SPEAKER_02
That sounds like this is like, you know those things where it's like we're auctioning off a date with layered Hamilton It's like a hug. Why don't you buy this? Yeah, you just bought yourself a nine million dollar hug
SPEAKER_01
All right, we're live I've got a bunch of good topics. Let me bring up one juicy one last year or two years ago You asked me a question. You're like, who do you admire? I think you asked me that and I said this guy named layered Hamilton Laird Hamilton is this like beautiful surfer dude.
He's like in his fifties now. Basically, he's beautiful Like we get it. We get it acknowledge that he's got like beautiful wavy blonde hair and like a nice skin And he's pretty ripped for his age and he always was ripped He's like this tough guy that serves a big waves and whatever He launched this thing called what do you make fun of me because I'm
SPEAKER_02
I don't need to make a joke. You've done it all yourself here
SPEAKER_01
Like this is like this is like objective like I'm just stating facts here. He's a human Ken doll He launched this thing called layered superfoods. Have you heard of that? It's like a coffee creamer.
That's made out of like Coconut I think right anyway They took the company public I don't know why they did that but they took a public at a 300 or 400 million dollar market cap at the time They were doing 50 million in revenue Look up the company now. Let me find it. Oh wow nine million dollars nine million dollars So this company they sell like a fair amount of like coffee creamer.
So yesterday. I think it was 8.8 million Dude, so listen, they have 20 million in cash.
No debt at all. Their revenue is decreasing So it like in q3 it was 8.8 million In q3 of last year was 10.
9 million. So what's that like a 50 million dollar a year business? But it's declining they're group. They have good decent gross profit They have an okay balance sheet, but like the business for some reason it's valued so low I would have to dive deep into it and really look at the numbers, but it's kind of ridiculous, right? So you were talking about wanting to buy a company.
You've said this before This is your target, dude. You get to hang out with layered hamlet. Sounds like it's your target
SPEAKER_02
It sounds like this is like, you know those things where it's like we're auctioning off a date with layered Hamilton It's like a hug. Why don't you buy this? Yeah, you just bought yourself a nine million dollar hug
SPEAKER_01
Dude, why is this why is this company you haven't looked at this, but why is this company so cheap?
SPEAKER_02
No, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much debt they have but none
SPEAKER_01
I said that so I read their report. They had their q3 report 21 million dollars in cash zero debt zero debt
SPEAKER_02
So I never understand when when companies trade this far below their just cash value because you know the obvious question That is why do you not buy this thing for 15 million and just wind it down and distribute the 20 million to yourself and make five million dollars?
SPEAKER_01
You know like in the or sell the inventory they have like 13 million or something in inventory
SPEAKER_02
Interesting so yeah, so I haven't I mean I haven't looked at this because you just mentioned it But yeah, there's a bunch of these right now that are like this There was one the other day that I that I saw that was kind of in the same same bucket But there's a bunch of stocks that are down like 95% right now that seem like you know interesting takeover targets And we have a friend who was interested in doing this and so I made a list of like 10 I was like here's 10 that I think you could buy is this friend aggressive It's an aggressive friend. Got it. I know you okay. I know which front it is How tight is that by the way just to be able to say this is an aggressive friend and you're like, yeah I know who it is
SPEAKER_01
With this friend say to a Buddling entrepreneur entrepreneur your business is one Google away from me ruining you
SPEAKER_02
Usually don't say things to their to their faces like that they they're more just like an under under like you know Those sharks that swim only under the water. They don't put the fin out. He's more like that got it But like wish calm was the was the other example that that had recently seen that was like this Which is wish, you know, pretty big brand name because they spent billions of dollars marketing this thing 10 billion dollar market cap at one point Now 360 million so 10 billion to 360 million has seven 700 million in cash with no liabilities You know, I don't know exactly how you can buy these things I think that's the the challenge is like to actually acquire the majority in doing so you would push the price up because people would know What you're doing so I think you'd have to make like a tender offer at a specific price That's like, you know, what I whatever some something above but you know, the board will just reject it They'll say we have more cash than that on the balance sheet so we don't need to sell at this price So I don't know exactly mechanically how somebody does this.
I don't know if this is like, you know Fantasy math where you're like dude, what if Shaq was in the you know, the hundred meter race you could just knock people over It's like, dude, that's not it doesn't make sense. It's not how things work in the real world So, you know this idea of like public company takeovers is not something that I understand
SPEAKER_01
Is that like a drug and conversation you've had which is can Shaq when the hundred meter dash, you know
SPEAKER_02
The one thing about this podcast is the number of on-the-fly analogies you have to create It just really brings it's that's a different skill. That's a different muscle and yeah, the muscles not not so strong yet
SPEAKER_01
I'm still working on it. So anyway layered superfood interesting company that I was that I was iron layered Maybe a little less hot in my book now Cuz this company is worth only 8 million. That's a buzz at 300 Now he's just a really hot fit guy before he was hot fit and rich so
SPEAKER_03
He lost the third leg of the stool
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he's still famous and famous Trump's wealth in most cases and in most people's eyes, but
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, all right. Well, let me tell you about somebody who is rich and somebody who is famous But he's not hot
SPEAKER_03
Can I tell you?
SPEAKER_02
Okay, are you familiar with Dave Ramsey? Yeah, yeah, yeah very tell me what you know about Dave Ramsey and I'm gonna fill in some gaps for you
SPEAKER_01
So Dave he's like a fight personal finance guru. He's based out of Franklin, Tennessee He's in his 70s probably now we started as a radio host where it was just like Dave Ramsey like Show and then he parlayed that into like the Dave Ramsey network So now he has like four or five hundred employees based out of Franklin, Tennessee and they do like 400 or 500 million a year and revenue where they sell like personal finance stuff I think he's pretty controversial because a lot of his like rules his lot of his personal finance rules are based in like biblical Like rules he also believes in like zero debt and he's pretty conservative. So people who aren't conservative aren't into him
SPEAKER_02
Okay, well you do a lot more than I would have guessed so I guess the segment's over
SPEAKER_03
Franklin, Tennessee, how do you know this stuff? What's going on here?
SPEAKER_01
He also bought all of his buildings without any debt. So he owns like a campus in Franklin, Tennessee
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah, so I didn't know all this. I don't know. Well, you know, well, you spitted my food, but all right I'm still hungry.
