SPEAKER_04
While you're listening to this podcast, you're probably doing something else too. It's cool, we get it. When you're having conversations with your customers, the same is probably true for them.
They're messaging their teams, they're mentally planning date nights, so growing conversations beyond the moment can be challenging. So HubSpot helps you go beyond the moment by connecting you and your teams, giving you access to the same exact data and helping you see the full customer picture. With powerful tools that connect marketing, sales, ops and service, HubSpot's powerful CRM platform powers you and your teams to transform your customers' moments into extraordinary customer experiences.
Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot.com.
SPEAKER_03
What you work on and who you work with matters way more than how hard you work.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days are on the road, let's travel never looking back.
SPEAKER_04
What's going on? For the past 10 days I've only eaten meat and fruit.
SPEAKER_03
The liver king, you're the new liver king. Have you seen that guy? But he's not just eating meat, he eats raw meat, which right, he's even more shame.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, that guy's disgusting. That guy's definitely, yeah, that guy's gross.
SPEAKER_03
So you're eating meat and fruit, why fruit? I love fruit. By the way, I thought you already do carnivore diet. Do you not already do carnivore, is this a new thing?
SPEAKER_04
No, I eat really healthy, but I usually have a cheat day once a week, but I realize I just want to get rid of that cheat day entirely and also I was like, I don't really want to eat carbs that much anymore either, except for fruit because if you just eat meat and low carb, it makes you go like number three, which is like a combination of, number three is when you go number one, not your number two and if you only eat meat and you-
SPEAKER_03
Wait, so that would get slower. This is one of your greatest inventions ever, inventing number three.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, number three. This is your original, right? Yeah. This is a Sam Parr original.
Yeah, this is a Sam Parr original. It's when you go number one, not your number two, and it's bad because if you eat only meat, you don't get any fiber and fiber is what helps you go to the bathroom and it's actually good, and so you don't want to go number three, and so I enjoy fruit and meat. I love it.
SPEAKER_03
All right, so just say it, every carnivore diet, every keto carnivore bro says, bro, my energy is amazing. I feel, I have so much more energy. I'm losing weight.
Just say the thing.
SPEAKER_04
No, I don't have more energy, but I don't feel bloated. Right. I just, it's the bloated feeling. Dude, it sucks that like you eat healthy for like a month and then you eat unhealthy for like two days and it feels like that whole month is gone.
Wiped out, yeah. So I've been doing that. Also, I'm telling you, the cold plunge has made a significant difference in my life.
I feel so much happier in the morning. You have to try it.
SPEAKER_03
Dude, I have a hilarious clip I meant to tweet out, making fun of you because it's so funny to me. Who posted, Ben, you posted it. Yeah, I think our group chat where it's you,
SPEAKER_02
you get in the cold plunge. In fact, I hope they edit the audio or the video into this. So Sam gets in the cold plunge, he's struggling because it's really cold.
SPEAKER_03
He goes, so I just bought some land. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
What did you say?
SPEAKER_04
I said it too, I go, ah. So I just bought a farm.
SPEAKER_00
I just bought a farm.
SPEAKER_02
I'm just bought a farm.
SPEAKER_03
It's like, you know, that's like what I would do if I was mocking, you know, the kind of like TikTok, you know, success coaches, success gurus, which is like, I'm just doing my daily 45 minute cold plunge, negative 85, shut down organs just to show them what it's like to be alive.
SPEAKER_02
Just got done buying a farm. It's good.
SPEAKER_03
That clip is so funny, dude. All right, so you're telling me you're doing this diet. Fantastic.
Did you have anything else to say about that? Or that was the main update? Ben was doing this. Okay, so I just linked, so there's two bends. People get super confused.
There's producer Ben, which is who we call Power for Young Ben. He's Ben the Dunker, he's Ben the Mormon, he's Ben the historian. That's one Ben, Ben Wilson.
And then there's Ben Levy, who's my business partner in all my businesses. I sort of like my most trusted right hand man. So sometimes I'll talk about Ben and people just think Ben is this, wow, Mr.
Do It All, because he sounds like he's doing everything, but actually the trick is there's two bends. So I just linked Ben Levy into the pod because he's got a really funny story. He started telling me and I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, save it for the pod.
But he's here. And Ben, you were doing something like this too. Before you were getting a guy to just deliver you like three pounds of chicken breast every week.
And that's all you were eating, right?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, basically I just got three to four pounds of chicken breast seasoned, and that was all I ate every day.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. It was intense. Every time I talked to him, he'd just have this tiny box of chicken he was eating.
SPEAKER_03
And then the funniest part is Ben's wife loves, like she just eats whatever. And so she'll be like, oh, Ben, like, you know, I'm watching the baby right now. Like go give me like some McDonald's.
SPEAKER_02
So Ben, who's on this like hardcore chicken breast diet has to like go walk to a McDonald's buy really like, you know,
SPEAKER_03
a really delicious smelling food or whatever, tempted and then deliver it in his house, but he doesn't eat it himself.
SPEAKER_04
I can't eat chicken like that, man. I think chicken's horrible. What's your story, Levy?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so got a crazy story for you guys. So you might have seen the app Wordle recently. Have you guys seen it?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. New York Times just bought it. You play?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. So New York Times just bought it. But about two weeks ago, one of my friends, he's a great mobile app developer, a bootstrapper.
He basically was like, oh, Wordle is going viral and there's no mobile app that everyone's using. So like the Wordle guy had put out this crazy story. He put out this story about how he was peer.
He didn't want to monetize it. It was just a toy for his girlfriend. It went viral out of nowhere, which I don't know if I believe because he works at Ms.
Jiff and like, I'm not sure I totally buy that story. But that was his story to the media. So my friend was like, holy shit, there's a huge opportunity for someone to build the mobile app.
This guy doesn't own the trademark of the name. It's kind of like rift off an old game show. So my friend built an app over the weekend, called it Wordle the app, went viral.
So basically like over the weekend got like 30,000 organic downloads was top of the app store. And my friend's one of these guys who likes to build in public. So he tweets everything he always has.
He used to like put his portfolio up so you could see everything he's doing and what is it?
SPEAKER_03
Sam, by the way, this is gonna support your build in public thesis, by the way. This is like the perfect case study of how you feel about build in public, which is I like it in theory. It's like the face tattoo thing, right? I like that other people do it.
I don't wanna do it and here's why. Here's the cautionary tale, like when the dare officer brings like someone who's like been in jail for drugs to the classroom.
SPEAKER_04
This is like a before and after of meth.
SPEAKER_02
Like it's like very rocky.
SPEAKER_04
But Sean, explain what Wordle is because all I know, I don't play word games. I play real sports. And so, I'm not trying, I don't waste my time with that.
So, when people are, what is this game?
SPEAKER_03
It's a game, okay, so it's a simple game. You literally, the way I get to it, you just Google Wordle, first link, you click it. And it's just five empty like letters, like five squares where you gotta guess a word.
There's no clues. It's not like a crossword. It's literally just like guess a word.
So you type in a word, you might type in. Like I always start with I rate because Darmesh from HubSpot said, the word I rate has three vowels plus the letter T plus the letter R. So you're getting a lot of common letters there.
