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Unknown A
All right, Sam, we just had an insane weekend together. We gotta talk about it. We just lived in a house for a weekend with 25 other founder entrepreneur types. Probably five to 10 of them were billionaires. A bunch of others were close. And we didn't just, like, talk or hang out. We literally, like, slept under one roof, sat in saunas together, played basketball together, went to Walmart together a bunch of times.
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Unknown B
My Airbnb had bunk beds, so we. We bunked. We bunk bed together.
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Unknown A
It's as close as two men can get. So. So we had an experience. And I have in front of me several sticky notes of golden lessons learned. And I phrased each of them. I don't know if you did this, but I phrased each of them to make it fun. Because nobody wants to hear your vacation story. That's one of the great rules of storytelling, is just never tell a vacation story. Cause it's so fun for you. But they weren't there. Nobody cares. But I think we should tell the biggest lessons learned with the story that backs them up. So it's real, not just a generic lesson. And I phrased all of mine like it's Confucius. Like, you know, Bruce Lee whispered this into your ear.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I dig that. And to give the background, basically, I think, like, three years ago, you tweeted out, I want to play basketball with interesting people. I think Mr. Beast, like, DM'd you, and you're like, wait, is this real? You ended up phoning him, and he was like, yeah, come to my place. I want to meet interesting people. The first year, it was like, you and Ben organized it. It was like 19 of us in an Airbnb, and we were like, what are we going to do? So we played basketball. The second year, you organized it a little bit more, and you had, like, an itinerary. This year, you guys killed it. It was awesome. It was an amazing event.
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Unknown A
I do like meeting interesting people when I go to conferences or events. I just hate conferences or events. Like, I get a pit in my stomach when I have to go, and I know it's good for me, and I know in the end I'll meet some cool people. I just hate the format. I hate the structure. So it was like, well, what's. You know, instead of just complaining about it, what's a structure I would like? It's like, well, I don't know. What if it was just doing the thing I love was playing basketball with those people. We basically play ball all day and then we talk at night. And that Was the core idea is to use basketball as the icebreaker.
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Unknown B
And you broke your knee in the first two hours.
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Unknown A
Yeah, yeah. So this was an event where you could tear. You could tear up your knee and be done in the first hour. And I still had a good time. That means it must have been a good event because normally that's pretty brutal. I did have a little pity party for myself, but I feel better now.
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Unknown B
Are we allowed to say who was there?
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Unknown A
Yeah, I think we could say some of the people that were there. Yeah, let's go for it.
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Unknown B
So Mr. Beast, who, like, you know, everyone knows him as the guy on YouTube with hundreds of millions of subscribers. I think he's a picture paper billionaire. I think that's public.
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Unknown A
Yeah, he's one of the youngest billionaires in the world. I think he's 26 years old and he's worth a few billion dollars. He's one of the most famous people also in the world. One of the most recognized entertainers in the world. And when you hang out with him, he's also one of the, like, most intense, fun to be around. You know, just wants to play all in. Like somebody said this once about Elon, they go, he's playing, he's playing life. As if the, as if the simulation theory is true. You know, Elon has a simulation theory, might just be one of many simulations. And so he therefore just goes all in because. Okay, whatever, let's make this the most entertaining version of that simulation. I think that's how Jimmy plays life too.
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Unknown B
So we were with him. It was one of the founders of Airbnb who, like, on paper, like according to Forbes, is like the hundredth or ninetieth richest person in the world. It was another billionaire who was one of the first investors in Tesla and SpaceX. It was the founder of Reddit. It was Jesse Itzler who's on the podcast, you, me, Al Doane, who runs like a quilting company that does nine figures a year.
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Unknown A
Tons of people.
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Unknown B
David Perel Nicuber. It was awesome. All right, all right. So a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And really a lot of people who are listening, they have a full time job and they want to start something on the side. A side hustle. Now, a lot of people message, Sean and I, and they say, all right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea? And again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas. Well, my friends, you're in luck. So my old company, the Hustle, they put together a hundred different side Hustle ideas. And they have appropriately called it the side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas, frankly.
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Unknown B
I went through them. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start them, how to grow them, things like that gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link. Click it, check it out, Let me know in the comments what you think. You wanna start first?
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Unknown A
Yeah, let's do it. All right, I got one for you. Here's one of the lessons I picked up. And this is about the business ideas that these guys were thinking about. So if you're out there and you're wondering, kind of like, where's the opportunity? What should I be working on? Here's what I picked up from some of the most successful people in America. And it says fish where the fish swim and not where the fishermen stand. Confucius, AKA me.
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Unknown B
Did you just make that up?
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Unknown A
You saw me write it these five minutes before we went.
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Unknown B
I thought you had heard that. Did you hear that somewhere else?
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Unknown A
There's a scratch out on it. Right.
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Unknown B
But did you get like Chinese food last week? And that was like a fortune cookie, dude.
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Unknown A
I've had my share of kung fu jiggin. Let me just tell you some of the ideas that I heard from people who were in at this event. So you messed. You mentioned Jesse Itzler. And I think one of the public things that he's done is he got really into racing, like running endurance races. So he just followed his curiosity.
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Unknown B
100 mile races.