So let's go So he's 62 years old. He was a realtor turned radio host and yeah, he's from Tennessee So basically what happened is by his mid 20s. So this is like back in the 80s
SPEAKER_01
So back in the day, you didn't know who Dali Parton was and she's also a Tennessee person. So like yeah, I guess lesson learned
SPEAKER_02
I'm not coming at you with any Tennessee trivia So by his mid 20s, he's got like a four million dollar property portfolio real estate portfolio And it's kicking off some cash, maybe like 5% a year cash on cash return So he's making 250k a year off his real estate portfolio at that stage at this time 1988 So the you know the year I'm born his bank basically revokes his line of credit and Demands that he pays it back and he couldn't sell fast enough. So he gets foreclosed on and declares bankruptcy This is like the trauma of why he's like don't know that no debt He's like debt bad debt bad. Why because I burned my hand on the debt stove before this and so he's like He's got no money now.
He's you know as marriage is on the rocks He says he's committed, you know considering committing suicide, but you know, he gets back on his feet So this is kind of like his story. So anyways fast forward to today Dave's back and Dave's back in a big way and a big way here's some things that Davis said He says he has a 600 million dollar real estate portfolio that is fully paid off So 600 million dollars of real estate equity that he owns that's kind of insane His media empire, which is like, you know the combination of his radio shows and then all of the financial courses Training seminars all that stuff that they do outside of that He says on their website makes 300 million a year in revenue. I believe it which is absurd
SPEAKER_01
You don't know any people that go to that. What's that? No, I don't know anybody that goes so dude in the south It's a thing so I had Texas employees and like if you're just like a normal couple where each employee makes or each wife And husband makes like six years 70 grand a year You'll like pay to go to like a Dave Ramsey like he trains these financial advisors and they host seminars and you'll go to this like five-day Weeknights thing where it's like instead of Bible study. It's like we teach you how to like save and like
SPEAKER_02
Invest like yeah, it's like Jesus on the front and a P&L on the back It's like this new remixed Bible. I love it. And so his company This company Ramsey solutions is Absolute juggernaut is insane.
So it's okay. Let's break down the media side. So he launches this thing in 1992 and Basically, he's done content for 30 years about the same seven steps It's like this guy's just been talking about this same thing.
I don't know who he feels like hours I've never listened to it to like a full thing, but I don't know. He feels like four hours a day of radio It's a good show just saying the same thing every time like well you got debt pay that off, right? So he's got these seven tenants. So here's this ten seven tenants All right, number one you establish an emergency fund of a thousand dollars That's your first baby step to financial freedom and Jesus bliss Second one you want to pay off all your non-housing debts ASAP starting with the smallest one so that he calls this a snowball So don't pay off like the highest rate interest just pay off the smallest thing you can just to get momentum All right, I like that Then you increase your emergency fund to three to six months of income Then you put 15% into a 401k or IRA then you start your five five, you know 529 plans or whatever like the college funds you pay off your mortgage and then you now you're fully paid off You got your you got your safety net now you start to build wealth and so That's his life.
Those are his seven steps. His company Ramsey Solutions is a Biblically based common sense financial education media company. That's crazy.
I'm not gonna lie. That's a bar
SPEAKER_03
Hey YouTube editor play that clip of like, you know Jay-Z the first time he hears like the intro to like, you know
SPEAKER_02
Timberlain's playing him a beat. He's like The Biblically based common sense financial education media company, so that's amazing And then he's got you said you talked about this like a Nat. He's Tennessee like Empire He's got he's got a thousand employees working there.
He owns all the real estate So he's got he owns. I don't know this is correct. Dude. He owns a lot. He owns a lot He owns two office towers.
He's got basically like, you know a 50,000 square foot event center He's got 60 acres of just like property land that he bought for $10 million So owns a bunch of land uses that land to run his common sense biblical Financial empire out in Tennessee. He's doing his show for three hours a day five days a week people call in and they're basically like, all right, Dave You know long-time listener first-time caller and you know, there's part of it. That's the sort of like my first million I actually think we should steal his stick which is he goes Yeah, they'll call him to be like I'm worth four million dollars and be like how old are you? I'm like, I'm 32 years old.
It'd be like fantastic 34 million He's writing notes this whole time and then he'll be like how much debt and they're like I got my mortgage You know $800,000 and you could just hear him like I Said some with a little a little tisk I mean, you know, it's like dad's disappointed in me and then he'd be like, you know, I'm making this much a year I put this much away and blah blah blah and then he gives him financial advice Which is kind of the same with financial advice every single time But somehow people like get really into this this thing and then the other things he does Which are just these hilarious segments that he has so he's got every day millionaires So somebody calls in he interviews somebody that's that's worth a million dollars But then he has and this is good the debt-free scream. Have you seen this before?
SPEAKER_01
Well, I used to think that it was like the equivalent of ringing a bell like they're yeah He had like a he had a thing where people would call him Like I finally paid off my debt and they like celebrate it. They celebrate it with the debt-free scream. I
SPEAKER_02
Think there's things we could learn from this guy. I think we should steal some of this guy's shtick and And so he's really got something going here. Anyway, so you wait you've never heard of him No, no, I've heard of I didn't realize how rich he was I just thought he was like someone's dad that gives basic financial advice because he's got the dad vibe
SPEAKER_01
He's got the vibe of someone who calls diabetes diabetes like that's it You know what I mean like like the thing above your head is definitely a rough to him not a roof
SPEAKER_03
He's got that type of thing. Yeah, I need to now laugh for 30 minutes
SPEAKER_01
I don't want to do the rest of the fight. That's that's his vibe He's a little judgmental too, and he's like this is the only way yeah, he's opinionated. I mean he's dr.
Phil for money
SPEAKER_02
He's exactly. Yeah, he's got his thing which is like this is how you do things and he's like a guy with a big belly
SPEAKER_01
Who wears suspenders vibe, you know like that? Like that type of vibe, so he's not wrong It just sometimes his energy. I think is a little bit judgmental. Yeah, yeah, exactly
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, exactly, okay I was gonna make a bunch of jokes about his look, but I decided to Turn the other cheek or whatever he would want me to do so his shows like nationally syndicated on radio Which I think is like the hack so 20 million people a week apparently listen to this
SPEAKER_01
I don't know how they see you but like I basically drive I would listen to it all the time
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, of course you did of course you're his target market So you know he's basically carried by like 600 radio affiliates. I think that's amazing So he's got his books. He's got 23 best-selling books.
