SPEAKER_02
So let's do a little public math here. Let's break a rule. He just launched this product.
He had more demand than he was willing to let in. He let in 5000 people. That's 20 million in ARR that he had on day one of launching.
All right. What's up to me and Sam, two guys who you can't live without. You know, I should really think about what I'm going to say before I start this topic.
I literally just start talking and whatever comes out of my mouth is fine. And then also it's 9 a.m. for me. I, you know, I wake up, I don't talk to anyone from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. So these are the first words I say, period. And that's what came out.
All right. Well, here we are. We both have one topic in both of our lists, which is very, very rare that we have overlap here.
We both have this topic because there's a business that sold for $500 million. That is a badass story and it's called follow up boss. I had never heard of this company before.
I find out they sell for 500 million in cash. Tell me about follow up boss. I think you know more.
SPEAKER_01
You know how I know about them. I know about them for two reasons. The biggest reason they're a Hampton member.
And so I saw them post that they had just sold. Man, this story is crazy. So I had never heard of this company.
Have you never heard of them till today. So there's not really a reason why we would have heard of them other than for word is business nerds, but it's a real estate platform. So it's a vertical software.
And so basically the gist of it is that if you are a real estate agent or if you own a company that has multiple real estate agents, you get leads from Redfin, Zillow, whatever else. Ideally, you get thousands of leads per month as well as you have homes that you're selling and people who are buying homes. You have to track them all.
It's basically kind of what HubSpot or Salesforce does, but specifically for real estate agents. The guy, Dan, he started it 12 years ago, I think. Do you know how he started it? That's what's fascinating about it.
SPEAKER_02
I don't know how he started it, but you're right. So the gist of it is it's a niche down CRM. So agents get leads, they need to follow up with those leads.
You got to keep track of all those leads. So it's a sort of HubSpot for real estate agents just zoomed in, zoomed way in on that one niche. Has a pretty insane exit.
So how did they start it?
SPEAKER_01
So what was the final sale? $500 million. So $400 million up front in cash and then another $100 million earn out. Listen to how this guy started.
His name's Dan, he's from Australia, but they live in Wyoming now. So I guess it's technically, it's a remote company, but they're a Wyoming startup. It's got to be one of the bigger tech exits out of Wyoming.
Man, listen to this. So he actually went through the foundation. Do you remember that course like 10 years ago? It was like a course to teach you how to start a startup.
SPEAKER_02
The foundation? No, I've never heard of that.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. That's what it was called. And so it's like their greatest success story, I guess now.
But he went to this thing and he started just trolling Facebook groups and he was like working a normal job. He was a marketer at a normal big company and he was like, I want to start a company. I need some ideas.
And so he was like, well, I've got a buddy in real estate that kind of interests me. So we started joining these Facebook groups for real estate agents and he just started like skimming in all the posts of like, what are people complaining about? What's like a common thing? And he saw this guy complain. He's like, man, I'm paying 500 bucks a month for the software that I hate for tracking all my leads.
It kind of stinks. Like, how are you guys like tracking your leads? And he saw like, okay, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02
All right, let's take a quick break to talk about our sponsor HubSpot. You know, I started a new company recently and I haven't announced it yet. Not going to announce it here, but I'm going to tell you that we use HubSpot for it.
We're using it for our sales process. It's actually pretty great. And, you know, it's quarter one now in 2024, we all have goals.
We all want growth. But what you don't want is your salespeople just stuck in the mud where they're spending all their time just scheduling, trying to track down leads, looking at data. And it's not organized at all.
That's why HubSpot has this thing called sales hub. That's pretty great. We're using it on a daily basis.
And, you know, the goal is you want to move customers in the pipeline from just being a contact to actually being a customer to signing their full-on contract and ultimately managing and forecasting your sales so that you kind of know which direction the business is going. And so check out sales hub from HubSpot. It is focused on helping you work smarter, not harder so that you can get all of your New Year's goals, close more deals and get on track for your best Q1 yet.
Explore the new HubSpot sales hub and AI tools like chatspot at HubSpot.com. All right, let's get back to the pod.
SPEAKER_01
And so we partnered with a guy who's a developer, a front of his who's a developer. They build an MVP. They say that it took them like six months and they only had one customer paying 150 bucks a month.
But he said, he goes, man, we built like this interview that I read with him is a few years old. So I don't know if it was true till the end. But he's like, we basically built our entire business on Facebook, but not Facebook ads.
He goes, I would just go into all these Facebook groups as the CEO and I would see them talk about like, hey, what's a good platform for this? And it wasn't even related to follow up boss, which was his software company. He was like, I was just like being helpful constantly and people would click my Facebook profile and see that I was the CEO of this one platform or this one tech company. And then they would click off and buy it and I would call them and become friends with them.
But he became, they found this idea just through trolling Facebook groups and they would see people complain about stuff and he would DM them on Facebook and be like, hey, I think I'm building a solution for you. I don't care if you buy it or not, but like, could you just give me 10 minutes of your time so I could figure out, make sure I'm solving the right problem. And he did this so often that that's how they came up with this idea for the software.
They bootstrapped the whole company. I don't know how much the revenue was. The only source that I found was a source that I don't entirely trust online, but it was like 28 million a year in revenue, less than 100 employees and a huge exit.
SPEAKER_02
People have to tell you the revenue when you join Hampton. Don't you just have this? Can't you just take a peek at the quick HIPAA record here?
SPEAKER_01
But I would never cite that. And so I just Googled like, you know, follow up boss revenue and I'm just like, what could I see that's public? So I don't know.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, this is a an awesome story and a good example of kind of the niche down, the niche down zoom in pivot. And I think that this is a, you know, there's many like business plan blueprints. For example, those guys from 37 signals, though what they're doing is they just go, hey, what's a super popular thing, but has too many features.
We're going to make it do less and take up less of your life. And that's like an example, you know, hey, their email client, they're like, yeah, it's just going to do these things in this way, less features, the better, less clutter, the better. And they're doing it again with once where they're doing software that you only have to pay for one time, no monthly recurring, right? So that their thing is it's the stripped down version of X.
I don't know if you saw, well, I don't know if you saw, but the guys who started Tuft & Needle came out with a new company. You see this crazy? What's it called boring mattress? Boring mattress. So the guys who created Tuft & Needle, they were part of the D to C, you know, mattresses were like the poster boy of the D to C wave that happened where Casper and Tuft & Needle and purple got big, raised a bunch of money, burned a bunch of money, kind of didn't have a great exit.
So these guys came back and now it's just boring.co is the name of their website. It's like, this is a plain mattress.
Our friends told us that we should tell you about all the cool benefits, features that will make this quote different and quote sellable. But we're not convinced. We don't think you'll fall for that.
So here's just a really good mattress that'll last you a while. No frills. And there's only $400, right?
SPEAKER_01
Or it's like, it's cheap. Yeah, 500 bucks.
SPEAKER_02
And so that's their new thing. And so that's one blueprint in a business is to do the same thing with less frills, actually, like, you know, brand less of a brand pump or less features that you needed to use. Trello is a good example of this.
All productivity apps had more and more and more features. Trello was like, hey, we're just going to have less features, right? It's just the equivalent of index cards on the internet that you can move around.
SPEAKER_01
There's actually another takeaway here, though, which is how long. So you started a need commerce company. How long until you hit your first hundred thousand in revenue per month? Like three months, probably.
