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What does Nate Diaz say?
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One of our favorite fighters, he goes, "Stay ready so I don't have to get ready."
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Nate goes, "Warriors are always ready to roll." Right. I'm a ninja.
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[laughter] Ninjas don't warm up. All right, we're live.
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Sean, and to the listener, at the end of the this next 10 minutes little opener I have for you, I'm going to need you to make a promise to me.
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And I need the listener to do the same to themselves.
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Now, before I get to that promise, let me tell you a little story.
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So, there's this guy named Marcus Elliott.
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I read about him in this wonderful book called The Comfort Crisis.
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And Marcus Elliott is an interesting guy. You can Google him.
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He's like this ripped older guy now. He's a doctor, whatever.
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But his story is that he got his MD from Harvard.
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And he thinks he's going to go down this route of being a doctor, but he kind of hates it. He's not really into it.
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And so he goes into sports, a world you know a lot more than I than I do.
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And he decides to work for the Patriots.
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And the Patriots had an issue where they had something like 21 hamstring pulls per year.
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And they're like, "Dude, our guys keep getting hurt.
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It's losing us millions of dollars. Help us out." So, Dr.
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Elliott helps them out and they reduce their hamstring pulls by to to only three per year.
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The MLB sees this and they're like, "Hey, you're the man.
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Come and do that for us."
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He works for the Major League Baseball and he helps reduce injury significantly.
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Eventually, he opens up his own facility where athletes, all types of athletes, basically most NBA players, a lot of baseball players, they go.
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And he's got this beautiful facility where they do like 3D analytics and they look at your body and they're like, "You have a weakness here.
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You have a strength here.
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Let's capitalize on this.
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We need to fix this, otherwise you're going to get hurt."
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And so LeBron, all these guys go to him.
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And so the picture I'm trying to paint here, super data-driven, scientific guy.
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He's all about the numbers, whatever.
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However, there's this one thing that I read about him that didn't exactly fit with what he talked about, and it got me super invigorated.
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And this is where the promise that I'm going to need from you in about 5 minutes comes into play.
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So, there's this thing called Misogi.
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You've never heard of Misogi, have you?
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I think I've been called one, a misogynist or something.
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Is that [laughter] No, something else. What do you mean? Close.
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All right, so Misogi is this It stems from this Japanese myth.
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So, basically there's this story in Japanese mythology of this guy who goes into the underworld to save his wife, and it's this hard, tumultuous, physical journey.
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When he gets done and saves his wife, he comes back to this waterfall, and he cleanses himself.
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And that's like, I'm cleansing myself of this journey I just went through.
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I'm now a new man, whatever.
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Well, a lot of people, including one of your favorites, one of my favorites, Jesse Itzler, has kind of taken this term or this myth of Misogi, and they've kind of changed it to this thing where it means a huge physical challenge.
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Basically, something that you need to do 1 day out of the year, but it takes 364 days out of the year in order to prepare and get ready for it, and it changes the rest of your your year because of how challenging and you're you're you're you're preparing for it.
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Jesse calls it kind of like his one It's like his one big annual mission or challenge or adventure that he's going to go on, right? The his Misogi.
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Misogi or Misogi, you know?
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I've been calling it Misogi, but it's one of those words that you read, you don't say. To each their own, yeah. Yeah. This is why it's a myth.
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It's really discussed in only read about.
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And so, I'm not exactly sure.
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But Marcus gets into this where this doctor that I'm referring to, he gets super into this, and he's like, we have to have our guys do this.
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And so, he starts doing these Misogis.
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So, he'll do one where he'll like drive to the mountains, and just the highest peak that he sees, he's just like, by the end of the day, I'm reaching the top, and I'm coming back down no matter what.
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And he starts having his athletes do it.
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And one athlete in particular who gets super into this is Kyle Korver.
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This is where you come in.
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I don't know too much about Kyle Korver, but he's a great three-point shooter, I think.
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I don't even know what he in the NBA, yeah.
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Yeah, I know nothing about him other than I know that he's he's into this.
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And basically, Kyle Korver kind of becomes like a Dr.
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Elliott disciple, and they do crazy things.
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So, here's one of the things that they do.
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They carry an 80-lb rock underwater for 3 miles.
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So, basically, they're out in the Santa Barbara the ocean off of Santa Barbara, and they grab there's this rock at the bottom of the ocean.
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They got to swim like 10 ft down. They got to grab it.
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They can only carry it for like 10 seconds. They drop it. They come up for air.
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And they do that for 10 hours until they complete 5,000 m, so 3. 1 miles. Um it's insane.
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Another thing they do is there apparently in Santa Barbara there's like an island 25 miles away, and they're like, "Today, he Dr.
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Elliott just calls Kyle Korver.
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He goes, "Look, get ready, clear schedule.
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Today we're [ __ ] Get over here. [ __ ] Yeah.
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[laughter] Today we are paddle boarding to this island, and it takes them 15 hours to do it.
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And it's like and it's like a thing where they're bleeding, and they're like, "This is just sucks.
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It makes you want to quit."
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But, the point of all this is to help you live life so you're not sleep sleepwalking through life.
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These types of challenges, they make you appreciate life.
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They make you be a little bit disciplined.
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They make you be purposeful. And Dr.
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Elliott, he's got two rules for these challenges.
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Rule number one, you can only have a 50% chance of actually completing the challenge.
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And there's many examples of where he has done a challenge where he's failed.
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The second thing, this is a really easy rule, don't die. That's the second rule.
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Besides that, there are no rules.
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And so, here's where it gets to my challenge to you.
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You've been talking about getting abs for like the last like 3 months, and you're doing great. You look great.
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I I've been inspired by this because I see the YouTube YouTube comments.
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Every freaking comment is is how great you look.
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I think you need and so do our listeners, you need a Misogi.
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I I What does he list them somewhere?
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You said he's been doing this for years.
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What are like I need some I need a I need some options cuz I would have never thought of carrying a rock underwater a 80-lb rock underwater for 3 miles.
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That's it's hard to even brainstorm. Does he have good ones?
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Yeah, so they they can be fairly random and so he actually chooses to not train a lot for them.
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But in your case, it could be like today I'm going to walk 30 miles.
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Or today I'm going to walk 20 miles.
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And you actually don't a lot of times you don't want to plan for it too much because then that gives you too much of an edge to actually get it done.
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Or it could be like I'm going to in your case it could be I'm going to carry two 45-lb kettlebells for 10 miles and that will take you probably 12 hours. Something like that.