I don't know what that even means. That's like there That's there. I think that means that's their personality So he's got like his daughter does it now and he's got these other people like Ken and dr.
John and like all these other people They's created as other other kind of personalities or brands. They're called the Ramsey personalities. So he's got them in anyways Live-speaking courses.
They got an app. They have you know all kinds of stuff. It's kind of crazy So let me give you some of his some of his tweets.
I want some of his tweets or quotes I want you to react to them with a hallelujah or a no brother not for me. All right, so first one If you're working and paying off debt the only time you should see the inside of a restaurant is if you're working there
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, hallelujah I'll give you that That's fine
SPEAKER_02
If you come to work late and they're paying you you're stealing don't steal and expect to be promoted Hallelujah, I'm a capitalist pig. There's nothing socialist about me. I'd put my my receptionist on straight commission if I could figure out a way
SPEAKER_02
You're talking about my style. All right, here we go if somebody calls in and they got more debt than their annual income He'll say that's a small shovel at a big hole I love that Okay, then he also says quotes He quotes the proverbs 227 and states the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is a slave to the lender
SPEAKER_01
No, I think that that's wrong I think that you can use debt like effectively to help you sure carries a gun the guys guys guys awesome guys awesome
SPEAKER_02
And I did not carries a gun carries a gun carries a 45 with hollow point bullets according to himself
SPEAKER_01
45 is that's a pretty big round. Yeah, that's the biggest round I know of That's a big that's a big round. Yeah, so anyways
SPEAKER_02
Fascinating guy in his 60s that like I could not believe his empire generates this much cash 300 million a year is a is a pretty absurd number for this dude and he's been doing that for decades He just shows you how big the Tony Robbins empire must be like Tony Robbins says this thing during his things Because my business is bringing over 500 million dollars a year, but I didn't know what that means because like It's like when a ad agency guys like I've spent over a hundred million dollars You know, 100 we've generated over a hundred million dollars in revenue. It's like no, dude You took the company gave you a budget you push spend yet the average normal rate And you've done this for ten years and you added up their total revenue number like that That's not you or like, you know, a lot of people will say they own a hundred million dollars of real estate with and like, okay Cool, you know, so what's your equity in that and they're like well It's 80% bank loan so the bank owns 80% of it and then of the 20% down I syndicated that out and so I got a 3% broker commission on it and I own 2% of the of the property It's like, okay, let's be a little more real about it So to me it was pretty stunning to hear that he's got a 600 million dollar fully paid off real estate portfolio and a 300 million dollar Your business of pyre if those numbers are to be believed I could also see this being totally full of shit by the way. No, no, no, no, no, no, it's not full of shit
SPEAKER_01
It's definitely not full of shit. I don't have any way to verify it But like I know his reach and I know that that is like very attainable to God Did you just read a book on the words Christian say no, dude, it's the flooding
SPEAKER_02
Something to me today I'm gonna get a good laugh out of you and that is worth the risk to me
SPEAKER_01
Have you been south of the Mason Dixon line man? Have you like been in the Midwest? Apparently not you went to Duke but Duke's not really the south the main
SPEAKER_02
I don't think my skin killers allowed south of the Mason Dixon line. I don't know what that is
SPEAKER_01
Have you hung out in like Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Alabama? You've never hung out in the news places. Have you?
SPEAKER_02
Have you ever even been I drove through but I came to California I had to step through the mud of the Midwest You gotta go man, you know I was born in Oklahoma all jokes aside, so you know I got my I got my southern street cred
SPEAKER_01
Dude, that's like my southern Burton certificate. Just cuz you've been to the airport. Don't mean you've been there That's like with this thing.
You got to get out man. Even just go to like this sounds very
SPEAKER_02
Get out is right. If you're in Tennessee, you do got to get out
SPEAKER_01
Dude just exactly you're good drive an hour and a half north and go to a Walmart and just chill and just watch what people Purchase and what are the about you got to get out of your little San Francisco bubble my man You got to get out and see like there's 350 million people in America. I can tell you a funny story yesterday
SPEAKER_02
I went to go I left my house for a meeting so I go meet somebody very interesting I might tell you about this later in the pod so I go meet somebody very interesting and I'm deciding if I want to save it to do a bigger thing or he's gonna come on as a guest or maybe I'll tell you about it I haven't decided yet. So do I know them? No, I don't think cuz they're they're not in your world, right? Like you know about Dolly Parton. You don't know about like, you know the NBA, you know, so it's like a different different Yeah, another big-base-all guy.
So wife and kids came with me. It's like a kind of a long drive I was like, oh, why don't we all drive down there together? You know nanny's out sick just drive down together We'll go to McDonald's afterwards of my kids love like getting a happy meal toy. So it's like we'll do that There's none around us.
We'll go go out there. So we go to this McDonald's kind of out You know, I've driven an hour away. We're going to this McDonald's out there And so I'm wait.
I'm like waiting and what I think is the line But you know McDonald's kind of ambiguous with the line
SPEAKER_01
There's not like they don't have like the airport order at the checkout or you have the self-checkout too
SPEAKER_02
No, they're well There's like self-checkouts like to the left and the right and then there's like the cashier in the front Then there's some people just waiting for their order You don't know if they're in line or not like you don't know what's going on And so there's a guy in front of me and the cashiers just like waiting and I was like, oh, you can go She's ready and then the cashier just goes he doesn't have money I Like peeked my head in front of like, oh, yeah sure enough
SPEAKER_03
And I was like, I thought it was such a funny thing for the lady to say now. He doesn't have money Like
SPEAKER_02
So outrageous of a comment like why did she have to say it like that? But it was the most direct answer like that like no you can go ahead. He's not he's not ready or he's not ordering
SPEAKER_03
He doesn't have money And he didn't even he just kept standing there just hoping that you get that I don't take someone's food that didn't show up or something
SPEAKER_01
I don't know what are you doing? I was in the bathroom at the airport recently And there was like there's like a line for the urinal But there was also like a line for the stalls and the guy walks out to me and he looks at the the stall and he looks at me He goes
SPEAKER_03
You wait to poop
SPEAKER_02
You have to answer to right you can not answer at that point Oh my god, why am I why am I paying it playing into this? It was just a dead face. It's just looking at it goes
SPEAKER_01
You went to poop That was like a 12 year old I don't know why Um, oh my god, I have another business you want to talk about business or no? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course
SPEAKER_02
We're idiots by the way this whole if you're not watching on YouTube you're missing half of it It's Sam's wearing a Harvard sweatshirt while we tell these stories
SPEAKER_01
We just talked about someone the whole legal whiskey wait to poop You made a bunch of jokes about the south. This is so stupid. Oh my god By the way, if you're listening in Austin, we're doing an event Well, actually we're doing two events.