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Unknown A
100 mile races. He started doing 100 mile races. While he's doing 100 mile races, he notices that the runners that are trying to do these amazing physical feats are drinking coconut water. And coconut water was a big part of that niche, super niche community. And he became a believer and spent time hunting down what he thought would be the best coconut water company ends up finding Zico Coconut Water partners with them. And Zico now is a big success. They ended up selling, I think, to coke and you know, they're, they're in Whole Foods or they're, you know, it's one of the big coconut water brands. And he found it when he was small and just like just exploring these uncharted territories. So here's some other Ones that I heard there was somebody there who's making hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling board games.
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Unknown A
I never even had that on my bingo card. I didn't even know that was an option. I did not even know that you could do that. There was somebody there that was investing millions of dollars into women's sports. Like, you know, and not even just women's sports. Like, they're trying to do things now where you just buy a piece of a college program. I don't even know you could do that. Like, that's for sale. What this is. What is that for sale? Where is this listed?
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Unknown B
I. I went to a talk recently with this billionaire who owned, like, the Timberwolves, Mark Glassary or something, and he was talking about the Bucks, and he was talking about how he's trying to buy college. Do you buy the rights?
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Unknown A
They're going to, like, the University of Alabama or whatever. And they're just like, cool, we'll give you $500 million for the Alabama sports program, and we want to own 51%.
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Unknown B
But it's like, trying to do. Do they buy the future earnings? Is that what it is?
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Unknown A
They're basically. I think what's going to happen is, again, it's uncharted territory. You don't know exactly how this would play out, but I think the short version is the college will spin out the program, their. Their athletics program as its own business entity. They'll sell equity in it. They'll use that equity to finance all of their sports, like women's lacrosse, like, things that aren't going to be the big revenue generators. So they use it to. To fund all their programs and maybe even school stuff. And then those. And then. And the costs now are borne by the. The private equity person. But now it's this asset that didn't even exist before. Like, these college programs can make a lot of money. Media rights and all this stuff. But they weren't even for sale. Somebody was doing that. There was some. Somebody there that was like, yeah, seven years ago, I just got really obsessed with water.
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Unknown A
I'm like, yeah, me too. I thought my whole life, he's like, no, no. Like, I got really obsessed. Like, do you know what kind of water you're drinking? And I was like, no. Like, is this bad with microplastics? What's going on? And he was just like, yeah, Like, I got obsessed. And so I just started studying. Where's the cleanest water from? Where's the healthiest water from? And I realized that water was going to Become like oil that people were going to more and more be drinking. Not tap water, but they wanted. They're going to want basically, basically bottled water, canned water, things like that. And that water's gonna have to come from somewhere. And I wanted to find the best sources of water. And so I went to West Virginia and I bought this aquifer. This is this spring. I bought this giant water source.
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Unknown B
What?
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Unknown A
And he was like, you see that drink you're drinking right there? It's like some brand, like popular brand. And he's like, that's our water. And they use our water, so that's good water. And I was like, what? This was just a side quest that he went on. And again, it was curiosity driven.
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Unknown B
Was this one of the billionaires?
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Unknown A
Yeah, basically. I mean, not. Not billionaire, but yeah, like whatever. Close. Close enough. There's a guy there, Al, who started a quilting company with his mom in Missouri, Star Quilt Co. And they sell fabrics for people who want to make quilts. His co founder is his mom.
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Unknown B
I have a planned vacation too. So he owns this thing. The company is called Missouri Quilting Company. And he basically bought. He did a podcast three years ago with us where he explained where he bought a town is a Hamilton, Missouri. He bought like an 1800 person town where they own every building and they're building the Disneyland for quilting.
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Unknown A
Dude, Just the thought of that. So first to go into quilting, smart guy, like, you know, could have done any business, goes into quilting.
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Unknown B
It's like, what are you guys, what are you doing, man? You're throwing it all the way on quilting.
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Unknown A
Does a business with his mom, right? Like again, independent thinking, not just following the herd. So then starts the business. Her, his mom does the YouTube channel, he does the business side of it. Business keeps growing and then it's like, you know what we could do? We could create the Disneyland for quilting. And he literally goes and buys a town again. Who's is that for sale? Can you do that? How do you do that? And that, that just kept happening, which was like people who were playing games that didn't even seem popular. Another lesson there is there was a person there who had sold a piece of their company to Chernin. And Chernin is now kind of known. I first heard about it maybe like 10 years ago. And Chernin is this really interesting.
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Unknown B
They're most famous for tcg. Peter Chernin was the CEO of Fox. So he's like a big swinging dick. He's been a baller for years, but they're Most famous amongst normal people because they bought barstool when it was nothing and helped make it something correct.
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Unknown A
And they just had this again, independent thinking where they were like, hey, I think these things that other people see as small kind of toys, things that aren't going to make a lot of money. Media brands, blogs, YouTube channels, I think these things are gonna be big. I think basically. And they had this thesis which was content to commerce. It's like, I think if you're kicking ass at content, you're gonna be able to, instead of just making your money through ad revenue and sponsorships, you're gonna be able to sell stuff to those people. And they had this content to commerce thesis and they go and they buy barstool. Content ends up being this juggernaut with commerce. They buy, they bought exploding kittens and they bought Meat Eater and they bought Surfline. All these niche content brands. We had a. The Pod, the Plant Daddy.
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Unknown B
I met with them a couple times. There was like early discussions. Well, you know, three meetings with the, that I had with at the Hustle. And I was like, what the. Do you guys know? Didn't get that one right. Turns out they know a lot. They, they know a lot.