Okay. You're involved in shepherd. How long do you think it took them to hit their first hundred thousand in revenue? I have no idea.
I'm just six months. Yeah, quick. Okay, six months.
So we're talking months. Hampton took a short amount of time months as well. The hustle, I think it took nine months.
Do you know how long it took follow up boss to get to a hundred million in revenue? Sorry, a hundred thousand in monthly bills.
SPEAKER_02
Well, you said they had one customer for a hundred and fifty bucks like hanging by a thread for a while. So is it more than a year to get to that first milestone? Four years? Four years?
SPEAKER_01
It took them four years. Four years to get to a hundred. So I was reading this interview with them.
It took them four years and they had 11 employees and they're at a hundred thousand in monthly revenue. They said around a hundred thousand, so it could have been a little bit more. But what's crazy is these software companies, so I don't know what their revenue was.
Like I said, I think it was between 25 and 30, if you just Google like follow up boss revenue, that's what I saw. They sold for four hundred, well, potentially five hundred, four hundred up front. What's crazy is these software companies, we, you and I both have this thing where we want to go fast.
We need to learn and have a little bit of this attitude. I got zero percent of this.
SPEAKER_02
You are more of a stick to it kind of guy. Do you think, I mean, if you're under a hundred thousand in revenue, four years in, are you doing this still?
SPEAKER_01
It's hard. So like, all right, so I have an audience now.
SPEAKER_02
So do you think you could have stuck with it?
SPEAKER_01
It depends where I was in life. If I was, if it was 26 year old Sam, 50% chance. If it's where I am now, I would say 5% chance.
It would be really hard. It would be hard.
SPEAKER_02
It would be going into those meetings and be like, all right guys, we're going to review the metrics today. Ear buffs everybody. We're going to say the revenue number.
And then everybody has to do this. And then I say, we're at 42,000 in year four. And then I'm like, all right, but, but there's other things to be excited about.
SPEAKER_01
But we talked to Darmash about this and Darmash is pretty, uh, he's pretty low key about it. He's like, it took forever. In reality, it Darmash HubSpot, Darmash is the founder of HubSpot.
I think grew like actually a lot faster, but he was like, man, the first like six years we only got to like 4 million or something. And I forget exactly what he said, but he like conveyed the idea where he's like, it's a slog at first.
SPEAKER_02
But the thing about that time, things just grew slower. Now things were much faster, right? The bench, yeah, and the expectations are way different.
SPEAKER_01
But you have to have faith. And of course we're talking about the one that worked. Uh, and there's a lot, there's so many more that don't work, but like to have that faith of like this can work and to stick to it for 10, 11, 12 years.
If, if you have the right, you know, metrics, this shit pays off. This, these software companies are so much cooler than what we typically start.
SPEAKER_02
So I did a, I remember many years ago. I did a fireside chat with Michael Birch, who was at the time was, you know, my mentor, he was my boss. Uh, he's a guy who's built four or five super successful internet companies that scaled to millions of users.
He's basically a billionaire at this point in Silicon Valley. And a bunch of entrepreneurs came over and they were asking questions. One of the questions they asked was, how do you know when to pivot or persevere? Meaning you hear the stories about follow-up boss or Pinterest where it's like there was, it was not taking off for a while and then, you know, they stuck with it and then it did.
Did pictures take a long time? Pictures took a long time. Um, like the graph was, you know, not like some explosive social app at the beginning. And, um, and so they, and I, I turned on because I was like, I want to know this answer too.
This is like, this is the, I want to know what is the guy who's done it in Silicon Valley? What does he, what does he say? And he goes, this is the hardest question for any entrepreneur. And he's deeply personal and situational. He goes, for every, you know, one story you hear of a Pinterest that just keeps going after 12 months, even though there's no signs of life, you know, there's a hundred people that did that and failed.
And you just never hear, they don't get to talk at the conference, right? So he's like, it's super hard because you have the survivorship bias to know which story should you listen to. And so he's like, I, he's like, this is the one where there's no real advice you can get from somebody else. The one thing that we figured out at our company was like, we would set a time box.
We think we can hit this milestone by this date and setting that time box is really important because it keeps you honest up front when you're super optimistic. All right, let's say something then we think that in the first, uh, like I, I set one for this new company. I haven't, I haven't announced it yet on the pod, but I set one.
I said, I think we can get to 500,000 ARR in the first 60 days. So I think it's 500K of revenue in the first 60 days. And I set that now, if we don't hit that, doesn't mean I'm going to like throw in the towel or shut it down.
It meant like, maybe, you know, me, you never know, life's on the line for these companies. No, but, but the reality is you set that so that you have to have a conversation about why you didn't hit your expectations. What were you wrong about? Or what assumption did you have that was incorrect? Cause it might be a fatal assumption or might just be, oh, I was just, I underestimated how long it takes to do X.
And that's okay. You can have that conversation. The thing we did when I worked with Michael was we asked a question, what metric gives us the most faith? So what metric worries us the most and what metric gives us the most faith? So let's say four years in, we don't have a million, we don't have 100,000 of revenue.
That's the one that worries us the most. We have very little revenue. Okay, but what gives us the most faith? It's, well, of the 52 customers we do have, they love it and nobody's churning.
Right. Then it's like, oh, okay. What can I hang my hat on to give myself the excuse to keep going? And so I think that's a useful question to ask if you, if you don't know whether I should pivot or persevere.
I think what metric is giving me the most faith and what metric is keeping me up at night? And then you can almost kind of weigh the two against each other. Um, you know, if the thing that's giving you faith is like, yeah, that one guy told me he likes it. It's like, oh, that's not a very strong counter punch to the fact that the evidence on your revenue and usage side is pretty low.
SPEAKER_01
But it feels horrible when you're in it. So I posted a link in our MDB document. Okay. So it goes to a tech crunch. I remember it goes to a tech crunch article, but I remember when we were running the hustle, I looked up to, there weren't that many media companies to look up to.
And so I really looked up to business insider. And the reason I liked it was Henry Blodgett was fairly transparent about their traffic. And so Henry Blodgett, they wrote an article and looks like maybe six years into the company and he made a funny joke.
He's like, we eked out a net profit of $2,100 on revenues of $4.8 million. It's basically enough to buy a MacBook Pro.
And he reveals their traffic. And you see that it looks like this nice like arc where it's like, or this nice graph where it's like exponentially going up. But I remember when I was running the hustle, I was like, well, their graph looked amazing.
Like it looked amazing. But then I zoomed in on this picture and you could see that it's broken down by month. And if you really focus on it, what you could see is basically February of 09, they hit an all time high.
And then they didn't surpass that until something like December of 09. So basically for a whole year, for 10 months, yeah, the whole year, which I think it looks like they started in 07. So for 10 months, two years into the company, the monthly traffic, which for a site like business insider, that's how they would gauge if they're doing a good job.
It basically either went down or didn't go up. And when you do that every single day, every single week for 10 months, it feels miserable. And then you zoom out and you like see like, okay, well, it has gone up, but these graphs are never a smooth going up.
And a lot of times, sometimes I imagine for two years, it'll be pretty shit. Three years for years, it'll be shit. And then after a while, it starts picking up if you do a handful of things, right? But that requires extreme faith.
And it's very, very, very hard to manage your emotions every day when it's like that.
SPEAKER_02
I totally agree. This is a... Tony Robbins said this thing. He goes, the number one choke point of any business is the psychology of the owner.