I think the second one's not confirmed The second one is Sean and I doing a live pod late April. We're gonna have more on that right? Well, that's it's confirmed
SPEAKER_02
We're doing it. We just don't know the venue yet. We don't know the venue yet We need to know is it gonna be 300 people a thousand people or 3000 people? That's that's kind of the only thing that that we're missing here is how many of you will show up To this live show in Austin where we can we're gonna we're gonna put on a little show We're gonna meet and greet have some fun Maybe do a little private dinner with some people afterwards.
So I think we should We're gonna do that end of April Where do they go to like sign up for that? We'll put the link in the description here
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and then go to what's our website called MFM pod.com MFM pod.com Which is like my first million pod.
com and then we're we're doing another one. This one is not a we this is a me Sean's not coming to this one. It's just a casual hangout session.
We're doing that Wednesday, March 15th It's free. You can just show up and we're just gonna hang out and you can find that also on MFM pod.com Or by the time this episode air airs, I will have tweeted it so you can go to my twitter handle thus ampard and see it
SPEAKER_02
Sam I'm in a great mood. Can I tell you why? Yes? I Did something that I forgot is an amazing tactic and technique so I'm gonna say it out loud here So other people could do it, but also it's a reminder to myself to do it. Have you ever heard of something called flooding?
SPEAKER_01
No, is that when you text someone a lot of no, I have no idea
SPEAKER_02
It could be a lot of things don't urban dictionary. It's probably something weird But here's here's how I learned about it. Tony Robbins talked about this thing So he goes somebody asked him to go.
What's a like, you know marriage like Advice or a thing you do in your marriage that like, you know, it makes it better And he he basically had like two stories that I really loved. I'll skip the first one for now I've told it. I teach it my course, but I'll skip that one for now The second one that he had said was he goes about once a month We'll do something called flooding which is basically us we sit down on on the couch, you know Like we're about to watch Netflix or something else But instead of just mindlessly vegging out to some TV We watch videos or photos.
We go of some part of our past some some era of our past So maybe like this vacation that we went on or our wedding or whatever And you basically you'll get this flood of memories and emotion that are linked and anchored to those moments but most people don't like revisit it in a kind of like an intentional way like this and I do this in two ways one. I'll do it with like life photos or memories The second one is and this is the one I did before this which is why I post or something I will pull up a bunch of videos that were really funny to me back in like the day back in college Like back when YouTube was like the new shit E-bomb world And like, you know, things would go viral, but it was like yeah, E-bomb world like things would go viral and like everybody knew about that video That video, you know, whatever that Charlie bit my finger or whatever But there's this set of videos that were so funny to me and they're not even that fun Now that I go back and look it's kind of like an old movie where you're like Dang, this movie doesn't it doesn't hold up. It doesn't it doesn't have the same juice Like things are much funnier now like tick the average tick tock is funnier The best videos back in like 2006 which which videos did you look at? Yeah, this is gonna sound dumb, but have you ever seen this video?
SPEAKER_03
You know 12 year old boy disclaimer here we go
SPEAKER_02
I've heard this video of this cop pulling over this guy. He's got his hands above his hands like this. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, he goes he's patting him down
SPEAKER_02
He goes he goes, all right, let me just check the pockets hold on here. We go up What what's this and the guy goes that's my penis and he goes that's your penis and then he continues And this video cracks me up just the way he goes that's my penis and he goes that's your penis And so there's that one but then there's just a whole bunch of these that were like Like just goofy videos. Yeah, a lot of them were like, you know, the news anchors interviewing some like that kid who like I like Turtles kid or like the grape stomp video or like whatever There's this whole bunch of these and I watched like six of them and they just cracked me up in this like way It's like a simpler time
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that evolution of dance
SPEAKER_02
The wife and a mortgage and I didn't have it, you know, it's just literally that was like those videos were just took me back They just teleported me and so how do they recommend this this idea of flooding You probably have done some version of this on accident, but like make it a practice It's pretty awesome and it just puts you in an amazing mood
SPEAKER_01
So I did it recently So I'm gonna tell a story that I we're and I were texting about and I can't reveal What I was selling because it was kind of against the law and I didn't know it at the time
SPEAKER_02
But I treated that thing of statute of limitations. Yeah, you're way past that it's been more than 10 years Is that a real law?
SPEAKER_03
That's definitely a that's definitely a legal speech
SPEAKER_01
Here's what we do we can mention I'll I'll say it was alcohol. That's all I will say it was legal alcohol that I was selling
SPEAKER_02
That's all I'm gonna say I was like anytime you have to specify it was legal probably not a good thing
SPEAKER_01
So well, so here's the story I tweeted out that I think I it always bothers me when when people collect domain names That's a that's a pet peeve because I because I'm saying if you're doing that you're doing the wrong stuff because people will say I'm gonna I've got this great idea. I'm gonna buy a domain name or even worse. I'll say I've got this amazing domain name I should build something for it I'm like, dude, don't build something just because you have a domain name.