So it's a great start word. So you type that word in and then it'll tell you either, it'll either show up gray, which means the letter's not in the word yellow, which means it's in the word, but you got it in the wrong spot or green, which is this is the right letter in the right spot. And then you have, I think, five or six guesses to be able to get the word in the end.
And then the beauty of it is at the end, it's like you got it, you feel the sense of accomplishment. The whole thing takes you like two minutes to play the game. So it's like really easy to play in that sense.
And then if you get it right, it lets you share that you got it right, but it doesn't share what the word was. It shares like the, like imagine what you're looking at now, which is like the word in all these colors, but take the letters off, it just shows the colors. So it'll show somebody else, oh man, I started off not having any of the letters.
Then I got the T at the end, and then I got one letter at the end.
SPEAKER_04
So that's what that story is.
SPEAKER_03
And then like on the fourth one, I got it right. So that's why you see that grid of green squares posted on Twitter, and it started going viral on Twitter.
SPEAKER_04
So that's the game. And what's like the score? Okay, so I'm,
SPEAKER_03
Ben just got it, moist. Ben, did you really just play that? Are you watching a video?
SPEAKER_05
I think he's playing. I already did this morning. I was trying to just do like an illustration, you know, just trying to get some after a B roll.
SPEAKER_04
All right. So I understand. So people have been sharing this like crazy and Darmesh, the founder of HubSpot.
He plays a daily. And he even built a competitor to it as well. And so your buddy Ben Levy, what's this guy's name? His name is Zach Schakhead.
And what's the name of the app?
SPEAKER_01
It was called Wordle, the app. So part of the story basically, so he goes and builds this app. He tweets like, Holy shit, this is the fastest growing app I've ever built.
You know, I've built 10 other businesses. They've all done really well, but this is the only one that's like growing organically like crazy. And he basically, the Wordle creator sees it and he's like, yo, he gets on the phone with them.
He calls them and he's like, Hey, this just doesn't feel right.
SPEAKER_03
By the way, by the way, this whole thing's just happening in a Twitter thread. Ben sends me the first tweet. He's like, yo, Zach's, cause I've met Zach through Ben.
He's like, yo, Zach actually cloned Wordle next tweet. Look at this shit. He's tweeted out of the graph.
It's going crazy. Third tweet. Someone, someone says, dude, you just ripped off Wordle.
Like you're going to get whatever suit or something. And you don't know the trademark for this. He goes, what trademark? And so I'm seeing the tweets play out in real time and he's bragging.
He's bragging about how good it's doing. And he's like, ha, like there was no app. Now I'm dominating this.
I'm getting all these free downloads. This is amazing. And he's just tweeting update after update.
Okay. So Ben pick it back up. So then somehow the Wordle guy gets in touch with them.
SPEAKER_01
The Wordle guy DMs him and he's like, yo, let's get on the phone. And my friend Zach is like, Hey, like you don't know the trademark. I know nobody owns it.
There's a bunch of other apps called Wordle before this, but like let's partner or something. And the guy's like, eh, I don't like, you know, he basically said some version of like, I don't do this for money. This is just fun.
You know, ironically he sells the New York times like a week later, but that's separate. So my friend gets off the phone with him and he's like, all right, I'm going to talk to a lawyer. I'm going to figure out what I should do.
Like clearly there's no ability for us to work together here. And then like 20 minutes later, some big tech reporter dunks on him pretty aggressively. And he's like,
SPEAKER_04
Dunks on who? Your buddy or the original creator?
SPEAKER_01
Dunks on Zach, my friend. And he's like, he basically says something like, wow, like app developer has no ethics. Clone's Wordle bragging about how he's at the top of the app store.
And then, you know, when that happens, everyone goes and looks at Zach's past tweets. And he ironically had two tweets. So like six months ago, he tweeted, I hate app clones.
Like someone's cloning my app and I'm going to like, you know, he basically like disputed every app that was cloning his old app and posted a big thread about how app clones are the shittiest people.
SPEAKER_03
Didn't he call them like scumbags or something?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he was like, they're the scums of the earth that you're copying my app. And then he also-
SPEAKER_04
Wait, you said the word ironic. So was he being serious?
SPEAKER_01
No, he was being serious. It was ironic that he tweeted that. And then he was doing, you know, and then he was being opportunistic.
And then he also tweeted like, at the beginning of the year, I have two goals for 2022. It's like be more vulgar and make $10 million this year. So he just gets like proceeded to get dunked on really aggressively.
And people start buying his domain and they're like, you know, I'm going to start like, I'm going to dispute every app you've ever made. I'm like going to make sure that everyone knows you're the worst of the worst. And like, so basically that's what happens.
Apple ends up pulling down every single word.
SPEAKER_03
He calls you right somewhere in the middle here. He calls you for some advice, right?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so he calls me in the middle of this and he goes, hey, this is crazy. Like app is doing really well. I think this is a big business.
Like, you know, I know how much these apps convert like free to pay. This is just growing organically. This is a 10 to $100 million mobile app here.
What would you do? And I was like, well, I think, you know, ethically, I'm not sure. I think you did kind of copy him, but I get that like this is version one and you're going to make it better. Like I could buy that.
But right now you're probably stuck. Like the mob has you, but he's like, well, maybe there's a Trumpian version to this where like, you know, I kind of own that like this is my approach and like I'm doing it
SPEAKER_03
and there is no trade more. Apologize, apologize. Put up the white flag, take it away.
Right. These are options on the table. Right. I could just say, sorry, I did wrong. I could say, you know, sorry, I said what I said and I'm going to make these, I'm going to change the name.
I'm going to make some concessions. And then there was go full Trump. And full Trump was like, just lean into it.
And don't back down.
SPEAKER_04
In a non like douche way, what you could say is, yeah. Like, look, we're not claiming to be innovators here, but we're executors. And so we find things that are great and we make them available for the masses.
Sue me. Like, you know, that's like the way that you could take this. That's what, that's what rocket internet says.
They go, we're not innovators, we're executors, we're operators.
SPEAKER_03
So how did the conversation go, Ben, when you guys talked about these options?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. So basically I was like, you know, I think those three options around the table. And he was like, yeah, but I don't think, you know, I don't think we're really doing anything wrong.
Like, you know, yeah, there is no mobile app. So like, well, people can think that I think it's fine. So he basically was like, I'm going to double down, you know,
SPEAKER_03
by the way, this other guy didn't create word. There was a, you're saying there was a game show back in the day that was the same game. He created a web version of it.
Is that right? Cause I think that changes it too, which is, yeah. This guy also copied this show, right?
SPEAKER_04
Like, and it looks like this guy, Zach, did he redo the app but call it word love?
SPEAKER_01
Well, that's later in the story. That's like after word will got shut down in the app store. He recreated a new, you know, another word game.
What's similar?
SPEAKER_03
So Apple literally just shut down all the clones?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they shut down everyone that was using the name wordel after that. And to clarify, yeah, there was a game show that wordel was based on. And I think the guy's story was like, I did this for my girlfriend.
It wasn't for profit. So he didn't get crucified for it.
SPEAKER_03
I see. So what did Apple say? Why did they say they could just take down all these things or you don't know why they just took down?