Like every problem you think your business has, if you do the root cause analysis, it goes right back up to the root, to the psychology of the owner. Right? Let's say, oh, we're not growing fast enough. Why? Because, you know, we don't have our paid acquisition sucks.
Why? Because we... The guy who's running our paid acquisition has been doing it for six months in his life. You know, if somebody experienced.
Why? Because we're not hiring the right people. Why? Because our owner hasn't made that a priority and isn't willing to spend money. Right? Or is afraid to spend money on talent.
And so everything just goes back to the psychology of the owner, which is both empowering, but also I think scary for some people. The empowering part is it's in your control. The scary part is shit.
SPEAKER_01
It's my fault. And it goes back. You could also like go back to like what inefficiencies or like where does the owner or CEO, where do they like suck? So like, for example, I remember at the hustle, I was always fearful of overspending.
And so I was cheap about shit. And I was actually overly cheap. And when there was times when Facebook ads opened up and it's like, dude, we got to spend more here.
Looking back, I should have spent way more, but I didn't because I was being too cheap. And like, why am I cheap? Well, because of all this other shit that I experienced in life. And so like, it's basically like, what did they say? Like a person with money is they, it's just going to like magnify the things that the traits that they already have.
Or like, you always say that with people when they're drunk, like, oh, you're the true feelings are just going to come out. Right. It's the same thing as with running a company and you got to like master that intergame. And it's really hard.
Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_02
Let's do another one. I want to talk about, let's do, you have this one, Peter levels is insane. Tell me the Peter levels is insane one.
That's a good headline. I love this guy.
SPEAKER_01
So Peter levels we had in the pod. I think we've only had him once, but he's got an open invitation if he wants to come on again. So Peter levels, we both love him.
He has like four or five different businesses that he runs. I think he's by himself doing it. Collectively, his businesses probably do two million a year in sales and he's super transparent about all of it.
So we put this revenue and his bio on his Twitter. He shares everything really fascinating thoughtful guy. Did you see what he did with his stock portfolio? So he basically, so click that tweet and you'll see it, but he basically created a Google sheet.
And he, you can kind of, I don't, he doesn't explicitly say it, but you can do the math. He says, here's how much my stock portfolio made me. And it was up 32%.
So you can kind of like just do basic algebra and figure out how much he has in his portfolio. And he reveals every holding that he has. And I think that A, I'm happy he is doing this.
B, I would never, ever do this though. Like it's, this is like his transparency is wild, but it's super fascinating to see what this guy is doing when it comes to like sharing his numbers out in public. It's pretty, pretty fascinating.
I got to say two things about Peter. So first Peter, come back on the pond.
SPEAKER_02
We miss you. You've done a lot of good things. You miss you.
You've done a bunch of interesting stuff. This plus your new AI stuff that we didn't talk about yet. So I want to do that.
Second, we've had a bunch of people on this podcast, some that have big names, some that have, you know, big, big track records, a billionaires or built this $100 billion company or whatever. Nobody. And I mean, nobody has a higher approval rating amongst entrepreneurs on the internet than Peter levels.
Have you ever met anybody that is not a fan of Peter levels?
SPEAKER_01
I've had billionaire friends like or associates in a, in a conversation and they'll go, that guy's doing it right. Everyone likes this guy.
SPEAKER_02
Put this guy's profile picture up on the, on the fucking screen. Go to YouTube and just look at this guy's profile picture. This is a personal branding seminar.
Look at this guy's profile picture. It's him on a couch in the like international pose of like guy scheming on the internet, just messing around, having fun on the internet by himself. He's on a couch, half of his body is dangling off.
He's got his laptop. He's nowhere, no shirt. He's got his laptop up on a pillow because, you know, the laptop starts to just scorch you after a while and he's at this messed up angle is next all messed up.
But you know, this guy is a one man band just having fun. And this is why you're right. CEOs of like, you know, major companies are like that guy.
That guy's doing it right. Because everybody is jealous of being able to be this guy. A guy who's just one man in a laptop travels around the world, builds projects, whatever he wants for fun.
He builds cool stuff like an artist that whatever he builds tends to have some, some juice behind it because he's a very creative guy. He's had many failures, but who cares? And he's got a bunch of successes. He's very open about them.
He's not trying to sell you anything. Peter levels is a hero amongst makers and nobody I will contend this. Nobody has a higher approval rating on the internet amongst entrepreneurs than Peter levels.
SPEAKER_01
He's great, man. He's great. And I think on this podcast, a lot of people are like, oh, you're talking about just big companies too often or whatever.
And it's like, we always reiterate this is like, we like people who carve their path and that path could lead to a huge exit. It could lead to something really small. Like just, you could just be a great artist.
It doesn't matter if it's a big money thing or not. And Peter levels, the reason why he's so fascinating is he has carved the hardest path and he sticks to it. He's very value based, really, really, really cool guy.
SPEAKER_02
He did a tweet that it goes, he goes, only four out of the 70 projects I've ever done have made money in Chrome. 95% of everything I ever did failed by hit rates only 5%. So ship more.
This has 15,000 likes. It is just literally a, like a, you know, like a VS code, like a screenshot of projects that made money and grew for. He's got no mad list, remote talk, rebase and a YouTube network.
This is before his AI thing. And then here's all of his lit, all of his projects and his stuff like ice cream chat, two ballistics, gift book, Taylor telegram chat bot, startupretreats.com, places to work, fire calculator.
I don't even know what any of these are, but each one of these is like, you know, a great week, it's like, you know, a great weekend that was had by him doing these projects.
SPEAKER_01
All right, everyone, a quick break because I want to fill you in on a little experiment that I'm doing. I've got a new project. It's called Money Wise.
It's a personal finance podcast for high net worth people or young people who are on their way to becoming a high network. When I made a little bit of money, I didn't even know how much money I should be spending each month. Should it be 10,000, 30,000, 50,000? And I didn't really have a lot of people to ask.
So I created a podcast called Money Wise because I wanted to figure out what are some of the things that people who have a lot of cash and who have a high net worth, what do they do with it? The first episode is with a friend of mine. He sold his company for $200 million when he was 31 years old. He gets super transparent about his monthly expenses, his portfolio, how it impacts his happiness, everything.
And so I want you guys to check it out. It's called Money Wise. That's one word.
You can find it on my Twitter bio. I'm the Sam Parr or you can just type in Money Wise on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. All right.
Back to the pod.
SPEAKER_02
All right. I want to take a quick break to tell you about another podcast you maybe should check out. It's called Imperfect Action and it's hosted by Steph Taylor.
It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. This is a podcast all about marketing. And Steph is sharing the wisdom that she's learned from seven plus years of marketing trial and error as a business owner.
Her approach is kind of a, let's see what happens mindset and she'll share the results with listeners. She has a bunch of cool episodes. One that you could check out is five things I'd never do in my business as an online business strategist.
And in this episode, she's sharing five things that she no longer does as a strategist and she covers why waiting until your idea is perfect before putting out of the world doesn't mean it's going to be perfect for your audience. So check it out Imperfect Action by Steph Taylor. Go ahead and listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts.
Now back to this episode.
SPEAKER_01
You know that meme where it's like, babe, wake up. Sean Perry just tweeted again. Or like, babe, wake up, you know, like Peter levels, bottom domain.