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Like a crazy challenge or you're going to ride your bike from LA to San Francisco.
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Uh just like a crazy challenge like that that is only a 50% chance of completing it.
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And so I need you to have one of those.
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[laughter] What about you? What what's yours? I've picked one.
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So this this this August I'm doing a 50-mile running race and I'm going to try and run that race at 10 minute per mile pace which is really challenging for me and the most challenging part is I don't even know how I'm going to be able to finish this.
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But cuz I think I'm going to get hurt.
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I think like there's a good chance I get hurt just training for it.
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But I want you to pick one.
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Let me tell you why I like this.
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Let me tell you why I like this.
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Number one, anything that's like there's this Japanese word that we don't have.
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I always love the end of those sentences. That's the first thing.
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The first company ever started was called Sabi Sabi Sushi and Sabi is this word that that Japanese have for basically finding beauty in the imperfection of things.
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And like we just don't have that word in English and and you know I so I like this.
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Anytime there's a Japanese word that we don't have the equivalent of.
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Second thing I like about this.
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I like the way that he did it where it's not a thing you're training for all year that you know about.
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You kind of said both ways.
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You were like, you prepare all year and then you do the thing, but then you also said he he would just be like, F it.
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Today, clear the schedule.
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We're doing a really hard thing. I found a hard thing.
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We're doing the really hard thing. Today is the day.
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It It's not about preparation. It's about guts. It's about courage.
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It's about being in a ready state of mind and a ready physical state all year so that whenever adventure calls, you can do it.
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I kind of like that a lot more.
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Yes, so Jesse Itzler is the one who adapted it to the 364 days.
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He That was a beautiful phrasing, I think.
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But, it is more so are you ready to do this?
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And so, you have to be ready at all times.
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What does Nate Diaz What does Nate Diaz say?
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One of our favorite fighters?
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He goes, Stay ready so I don't have to get ready.
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[laughter] Nate goes, "Warriors are always ready to roll." Right. I'm a ninja.
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[laughter] Ninjas don't warm up.
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So, I do like the idea of Misogi.
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I am down to do a Misogi.
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I want to kind of brainstorm what a fun one might be.
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Or, I might just go the the other way, which is to say, sometime in the next, let's call it 3 months, I'm going to find something.
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I will notice something, a challenge that kind of scares me.
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And that's the day that I have to do it. That's the day. Cancel the podcast. Cancel the meetings. I got to do this.
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And you know, one Misogi that I think everybody could take right now, one mission, is to go to youtube.
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com, type in My First Million, and subscribe to the channel because we have crossed 400,000 subs.
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And I got to tell you, dude, I'm at gymnastics yesterday.
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And uh you know, gymnastics is basically like part kids gymnastics, part like Fatherhood Anonymous.
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It's like all dads in there with their daughters, usually.
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And um we're all just, you know, taking part.
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So, one guy, he goes, "Hey, were you the guy who did that Did you talk to Tony Robbins?"
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[laughter] I was like, "Oh, yeah."
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He's like, "Dude, I saw you on YouTube."
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And I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's great. Did you watch it?"
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He was like, "Yeah, it was awesome."
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He's like, "What is that?"
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I was like, "Oh, I got this podcast."
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Next week he comes in and he goes, "Dude, I saw three more episodes. Really like it."
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He goes, he goes, "You know, I'm impressed.
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You guys got like 400 something thousand subscribers."
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But also, I feel like you should have a million.
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I was [laughter] like, "Wow, the audacity to tell me how many subscribers you should But he said it in a complimenting way.
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He was like, he's like, "You guys are dropping gold."
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He's like, "That thing about the A+ problems, I love that [ __ ] man. That was that was good."
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He's like, "I'm surprised you don't have a million subscribers."
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And I was like, "I'm surprised, too."
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So, to save me from future gymnastics embarrassment, go to YouTube, subscribe to the channel. All right.
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That's a That's a great reason.
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All right, everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's easy because I'm going to show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company.
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When I say I, I mean, not my team.
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I mean, I'm the one who actually made this.
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So, I've got this company called Hampton.
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You can check it out, joinhampton. com.
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It's a community for founders.
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And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys, but we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people a lot of times people are afraid to ask.
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So, things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these like interesting questions, and then we'll put it in a survey, and I went and made a landing page.
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So, you can check it out at joinhampton. com/wealth.
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You can actually see the landing page that I made.
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And the hard part with this is with Hampton, we are appealing to a sort of a higher-end customer, sort of like like a Louis Vuitton or Ferrari.
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So, I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates. That's what we used.
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We just changed the colors a little bit to match our brand. Very easy.
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They have this drag-and-drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple.
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I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it.
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And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it, and thousands of people who gave us their information, and I can then see over the next handful of weeks, this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did.
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This is where the revenue came from.
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So, it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn.
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whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it and I can say, "Oh, well, that worked, that didn't work.
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Do more of that, do less of that."
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And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it.
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Look, I'm actually doing it.
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But, you can check it out.
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Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started.
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All right, now back to MFM.
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All right, so back to Misogi.
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So, the I like the idea of a challenge, I accept.
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I will find what it's going to be.
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Um but, you know what I really like about this?
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I have avoided things like this.
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Like, anytime somebody's like, "Oh, I'm doing a ultra ultra man race."
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And I'm [laughter] like, you know, doing what I don't even know what these things are called.
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They're like A hard thing.
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Yeah, I'm doing a I'm doing a warrior jog.
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And it's like, all right, bro, all right, cool.
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I I'm not big into the David Goggins thing.
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In fact, I've kind of built my brand on the uh work smarter, not harder.
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Or like, "Hey, I'm a counterpoint to the idea that you got to work hard to achieve your dreams." Like, I don't know.
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I didn't work that hard, I achieved my dreams, right?
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Like, it's it's worked pretty well for me.
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However, I do think that the real value of this is not the physical challenge, it is the mental challenge.
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And I mean that in the the least corny way possible, which is like, I imagine if you do one of these, it removes a one layer of feeling limited in your life.
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It's like, "Well, if I did that [ __ ] and that was so hard.
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I did not think I could do it, I did not think I could push through, but I pushed through, I did it.
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I was scared of it and I did it anyways.
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I acted in the face of fear."
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I feel like that's the value and not obviously how many miles you ran or how strong your body was to be able to do that thing.
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That's absolutely the value.