SPEAKER_01
There was no statement. They just took down every wordel app and said, you know, you don't own this trademark. Like you're being taken down because we do decide what we do with the app store.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, so I'm not a lawyer here, obviously, but I have done some trademark-y stuff. And I'm almost positive that someone's going to correct me. But I'm almost positive that even if you don't own the trademark, if you're like, and you can make the argument, if you're like the first or the most popular, and if there's like a general consensus that like, yes, when people think of this name, they think of you.
And these other clones or these other people are trying to like steal, you know, like act like they're you. The courts tend to favor your side, even if you don't own the trademark. Yeah. So like, just because they don't literally have that trademark, there is probably some, like, you know, you would probably win.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think that's probably true. And like he knew that, like there was some argument that there's been other apps called the wordel, but it was pretty clear that like they would have a good case. So he proceeds to kind of double down on it, gets dunked on aggressively.
Like basically, you know, he doubles down a little bit, like says like, no, like this is based on the game show. You don't own a trademark. I'm looking at it now, versions of that.
And then it goes completely viral. Like 10,000, you know, it gets like 10,000 people in the tech Twitter circle are dunking on him. There's article-
SPEAKER_03
Wait, can we stop for a second? Why was his goal be more vulgar for 2020? Why was that a goal? That's such a random, you said that.
SPEAKER_02
And my mind is still wondering why was that his number one?
SPEAKER_01
Does that mean like be more aggressive? I think he meant like be more aggressive. Like when he sees opportunities be more assertive and like, you know, be as aggressive as possible and opportunities present themselves. Okay. Which clearly was what this was. So he went, he went hard.
He got dunked on. And basically what happened was people bought his dome, people squatted on his names, zackshaket.com. They were like, we're going to go vote down every single app you own. We're just basically going to attack you.
SPEAKER_04
Oh, it's so, how's this end?
SPEAKER_01
So, I mean, basically it ended with him shutting the app down as you'd expect. And now he's like making a new word game cause he likes the word game space. But I think his, like when I was talking to him about it earlier, he was like, you know, the biggest thing for me is building in public is not always good.
You know, like the fact, you know, by building in public, like I just assumed I, you know, this was great for me. And this is the really dark side of me building in public.
SPEAKER_03
Well, dude, let's be more specific. He had $10 million in his hands and decided that the tweet love or talking about what he was doing was, was worth that. Because if he just stayed as an anonymous developer, he just put it under some shell company developer name, left it in the store, didn't brag about it.
It wouldn't have got picked up by journalists as like, the story isn't that other people, there are apps in the store called Wordle that are owned by different people. That's not the story. The story is, look at this guy cloning this thing, ripping it off, bragging about it, and then getting shit on on Twitter.
That's the story. So if he just didn't do that, then that doesn't get to Apple. Like I think there's a pretty good chance he gets away with it.
Cause I know there's a, the app store is full of clones. Like Flappy Bird had tons of clones. Every slot machine game, there's, people don't know this.
Like random apps, like slot machine apps are what like produces the most revenue in the app store. And, and you know, nobody really cares about it. They're under these like random holding company names.
SPEAKER_04
Because you don't talk about it. Cause you don't talk about it. When you're crushing it, you shut up.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. It's when you're not crushing it, that you want to talk about it. As soon as you start crushing it, zip.
SPEAKER_04
Yes. When you're doing well, you only talk about it when you're not doing that well, or when you are doing so well that you think that like, you know, you can't catch up.
SPEAKER_03
That's why people are always like, why don't you talk about your e-commerce thing? Like why is it working? What do I need to tell you guys about it for? Yeah. And I also think that like, But transparency, like yeah, cool. I, I favor transparency with people I trust.
Not strangers on the internet.
SPEAKER_04
Also, I don't value transparency.
SPEAKER_03
Well, it's like, if it's my wife or my family or my coworkers, all right, I'll give you transparency. I don't owe you my Twitter follower or even my podcast listener to tell you my every detail. I'll be very honest with you.
I tell people things when it's beneficial to me. And I don't when I don't. And I actually recommend that strategy to anybody.
There is no like a force that is, there's nobody forcing you to tell everybody everything when there's no gain to be had for you.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. And there's actually clear downsides. And this guy just totally screwed it up.
If he should have shut up, you just got to shut up some times. And that's really hard. This is the building a public thing, man.
And also it impacted the wordle guy. Now he got all this competition and he had a lot of stress. I think that like, when you're doing well, you just shut up.
You don't talk about it.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And I think, you know, part of it becomes your identity. Like I'm the building public guy.
So like I do everything in public. And I think he was just like, you know, type of guy. It's like, I'm a really good at growth and I'm really good at building apps and wanted some love for it.
You know, and then-
SPEAKER_03
By the way, I recommend this guy's blog or sub-sec because he actually, he does a good job of building in public. Like he, man, what was the one that we were, we were reading and I remember telling you, I was like, dude, this guy's stuff is actually really good. He had like no followers, but like, or like, you know, not no followers, but he had a very small following.
But I thought his content was actually really interesting. He would talk about like, all right, I'm gonna build this product cause of this reason. So first thing I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go to, you know, lean domain search.
I'm gonna get a name generator for this. Okay, I got the name. Boom. Now I'm gonna go do this. Boom. Here's how I do this. Boom. All right. I'm gonna fire up some paid ads.
Look, here's the dashboard. And like he was actually making progress. So he wasn't just like, you know, stuck in, he wasn't just talking theory.
Like he was actually getting users, getting revenue. And he was very, again, he was giving out a ton of value. So I was like, oh cool.
I like to learn all this stuff. Great. Thank you very much. And in those projects, the trade probably worked, right? He got interest and respect and attention.
And he gave up, you know, just a little bit of knowledge. But in this case, it did not pay off.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And he like openly shares all of his app numbers. Like that link I just dropped, zac.
so slash dashboard. You can see all of his app numbers, all the churn. So it's a big part of his identity.
And he's really good at it. But, you know, sometimes it doesn't always pay to be paying to build in public.
SPEAKER_04
Dude, cornrows and face tattoos. It's cool that other people do it, but not for me. The...
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. The other thing is like identity. Be real careful what your identity is because your identity comes with like.
..
SPEAKER_04
All right. Everyone. Today's episode is brought to you by Imperfect Action hosted by Steph Taylor.
It's a podcast on HubSpot's podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners. So join Steph Taylor as 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. And another one is five ways to make content creation less consuming.
So check it out. It's called Imperfect Action. You can look it up wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_03
You know, some serious trade-offs. People have an identity and then they'll like, you know, they use it to build a little prison for themselves. Here's my walls and chains that I put on myself by like labeling myself in this way.
I like to, like, people will be like, oh, I thought you said this the other day. I'm like, yeah, change my mind. Speaking, well listen.
You know, done.
SPEAKER_04
Speaking of prisoners and building an identity, I saw that someone did a survey, like a reputable source, but I forget who did a survey and they asked, they did a survey and they asked young folks, Gen Z, who they follow for crypto and NFT advice. And it was like, I think they surveyed hundreds of thousands of people. Pomp was number one for the most trusted person.
Pomp is like our friend and started out, like just a guy on Twitter. Now he's like, pretty official. How on earth does this guy do so much? So he's got a 200,000 person email list who he talks to, I think, every day.
Every day. He's got a daily business show.
