fuck the strategy.

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Let's just take our intensity up. He's like, what? I said, whatever strategy we're doing, let's just agree that, like, right now, we're probably executing any of our strategies

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at a at a seven or eight Let's just execute any of these bullshit strategies out of nine and a half. Let's just see what happens. And this is just working in all areas of my life now. Because now when you put a nine nine or nine and a half in ten city, you kind of, like, wanna figure out the right plan. Right? It's, like, if I'm gonna put in this intensity, it better be on the right thing, and your brain will solve the the which path should I choose problem? A different way because of intensity. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a little No. It does. Mypack.

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The this weekend, I went to f one. Formula One racing. In Austin, it was, like, the hot thing to do. And I went with this guy. Have you heard of, what's it called? Jungle Scout. You know, Jungle Scout? Yeah. Yeah. We've talked about it. It's the tool that, basically, if you go on Amazon and you wanna see what products are selling, how much how much of this instant pot gets sold every week, jungle Scott's this little extension you can click on. It'll tell you what pro how much sales the products on Amazon have. It's kind of expensive, but it's a cool product. It's a big business. Like, you know, if you just Google it, like, I you'd you'd have to if you could put the pieces together that they're not far from a hundred million in recurring revenue,

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big business. Yeah. And started as a Google Chrome plug in, which is interesting. This guy, Greg, he's Neville's good buddy. My buddy's Neville. So that's how I got brought into this thing. I went with him, and he's very nice, very kind, easy to talk to, but incredibly intense. And here's just a tiny example of what when I see this and I'm like, I like, I always see, like, whenever I'm around certain people, I always notice this. When when when intense people do things like this, so for example, the race had just ended

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some people, I don't know how they got onto it, but they got onto the track. I guess they just went on and took photos. And he's like, let's go. And he just starts walking over And I'm like, well, there's no, like, gate and, like, every, and, imagine, like, huge stands and then you walk down the stands and there's, like, a fence that's quite tall. And he goes, He's like, well, let's go. I'm like, there's no there's no gate. And he goes, no, no, no, we're just gonna jump the fence. Everyone was staring at us. He just walks up without hesitation puts his hands up there, climbs up on this fence and just hops, he goes, come on. Let's go. And I when I'm

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I'm I don't like confrontation that much. I don't like doing a lot of things that people stare at me. And I was like, what? You just did it. Like, you didn't even think twice. And I've been with people who are, like, really successful entrepreneurs, and they'll be, like, aligned. And, of course, there's like

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a jackass move. And they're like, no. No. No. We're not waiting in line. We're we're just gonna we're gonna walk in and we're just gonna we're gonna do this. And, that's like an example of that intensity. Have you ever noticed, like, dude, how many friends that do, like Dude, you you're like this. You're an intense dude. I've noticed this from you. And the line example is perfect. When we were going to do our live show, remember, in Miami,

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and the airport was just packed. I don't know why. It was, like, six in the morning. The airport was so packed. We got there early, and we were still gonna miss our flight. Like, the security line was, like, two miles long.

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And we waited, we waited, we waited, and then you were, like, You just, like, some switch flipped inside you that was just, like,

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okay. We have all the reasons

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to, like, do do, like, just to miss this flight. Basically, it's, like, alright. We got here early. Look. It's just a long line. There's nothing we could do.

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You know, the airport is packed. To COVID just it's all that circumstance.

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And then I literally we didn't even you didn't even say anything. You were just like, okay. I'm gonna go. And then you just left the line so you gave up your spot, which was like a risk. Because we waited for, like, an hour and a half. Yeah. We snuck into the the pre the TSA. You go to TSA pre pre check. You're not TSA pre check. You just hand the guy your ticket and he's like, bro, there's no pre check on this and you were like, oh, yeah, my, my wife pre check. It was she's it didn't print or you're like, you're like, I'm pre check.

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He's like, look at it. He's like, there's no pre check. You're like, I'm pre check. It just didn't print. Right?

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And then he's like, your will just dominated his, and then you just got through the line. And I'm And we were like, come on, Sean. I'm still standing there. I'm like, shit. If I go and say the exact same thing, that may work. And so I I was like, I need to crank my intensity up. So I went and I bought clear at that moment. I just, I went and spent two hundred bucks buying clear,

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and then I, like, the clear will they'll escort you to the front of the line and, like, take you through TSA. And then it was like, you called me and you're like, dude, you got a sprint because you were at the gate. You're like, you got a sprint. So I didn't have my shoes on cause it's the security line or whatever. So I'm holding my shoes. Didn't even have time to put it back on. I'm in my socks and I sprinted to the gate. Like, I've never sprinted before, and I hate running. So I hate I hate ran my way all the way there, but it was your contagious intensity. Another example,

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we wanted to build our podcast studio.

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And I was like, we had kind of been talking about it, and it got to that dangerous point that happens where you have an idea, a thing you wanna do, and then you've talked about it. But you're not closing.

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You're just somewhere in the middle, and this is where dreams go to die. And I think most people, it would just sort of, like,

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It would either fade and you just don't do it, or you kinda half ass it. And I remember, like, in a twenty four hour period, you just blew up my phone. You were, like, DMming me, like,

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pictures of every other podcaster. You're like, how about this? This, this. Just tell me, of these three, which one do you want? I like number two. Number two. And I'm like, yeah, sure. Number two. Like, great. Number two. Okay. I found the chair on Amazon. Actually, let's drive to these three places and, like, let's go pick it up today. What time are you free? Are you free in ten minutes? I'll be at your house. And you came, we picked me up, and we drove to IKEA, then we drove to another furniture spot, then we drove to this bootleg spot in Oakland. And then while we're at the bootleg spot in Oakland, it was like not really happening. And then, and we went to another spot. And then literally, the sales lady recognized your intensity.

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She came up to us. It was a big furniture store. She comes up. She goes, You guys look like you're you guys look like you're ready to buy. I don't know what she says. She said something like you guys look like you know what you want, and you were like, yes. I'm looking for this red chair. Because I have a show and I want it to pop in the thumbnail. And it's gotta look like this. And she, like, ran into the back and tried to find us one. And then you, like, got the whole thing done and somebody meanwhile, somebody was painting the whole wall, you're like, we need to paint the wall. So you, like, hired some guy to go paint the wall over the weekend. And by Monday oh, that was a Friday. By Monday, the studio was done. And I share this because

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that's a level of intensity.

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That you that I know you have, that I've observed in all of my successful friends. They have this this tray or not all I shouldn't say some people have been doing style, but

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very common that people who are success have this level of intensity when they do something massive action.

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And,

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and it's contagious. It's contagious to the people around you. And like the lady in the store,

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there's a there's this principle that's kinda like this. So I'm reading this book. Sorry to go on a tangent here, but I'm reading this book. You every everybody's heard of it. You've heard of it. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Have you read love it? Have you actually read the book?

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Years ago. But it's one of those books that you should reread years probably. I should probably reread it. It's pretty amazing. I've had the book for, like, ten years. I never even opened it because I was kinda like, oh, I think I get the idea. And so I actually started reading it two nights ago. And he tells a story of this guy who wanted to work with Thomas Edison. He's like, this guy had a clear idea. He's I wanna work with Thomas Edison. He goes to notice two things.

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He said,

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he knew exactly what he wanted, not just, like, I want a job in a lab, like, no. I wanna work with Thomas Edison. This guy is an amazing inventor. Because the second thing is I don't wanna work for him. I wanna work with him as a business partner.