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Unknown A
Did he just like slide a P and L across the table and he's like, I'll leave you three minutes.
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Unknown B
Like they told me this story and I was like, you're full of shit. You don't know what you're talking about. Like, do you're talking about my company? Right? It's like, you know, like. But they were right. I think with the premise was correct. But yeah, I didn't have that confidence that we're talking about now.
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Unknown A
And dude, they made a fortune because the market overlooked these brands. These brands were not valued like high flying tech companies, but they became, you know, multi hundred million billion dollar brands. I really admire what TCG did because there's so many investors that all love to sound like they're smart and contrarian and they're all just what's your thesis?
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Unknown B
AI.
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Unknown A
The, you know, AI is going to be the future of everything. Right? It's like, okay, you're not wrong in that. But like there's something really impressive about somebody who looked at just like this magazine or this blog or did it.
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Unknown B
With Doug Demoro who was on our pod. We've had a bunch. We've actually probably had three or four people who sold their company on the pod to those guys.
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Unknown A
Right, right. And they've been right and they've been right in a very, very Big way. So I'm very impressed by them. So to me, that's the principle. Fish where the fish swim. So fish where the real opportunity is, not where the fishermen are standing, not where everybody. All the entrepreneurs are huddled up. This fortune cookie says, man does not sell chocolate. He must become chocolate. Okay, so what does this mean? Three years ago, when we did the first version of this event, Jimmy, aka Mr. Beast, had launched his chocolate brand, Feastables. And it was like, okay, selling chocolate to little kids. I had the opportunity to invest, I think at a $40 million valuation was like the Series A.
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Unknown B
And I passed in the Beast empire.
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Unknown A
Or chocolate in Feastables itself. So kind of thought about it. I was like, I don't really get it. I didn't really know much about the chocolate industry. I thought his involvement was going to be like this normal influencer brand is, I'm doing my thing, I create my content. Oh, my manager hands me this. Hey, buy this. Smile.
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Unknown B
Ding.
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Unknown A
Yeah, Put it down. Move on with life. So I thought, he's just gonna influence it. I thought, he's just gonna hold it up and buy it. I didn't. What I didn't realize is that this guy was gonna go so deep into the world of chocolate and end up knowing everything about chocolate. Ended up running this company like an absolute maniac founder. If I had known that, if I had known he was going to bring his full intensity at this, I probably would have thought about it differently. I thought he was just going to hold up the chocolate bar and see how many people clicked the link. I was dead wrong. So I want to tell a quick story. You were there for one of the Walmart runs, right?
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Unknown B
No, but I have a bunch of Walmart stories.
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Unknown A
So we're sitting there, we're about to record, he walks in, he's like, hey, before we do this, you guys want to go to Walmart? Which I realized at the time sounded like strange request. Nobody's ever asked me on a. On a mandate to Walmart. We walk in and he takes us to the chocolate aisle and basically gives a like 10 minute masterclass on the chocolate industry right there in the aisle. And while he's doing it, he's not just like explaining like, well, this is how it works. This is how we do. This is our revenues, this, whatever. He's also simultaneously restocking the entire aisle. Like, he pulled the cartons up to the front because they were like 3 inches recessed. They were pushed back too far, some of the bars had fallen over, they were crooked. He Straightens every single one of them out. He puts the right flavors in the right spots.
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Unknown A
If a bar was crinkly or broken, he's like, he throw it to his chief of staff, like, hey, can you buy this? I want to have like, we should only have good bars, no broken bars up front. And he would basically restock the thing, but his hands were moving at a speed, which showed you this is not the first time this guy's done this. So he, he restocks it. And one of the popular flavors was out. And so he takes out his phone and he's like, oh, I have a badge. And so he just badges into the back of Walmart and goes and gets the box himself and restocks it. And I was like, does any vendor get to do that? And he was like, nah, nah, not exactly. But they know, like, I like, I just do this. I care, I really care. And it kind of two things stood out to me.
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Unknown A
The first was obvious, which was when high intensity obsessive people want to win, they do the same things that the rest of us do with the knob dialed up to 12. Like, they just, they just take the knob and they just crank it past even where you think it could go. And for example, he was like, I think you were there. He was telling the story about like missing a flight or something like this.
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Unknown B
He like told the story about how apparently he flew to D.C. and had a connecting flight to North Carolina or something, wherever he lived. And he was like, you know what, screw it. I'm driving from D.C. to Greenville, North Carolina. It's normally like, I don't know, a three hour drive or something, but I noticed that there's 14 Walmarts in between on that route. I'm gonna stop at every single one of them to learn. And it turned like a three hour drive into like, you know, a 20 hour drive. And he told me at one point he goes, I have scanned. I guess he's got some app where you scan things in Walmart and it teaches you about each sku. He said he scanned every single product in Walmart. And I don't know if he was like, if someone said, oh no, I've scanned all of them, you'd be like, oh, so it's like saying it's a thousand degrees outside.
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Unknown B
You're just exaggerating. But with him, I was like, oh, I bet you, you literally have scanned every single one of them in the podcast.
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Unknown A
We did. He was like, yeah, like, you know, we want to do a thing where you buy every item in Walmart for somebody in a video. And he's like, you know, but it's $16.2 million. It's like he knew the actual cost of the total, total inventory. If you bought one of everything in Walmart, like what it cost. I forgot what the number was. But so, but I don't want to make this just a Jimmy love fest because there was another guy who was a top seller in Target.
