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SPEAKER_01
These are all the best people are crazy. You can't be not crazy and be the best when there's crazy people out there who wanna be the best.
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like the days off on a road let's travel never looking back
SPEAKER_03
yeah I'm gonna actually start by asking you a question. I was just talking to a Ben about this. Would you send your kids to a school and let them get hit or like not hit but like hits at the right word but like if you're acting like an asshole they could grab you by the collar and kind of push you against the wall.
Are you okay with that?
SPEAKER_01
No. You're not okay with that? I'm not okay with that. And it's not because I don't want my kid to get hit.
It's that I wouldn't trust the person who would be doing the hitting to know the right way and the wrong way and the right where the line is because I just think about it this way. If you're the type of teacher who signs up for that like if you're the type of teacher who goes to this specialty discipline school this specialty abuse school to teach like I just don't want that person to have a screw loose and I'm not there to see it. So I would rather err on the side of no you can't hit my kid or like rough them up in any way unless I'm kind of like, I know this person that trusts this person, I'm there or whatever.
Like for example, I think if it was a coach of some kind and the coach was really tough on my kid, I don't know about hitting but like, you know kind of punking my kid, totally cool with that as long as the coach is legit. But I've seen a whole bunch of people and actually grown up now and look back at some of the teachers and coaches I had who kind of did weird stuff. And now that I'm an adult, I'm like, oh, this was just a totally flawed person.
At the time I really like, I thought they were the authority. I thought that they must know things that we don't know. And then now I see them on Facebook and they're posting like crazy anti-vax stuff and they're like, you know, like preppers and stuff like that.
I'm like, oh, you know, you kind of always just had a screw loose. And at the time I thought I was in the wrong for not, you know, not playing by your rules or whatever.
SPEAKER_03
I went to all boys high school and I was a jerk at the time. And there was times where like the disciplinarian, like you're supposed to have your shirt tucked in. And I would, if I didn't have it untucked and I got yelled at a bunch of times, they would come up and like give you like a horrible wedgie.
Like they would grab you by the underwear and lift you up. And like, what if I told you something about this? Or like, if I like, you know, I was disrespectful a couple of times and they just would grab me by the shirt and push me against the locker. And they're like, if I hear from this again, you're over.
You know what I mean? And I loved it. Was it a military school? It was just a boy school. No, it was just an all boys Catholic college prep school.
In St. Louis where I'm from, everyone goes to.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. You went to all boys high school. And what about like before that?
SPEAKER_03
I went to, in St. Louis, the way it works is most people in my area go to private school. And like, so I went to a Catholic K to eight and then eight to 12 all boys college prep Catholic school.
At the time, it was like $900 a year. St. Ambrose, my grade school. So it's like, that's just what everyone did.
SPEAKER_01
Right. So I'm assuming by you asking that question, you would want this, not just be okay with it, but you would want this to be the case for your kids?
SPEAKER_03
It depends. If my children are like me and they're like mischievous. Yeah, I think that fear is a good way to raise someone.
Yeah. If they're like my wife, then no, I wouldn't want that. Right. All right. What do we, what do you want to talk about today? Can we talk about your tweet that went viral? That was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01
Your boys done it again. Another hit. How many, how many people did it reach? Five million, something like that.
SPEAKER_03
Wow. So what you wrote.
SPEAKER_01
Honestly, there's just- It wasn't even that interesting. So I'm very surprised.
SPEAKER_03
I think it was pretty cool. I would say it was pretty cool. I think the reason I only thought it was pretty cool was like, cause I already know you and I know how you think.
The cooler, there was two cool parts about it. The one, it was okay. It was good.
It was like a 8.5 out of 10 insight. Number two, the thing that's a 10 out of 10 was the fact that you just thought of it.
Like that you just, it was a pretty original thought, I think, and like you broke it down. That was a 10 out of 10. And one of the other thing that was a 10 out of 10 was that you reached amazing people.
So Bill Ackman, Bill Ackman, if you don't know, five or $10 billion person, kind of a little bit like a God in the hedge fund world. He actually retweeted it and he said, incredible, incredibly interesting insight or something like that. Yes, something like that.
I thought that was amazing. I thought that was so cool. And I think that for the listener, the takeaway here is like, I know you and you're kind of a big deal now, but like three years ago, you weren't the big deal.
And now you're basically like one, you're like, if you DM'd Bill Ackman or loads of other people or you call their email, you have access to them. And that's pretty amazing about the internet.
SPEAKER_01
It's true. It is amazing how these things go. I'll tell you some cool things that happened.
I don't know why I want to tell you this. I guess I would never really say, if I would just think of this like a podcast, I would never say this on the podcast because it sounds like why you bragging. But if I just think about this, I'm just talking to Sam.
I'd be like, dude, you won't believe what happened. And so I tweet this thing out. And I guess for people who don't know what it is, I guess I tweeted a thing that was about the metaverse, which is like the dorkiest term ever.
So already I feel lame even talking about my. It's lame to talk about a tweet. It's lame to talk about the metaverse.
I'm multiplying two lames together. But basically what happened is Facebook rebranded or renamed the company to meta. And so it was kind of top of mind for a lot of people.
And I've been hearing a bunch of people talk about the metaverse kind of in the investor circle. I remember when we had, who was it that we had on here? Mike Maples, I think it was. And he was like, he was talking about big trends that he had kind of bet on in the past.
And we said, what trends are you betting on now? And he said, the shift to remote work, this other thing. And then he goes, and the metaverse. And we didn't even really talk about it on the episode.
But I remember stashing that away as like, huh, this pretty legit guy said he's betting on the metaverse. And I don't even know what a metaverse company is. And so I just kind of stashed away as like, something I should probably go look into at some point.
And so I basically wrote a thread that was like, hey, I think the way that people think about this is wrong. So I thought about it. Originally, I thought about it the way I think most people do, which is the metaverse is a place.
If you've ever read or watched the movie Ready Player One, it's kind of like, oh, there's a virtual world, like Second Life or like, whatever. This is virtual world. We're all going to go live in, hang out.
SPEAKER_03
It's a video game.
SPEAKER_01
It's like a video game life, basically. And that's what people, I think, traditionally
SPEAKER_03
recall. It's just the Sims with the headset.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like you're plugged in. It's some version of the Matrix, or Ready Player One. People have these different mental models from books or movies that they've seen.
And I said, I don't actually, I don't think it's a place. I don't think that the metaverse is just like one giant Minecraft world that we're all going to go live in and hang out in and play in and work in and all that stuff. I don't think it's like one company creates this game and we all go live in it.
I said, instead, I said, what if it's not a place? What if we're wrong about that? What if it's not a place? What if it's a time? I was like, what does that mean? A time? I basically described this like parallel. So in the AI world, for artificial intelligence, there's this idea of the singularity. And it's this moment where like, kind of like, technological progress just sort of escapes us.
It starts accelerating faster than we can imagine. And in rough speaking terms, this is where the Doomsday people think it's after this that basically the robots, the artificial intelligence takes over and humans are done. And then other people think it's utopia where artificial intelligence can just invent things.
It can create cures for cancer and whatever else. And humans will be saved. And we all just will have hobbies.
We don't have to work. AI just takes care of everything. But there's this idea of the singularity.
And it's this moment in time where AI basically surpasses this threshold. So I was basically arguing, whether my idea was, I think the metaverse is actually a time. It's a moment in time where we care more about the things in our digital life than in our physical life.
And care more doesn't mean like, oh, I don't care if my body gets hurt or dies. That's not really what I meant. But if you spend all your time working online and then you communicate with people who are also online and you don't even really know them in real life, you're not talking to your neighbor, you're talking to this person on Twitter or this person in a Discord, this person on Reddit.
And then you're watching all of your entertainment is streamed to you online. And all of your assets are digital assets, like cryptocurrencies and things like that. So your money is digital.
Like once everything goes digital, more and more things go digital, at some point there's a tipping point where you basically your identity, your assets, your social life, it's all online. And I said that to me is the metaverse. And it won't be one company.
It'll be a combination of companies that are all doing that. And I kind of gave some examples. Like a filter in Instagram is basically like a better superior replacement to getting plastic surgery or wearing heavy makeup.