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And so he's like, you know, problem is I have no qualifications, and I'm literally not even the same city, and I've never met the guy. I have no access to him. I don't know anyone who knows him. But he didn't let any of those limitations. Those limitations were sort of irrelevant to the guy. So, sure enough, he buys a a train ticket. He goes to where Thomas Edison is. Barges through the door and he says,

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you know, mister Addison,

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I'm here to work with you. Like, I I think you're great. And I think, you know, we'll we'll do great work together. I'm here to work with you.

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And, Edison's like, what the fuck? Like, you know, we're not even hiring, but, like and he said something. Edison has a quote in the book, which is, like,

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Even though this man had no qualifications, and I had never seen this person as a complete stranger,

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there was something about the intensity of his presence that told me this person has their mind set on something, and they're gonna make it happen. And that sort of reminded me of this like, common thing that's I've I've seen in a lot of people and in myself in situations, which is once you get to that level of absolute certainty,

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And you carry yourself, people will literally just start to respond to you differently because they just see

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this person is, like, on a mission. They are a man on a mission and, like, I made the I either need to get out of the way or I need to get behind them and help them do this. And that has, like, served me I have one crazy story that served me well, but Is that ever happened to you? Or have you ever seen anything like yourself or others?

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Yeah. I call it being an animal. And, like, Paul Graham, I or he's the one who who said he he's like, a lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups. He goes, basically,

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the one word you wanna use to describe them is, are they an animal?

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Right. And do they just get shit done? And I remember, like, I remember talking to my friend, Jake, who went and worked at this company called T spring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, was it, like, work for Walker, the guy who runs it and he goes, he's an animal. Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks. I'm getting in touch with these folks, and he just googled, like, their customer service number, and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, guys, watch this. And he just calls them and goes, hey, can I talk to this one person? Hey, this is Walker. I wanna make this happen. What do we gotta do? And he like,

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and that's an that's a very easy example.

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Dude, I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, my

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I've talked a little bit about this before, but my for very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You've done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I, in only tried sushi for the first time, like, a week before that. And that's why I even had this idea. I was like, oh, sushi's fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life? And,

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And so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy, Trevor, we were sitting around at at our apartment.

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And I was like, you know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like, chopped,

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iron chef. You just love watching this food chat. I never understood it because again, I'm not a foodie. I was like, why do you wanna watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.

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But, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously.

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And we're watching a throw down bobby flay, and there's this sushi chef that comes on. And he's like, he know obviously, he knows this shit about sushi. Otherwise, he wouldn't be on the food network. He says, his qualifications were like, you know, I'm in LA. I got my restaurant.

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But I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs. So we were like, oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs. And he had, like, this swag to him, but and we had interviewed three chefs locally,

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and they were all, like, you know, think about, like, a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like, zero kind of out outward person out study, very Conservative. Traditional

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conservative. And they just looked at us, like, you are, like, kind of, like, besmerching the name of Suji Sushi, like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi. No. No. Thank you. And so we I saw this guy and he had he had big personality, which is why he was on TV.

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And I said, we need a guy like this. I go, and he's, like, and Trevor's like, yeah. Where are we gonna find him? I go. He's right in front of us. We need this guy. And he's, like, okay.

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And it's just, so we quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He's like, she turns his laptop and then he goes, here's his number.

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And that's, like, you know, challenge accepted. Like, if your friend shows you that, it's like, or you're gonna, it's like, hey, that girl over there. You gotta

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go now. Now you gotta go approach that girl. So I pick up the phone and I call. And I don't know why I said this. I didn't I didn't have this planned, but it's exactly what you just said. The guy Walker said.

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He picks says somebody picks up the phone, and I'm so used to getting the runaround that I didn't expect it to be him. So I go,

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I need to talk to Philip y. How do I make that happen?

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And then he he goes.

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So I didn't say, may I please speak to the Which, by the way, that's the right way to ask, which is how do I make this happen? It just because there's always an answer. It came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity,

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and I was kind of nervous. And so, like, I was just in this heightened state, and so that's just what came out. He goes, is this Philip? Talk to me. And I hadn't planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, oh,

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I said, Philip,

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You've never met me, but,

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I'd like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me ten minutes,

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to hear me out, hear out my plans. I think you'll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you're doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really take that and and really blow it up. And he goes, he goes, what's the plan? How old am I at this time?

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Yeah. I I was a senior in college. So twenty twenty one. Wow. And he goes, what's the plan? And now I didn't have a plan, Psycho. I go, you know what? It's gonna be easier for me to email this to you. What's your email address? And I bought myself two days to, like, create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so

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A bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us.

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We're going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm, basically, and meets us. We fly to his. I live on his couch in LA. He's he like vets us, but he basically puts us through the grinder to see. Are we the type b we want to work with? Which I have I don't know how the story's gonna end, but at that point, to me, that's a success.

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Already, it's a success. Already, we turn this joke of an idea

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into, like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I'm starting a shoe sushi restaurant,

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but,

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you know, this food network chef's on board, or he's, like, kind of on board. He's talking to me at least. He's flying out here next week. So we gotta prepare for that. I'm not going to class right now. I gotta prepare for my chef. And

22:26

so later, months later, when we we finally a deal with him. We close this deal. And he's like, dude, you don't know how many people. He's like, because celebrities eat at my restaurant. He's like, you don't know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, oh, this restaurant's so small. You don't even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I'll put up the money. You need to expand. He goes, and I never did business with any of them. And here I am with three dipshits in college. I decided to go into business with you and everyone thinks I'm crazy. But you know why? And I go, why? He goes, do you remember what you first said to me? And I was like, no. And he goes, He goes, you called, and you said, I need to talk to Philip. How do I make that happen? And he goes, that he's like, there was something in the way you said it that just told me This guy's gonna do something. This guy's gonna make something happen. And he goes, he goes, if you literally had not said that phrase, I don't think I would have even ever heard you out. Because this is just another one of these people who say, I wanna start a restaurant with you. I'd like to partner with you blah blah blah. And I was like, wow, it didn't realize these things make that big of a difference. And I don't think it's the word I think it's the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time. That's great. I like that. How how did it end?

23:28

We partner with him. We go live on his couch. We train in his restaurant in LA.

23:33

And,

23:34

so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me, the process for making sushi. So I don't know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?

23:45

Just like the yeah. I guess so. Like, they use that, like, a piece of wood.

23:49

Yeah. Little bamboo. There's a bamboo roller, basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, You gotta put the rice on it. Now the rice is sticky rice. If you've ever had Asian food pain in the house, sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you and so there's a little problem. I I didn't even realize there's a problem. Right? I'm sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first, he says, just shatter me. Sit here and watch me. I said, okay. I'm watching And he's just making sushi. I'm kind of getting it, but I don't even know what I'm looking for. Right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don't even know what you're looking for. You don't know what the details are that matter. Until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, I'll tell you who it was in a second. He goes, alright, Sean. You're up. And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot,

24:32

wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don't know anything about anything. I've just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, you've ever watched, like, what's that Jiro Dream of Stuttgart? Jiro. Yeah. It's like a five decade. The tradition is, like, you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegar rice. It's sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So,

25:00

so I didn't expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me the fire. Not only does he throw me in the fire. He throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it's Daryl from the office, if you've ever watched office is Daryl, and Daryl's a regular there. So he kinda knew, like, wait, wait. Daryl

25:17

from the office is He's the warehouse guy. He's black warehouse guy. Oh, black dude. Ben Robinson, I think his name is. I don't know if that's his name. Maybe that's his name. It's just something like that. But Daryl. I know Daryl. Course. So so it's Daryl. So I'm like, oh, fuck. I gotta make sushi and I make it for Daryl. And sushi, it's like the guy's staring at you. You're two feet away from each other. There's no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I'm making it in this guy's face. And, and so here Daryl Philbin. Sorry. Not bad. Daryl Phil. And so I So I first, I just freeze. I'm just standing there and I'm looking down at the fucking bamboo. I have seaweed bamboo and rice. And I'm like, okay. How did he do this? And then I'm freezing. And then he walks away. I'm like, shit. Okay. I gotta figure this out before he comes back. He comes back up to me. He hands me a shot of, of sake.