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Unknown B
Yeah, man, I heard him nerding out, it was wild.
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Unknown A
He took us to this shelf and he was like, this shelf right here, he's giving us a tour of Target and it shows you how the store works. He's like, this shelf right here is the high, most profitable shelf in Target is the highest profit per square inch, which is how Target measures, you know, success. And he's giving us this Target masterclass. And we were like, are you also in Walmart? He's like, yeah, we're in Walmart, but we're not doing so well. And I asked him what's exciting for you? Coming up. And this guy runs a billion dollar plus company. I assumed he was just going to say I've got some board meetings to line up. I'm going, I'm taking the family to Aspen. And he goes, actually I'm working the next three weeks as a Walmart associate. I was like what? And he goes, yeah, I'm gonna be.
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Unknown A
He goes, our sales in Walmart are not the same as in Target. And I've been trying to figure out why. What I found remarkable is that you expect the people who are the most busy, the most accomplished, the most high net worth to be above these tasks. Jimmy restocking, the SKUS himself, this other guy going to be a Walmart associate for three weeks. You know, they don't have to do any of this, but they're going to do it anyways. They're not just doing it now, now that they're successful, that's how they got here. And so that was the first really big takeaway from this whole thing was the intensity with which certain people play the game of business and how that leads to success.
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Unknown B
That guy who you're referring to was the quietest person there or one of. And there was a point where I was hanging out with him. He goes, can I get your guys opinion? You know, I thinking, I'm thinking about potentially like making some type of business move which would value us at this valuation. And we were like what valuation? And it was like in the billions. And we were like, do you know who we are? Why Are you asking us this question? Like what? Like, what are you. What are you talking about, man? Like, you. I don't know who you asked this question to, but, like, he was the most, like, humble person there, and he was crazy successful. It was pretty wild. That guy who you're talking about. All right, I have one confidence beats iq. So, you know, there are a lot of, like, really successful people out there.
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Unknown B
Like, when I read Warren Buffett's biography, he does the opposite where he is like, you know, I'm just this guy. It's like, did you're. You're bonafide.
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Unknown A
Aw, shucks. Downplaying them.
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Unknown B
Yeah. You're a baby genius. Like, he was like, when he was like four, he was like making ten grand a month selling Pepsi. But in general, the group of people who we had there, there were some people for sure who are genius. I think Jimmy's one of them, actually. I think when you talk to him, you know, he's like, brilliant, but. And like, Mario from Oscar was one of them. Mario co founded a company called Oscar, which is a health insurance company, which is one of the hardest things ever to do. It's worth publicly traded $4 billion. So he's like the man. And he doesn't even speak English or he does. That's a second language. So like, you know, he's from Germany. So imagine genius, dude. Imagine going to Germany and revolutionizing the German healthcare market. You know what I mean? Like, it's. It's pretty wild.
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Unknown A
Extra degree of difficulty. Just go to someone else's motherland and fix their shit.
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Unknown B
Yeah. Which is wild. But, you know, he was a genius. But in general, dude, the wealthiest people there, I noticed, were not even close to the smartest. And here's an example. One of the billionaire guys was there. He goes, man, AI is just going to change the world, you guys. I don't think you guys get it. Like, I use it every day. And I was like, how do you. How do you use it? He goes, I could show you right now. And he pulls out his phone and he talks to ChatGPT and he goes, hey, Chat GPT, you know, I have a question. And he like starts like reading a question to it. And then he's like, now watch how amazing it is. And he like, it repeats the answer. And I'm like, oh, so you're saying that you just use chat gbt, like all the time?
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Unknown B
Like, yeah. And I was like, well, like, have you, like, trained it? He goes, you could trade it. Like, like he didn't know that you could do these things. And this particular guy ran a company doing billions a year in revenue. I guess what I mean is, like, this. The. The. The percentage of intelligence greater than me or you or someone else there versus impact or net worth was not like that. It.
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Unknown A
It wasn't Totally, totally, totally, totally agree with that. Which is that when you sit in a room like this, two things happen. One, you just get to sample, like, it's Costco and it's noon at Costco, and you're just getting to sample different lifestyle. Oh, what do you do? Oh, wow. You seem kind of stressed out. Gotcha. Like, not interested in going down that aisle.
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Unknown B
Yeah.
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Unknown A
You seem like you're having a lot of fun. What do you do? How do you think about this? You got kids, too. How are you doing Both, right? And you get to sample people's lifestyle when you're hanging out with them like this for, like, you know, 48 hours straight. On top of that, you also get to do the measuring stick thing, which kind of sucks because you're measuring yourself against, like, some of the most crazy, creative, successful, ambitious people in the world. But a big part of it is you're trying to figure out the diff, right? It's like those. See, there's little children's games, these two pictures. What's the difference between these two pictures? And on one side is me, and the other side is them. And I'm always looking at what's the difference? And sometimes if it's like Amari or whatever, it's like, oh, cool.
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Unknown A
Like, his brain has an extra library in it. There's an extra wing that somebody donated to that brain. All right, cool. I can live with that. I can sleep easy. But there were other people where it was like, oh, it just seems like they didn't limit themselves.
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Unknown B
That's what I mean.