Like the digital filter matters more, is cheaper, more accessible to more people. Because ultimately you care how you're seen online almost more than you care how you're seen in person. Like I know plenty of people that would never, they would never post a photo of them with their hair messy and their sweats and their oversized t-shirt.
They would never post that on Instagram. But they'll go to the grocery store like that because who cares? I don't care what these people think, but I really care what those people think. So what I was describing was that this is already happening.
There's this long running shift that's happening where you're caring more about your digital reputation, your digital identity, your digital assets than your real world stuff. And I said, so some people this is gonna be like, sound like the worst thing ever. Some people think this is the best thing ever and my argument is it's not even, it's neither the best nor the worst.
It's just the way that things are going and you'll make of it whatever you choose. So anyways, that's what we're treating this.
SPEAKER_03
You treat this on like Friday or Thursday. And what happened?
SPEAKER_01
At first nothing really happened. It kind of did how I thought it would do initially. So initially I was like, oh, it's kind of an interesting idea, but pretty like nerdy and in the weeds and I don't think anyone's gonna care.
And it kind of didn't do much at the beginning. And then something happened and it just started picking up steam. Like it's getting more, like yesterday it had even more mentions because, you know who Fred Wilson is?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the VC from Union Square Ventures. He's had this blog for a long time. I think it's like Fred, I don't know if you guys see or something like that.
He's been blogging for like 15 years. I've read his ideas for so long and he made a post, his post today was the metaverse. He goes, I read this really insightful thing and he just embedded my tweet.
He's like, it made me think blah, blah, blah. And so then it gets a new spike of people or whatever. And so yeah, I didn't expect it.
I wanna know what house it likes. So, okay, so the first thing is after I post a follow.
SPEAKER_03
How many people followed you because of it?
SPEAKER_01
Let's see, I started at 178,178,000 followers and I now have 193 and a half thousand. So 193.5, we don't do public math, but we can add this up.
15,000 new followers. The post itself has about 20,000 plus likes. But I'll tell you what was, that's okay.
That's the cool part, that's numbers, but here's what was fun. I get a call from, we'll have to bleep this out, but I get a call right after I post it about 15 minutes later. I get a call from a, and you know, basically I'll bleep that out, but basically a famous person who has stuff on Netflix and they go, dude, I'm tripping out over here.
I go, what? And they've never called me before. So I thought we're friends. So I did that clubhouse thread a while back and this person at DM me saying, hey, that's so on point, blah, blah, blah.
And they said, hey, if I ever come to San Francisco for some, my Hollywood work, then I'd love to hang out or something. And I was like, yeah, right. And, but I gave them my number.
And so I get a phone call from the person and then they say, dude, I'm tripping out over here. You know, like he made me a little bit anxious. Like, this is like, what's gonna happen? I think you're right, but I don't know what it means if you're right.
So anyways, we have this like little conversation. So that was kind of fun. And then it starts going into a bunch of NFL players started following and I'm like, why would they care? And so a bunch of pro athletes followed.
And so then I'm, you know, it's sliding into their DMs or they're sliding into my DMs. I'm just basically it's like clear the calendar all day. I'm just gonna be answering direct messages.
Cause really. So I don't know who's in here, but I know the lot of values in here.
SPEAKER_03
So professional athletes.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. A bunch of people from the tech industry, which you would expect and then Anyone intriguing? From the tech world. Yeah. I think for, I mean, Fred Wilson, I felt pretty good about like a bunch of the Andreessen guys who had blocked me from the clubhouse thread. Some of their partners, well, the people who blocked me probably didn't didn't reply.
So they didn't unblock me for this, but some of the other partners message and said, Hey, this is, you know, this is great. And I said, okay, I'm glad I'm not just permanently banned from from your officers or whatever. I think that's great.
So this is cool stuff happens. And then, you know, the other thing is that a bunch of people, and I realized this later, which is I thought kind of like, you know, even if you have one of these Twitter threads that goes viral, who cares? Like ultimately, what does it lead to? It's fun, but, you know, who gives a shit? But I've seen now months later, there was a lot of people who are like, like let's say I want to go invest in a company. They're like, dude, I remembered that thread that was epic.
And they're just like, you're cool. Right. And you just get the stamp because in a world where it's so noisy, there's so many people, if you do one memorable thing that people respect and like, it's like, that's the shortcut in their brain that says, okay, I like this person. Yeah, I trust this person.
They're cool. And it's like, just from that, that's not like, I wouldn't have ever predicted that. So anyways, I call these like my little serendipity engines.
It's like, I put it out there in the world and I could never predict what's going to happen. But then all these like kind of second and third order consequences end up happening where you end up meeting somebody, going to dinner, doing a deal. Like it's just all this weird stuff that you can't predict.
So fun day when this happens, but also such a weird thing, dude. Like I couldn't imagine, even if you told me five years ago, 10 years ago, like this would be a thing in my life that I would care about. I'd be like, what are you talking about? Why would I care about that?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I think it is pretty unique. And I think that I met this guy named Blake. I don't know what his name is, Blake B.
But I went to Oklahoma City when I was driving through and I had like a MFM meetup or like a Sampar meetup. I don't know what it was. And I hosted like 20 people for breakfast and this guy came and they're like, what would you tell us if we want to, I forget what the even question was.
And I go, man, get on Twitter. It's where it's happening. And he's on it now.
And he signed up whenever I did this thing a year ago. Now he's got like 50, 80,000 followers, 50, 70. I forget.
What's his name? Blake Burge. You probably see him in like the little circle jersey. Absolutely, yeah.
And he was at the meetup. He didn't even have Twitter. I go, dude, sign up right now and start posting this shit.
You can meet people. It's pretty amazing.
SPEAKER_01
Dude, you know what's crazy also? Somebody, I'm pretty sure somebody sent it to Zuck because somebody who's very close to him, like respect, like was like, yeah, this is awesome. And so I'm pretty sure that person was gonna share it with him, which is kind of crazy, right? Like I literally, I watched the keynote of him talking. He gave a basically a 30 minute presentation.
I actually want to talk about this. So he gave a 30 minute presentation saying, we re-branded to Meta. Here's why.
Here's what it's gonna be like. Not just like here's new products we're gonna build, but here's what the world is gonna look like. Here's what life is gonna look like.
He gave this cool presentation. I don't know, did you see this presentation?
SPEAKER_03
A little bit. It bored the fuck out of me.
SPEAKER_01
Oh really? I thought it was amazing. You got bored from that?
SPEAKER_01
It's literally like somebody opened the door and is like, hey, you want to see what life's gonna look like in 20 years? Yeah, I just find him to be incredibly unlikable. Well, yeah, he's kind of robotic, but like, So I still think- I find it a little bit hard to watch. I definitely, yeah, there's definitely some cringe factor, for sure, but the funny thing is I saw that, and then I was supposed to have this call with Ben, and Ben's like, oh, I gotta like, you know, I gotta take care of the baby real quick, like just, you know, I'll be online in like 25 minutes.
And I was like, okay, cool. I was like, all right, I got 25 minutes to kill, and I just watched this thing and I just tweeted it out. And like, to me, it was like a throwaway thing.
It wasn't like a planned, drafted, edited thing. And so anyway, it's crazy how that works. But I want to talk about this meta thing.
So not even what he predicted or what kind of Zuck laid out, but what do you think about Facebook changing the name of the company in general? And like, I have kind of a theory on why, but I'd love to hear what you think.
SPEAKER_03
I think that if I was Facebook and I wanted to recruit the best people on earth, I would do, like, what I've learned running a business, and this is something that every business says, is they say, like an entrepreneur of a 20 person company, you even tweeted it about Ben Levy. Like, I just call Ben like, blank, but what should I call him? So this is something that everyone says is true, but it's not, which is that titles matter. People will be like, oh, titles don't matter.
Just call yourself anything. No, they're actually really important and they matter a ton, even if you're a 10 person company. If I was Zuck and I wanted to create a company where people wanted to work, which I think they're struggling to right now, I would change the name of the company and I would have a CEO of Facebook.
I would have a CEO of this, a CEO of that, which means there's like a VP, there's like a president. And then I would give all these people their own kingdoms and that's how I would continue to grow. So that's what I would do is I would, that's exactly what Facebook did, or Google.