SPEAKER_03
And I think he has like multiple hours of you three hours. It's a professionally produced morning show, meaning like he's there on camera with his brothers. They got an agenda, a rundown of stories they're gonna cover.
It's like a news show, business news show. I think it's called the business news show or some shit like that.
SPEAKER_04
The best business show.
SPEAKER_03
The best business show. And he does it for multiple hours in the morning, every morning.
SPEAKER_04
And I think I was with him and his wife a while ago and she was joking. She's like, man, he writes all of it. I don't know how he does it, he writes really fast.
How on earth is this guy have this much output?
SPEAKER_03
I have a tremendous amount of respect for that because I know how hard that is. And I know there's not usually people I look at and I say, I couldn't do that. And I know when I look at that, I couldn't do that.
There's no way I could maintain that level of output. At the same time, I would not want to do that. And that is not a person I want to build for myself.
SPEAKER_04
I don't think he's gonna be able to keep it. He won't be able to sustain that for more than two or three years. Yeah, that's crazy.
He's got like an empire. What do you, how big is his empire you think? You think he's making more money from selling stuff as opposed to actual Bitcoin?
SPEAKER_03
We've speculated on this before. So let's, I don't know if we, we've kind of done this before. You want to do it again? Yeah.
Okay, fair enough. So he's got a couple of components, right? He's got the paid sub-stack. So he's got the free, there's like a free version of it.
But the daily one I think goes to a paid group. Ben, do you know roughly what the paid size is? I think it's like, I think it's something like 70,000 people paying like $10 a month or something like that. I want to say it's like 70K-ish.
So that would be what, 700,000. By the way, the, I don't do public math. That was stolen from Pump.
Pump said that. I thought it was fucking hilarious and stole it because I think it's amazing. It's amazing rule to live by.
So he's got about 200,000 people total on his list and he's got I think 70 that are in the paid group. Let's just call it that. Then he's got a job board.
I think the job board we had heard, either heard or we had kind of investigated, looked like it was doing about a million dollars a year. That's cryptojobs.com or something.
So then he said, all right, you learn about crypto for me. You want to work in crypto? Boom. He also has sponsors on all the news on all the newsletters.
So at the end of every newsletter, it's like, thanks to these 10 companies. He like rolls the credits.
SPEAKER_04
And if I had to guess, that would be his sponsors. If he has 200,000 free subscribers, that'd be around between 100,000 to $200,000 a month in sponsored revenue.
SPEAKER_03
So we're at that. I think what we've just added up to is about two to two and a half million dollars a year.
SPEAKER_04
And then his video is,
SPEAKER_03
he does about a million dollars a year on his Bitcoin course, which I don't think he even shows up for or maybe he does. But like, I think he's got teachers. It's like pretty automated.
So let's add another million there. That's let's say three, three and a half million on the course. Then there's investing.
So investing is probably where the real money's to be made. Very hard to say kind of what both crypto investing, so like buying Bitcoin and other tokens, as well as investing in companies that serve the crypto economy. That's kind of like, and he had a fund.
The fund was pretty big. Ben, how big was the fund? But he closed it.
SPEAKER_04
He returned all the investors money.
SPEAKER_03
$100 million. 100? No. That was the fund he was at before this.
I think his personal fund, which was like the pop rolling fund or whatever. Oh yeah. I think was like 25 million a year or something like that, which is the equivalent of a $100 million fund.
I think he was doing 20 to 25 million a year. Again, these are all plus or minus 50%.
SPEAKER_04
And then his YouTube got 4 million views in the last 30 days. And then his podcast, I bet, is around where we are.
SPEAKER_03
But dude, YouTube at 4 million views is like $4,000. Something like YouTube pays like nothing on just the views. But maybe his sponsors, because I think his best business show has a main sponsor that's like.
..
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, it's SoFi. Because one time I got in trouble because I disrespected them when they were...
SPEAKER_03
Well, they're not a sponsor anymore, right? So can you tell the story?
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. So basically, one time, the Hustle wrote an article about SoFi's CEO getting in trouble for, I don't remember what it was. Was it a sexual thing or was it fraud? Something like that.
And he, in the headline, we wrote SoFi, more like SoFucked, and they bailed as a sponsor. And I told that story on his podcast, and he got really... He wasn't mad. Uncomfortable.
Yeah, I was like, well, you just tell him I said it. You know, you didn't say it, I said it. So SoFi can't.
..
SPEAKER_02
You're like a menace to the SoFi marketing team. They're like, God, everywhere we go, this guy comes in and hits the same SoFi, SoFucked joke.
SPEAKER_04
It's a good joke. It's a good joke. So anyway, I would get.
.. So at this point, I would say he's in the huge range of five and seven million a year, just off like Pomp.
SPEAKER_03
That's income, right? Then not even counting the sort of equity value. Because there's also Bitcoin Pizza, which was his ghost kitchen he launched. What else is there, Ben? He's got merch? Is he a merch? I think he's got merch.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he's got merch.
SPEAKER_03
What other part of his empire of his Pomp empire? He's got his brother. So I really respect that. Anybody who takes.
.. Anybody who's got the when I eat, we all eat mentality, I respect that. And he brought his brothers along.
So one brother, Joe, he does awesome content about the business of sports. His other brothers are his co-hosts for the best business show. Because when I asked him, I was like, dude, why are you signing up to do this morning show? Like there's so much work to do, YouTube show every day for multiple hours.
He's like, yeah, but I'm just like, it's me hanging out with my brothers. Shooting shit, busting each other's balls and talking business. That's kind of what I would.
.. If I just said, what's my ideal life? It's like, oh, just hanging out with my brothers and like... I mean, I get it. I could do that.
SPEAKER_04
The problem is, is like, let's say you want to take like a three week vacation. You know?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, there's a difference between I like to do it and I have to do it. Right. And he's in the half to do it. It seems like right now with where, you know, you're committed to a schedule.
SPEAKER_04
All right. You want me to tell you about an interesting company?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, actually one plug there. So while Ben's here, so we... I don't know when we're gonna talk about the Milk Road. I want to talk about my new project that me and Ben have launched, new company.
But there is a version of this, which is the one... We were like, all right, this is a great idea, but there's one drawback, which is you have to write this email every day. And it's the same thing.
It's a prison. And we were very conscious about it. It's like, Ben, you want to sign up for this? This is the prison we're gonna choose to be in.
Like, if this is what we choose, fine. But let's not get here and be surprised because that's the commitment we got to make. We are every night.
And so Ben at, you know, midnight, after the babies are asleep or whatever, it's like, you know, he's like, hey, here's the draft for tomorrow morning's email. And then I was up till 2 a.m. last night editing the thing. And so there's definitely a pain in the ass component to it that's, you know, that I'm experiencing, which is one-tenth of what Pomp does, but it's more than enough for me.
SPEAKER_04
And you did the same thing with us. It's hard, man. It's hard.
I like, I loved it. I mean, to me, it's like, I think I told you, it's almost like running a marathon or like being in a fight or something. It's like, you're scared to do it.
You do it and you get in the thick of it and you kind of enjoy it. And then you get to a point where you could take a break and you're like, this is horrible. I never want to do this again.
Which is how I felt like last year. And then you get like six months out and you're like, fuck, I missed the action. I need to get into it.