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The value I think that to to do a lot of these things physically, I think most people could do them if they tried really hard.
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I have a challenge back to you.
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You gave me a challenge that's going to be very hard for me cuz you know, I'm a lazy [ __ ] I'm a I'm a dainty guy.
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I don't really get my I don't like getting my hands scraped up.
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So, I accept your challenge, but I'm going to give you one back.
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So, So gave me what I'll call the macro challenge.
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A big the big hard spectacle challenge, right?
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I'm going to climb this mountain with my fingernails, like whatever, some [ __ ] like that.
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I'm going to get I'm going to give you the micro.
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The micro challenge that I've given myself many times and I've actually never completed this, but I've tried many times that I'll give you cuz I think for people like you the hard thing honestly, let's be honest, is not that hard.
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You're going to do this 50-mile thing.
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You're going to succeed at it and you know that.
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That's the thing about you, dude.
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You know you could do stuff like this.
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No, I I'm attracted to this. Just be honest.
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I'm attracted to it because I love the glory of like getting it done and I love like proving to myself.
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But no, You believe you believe you will get it done.
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But you believe you will get it done.
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I believe I will get it done. Okay, agreed.
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Here's a hard one for you.
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For the next 24 hours or for any 24-hour period, I challenge you to not be bothered by anything for 24 hours.
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A zero complaint and a zero bothered 24 hours. challenge. See if you could do it. It is so hard.
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I have tried this for like 3 years.
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And I've tried it like consciously meaning like, "Okay, today I'm going to do it."
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Probably at least 50 times and I'm over 50, but I get closer and closer each time and it really points out it's like, "Damn, I threw it all away for that just because that little thing happened." And challenging?
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Is it So I can't complain about something mentally or or or only verbally?
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No, no, no, forget about saying it. That's easy.
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You can't have the thought. Don't be bothered.
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Do not feel bothered for 24 hours.
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See if you can do it cuz obviously, we all know logically we have a beautiful charmed life.
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Like all of us, anybody who's, you know, healthy living in the Western world, like life is better than it's ever been in all of history.
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Um yet we are in our heads complainers and we are annoyed by things and we're upset by things.
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We are frustrated by things.
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We really shouldn't be and this is a it's a micro challenge and you get no medals for this.
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Honestly, you get no glory for this, but I think it's very valuable.
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So I give you that challenge back.
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I I think that's a great challenge and I I want to I want to wrap this up and I'll only spend uh 2 minutes on this, but there's three challenges that I think are interesting if if they interest you. Okay.
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I don't think I don't think you could do the uh we'll see.
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One, and we got to talk about this is like a business podcast.
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These guys have turned these into businesses.
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The first one is called The Speed Project.
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I keep seeing people talk about this, but check this out.
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It's an underground race, meaning there's no website.
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You you can't really find details about it.
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I don't even You have to apply for it.
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I don't even know how you apply for it, but it's a race from Santa Monica to Las Vegas.
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You get four friends to do it and you and there's no rules, there's no route.
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They they just show up at the start line and they go, "All right, go. See you in Vegas."
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And the and the organizers go to Vegas and the first group of people who arrive, and you have to run the whole time, and you can't go on highways, those are the only two rules.
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The first people who get it, they win.
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The second one, and this is called The Adventurists, of which we've talked about.
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They do this thing called a monkey run, where you're on a mini motorcycle throughout Africa, and it's something like 1,000 mi or something like that, and it takes like uh 8 days or something like that.
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These guys are hilarious.
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I met with the owner with the amazing website copy?
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The amazing website copy. I met with the owners.
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They're doing millions of year uh in revenue, and I actually think this could be a potentially much larger business than it already is.
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I think it's a decent business. go into this. All right.
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So, website, so the adventurists. com.
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It says, "Giant adventure, tiny motorcycle."
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All righty, great headline.
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Then it says, "The monkey run."
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And it goes, "The monkey run is pretty stupid."
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"It's like a jungly, mountainy, desert-y velvet glove of adventuring joy.
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So, grab your sweaty hand and shove it inside.
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There's nothing like the sensation of a monkey bike between your thighs as you thunder slowly along dirt roads with absolutely no idea where you are.
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As you glance up, there, staring down at you like a baby ant in a tiny nest competition, might be some of the highest mountains on Earth.
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Imagine endless jungles lying in wait to punch your cheeky face with a fist of adventure.
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Imagine deserts that stretch far beyond the horizon at your woefully underpowered two-wheeled children's toy.
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Behold the Behold, people, the mighty Monkey Run. That's awesome, right?
17:24
I think it's like five grand, and they do a ton of these, and they're picking up steam.
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And the last one, this is the craziest one, it's called the Barkley Marathon.
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It's created by this guy who has a nickname called Lazarus Lake. I don't know why.
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But basically, he started this marathon.
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It's 100 miles in the mountains of Tennessee.
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The reason he created it was James Earl Ray is the guy who assassinated Martin Luther King.
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Well, he had one at one point escaped from prison for like 3 days, and it took him something like or or he was gone for 60 hours, and he only ran 12 miles.
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And this guy Lazarus Lake was like, "What a softy.
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I I easily could have done 100 miles through that route."
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And so he creates this 100-mile race inspired by the route that James Earl Ray took.
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And they do some crazy stuff.
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Uh basically, in order to get They only allow 40 people a year to join, and they get thousands of applicants to join this 100-mile race.
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It has a 60-hour cutoff, so it's pretty intense.
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In order to join the race, you have to pay a $1.
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60 application fee for some reason, $1. 60.
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You also have to write a letter as to why you are good enough and why like this is important to you.
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And if you get in, he sends you not a letter of acceptance, he sends you a letter of condolences that says like to this is the day that you might die. Great branding.
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These guys are masters of branding.
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I remember Wait, listen to this.
18:42
So, and we'll talk about branding, but listen to this.
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And then, once you get accepted, the registration fee is you have to bring a license plate, for some reason, a license plate.
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You have to bring flannels, socks, and underwear, because that's what this Lazarus Lake guy That's what he needs to in order to live throughout the rest of his year. of blood.
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And And the And the race starts not with a gunshot, it's when Lazarus Lake lights his cigarette, and that's when the race starts.
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And the And just And he made a video a few years ago where he goes He was trying to It was like a clickbait video where he goes, "Women are physically not capable of completing this race."
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And he goes on to say why, and he goes, "And if you think I'm wrong, come and prove me wrong.