26:00

And he goes, drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll shot. And I so I take a shot. And then I'm like, okay.

26:08

I grabbed the rice because I'm like, I gotta spread the rice on the on the seaweed. I grabbed the rice and immediately I know I've done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand. That as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it's like not gonna leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed and my hand is like a rice glove.

26:24

And he goes, He's laughing, and he's he said he goes, you know what? Every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap. He goes, that clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand and you clap and that removes all the moisture that likes kinda like splashes the moisture off your hand. So you just just enough so that when you touch the device, it's not gonna stick to your And so I was like, oh, shit. And then he kinda showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kinda like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watch Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost,

26:53

came in and he ordered food or whatever. It's crazy. Anyway, so that's that's part of how that story ended. Have you heard of, wanna talk about intensity and and billy of the week because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I've ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?

27:10

Michael Rubin. Is that the fanatics guy?

27:13

Yes. So he's interesting because he's a young guy. He's probably not yet fifty, but if he is fifty, he's early fifties. And his name's Michael Rubin. He's been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he's worth like ten billion dollars. Like, you know, he's worth a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorothy money. And yeah, he's like pretty under talked about. And so this guy listened to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So, basically, he's in the news now, but I'm gonna explain his background. So at the age of twelve, he started, a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents basement. And then two years later, at fourteen, he got, twenty five hundred dollars in Barbitzvah gifts, and he leased a,

27:52

an office or a shop near his parents house, And by age sixteen, he was already in a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in debt and had to settle with creditors and his dad had to,

28:01

pay him, give give him bail amount for thirty seven thousand dollars. And he was basically said, like, I'll bail you out, but you have to go to college and you gotta stop this nonsense. So he goes to college, But then after a couple of semester, he drops out and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of twenty one,

28:20

He starts his business called KPR Sports. It's an equip an equipment close out company. By age twenty one, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age twenty three, fifty dollars in sales. At the age of twenty,

28:31

at twenty three, nineteen ninety five, he purchased it purchased forty percent of the, women's shoe company Rica, heavier than Rica. Who's around in, like, the the nineties and early two thousands. And then eventually, he started this company called GSI commerce. He kinda pivoted into this thing. Where it was called GSA

28:47

GSI Commerce and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at,

28:55

age, like, twenty eight for two point four billion dollars, netting him a hundred and fifty million dollars personally, that a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was Shoprunner. Have you heard of Shoprunner? No.

29:09

Shoprunner basically was kinda like Amazon Prime, but for all non Amazon stores. So you could spend a hundred dollars and get free shipping on loads of different stores He started rue la la, which you probably wouldn't have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started fanatics. He sold Shoprunner recently for two hundred twenty eight million dollars. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so, basically, if you buy like a Ram's Jersey,

29:32

it's made by fanatics, and they've basically work with the NFL. They get they're like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports.

29:40

But here's where the shit gets really, really wild. So fanatics turns it now at this point. I believe it's three different large businesses. So there's the main fanatics business, which is They basically have licenses with the NFL, MBA, MLB, they make shirts and stuff like that, and and just normal merchandise.

29:56

I think I believe if it's not publicly traded, it's nearly publicly traded and worth eighteen billion dollars. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? There's just no news because I see this. What is what is it called? He raised it's called fanatics trading cards. And so basically, he raised three hundred fifty million dollars at a ten point four billion billion dollar valuation. And so, basically, There's companies like tops. Everyone knows tops. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things, but top plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I'm if you're listening in to the baseball cards, you told me is huge.

30:31

So collectively, those make, like, two billion dollars a year in EBITDA. Like, so it's a fairly big business until you're, like, ten billion dollar trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but, like, it it could if it, you know,

30:43

can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has the second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised a hundred million dollars at one point five billion dollar evaluation. And so he spun all of these off And now he's also the owner of the seventy sixers and the New Jersey Devils to the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he's homies with Meek Mill.

31:07

And he, like, helped get him out of prison, and he's, spends a lot of his time. Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly

31:14

prolific,

31:15

very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense, incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy.

31:23

And, dude, the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy's cool. I've seen a lot of his interviews

31:28

and, and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with fanatics is, like, I always view doing things in sports. It's like if you wanna do sports and music, it's like actually so hard to win because

31:39

It's like, oh, yeah. I'm passionate about sports. Great. You and, you know, two one two billion other people. And so it's really, really hard to do what I'll call obvious ideas in sports, like, yeah, selling the merch, selling Jersey, sell selling shirts.

31:53

So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space

31:58

is really impressive to me. It's very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with them, So Gary v is a partner on this, on a couple of his things. Like, I don't know if he's an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don't know what how the how the thing is, but he's he's mentioned in a lot of the articles as, like, either a co founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I've hung out with Gary, maybe only three or four times, including the time we had podcast. I've hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I've noticed Michael Rubin has, where there's basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, even these guys don't have a lot of it where it's like a self limiting belief where it's like, well, you know, I can't do this because of this, this, and this. And I've noticed with Gary, he's talked, like, one time he told me, he's like, I wanna next thing, he's like, I'm gonna create all these restaurants, and they're actually gonna be completely free. And the way they're gonna make money is Amex or whoever's gonna sponsor it. Like, he was just brainstorming. He's like, but I'm gonna do that. And in my head, I'm like, well, that's really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

32:57

But I feel like nine out of ten things he does, I would say, that's a really dumb idea, and they work. And, you know, he said he's gonna come out with these, what's NFT thing. It's, v friends.

33:07

V friends. Like, if he told me, I'm like, Gary, this is really dumb or, you know, like, that's not gonna work. And it's been incredibly lucrative and and very successful. And they don't have this limiting belief where it's like, this won't work for this reason or this reason. It was just like, well, why not? Like, it it logically, it makes sense. I think this can work. Anyway This is this is very, timely. So let me tell you why.

33:27

By the way, I've noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where

33:31

I'm thinking about something or I'm doing something, and then somebody who's, like,

33:34

like minded, they're almost experiencing the same thing and just in a different way. We trade these stories. So same exact thing. Alright. So I told you I'm reading Think and Grow Rich. There's a section in there that I, remember. You know, it's just, like, stuck in my head. And he goes,

33:49

He goes,

33:50

to be successful,

33:51

one needs to be success conscious. And I was like, I don't even know what that means. I don't think most people would know what that means. But the interesting part is the second line. What he says after that. He goes, he goes,

34:00

and people who fail all fail for the same reason.

34:04

They take their current limitations as real limitations.

34:07

They're they take the perceived limitations that are that they're perceived that they're feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you're saying is exactly that, which is that everybody

34:17

Oh, I need to do this, but I don't have the time, but I don't have the money, but I don't have the experience.

34:21

But this person said they would get back to me and they haven't got back to me yet. But this But, you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment's gonna be delayed. It's like there's always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. Then what's what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves. And even the thing when somebody says no to them, they're like, okay. Cool. They're like, does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I'm gonna ask more playfully and later on out over a glass of wine. Now you're gonna have a different answer. It's like, they don't take no for an answer on any front,

34:56

you know, on their own limitations from they don't take no from themselves, and they also no from the world.