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Unknown A
They just kind of went for it, or they have. Their courage was just a little bit higher supply than mine. And you're right that when you look at the diff, very, very rarely was the diff. These people are smarter than me. Or they had some advantages I didn't have coming up. Right? Like, in fact, it was usually the opposite. It's like, damn. They had this huge chip on the shoulder because their dad wasn't around, and because of this happened, and they were dyslexic. There's a bunch of people over there that were dyslexic.
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Unknown B
I wish I was dyslexic.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Was the goal. It's dude. Dyslexic, dude.
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Unknown B
Every dyslexic guy there somehow was a good freestyle rapper. Did you know that?
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Unknown A
Like, not only rich, but also cool in a group of men huddled around together, right?
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Unknown B
Like, yeah, I wish I was charismatic like a dyslexic guy. Like, that's crazy. It's like if you're, if you're. If it's like if you're blind, you're a good, like, piano player and if you're dyslexic, you're like the most charismatic guy on earth.
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Unknown A
Yeah, exactly. I have a related point, which is I just wrote these two words. I don't know if you can read this.
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Unknown B
I am.
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Unknown A
I am. So my trainer has a clothing brand that he creates. It's called Superconscious Go. So one of the shirts he gave me from Superconscious Go, my favorite shirt, it just, on the side, it just says, I am. And then it's after. And underneath it says the two most important words in the English language for whatever comes after them will define your life. If you think you are destined for greatness, if you think you belong at that table, you will make different decisions along the way and then it becomes sort of self fulfilling, right? You'll work at a different speed, you'll take different risks. You will. You will go for it in a different way. Several conversations I had at this event where I realized, damn, a lot of the. A lot of the downstream decisions start with the little voice in your head, the little director of your movie who's deciding, like, what kind of movie is this?
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Unknown A
Is this like an indie budget? Is this a tragedy? Is this a comedy? Are you a joke? Or is this a hero? Is this a Marvel movie? Are you the hero saving the world? Right? And like, I'm not saying one is better than the other, but you get to decide what that little voice in your head is going to tell you. Because the director says, you know, what happens in the story, where you stand, what you say, all of those things. And I thought, damn, a lot of what I'm seeing in how people are living their lives and what they're doing differently comes from the little voice in their head. Just has a different script in mind for what their life is all about. That I am statement.
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Unknown B
Or like, here's a small example. How about Jesse bring his sauna? Jesse Itzler brought his sauna and he had two guys. And I was like, what do you guys do? He's like, oh, we bring these saunas, like whenever he wants to go.
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Unknown A
Keep the sauna hot.
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Unknown B
Yeah, he's like, whenever we go, when he wants to go to like a conference or something, like, this sauna is like a really cool way to like, create a bonding experience. Which it was, by the way, just chilling in the sauna. It was freaking awesome. And I was like, wait, Jesse, you got these two guys whose just like, job is to like, trail around this, like, sauna, like across the country to break to events. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard of. He's like, yeah, isn't it great we get to hang in the sun? I was like, yes. And that's like another example of like, intensity, but like, on a more relatable scale.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown B
All right, I have one. You could take your billions and shove it up your ass.
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Unknown A
Seneca.
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Unknown B
Yeah, put that on a. On one of those inspirational posters that you see in your office, there is this one guy who was one of the first investors in a variety of Elon companies, and presumably a billionaire, like, you know, investing in Tesla at a $60 million valuation or $100 million valuation. You know, I don't know what that. Is that like, is that like a hundred thousand times? So something like that.
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Unknown A
We don't do public math. Yeah, like a lot. It's now a trillion dollar company.
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Unknown B
Yeah. So it's a big deal. You know, there was this funny story where this guy was telling a story about working really hard and like, he was grinding and his kid was sick and he's like, I had to take a week off to like, go and help my kid. And you know, that was a big deal because I was working so hard. And then this other guy came and he goes, you know how you guys are all talking about working 16 hours, weeks, 16 hours a day on your companies right now I'm doing that as well. But my company is my family and I have retired from business and I work 16 hours a day as the CEO of my family. And when he said that, I was like, this is awesome. And I imagine he was exaggerating a little bit because I imagine he still does some type of deal making or something like that.
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Unknown B
I don't know him well enough to know, but I thought it was so cool when he said that. And I thought, you have it figured out. Same with Jesse Itzler. These two guys who I can't say the first guy's name, but Jesse also had the same energy where I was like, this is the way. And this is all personal preference. You know, Jimmy wanted to be Elon, cool, go do that. But when I heard this Other way of talking. I was like, you know, after. This is easy to say because everyone was wealthy, but after some number, I don't know what that number is. 10, 20, 30, some millions of numbers, not a lot of it really matters. And just like having a good time with your family is something I really admired. And I thought it was really cool that that guy said that.
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Unknown B
And it made me realize that I was getting sucked in this vortex of like money, money, money and achievement, achievement, whatever. But when I saw these guys talk and their energy, I was more drawn to that than anyone else there. Do you agree?
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Unknown A
Yeah, a hundred percent. I think when I go to events like this, my instinct is to figure out, oh, how do you win? Oh, how do you win? How do you win? What tactics, what techniques, what strategies, what approaches work. And instead the better question almost every single time is what game are you even playing? And picking the right game matters way more than figuring out how to win the wrong game.
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Unknown B
Dude, there was people there who were like mini Genghis Khans where it's like they want to dominate. Like they get joy out of war and domination.