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No woman has ever done it."
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Well, this year a woman finally did it.
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She's one of the I think only 18 people have ever finished this race, and now she's one of them.
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And so, he does this hilarious branding stuff. And Google this guy.
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He looks like a redneck hillbilly who wears Walmart camouflage and like fluorescent red hat. he's going hunting.
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And he smokes cigarettes all day.
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And he just thinks of all these insane obstacles that he could have.
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And so, yes, the branding on these things are are amazing.
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And it's just so It's so fun so to to create these things.
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And I think there's a lot of interesting opportunities here.
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You just have to do whatever you think is opposite of the right thing about business.
19:57
Look at the branding of this thing.
19:58
Well, just I'm just on this guy's Wikipedia page.
20:00
I've never heard of this one.
20:01
So, um Trail Runner magazine calls him an evil genius.
20:05
The Leonardo da Vinci of pain.
20:09
[laughter] Uh like his icon, which is him in the orange beanie lighting up the cigarette, genius.
20:14
The kind of like you have to try so hard just to even get to the starting line.
20:20
Like I remember we did one of those like a Spartan Race or Tough Mudder or whatever once.
20:22
And uh you have to climb a wall to get to the starting line.
20:25
It's like that before the race Yeah.
20:27
you better get through this wall.
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If you can't get through this wall, you're not you should not even do this race.
20:32
You You started this by talking about the comfort crisis.
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I think there's something to like this deep inner knowing that we've all become very, very soft.
20:42
And um and people are willing to pay for pain. Which sounds insane.
20:47
But it also probably would have sounded insane back in the day when we all worked on like fields and did labor that we'd be like, "Yeah, you know what?
20:53
At some point, we're all just going to sit all day for our work.
20:56
And so, then there'll be a place with heavy objects.
20:58
You'll just go voluntarily pay a membership fee, and you'll go there just to lift lift heavy objects."
21:04
You're like, "To To move them somewhere?" "No."
21:05
It's like, well, there must be crops that we're lifting.
21:08
No, no, they're just metal.
21:12
So, you just lift it, then what do you do? You put it down.
21:13
Yeah, you lift it up and put it down again. Like three sets of five.
21:16
What are you talking about?
21:17
And so, I think uh these are just the modern-day gyms, right?
21:21
Like these are the modern-day gyms, and the beautiful part about this is not only do you get the pain, you get a story to tell, too.
21:26
You get to go You get the social social cred, uh which is the key part of all these businesses.
21:30
I heard this quote the other day from the CEO of a luxury brand, and he goes, "The definition of luxury is dominating your customer."
21:37
And I was like, that's one of the greatest things I've ever heard.
21:41
Because if you think about it dude. Say that again.
21:42
That's a MFM classic right there.
21:44
What what What Who said this?
21:45
Um I heard it on Acquired, the podcast.
21:48
I think it's attributed to the guy who runs uh Louis Vuitton Group.
21:53
Uh and I think it What's his name?
21:53
Um Bernard Yeah, and he goes uh I think.
21:55
Uh but he says the He goes, "Luxury means dominating your customer." And what's that mean?
22:02
So, Ferrari, in order to buy a Ferrari, you have to get on a waitlist.
22:04
If you want to sell your Ferrari after you're done with it, you can't.
22:08
You got to like jump through all these hoops.
22:10
If you want to go and buy a Louis bag, I believe you have in most in many cases, you have to go set up an appointment to go and um and actually purchase the thing.
22:17
And so, I heard this quote, and this has changed so much of my thinking.
22:21
Uh and it relates to this race or it relates to other things of making your customer jump through hoops in order to acquire the good makes it so much more valuable.
22:30
The problem is is that's really hard to pull off.
22:31
But, if you can pull it off, you have the the will and discipline in order to like take this risk, it's pretty badass, and it creates a true cult.
22:40
I I think that's an awesome insight.
22:42
I'd like to tell you about a luxury brand that I was going to bring up anyways.
22:47
Now, when you think of luxury, typically you'll think of what?
22:50
Like Louis Vuitton, like you know, these sort of uh fashion fashion brands, right? Yeah.
22:55
How much does a Louis Vuitton bag cost?
22:57
A cheap one maybe is 2,500.
22:57
I imagine a really expensive one is 20 20 grand?
23:03
Yeah, let's say 5 grand on average for a for a LV bag. Okay, 5 grand. That's that's okay.
23:10
Also, maybe child's play compared to some other luxury brands.
23:11
You talked about Ferrari.
23:13
Ferrari average price point is what? Like Maybe 250 or 300. I don't know.
23:17
Yeah, that's what I thought.
23:17
Okay, so I have another luxury brand that costs about 200 to 250k.
23:24
Um do you know which one I'm thinking of? No. [laughter] Harvard. Harvard?
23:31
Colleges, top top flight university universities are part luxury brand, part daycare, part education, part insurance policy.
23:38
Shout out to Peter Thiel who first pointed this out.
23:42
And um I just wanted to use this to talk about a very fascinating business.
23:47
So, there's a tweet that uh somebody put up.
23:48
Uh this guy pointed out one of the one of the great examples of niches and riches.
23:52
And the niche that he chose is basically this guy's in China and opens up a college merch shop.
23:57
And he's like, "Dude, I walked into this merch shop.
24:02
It's busy as hell at all times."
24:04
And he's like, "They're just selling like Harvard sweatshirts and Yale sweatshirts and Princeton sweatshirts to Chinese people who don't go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton and don't have any intention to.
24:14
It's just a luxury brand that is [laughter] that is being you know promoted here in this here.
24:20
He goes, "I want to import American college merch in China.
24:22
This shop here still sells Harvard and Stanford branded hoodies and they print millions of dollars.
24:27
But I saw this firsthand.
24:29
So, when I lived in China, I finished high school in China.
24:31
And you know how here you have like Kaplan and you have like other like kind of SAT prep courses?" Yeah.
24:37
Uh I think when I was So, I went to school in Texas and then I moved to China.
24:41
And in Texas, the number of people who were doing these SAT prep courses were kind of like who you would expect.
24:45
It's the kids doing AP classes on a roll type stuff.
24:47
Maybe 20% of my school was doing it at the time.
24:51
I don't know if that's just my experience, but that's what it was. One out of every five.
24:56
In China, it was six out of every five.
24:59
Every single kid did SAT prep.
24:59
Every single kid wanted to go to US universities, and every single kid and their parents like revered these American university brands.