So anyway, I Tweeted out. I'm like just make money first and just use like a you know Store name dot square space dot com for like the initial like hundred bucks and sales and then go and get the domain name Like and someone's like you can't do that. I was like, oh, no, I've done it a bunch of times I'm like, yeah, well, you're doing it because you have a name It's like no, I didn't actually in college tons and tons of times In fact, I found this old website that I had and it was alcohol name dot wordpress dot com right and I went and looked at the old stats and it's getting 5000 views a month still On a wordpress.
com free website in this it's a store. It's a quote a store That is a blog post and a click to paypal And basically what I did was there was this really unique drink that was sold in Nashville And for some reason only one or two stores were carrying it But this particular type of drink was popular across the country And I thought well, I should set up an online store to sell this stuff And I did and I made friends with the person selling at the the liquor store or whatever and I go Hey, I'm gonna sell this for 3x the markup, but I'll buy a bunch of it from you So whatever and I did it and I didn't I'm an idiot. I didn't realize that like as this thing was growing I was making like a lot of money and I went and told the legal team at my college I was like, hey, I think my business is like working really well Do I need to set up like an LLC or something and they're like, oh, you're breaking the law Like you can't you can't sell this without like a liquor license I was like, but it's like a collect basically this thing that I was selling It was it was a very rare whiskey that was in a very particular type of bottle That was like a collector's item and I thought like it was just like collectors out of money I don't know if people are gonna drink this thing So anyway, it was making like a thousand dollars a day sometimes And I looked at the old blog post that I was selling this and it was hilarious and it reminded me like Of a simpler time when I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor Yeah And life was good and I was building motorcycles in my living room and it was working out well.
So I was like
SPEAKER_02
I was building motorcycles in my living room sleeping on the floor
SPEAKER_03
and selling their collector's whiskey illegally on the internet It was a simpler time
SPEAKER_02
You know the American dream
SPEAKER_01
The American dream I was one of those kids that you probably had this too I didn't have beer like you remember those college kids that would have like beer Cases the cardboard on their wall. Yeah, I wasn't that bad, but I did have an american flag I definitely had the american flag. So I was pretty trashy But yeah, I was so I was looking at my old like blog that I used to do and I couldn't even remember the password And so I flooded myself a little.
I'm just flooding my pants today. It's great All right, I have something for you. So there's this company that's for sale that I came across So check it out.
Go to chambers.com Chambers, okay. Yeah, like that harry potter stuff chambers chambers and partners.
Is that it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay
SPEAKER_02
Okay, dude, check this out. Well, I'll describe what I see It says discover the best law firms and lawyers and then there's like a search a search bar where you can type in a firm
SPEAKER_01
A lawyer or a legal network. So this yeah, so I'll explain what they do So basically what they do is I think they're mostly in europe But they are in america as well is they put out these rankings once a month or once a quarter something like that And they go and they interview lots of I think they have 200 employees who do this 200 employees who go out and interview different lawyers They talk to your past clients And they try to like see which cases you're winning and it's all done manually Like there's not like a lot of like tech behind it And then they create these rankings for like best legal firm or whatever like that or like, you know A good firm for this good firm for that like different niches And then they put out these rankings and if you're a lawyer you can pay money and and get like a plaque They'll send you a plaque and then also they'll allow you to use their like thing in the in the like when you send an email It could be like voted a top lawyer by chambers And you could do and you could do all that dude this company They do 44 million euros or yes, sorry 44 million pounds. So what's that in real real money? That's like 60 million in revenue and then 18 million in Profit and they're selling right now for close to 500 million dollars.
It's a crazy company
SPEAKER_02
You saw this like for sale somewhere just like in a
SPEAKER_01
trade magazine for media companies that I follow it's like a small thing called flash and flames Because this got that website they cover like b2b media stuff because I'm like been obsessed with b2b data business What's the name of the b2b media thing flash and flames com? I love it It's like my favorite site. I don't even want to tell people about it because I like how you tried to just mutter it
SPEAKER_02
That's when you know, it's a good one. It's a good one
SPEAKER_01
Like I'm a paying subscriber to it which is like ridiculous but dude these lawyers pay like 1500 to $4,000 a year and They said they have like no churn. They're like we have we no insurance from our from us because these lawyers wanted for So much this these lawyers wanted for so much and I uh I'm interested in this and I found like eight or nine other Businesses they call them like data businesses or databases or intelligence businesses And they're not really much tech but right now a lot of them are selling for eight to ten times revenue And I found 10 examples of companies that have sold in the eight to ten times revenue range for one of these data businesses It's ridiculous. It's crazy and this sounds like a scheme because what they do is they rank you and then they go Hey, if you want like to make like a special profile on our website We'll do that and it's $4,500 a year and what we'll do is like once ranked you could purchase this one pager Where you get a profile on our site It's almost like a wikipedia page where they like one of their journalists just writes like two paragraphs And it says like this legal firm is known for x y and z and then you you could put that if you're a lawyer You could put that in your email signature and you're allowed to do that and then people can click and see whatever It's crazy man.
This is a caper. They're pulling it off and I and I love stuff like this, you know, it's like JD power
SPEAKER_02
We talked about you know, you know, they're smart because their logo Is like it looks like a medallion like a like it looks like a special emblem or award Like it's a see with this like I don't know what you call these but like the pedals Going around it put this on the youtube channel so that people can see it but like a reef It's yeah, it's like a it's like a reef around it that like just looks like you know what the olympics The olympics and Athens would would would award their the top performers, right? So like you they're they're really playing into the whole thing with their brand. So I think that's pretty cool
SPEAKER_01
I have a business and their name is partners. I'm gonna create like something like this Do you know partners man a's and partners? You know We'll just do something for the people, you know, we break we rank best condiments man a's and partners I gotta figure this out. We could put this on the logo But I love these rating businesses.
What's the one you have that's similar?
SPEAKER_02
So I was have you ever done like Like trademark search yourself But no, what's that when you start a business and you want to look up? Is this a good name? What do you do? Do you pay a lawyer and say hey, can you just tell me if this trademark's available?
SPEAKER_01
Do you do that later once you get going a little bit that later once I get going? Is there is there an importance to having a trademark?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it's very hard to sell a company without a trademark. Did you sell the hustle without a trademark? I didn't have a trademark. Yeah, typically very hard to get acquired without owning your name because it's a giant liability So for example, like if somebody else owns the trademark and you get six years in you're gonna have to change your name Because the more valuable you get the bigger your exposure is for them to say I own the trademark this you have to change your name
SPEAKER_01
But maybe my name. I mean it was called the hustle. Maybe it was too broad of a name.