Yes. Whenever Peter replies to one of my tweets, it's like one of those. It's like, babe, wake up.
Peter just said he liked what I'm doing. That's how I feel about this guy. Really cool guy.
SPEAKER_02
And I have a theory that people ultimately what is lacking in most people's lives is that they don't live life on their own terms. And then the way that that expresses itself is you have a lot of fun when you're living life on your own terms when you're just doing your, not your thing, you're doing your thing. And if you're doing your thing, you're having a good time.
Peter levels that profile picture of him on his couch, like all crooked just on his laptop, he's doing his thing. And I feel like this is honestly, it's a bit of why people like this podcast. We're not the most prepared or researched or well spoken or whatever.
But people could tell we have fun in our lives that we like we literally just do this shit that we want to do. And we're having a good time. And it might be that the things we do are not at all the things you want to do, right? Sam's like buying a ranch and like, you know, tipping cows and I don't know what else you do.
I don't want to do all that stuff. But I can tell that you want to do all that stuff. And that's awesome.
It's great that you want to do all those things. You know, you build your like gym and your farmhouse and whatever, all that good stuff. I think that Peter levels is a great example of somebody who's just living life on his own terms.
And that is one of the most attractive traits that people have in general. And it's so funny because what most people do is the exact opposite. Peter levels has a bunch of influence.
But when most people try to become influencers, they, you know, strip down their personality and try to appeal to others and people can sniff that out.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I just think he's the best. And I DM him on a regular basis. He replies to me 10% of the time.
So Peter, if this makes it to you, come on the pod, man. Come on. Come back on.
What do you got?
SPEAKER_02
All right. Let's do. So another person who is gone from zero to hero, Brian Johnson.
SPEAKER_01
Have you seen a t-shirt that he wears lately? Don't die. Yeah, don't die.
SPEAKER_02
Don't die. That's a new brand. You know what I like about it? It's the same look as the Austin 316 t-shirts.
Yes. I guess it should have just done Johnson 316. Don't die.
In fact, it's good. I don't make Johnson 316. Don't die shirts because that's who he should become.
All right. So I was looking the other day because I saw that Brian Johnson finally started to sell something. And me and you had made a prediction about six months a year ago.
We said, you know what? I don't think Brian's doing this for the money. I don't think he's doing this for the fame, although he's going to make a lot of money. And I'm sure the fame, you know, the attention feels good in the moment.
Very obvious prediction. Very obvious prediction. But we said, dude, is this the greatest pre-launch marketing stunt ever? Because what he did was he basically turned himself into a character.
And a lot of people have done this in the fitness niche, but he's not a fitness influencer. He brained himself as a longevity influencer, a live forever, a don't die influencer. And he spent a couple million bucks on tests and content and building his brand.
He came on pods like ours and you can look at Google Trends. You could see the interest in Brian Johnson growing over time. Actually, we should map out where our podcast was with him on that trend because I'm curious where that was.
And he has built an amazing following. And he's doing everything you should do as an influencer. Not that he wants to be an influencer, but he's doing everything you should do.
He's seen his meetups that he's having lately, these runs that he's doing.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they look awesome.
SPEAKER_02
They take people and they chant like, don't die. They run up a hill. There was something like that.
And then they get at the bottom and they eat like just a pot of lentils. And they're all eating lentils. It's amazing.
And so he's building this little cult and it's a great thing. So he came out with his first paid product. Did you see it?
SPEAKER_01
It's the meal service, right?
SPEAKER_02
No, no, no. So he came out with like a, it's kind of like a meal service. Basically, it's a part one of his blueprint diet as a ready to eat sort of like delivery package.
I think you pay 330 bucks a month and you get this thing. 12,000 people applied.
SPEAKER_01
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What is it? How is it not you said you implied I was a little wrong with meal service. It is a meal service then, but it's just like powder, right?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah. It's not like meal delivery. It's not like blue apron, but it is like, you know, the supplements and the drink and the whatever, whatever.
It's like some version, some skimmed down version of the, of his like anti-aging protocol. Got it. It's the blueprint self experimentation study.
And there's like a level one and there's going to be a level two, a level three. So there's 67 interventions in this and it looks like there's a couple of powders. There's a bottle of olive oil and then there's a bunch of pills.
SPEAKER_01
I like all those things. Powders, pills, powder, pills and oils.
SPEAKER_02
So he got 5,000 people. He got 12,000 people to apply. 5,000 people paid.
So let's do a little public math here. Let's break a rule. He just launched this product.
He had more demand than he was willing to let in. He led in 5,000 people. That's 20 million in ARR that he had on day one of launching this product.
And 20 million of ARR for a subscription supplements business essentially is like a $200 million business.
SPEAKER_01
What do you think athletic greens is that revenue wise? They raised that at 1.2 billion in valuation.
SPEAKER_02
I bet they're at like 100, 150, I guess, maybe 200. Wow. Max. Okay. Not yet, but this is day one. Day one, come out the gate with 20 million and this is all he let in less than half of the demand that he had, right? So he could have been at 40 million if he wanted to.
Again, I don't think he's doing this for the money, but goddamn, that is an impressive start to a business and it shows that, I have this phrase now that I say, and my wife doesn't think it's cool and she's the one I've tried it on. But I say this, I say all content is now marketing and all marketing is now content. And this is what Brian Johnson did.
He was put out content. It happened to be marketing and that marketing is now leading to a lot of sales for his new protocol.
SPEAKER_01
When you say that to your wife, I can just hear the world's loudest eye roll of like, shut the fuck up, Sean. That shit works on those fucking dorks that listen to you, but take out the fucking trash, Sean. Did you warm up the mac and cheese like I asked you to?
SPEAKER_01
What are you talking about? This is awesome. It's sort of like, have you seen that? What's that movie where they talk about the biggest short and Ryan Gosling's character, you know, they're like, what are you getting out of this, Ryan? He goes, look, look, listen, Vinny, you're getting the ice cream. You're getting the nuts.
You're getting the chocolate syrup. You're getting the whipped cream. And when this works out, I'm going to get the cherry on top.
That's my feed. I just get a little bit of this. That's what Brian Johnson is doing with this business.
He's doing everything else. I think actually just cause cause he's a dork and he enjoys this shit, then it just so happened that he got famous. And now he's like, yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.
Okay, fine. I'll do that too. You know, and I dig that.
And isn't it weird? Like, why do you think we have so much trust and faith in this guy? It's part of it is because he already has like the FU money. And so we think like, he didn't give a shit. He's just doing this just cause, but the way that he's turned himself in the character is actually really interesting.
In his case, there was a high barrier to entry. He spent millions of dollars. It seems doing this.
He also kind of lived like a hermit for two years to like perfect this. But the idea of turning yourself into a character and then doing it in front of a lot of people, that's actually a really appealing. That's an exciting route to go for a lot of people where it's just like you change your identity and you go all in on this and you could actually make and make a great living by doing this.
SPEAKER_02
It's the same reason I bought shoes from these over toes guy. Right. I probably never bought shoes from any brand besides Nike in like 20 years. And then I see this guy who's over 40 years old dunking a basketball.
I see what he looked like before he was doing his thing and how he had knee surgeries. Undeniable proof is a very, very powerful lever. This guy literally just does like a somersault.
Then he gets up and dunks the basketball and he's like this 45 year old white guy. Which shoes? He came out with like a pair of shoes that are like, you know, the knees over toes like thing. Not great shoes, by the way, for the record.