So there's a CEO of Google, there's a CEO of YouTube, a CEO of this, of that, of that, of that, and then which each CEO, there's like a hierarchy for people to climb and you gotta give these people these ladders. That's why I think it's a great idea.
SPEAKER_01
That's on point. So basically I've heard, I will call it maybe three or four different theories. So one theory is what you call-
SPEAKER_03
I just made this up. Is this real?
SPEAKER_01
So that's what- Did I nail that? I did it in kind of nerd circles. I've just heard a couple people talk about this and I was kind of like, here's what I think it is, but let's start with the layout, the theory. So theory one is it's a recruiting.
Why would you do this, right? They said it's a recruiting thing. And it's basically a mix of what you said, which is when you create a parent company, now you have like more, you created basically another level at the exact level. You created, it's like your neck was compressed and now it's stretched out.
And it's like, ah, you just created this breathing room. So that person who's otherwise VP can now become CEO. And it's like, that might be the difference between them.
Like I know for example, the person who was head of or VP of, I don't look up her title-
SPEAKER_01
Ben, look up Fiji Sumo's title. So she was in charge of Big Blue, which is the Facebook app. And then there was Chris Cox before her and they ran kind of like multiple products.
They were kind of like in charge of like the suite of products. But their titles weren't CEO, it was something else. And she left and now she's the CEO of Instacart.
So she like left the big chip, you know, the trillion dollar company to go be the CEO of a maybe 10 or $20 billion company. I don't know what Instacart's valued at, but something like that. And so now you lose that key talent.
And maybe it's because she looked up and said, this guy's never gonna leave. This guy was super young. He loves this shit.
You know, where do I go? How do I go up? I can't go up anymore. And even the stock price, we're already at a trillion dollars. What am I betting on? We go to 10 trillion, like I need some upside and I need some resume growth here.
So that's one theory. I like that theory. I think that's true, but I wouldn't say it's the number one reason.
Okay, so let's go to the other theories. Then there's the skeptical theory, which is dude, Facebook's brand is trash. It's the Philip Morris of, you know, Facebook equals cigarettes and they're just trying to run away from all the bad news and all the bad branding.
And so they're gonna change the name. I think that's a pretty good theory. So a lot of people think that, and there's a subset on that, which is if Mark hires a CEO of Facebook, the app, then the person who get called into Senate is that person to go sit in front of Senate and talk all this stuff and they can get sort of like hammered out there.
But Zuck as chairman or whatever of Meta, it's like, you know, when the Google guys did this, they Sundar now or whatever has to go, go in front of Congress and Larry Page can just go and he's, you know, could be CEO of Alphabet and not have to worry about that stuff.
SPEAKER_03
So I think that's part of it. Did you know that one of the Google founders? I don't know. I don't, I think it's Larry.
Do you know he can't speak?
SPEAKER_01
He's got like a voice problem, Sergei.
SPEAKER_03
He's got a voice problem. It is Larry, yeah. I think it's Larry.
So over the years, if you go and go to his name, type in like his name on YouTube and you'll see a video of him 10 years ago and you could hear it progressing and then like maybe five years ago, you're like, oh, this is really bad. I'm pretty sure at this point he can't talk at all. But if you go, this is so interesting.
Google his name and watch a video of him and any video that's online, it's probably recent enough that you could start hearing his voice. You know, I'm not making fun of him, but he sounds like Kermit the Frog. Like it's a really weird voice for how he looks.
SPEAKER_01
It's definitely been that way for a few years. I think he can still speak, but it's basically, his vocal cords are like partially paralyzed if I remember correctly.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it's crazy, man. So if I was him, I wouldn't wanna go speak either. I mean, it seems really embarrassing.
I mean, he shouldn't be embarrassed, but I understand, you know, should have.
SPEAKER_01
So by the way, I'm just reading it right now. It says 14 years ago, he had a cold and then he got like a horse voice from the cold and he just never recovered. He went to a doctor and they said his left vocal cord was paralyzed and it's a nerve problem that's causing your left vocal cord not to move properly anymore.
SPEAKER_03
And then when I first heard him talk,
SPEAKER_01
I was like, is the video broken? Right, because he's super soft spoken, right? So you're like, wow, it's just like
SPEAKER_06
the gentle one.
SPEAKER_03
It sounds like the video's in slow motion or something. It was really, you know, it's sad, it sucks.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's crazy. And so I think it has happened on his right vocal cord too. Now Hashimoto's thyroiditis, that's wild.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it's shit. Anyway, but yeah, so if I was him, I wouldn't wanna speak in front of the Senate either.
SPEAKER_01
And Ben looked it up. And he's title was head of the Facebook app.
SPEAKER_03
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SPEAKER_01
So that's one theory which is it's such bad news as a rebrand. I think one of the cigarette companies rebranded to like Altria or Altia or something like that. So it's like, it's a reminiscent of that.
So, okay, so that's another theory. And then there's the third theory, which is actually the theory that I subscribe to, which is this is actually just a mission shift. And so I remember when I worked at Twitch, and this is the second year, it was right before I left.
So I was kind of like, you know, basically I was on paternity leave. I wasn't even really working at Twitch at that time. I was on paternity leave and I was thinking, okay, I think it's time for my next thing.
But I got a phone call from Emmett, who's the CEO. And Emmett's great. And, you know, I got a ton of respect for him.
And he basically said, hey, I wanna, or he said, he'd message me something and said, like, hey, do you have time to talk today? Like, I wanna bounce up and off you. And he called me and he basically said, you know, this funny thing has happened, which is that like, I think it's eight to 10 years ago, very early days of Twitch, we had, we set out like this big North Star mission, which was a million creators getting paid to create on the platform. And so it was like one million.
He's like, and at that time we might've had like, you know, we were in the thousands or tens of thousands or something like that. Like a million just seemed, a million people getting paid, like earning money doing this, it just seemed like wild. And so he's like, you know, so the million was like, super far away.
He's like, and then, you know, last year, like we hit the million. And he's like, it's just really weird feeling. Like you hit this 10 year goal and there's like this amazing part of it, which is holy shit, we did it.
And then there's this numb part of it, which is like, wait, it's like now what? What do you do when you hit the thing that you thought was, like, you know, it's like when Elon takes a man to Mars.
SPEAKER_03
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So join Steph Taylor, she answers all your business marketing questions that deep dives into the nitty gritty of online marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and marketing for strategy for business owners. A few recent episodes include some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch. Another one is why growing your audience feels so hard in 2022.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, what's the next step? Like, if you get to the moon, you gotta start thinking, what do I do now? And so he said, you know, one of the most dangerous, he told me on the phone, he goes, one of the most dangerous things for a company is achieving your mission, because you have to reinvent your mission. You have to reinvent yourself and think bigger. He's like, and so he was like, I wanna brainstorm with you some ideas on what that could be.
What could be the mission for the company next 10 years? And so we had a good brainstorm or whatever. And so I think that's what this is. I think Facebook is now used by everybody with a cell phone, Facebook or one of the Facebook apps.
The mission was connect the world or whatever. They literally did it. They connected the world.
Everybody is using not only one, but multiple other products.
SPEAKER_03
So many people use Facebook that when Sarah worked there, I think they were sending satellites to India because they just literally needed more people on the web in order to get more use.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they ran out of people with internet. And so it's like, dude, it's that moment where your TAM, your total addressable market becomes your actual market share. It's insane.
And so to the point where I remember once, we were having lunch with Alex, the founder of Calm, and he just started cracking up. And I was like, what? He goes, I just realized, he's like, dude, think about how many Facebook accounts shut down, did churn just due to death? He's like, every day, there's probably like a million people who just die and stop using the service. And he was just like, Kackler.
He's like, that's insane to me. He's like, if you're at that scale, that's how many people literally just die and stop using our service. That's like more people than ever have used our product will die today on Facebook.
So anyways, I think that this is a mission shift, basically. I think they achieved the mission one. And it's like, what's the point of the company now? Is it just to make money? And I think a lot of people think Zuckerberg's pretty evil.
I actually don't think he's evil. I do think he likes power as evidenced by like, you go read those early like text messages that got leaked of him talking to his buddy at college. And he's like, dude, these dumb fucks are just giving me all their information or whatever.