You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02
Well, I don't know. There's probably some troll out there listening to this being like, hey, hang on
SPEAKER_01
Let me go get this guy. So dude, I'm past the reps and warranty like the escrow has been paid out. So
SPEAKER_02
There's a great there's a great story. I think the early episode where moise came on and told the native story So it's like I don't know episode 10 of this podcast moise tells a story about like when they tried to sell native They they got in trouble with this so they go they have a deal to sell native And as they're doing the diligence or like as they're prepping for the diligence, they're like Shit, we don't have the trademark for native native deodorants and they're like, okay. Well, let's just get it and they're like Well, you can't get it because somebody else owns it.
They're like, what who owns native deodorant? There's no other native deodorant. Look, I have the domain and they're like, well, no, there's this guy I think it was like someone in Palo Alto if I remember the story correctly I might be butchering a little bit of this but somebody in Palo Alto who was like kind of like a Patent troll type that owned the name to it and owned a bunch of names like this and they were like And he's like, okay, I guess I can go buy it off them because they're not doing anything with it So he goes to them tries to buy for like whatever 20k. They're like, no He's like, okay, you know, whatever goes up 200k.
No And like the guy wanted millions of dollars for this name because he knows your business is valuable You need this name. You're gonna change your brand name for your consumer package. Good. That's like, you know, you can't change Doritos to go be called, you know, like like fluffies, you know tomorrow. It doesn't work you lose a lot of value and So They were like going back and forth.
I forgot exactly how he got resolved I think he ended up buying it for two million dollars or something like that or moisted I think so or something else happened where they like threatened They were just like, all right screw you. We're not gonna do it at all And the guy like realized it was like his last-ditch effort and like and they ended up getting it for whatever some amount You know, I forgot I forgot what it was but they acquired it in the end But yeah, anyway, so so I've had this problem with the business of mine, which was that I Up for I'm like you I'm like, oh, I don't need a fancy domain. I don't need a fancy name Let me just start the business And go and then I start and it goes and it gets popular and I'm like, okay I should probably like incorporate the company and do like payroll And do like all these things I should I should have been doing it in the beginning but like I didn't want to Do all that stuff if there wasn't like a real business here And so then you try to go back and some things are easier than others to correct going backwards One of the things that's hard to correct is if you chose a name that wasn't right, you know, you have a problem And so with one of my businesses, I had done the actual search myself I should have just paid a lawyer to do it But I went on the uspto search website, which I don't know if you've ever gone there It's like, you know, imagine like a government.
It's like a dmv website And so you go there you try to search and I search for our brand name and nothing came up But it turns out there's like a fancier way to search where it's like yeah that brand name or like With an s at the end or like with associated other words that would make it too close And I didn't know that and so I remember being so frustrated with this interface And I was like somebody should make a because this is a it's a public database It's like somebody should just make a more consumer friendly layer on top And then I found a business that does this and I got in touch with the guy who does this So there's a business called trademarkia.com. So it's like trademark with IA so trademarkia.com If you go to it all of a sudden it's like like if you just compare side by side like in the youtube channel You should do this like take uspto And try to find even where do you go find search for trademarks and then like how that looks versus this where it just says search 11 million trademarks for free Search your thing example mickey mouse and it's like you can just type in your brand name.
So like if I typed in you know The hustle I'm gonna search for this and it's gonna tell me what trademarks exist for this who owns them This company kills it. What categories are there? Okay. So so hubspot hubspot owns it now So it says the hustle hubspot owns it.
It's pending And it was filed December 3rd 2022. When did you sell December 3rd? When did that two years ago? What would that be 21?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so, okay, so wow. So they yeah, I didn't own it
SPEAKER_02
They also it also looks like you abandoned one in 2020. So, you know So somebody did something on your team. Maybe tried and didn't get it or whatever it tells you what class it's in etc Etc.
So it's a great great little thing and you can search for like associated names or whatever So great website and so I reached out to the guy who owns it. I was like dude This is a and so I said trademark. He has a great great idea brilliant interface, you know, you know props to you So the guy lives in the Bay Area actually and he goes yeah, it's really cool website You know, we have 5 million and a r and I can't you know, we never raised VC 5 million and a r It was kind of declining from the peak But I just came back to the company remove the subscription.
I got big plans now You know, I want to talk to you about it and you know, he's gonna try to make this like he wants to go for like the billion dollar outcome And I was like, dude I think you have a five million dollar year cash cow that you could probably get to like eight or nine With just like some simple tweaks and like, you know chill like that that sounds awesome But but I thought this is a really cool website again It's just a simple like these businesses are everywhere man These businesses are hidden in plain sight and in this case it took a public data set It just put a much more user friendly Rapper on top versus what you were talking about with chambers is they created their own data set and then have then they own that proprietary data
SPEAKER_01
It's called, uh, you know, uh, who was it a non from cbm sites was on and he was like no We just like taking public data that's messy and we just make it a little bit easier to yeah We just make it clean by the way. My first million is owned by advanced magazine public publishers Which is a big company in new york and it's a entertainment services Namely an online non-dial notable video series featuring star athletes explaining their life as millionaires I guess that's that gq thing which I search or where I see when I search on youtube But anyway bad ass. I love this.
In fact, uh, you want to go trademark this before this episode comes out because now somebody's gonna go squat on this and um a funny story about Native deodorant, I've always remembered this story. I never brought it up to you So the hustle's office in twitch's office was just a block or like 50 yards from each other so If you know, there's there was like Kearney or whatever you were and then you were the left if you go to the right There was a little cafe that was lovely that I that I really liked so native deodorant They sell deodorant. It was sold for a hundred million dollars in in cash And it probably does hundreds of millions now and it has like a really cute branding They make shampoo they make everything and I remember walking by this lovely cafe and I thought, huh This cafe is called native two and their logo looks Just like native deodorant and I realized that moys worked nearby and so I put kind of two and two together.
So if you google native co sf, yeah, you'll see a little you'll see a little cafe You'll see their yelp page. They've changed their logo to green But it used to be yellow or sorry. It used to be blue the exact same as native deodorant And so I have a feeling that he was just thinking of like good branding by this and I was like
SPEAKER_02
This is I remember thinking dude boys. They're ripping off your brand or are you doing exactly? And now it's realized the obvious He was like, all right. I need a name looked out the window saw it.