35:01

And, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout.

35:06

And,

35:07

and we have a kind of like, you know, like, is we train the body, but we train the mind at the same, at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, man, I've read this great thing. And I know I could share it with him because he's he's the type too that like to eat this stuff up. And he goes, oh, great. And I go, but you know what? I don't wanna just sit here and say that's great because what what really means when I say this and we're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that's true. Is we kind of do this thing where we're like, Yeah. That's true.

35:31

Other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me. Yeah. There's like this inherent, like, yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don't get it. I get it. So I said, no. No. No. Screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else. I said, let's get a rep right here. I say, what's a let's get a rep right now. What's something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it's not even like you haven't been able to overcome it. Honestly, you're just not even aware of it. You're not even, like, saying it out loud. Once you say it out

35:59

loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don't really do it. I said, I'll go first.

36:03

I said, man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam's gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I already doing the workout. He doesn't feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He's got the floor finished properly. He's got this. He's got the fan on the wall. He's got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that. And I said, I want that. And then what's my limitation?

36:24

I hired this one contractor. He's been really slow getting back to me with a quote.

36:28

It's like, well, I could think of ten ways to solve that problem right now. But, like, I just kinda hadn't put my awareness on what was What was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted? And I tell my trainer, so you gotta do one now. What's what's a what's something you want that you have a limitation? I said, let's get a rep. And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice,

36:47

don't just be like, yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out. It's like, no. No. No.

36:55

Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing. And so, so let me ask you. Let's do it live. What's a thing you want

37:02

in your life? And then what's the thing you want that you're not kind of, like, it's not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something where your relationship, work wise, money wise, fitness wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. What's the thing you want? And then try to shine that light

37:18

37:19

What's the limiting what's something you've just let limit you for no reason? That Gary v wouldn't, that Michael Rubin wouldn't.

37:25

Okay. This sounds silly.

37:27

It sounds silly. It's perfect because it's usually the silly things. I've had a fear of camping for a long time, and I wanna spend more time in the wilderness because I like the idea of it. But, like, I'm kind of afraid of, like, being out at nighttime in the woods by myself or with, like, a small group. Okay. Great. So you wanna

37:44

camp? And then you're afraid. And then so if you shine the light, what's the what's the limited? What's the thought that goes in your head? Is it I don't have x or I'm afraid of y? What is it? I've just not I've just I've not bought, like, camping equipment. I've not looked at where to go. I've not told a buddy or two that I wanna go do it. And the and I've I've not take I've just not planned anything. Make it more personal. Why haven't you planned anything?

38:08

What's

38:09

Fear of? What? Fear of being out at night in the wilderness by myself. And that's the perfect stopping point because whenever you say the fear out loud, it sounds really fucking stupid. It's like I have afraid of being outside at night by myself. Like, first of all, I'm not gonna be by myself. I'm gonna be with somebody because more fun with friends. Secondly, like,

38:29

whatever. It's not that scary. I could do it. Right? So, like, that's the best part of, like, when you finally find the thing and you say it out loud, it just sort of dissolves because it's like, well, that sounds silly. Like, yeah. It doesn't have it's it doesn't have as much power once I say it out loud. Once I shine the light on it, it's like scurries away.

38:46

Well, you gotta get your gym set up then. It's not that hard. I sent you the link. I know. Yeah. I have everything. The the the the limiting thing was I don't know how to do home improvement projects. Like, I've never I'm not handy. Dude, do you know how to cut, like, a slice of bread? That's all you have to do when you lay down floor.

39:01

Could pay this guy to do it. Okay. That'll solve my problem. Oh, the guy's not responding.

39:05

Okay.

39:06

And I just let it fizzle there. It's like, what? No. I want this. Well, I want this. Why would I why would I just let this wait? And we we all agree that that one common denominator

39:15

in most of the things you want is you've come up with an excuse to wait.

39:19

Like, I'll give you another example. I hope he doesn't mind me saying this, but I had this guy who kinda was like an apprentice for me for a few months. And I I basically was like, hey, he was like, hey, I wanna learn about content and stuff like that. And I said, cool. You come help me research and write stuff, and I'll teach you some things. And after a few months, he went on his way and was like,

39:38

cool. Go out there in the world. And since then, he I think I could say his name. So it's this guy it's this guy Chris don't even know how to say his last name. Chris has look. I don't know. It's crazy last name. Redhead guy works at Goldman. Redhead guy. Exactly. So he was a college student at the time. So when I was talking to him, he was a student at Yale, And,

39:54

it's after Nice guy. I've talked to him. Super nice guy. After he did the apprenticeship, he grew his Twitter following.

40:00

From, I think, like, two thousand followers. He just hit a hundred thousand followers yesterday or two days ago. And he texted me. He's like, dude, I hit a hundred thousand. Like, thank you. You know, I I learned a bunch of stuff. You showed me kinda like what good writing looks like. And I was like, dude, that's honestly, it's fucking amazing. Like, you're a college kid and you did that. Like, that's that's super impressive.

40:18

And he's like, you know, but I'm thinking about, like, where do I go from here?

40:22

I said, well, it's real simple. Like, What do you want? Like, I'm not I'm not gonna tell you what to do next. Like, what do you want to do next? Then go do that thing. It's really that simple. He's like, oh, you know, I wanna start a company.

40:32

Said, okay. Cool. So did you take that banking job that I was telling you not to take? He's like, yeah. And, you know, I've been here for a little bit. I I don't think that my that might not be the long thing long term thing for me. I think I wanted to start a company someday.

40:43

I said, oh, you're waiting.

40:45

He's, like, yeah, I'm just, you know, like, I said, okay. Why don't you just quit your job and go do that?

40:49

He's like, well, you know, and he gave me another reason for waiting. I said, okay. So why don't you just go do it? And he goes, well, I, you know, if I did do it, I'd wanna do it with my friend. He's really, really smart. Super smart guy, but he has to wait a year because he's graduating. He's not graduated yet. So, you know, I thought I'd just wait, you know, a year.

41:06

I said, wait a year, ten ten percent of your twenties you're just gonna give away. Oh,

41:12

most precious asset. Just pissing it away.

41:15

Just waiting. Oh, wait.

41:17

Wow. I was just like and he's like, yeah. You know, and then also, you know, I wanna I'm making good money right now. I wanna save up so I have enough runway. You know, money money is always, like, you know, it it it does matter at the end of the day.

41:29

I said, how about this?

41:30

How about instead of telling me a bunch of reasons why you're not gonna do the thing you wanna do? You just start telling me some reasons you are gonna do the thing you're gonna you wanna do. Try that. It works much better. Trust me. And I was, like, kind of a dick about it, but it's really that fucking simple. And I noticed and it's not just him. I know this because I do this. I'm guilty of waiting

41:50

for bullshit or coming up with reasons to wait. And so whoever's listening to this that needs to hear this

41:54

don't wait.

41:56

My trainer says wait is a wait. Wait is a wait on your back and stop waiting.

42:01

So, I had a friend who and and we can move on after this, but I don't know if people will I think people will like this, but I had a friend who on, I do this all the time. So if I have friends or people who I care about, in on April fifth. I'm at the point where I've saved enough money to move forward with the prototyping process and feel like I found the right engineer to partner with. It's a decent money, but I think I could do it. I wanna know what your thoughts are on how to launch this. I text it back. I go,

42:26

if I was you, I would do this, this, and this. Right. This morning, I I texted him. This was April fifth. I texted him today. How'd the idea get turned out? He said too expensive for me to commit my life savings, the cost in manufacturing and marketing of a physical product were way big and much bigger compared to starting a software or internet company.