25:09
And I just you know, in America you could start you could sell these licensed college gear.
25:13
By the way, these are not dupes.
25:14
These are These are like officially licensed, I guess.
25:15
And so you could sell officially licensed college gear, and it does okay.
25:19
It's not like the best niche to be in.
25:21
But it's just a great example of like finding a niche where the market is actually bigger.
25:27
If it like you know, the market for water is bigger in a desert than in a grocery store.
25:30
And basically that's what this guy did.
25:32
He took the water to the desert and took these luxury brands over there took these luxury college brands over there.
25:39
And I thought this was He's doing it right now?
25:40
No, this guy just posted about the store, but I guess it's this Brandy Melville store that's doing it.
25:45
But I thought this was a very smart thing that this company is doing selling this gear there.
25:48
And I've seen kind of like the demand for US college elite universities as like a Louis Vuitton style uh you know, symbol.
25:55
Do you want to know a little bit of history?
25:57
This is very weird, but I recently read a book called how how Japan saved American fashion.
26:04
And the story is basically after World War II, America takes over Japan.
26:09
The Japanese are like, these Americans are going to come over and crush us.
26:11
Well, America's rule at the time was we're going to try and be kind and hopefully they're going to we're going to buy some goodwill and it's going to turn out okay. And they did.
26:18
And so these Japanese start becoming friends with the American soldiers.
26:21
They start learning about American culture.
26:22
And for some reason this guy named Kensuke Ashizu he creates this fashion brand and he calls it Ivy Prep fashion.
26:33
And and so he like sees old pictures or they're not old, but at the time from the '50s of like Brooks Brothers ads.
26:38
He just sees these cuz one of the American soldiers has it and he goes, "Wow, everyone who lives on Harvard's campus must dress like a Brooks Brothers magazine.
26:48
We're going to make make popular."
26:50
And at the time the Japanese were very conservative with their dress.
26:53
The prep fashion was considered a little bit less conservative.
26:56
And so, he makes this a huge thing.
26:58
It becomes a massive company.
26:59
And that's one of the reasons why in in some Asian cultures, this Ivy League prep is popular over there.
27:03
It turns out popular there.
27:06
But it turns out he ran this business for 10 years without ever going to America.
27:10
So, he goes, "I need to finally get over there to America and see what's it's all about."
27:14
He goes to the campus of Harvard and he walks around.
27:17
He's like, "You guys are wearing like cargo shorts.
27:18
Why aren't you dressed like the magazines?"
27:20
And so, have you ever like hung out with some of your like Asian friends who just came over and they dress a lot nicer than you and they like they like wear a better American fashion.
27:30
That that's kind of what happened with this like whole fashion trend was like we took the American style, but we cranked it up to the extreme.
27:36
So, we're now like more American they're the American caricature as opposed to what they really are.
27:41
And so, A Duke So, Duke is kind of like these like old school like it look the campus looks very much like Yale or whatever.
27:49
Um it's like the Ivy of the South they call it.
27:51
There was a guy named Bobo.
27:51
And I don't know what his real name was.
27:54
I think his last name was like Boba Dee or something like that.
27:56
But everybody called him Bobo.
27:57
And I think he was in the international dorm.
27:59
But this guy would always walk around dressed to the nines.
28:04
So, he had like the vest, the blazer.
28:06
And he was like wearing khakis.
28:08
He would never wear shorts.
28:08
He would never wear like athleisure [ __ ] And he would have a rolling like briefcase that he would take with him every to every single class. No backpack.
28:15
And he had like that like kind of like the beret type of cap.
28:20
And at first we all kind of laughed at him.
28:22
But by like week three we were like, "Bobo looks pretty fly actually."
28:26
[laughter] And we I think I think that's what happened.
28:28
This guy came over internationally.
28:29
He was like, "I think this is how I'm supposed to dress."
28:32
[laughter] And that's all he had in his wardrobe. It was amazing.
28:34
Yeah, and and that tends to happen.
28:36
I've had a bunch of Asian friends who come over and I'm like, "Dude, you are dressed as if you read an American magazine and think that that's how we all behave and you You way better than us."
28:45
Well, this gave me an idea which was like, you know, how do you just how do you put a 10% remix on an idea?
28:50
So, um I don't know if you read my 5-2 Tuesday thing I sent out, but I had this one um picture in there.
28:54
Do you see the McDonald's merch I put in there? No.
28:58
So, there's this guy on Twitter.
29:00
He's a He's a great follow.
29:00
He's uh I don't know how you say his name.
29:02
It's like the most French name I've ever seen.
29:05
Guillaume Huin, I don't know how you say it.
29:07
Um he's the senior marketing director at McDonald's.
29:09
He's the ex-head of social.
29:11
He tweeted this thing out.
29:11
I will follow this guy and he's great.
29:13
He just has like really great McDonald's like marketing stuff that I that I like to follow.
29:19
And so, he tweeted this thing out.
29:21
He goes, "The merch from McDonald's France is a big oui." Like a big yes.
29:25
And um there's this jacket that just looks so fly.
29:27
And I'm like, "Oh my god, I want this jacket.
29:28
This jacket looks amazing.
29:29
I never wanted a McDonald's jacket until now I must have this McDonald's jacket."
29:33
And it kind of gave me this idea, which is if you take this kind of like luxury high fashion streetwear type of like designer, but you use them on licensed IP that's usually pretty low-end casual, you get kind of an interesting result.
29:50
So, he did it with McDonald's.
29:50
I when I saw this college thing, I was like, "Oh, you know, the college gear that pretty much every store sells is the same.
29:55
It's sweatshirts, it's hoodies, it's like sweatpants, and like t-shirts."
30:00
And nobody really takes those that same IP and does it in kind of high fashion or any kind of like luxury interesting niche, right? or streetwear. Yeah, or streetwear.
30:10
And I think that would be a good remix that you could do um I agree. on this. I agree. It's awesome. Um I totally agree.
30:20
I actually own four or five different Ivy League sweatshirts because I got so obsessed with this. I took tours of them.
30:27
I always tell people, "I toured Harvard once."
30:30
It's like I I I bought a Groupon.
30:33
[laughter] But I I completely agree.
30:35
I've got my Stanford one. I completely agree. I'm into this.
30:39
I really want to do do with uh company brands.
30:41
So, I want to create a like a rogue uh uh merch company that just does absurd merch for for tech companies cuz for two reasons.