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Unknown A
They want to build cities, they want to dominate industries, they want to do that. That's one game you could play. And by the way, no judgment. Great. Do whatever game you want to play. I just want to know what the games are so I can pick. And other people were like, I want to be CEO of my family full time. And I'm like, ah, I've done a four hour stretch with my kids. Like, I think I'm more of a 45 minutes a day, 45 minutes at a time, four times a day. That's, that's my ideal. So, okay, I'm not going to be CEO of my family because I would actually be miserable if I was a full time stay at home dad personally. But I, but okay, that's a game I could play. Then I talked to Jesse and I was like, Jesse, what do you do?
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Unknown A
Like what do you do every day now? I'm training for races and I'm coaching my kids sports things. I do public speaking because I feel like it keeps me sharp and I get excited to get up on stage and say some shit that lights people up. He's like, I'm selling calendars. He's like, it's not going to make, he's like, I'm not making a fortune. Like these guys, you know, they'll do that in a day or two, a week or we'll do in a year, but I don't know I like doing it. I'm doing what I want to be doing. And he was very at ease with that. He's at peace with that. And I think obviously some of that comes from maturity, but a lot of it comes from. It's easy to be at peace when you're actually doing the thing that puts you at peace when you're doing the thing you like.
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Unknown A
And if you're kind of, I don't know, like, masquerading around, trying to just do what you think you should be doing, I think that becomes very exhausting. And so I'm with you that figuring out what game to play seems like the much more important question at every phase of your life. And the game I wanted to play in my 20s is different than the one I'm playing currently in my 30s. It's probably gonna be different than what I play in my 40s and 50s. And I just gotta kind of reinvent myself, Dude.
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Unknown B
There was one guy there who said he worked with Elon, and apparently he had to do a meeting or something with Elon. And like, the secretary told him, like, all right, you're gonna do this meeting, but I need you to know that Elon makes his companies make $20 million every one hour, so this better be a $20 million meeting.
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Unknown A
I heard a similar thing from a guy who worked with him that he was like, elon would have a meeting, but he would. There would be like 40 or 50 people in the meeting. And the reason why was not because that makes for a more effective meeting, but because it was like, if the right. If the person who we need to talk to is not in this room, it's such a colossal waste of his time that we'll just fly everybody here and we're going to have this, you know, 45 minute block, and that way everybody's here. Because all of your time collectively is not worth as much as his. His hour, which is like such a.
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Unknown B
Like, it's hard to. It's hard to fathom this. Let me tell you a really quick one, which is hard work amongst this group, not universal. So there was one guy. I don't. You weren't there. You were. Sean, like, busted his knee in the second hour or something like that and had a stand at home for like this whole. One whole session. And there was this guy there who was explaining how hard he grinds. And then there was this other guy who was one of the more successful guys there. He was like, I work like 20 hours a week. He's like, once my companies got to be like some type of, like, predictable, stable. Like, all right, if we just keep doing this for 10 years, we're gonna grow 50% a year, hopefully. Like, it's gonna. Whatever. He was like, I started working 20 hours a week, and he's like, I wouldn't work Fridays.
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Unknown B
And it was really interesting to see that not everyone worked hard. Did you get that sense from people?
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Unknown A
The thing I pulled from it was some people were basically operating like monopolies and other people were not. Meaning. There were some people playing a game where the competition is so vicious. An easy example is YouTube. If you stop uploading, the game stops, the music stops.
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Unknown B
There's literally a million other businesses in that same exact space doing the same exact thing who are ready to eat.
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Unknown A
And every idea you put out there in a video, somebody else is going to copy. And a lot of people do copy the exact videos that he does and the exact script. It's all public information. It's all super competitive. There's no gatekeeping. And then there's other people who were like, yeah, all we had to do was get to this. Like, we just had to get this shelf space. Like, there was one guy who was showing us a shelf at Target, and he was like, basically seven years of the company was just dedicated, was just like hard work, dedicated to getting on the shelf. But once you're on the shelf, it's almost impossible for anybody else to get on the shelf. All we have to do now is stay on the shelf. By the way, this shelf right here, like this little rack you're looking at, this is $300 million a year.
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Unknown A
And you're just looking at it, you're like, oh, damn. Wow. One shelf in Walmart, one shelf in Target is like the entire revenue streams of these online only companies. But you're extremely defensible compared to other businesses where the moment you take a. Take a break, you have the entire Internet competing with you on that same thing. You know what I mean?
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Unknown B
Yeah. Yeah. That was an interesting thing. Do you have.
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Unknown A
I have a quick one. Health as well. In a room full of very wealthy people, how many fancy clothes did you see? How many fancy watches did you see? How many fancy cars did you hear people bragging about?
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Unknown B
Everyone but Joe Ghebbia looks schleppy. Joe Gabbia looked great. Even in fantastic style, even in workout gear, he was wearing some nice shit.
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Unknown A
He looks like he should be in like a Taylor Sheridan show. Like, if he. If he made an. If he made an appearance on Landman, I wouldn't even. I wouldn't even blink.
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Unknown B
Everyone besides him, did you know he's on the board of Tesla? I didn't know that either. Like he does a lot of interesting stuff. Everyone besides him looked like. We're like, we were like at a slumber party.
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Unknown A
Well, we were also.
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Unknown B
Yeah, but during the day.