And so it's really hard to write a newsletter every single day. To do any type of content creation every single day for more than a year is very, very, very hard.
SPEAKER_03
Really tough. And we're only what, less than a month into it. Ben, where are you at in the grind? Like I think we're giving it a year for like how long you could tolerate this and sustain this pace.
Where are you at right now? You're only in month one.
SPEAKER_01
I'm at the still exciting, still fun to research and write. But I am at the holy shit, Sean's a way better writer than I am point. But it's still fun.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, sometimes I go into edit. I'm like, let me just touch up this little wordsmith and then like, I overhaul the whole thing. Cause I'm like, oh no, I think this could be better.
And I'm like, actually it was fine before, but like I just can't help myself. Like last night, actually this is an interesting point to talk about at S&M actually. So we should say two things.
We'll talk about what this company is and why we started it. Basically every year me and Ben have started one company. Last year's company was the e-commerce company.
And we grew that from zero to about 10 million in revenue profitably. And we, and to do that, like never had done a physical product before. Never like, never knew how to get things manufactured and all that.
Never had been spending like, you know, $200,000 a month on Facebook ads and being responsible for that return and making sure you don't grow broke. So that was the adventure last year. This year we were like, what do we want to do? And we basically were like, whatever it is, it's got to be in either crypto or like kind of like teaching slash audience building.
That's the stuff I like to do. Crypto's like the topic me and Ben are obsessed with. And that's why we came up with this thing called the milk road, which is basically it's an email you get every day.
And we just say, it's kind of like, it's the way I got good at crypto, which was my buddy Furcon, who's way smarter than me. He was like, he, you know, he bought Ethereum in the crowd sale. He bought Bitcoin, he was mining Bitcoin back in the day.
Like this guy's just been ahead of the curve on stuff. He's an engineer. And every day he basically just sends me like three links.
He's like, yo, check this out. You seen this? I'm always like, no, I haven't seen it. And then I'm always like, wait, what is this? Why is this interesting? And he's like, oh, so the reason this is cool is because ABC, he just breaks it down super simple for like a dumb ass like me.
And I was like, dude, if I could just take that idea and provide that like as a newsletter, like Furcon doesn't care, he's never going to create a sub stack or newsletter. He's like too smart and too cool for all that shit. But I was like, if I could take that idea of like a smart friend, just showing you one or two cool things a day that's going on in crypto and explaining it in simple plain Jane English, I think that that would actually be useful.
SPEAKER_04
How many subscribers do you guys have?
SPEAKER_03
So we've been doing it for I think three weeks now and we're at 16 and a half thousand as of today. So it's grown like last week we're at 10,000. So this week alone, we've grown about 50% in seven days.
SPEAKER_03
What was the cause? Two things, we turned on paid ads. And so you referred or you know a guy who is good with this stuff, he's been helping us out. He's really good actually.
Like, I've tried like five agencies for Facebook as this guy's like better than all of them.
SPEAKER_04
How much are you spending to acquire an email?
SPEAKER_03
Right, I don't want to say that right now, but it's in the good range. Remember when you were like, dude, back in the day it used to be X, now it's Y, we're getting it for X still. But we also aren't spending a ton.
So maybe as we spend more, that's going to go down. But honestly, there's such a big appetite for learning crypto because people know, people kind of know, all right, this seems like the next big wave, like, you know, there was the internet, there was mobile phones, there's iPhone. And now like crypto seems to be the big wave, super hard to keep up with.
And I know there's money to be made. So I think the appetite is there where I think we're going to keep getting subscribers for pretty cheap because the appetite, I've never seen an appetite for content like this in my life because I've been trying to make content that people want and I'm always talking about shit I'm into. And like, you know, it's often like.
I think the name is good.
SPEAKER_04
I think the name's pretty good. And you're using that platform Beehive. Is that any good?
SPEAKER_03
Beehive is pretty good. It's pretty new. So like there's a lot of features we need where we're like, yo, we need to be able to, for example, if I do a partnership with somebody or somebody plugs us in their newsletter, or let's say Facebook ads, we pay for Facebook ads.
I need to know if that subscriber like worth the same as an organic. Like, are they still opening it 20 days later? You know, I need to know like based on where they came from, are they still opening it to know where I should put my energy spreading the word. And so they don't have features like that yet, but we're kind of working with them to be like, yo, help us like, good, we need X.
Can you build it? We'll be your best customer. If you can kind of like help us get what we need.
SPEAKER_04
Sick. I think is, I think it's going to work. It just, I think that you'll start seeing, well, you're already seeing progress after one year, you're going to see a lot of progress.
And then if you continue to do it for three years, then shit really starts to accumulate. The media really does compound. I didn't believe that it did compound because I'm like, well, it's not like subscription revenue necessarily.
But then I realized, like, yeah, but if I like just continue doing this and like it known, you like, it becomes, it compounds in terms of cultural relevance. And that usually translates to revenue.
SPEAKER_03
That's a good point. And I've always said this and I've always fucked this up. That's the reason I keep saying it.
So it's mostly as a reminder myself, like the best advice I get, the advice I give the most to others is the advice that I've had this, the lesson I've had to relearn five times because I just can't like get it through my thick head. And that's that what you work on and who you work with matters way more than how hard you work. And to put that another way is the most important decision you make is what project to work on.
And so like, I'll tell you, like, I've worked on some really shitty projects. Like we did a hackathon and we built this app called Beer Hunt and it was like, every time you drink a beer, you like take a picture of it, you check it in. Yeah, but you don't give a shit about that.
And it's like, and people got excited. Why? Because, oh, beer, everybody loves to, like, it would get a big reaction anytime we told somebody about it. And they'd laugh and they'd be like, oh, that's cool.
I'll send this to my buddy or whatever. And so people liked it who are especially craft beer types, but I wasn't a craft beer type. And also, like, I didn't have the filter of like, dude, if I'm going to do anything, it's going to basically take up all my time for like three years minimum.
Is this the one? Right. And I was treating it like a, you know, like a hookup. And I should have been treating it like marriage because projects are more like marriage really when they like, once you decide to do them, you're going to do them for multiple years.
Right? Like, and so, so I've chosen a bunch. I've did a sushi restaurant, horrible project, beer app, horrible project, tried to build the next big social network and messaging app, worked so hard, built cool shit, but like the fucking hardest industry to like, you know, you're just running around with a bottle trying to catch lightning. So my project selection has been horrible to date.
The best project I ever selected was this podcast. And then the, you know, the e-commerce one was okay. Not great.
It like, it's successful, but it's more successful just because I got better at business. It's still a really hard business to be in and kind of a roll up your sleeves type of business to do. I think this is probably the next best.
Like, I think I finally did project selection right. And the reason why is I think that crypto is as important as like, you know, mobile apps and iPhone was in kind of like 2009, 2008, 2010, maybe. And as important as like the internet was back in like 1999, I think that's true.
And when there's a huge wave happening, it kind of doesn't matter exactly what you do. You just need to make sure you're out in the water, paddling with your board. And I had been kind of like, I had been investing and thinking about it, but like, it wasn't my job.
It wasn't my job to think about it every single day. What this newsletter does, like, I don't know if the news, I don't know if the media business is going to be amazing. I think it could be, but even if it's not, the fact that my job is that every day I have to learn two amazing things, like two interesting things about crypto and be able to explain it to tens of thousands of people.