Definitely don't buy V1 if anybody's anything. So, you know, it wasn't great, but I have a high amount of faith and trust in this guy because again, all content is marketing. So for two years, he was just put out free content, didn't sell a thing.
And so for two years, all he did was put out very helpful content and showed an undeniable level of proof that this guy was in incredible shape, that his legs were super, super strong and that, you know, where he started to where he was is a very powerful transformation. So anybody who wants to have that transformation will trust him. And then when he comes out with a thing and he says, hey, this is what I use, people will buy it.
And it's very, very effective.
SPEAKER_01
By the way, I also bought knees over toes shoes. Before he came out with that shoe company, he was always wearing these other shoes and I also bought them. I also bought those.
SPEAKER_02
That white shoe that looks like it's from Japan, that's like $70 or something, $45. Couldn't even really get it on. I have like a thick American foot or something.
It doesn't fit in this European shoe.
SPEAKER_01
Dude, I wore the shit out of them. I love those shoes. I remember seeing the picture and like Googling, like, what are those shoes? They're not very comfortable.
SPEAKER_02
They look cool though. What do they look? They look great.
SPEAKER_01
They're like Fouyay or something like that. Like Fugazi or it's like such an F.
SPEAKER_02
I love the Fugazi's too, man. They were Fugazi's.
SPEAKER_01
Can I do a quick thrill of the shill, by the way? Okay, go. All right. So basically at Hampton, we've got access to all this data.
And so in order to grow, we decide, I love data. They say data is the new oil. I already mentioned I love oil.
I don't know how to make money off of it yet, but somehow oil is good. We've been doing these surveys where we surveyed different industries and we can get benchmarks for different industries. Right now, we just did one on agencies.
And so we did this thing where we surveyed 60 agencies that give us all their revenue, all their profit. And we did like this cool survey where we show, here's the benchmarks for profit per employee, revenue per employee. You can find it at, if you just go to joinhampton.
com and then you go to our blog, you'll see the database. We did one on wealth. So like people say their net worth, how much money they're spending each month, how much income they're making each month, how much they're working each week.
We just did one on agencies. So if you're an agency owner, check it out. But more so, that's the shill.
Here's the thrill part. I think, Sean, that if I decide to do this, have you ever heard of the, I think this could work. Have you ever heard of like benchmarking? Like I didn't know anything about this industry.
Do you know anything about benchmarking? Yeah, of course. I didn't know that people would ever pay for this. And so there's the most common form of benchmarking is salary benchmarking.
So there's a company called salary.com and then there's like 10 or 20 other ones who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever. I think in a couple of years, if I get enough data, I think we could, I can spin this off and create a data company where I do benchmarking for different industries.
And the problem that we'll be solving is let's say that you're an agency, let's say you're Ecom business and you're above 50 million revenue, you want to know, are we spending the right amount for ads? Are we spending the right amount for employees? Whatever. I think we can build a cool data business off of this. So that's the thrill of the shill.
But I just wanted to call my shot and say, maybe eventually I think we're going to do this.
SPEAKER_02
I don't think it's a call your shot. If you say maybe eventually, the call your shot is, I'm going to do this. That's like the only requirement of calling your shot is to say, I'm going to do this.
Not calling my shot. If I so happen to do this, which I probably won't, but it can kind of work.
SPEAKER_01
It's like a Bay Brutes just went like this. It's at the point you just went like, like, It's kind of shrugged. He just laid his hand and he's like, Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
Dude, also, you reminded me of something. I don't mean to rain on your, your thrill or your shill here, but do you remember, have you seen these leaked? I'm sure you've seen this because we're both internet, like, what's it called? Like the people who look for fossils, whatever. Yeah. When Mark Zuckerberg had his old like aim messages leaked when he was 19 years old,
SPEAKER_01
starting Facebook and he was like, these these F and idiots are actually downloading
SPEAKER_02
this. Here's the transcript. He goes, it is Diebs a friend just because you can't wait to break.
He goes, yeah. So if you ever need anyone, if you ever need any info about anyone at Harvard, just ask. I have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, social security numbers.
His friend goes, what? How did you manage that? People just submitted it. I don't know why they quote, trust me. This is Sam and his slack about Hampton.
He's like, yeah, every agency just submitted their profits, their revenues, their growth tactics. They trust me for the record. I want to say the next duck, dude.
SPEAKER_01
Dude, I want to say I have access to zero of the documents that people submit for in order to join Hampton. I've got zero access. I purposely did this just like for years.
I purposely didn't ask your name of your e-com business. I just like, I don't want to know because I don't want to accidentally say anything. I have zero access to this, not only because I don't want to say anything and also because I just literally don't know how to, you know, like use computers and like log in and I don't have a password.
SPEAKER_02
That was the equivalent of, you know, no oblong glass. I don't even speak. I don't even know how to use my computer.
I can't act because it's down to trust me. All right. Let me stop making funny about that.
Let's let's move on. Let's do another one.
SPEAKER_01
All right. So last year, I invested in this company called Consensus and they basically, it was like an AI company for research, for like scientific research. So if you wanted to like figure out, like, you know, instead of like reading individual studies, this website would just tell you in aggregate what many studies would show.
And they're only doing OK. There was basically just two guys and they were still just trying to figure it out. Like it was like, this sounds interesting, but like, I don't even know if this is going to work.
Let's see. Well, something happened a few weeks ago that I think is going to change their business. But I think that there's an inflection.
So basically, like when the iPhone came out, the app store happened and we heard stories about Pandora. So Pandora was a company before they were the music service. The app store came out and they're like, oh, let's just use our service and pivot and build an app.
They're one of the first apps. That's what made Pandora popular. When COVID happened, there's companies like BetterHelp, which is like therapy online or there's like telemedicine because the laws during COVID change where a doctor can prescribe meds cross state lines.
There's been a bunch of these right now. One just happened. So I think January 14th.
So I think it was 10 or January 10th. OpenAI created an app store. They've kind of done this where they've like made their own, like you can make your own GPT and all this other stuff.
But they've created an app store. I don't even think they said what the pricing was. So with the iPhone app store, I think the developer gets what, 70% of the revenue, Apple gets 30%.
OpenAI hasn't even said what that what it's going to be. So there's still really early. And so this company that I invested in, they're like, oh, well, like our thing is going OK.
But like, what if we just like went all in on this like plug in for OpenAI store? And so their version is basically like you just type in you ask it questions, medical questions, and it just gives you a slightly better answer than OpenAI, but it's a lot better or at least enough that you want to pay for. And there's not that much traffic right now or not that many new apps in the OpenAI OpenAI app store. But this is one of those inflection moments.
So here's two more examples. So you remember Honey, that company that was like, what do they do? coupon codes for a website? And then Grammarly did the same thing. They both did that with the Chrome store.
You have a bunch of friends because you kind of ran in that world where people did this with the Facebook platform. So Zynga, I don't know how much money they eventually made, but it was at one point, multi-billion dollar company. I think right now we're going to see like a Facebook store.
You're going to see like all these mafia wars, all these like weird games. I think you had a buddy. What was the guy's name? Dan, who went to Camp MFM who started like OMG Pop or something like that.
What was that called? Draw something was the game that everybody played. And I think he had a multi-hundred million dollar exit. I think this is right now about to happen with the OpenAI like plug-in store.
It's really fascinating what's happening.