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Unknown A
Yeah, that should be the title of this slumber party with billionaires. So the. But the health is wealth thing was very real. There was a lot of flexing on stuff you're doing for your health, what you're eating and not eating, how much, who's your doctor, who's your, what's your protocol.
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Unknown B
No one was like that jacked or ripped or anything, were they? Other than Joe.
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Unknown A
Yeah. I thought people were in pretty good shape if you go to other industries. Non kind of like tech, Internet, not our bubble. Right. But like go to like a conference with the wealthiest people in finance or oil or whatever. Like pick any industry. Their body shape looks a lot different. No, everyone way different.
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Unknown B
They looked like a healthy 55 year old dude.
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Unknown A
After. Basically our day was go play basketball for three hours, like an intense basketball game. Come home, go into a 250 degree sauna. Then when you're tired of the sauna, go into this pond that was like freezing cold in North Carolina and go plunge for three minutes, then go back into the sauna, then go back into the plunge. Then there's like a masseuse doing bodywork and myofascial release for you. Then you're eating and everybody's eating clean. Every single person's eating clean while we're there. Right? Like it's like, dude, that was the norm. That is not normal. You know, if you were drinking something out of a plastic bottle, it's like basically doing heroin at this event.
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Unknown B
Dude, me and Nick Hubert got Taco Bell at midnight.
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Unknown A
Secrecy.
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Unknown B
Yeah, like we didn't want to tell anyone.
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Unknown A
Secrecy. Dude. I took like a feastable bar in my, like I like hid it in my hoodie and it crutched over to my bedroom and ate it like in shame over there. Because what am I gonna do, sit here and eat a chocolate bar in front of these men? Hayes is 52 years old and ripped.
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Unknown B
Yeah.
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Unknown A
I was like, wow, this guy is, you know, on the Forbes, you know, self made billionaires list and also, also just ripped for fun as a side quest.
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Unknown B
Dude. Yeah. Yeah. I mean he looked great.
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Unknown A
And then Jesse's 56 and runs 100 mile races. How many 50 year olds are ripped and run 100 mile races? Nobody does that shit. Especially successful guys.
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Unknown B
Jimmy wanted to do, like, a taste test. He had everyone, like, gather around to do a taste test of, like, Hershey's versus his stuff. And, like, I, like, pretended like, oh, wow, Jimmy, your stuff is great. I've never had this before, but, like, at every Airbnb in the kitchen. Did you see this at every Airbnb? It was, like, literally 100 candy bars, and I literally had 2,000 calories per night of his candy. I ate so much of it. I could tell you about all of it. Like, I could. I could. I did. I. I didn't need a taste test. I could tell. I'm already an expert on. I could tell you about all. All the flavors, the peanut butter ones, the dark chocolate ones.
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Unknown A
He's like, you don't have to lick the wrapper for the taste test. No, no, no. This is just how I'm thorough.
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Unknown B
Like, I've already. I'm like, Jimmy, like, I already know. Like, I've. I've eaten all of them. And I. I had M M's and Hershey bars on the plate on the way here. Like, I. I could tell you about.
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Unknown A
The weirdest thing is when he's. When he's, like, hanging out with, like, the. Like the. The. The upper echelon of the group, he's just like, just try a piece of this one. You don't have to eat the whole thing. But, like, you know, it's more for younger people. But, like, whatever.
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Unknown B
That's what he's going. Because it's for kids.
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Unknown A
It's for kids. And he's like, he gives. He'll give you, like, the dark chocolate flavor. Yeah. And I'm sitting there with, like, cookies and cream all over my face, and I'm like, I like it. I like the cookies and cream.
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Unknown B
It's like, my daughter just learned my favorite.
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Unknown A
Jimmy, you have more of this one?
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Unknown B
Yeah, my daughter just learned how to say more, but I feel like this. More, more.
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Unknown A
This one.
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Unknown B
I was doing this all the time. More, more, more.
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Unknown A
Can I give you some. Some of the negative ones?
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Unknown B
How about the guy who goes, at that point, I was broke. I think I only had, like, $20 million. Yeah.
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Unknown A
He's telling some story. Well, there's a. There was a hilarious conversation about prenups, which is, you know, nothing more can be said except for. There was an incredible conversation about prenups.
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Unknown B
I was about to go outside. Me and. Me and someone else were going to go outside of the sauna, and someone said, hey, can I ask you guys about prenup. And we were like, let's just sit right here. I just want to listen. Let's just listen.
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Unknown A
It was one of the most that, like, next three hours was one of the most entertaining three hours of my life. Like, I don't think I've laughed that hard in five, 10 years. Like, I was literally belly laugh crying.
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Unknown B
Some shocking set setups, people. Billionaires are not like you and me. If you're listening to this, billionaires exist and they are not like you. They are not like you.
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Unknown A
I would say is the midwit meme was in full effect. I'll give you one example. So the way we played our basketball tournament was three teams and we played and then it was supposed to be the, you know, the top two teams play for the finals, but all the teams finished the same record. 1. Like, we all had one win, one loss after everybody played each other. So I was like, okay, well, which two teams advanced to the finals? And so I. But everybody's getting tired, so I had to make something up. So I was like, all right, we're going to do a, like a penalty kick shootout. So what's the most exciting, you know, like, thing in sports is in hockey or soccer where they do the shootout. And it's not going to take up a bunch of energy because, like, we're old guys and people are getting hurt.