That is like, that is a job that I think is going to pay off in weird ways. I could think, I think we're going to get into good investments because people are going to be like, oh, cool. Yeah, you guys got that big distribution.
Yeah, we want you in this project. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
I mean, that's what I'm going to find. That's what happened with the hustle.
SPEAKER_03
Right. And it's like, I'm going to find cool projects because I'm literally, I have to say something interesting tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. When this email goes out, I'm not going to say something boring. So that means I got to learn something every day.
So that means I'm turning myself into kind of like a learning machine. So that is why I think this is the right project. And the reason I share this is because I think it's the most important decision you make in any project you do, in any endeavor you do is just at the beginning.
What project you decided to go for?
SPEAKER_04
Dude, I, I, that's wonderful. I'm reading three, two, two books on this topic. The first is called Wanting, which is Andrew suggested it.
That's why I bought it. He suggested it on this pod. It's called Wanting and it's about mesmic desire.
Mimetic. Sorry, mimetic desire. And the second one is The Daily Laws.
And this, it's this daily, it's about the 48 Laws of Power and Mastery and all these great books by this guy named Robert Green. But you read just one page a day. And the whole first section that I'm continuing reading is like, how do you find what you care about? And it's really great because the, the thing is, is you want to find, you want to find stuff where you are able to, when you get into it, you actually get more energized.
And I've done a lot of stuff like a copywriting stuff, which I think is fun sometimes. But when I do it, I'm like, ugh, I gotta like, I'll be like, fine, I'm going to get this done by one o'clock on Monday. I got to get this done.
And then I realized one time a couple of years ago, I moved apartments and I remember the mover coming and I planned for a week. So I was like, all right, we're going to get all these boxes, we're going to stack these boxes here. This is how we're going to move it.
The mover is going to come at eight o'clock. I'm going to be there. I'm going to lift us up.
And then I was, I got up at five a.m. Cause I couldn't go to, I couldn't sleep. I was like, I'm so excited to move and to like physically move these things and set up the new place.
And I was thinking about that when I was figuring out what I'm going to do next. And that's one of the reasons why I'm getting into short term rentals right now is because I just got, and I think that the point I'm trying to make is when you're thinking about what gives you energy, it doesn't have to be, you said it, but I don't actually think you meant this this way. You said, I think this is a big deal.
And I don't think that's why it excites you. It excites you just because the, I don't know why it excites you, but like the, literally just like, it's a new money. That's kind of interesting.
I don't think it would matter if like everyone's talking about it or not. Like, I don't know if you, if that's what excites you, what excites you is like literally the tiny minute details for some reason it's just, maybe the math, maybe like your overflowing the system. Something about that is really interesting to you, right? And so for me, I was like, I just love moving these fucking boxes and moving into a new apartment.
I don't know why I love doing that, but like I love going out on the street and hunting for places and talking to the guy at the bar. Like, what do you think about this neighborhood? Are all the hipsters moving here? Like, I love it. I get obsessed with it.
And like, what I was trying to do, what I should do next is I was thinking about what do I just get so much energy of? And I remember I cannot sleep the day before I've got to move because I'm so excited.
SPEAKER_03
That's so funny, but I think most people hate that, but you love it, which is why it's even more valuable. When the thing you get energy from is things that drain other people's energy, like bingo, you're going to out compete everybody because for them it's going to be working for you. It's going to be play.
Like my coworker, this guy Paul Gebheim told me this once. He goes, he was like, I hadn't really thought about this. I was really young at the time.
I was like, maybe 24 or 25. And he goes, yeah, so you should go talk at this event. And I was like, why is it going to give growth to our app? Or are we going to recruit people? He's like, no, you should go talk because you love talking.
He's like, talking gives you energy, so you're going to love it. And I go, what? He goes, yeah, it's like, for most people, if they had to go give a talk in front of a bunch of people, they'd be drained by the time they even get up on the stage. And then afterwards, there'd just be like finally some relief from the anxiety I've been feeling.
He's like, you're the opposite. I was like, I noticed that. He goes, yeah, he goes, it's like going to the gym.
You go to the gym and like, if you just look at the math, it's like, well, there's a lot of energy expended working out. But how do you feel after you work out? You feel, yeah, you feel physically a bit tired, but you feel like your actual spirit feels energized. Like you go give energy and somehow you get energy in that moment.
And he's like, so, you know, there's some stuff that's energy drains, even though it's not that taxing. It's like, just think about your, think about filing your taxes for like the next 20 minutes. Watch, you'll feel fucking awful by the end of it.
You'll go need a nap or a drink. And it's like, on the other hand, if you do stuff that gives you energy, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, you can audit your calendar and say, I'm gonna highlight in green the things that I do that give me energy and put in red the things that suck my soul.
And, you know, if I want to have a better life, I should probably just do more of the green shit.
SPEAKER_04
I think that's great. I think that I've talked into a ton of people right now who are mess, they're like, you know, I've made a little bit of a name for myself. What should I do? By my career, but like, I don't even like it.
What the fuck do I do? And I'm like, oh yeah, it's tough, but you gotta find where, you have to find what gives you energy. That doesn't necessarily mean what makes you happy, by the way, but what gives you energy.
SPEAKER_03
Totally, because it can be really challenging and frustrating at times and, you know, it'll have highs and lows. In fact, I add this channel to every slack that I do. So like I just put it in our e-commerce one because we just had like a big low where we got F'd over by this like crazy unforeseen circumstance.
It's like, oh, well, here's another one. And so, you know, my team, they get so bogged down by these highs and lows. And I was like, guys, remember, like, we stood in line to get on a roller coaster.
Why are we surprised when there's highs and lows? That's what a roller coaster does. Like, if you didn't want the thrill, like, you know, we can go sit in the grass over there. We don't have to be on a roller coaster.
SPEAKER_04
That's such a good line. I'm still on that.
SPEAKER_03
And it's like, you know, so I create a slack channel called highs and lows. And I say, well, now we have a place to put it, which is in itself like therapy. It's like, ah, dude, this is gonna be an epic low that I put in there.
And we went, we wrote the low. And then we started riding some highs that we've had. And like, it's just, it's what you should expect.
Don't be surprised when the roller coaster goes up and down. When you stood in line to get on a roller coaster, you were excited about going on this roller coaster. You know, that's what you wanted.
You wanted the adventure. And so, and so, you know, that's how, I think that's like a good tip for really any business. That's a great line.
With the milk road, which milk road is the name of the, the crypto email that me and Ben send out every day. And like, you go to milkroad.com. About the domain, by the way, for $2,000. I think it was pretty good, pretty good buy, right?
SPEAKER_04
That's a good buy. Two grand from milkroad.com. That's a great buy. I would have thought you had to get the.
co.
SPEAKER_03
We had milkroad.xyz and it was like just such bullshit. Like people couldn't even, like the thing wouldn't even load.
I don't know why, but like milkroad.com. So when we started writing this, I was like, all right, I found my thing. Now I found my thing when I was probably like 32 or something like that, right? So it took me 12 years maybe to figure out what's the thing that gives me energy.
And mine was, I just want to get paid to be curious. And it's like, what does that mean? It's like, I don't know. Like every, like every day I hear about different stuff.