SPEAKER_02
I thought this was interesting. You asked the guy or somebody asked the founder. He said, I think it's going to be something between like more than the Chrome extensions market, less than the app store.
You know, short term, it's awesome for marketing and functionality for users. And OpenAI is footing the bill on a lot of the compute costs. And the medium term, we have to exit the usage of the next biggest GPT.
And I think Canva is the next. So this is the number one GPT.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Yeah, it's taking off. And these guys, they're smart guys, but it was still when they were starting their company, when we invested, it was like, I don't know.
Hopefully we'll figure it out. And there was a time where I was like, you guys better figure this out soon. Like, I don't know if this is going to work out.
And then this inflection happened. This changed happened.
SPEAKER_02
Dude, this product is awesome. I just went to their site. I didn't do the chat GPT thing, but just their app is really cool.
So you go there, you ask any questions. So I just did our microplastics dangerous for humans. And then it has all these papers, but then you hit synthesize, which I think is the credits that you have to buy if you but you start with twenty three credits.
And it says summary, we looked at 10 papers. The study suggests microplastics are dangerous for humans and the care toxic chemicals contaminate ecosystems and are linked to various health issues, including cancers and immune system disruptions. And then it says, we looked at the 14 papers.
Yes, was 43 percent of time, possibly 57 percent of time, no, zero percent of the time. And that was the like, that was the thing. And then you could see below each specific paper and it's like tag, like, oh, this is a rigorous journal.
This is highly cited. And you can kind of get AI to summarize each of those papers. This is this is a sick like this is a sick product.
SPEAKER_01
It's cool. And it put it by the way, just like all great stuff, it did not start that way.
SPEAKER_02
I'm mad you didn't tell me about this. This is why did I invest in this? This is great.
SPEAKER_01
It wasn't obvious. By the way, it's still not obvious. This company, just like any startup, it could still totally fail and not work.
SPEAKER_02
No, but it's a very interesting bet, right? Like to do a verticalized Google specifically for scientific papers and AI being the the why now of what you could do differently than you could do before. This makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_01
And it was I'll give the shout out. It's consensus dot app. That's their website.
But the point being a consensus is great. I think it's actually going to work out. And these guys, they kind of put their head down for like 24 months and like are really starting to figure out there's going to be a lot of stuff just like them on the chat.
Gbt store, because I think when we invested in them, I don't remember exactly. I'm almost positive the word AI didn't come up one time. Like it wasn't like it was like we have this like we know what the outcome that we want to it.
What we want it to be, but we're not entirely sure how we're going to come to that. And then they started figuring out AI got more popular. And then this chat Gbt store opened up and they're like, boom, we found the path.
And I think that path is opened right now. Now it's more competitive than than the app store. And it's more competitive than Chrome because there's more people who are doing this stuff.
Open AI is already huge. But that inflection is happening right now. This is one of those things that's happening in real time.
And I wanted to call out because I think open AI even said, we don't even know how what payment terms we're going to give these people. Like we're they're still all figuring it out. But this is happening the second right now.
There's an opportunity here for a lot of different companies.
SPEAKER_02
They're like a route like, you know, some celebrity relationship. They're like, oh, we don't we don't know what we don't want to put a label on it yet. So we're just we're just exploring each other and figuring out, you know, who we are together and individually.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's definitely trying to figure it out. Have you seen perplexity? Have you used perplexity?
SPEAKER_02
I don't like it. I don't know why people are going nuts for it.
SPEAKER_01
It's pretty cool. It's just like open AI. But for some reason, it's like has a science bent.
SPEAKER_02
That's one of these companies. I don't know. I don't know much about it.
This is an uninformed opinion, but I feel like every VC who missed like you can't get into open AI. Or if you could get in now, it's at $100 billion valuation. There's not much money to be made as an investor there.
And so all the capital, you know, realized all the investors realize, holy shit, this is the big thing. And they're like, what's the next best competitor? And they're like, all right, stable diffusion and it could be the next thing. And the next thing and these they get these super inflated valuations.
And I don't know, I'm not really a believer in that. I think those get way ahead of the skis. And I just seen that story many times.
This happened in crypto. This happened in, you know, when mobile, when mobile was happening and you would get, you know, for every Instagram, you would then get the 10 super funded other apps that didn't make any sense. And yeah, I would take, I would take the under or I would short that.
SPEAKER_01
After the pod, go to your email and type in consensus. I'm almost positive that I heard about this company and you were CC'd on the email. Just I just want to put that out there.
It was 2002. It was two years ago. I'm almost positive.
SPEAKER_02
You're like, ask in the pod, take some lighter fluid, pour it over your eye, light it back.
SPEAKER_01
I hope no one finds what finds out what happens. We're going to burn it down and hide it.
SPEAKER_02
I do a rant about something. So I've had a realization that my world, like a lot of the content I'm consuming was algorithmic. All right.
That's pretty obvious. You, everyone, what does that mean? Just Twitter, TikTok, whatever. Everything I was using, you'd go to, you go to Twitter.
It's an algorithm telling you, here's the content you need to see. You go to TikTok algorithm, business, Facebook, Instagram. Yes, all of that.
Even email. Email is not really algorithmic exactly, but it's you go there and it's here's what other people want you to look at. Here's my problem.
Hey, here's my problem. Read me. Right. And then the same thing, same thing with, you know, all news. Go to the news app, say, Hey, here's everybody's problems on the other side of the world.
Here, you know, pay attention to this. I'm calling it the intentional internet, which is I started really being intentional about, Oh, no, no, no, no. If I'm going on the internet right now, what is it that I want to see? What is it I'm curious about? What is it that I want to learn about? And then I go in and I'm stiff arming algorithms left and right.
You know, I'm more shown Lynch on that one run where he just sheds eight defenders. It goes all the way and just rumbles to the end zone. That's me on the internet now.
And I think more people should be doing this. Join me on the intentional internet where you get on and you don't just, you're not just a little puppy, just eating the puppy child that the algorithms give you. Go on with some intent and say, what is it that I'm looking for? I want, maybe it's I want certain type of entertainment.
Maybe it's I want a certain type of information or I want to be inspired. Okay. So then go look for the things that will give you.
SPEAKER_01
But you follow that that way. You follow 13,000 people on Twitter.
SPEAKER_02
The trick is you don't go to Twitter. Right. You said, what do you do? Well, Twitter is not a great place for this, right? Because if you go to Twitter, you're going to get your first thing. You're going to be served up.
There's a feed and you're going to start scrolling.
SPEAKER_01
What are you going to start reading books? That's very unlike you. So I make a little list.
SPEAKER_02
I say, you know what? Curious how this started. Or I want to learn more about this. And then I'll go to YouTube or Google or wherever looking for that.
But just that adding that little paper step in between me and the internet has been very, very useful. And I learned a bunch of interesting things the last three days. I got more out of the internet.
So I'm just putting that out there for anybody who.
SPEAKER_01
What's been on your list?
SPEAKER_02
I'll give you an example. I was doing research for one thing and I saw this name. Do you know this guy, Eric Van Veen?
SPEAKER_01
Yes, he's amazing. I have got him. Oh, wait, are you talking about Ricky Van Veen or Eric? Oh, maybe he's Ricky.
Ricky Van.
SPEAKER_02
Ricky Facebook guy. Yeah, dude, Dravy. Super Dravy.