Like it sounds really evil, but I think he just liked being kind of like the puppet master a little bit. But fundamentally, I don't think he's money hungry. I don't think he's driven by money.
And early on, I remember when Facebook IPO'd, he put something in their perspective that I really liked. And I think other people kind of rolled their eyes if you just hate everything Facebook does, but I thought it was pretty cool. He goes, we don't build great services to make money.
We make money to build great services. And he's like, there's an important difference between the two. Yes, we care about money, but we care about money so that we have the profits to invest in building great services to hire the best people who can build the greatest services and the greatest products in the world.
And I think that's what they're doing now. He said they're investing $10 billion this year in their virtual reality augmented reality stuff for like, kind of the metaverse, which is an absurd amount of money to be investing into this. That's what some people think, like, you know, the stuff is gonna be worth some day.
If you started a company in VR, you'd be hoping it'd be worth $10 billion some day. He's investing that as one year's R&D, which is insane.
SPEAKER_03
I wanna talk to you about a bunch of different things, but, and I wanna ask you about your real estate guy, your real estate buddy, but someone said they like when we rambled about normal stuff. And I wanna, we can make this really quick, but did you watch UFC on Saturday?
SPEAKER_01
I did. Oh, I watched part of it. Yeah, I watched Hamza.
SPEAKER_03
Okay, so I want, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're into UFC or not. I want you all to do this.
So a few weeks ago, a few months ago, we talked about this woman named Rose Namayunas. Namayunas, her name is Thug Rose. She's this little white-haired lady with like a shaved head, really cool, and she was muttering to herself like, I'm the best, I'm the best before the fight.
And it was inspirational. It was, and then she knocked out this woman and it was like inspirational because she's very endearing, she's very cute. Like there's everything to like about this woman.
There's this guy who's kind of the same thing, but the opposite. So there's this guy that is about to be the best, but he's not the best first, not the best yet. His name is Kamzat, okay? And he's this, there's for some reason, there's a huge Chechian group of UFC fighters.
Chechnya, if you don't know, I don't wanna sound like a fool. I'm not incredibly well researched. It's like a subsidiary of Russia.
It's a region of Russia. They're mostly, I think, so they're white and they look white, but they're devout Muslims and they're Russian. I don't know how, like, if they consider them Russia or not, but we Americans would say, oh, you're just a Russian Muslim.
That's what they look like. And they're known to wrestle. A lot of them are from this area called Dagestan, where if you imagine in your head what Afghanistan looks like, that's kind of what this area looks like and it's in Russia.
And they basically have gone through just a ton of war lately, or in the last like 20 years, 30 years. So there's this guy named Kamzat and he had a cleft lip or something like that. So his lip is all crooked.
And he is so scary looking. And he comes in and he knows how to speak English now, but his attitude and what he says, he says the same thing. Who do you wanna fight next? And he goes, oh, brother, I'll smash everyone.
I'm going to kill everyone. I'm gonna take their soul. And he's been saying that this whole time, and he's been in four fights in the UFC and he's been punched in the face one time.
This weekend, he fought, which is absurd. This weekend, he fought the best Chinese guy. I forget if he left him with Lee.
He's just, he's a little bit older, but he's considered the best out of China. And he picked him up and he walked over to the side of the cage where Dana was. And he yells to Dana, get off your phone, watch this.
And he gets on top of the guy and chokes him unconscious. And so the interview afterwards, in the ring and outside the ring, he goes, brother, I'm just here to smash everyone and kill people.
SPEAKER_01
Who do you wanna fight next? Everyone, brother, I killed everyone. I'm here to kill everyone, brother. I love this.
I'll kill everyone. That's all he was saying.
SPEAKER_03
And they go, are you gonna fight the number one person? He goes, well, they're gonna have to give me the number one person, because I'm gonna kill everyone. No one will be alive.
SPEAKER_01
And then he even said something, he goes, he goes, they go, you know, where'd you get this mentality or something? He goes, I'm crazy, man. He goes, I just, he goes, you don't, all the best people are crazy. You can't be not crazy and be the best when there's crazy people out there who wanna be the best.
And I just thought that's not true. It's absolutely true.
SPEAKER_03
He goes, I'm a gangster. He goes, I'm a gangster, I'm crazy. And I think there's two, there's a few things to alert here.
The first is, I think a lot of that is born. I think a lot of that is just an act that you've turned on because in his case, I imagine he's seen a lot of tragedy and like fucking war. And he like created this tough guy persona in order to just survive.
You know, he put me, the second thing is I think you could tell yourself that consistently and you kind of can become it. And the third thing is these guys, these Zac-A-Stanley guys, and also for some reason this weekend, all Russians won. Peter, Jan won, he's Russian, all these Russians, they're crushing it.
They've got something in them. I don't know what this Russian attitude is that I've noticed about these guys, but it's this very quiet, although it comes out, even though he talks a lot of shit, he's still really quiet. It's this quiet, subtle confidence and I love it.
If I watch them, their videos over and over again, Fedor had it, they've got this quiet confidence and I'm in love with that. I'm in love with it.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they have a tenacity that's pretty crazy. The, I was watching, I was going through, I was just browsing on TikTok and this clip came up related that like in the NBA, most of the NBA is not like that. Like there's not many Russians in the NBA, but B, kind of silly.
UFC is one of the only sports where people go and say, I want to kill everybody. In any other sport, they don't really say that in the press conference, right? They might say it trash talk on the field when there's no microphone to pick it up, but in the UFC, they just literally say it to the reporter, the reporter writes it down and publishes the post or whatever. You know, like it goes shit everywhere.
SPEAKER_03
And it's one of the only sports, it's one of the only sports you can't play.
SPEAKER_01
Right. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03
You can't like play it. You know, it's like, it's like something,
SPEAKER_01
something bad is going to happen. Too cool little nuggets here. So early on, the founding story of the UFC is pretty, pretty wild, but it was started by somebody else.
And then Dana White, who's currently the president of the UFC, pretty famous guy. He's part of the show, basically. He goes to every single event.
He sits cage side. He's, he's every, like, and they do like an event in a different place every weekend. And so this guy's, he's now a billionaire.
And he, so, and he's a very outspoken guy. Like imagine the commissioner of your favorite sport. You know, they're usually a pretty buttoned up guy.
Usually ex lawyer, you know, they, they just say, you know, we as the NFL are committed to upholding integrity and blah, blah, blah, blah. And Dana White will post like, oh, this fight's going to be awesome. And some, somebody in an Instagram comment will be like, this fight sucks or that's too expensive for the pay-per-view.
And then he was my fucking clown. Yeah. He'll be like, he'll literally be like, you fucking clown, like shut up, you fucking clown. And then that's like, he says that it's like, what CEO of what company is able to just say that to their potential customers? It's insane.
It's the whole sports savage. But he said something early on because the bet that he made, the investment that they made, they bought the UFC for about $2 million. And it wasn't his money.
He convinced his two kind of childhood friends, the Fertitas who own casinos, that's their background, that's how they made their wealth, convinced them, let's buy the UFC. And then they ended up pouring in like $50 or $60 million at a loss to keep it alive, to promote the thing. And he kept believing, kept believing, kept believing.
They kept pouring millions and millions of dollars in. And it looked like it was not going to work. And then it has now since turned around as a public company.
And it's, you know, it's all working now. They sold it for, for, you know, over $4 billion.
SPEAKER_03
So. Yeah. I think it, and I was, and I was looking at it, it's a great company. It makes like three or 400 million a year in profit.
SPEAKER_01
And they asked them, Dana, what gave you the faith that this business would work when all the evidence just said, the guy who did this before me failed. Nobody else has done this in America. And, and you guys are bleeding like 40, 50, 60 million dollars.
Why did you continue? He goes, because I get people. And he goes, I understand humans. He goes, let's say we're out on a playground.
And there's a football game going on over there. There's a soccer game over here. There's a basketball court over there.
People shooting hoops. And I said, oh my God, that Russian guy's fighting that Chinese guy. Guess where everybody's attention goes? He goes, everybody looks and then everybody runs over to watch the fight.
He goes, that's how humans are wired. You can't help but turning and looking when a fight breaks out. And that was the whole like thesis.