I'm reading about things. I'm talking to people. Wouldn't it be great if just like going and learning that thing was somehow how I got rich and famous? Like, wouldn't that be dope? And like the podcast does that.
It lets me just be curious. I could be like, oh, someone's making a bunch of money, selling turnkey tailgates to universities. How does the economics of that work? Right? Like that shouldn't be something I get.
I get the license to go spend three hours figuring out. But the podcast gives me that license. And cool, it gives me money and fame for doing it.
I get power and influence. Great. As a byproduct. Then the second thing, the e-commerce one, for example, does not give me this.
And that's why I don't think long, long term. It's for me because it's not me being professionally curious. It's like a more of an opportunistic thing.
Milk Road is that because every day I'm like, I like, for example, yesterday this guy came out with this thing that I think you'll find interesting. So most of the time people talk about the prices. People tell us about a lot of time talk about price of crypto, which is kind of annoying once you stay in it for a while.
But let's say the price of Ethereum right now is about $2,600 per per eith. And was that anywhere?
SPEAKER_04
It should be $5,000.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, people come out and they should be there like, oh, like, eith is going to $5,000. Eith is going to $10,000. Eith to the moon.
And like nine times out of 10, this is either hopes and dreams. Or it's like just clickbait. Like if I say I think Bitcoin is going to $5 million a coin, guess what? That's going to get covered by a bunch of people.
And like, a bunch of people are going to share it because it's outlandish. And hey, please don't hold me to it. What are you going to do? I'm just making some farfetched prediction about the future.
And the last one is they are like using some weak ass logic like people do this with Bitcoin all the time. They're like, there are 55 million millionaires in the world. And there's only 21 million Bitcoin.
There's not enough Bitcoin for the millionaires to all have one. So price is going to go way, way up. And it's like, OK, like I understand the general idea of what you're saying, but like that's so unsophisticated compared to, and this is why Warren Buffett comes out and says, Bitcoin is rat poison or it's pure speculation.
There's no fundamentals. That was like the that's the common narrative. So what I thought was kind of cool was, was that, I would have been just linked to an article in the chat where I did the clickbait thing where I said, I'm putting 25% of my net worth into Bitcoin.
This is like a year and a half ago or something like that. And I was like, because there's a there's a wave of institutional capital coming in, I'm going to front run the wave. And it just sounds great.
And guess what? Like, you know, these these news news websites,
SPEAKER_02
you know, look at this like cringe.
SPEAKER_04
So wait, so what was the thing that happened?
SPEAKER_03
All right. So this guy came out. He's a he's like a kind of like a crypto quant investor.
He's got like his own fund or whatever. And he said, you know, I actually think that there's a way to value Ethereum like you would value any stock any stock of a company. He goes, so how do you value a company? You value a company based on his cash flows.
Well, guess what? Ethereum has revenue. So what's the revenue of Ethereum? If Ethereum has revenue because there's transaction fees and, you know, people, this is not new, but there's something new of like Ethereum changed what it does with the transaction fees. So now you can value it.
So for example, Bitcoin has transaction fees, but the transaction fees get paid to miners. So as a Bitcoin holder, you don't get that revenue. And the miners all have different expenses.
One guy's in Greenland, his expenses are low because electricity is cheap there, whatever. So you could never really get the profits, the net profits of Bitcoin transactions with the Bitcoin network because it really wasn't that's not enough. It wasn't it was apples to oranges.
But Ethereum has changed what it does with the fees, which now lets you create a valuation model. So what happens? All right, Ethereum transaction happens. Let's say it's $100 for the transaction fee.
Seventy percent of that is called the base fee. And do you know what they do with the base fee? You know where that goes?
SPEAKER_04
No, I don't know anything what you're talking about to be honest.
SPEAKER_03
OK, so you OK. Well, I'll explain in the most simple terms. When there's an Ethereum, when there's a transaction Ethereum, there's a fee, right? That's cool visa, mastercard.
Everybody has a fee when you do a transaction. The Ethereum fee gets broken into two parts. There's the base fee, which is just burned.
So they take 70% of the transaction fee and they just get rid of it. Why would you do that? Well, this is like when a company buys back stock. It's a share buyback.
They basically buy stock on the open market and just get rid of it. What does that do? It makes it, it shrinks the supply of the stock, which makes the price go up, right? There's less supply, but there's the same demand. So price goes up.
So Ethereum started doing this thing last year where it takes the fee and it just buys back Ethereum and gets rid of it, which drives the price of it, drives the supply down price up. OK, so that's the first bit. The second bit is there's like a tip.
That's 30% of the fee today that goes to miners, but there's a like the way Ethereum, there's like Ethereum 2.0 coming out. When it does that, that's going to go to the holders of Ethereum, to the long term holders of Ethereum.
So that's like a dividend being issued out. So now you have, now Ethereum has revenue, which last month, that was 1.3 billion in fees, so real significant revenue.
And we know that that accrues, the value accrues to the two holders of Ethereum.
SPEAKER_04
So what price target did he put on it?
SPEAKER_03
So he does a model, he does a discounted cash flow model, and he basically says, based on this revenue, based on this multiple and based on this discount rate, the price target for Ethereum right now, right now, the present value of Ethereum according to, according to this model is $10,000 per ETH. ETH is trading at 2.6,000, you know, 2.
6K. If you believe this guy's model, he's undervalued currently by about 4X. And he put the model out there, so anybody can go change it.
You could say...
SPEAKER_04
What's his name?
SPEAKER_03
His name is... What do I do or read it?
SPEAKER_01
What was the name? Ryan Alice, Avalis.
SPEAKER_03
And so you could say, okay, maybe he's got really like aggressive assumptions in his model. Well, actually, he just used the average price to earnings multiple of the S&P 500, and he assumed 25% annual growth for the Ethereum network over the next 20 years, which is not like super aggressive, right? It grew like 1,000% last year, 400% this year, like, you know, it's growing much faster than that right now. So he used pretty conservative estimates.
Now there's always risks, right? And I have this phrase I put in the newsletter this morning, which is that, you know, more fiction gets written in Excel than in books. Right. You know, because you can make an Excel model dance and make it look great just by tweaking two little variables. So you always have to be careful with the stuff.
You got to do your own homework. But I found this to be really interesting because the common narrative is, oh, it's all speculation. It's got no intrinsic value.
There's no fundamentals. There's no analysis you can do on it. You're just guessing what the next guy's going to buy.
And that actually is true for most coins, and it was true for Ethereum until now. And one of the best things you could do as an investor is spot when something is wrong. When something, you know, common narrative is now no longer true.
Those are usually pretty big opportunities. So anyways, I was, I'm up till 3 a.m. last night because I'm learning what this guy's model looked like. I'm kind of checking it for myself.
Does this make sense to me? And I'm putting that in the newsletter as like, hey, let me make this simple for you to understand. Like this is kind of cool. And so even though that's a lot of work, that's a prison of my own making that I'm happy to do because I'd rather be doing nothing else.
SPEAKER_04
I hope that you're going to be into this, though, for years. I think you will be. That's the big TBD.
That's the, I think you will be.
SPEAKER_03
For now, I'm into it. I'm providing a fuck ton of value. Nine months from now, 28 months from now.