42:45

Oh, wow. So you started a software company, l o l, no. I love it. I was not to say I'm figuring out what to do and what I'm gonna stop being a worker bee. And then I'll probably,

42:55

I can't say it. I'll I'll probably quit after blank IPOs. Right. Don't even know what city I'll be in next year, and

43:02

it's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen. It will never happen. Oh, no. Will never Let's imagine lovingly for this guy. It is gonna happen. It's gonna happen once he stops thinking that way. Right? Once he stops being that way, once he changes, that'll change. And so or a sheet. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but basically,

43:17

there's a

43:19

there's a funny thing with that. And you know, I I I always wonder, like, do you be a dick, or do you kind of, like,

43:27

empathize?

43:28

If you care, you be a dick.

43:30

And why is that? If you can't well, like, look, it's like, look, do you want this or not? And and oftentimes I say to people, I'm like, do you really want this? I don't know if you actually want this. And I think that you just think it's cool to want this, and I don't think it's cool to want this. You want to talk about it. Either do or you don't. Right. You wanna talk about it. If you just wanna talk about it, just tell me you just wanna brainstorm Right. Or you just wanna shoot the shit. Right. But if you're telling me that you want this, then I'll I'll hold you accountable, actually. I'll I'll say why haven't you done this?

43:56

Right.

43:58

He goes, he goes, you know, I treat people the way they told me they want to be. So you wanna be fit. Right? So then what if you're gonna complain about doing this sets, well, the whose fit does this. So I'm gonna treat you from the place you told me you wanna be, and a you at any given time, you could come and say, I don't want it anymore. I changed my mind. I want this instead. Cool.

44:19

I'm happy to change my tree. I'm happy to treat you differently when you tell me that you have changed your mind that you don't wanna you don't want this anymore, that you want something else that you are totally in your right to them. But let's be clear. I'm always gonna ask you, did you change what you wanted? Because if you still want that thing, then I'm gonna keep treating you like the person who gets that thing.

44:38

And that person doesn't do or say these things, and so I'm not gonna entertain it. I'm not gonna be the shoulder to cry on. I'm not gonna be the one who sympathizes and pats you on the head and says, I understand why it's tough for you, why it's so hard because it's not so hard for that guy. And so be that guy. People, people DM us a lot of interesting ideas. My reply to all of them. They go, what do you think about this? I always reply with two things. I think that's an amazing idea.

45:02

And I always say it's an amazing idea.

45:04

And then I say, when are you launching?

45:07

It's always amazing. Like, you're just asking for permit you're just asking for permission I'm gonna give you permission. Amazing. There's no reason why this can't work. Oftentimes, there's a lot of reasons that it doesn't matter when are you launching?

45:18

And,

45:19

I do a similar Mine says Sounds cool. Right? They say,

45:23

I have this idea. What do you think? I would love to hear your feedback, your thoughts, happy to jump on a call, don't even reply to any of that. I just say, sounds cool.

45:32

Let me know when you launch it so I could check it out.

45:35

Yeah. I always hear the same thing. And sometimes,

45:38

I I'll reply months later. Like, I'll save certain conversations and I reply. Right. Do you wanna, talk about one more interesting thing. On the list. I have one thing from this de beers thing that I've just Yeah. I've been dying to hear it. Okay. So, okay. So let me tell you the story. This kind of blew my mind. I gotta open up my notes for this because I I did, you know, proper proper research for this.

46:00

So why don't you put your notes in this document so I can see the Oh, it's just really long. It's like two pages of notes. So I didn't wanna blow it up for this. But

46:07

let me just tell you this story. I got you full and undivided attention. You can't even read the thing. You gotta listen to me. Hey, say it. Alright. So somebody in my family is, was thinking about getting engaged soon. So the whole, like, engagement ring process was going on, and they were asking, like, you know, all the questions you have because you don't usually you don't most people don't buy a ton of diamond rings or somethings like that. So they're kinda, like, you know, what's the budget?

46:28

You know, the I see there's these four c's cut clarity,

46:32

you know, which one should I care more about?

46:35

Blah, blah, blah. So

46:36

And and and then they did this thing. They went to a jewelry shop and they tried some. I said, just go try some on. See what you see what you what you like. And, I said, you're not gonna buy it from there, but go to a nice shop to try things on. So you could see what shape you like, what color you like, what different prices will get you, that sort of thing. And, they go and they came back and they said, hey, you ever heard about this lab grown diamond thing?

46:56

And,

46:57

have you heard of this?

46:59

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, there I mean, that's all it is. It's diamonds grown in the lab. Right? So just the way that, like, now you have, you know, for for many different types of products, for me They're trying lab grown meat. So what if instead of farming animals and killing them and, you know, contributing to a lot of, you know, global warming? You could just take a stem cell from a cow shoulder. And grow a filet mignon. Right? That's the promise. And there's a company called Memphis Meets. That's doing it, and it tastes it looks identical to the meat to a steak. It tastes identical because it is identical. Cellularly,

47:30

molecularly,

47:31

it is identical

47:32

to a normal steak. Now the problem right now for meat is that it costs like ten thousand dollars a pound or something crazy. So, you know, it's not economically feasible yet. And, and then there's this company I was looking at potentially investing. It's called vitro Labs, and they're doing this with leather. They're saying, hey, instead of killing animals for for leather,

47:48

what if we could have a cruelty free leather? Let's just grow the skin in a lab. And they're signing deals with, you know, big big name luxury brands, you know, the the sort of, who's who luxury brands that they wanna offer a a vegan product, but they don't wanna verify the quality of the material. So they said, hey, let's get you an identical

48:06

material, molecularly matching material for that. Okay. So I've been interested in this lab grown trend. And diamonds with the latest one. So I said, oh, interesting. Diamond, it's not the new. It's not new. It's actually much more commercially forward. It's like out there and people buy this stuff. It's growing in popularity. Compared to meats and leather, which are kinda, like, still in development.

48:24

So,

48:25

so I started looking into it and I was, like, I was, like, is this kinda, like, bullshit or what's going on? And here's what I found.

48:31

The diamond industry itself is mostly bullshit. And a lot of people know this, but I dug into some of the history. And here's what here's what I found that kind of interests

48:38

48:39

before eighteen seventy, like diamonds,

48:42

weren't even, like, a they they were not even,

48:45

considered rare. So, are you're plentiful? Sorry. Before eighteen seventy eight were rare because we didn't know where to find them. So, like, you know, the Mahar Raja in India would would have it in his crown or you know, some Egyptian person would have it in their in their garment, but it was it was so rare that you didn't even see it around. It wasn't even a thing. It wasn't even businesses around But then in eighteen seventy, they find this huge deposit

49:06

in, I think South Africa. And so now diamonds become this, like, they re oh, diamonds are actually not in short supply. There's tons of diamonds. They found this huge thing. And so all these miners go in like a gold rush, basically, and they start mind they start establishing diamond mines in South Africa.

49:21

And then, like, six months later, they all realized, like, shit.

49:24

There's now too much supply. We're flooding the market with this stuff, and it's we're all going out of business. Nobody can afford.