I was like, that's my name in my logo now
SPEAKER_01
That's mine If you go to this go if you look up native co spacing is exactly the same It's exactly the same And it used to be blue. It looks like they're Exactly nivia blue It was it was the same white background with the same blue now. It's green It looks like they closed in coven and they moved to a new location But that old location that we were at it was the same logo and it was called native co And I think native deodorant was the domain was also native co for him Yes, it was it was the exact same thing And so he must have been just walking down the street and he goes like, yeah, that's me That's mine now.
You know, it's just like there's that meme on the internet of like A stick figure handing an item to another stick figure saying hey, I made this and the second stick of your figure looks at it Goes I made this that's basically what just happened And I don't think I've ever like said this to him But I would love to hear what his rebuttal is but he 100 100% stole the entire branding the name the everything from this company I don't know if stealing is the right word, but kind of I mean that one looks like stealing
SPEAKER_02
It looks like he actually went to took a screwdriver took off took their sign off their office moved it across the street and put it on His office. It's the exact logo. I remember seeing that for years and being like, huh? And I just never like put two and two together.
I didn't realize he worked there, but I was like, wow They're really ripping off his branding
SPEAKER_01
No, that's that cafe has been there for years. I remember walking by it for years
SPEAKER_02
Shut down that I mean, this is like everything that's wrong in society Um, you know, he sells his business for a hundred million dollars poor cafe, you know shuts down You know, you know sadly during covet during the pandemic. This is the way the world is going dude. Have you seen people ripping us off? I don't know if you've seen this but
SPEAKER_01
No, but that's cool. Watch what happens
SPEAKER_02
In the next two weeks, you're gonna see Twitter threads linkedin short videos on tiktok other podcasts Talking about the exact same stories that we tell here There's like this group of 10 people that just take our content And then they just say the exact same thing And they just tell that exact same story. They're probably better than us too Dave Ramsey Dave How Dave Ramsey built a six hundred million dollar empire animation this that and then they're just gonna be like literally Steal our shtick. It's it's kind of annoying.
I get it Michael from our future has done it a few times. Yeah, they do. Yeah, he's one of the 10 that does this all the time Who are the other nine? Uh, I mean, I don't even really want to give them shine of doing that.
Yeah This is literally if you're one of those people just you know, this is have your own silent embarrassment There's nothing wrong with sort of like taking ideas and remixing them But what most people do is they just take the same idea They just tell the same story the same way we that we already told it in their own twitter thread or their own LinkedIn and and whatever else which is fine But like give credit at least if you're gonna if you're gonna say the same thing be like, oh, I was listening to my first million And they told this great story Check it out. All right. No, yeah, that that's I think a slightly better way to do it
SPEAKER_01
But you know, whatever it is. It is like this is why so I have a new project I'm actually gonna announce it in about a month or three weeks. This is why I didn't announce it I've been working on this for almost a year now.
I didn't want to announce it copycats Everyone everyone talks about building public. I hate building in public building in public is not cool when you're popular Building in public is really cool when you want to get popular. Yeah, but once you already have a following I don't want to do it like the milk road.
Did you guys have a bunch of copycats? Yeah
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, tons uh, there's like There's tons of embarrassing ones that are out there There's like people that literally just took the same exact newsletter and they would some people would translate it So they're like, oh, I'm you know, let's say whatever and it's like the Mexican milk road And then they would translate it to Spanish and just like google translate and then publish There's one I don't know if I want to put this guy on blast, but someone who tried to buy the milk road and failed Yeah, I know you're talking about then just tried to copy it in his own like way And you could just the funny thing is they very rarely work Um, they don't and it's like kind of surprising. Why don't they work? I kind of expected them to work Like for example when people take our content and then write a thread about our link there And like it does pretty good like that that kind of works for them Otherwise, they wouldn't really keep doing it But the copy the whole newsletter thing like for some reason that doesn't really work. I'm not sure
SPEAKER_01
I'll explain why I know why do you want to know the so basically if for people who have been raised on the internet They have a very high bullshit detector And do you want to know the best way to circumvent someone's bullshit detector? Yeah, don't bullshit. You don't bullshit Don't bullshit. That's how you circumvent that bullshit detector.
You don't bullshit And people could sniff this out and so if they read something and it's like dude You're like a not cool older guy trying to act like a cool younger person I know that this is not good like this doesn't work. Yeah, I told you about the
SPEAKER_02
You need soul the the the KFC's in China not quite right It's like dude. It's the same menu Like this is this is the spicy chicken sandwich and it's like That's not quite right And people it just doesn't taste right the taste buds reject it now I believe that when it comes to if I use one product and then somebody tries to copy it I'm like, why would I want the shitty copy? I'm just gonna keep going with the original But in markets where you're reaching a new audience or people who haven't heard of the original I'm surprised it doesn't work and I think my theory of why it doesn't work in those cases I think you're right when it's uh when people have tasted the original that they don't really want the
SPEAKER_01
Or when it's like a community community brand, uh, like personality driven, you know, it's it's that one moat that peter teal It doesn't understand brand Yeah
SPEAKER_02
The one the as burger proof, uh defense one Weapon we have so you know the one thing that I think is Is true, which is like this like iceberg theory Which is which is like if you look at an iceberg like the part you see at the top is like, you know 5% of the total mass that's there And so what I think people get wrong when they try to copy a business is that they only see the top the 5% And they're like, oh, okay. I'm gonna copy that but they don't know what goes on underneath They don't know that basically the uncopiable thing is the the people the personalities the engine Underneath that's coming up with the creative ideas That's coming up with the next marketing thing because this one starts to decline And so I think that's the part that's typically hard to copy but honestly, I'm surprised that That more of them don't work because if you're sufficiently talented, I think it sadly does work more often than it doesn't
SPEAKER_01
We should do an episode where we talk about the things that people have copied and it's become better than the original Um, like there are stories of the samwear brothers So it's these three brothers in Germany and they have a company called rocket internet and it was a clone factory And they basically it's a it was publicly traded until recently But the reason they started this company was they like cloned amazon and all these other companies zappos uber things like that But before they started a company started that company they cloned Other things and they sold it to the original So they cloned ebay in germany and they sold it back to ebay for 90 million dollars in Like three months and then they were going to do the same thing with groupon But they uh got bigger than groupon and they realized Oh, wow, once you get huge this business sucks We got to offload it and then they try to do that with zappos the shoe company But they got bigger than the original zappos so the bigger they were their market cap was larger So they couldn't sell it and they uh like this is their whole strategy It's a very fascinating strategy and so far it's not panned out for them other than like hello fresh They did hello fresh and they copied blue apron and hello fresh worked right?