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Unknown A
We got to, like, we can't play an extra game to figure out who's going to go. So we said, all right, everybody step up to pick every. Each team pick five guys. They're going to shoot a free throw, and then the team that makes the least, like, pressure's on. Everybody's watching you. So it was interesting. One team, my team was like, this is a dictatorship. Like, y'all are the five best to the other guys. They're. They're better than you. These five are shooting.
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Unknown B
Who was the dictator?
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Unknown A
Well, I was a dictator. I didn't even think there was another way. I was like, of course we're just going to pick our five best and do this. Like, honestly, I didn't even consider another method. And I was the coach of my team because I had gotten injured. I'm on crutches. So I was like, doing that. The second guy, the second team did it merit based. And the third was like, kind of like a volunteer voting system or whatever. And in the merit based thing, a funny thing that happened was one of the guys was probably less good at basketball overall, made it in the practice shot. And one of the guys who was one of their better players on the team just happened to miss. So I was like, damn, are y'all really gonna not have one of your best players shoot and have this other guy shoot?
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Unknown A
I was just watching. I'm like, I just want to see what happens here. I want to see what happens with the egos. I just need to know. I need to see this. The guy was like, you sure you want to do it? He's like, no, no, you should do it. You made it. If you want to, I'll do it. And then the guy's like, no. I mean, I don't know. I think I'm going to do it. He's like, okay, go ahead and do it.
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Unknown B
So.
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Unknown A
So the guy steps up and he shoots, and he makes it. The guy who's probably like, you know, the weaker basketball players makes it, clutched it up, and has this awesome moment, and his team advances to the finals. And I feel so happy for this guy. And I'm like, that was amazing. I'm like, I'm. I'm glad that they kind of real Rudy moment. He had his Rudy moment. He honored it. He made it. Good for him. That was awesome. Under pressure. I love. I wanted everybody to have, like, golden moments during the. During the event. But then after the final and this. Their team goes on, Wins the finals, Happy they're holding the trophy. It's all good. Afterwards, we're all, like, packing up to leave, and he's like. He goes up to that guy, the other guy who sat out. He's like, hey, I want.
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Unknown A
Can you and me go shoot free throws? I want to know if that was the correct, like, ev decision statistically. And the guy's like, oh, man, you already made it. Like, you. You already made it. We already won. Like, you're good, dude. You did it. He's like, no, no, no. I. I need to know. I need to know. And he's like, no. Like, it's like, honestly, it's done you. I'm glad you did it. You made it. He's like, I need to know. And he's like, all right. So they go and they shoot. And of course, the guy who's played basketball his whole life makes more of the free throws in, like, the. With the larger sample size. And then the other guy was, like, kind of head down for, like. He was kind of bummed out about it for a second, and I was like, what a.
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Unknown A
What an intelligently stupid thing to do, right? Like, he wanted to know, like, was this a positive ev Decision? Was this statistically the correct move.
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Unknown B
What does EV mean?
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Unknown A
Expected value. It's like if you're playing poker, you can. You bet your chips and even if you lose, you're still happy because you made the right decision. Even if the result didn't pan out.
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Unknown B
So funny.
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Unknown A
There's chances. And so I was like, way to snatch, like, way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And there was so many of these little moments where like, there's this guy there who's like, he's a total catch. He's like, smart, he's good looking, he's ripped, he's successful, all these things. And he. I just thought a guy like this could walk into a coffee shop and like the cute barista would want him to talk to her. I've always wanted to be that guy, you know, like this guy could have been that guy. He could have. It could be so easy for him to just meet someone amazing and instead you want to describe like, so, all.
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Unknown B
Right, I think what he did was, did he scrape? He built a program that scraped. LinkedIn starts with the desired result.
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Unknown A
He's like, I want a beautiful, intelligent, successful woman or something like that. I was there for the whole thing.
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Unknown B
Someone who fit his, like, heritage.
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Unknown A
And so he was like, cool. So he built a AI bot to crawl LinkedIn to then scrape all the, like, successful, beautiful women, like trained on images of women that he thought were beautiful.
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Unknown B
Like every woman who was like, of a certain like, look in New York, who was between, you know, whatever, 22 and 30 or whatever, he had like a data. Yeah, he had binders of women.
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Unknown A
Yeah, it was hilarious. And then he had this like whole system for how we could reach out to them with like, it was amazing. I want to, I don't want to go into all the details, but like.
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Unknown B
He had a dedicated iPhone there. He goes, this is my iPhone. And I. He goes, I have two full time engineers who, who have built this program that auto DMs, them this particular DM on Instagram. Let me send her a voice note. I go, you send her voice notes? He goes, I have found that voice notes convert better. And like, he like showed me the.
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Unknown A
Voice note as he told this whole system. It's like, what's that thing called the Rorschach test or whatever where you see the blot and it's like you either see like, you know, a killer or an angel or whatever. His. It was like. Some people are like, this is the most impressive thing I've ever seen. And then some people, like the married guys who are like, you know, 50, 40s and 50s were like, brother, you're. You're. It's too much. You're doing too much here. You gotta just, like, just see a cute girl and go talk to her. It's okay. Let it. Let it roll organically, baby. It's gonna work better that way. And I just thought it was hilarious. I'm really late. I gotta go. I'm supposed to be speaking at something right now. I gotta. I gotta jet. I just realized I'm way over.
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Unknown B
That's it. That's the pod.