49:31

Nobody can afford,

49:33

to to run the mine because we're we're flooding so much supply. So the minors,

49:38

but no so the minor's like, damn it. If everybody else just stopped, I could make a bunch of money, but it's like the prisoner's dilemma. Nobody wants to be the one that stops. So they all keep going and they all put each other out of business. And so there's this guy Cecil Rhodes who comes around and Cecil Rhodes starts buying up the mines. He's like, I need to aggregate all this supply in South Africa. So he starts aggregating it all. And, basically, buys minds from one of the farms is called something something that the brothers were called De Beers. That was their last name. So he becomes the de beers, like, mining and exploration group or something like that, some name like that. So that's where de beers, the diamond company, comes from. And so de beers became this Over the next hundred years, De Beers becomes this monopoly.

50:18

They control ninety percent of the supply. And the reason diamonds are considered rare is because De Beers owns all the supply and they just limit how much they produce from the mines. They could produce ten times more, but instead they intentionally strict supply at the mining level,

50:33

then they the this is so monopolistic as crazy. So then they created this group of two hundred p only two hundred people were allowed to buy from them. Called site holders. And they said, oh, you were invited. So so we control all the supply. So we decide who we sell to, and we only are gonna sell these two hundred And then you can go sell to merchants. Now we're gonna so they could kinda hold these two hundred people accountable and say, hey, why is this person over here selling at this low price? Cut them off. And, like, they just cut you off. And if a new mind popped up, they would go like the mafia, and they'll go into sort of, like, through violence,

51:05

intimidation,

51:06

or, like, even just like market tactics, they would basically, like, put the mind out of business and take it over. So, like, let's say you discovered a mind that had a bunch of yellow diamonds, they would flood the market with yellow diamonds ply, crush your economics, you'd go out of business, and they would take over your mind. And so they would just find whatever you produce, and they would just flood you. And so,

51:24

so all the way up until about the year two thousand. They owned ninety percent of this thing.

51:28

But I was like, I was like, why is this? So if it's not rare, where does the value come from? And so the story is basically

51:35

diamond mining wasn't big business right away. It was like an okay business, good business. And then it started to, like, kind of like plateau and it wasn't really growing that fast. In nineteen thirty six, they say, we gotta do something. We got all this diamond production, but where there's not enough demand now for the diamond production. So they go down Madison Avenue and they find this ad agency and they find this one guy. So everybody who loves diamonds today and every girl is demanding a diamond engagement ring. It's because this guy George Lock back in the day. And they hire this guy and they say, look, we need you to create demand for diamonds. And at that time, before nineteen thirty six, people were not even giving diamonds as an engagement ring. It wasn't even like rings weren't even a an engagement process.

52:13

It was like very rare that people would do that. Most people just kind of did an engagement as sort of a a different sort of agreement.

52:20

And so he does a big study, and he says, okay, look.

52:23

What we need to do is this. We need to get men to buy the diamonds

52:27

for women.

52:29

And we need the women to believe that diamonds are the way that your man could show you. So for women, it's, like, If you want the man to say he loves you, we need Diamond to represent love.

52:39

Diamond equals love. That's like one side of the board. They said, on the other side, men,

52:44

the bigger, the better, the more expensive the diamond, the more of a man you are. So it became diamond sneakers worth. And it was it was, like, some, like, ridiculously obvious state that they came out with. Right? So they they had a bunch. So they've done, like,

52:56

diamonds are forever is was named, I think, one of the most, I think it was named the marketing slogan of the century or something like that. I think of last hundred years. It was voted that diamonds are forever was the best marketing hook created because it created this, like, demand for diamonds.

53:12

So why is that? So so so there's a bunch of, like, aspects to this. So first did they build demand? Well, it was basically in old school influencer marketing. So they decided, alright, we're gonna make diamonds look like the gift of love.

53:24

And so they went to Hollywood, and they went to all the producers, and they said, we will give you producers. Here's a beautiful diamond for you to give your wife. Here's a diamond for your for your for you on your your bracelet or your neck earrings or whatever. And they basically said, hey.

53:37

We will give you these diamonds for free producer, but you need to have scene in your movie, the climax of your movie where the man professes his love for the woman. He needs to open up a box with a diamond ring inside. And then she needs to have a amazing reaction. Like, she needs to be won over because the guy did that. And so they went to all these movie producers, and the movies now all have these scenes and you could go back and watch this montage of before this, nobody was doing this in movies. All of a sudden, every movie, this was the key scene. The guy pronounces his love for his what for the woman and gives her a diamond and she says, oh my god. I love you too. It gets us him back. And so they, like, use that kind of inception. Then they went to fashion designers, and I said, hey,

54:16

wouldn't it be a shame if,

54:18

if if if you didn't say that the trend next year, the big trend is that diamonds are in, what the let's call it the trend to diamonds. So they created this thing called the trend to diamonds, and they just got all these fashion designers to ambiguously say There's a trend to diamonds. So now you have the the the high art people saying this, and then you have Hollywood showing it. And that was like the main sort of brainwashing mechanism of of the world at that time. No social media, no nothing.

54:42

And so then they so then, you know, the ad agency starts getting, you know, clever. They're like, alright.

54:49

How do we make the diamond proportionate to the man's success? What if it was you have to spend one month's salary on this? And they went with one month's salary, and then they upped it to two month's salary. And then they had an advertising campaign that said,

55:01

how do you make two months of salary last forever?

55:05

Buy a diamond. Oh, man. Amazing. Right? And then and then they were like, okay. Look. But, hey, we all know that diamonds are actually not that rare. Right? So we can't have people reselling these. So they said, oh,

55:16

first of all, if you make it the the the the ultimate gift of love, the woman won't wanna sell it, the guy won't wanna sell it. And then even if they do, here's what we'll do. Dealers, the you, the the merchants who sell this, you cannot take diamonds back. Cause diamonds, even though they are, like, seen in the world as like a store of value, it's like, oh, just jewelry. It's like, you know, jewelry is kinda like a safe way to store your wealth. It's like a car. If you take a diamond out of the shop, it's lost fifty percent of its resale value. And the dealer doesn't want you to know that, so they won't even make you an offer to buy it back. So they've banned merchants from, like, making offers to buy it back because they didn't want the merchant to tell the customer Hey, once you buy this thing, it's worth half. And so they said don't even make an offer. And,

55:57

and so they they kinda, like, killed the resale market. And then they created this diamonds are forever campaign

56:02

so that you would not wanna sell your diamond.

56:05

And they did this country by country. So, like, you can look in any country. You could see this So it's like the US goes to this curve where no one's buying diamonds to, like, seventy five percent of engagements are all through diamonds. And then, ninety percent. It gets to, like, ninety something percent our our engagements are done through diamonds.

56:21

In Japan,

56:22

they they're like, oh, we have no market share in Japan. They go. They do do the same marketing playbook there. It goes from five percent of brides have a ring. To sixty percent in twenty year and a twenty year period, and De Beers own seventy percent of that market share. Right? And then they started creating other marketing gimmicks like the right hand ring. It's like if you're an independent woman, you you know, you don't want this ring on your left hand that shows that you're kind of owned by this man. We're a right hand ring. You need a diamond on your right hand that says that's the right hand ring. The twenty fifth anniversary ring, the upgrade ring. Like, you know, just show that you were doing better than you were before. And so they created all this, like, they literally fucking created the demand and they restricted the supply. It's kind of unbelievable.

57:00

So that's kinda like the That's amazing. The core of it. There's some other stuff, like, you know, there's like sort of the blood diamonds thing, which is, like, the bad PR around it, which is that these diamond mines were a kinda shitty conditions to be in.