That was the underlying psychological nugget. I loved that. You know, that, that, that is how simple he was thinking.
And he goes, he goes, and he goes, and by the way, this is a sport that transcends every country. Yeah. Football is huge in America. Go to the UK.
Nobody cares. We have fighters who are like the pride of the UK. It's a huge, we're huge in, in the UK.
We're huge in Australia. We're huge in Africa. We're huge in China.
Like this can get bigger than any one of those sports because we can tap into the global population because fighting one person punching another is a universally known sport. You don't need to even know the rules. It's not like basketball or football or baseball.
Like it's like, if I try to watch cricket, I don't know what's going on. I don't know the rules, but with two people are fighting, I understand the premise. I get what's going on.
And, and it's like, you know, this historic barbaric thing. So anyways, I love that business side of the UFC as well.
SPEAKER_03
So if you're a UFC person that you know I'm talking about, if you're not, that was pretty cool. And this weekend, there's a couple of things. There's, I'll say it really quick, that the main thing is this guy, Kamara Usman, African immigrant comes to America during college, kicks ass, the American dream.
He's fighting against a devout MAGA Trump supporter. So that story is very fun. The second fight is Rose Naminunas, who I like.
She's fighting the best one from China. She's, they're both amazing. And then the third one is like these both Midwestern hardworking guys who are just going to stand there and bash you.
They're just like bangers. They just stand there and bash each other's brains. And so that's the cool fight this weekend.
All right, what do you got?
SPEAKER_01
Let's do something else. Let's switch topics here. You have a couple of things on here.
Let's do a quick idea actually. So Ben had this idea that I liked. He goes, you know, my brother's a real estate agent.
And he goes real estate agents are really competitive with each other, you know, in any given city, they're fighting for kind of like the pie is this big. You know, it's either my client or yours. There's not a whole lot of, you know, there's not a whole lot of ways for real estate agents to collaborate with each other.
Some like to do deals together. Like if I'm the buy side and you're the sell side, great. We can, I'm confident we can get our clients to hammer out a deal.
But for the most part, it's a very kind of doggie dog world. All agents are like the sports agents, whatever. But he goes with real estate agencies.
Like there's something interesting that might be a niche little business. And he goes, and so I called it real estate buddy, which is basically when you're, let's say you're a real estate agent in Florida or right now California, you're real estate agent in California and a bunch of people move into Texas. That agent in California is not gonna help you find the home in Texas, but maybe I helped you buy your California home.
And you don't know any agents in Texas. So what if I had basically a buddy in every state that if my client is moving there, I can pass you to them and basically I get a share of the commission and they get a free referral, a trusted client basically, that somebody else has put the time and energy into build up trust. And so you could create this network of leads basically and partnerships across borders where there actually is a big incentive to collaborate because otherwise both sides benefit from this, whereas normally it's extremely competitive world.
So I thought that's a little interesting of a niche business, maybe something like that exists. I'm not super deep in that world, but I thought it was cool.
SPEAKER_03
Have you ever used bigger pockets?
SPEAKER_01
Like to learn, you mean?
SPEAKER_03
You know, yeah, do you know what bigger pockets is?
SPEAKER_01
It's like a real estate kind of like media company and it's like a forum plus podcast
SPEAKER_03
supposed to go about buying real estate. I think that could be potentially a huge business. I don't think it is huge, but I bet it could be.
So if you look at the reason I see them all the time is when we look at our podcast rankings, we're like on a good week will be like 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 in the business categories on a bad week will be 40, 50. And bigger pockets is like always number three. And then they have another one that's like number six and they got another one that's like number 11.
Like they're always in the top 10 most listened podcasts, bigger pockets has three or four of them. And then they got this forum that costs, well, it's free, but you could sign up and get extra stuff. I'm a $300 a year paying member.
And I think what these guys are doing is they're like built this business and media, arm or whatever. And then they just use all of their cash flow to go and buy more real estate. It's an amazing company.
I love bigger pockets. I think if you want to build a community, this is the company that can make money from it. This style and you want to do it like with a style where you get a lot of people, these guys are one hundred.
This is the model. This is the perfect model on how to do it.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that's actually a great point because bigger pockets has existed for a while and it's always been important. The main guy, I think Joshua, Josh Dorkin or something like his name, he sold it at some point. So I think it's, I don't know who owns it now.
Let me see if I can find out. So basically he sold the thing, not for a ton if I remember correctly. McCarthy, Kevin, and
SPEAKER_03
he could raise, this is like Angelus. He could raise like a massive fund.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly. And so I think he had like a, there was some story, like he had like a medical emergency for his kid or something so he had to take time off and he ended up selling it. I don't know how it all went down, but I think you could compete with this.
I think you could build a better, bigger pockets. It would be hard. I'm not saying it's easy, but I think that they would be extremely valuable.
And if you're gonna build a community or a media company in any niche, this is one that I would bet on because if you're not gonna go for something new and sexy like crypto or whatever, this is where a lot of money is to be made. And there's always a new batch of people that wanna learn about making money in real estate, how to buy real estate. So there's always a new group of people who are looking to learn, connect, blah, blah, blah.
And maybe bigger pockets is pretty established with its crew, but if I just said who's number two behind bigger pockets? Certainly there is somebody, but I don't think it's as household of a name right now. And I wonder if you could take some other angle and do it.
SPEAKER_03
By the way, can you talk about that? Dude, let me tell you about something that I, let me talk about something real quick. Something that you've never, maybe you're about to say what I'm gonna say. A house, something that's not a household name and is huge in our little world.
There's this group. It's a guy or a group of guys called Gangels.
SPEAKER_01
This is exactly what we're gonna ask you about.
SPEAKER_03
Okay, I've gotta tell you, I'm getting dinner with these guys tonight. Okay, so Gangels, like no offense Gangels. I think you guys are wonderful.
I've met you. It's a really weird name at first. So I guess it's not spelled this way.
I guess it just means gay angel. Okay, so it's this, I think it's one person who started it. Lorenzo, I think his name is, he's gay, I guess, based off of doing some research on him.
And I think he was a successful entrepreneur. I'm meeting him tonight. So I don't know his whole background, but he started this group called Gangels.
And I believe it was an email list of gay...
SPEAKER_01
Give the headline first. Why is this interesting? And then didn't give the background.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, you're right. So it's this group of people, it's this guy who's got this, it's not a fun, but it's like an investment group. And this year alone, the rumors that they're gonna invest around four to $500 million.
And previously they've invested collectively over the past few years, like $300 million. So like next year, two years, their total investment is gonna be like a billion dollars, which is basically like a $3 billion fun, kind of like that you invest. If you have a $3 billion fun, I would imagine you invest that over five years.
So like that's like the numbers we're talking here.
SPEAKER_01
And basically the way it works. Which would be like a very large, this is startup investing. So this is like a very large technology fund that I have never heard of.
Very large, one of the bigger. And it seems like a niche fringe thing. It's like, oh, that's cool, like an LGBTQ fund.
What do you have like a $2 million fund and you're investing in some cool companies? It's like, no, how are they deploying, how are they getting $400 million in a year to deploy? And then how are they deploying this?
SPEAKER_03
So I don't think they get... How many people are ever heard of this? I don't think they get any money. If you Google, it's spelled Gangels, like Gain, G-A-I-N, and then JOLS, Gangels.
And if you look at their portfolio, and if you just Google Gangels and click news, you'll see all these TechCrunch articles that it says, you know, and this company raises money from Adresin, this, this, this and Gangels. This, this, this and Gangels. We'll say it for every article.
And if you go to their portfolio page. Yeah, it's legit, yeah. Dude, they're in everything.
Gangels is in everything. They're in everything. And what they do is they find companies and they write a page about it.
And then they send it out to an email list and people invest and they get a 20% carry in it. And they take also a fee of like eight or $10,000 per deal that they take out of that money. And they use that to, as their like finder's fee, so they could pay their lawyers and things like that.
And that's the whole business model. And they've got like this web of like five or six or seven people who will also send the deals that Gangels gets access to, to their audience. And those people who send it to their audience also get a stake in the, of the carry.
And that's, it's a very simple business model.