30:51
One, all merch is all corporate merch is the same. It's the same thing.
30:54
It's all hoodies, t-shirts, backpacks, vests, like the same socks, like the same [ __ ] Um and it all tends to be pretty cheap.
31:02
And I just thought it'd be interesting if you sold if you did a merch company called the absurd merchandise corporation um or the ridiculous merchandise corporation.
31:11
And so, I was like, well, what we would do is you take First, you make categories that are not already made.
31:18
So, for example, when you were at The Hustle and you guys did ad sales, did your sales team have a gong? Yeah. Yeah.
31:23
And you bought that gong and it's kind of an unbranded gong.
31:27
You bought it off some crazy Yeah.
31:31
I think somebody should make like the sales gong, the deal trophy, the like Series A ring, like a class ring or an exit ring.
31:37
Like if you sell your company, you get a ring.
31:39
Like somebody should make categories that other merch companies don't even touch and you do limited quantities but high price points.
31:45
And then the other thing I think you do is you do like more unique fashion, super high quality, super high price point of corporate merch.
31:55
And that's like what like that McDonald's jacket.
31:57
Like do the equivalent of that. Yeah, man.
31:59
Dude, I if I had if I could purchase like a really cool old Apple or like remember how Apple used to have the the Apple that was a rainbow or how Microsoft had the the four squares that had the The retro, vintage, throwback stuff.
32:11
I Yeah, I went on Etsy the other day looking for this stuff and I bought a bunch of things on Etsy of like vintage, retro tech stuff.
32:18
There's not a lot out there, but I was inspired because I went out to dinner with our buddy Greg Eisenberg. And Greg shows up.
32:24
I haven't seen Greg in a few years.
32:24
And he he's like a cool guy. And Greg's very cool.
32:28
Greg has um Greg is like mood music.
32:33
Like if you just hang out with Greg, your your head starts to nod almost like there's music playing and you're like, "Why am I just in a good mood? Why is my foot tapping?"
32:39
It's cuz you're hanging It's like there's a great Eisenberg within 10 ft of you.
32:41
Um so, I'm hanging out with him and I'm like, "Is that an IBM jacket?"
32:45
Have you ever seen his IBM jacket? No, but was it old?
32:48
So, he's got like a 1980s IBM windbreaker jacket. That's awesome.
32:54
And it doesn't quite fit exactly right, but I'm like I'm like, "Where did you get this, dude? What is this?"
32:58
He's like, "I was in Japan."
33:00
And I was like, "Okay, of course."
33:02
And so, he goes, "I was in Japan and I'm on a a train and I'm sitting next to this guy.
33:07
He's an older guy and he's wearing this jacket."
33:10
And I'm like talking to him. He's great.
33:11
We have a great conversation.
33:13
And at the end of the conversation, he gave me his jacket.
33:17
[laughter] I was like, "What?"
33:17
Most Greg Eisenberg thing to do, strike up a great conversation with somebody to the point where they're just like, "I like you. Here's my jacket."
33:24
And so, he's got this jacket and what I told Greg, I go, "Dude, we should just turn this into one of those like one of those things that exist in the world for no reason, but is awesome, which would be you should And next time you have an amazing conversation with somebody, you have to give them the jacket.
33:40
And then they have to give the next person the jacket and let's see how far the jacket goes."
33:44
And so, I kind of want to start this and I want to So, I bought one off Etsy and I was like, "I'm going to buy this jacket and I'm going to do this.
33:51
The next time I have an awesome conversation, I'm going to give it to him and I'm going to say, 'The next time you have just a lovely conversation that just leaves you lit up with somebody who just spontaneous, serendipitous, not somebody you know, you must give them the jacket.
34:02
And let's see And then when you give them the jacket, I'm going to make like a Google Doc.
34:06
Be like, "Jacket handed to Japanese man on train." You know, with the date.
34:11
And let's just see how far this jacket goes.
34:14
You better buy the whole stuff, otherwise the person will be like, "No, thanks. I'm good."
34:19
[laughter] You can No, it's yours. You can keep it.
34:22
Um dude, pick one of these other topics.
34:24
Some of these I sound like they might be funny and I feel like laughing. What do you got? Okay, I got a funny one.
34:28
Uh if you wanted a I got a funny one.
34:30
Uh this is Some people are going to be like, you shouldn't make fun of this.
34:35
But that's what this podcast is.
34:35
It's an honest conversation amongst friends.
34:40
[laughter] And so, did you see the Marissa Mayer uh new app launch? No, what happened? Oh my god, dude.
34:47
Wow, this is This is insane.
34:50
Okay, so Marissa Mayer, who Do you know her backstory, who she is?
34:55
Early at Google, one of the first 20 Google people, climbed her way up, gets wealthy, and then becomes CEO of Yahoo.
35:01
She created the product manager like program at Google, which then trained a bunch of people who then went on to go work at Facebook or a whole bunch of product people.
35:08
It's like this long family tree.
35:09
So, she and she's famous.
35:11
She was like, you know, tested the shade of blue on the of the Google search button, you know, 42 times before finding the optimal shade of blue, right?
35:19
Like, you know, whatever.
35:21
So, she's supposed to be like, you know, high product chops.
35:24
Goes and then becomes the CEO of Yahoo.
35:26
She's this amazing CEO, apparently, but then kind of like Yahoo falters, so people are kind of like, was she good? Was she bad? I don't know.
35:32
Maybe it was hard to turn that around.
35:33
Anyways, I haven't heard from her in a little little while.
35:37
So, she comes out of nowhere and just posts a Twitter thread and is like, "You ever been at a party and you and somebody says, 'Hey, share that photo with me?' and then they don't?
35:48
Well, I'm going to solve that problem with my new app, Shine."
35:50
And all I wanted her to do is So, so look at this app. So, she It's 2024.
35:55
She creates a photo sharing app, which is like the most 2012 thing possible that you could do, which is the last time anybody heard of Marissa Mayer.
36:03
It's like she was frozen in time and somebody she somebody like thawed her out and she popped out and just made the same app you would make in 2012 when the iPhone was like, you know, just popping and people were doing photo sharing apps.
36:15
So, she posts this thing and you'll see that the thread has like thousands of like, you know, retweets and whatnot.
36:21
And the reason why is because some Some are like, "Oh, this is cool."
36:26
And a lot of people are like, "Why is this the ugliest app I've ever seen?"
36:30
[laughter] Look at the design of this app.