57:13

But b, they were like basically using profits from the mind to fund, like, war in the area, like militia war in the areas. That was kinda, like, you're basically funding conflict in a way And so the the Diamond industry tried to, like, after that movie Blood Diamond came out, they tried to, like, clean up their image, but then lab grown diamonds started coming out.

57:30

And,

57:32

and so the lab grown diamonds come out and it's like, oh, shit. So first, they created marketing campaign that says real

57:38

is rare.

57:39

And they basically were like, if it's real, that's what makes it rare, which is what makes it valuable. So if it's a lab grown thing,

57:45

that's nothing. And then they refuse to acknowledge it. They refuse to sell it. They refuse to care But customers were like, dude, this is it it's indistinguishable from a diamond. Then they could, I cannot tell what's a real diamond. Like, mined from the earth or or made in a lab. Because materially, again, the composition is the same. It's not like a fake it's not like a fake diamond. It's the same material. It was just grown in a lab rather than growing in the earth. And so you always get the the shanko commercials.

58:10

Right. And they say, like, you don't wanna get them from a lab from a lab. It's it's it's just like every other one. They're all the same. Exactly. Exactly. It's not special. And so the problem is it's still growing in popularity because they sell for about thirty percent of the price. You can get like a way bigger ring that looks identical to a diamond ring that is made of a diamond.

58:27

But it just happened to have been like it's like, do I want my coffee sourced from you know, Canada or from Philippines or from Africa or, like, it's kinda like, where is it sourced? So some people care, but it's growing in popularity. So then De Beers,

58:39

and the diamond industry, they, like, did the last kinda, like, stone cold killer move. For years, they were, like, lab grown as fake.

58:46

It's bullshit. Don't buy it. They but they but it was just growing in popularity anyways. So they were like, alright, shit. We gotta do something else. So then they created a brand called lightbox

58:55

And they start producing lab grown diamonds. Everyone's like, oh my god. Does this mean that lab is legit? And they're like, no. No. No. No. No.

59:02

Lab is for people who can't afford diamonds. So we're gonna sell ours. So they undercut the price like crazy. So normally a lab grown diamond will cost, like, thirty or forty percent the cost. So it's like a fifty, sixty percent discount.

59:13

And But they started pricing, but here's that, like, a ninety percent discount,

59:17

a real diamond just to ruin the market value of the brand perception of Labiger diamonds. And they said, This is for they said they came out in a statement. They said this is for emotionally shallow events, like a sweet sixteen or like a quinceanera party. By the by the lab grown for that. Don't, you know, So that this is their latest tactic to try to, like,

59:35

keep up this big myth, this big lie

59:39

that Dymas are this rare, valuable, precious gem. And it's, like, actually complete bullshit. This is amazing research. This is a good one. This is a very good story. And

59:49

What but here's the thing where we are. Maybe it'll change is us in our thirties. We all do the same thing, which is Right? Before we get engaged, we say, this is bullshit.

59:59

I will not stand for this. I will not pay this amount of money. Right. My it. I'm gonna set it really low. I'm gonna get a fake one or I'm gonna get a lab growth. Like, I will not buy into this and then you get into it and you say, She's gonna make her happy. I'm gonna make her happy. Yeah.

01:00:15

And we all refuse to buy into it. And Well, well, more and more people are starting to to go the other way.

01:00:22

But

01:00:23

but, yeah, it's it's amazing that this is still the majority. Right? Given

01:00:28

now that lab grown is visibly identical, and you can get a way better better looking diamond

01:00:33

for for cheaper price.

01:00:35

It's amazing that that, like, the real utility doesn't overwhelm, but, like, the branding is that embedded. It's that strong after so long. And, actually, there's one other part, which is that Eventually,

01:00:45

you know, the diamonds do,

01:00:48

the the the the De Beers did lose their monopoly. I should say. So, like, in the year two thousand, they basically broke up the monopoly because they're getting a lot of public pressure as a monopoly.

01:00:56

The the buyers were kinda sick of being, like, constantly threatened,

01:01:00

by de beers. And then people found new mines in Australia and all these other places where they couldn't, like, you could kinda just in Africa, you can kinda, like, coerce people, but in Australia, it's a lot harder to, like, go coerce a minor in public to, like, just fucking give you their mind. And so, and so they've changed their business strategy. So, but and the last factor, by the way, is There's this guy. The family that kinda, like, created the real monopoly is the Oppenheimer family.

01:01:24

And they've run this thing for years. First guy Oppenheimer, he's the one. Are they?

01:01:28

They're they're very wealthy. So the the business, I think, is like a ten billion dollar business. I think they sold half the stake for four or five billion,

01:01:36

recently.

01:01:37

And I also think they own, like, fifty percent of Lou Vuitton or something like that. They they own some other stuff too. But,

01:01:43

but anyways, they couldn't the the the in the family, there's no one to take it over anymore. No one wants to run the business that nobody none of the young generation. They didn't want they don't want the business. There's nobody there's no air And so they're like, shit. There's no air. Business is still good, but it's getting harder, and we don't have somebody to fight it. And so they actually switched strategy. So they broke up the monopoly and now they shifted from like ninety percent market share to thirty percent.

01:02:05

And then they started rolling out their own retail stores and profits have gone up, but they're kind of like their,

01:02:11

you know, their their control has gone down. The power has gone down fine. And I would have to if I had to bet, you know, I'm a very amateur historian, and so I've read a lot of these stories. If I had to bet, I would bet that

01:02:23

once you break up a monopoly for a family owned business, I would argue that the odds that the odds are that the family are now actually going to get richer.

01:02:32

It seems like when What do you mean?

01:02:35

Well, so for example, standard oil. This is the same thing. In the nineteen twenties, Teddy Roosevelt said, nope, standard oil. You are the de beers of America. You own eighty percent of oil production,

01:02:45

you can't do it anymore. So they broke it up into five or eight different companies, and some of those companies are Exxon.

01:02:51

Mobile,

01:02:53

BP. Right.

01:02:55

Conoco

01:02:55

and, like, five or six other companies that you probably know of.

01:03:00

And it made Rockefeller get significantly

01:03:03

richer because he owned a small stake into each one. And they all competed with each other, and they boost their revenue, boost their profits, and they all made. And he made significantly more money because of that. And that was, the big source of his wealth is when they broke up the company. And I would say that if Facebook and Instagram had to compete with each other,

01:03:22

it would actually make Zuckerberg richer. Same with YouTube and Google. If they had to compete, it would probably make them better and thus the owners a little bit more rich. Exactly. I I I agree. That's why when people talk about breaking Facebook. It's like, well, you know what this is gonna do. Right? Like, they're all gonna become more valuable. And the services will become better, but it does open up more room for competition whereas when they have absolute stranglehold, then, you know, it may not be as as lucrative and it may not be as good of a product, but it's very hard to break break in.

01:03:51

Yeah. That was great. That that was a that you Well, there's also, like, an opportunity here. Right? Like, as I learned this, I was like, okay. I know this is not new.

01:03:58

But if I just sample the population,

01:04:01

it's, like, on one hand, you you do two surveys. One survey they did was, hey, did you know about lab grown? Blah blah blah. Here's here's, like, look, you can't tell the difference. Look, it's made of it's actually the same material composite. It's the same material as diamond. It's just grown from a lab rather than mine in the earth. And, hey, you don't have to worry about the, like, of the mining because it's not not mine from the earth. Seventy percent of, like, millennials are like, yeah, I'm totally open to that. That sounds great. But then at the same time, the market share hasn't caught up yet. And so I think that even though this is not a brand new thing,

01:04:30

I think that people could create

01:04:32

really valuable brand. Like, I'm curious if somebody listened to this, it wants to go and basically take an education based approach to selling this, because I think the more you educate people, the more they wanna, like, the more willing they are to buy. And if you're the one who educates them, you get that first right of refusal to sell them sell them their first lab grown, diamond. So And I think

01:04:51

I would bet

01:04:52

that millennials won't do this, but what's the generation to have for that? Z I believe they would. And the eighteen because, you know, they're so,

01:05:01

politically correct, and they're very they they they they they have a high bullshit detector, I believe.