SPEAKER_01
Are most of the investors gay? Or that's just the most of the people who started are gay? What's the stick? Can I do it if I'm not gay?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, so here's the, yeah. So here's the thing. Why it's kind of crazy is it must have started like they like mostly invested into gay and lesbian and transsexual or whatever, LGBTQ, you know, whatever the, what is it? Sorry, I'm not me.
LB, L, I'm just struggling. LGBTQ?
SPEAKER_01
Yes. Is that it? That's the new intro music. I think maybe you just stumbling over LGBTQ is perfect.
SPEAKER_03
No, I just, whatever it, LGBT, I just can't say it properly. That, so it started with that, that was their thing. But then like they invested, like they've invested, yeah, they invested in Hone, which is the company you and I invested for testosterone.
And that's like a pretty masculine male. I guess you could say like, well, maybe if you're transitioning, you would want to take testosterone, but they invest in like Lyft. So like, I don't know where, like how the, the LGD, whatever.
Just like, just skip it. LG, LGBTQ thing lines up with the, with the whole, with like other, other companies, but that was definitely their angle. And it's not anymore, but it's a great angle because, you know, there's not a lot of gay and lesbian investors.
And then they're like, hey, look, that's our whole shtick. Like, let us in. I understand.
It totally works.
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember, do you remember when you stopped using gay as a, as a term for like, you know, meaning like, whatever, like something is lame or something is stupid?
SPEAKER_03
Oh, yeah. In high school.
SPEAKER_01
And do you remember what got you to stop when you realized like, oh, wait,
SPEAKER_03
that's not cool. Just like when I have like gay friends, I was like, oh, that's not very nice. Is it? And, and then like, I talked to my nephews and they're like in the Sarah's in the Sarah's nephews and they're like 14, 15 and 13.
And I was just curious. And I was like, hey, do you guys ever insult someone or does anyone ever insult someone for being gay? And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, you know, like, do you ever see like, picked on? Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, you say like, hey, man, that's really gay. You're gay.
And they go. But like, why is it bad to be gay? And I was like, it's not. You just answered.
You just answered my question. Thank you. And they just it just not part.
You know what I mean? When you're kids, when we were younger, that's. And it was crazy. Yeah. It's I don't think young people like insult people for being gay. I think it's pretty crazy.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I think that means like in 20 years, because probably when I was 10, that's like what everybody in my school was, you know, that was like a common thing to say. And so I think that means in 20 years, it went from just common and people did it without even thinking to like it would now be kind of disgusting.
It would be like it's not even like it's not even an argument. It's like, wait, why would we do that? Like I would. I referred to, you know, like, why would I? Why would I try to use that as an insult? That doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_03
I like in my head, there's like the N word and then there's like the F word. Like, you know what I mean? Like I wouldn't have. You know what I mean? If I heard someone say that, I would be like flabbergasted.
I'd be like, what? Yeah. It'd be like when I was a kid, it was like the word like, you know, if I said the word, if it was like this, that was like the C word. Now, like I wouldn't say you meet some British people, Australian people, they say.
Yes. But like it's yeah, it is kind of crazy how that how it's changed. I mean, obviously it's good.
But yeah, I remember as a kid, I'm what we used to talk about all the time.
SPEAKER_01
And then the person who first told me like, hey, by the way, you know, that's not cool. Right. I was it was this guy who actually just just I think yesterday or two days ago or something, the news came out that he's engaged, gay and he's engaged to to this guy that he's been dating for 11 years. So the actor Cal Penn, he when I was a kid, I was in a movie and he was my older brother in the movie.
And so we like would hang out on the set all the time. And I remember saying it when whatever I was just calling. So I was trying to say something was stupid or lame or whatever weird.
I don't know what I was trying to say. I was this little kid. It's probably like in sixth grade or something.
And he was just like, he was the first person that had ever even brought my attention to him. He goes, you know, that's not like you shouldn't say that when you just mean something's like weird or not cool. Like you shouldn't say gay and you should say something else.
And he wasn't out that time. I don't know if he even knew at the time, but he brought that to my attention. And I felt I remember feeling so dumb because I looked up to this guy.
I thought he was so cool and I was so nervous about it. Set with yeah, he was totally nice. He kind of like big brother to you.
Yeah, he big brother to me. He was just like, you know, like, by the way, like, you know, you shouldn't do that. Like think about it.
Oh, blah. And I was like, oh, that makes total sense. Like I never even thought about this.
Like and in that time and even in my my world, I lived Houston, Texas. It's not like even like I went back. It's not like I was the last one to know.
Nobody even really thought about it. But he was like in Hollywood. And I think it was like, you know, people on the West Coast were people on the coast tend to be like a little more like kind of forward and liberal and progressive with that type of stuff.
So so I remember hearing that and being like, oh, man, I just made a fool of myself and like, yeah, that's silly. I don't know why I do that. And I just stopped after that.
And so, you know, came full circle yesterday. But anyways, we can do another another topic. What else you got?
SPEAKER_03
All right, let's do one more. All right, I'm going to tell you about actually, do you have one? You want to do you want me to go?
SPEAKER_01
Let's do this one that's about companies. So I had this idea. I I don't even know what it is.
But I was reading that Tech Tesla was doing something called gigafest. Do you know what gigafest is?
SPEAKER_03
Yes. So basically, if I remember correctly, they had a lot of people like liberal media got angry because they're like Tesla's throwing a festival during a pandemic. But basically, they rented out a town in Germany and they're doing like a conference or a festival.
SPEAKER_01
And like what's happening at is it like drinking in music or is it like car technical stuff? Do you know?
SPEAKER_03
I have no idea.
SPEAKER_01
So, OK, honestly, it doesn't even matter what it was. I just saw the name and I thought, oh, man, Tesla's doing another smart thing. Like they basically took Oktoberfest and they just rebranded it for their thing.
And it's going to I assumed it's going to be some combination of like fun as well like, you know, between music and food and drinks and all that, as well as like, you know, things that are relevant to, you know, building cool cars and then recruiting talent and just building the brand and having people have a great experience at the brand. And I started thinking, why don't more companies do this? And at first I thought, well, certainly they're not the only ones. And I started thinking about other examples of this.
So there's like the Macy's Day Parade, which I don't even know like how that got invented. I don't know the backstory. But since I was a kid, I remember that there's always the Macy's Day Parade on TV.
And it's like, why did Macy's get in on that? Or we've talked about Michelin Star restaurants, right? Michelin tires, the tire company basically inventing a food restaurant ranking system so that you would have a reason to go drive, you know, far out places to go try these amazing restaurants. They created demand for driving long distances through the Michelin Star. And they just got their name in all that.
And, you know, there's the Forbes 30 under 30 list. And then there's like in San Francisco every year, if you live in San Francisco, you know, Dreamforce is this like full, like kind of it shuts down half the city. And there's sort of like a parade and there's like big bands like you two come and perform, but it's like for the most boring thing, it's like a sales CRM.
SPEAKER_03
Dude, do you want to know why most people, more people don't do this? Yeah, I think a lot of people actually try and it just doesn't work. All right. So the Fortune 500.
Fortune 500 is that basically just means the top 500 companies in the world. At this point, do you even think Fortune 500 means Fortune magazine?
SPEAKER_01
No, right. Sometimes it does over overtake the brand. Like Michelin Michelin Star means more to me than Michelin tires.
SPEAKER_03
Do you when you think have you ever shopped at a Macy's? Of course, I've shopped at a Macy's before. Yeah. Have you been at a Macy's in 20 years?
SPEAKER_01
Not 10. Yeah. 10 years. Probably cut off.
SPEAKER_03
So a lot of so there's one. I think a lot of times people do this. I always work with like creative people and maybe I'm just sometimes a pessimist around this stuff.
A lot of times they get give me these ideas and I'm like, this is just fucking stupid. And I don't think this is going to increase sales. I'm just trying to survive at the moment.
And and it doesn't work a lot.
SPEAKER_01
I agree. It's not for when you're in survival mode, which is where I spent most of my career in startups is like, you're you're not in survival mode or you're in survival mode. If you don't turn, if you don't make this work, it's going to just die.