SPEAKER_02
yeah, I think uh There's an art to there's an art to copying and this is a whole whole I think we could do a whole podcast about like if you're going to copy here's how to do it Here's how to do it in a way that feels good to your soul feels good to customers actually works And is not just going to result in like a massive waste of time And so I think there's there's a bunch of different factors there I think one thing the sam war brothers did one of the factors for example is they Did the same business in a different country? And so I think you know geographic a geographic differentiation is important I think that's one that that that you can you can copy and make things work when you do geographic Difference, but then there's some traps with that too that we could we could talk about but all right Where do you want it? Where do you want to finish up? I think we should well There is one thing that we should do And yeah, I forgot about that. I think you're aware of it. I think I'm aware of it.
I can't seem to find my pen
SPEAKER_01
But that's okay. You don't need you don't need a pen. So basically I thought I'd sign something So you do but you sign it but just with a click of a button.
So basically at this podcast my first million our content Unlike every other content on youtube. It's actually not for free right not a free podcast It's not a free podcast because what you have to do if you've seen one more than one episode You have to do this thing called the gentleman's agreement, which is it's called that because we're not there I'm not behind you to stare at your screen honor code. It's an honor code you have to basically go and Click subscribe on youtube because we'll get more subscribers that helps the algorithm We get more views and then we'll do more dumb stuff for you So it's called the gentleman's agreement if you've watched more than one video you have to do this everyone's doing it
SPEAKER_02
By the way, I have a a Addendum to the gentleman's agreement came from a from a listener. She pointed it out. She goes Not only have I signed the gentleman's agreement.
I've signed the lady's understanding. What's the lady's understanding? You know, there's not many phrases that will stop me in my tracks, but I stopped in my tracks the lady's understanding. I thought that was
SPEAKER_01
Ladies understanding that's actually when you also click subscribe on the itunes or the I always call itunes on the podcast app And the spotify app that's going to be understanding Go that extra mile and give us the lady's understanding along with the gentleman's agreement since we started doing this
SPEAKER_02
So two things about gentleman's agreement number one. It's funny because we were talking about copying You stole the stick from somebody and we're trying to get do I stole it and he called me by the way
SPEAKER_01
And he was like, isn't that awesome? It works so good and he invited me to go to a UFC fight with you
SPEAKER_02
You did it right because you gave credit to him uh, you put your own spin on it and Yeah, you you credited him most importantly as being like this guy did this awesome thing and I was like wow I I got to try doing this So, you know, you credited him and that's cool that you guys are are going to see a fight together. That's that's amazing Now the second thing is we have We've grown a lot since we did this so we started doing this we were at 100 When you the first time you did it, I believe we had 145,000 subscribers on youtube It's like a month ago. We have yeah, that was like, yeah Maybe 45 days ago something like that and now we're at 180,000 And the people who watch the youtube videos, they know this in fact, I'm looking at a tweet right now Which he goes he goes at he just mentioned us.
He goes watching on youtube is better than spotify Yeah, no shit. I told you this it is way better to watch the show on youtube And in fact what I think we should do to really like juice the agreement to even add more You know see appendix a of the gentleman's agreement I think we should do a piece of content that is only good when you watch it So so here's my here's my proposal to you sam shirtless Yeah, sam's gonna be shirtless and I'm gonna screen share I think we should screen share us going through like a pitch deck and making it taking one from average to awesome or like good to great Uh and just show how we would tweak the copy how we would make it look like better And we'll use a real one And so I think we should do that and put that only on the youtube channel because it would only make sense to see
SPEAKER_01
No, I think that on youtube you should log in to chase.com And uh show show your checking account. Yeah, okay, and it will react, but we won't say the number.
That's genius
SPEAKER_03
You know, this is why you complete me bro I gave you a shitty idea and you gave me the old yes and
SPEAKER_01
We're gonna go to chase.com or whatever bank of America whatever you use and you're gonna just we're gonna watch you log in And we're just gonna react and that's it
SPEAKER_02
By the way, the yes and is the corniest thing that the startup world tried to take from from like the cool like you know people who are actually funny world because actually it's uh No, but
SPEAKER_03
Which is what you just did there
SPEAKER_01
No, but we should do this instead is a better group of yes and Improv people are are one step below acapella people in terms of the nerds So like there's no way we're cool and improv people you ever been around around it And improv person's like being around someone who does crossfit, you know, like just stop talking about it I can't stand improv people. They're exhausting. It's like, uh Uh, it's cross without muscle Uh, dude, I feel like I said it's like, uh, it's like a blind jack russell.
You know what those are It's like that dog that's yapping everywhere and when it's blind, you just can't stop it's going all over the place
SPEAKER_02
That's why I feel about an improv person. Yeah, I think you're I think you're right. I did improv so I can confirm This is correct.
Um, and you're correct that it's below acapella Which is below anything that's actually cool
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, acapella is the worst of the worst I remember hanging out with people from New England and they like were bragging about acapella and I was like, dude Shut up. Why are you talking about that? You don't want people to know and uh, they're like
SPEAKER_02
When octopole people hang out with each other and they're like ordering or they're like waiting for their food at the table and then one guy's like And then it's like
SPEAKER_03
I don't know, I think this is like starting like harmonizing is like dude, you gotta stop like, you know
SPEAKER_01
If I hear the lion king song one more time, I'm gonna put a bullet in my head. That's how I feel I'm with these people
SPEAKER_02
I've ever trapped on a subway and like they do a flash mob around me and start singing
SPEAKER_01
Oh, those people are above flash mob people are are above the acapella people
SPEAKER_02
I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna start vomiting just to out outrageous them
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days All on a road. Let's travel never looking back