36:31
So, like so just look at the pictures.
36:34
I want you to give me your reaction, and then I want to read you some of the funny comments that I saw on this.
36:40
She's maybe past her prime in terms of knowing what's up, like knowing what's cool. [laughter] Right? I think so.
36:47
Basically, the thing looks like a test flight app.
36:49
Like everything is rectangular, all the colors all the buttons are too big, all the colors are too too boring.
36:55
The font she chose for the main thing literally like somebody retweeted this thing going, "Okay, cool, but why does it look like an Indian wedding invitation?"
37:06
[laughter] Which is so spot on.
37:08
The font literally is the Aladdin font. It's crazy.
37:10
Um why is she why why is she doing it?
37:14
So, Marissa Mayer is probably I bet you if she's not a billionaire, I bet you she's like Yeah, hundreds of millions.
37:19
within that that ballpark. Why is she doing this?
37:21
This seems like way beneath her.
37:23
I mean, it's fun to build things, and I think she felt this problem of like, "Oh, it's hard to do group photo sharing at events."
37:29
Uh you go to a party, and you want to see everybody's pictures, and it's not easy to do still.
37:34
And there was a famous app Color that tried to do this way back in the day.
37:36
Many many people have tried to do the same app. And uh maybe it's time.
37:42
Or maybe it's time to hire a designer.
37:43
One of the two things are true, and we're going to find out which one it is. I like her. I like this woman a lot. I hope I hope she wins.
37:48
I'll I'll leave it at that.
37:51
Oh, did we do a good cop bad cop thing there? I like that. That was nice. You like her, too. I mean, she seems great.
37:56
I mean, I don't know her.
37:56
I [laughter] I don't know her, either.
37:59
But her Wikipedia left a wonderful impression when I read it.
38:03
If you are successful and famous, and you put out a product, and the product looks ugly, it's not I my personal belief is that it's not mean to say that the app looks really ugly.
38:13
And I'm not the only one to say this.
38:15
There's a lot of people saying this.
38:16
I found it very funny that this is the case. That's all I'm saying.
38:19
I wish her well, and I have nothing against her personally.
38:23
I do not know her, and she's obviously very smart, more successful than me, smarter than me, and all those usual disclaimers.
38:28
All right, you do one more thing.
38:31
Well, all right, it's time for the thrill of the shill, which as you know, is when we shill one of our companies, but before we shill, we thrill you with something interesting.
38:37
And all right, so here's the interesting thing.
38:39
So, me and Nick Huber were part owners of Shepherd, but we one of the things we've done that's been pretty cool is we do these like workshops or you know, haters will call them webinars, and our fans call them workshops.
38:52
[laughter] So, we do this together, and I thought going in I was like, okay, cool, so what are we going to do?
38:56
Just show up and be like, use Shepherd?
38:57
And he's like, no, no, no, like let's add a bunch of value. I was like, okay.
39:00
He's like, so let's talk about the stuff we're doing in our companies that actually works, that's non-obvious, and like kind of was an unlock for you as a CEO or manager.
39:08
Like, your life before you did this tactic was one way, and after was better. And so, I'm big on that.
39:14
I'm like, oh, great, I'm going to shine here.
39:15
And we get on, and Nick tells a story that's so good that I'm like, where the hell did he get that from? That was awesome.
39:22
And I had to follow that, and I was like, oh, yeah, I I I I I I I I I I I I I do metrics and KPIs. Yeah, that's whatever.
39:29
Nick's thing was so good, I didn't even need to say anything else.
39:30
So, Nick comes in there, and he starts talking about a monkey on a desk.
39:33
Have you heard this story? No.
39:38
Okay, so, he tells the story, and it again, it was so good that only recently I heard it again, and I was like, are they talking about Nick's thing?
39:44
And I realized Nick got this from Harvard Business Review.
39:47
It is the number one or number two most sold article of the Harvard Business [laughter] Review.
39:52
It was this monkey on the desk thing.
39:54
I'm like, oh, that makes so much more sense.
39:55
Still all credit to Nick for teaching it to me, but um it it got me thinking, oh, wow, I'm not the only one who likes this.
40:01
This thing is if it's a best if it's like the second best-seller in all of their their their articles, then that's that's pretty good.
40:08
So, here's here's the idea.
40:11
So, it's a it's a rookie mistake that almost everybody makes as a manager or CEO.
40:16
You build a company or you're you're in charge, you start to hire people, and you you're in your mind you're like, "Great, I hired these people, and now they're going to take care of all these things.
40:24
Now my life I'm going to have less work because I hired these people." Right?
40:28
But of course, every kind of like first-time manager CEO kind of learns, well, we all pretty much suck at delegating at the beginning, and so what happens is you hire somebody, that person comes in, they try to do a good job, and they do he has this analogy of the monkey.
40:41
So the monkey is like a problem.
40:43
So he's like, an employee walks by your office, and they knock knock, "Hey boss, can I come in for a second?
40:50
Um I just want you know, I we have this situation. We got this problem."
40:53
And you're like, "Oh, [ __ ] Okay, let's talk about it."
40:55
And he's like, "We have this problem. Here's the situation. This is happening.
40:58
What do you think we should do?"
40:59
And you're like, "Uh okay, I don't it's not an easy answer, so I'm not sure. Let me think about it. I'll get back to you."
41:06
Like, "Let me let me think about it, or send me the info.
41:09
I'll read it, and then I'll get back to you."
41:11
And he's he what he what this guy points out is that that sounds very reasonable, but what's happened is they took a monkey that was their problem, that they were responsible for, and now you've said, "Let me think about it.
41:20
I'll come back to you with an answer."
41:21
Or let me send me the materials.
41:23
I want to read them, and then I'll come up with a decision.
41:26
They've given you the monkey.
41:26
The monkey's on your desk.
41:29
Then the next guy walks in.
41:29
He says, "Hey boss, you know, wanted to get your opinion on this.
41:34
Uh I'm thinking about doing this."
41:34
And you're like, "No, no, no, I don't like that. Let me let me edit it.
41:36
Let me let me fix that for you.
41:39
You you don't know what you're doing. Let me fix that for you.
41:41
And uh and I'll I'll I'll I'll come back to you."
41:45
Again, monkey's off their plate, it's on your plate.
41:46
And you know, let's say you have five direct reports, only five employees that report to you.
41:51
If even and all of them will usually have one monkey a week of like some unsolved problem.