So you don't have time to plan a parade with a music festival and like all the stuff that wouldn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_03
And here's the other reason why this isn't a good idea, though. I wonder if this isn't a good idea a lot of times because most companies, they're just fucking lame. Like imagine like I'm trying to think like just like this window blind company, Hunter Douglas, like they're going to have like what a blind fest.
Like I don't know. I mean, I think there's some cool shit like, you know, Blendtec. The blender.
Have you heard of Blendtec? The blender and they had Will It Blend? That was awesome. I loved Will It Blend. Do you remember that YouTube channel? Yeah, yeah, of course.
I love Will It Blend, but a lot of stuff is just lame and I don't want to celebrate it. Now a few boring things that I think could work is what's that vacuum company? Everyone loves Dyson. Dyson. Yeah. Dude, I'm about to I'm like been staying up at night. Wonder if I'm going to buy one of these $700 vacuums.
Have you ever used one of them?
SPEAKER_01
The handheld one. Yeah, it's like a little wall.
SPEAKER_03
Amazing one. Yeah, I have that one. It's amazing.
You have one, you pay $700 for it.
SPEAKER_01
It feels so satisfying, dude. I feel like I get $700 of value every time I use it.
SPEAKER_03
So like Dyson has like is like boring and I dig I would do that. I can't I'll have to think of like what else is like boring and awesome.
SPEAKER_01
But dude, any any company could do this. All you have to do is attach your boring name to awesomeness. And it does work.
It does work to an extent. Now it's not going to turn a bad company into a good company, but it does take a boring company and make them slightly less boring. It makes them more relevant.
And in general, I just feel like those same dollars just go further. So like I see so many dumb billboards or just like useless events or useless like ads, you know, on the all over the Internet. And I just sort of think, man, you know, for like $200,000, you can throw like a whole music festival.
You can do like some amazing things with $200,000. And that's what they'll spend.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, but I don't want to go to like Flora or Clorox bleach and imagine dragons. Like I just don't give a shit.
SPEAKER_01
You might. Did you want to go to a tire restaurants reviewed a tire tire company's restaurant review reviews? No, you didn't maybe.
SPEAKER_03
But like when I think of like like Clorox and like the killers, like I don't think like I'm going to buy more bleach.
SPEAKER_01
Dude, Mr. Brightside, although maybe maybe.
SPEAKER_03
Oh, that's a good point. Walk right into that one. I don't know.
I'm not sure if it could work, maybe. But I think and I also think a lot of those things, I don't think they're as successful often. Like whenever I was thinking of like Fortune 500 or Michelin, I'm like, I don't fucking that don't associate that with the magazine.
The magazine is still going to go bankrupt anytime. So anyway, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01
Like I think the Victoria Secret Fashion Show is a good example also of like going overboard on these kind of events and like just put your you're not directly trying to sell your thing. You're creating a spectacle. You're attracting the type of people you want.
Like for example, we have an ad budget for this podcast where they're like, dude, Hubspot is great. They're generous. They're like, you guys are in our Hubspot podcast network.
We want to help you grow. So they gave us a little bit of cash. A lot of money.
A lot of cash.
SPEAKER_03
And I can't think of a thing to do with it.
SPEAKER_01
Exactly. Because and what's the plan right now? The plan is to go spend a shit ton of it on Spotify ads, right? And that might work.
SPEAKER_03
And other podcasts. And other podcast platforms.
SPEAKER_01
And that might work. I don't know. We'll see.
I don't know. We'll see. I guess it's going to work very poorly.
So I'm saying with that same amount of money, can I say how much money or no?
SPEAKER_03
Hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter. So hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe maybe we could say like in the range of a million dollars a year.
SPEAKER_01
Right. So I don't know. Like let's take our audience.
Our audience is kind of this hustler type mindset. Our audience is this person who likes to they like investing. They like building shit.
They want to make money. They like hearing about billion dollars companies and billionaires and things like that. Like what could we do that would just get? I don't know.
Like if we got 50,000 people to pay attention to something, I think that would be a huge win. Right. So what would be a either an event or a stunt or something that's of service to people? The equivalent of what Red Bull did, right? Like Red Bull was like, dude, we're an energy drink. We're all about sort of like, you know, this is kind of badass lifestyle.
All right. We're going to put a guy in a wingsuit. We're going to take a guy like what?
SPEAKER_06
What can we do though? I don't know. Like I just want.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. Let me think of one. I think that we could do what do people who are startups? What do people who are into building businesses? What are they? What are they super into that?
SPEAKER_03
That's what I've gone through this mental exercise and I'm it's okay.
SPEAKER_01
I have a dumb for me. I have a dumb, simple one. I remember these people set up a headshots.
By the way, your computer screens like covering your face or something. Oh, there you go. I remember this like a fitness company did this.
They parked their van outside of the Salesforce tower and everybody who's coming in, they're like, do you want to get your body scanned real quick or do like this BMI test to do this test? Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03
I'll tell you. I loved it.
SPEAKER_01
They just hired hired two people to stand outside the fucking like tower and they just got a bunch of people in and they like, while they were there, they got to what is this all about? Who's doing this? Why do I get this free thing? And they got to learn about their learn about their body while then being so upsold into like signing up for these scans and personal training and a gym membership after that. And I saw somebody else do this with headshots. They're like, you know what? Like your picture online just like looks like shit.
Sean, but what are we going to do?
SPEAKER_03
What's that? So what do you want to do for us? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
So I'm saying we could come up with something where let's say we had, I don't know if you ever seen those like three 360 degree cameras. You can rent these things for like a thousand dollars. We could have a pop up in a city in New York.
And all you got to do is if you show that you're subscribed to the pod, you can get a free epic headshot done for you. And we just pop them up near downtown or a bunch of people live. And that thing would cost us, you know, I don't know, three grand total for the day, but might have like a thousand people have like a unique experience or 2000 people have a unique experience.
Or maybe we could have like a blimp going over, you know, going over Miami and the blimp is going to, you know, air drop, you know, some like cash or the blimp is going to display some QR code. Or something like that. And there's a giveaway inside.
SPEAKER_03
I don't know, like some kind of big million dollar bills. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Some kind of stunt or whatever. Like let's say something that's like on brand for you.
SPEAKER_03
I'm on board. I've just been going through this and I'm like, what is worth pulling off? Like these are bad ideas.
SPEAKER_01
I got to admit the ideas I had just now are bad. But I feel like if I bring this one for an hour, which I'm going to do, I feel like we can come up with a great idea. And it's a better use than the ads.
SPEAKER_03
I'll do the same. I think I think it requires both to be honest. And I'll do the same.
I think, and this is like a good example of whenever I talk to people and they're like, well, I'll start this company once I get funding. I'm like, if you had the money, you wouldn't even know what to do. Trust me, the money's not the issue.
Right. And that's how I feel right now. I'm like, the marketing budget is not the issue.
Yeah. I'm like, we got the money. We got the people.
I just don't know. So I had this, which is kind of fucked up. Rameet, Rameet talks to people about this all the time.
He's like, once you're rich, what are you going to do? And people actually struggle with this all the time. Right. I struggle with it.
SPEAKER_01
I had this phrase I used to say at our startup, which is you can always run out of money, but you can never declare creative bankruptcy. And that was, that was always my rule was like, I cannot have a conversation with somebody who says, I can't think of an idea. I don't know what else we could do.
It's like, you've declared creative bankruptcy and like now you must go out that door and never return again. And did you see my rule? So even if I had an idea, I don't declare bankruptcy.
SPEAKER_03
Those guys at Outside Magazine asked us if we wanted to do the adventure. I don't think you replied yet, by the way. Not yet.
I sent you. You see it? Okay. And they're like, well, what else do you want to do? And I'm like, oh, I have no idea.
I feel like such a punk. I can't think when like they're like, well, we can go anywhere as long as you're there and back in three days. I can't think of a thing.
It's fucked up.
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01
Who does our audience look up to? Warren Buffett. Like he auctions off his like lunch thing every year for like a hundred grand or whatever. It's like, dude, some.
That's it. There's no way it's only a hundred grand. I think it is.
It might even be less. But like, I know like Andrew Wilkinson did his, I think it was like, it was like, I don't know, two grand or something to get lunch with him. You know how many people would want to do that? Like we could just host these.