01:05:06

And

01:05:07

for me and my friends, a lot of us were like, this is not the battle I'm going to choose. Right. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna, you know, buy my way out of this and and and we'll a different battle. Right. With them, I don't I would argue that there's a good chance that something like that could happen. I don't think it will happen now, but I think in ten years when the eighteen year olds to get in their twenties and thirties.

01:05:28

And I would bet money. I I I would bet my money. I think that I could work as well. So I'm bullish on this too. Yeah. That's great. Alright. Do we wanna do it? This is a good story. That that

01:05:37

yeah. We that that this has gotta be our our our YouTube clip. That was a very well researched and very good story. Good job. Much.

01:05:46

So that's the episode. We'll see. Let's see if this one's a hit. I think it was kind of interesting. What do you think then? I thought it was great.

01:05:53

The de beers stuff is super, super interesting. And, and

01:05:58

the intensity stuff

01:06:00

the the sushi story was great. Love it. It's a good episode. Of intensity. You dunked on somebody this week, you said?

01:06:08

Did you really? Can you dunk? How tall are you?

01:06:11

He's Mormon. Of course, you can dunk.

01:06:13

So I'm six four.

01:06:16

Apparently.

01:06:17

It's like the basket isn't isn't it isn't it the basketball of, of the, like, whenever all my Mormon friends, they it seems like they always are playing basketball on Sunday. All of our churches have,

01:06:28

basketball courts in them. And so,

01:06:30

even, like, non Mormons play basketball in our church as well. Now are we talking about At six four? You could do windmills or we're barely scraping the dunk through or what's going

01:06:39

on? So, you know, like, when I was young around in high school, I could do, like, Tomahawks and and one eighties and, like, pretty good dunks.

01:06:46

But, you know, over the pandemic, I didn't I didn't play basketball for, like, almost a year and a half. So I didn't know if I still had it. And last night, I just drove. I was going down the lane. He's actually a buddy of mine jumped with me, and I wasn't planning on doing him like that, but I was just I was there, and I had to do it. I dunked on him. Can you please send me a video of something like this and I would share it?

01:07:08

I'll I'll put you in. You you I don't think you're a guy that would lie at all, but I would love to see this. I don't think that you're a guy that would even exaggerate a little bit. I would love to see this. I don't have the video of me dunking on the guy, but I sure. I have video of me dunking, so I can yeah. Can can I send it to me. I would share that in a heartbeat. I would love to brag about that. I I Are you you're six four? We've never seen Ben real life, by the way. You're six four?

01:07:31

Yeah. Last company I worked for was all remote. And, we had a off-site. We all met each other for the first time, and everyone was blown away. They were like, oh, I didn't know you were call. I asked him.

01:07:41

Like, I I if I one person in the company told me she's like, you have short energy. I can't believe you're tall.

01:07:46

Wow. I know. I Did I saw this really hilarious TikTok yesterday where this girl just goes, oh, I'm I go around on live streams, and I just give people compliments for I I call it I I go,

01:07:59

we love our short kings.

01:08:01

And she goes to tall guy streams. Like, normal height or taller guy streams. And she goes, We, yeah, we stand our short king. We love our short king with kissy face. And the guys, as you clip together, they're reaction, and they're just they're all like, we love our short king. And they get excited. They're like, wait. What?

01:08:17

I was like, like, duh, I'm six I'm six in I'm six in a quarter. Like, I don't know who you call a short king. And then, like, everybody gets, like, super butthurt about it right away. It, like, really fucks up their brain. And she goes, it's hilarious. Just call them like, my short king.

01:08:32

Ben, please send me a video of you docket on fools. I would love that. That would make that would make my day. I'll send it to you right now. Sean, Sam, how how tall are both of you?

01:08:41

I'm six. I'm six one. Yeah. We're we're both, we're both,

01:08:45

of similar height and weight, I think. I mean, I, like, when when when people meet both of us, they say, you guys are much bigger than we thought. And I would say that when we're together, we look

01:08:55

big and tall and Sean, you look taller than you are, I think, too.

01:08:59

Oh, good. I don't know what that means, but I'll take it. It's better than me call it a short king. Well, I think it's because you got big hair.

01:09:05

That's right. That's right. You know what I don't get. Do you do you guys feel tall at six foot and six foot one?

01:09:11

No. I don't If you feel average higher, Like, to me, that's, like, six point six

01:09:15

but, like, if you look at global averages or even American average, like, the American male height is, like, only five nine or some Yeah. Yeah. It's, like, it's short. You guys are super tall, which I don't know, there's a disconnect. Well, then you're a giant. I guess so. Yeah. By that logic. No. I don't I don't feel tall. I feel

01:09:32

I feel thicker than the average person. That's for sure.

01:09:35

As you are. So, Ben, when you dunked on the guy, did you, like, scream? What did it feel like? I mean, I've never dunked on anyone. I've only

01:09:43

I've dunked a volleyball once. That's the closest I ever got. It was like It's something smaller than a vinyl. I mean, that's pretty good. That's that is pretty good. That was like a high school. So

01:09:52

wasn't great.

01:09:54

The guy was a friend of mine. I had we we'd been playing some pickup at a Mormon church, actually. And I'd just won, like, four games in a row. I think peep, like, morale's pretty low. So I just played it cool. I didn't say anything. I just kinda randomly.

01:10:06

By the way, I'm not being prejudiced. It's a thing that Mormons, like, you it's like, I've always known that there was basketball courts at the church and it's like your church is like a community event. Right? You hang out there after church.

01:10:20

Yeah. We have weekday events there sometimes,

01:10:22

especially for, like, youth and, like, yeah, people play basketball there. Yeah. Yep.

01:10:27

Yeah. So it's a thing. It is a thing. Sam It's a mormon thing to go dunk on someone politely as you did. Like, it's such a morbid move to politely stunt. And just, like, And then, like, to drink a coke.

01:10:39

Right?

01:10:41

Lot many latter day saints, many many members of the church do drink a lot of soda because you don't drink coffee or tea.

01:10:47

But I don't.

01:10:48

Yeah. Whenever I go to Utah, like, I'll go to the drive through at these, like, soda places, and they've got the best sodas, like, the weirdest combinations. I love it. So I'm I'm t Mormon, man. I'm an honorary member, I hope. Sam, are you Coke or Pepsi guy?

01:11:02

Coke. I coke zero all the way all day. Ben, coke or Pepsi.

01:11:07

I've I've actually never had either in my entire life. What? Oh, amazing.

01:11:11

That's amazing. Okay. Great. I I saw this great Reddit thread that was, like, brands, if their slogans were true, like, it's, like, truthful brand slogans, and the Pepsi one was,

01:11:22

Is Pepsi okay?

01:11:24

I thought it was so fucking clever.

01:11:26

It's like The thing at the restaurant, you order a coke, and then they hit you with the is Pepsi okay?

01:11:32

Alright. That's the episode. Let's see. We've we gotta cut those into clips. We had a bunch of good ones. See you.

01:11:39

I feel like I could root the world. I know I could be what I want to.