SPEAKER_01
This guy's Dravy is shit. I've talked to him a bunch via email.
SPEAKER_02
It looks like the internet Pete Buttigieg or something. No, and this guy's great. So this guy created College Humor.
Yeah. And then he created a couple of other things. So what did he create? He created College Humor and then he created a few other things like Cracked or whatever.
Then he bundled it up, sold it to IAC. It was running media at IAC.
SPEAKER_01
And then you're forgetting the biggest thing they started. Which one? So at College Humor, this was like pre-Youtube days. They create, this was like eBombs World Days.
They created a better way to host videos. And that's what Vimeo is, which they sold to IAC. IAC spun off and became a billion dollar plus publicly traded company.
SPEAKER_02
So Cracked's Vimeo, Cracked's College Humor goes to IAC. IAC is a super interesting company with like a very cool pedigree of people that come out of it. Like Tinder came out of IAC.
You know, there's there's a bunch of really interesting things about IAC. They're sort of like the, they're the proctor and gamble of the internet. They're conglomerate of internet sites, mostly media.
And then. Match.com, I think, came out of there. Now he's head of like, head of like video or head of creative content at Facebook.
And I was like, oh, this guy's interesting. I kind of just noted it because I think I was thinking about College Humor. And so I just, who's behind that? What are they doing now? And I think this, this, what are they doing now has been one of my threads.
So I'll, I'll think of something that was cool. And I'll be like, where did they go? I haven't heard about their new album. What are they working on? And I'll go look at that.
That's just a very, it's a very useful way to go look at things.
SPEAKER_01
So by the way, Ricky, Ricky ended up marrying. And I don't think they're together anymore. But he, like, if you just, you could just Google like tabloids or whatever.
He married Allison Williams, you know, the famous like actress whose father is Brian Williams, the famous newscaster. And if you Google his name, the guy's just like hanging out with like all these celebrities and stuff. And he's like, seems so cool.
Like this guy's really a shit.
SPEAKER_02
So we acknowledge that. strategy at Facebook. So anyways, what's my point? So I, I'm, I'm, I have a list of cool companies or cool things that were built, you know, 10 years ago.
And I'm wondering what are those people doing now? College Humor was one of them. So I go look at this guy and then I'm like, I'm researching Vimeo and I'm looking at him. And then I'm like, he gave this talk in 2008 at this media conference and then he comes back again eight years later.
I don't know if you've ever seen this talk, but it's a, it's a, I mean, it gets no views on the internet, but for nerds like us who create media and content on the interest, very interesting to see what somebody thought in 2008, which is like, the iPhone has come out, but it hasn't changed the world yet. And like literally the presentation, he's like, yeah, kids, all their black berries are not going to be doing XYZ. And back then, you know, we created College Humor.
It became the number one comedy entertainment site on the internet. Way bigger than Cartoon Network and all these other like incumbents. Okay, that's interesting.
Then he comes back eight years later and he's like, here's what I got right and here's what I got wrong. And one of the things he was talking about, and he's like, he's like, at some point, people on the internet will stop leaving the internet. Like they won't, they'll stop using the internet as a springboard to go onto Netflix or onto get cast into a TV show or whatever.
Like they'll realize that their YouTube channel is worth more than, than those shows and they won't want to leave to go do those. And they won't review this as just a stepping stone. And that's happening.
He basically had like four or five predictions about where the world was going, he put up all the sites like Viral Nova and Upworthy and whatnot. He's like, right now, these are the hottest sites in the world. Their traffic is crushing ours and they're, they're getting more traffic than anybody, more traffic than God.
He's like, I think all of this is going to zero. I think this is highly commoditized and it's not going to work for these reasons. It was absolutely correct.
And so it was very interesting to go learn from this guy. He's kind of a master at what he does. And I've done this before with like, but I looked up all the infomercial kings.
So the guys who created like, you know, proactive, that acne, you know, medicine, like, how did that story happen? Right. But if I just log on the internet and I just take the, the, the last thing that somebody tweeted or the latest TikTok, somebody uploaded, you know, I'm playing defense, I'm playing their game, not mine. Right. And so I'm just trying to have a little bit more intention when I, when I, when I use the internet, you know, I'm not the type who's just going to go like total digital detox and just not use the internet. But when I do use it, I'm trying to use it in a bit of a healthier way.
SPEAKER_01
So Ricky, did he, he predicted that the viral novus of the world, he predicted that it was going to go to zero and they did. Yeah. Did I ever tell you the story about my partner, Joe and Hampton and a bunch of other stuff? Did I tell you a story about little things?
SPEAKER_02
You've mentioned it before that he got like really the most trafficked Facebook referral, right? And then he had an offer to sell and he didn't take it or something.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Is that the story? So Joe, Joe's an amazing entrepreneur. So he started his first company.
It was an ad tech company. He sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars when he was like 25. So he just had this like huge success at a young age.
Then his next business he started was called, uh, I forget exactly what it was called, but a pet flow. It was a pet food company. And they started it before Chewy, except he was a little conservative and he was like, we have to spend money profitably on ads and that's hard to do.
And so we're going to go a little bit slower. Chewy comes in and go, nah, f that. We're going to lose money for the first six or 12 months at a customer and we're going to do such a good job that they're going to come back.
And Joe was like, that's a dumb strategy. Turns out it was right. But in order to make a pet flow grow, he created a blog where they just wrote content on pets.
And within a very, very, very, very short amount of time, they started getting 10, 20, 30 million people a month coming to this blog on pets. And he's like, screw that. Let's just do this blog.
And so within four years, they were the most shared website on Facebook, bigger than viral Nova, bigger than Buzzfeed, bigger than HuffPo, all these publishers that were huge in the 2014, 15 era. And it started getting something like 250 million unique some months to their website. And they were scaled up, I think, to 90 million in revenue in four years.
It was a huge company. I went to, I cold emailed them. I went to his office.
He had these studios and they're like, Facebook Live is the next big thing. We just built out this $250,000 studio in the, in the Manhattan office. And it's going to be the greatest thing ever.
We have 150 employees. This is going to be the biggest thing ever. The problem, of course, that we all know was Zuck does with Zuck once.
And they built this entire company, little things.com on the back of Facebook. And they got an LOI to sell the business.
And they were literally three weeks from selling. They were going to sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. Facebook puts out this annual report where they go, we're actually changing, repiviting from this thing to this thing.
And three weeks away or something like that from this deal closing for hundreds of millions of dollars, the company backed out. And within six months, the business basically laid off everyone and had to shut down all in a matter of like six or seven months of like, we're on top of the world making a hundred million a year to now we are not. And it's a crazy, crazy story.
If you Google like his name, Joe Spicer, little things, you'll see the story. I think, just did some big story on it, but it's pretty wild.
SPEAKER_02
Ah, the lessons we learn, unfortunately, that's, you know, that's like, it's cool to be like, yeah, you learned so much from failure. But it's like, God, sometimes it's so painful. Yeah. He was basically, I didn't win.
SPEAKER_01
He posted this publicly. He was like, I was set to make $50 million and three weeks away from the closing. It went away.
And I, he like has always crazy stories about that.
SPEAKER_02
What's he like to work with? Cause you picked him as your partner for Hampton. Um, why'd you pick him?
SPEAKER_01
He's the best man. He's the best. He's the best.
He's a harmonious partner. He's even Keel. He's very easy.