Am I going to feel the same?
SPEAKER_04
I don't know. But hopefully we can hire a writer who doesn't feel the same. I think with most people, even the shit they love, it does get boring sometimes.
And then what you do is you walk away or you chill and then you fall in love again. I mean, I have to imagine that even Steven Spielberg is like, I don't want to make a movie this year. Right. You know what I mean? I think, is that how they feel? I wonder what like Nadal or what's the tennis team and what's the tennis player or the. Rafael Nadal.
Yeah. I wonder like what he thinks about like tennis or something like that. I mean, I like, you say, bolt was like, I don't even like training, man.
I'm just doing this because I'm good at it. And it like, I like winning, but I don't really love, I'm not in love with this right now. And like, you, that's normal.
SPEAKER_03
I think that's natural.
SPEAKER_04
And you see even like fighters like Dustin Poirier when he beat kind of McGregor, he was like, man, I'm over this. I don't like doing this anymore.
SPEAKER_03
I don't even like this anymore. Tom Brady just retired yesterday, right? Like basically he's, he's what he's 44 now. So he's been doing this for like, you know, 20 plus years professionally.
And he was like football is, he's like, I still love the games, but football is a 365 days a year commitment for me. I don't know if you know about Tom Brady, but he like sleeps every day at like 8 p.m.
SPEAKER_04
The guy who started like the T12 or whatever his thing is called, the T body or whatever his thing is called,
SPEAKER_03
wanted to come on the pad. Oh really? His trainer? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
They got Alex. His trainer, a business partner, but like he branded himself as the guy who started it.
SPEAKER_03
The TB 12 method. So yeah, I think people do get burnt out. Tony Robbins has this thing he says, which he goes, people's number one need in life is certainty.
So like you need to know where your next meal is coming. If you got a roof over your head, where you're going to sleep. That's why we love relationships because we love the certainty and comfort of knowing who's going to be there, who you talk to, what you do every day.
We love routines. He goes, but you know, God in her infinite wisdom made it so that the second biggest need we have is uncertainty, which is variety, which is, it's like a seesaw. What do you do as soon as the thing is balanced? You start jumping around to mess it up, right? And like, you got to know that about your nature.
And, and there's like, you know, it's, it's completely normal to enjoy a structured routine. And then at the same time, crave variation doesn't mean you don't like the thing or it's not cool anymore. It's just that that's how humans are wired.
All right, sick.
SPEAKER_04
Let's wrap up here because I've got, I've got some stuff that I wanted to cover, but we didn't get through today and so we'll save that for Monday, right? Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_03
Producer Ben, what'd you think of the app?
SPEAKER_05
Good episode. Oh, I'm going to direct you on. Good episode.
Ben Levy, good edition, good story. Yeah. Solid episode.
SPEAKER_03
Ben, your, your meme was amazing. He did this meme, which is like, walks into Sean's office for interview. Is your name Ben? Yes.
You're hired.
SPEAKER_05
We're putting together a team. If your name is Ben and you're talented, get, get at us.
SPEAKER_04
How's your, what was your, what was your numbers in January? Ben?
SPEAKER_05
Oh, I need to look it up. It was, it didn't beat my best month, which was like just below a hundred. My best month was 97 or something like that.
And this was just below that.
SPEAKER_03
What's the latest, who are you profiling right now? What story are you telling?
SPEAKER_05
Well, I'm still in the middle of Walt Disney. I haven't put out part two yet. So I'm in the middle of that.
And also I'm a, I'm a big amist. I'm a cheater when it comes to research. So I'm also doing a little research on other stuff too.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. So I know a fair bit about Walt Disney. What's like, give me one tidbit.
That's like, I bet you didn't know this or this is super, what I found super fast. Give me one.
SPEAKER_04
I haven't listened to the update. He's optimistic and he went broke and bankrupt a few times, right?
SPEAKER_05
Yeah. I mean, that was the most amazing thing to me. I actually, the, the tidbit that like has blown my mind the most is there's this story where basically they're inventing cartoons of sound and like they're showing it to this audience.
The audience is going crazy, right? So they keep showing it to him again and again and again. And finally a couple of his animators are like, we can't do this. It's six hours.
They've been showing it to him. It's two in the morning. So they just like go outside of the theater a little bit and are like smoking and talking and he comes out and he goes, yeah, what are you guys going to do? You stand out here talking about babies or you're going to come inside and change the world.
And it blew my mind because I was like, if you just told me that, that quote out of context, I would have told you it was Steve Jobs. Like it was, it's so similar. And then I just like started putting it.
SPEAKER_03
I would have thought of Sam Parr when he said, do you want your kids to have braces?
SPEAKER_05
So those are just like two stories that I'm breaking this down now in the second episode. The similarities between their stories are actually like kind of uncanny. They have a lot of weird similarities.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. Isn't that I've always thought that like you could do with all types of people that you could basically there's like, I was always trying to think how many categories are there of people? Because I remember meeting some people and like, oh, you are this, you are exactly this human being. And after listening to your podcast, I remember listening to Edison and I'm like, oh, Elon is exactly like that.
And if I study Edison, I bet you I can like make sense of a lot of what Elon's doing and help predict what he might do. And I wonder if you could do the same for like a jobs and a Walt Disney where you just put them in the same category. Like I bet I can understand a lot of stuff because of Ben.
SPEAKER_03
This is perfect for your, your consulting business that you've created off the pod. You know, those disc personality surveys where it's like, you're a dominant, you know, indifferent or whatever, you know, like some bullshit like that. You're a red, blue and you can get along with greens.
You just need to do that with like great, great people in history. It's like you're 42% jobs and actually like, you know, say you're 42% jobs and you're 60%, you know, like whatever Walt Disney and it's like, what does that mean? It's like, well, you're like jobs in this way and everybody just gets a compliment. It's like, oh yeah, I'm, I'm 80% Edison actually and I don't work well with Disney's.
I'm 32% wasniacs. I need to find my job.
SPEAKER_05
Yeah. Yeah. Do some like Myers-Briggs over the top of it. I like that.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. All right. I'm all about making up fake personality quizzes.
I think that's great.
SPEAKER_04
I got to run. I got to go get my workout in. It's about to snow and get freezing in Austin.
Like the first time in a long time.
SPEAKER_03
So I got to get an Austin like shut down when it snows. Yeah, it's stupid.
SPEAKER_04
Like last year we were shut down for like a week, but I didn't have power and water for six days and it was like 20 degrees. So it was kind of warranted.
SPEAKER_03
By the way, speaking of one liners, you said an amazing one after we recorded last week that like, you know, he was just saying that Walt Disney quote. What was the one that you said that our, our buddy said?
SPEAKER_04
He goes, um, he goes, and this guy's like worth a hundred plus million dollars. He said, um, people hate on get rich quick schemes. Are they crazy? Getting rich quick is the best way to get rich.
Why would anyone hate on that?
SPEAKER_03
I love get rich quick.
SPEAKER_04
I only, I only want to get rich quick. Yeah. I got a good get rich quick scheme for me. I love that.
And this guy like sold his company in like two years. So like it was a get rich quick scheme.
SPEAKER_02
It worked. All right.
SPEAKER_00
See you guys. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like the days on for the road.
Let's travel never looking back.