We could get people to like come and be able to hang out, have a lunch with Chimoth or something like that. We could do a giveaway. That is we spend the money here, but then we dangle that in front of people in order to get them interested and excited about what we're doing.
Now, those are kind of disconnected to what we're doing, but I refuse to declare creative bankruptcy is my answer.
SPEAKER_03
We just kind of think about it because this it's been bothering me as well where I'm like, what, what should we do?
SPEAKER_01
Because if you're listening to this, imagine this, we have hundreds of thousands of dollars of budget and we would we want a whole bunch more people to subscribe to the podcast and just get down with the mission, like realize that there's a cool podcast out there that they might like the reason you like it. There's a whole bunch of other people that would like it for that same exact reason. They just don't listen to it yet.
They never heard it. They don't know that they should try it. And so how would you turn hundreds of thousands of dollars into hundreds of thousands of subscribers is the question.
And and so, you know, if you have ideas, obviously my ideas kind of suck. Sam's refusing to have an idea right now. So we need we need ideas.
SPEAKER_03
Ben, what do you think we should do?
SPEAKER_01
Like the teacher calls on you and the worst possible no, no, no, no, this is good because
SPEAKER_05
I was actually talking about this this morning with Darren and Jonathan, but it's hard.
SPEAKER_05
Well, so here's one idea that we had was we had this TikTok go viral, but it did well on TikTok. Do you see that?
SPEAKER_01
Sean, what was it?
SPEAKER_03
It was a Rob Deer thing.
SPEAKER_02
What's his name? Jacob like texted me on Saturday night and he was like, hey, I made this and posted on TikTok. Got like 100,000 views.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, which is like good. So what we were saying is what if we just put up $10 or $20,000 and just said, hey, we're going to put out the video files from my first million. Anyone can access the raw video files.
And if you want to make content for us, great. And at the end of the month, we'll give $10 or $20,000 to whoever gets the most views on TikTok or Instagram reels.
SPEAKER_03
Like a 99 designs contest. That's not a bad idea. That's actually a really good idea.
$20,000 to in order to be submitted to the contest, you have to you have to post it on Twitter or Instagram. Yeah. And that's a great idea, actually. So a consistent $20,000 a month contest for the best clip.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_05
You can produce it. You can just put it out there because you have a big audience, but like whatever. Yeah, do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_03
That's actually brilliant. Right. I don't I'd seen. I think that's the greatest idea yet.
Right. Right.
SPEAKER_01
He almost went greatest idea ever. He threw yet in there just to save himself.
SPEAKER_05
I was so close.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, let's do that.
SPEAKER_01
All right. I'm going to publicly brainstorm the ideas on Twitter. That's how that's how we're going to do this.
SPEAKER_03
No, yeah. I'm going to add that one to it, though.
SPEAKER_01
I'm going to create a thread. I'm going to add these ideas to it. And then I'm just going to continue until we have a winning idea.
SPEAKER_03
It's just it's a rolling $20,000 and every single month, one person gets $20,000. And the criteria is the people who are posting the best, most interesting, most viewed MFM video content.
SPEAKER_05
My other idea is I guess I'm just into contests, but it's like, hey, if you want to join this contest show up to downtown, preferably somewhere we're not a lot of people are from. So like St. Louis, Cleveland, Austin, whatever.
And Austin, Austin is a bad idea. But OK, we're going to give you a category. So it might be food, it might be exercise and fitness, but you have 24 hours and whoever can make the most money wins this contest and will give you an extra $20,000.
It's essentially an entrepreneurship contest.
SPEAKER_01
I got a better idea. Fuck your idea. Here's a better idea.
All right. Here's a great idea. OK, so Sam, how much does it cost to sponsor like an open bar at a bar, like set up a bar tell us actually, let's say.
SPEAKER_01
There's we pick 10 cities around the country and we say, hey, in these 10 cities, if you're one of us, there is a place where you can go and you can hang out with other people who are like that, like like us at the ball like, you know, like you have heard.
SPEAKER_03
You could we can say, hey, we're going to do a lot of drink for three grand. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01
We're going to put up $1,500 and we're going to do this in 10 cities and we're going to do this every Friday for the next, you know, let's call it three months or whatever. It's like, you know, the winter, the winter fest and we say, great, we're going to do that. So we're going to do that 12 times.
That's 180 grand, but basically you've created a and all you have to do to get to redeem your free drink to redeem a drink as you just got to show your subscriber to the pod show bar tender. Boom, you get it. We just call the we get we have cool bars or like whatever is like your favorite bar in Austin, your favorite bar in New York, your favorite bar in San Francisco, whatever.
And we just make that our little watering hole and people who are into our shit can go and hang out there. And it's not that it's like the biggest mass idea, but the spark that would come from a bunch of people, a bunch of our fans getting to know each other, hanging out, having drinks, bringing their friends. I think a lot of good would come of that.
A lot of good will would come of that. I don't think that's that expensive.
SPEAKER_06
I think that's worth doing.
SPEAKER_03
I would say that the video bounty is to me the most interesting. I think that's like wildly interesting. Yeah, bars.
That's not bad. Yeah, I've done that for years and years on all types of stuff. It worked really well for product time.
It worked well for us. Yeah, it works. What have you done in that?
SPEAKER_01
Well, like for the hustle, we've done meetups forever.
SPEAKER_03
And then when I started my roommate business, we had meetups every single week for like two years. And so it was basically anyone who's ever looking for a roommate, you come that day and we'll have a party with like 150 people who are also looking for housing. Right. And in order to come, you got to download our app. And another one that does this by the way, it's like, it's like physically hostile.
That does this by the way, it's like, it's like physically hard. I remember being like, I was like exhausted all the time.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for sure. I remember this agency reached out and they had emailed us before being like, hey, we're a creative ad agency. It's like, uh, yeah, into the into the trash pile.
Like, I don't, I don't know you. I don't. This is just some outbound sales and whatever.
I don't care. And one reached out and they go, they, they sent, they sent a package with invites. Like they sent us like a physical mail to our office.
It was a bunch of flyers inside cheap flyers, you know, just flyers, whatever. They said, Hey, these are, these are ticket entries. So this gets you entry to this party tonight, as well as a free drink.
We rented out butter this bar in San Francisco that's like pretty famous. And, and they go, we're having a meme battle tonight. It's like a rap battle, but for memes.
And we're like, what? And basically, they got like, they, and then they would email the office manager and they say, Hey, did you get our package? We sent over a bunch of invites. Make sure that people know that's for you guys. You guys can come and get, you know, free drink and it's great.
You know, send five or six people to have a great time and happy hour today. And so they all did was email and a flyer. They sent that.
And then I went there and it was basically like they had rented out the bar. It was a Tuesday night. So like the bar was like, yeah, sure.
It's all yours. Go ahead. And they basically had a projector on the screen and they had a guy dressed up as a cat and a person dressed up as a dog.
And, and they would go, it was the battle was, it was a five round battle. And basically one would show a funny video clip, like a TikTok length thing. And then the other person would show it.
And then the crowd had like, little handles where they could vote for the dog or the cat. Like who's was, who's was funnier? And it would go five rounds and then the winner would win at the end. And that was it.
It was just silly. And then the whole stick was the guy would come on at the end. He'd be like, Hey, by the way, that one, the third one, that was actually a viral video we made where rubber Republic, we make amazing viral videos, eight out of 10 videos we do get over a million views.
Like we're good at this shit. We've done it for these companies. Enjoy yourselves tonight.
And if any of you guys ever want to have a video go viral, come find me or the guy dressed up as the cat. And I was like, and we worked with them. We did a video with them.
It got over a million views. And it was all the time.
SPEAKER_03
You're talking about drawing dicks all over the Bebo.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's right.
So they made that video for us. And so we, and so they were so good. And I was like, Oh, this little sales funnel they did was actually genius.
That's pretty good. You know, because one client to them is worth tens of thousands of dollars. So, you know, renting out this bar and inviting people from these 20 companies and just hoping one of them ends up with you as a client is a great way to go.
SPEAKER_03
All right. Well, let's do Ben. Let's let's could we please make one of them happen?
SPEAKER_01
All right, let's roll.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. I mean, you tell me money bags, but yeah, they will work on. You're fired.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, down. Let's do it.