SPEAKER_02
But not like the partnership dynamics, because you've told me about those. What is he, what's his edge? What's he great at? What's it? What is he like? What is he amazing at?
SPEAKER_01
You ever hang out with Israeli guys and like Israeli guys have a culture of like, they're quite competent because they served in the military and they're like, you're really good at stuff. Oftentimes they're good at spotting opportunities because that's also part of the culture of like, just like negotiating well and like finding interesting deals. He is so good at spotting opportunities and he's technical and he's so fast.
I've never met someone who's like significantly faster than I am at making stuff and going all in and like, he'll just find an opportunity. He'll build a website for it. And he's like, yep, this is what I'm doing now.
And he pounces so fast. I've never met someone who moves faster. One thing that we did that was so great.
Did you ever have this with Ben or any of your other partners where you do like a, you're like, look, before we like hop in bed and before we get married here, let's just sit down and map out. What do you want your life to be like? What do you want in five years and 10 years? What do you want on a day to day basis? And you're like, right out like how you want to live, what you're willing to, what you're willing to give up, what you're not willing to give up. Have you ever done that?
SPEAKER_02
Not exactly. But, you know, you told me you did that. I think there's a version of that that I do, but I'm not.
I think everything changes. So, you know, it sounded really great in theory. And I think it's a useful exercise just to clarify your own thoughts.
But I don't. I think people themselves are quite incongruent in general. Well, yeah, you change.
But also, you don't know what you want. And also, you say one thing because it sounds good or you think you want it. But then something comes up and you're, you know, it's your stated preference versus revealed preference.
I think it's very hard to get to people's revealed preferences. They're true preferences or they're true desires or whatever. And so I think it's a good exercise to do, but I don't put as much weight in it as you did, I think.
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think that. I think that, A, it starts a really good conversation. So I was like, look, let's be transparent, just like you should with like your wife or girlfriend, you're like, let's talk about like what type of life that we potentially want and let's be very open about that.
So I think that like creating that, like, let's just be very clear about and we'll acknowledge that it will change. So I think it creates a great version of that. But Joe's also 42, I think he's older than me.
And so I would think that at that age, he has a little bit of solidified the values that he stands for. And so it was helpful. I think if I did that exercise when I was 24, it would not have been good.
In fact, I did do that exercise when I was 24 and it sucked. I said, I wanted you want to know what I said I wanted when I was 24. I said, I want 10,000 employees.
I go, wouldn't it be awesome if you had 10,000 employees? And then I hired three people and I'm like, went out the window. I'm like, yeah, that's that's a no for me, dawg. Like this is going to work.
But so I think if you're a little bit older and you have some experience, you might know a little bit more that you want. But when I was younger, no, that wouldn't have worked.
SPEAKER_02
My thinking on this is the Buffett thing of you want some a partner with an energy, integrity and intelligence. I think that's the like core thing you I look for at least, which is basically. And in order, energy is the easiest to spot.
And it's the easiest one to try to write off if somebody doesn't have it. Meaning seems like a seems like a nice to have. It's actually not a nice to have for me.
It's a must have for me. And so energy is the first one that shows up. And it's the easiest one that I've tried to talk myself out of with certain people.
And that's been a mistake every single time I've done it.
SPEAKER_01
Who have you worked with that's high energy and like almost exhaust you because you're like, I can't keep up.
SPEAKER_02
Sully's like that. He's super high energy, but not in an exhausting way. And like, I get energy from that.
So it's all good.
SPEAKER_01
I don't mean exhausting like they wear you out, but you're like, oh my God, dude, like you're you're almost hard to keep up. You move so fast. That's inspiring.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, everybody that it's a good way. Like, yeah, I mean, in a good way and that they bring their own energy to the table. I'm not bringing it out of them.
Ben is a fun. So Ben, believe you, he's my current business partner. On the surface when you meet him, he's a more quiet guy.
He's more reserved. He's not like he doesn't come across like this huge booming personality. But Ben's got that energy where he's just he comes out for him like through text message or through like, you know, he'll just wake up and do something or he can't sleep at night because he's thinking about something.
So energy reveals energy is not just being a wacky flailing arms guy. It's do you have the are you driven yourself? Do you take action quickly? Do you think about things all the time or are you am I trying to force you to am I dragging your brain into the conversation and do you get excited about things? Are you when an opportunity arises? Does your do you shift gears up to energy is the first one? Then it's intelligence or competence, which is like, what are the great at? Oh, this person's great at selling. There's great at selling.
There's person's great at building. This person's great at just pushing the ball forward every day, whatever it is. And then the last one, which is integrity is the hardest one to get a feel for, which is how is this person going to treat me when they have the opportunity to be selfish? Will they be selfish when they have the opportunity to be selfish? And it's very, very hard to know that you can kind of only talk to people.
They've worked with four or ask them questions and try to see if they're pretty honest about that. And then I just work with them on something first before we commit. So it's like, we have that conversation.
Sure. But let's like, I would always trade an experience for a belief. And if I can have an experience working with you on something for three weeks, that's going to be way better than me trying to put, take a leap of faith on a bunch of things you said, or you wrote down at a Google doc.
SPEAKER_01
Did you just make up that word or that phrase?
SPEAKER_02
Tony Robbins special, baby.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I was going to say, that's that's yours now. Do you what how late into the evening are you working on business stuff? Versus family time or fitness or whatever else there is?
SPEAKER_02
I basically, I work out in the middle of the day. I work about two p.m. So it's basically like I've done, I've done enough where I could stop working. I wake up and I work.
I wake up, I do my morning routine, then I work. And then I take a break to work out. And then I'll either just, if I've done enough that day, I'll just play with my kids.
I'll start playing with them and just hang out. If I have it, I'll do another hour or two of work. And then I do family time till about till they go to bed.
So they're usually fully asleep, eight, 30 or nine. And then I chill out slash work one of the two. They're both kind of the same to me.
So sometimes it's just like watching a show. Sometimes it's working or reading something. And I'll do that till 11 or 12.
I go to go to sleep.
SPEAKER_01
But between that 11 or between kids, kids go to sleep and you go to bed. Are you on the phone talking to people ever?
SPEAKER_02
No, no, no, that's me time. That's me on the Internet. I'm not talking to people.
No.
SPEAKER_01
I I've got a bunch of friends who are like that and they'll like my wife.
SPEAKER_02
She'll try to talk and I will be like, I'm doing no talking. That's my friend. I'm doing no talking right now.
It's a nice way of saying like, I don't want to talk to you. I'm doing no talking.
SPEAKER_01
That's it. There's like this like unspoken rule at my house where like eight or nine when she wants to like ask me like, hey, what dates do you want to go to this place? And I just mumble. I go, I mean, that means like, dude, I just shopped at Ikea all day.
I'm overwhelmed. I can't look at anything. I can't think.
Don't ask me a date. I'm not thinking about anything. You know, we've been you know what we've been doing lately.
It's fucking Legos. Have you ever done Legos?
SPEAKER_02
I've never done Legos. I I have a whole separate pod topic about adult Legos, because I think it's a thing. And you're one of those.
So we should talk. We should actually do a full segment on it.
SPEAKER_01
I'm so into it. I'm so into it. That's all I'll say.
I am. So I just got into it in November. I'm a Lego guy now.
SPEAKER_02
We're going to talk about that next time. I got to jump. This has been good.
This is the pod. That's the pod. That's the pod.