41:56
By the end of the month you have 20 monkeys crying in your office, and you're like, "What the hell just happened?
42:01
I hired all these people, but somehow I have more work uh than I had before, right?
42:06
Because I'm now responsible for solving a bunch of these problems."
42:10
And so this article is basically talks about how you should handle that situation instead.
42:12
Like how to actually delegate it so that at the end of the day they own that problem.
42:17
So it's like first thing you want to be very clear with them who owns this problem? You own this problem.
42:20
I don't own this problem, right?
42:22
That means you're going to be responsible for uh ultimately executing it, for the results of that execution, and for the final decision.
42:30
If you need help or input you can schedule a time with me.
42:33
So you can't just come in and drop this problem off and now it's my problem.
42:37
I got to deal with this now.
42:38
It's like we will have scheduled time where we will talk about any way that I can help you with your monkey.
42:43
I can help you feed the monkey.
42:44
Uh I can help you you know you know put the monkey to bed.
42:46
Whatever you need to do, we're going to have scheduled time.
42:48
You don't get to just hijack my time with whenever this problem exists, right?
42:52
There's only rare situations where you need to break the glass and hijack my time.
42:55
Don't do it as a default.
42:57
So part of it is like um you only help in scheduled times.
43:00
The second is making sure they understand that this is their problem, not yours, right?
43:04
You trust them with this.
43:05
Nick's point is he's basically like one of the things people did they're very scared to do that cuz what if they mess up?
43:10
And he's like, well in the short term that is painful, but in the long run it's great because what you're going to find is people will go one of two ways within the first month of doing this.
43:19
You're going to either find out, wow this person is really capable of solving that problem.
43:22
Like they can take care of this monkey and more monkeys.
43:25
I should actually promote them. I should invest in them.
43:27
They're they're you know they're a keeper.
43:31
And the other is you know sort of sink or swim thing.
43:33
Like if they can't handle the monkey when you give it to them, they're not the right person for the job.
43:36
And you can give them feedback one time of how you think they should handle the monkey.
43:40
And if they don't do it the second time, you kind of know, well this is not not the right fit and it filters them out.
43:44
And so over time you only have competent people who can take care of the monkeys themselves.
43:48
How did he tie in Shepherd?
43:50
Well he's like, you know, look uh you need uh you need to hire great people, but when you hire them it's not like like yes, Shepherd will help you find great people, right? That's what we do.
43:58
We're like, in you know you need a bookkeeper, you need an assistant, you need a marketing manager, you need somebody to do SEO for you.
44:05
Whatever it is that you need, we'll find you the person.
44:07
But if you're not good at actually delegating them, you're not going to ultimately get what you want out of this.
44:12
You didn't come to us just for the hire.
44:13
You came to us to have your problem solved with less workload for you, right?
44:17
To scale your business with less work for you.
44:19
That's actually why you come to Shepherd, not just to hire a person.
44:22
And so, his big thing was like, if we can help people actually learn how to delegate, then they're going to end up hiring more people cuz they're going to have successful hire after successful hire, right?
44:31
You're going to have one great experience and it's going to lead to the next great experience.
44:33
So, that's kind of how we tied it in.
44:34
But I really like this monkey on the back um thing and I started to see it then.
44:38
And every every time I would come to, you know, employee would come in with a problem, I would, you know, quickly differentiate between do we need to talk about this now or should we just have time when we talk about things?
44:47
And secondly, how do I make sure that they're not just giving me the problem and my instinct is a problem solver.
44:52
I'm a doer and I trust myself more than I trust anyone else.
44:56
So, my instinct is just to do it myself just this one time.
44:57
But that just this one time mentality never ends.
44:59
You're going to be doing that forever.
45:01
You don't catch me as a regular one-on-one meeting type of guy, but are you?
45:08
I try not to have regular one-on-ones.
45:08
I think right now I probably have one. Uh two.
45:13
I have one with my assistant.
45:16
Cuz I'm like, "Hey, what I do with my assistant, which is great."
45:17
So, I hired my assistant off Shepherd. That's the plug.
45:20
So, what I tell her to do, I I just created a [ __ ] filter.
45:21
I'm like, "Anything you see that comes into my inbox or anything I say in passing that is non-urgent, I need you to put it all together into one doc and schedule 1 hour with me and we just knock them all out in that 1 hour of cleanups."
45:35
Because like I hate when I have to like stop what I'm doing, my big task, and like just address this one little thing.
45:40
"Oh, my eye glasses prescription thing.
45:43
Oh, my my kid uh their elementary school asked for this or um yeah, this person's asking for their K-1 or whatever it is." Like random requests.
45:50
This person's asking for this for a laptop or whatever it is.
45:54
And so, I said, "If unless it has to be addressed right now, we do them on Wednesdays.
45:57
We got a cleanup time and there's one doc and we just make it game.
46:01
It's like, how many of these can we knock out in one hour?
46:04
I'm just going to make decisions on the fly and it's not going to interrupt anything else I'm doing.
46:07
So, she helps me with that.
46:08
Um, and so I've delegated to her like the entire class of things which are stuff that has to get done but is not important.
46:17
It's not going to like push the ball forward on my my hopes and dreams.
46:21
It's just like [ __ ] that's got to get done that um I would rather put all together and knock out in one batch.
46:27
And so I have that meeting and I have one with the CMO of my e-commerce business where I just we talk about how it's going.
46:31
Those are the only two that we have.
46:33
By the way, I um I think your deal with Shepherd might end up being pretty good.
46:38
I mean, you already knew that.
46:40
But did you I won't even name the names cuz we'll we'll we'll be a Shepherd uh pod, but one of your competitors just raised money at a $300 million valuation, I think.
46:51
It was hundreds of millions and they showed how much revenue they added in the last 12 months and it was jaw-dropping. Jaw-dropping. It was insane.
47:01
I had no idea these things could be as big as they are.
47:05
I think they had added Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah.
47:10
All the competitor all all the companies that are were like doing this like the companies that are starting now, I think are having a tough time or a much tougher time.
47:16
It's not really going to work out in the long run, but the ones that have been doing this for like four, five, six, seven years, they're benefiting from like this like work went remote, right?
47:24
When work went remote, that was a big deal.
47:26
Having offshore talent is just like a smart thing to do.
47:30
It's just like more remote. That's fine.
47:31
It's no no extra organizational cost to you. Right?
47:33
The second thing, during the zero interest rate, you know, period, everything was about growth, growth, growth.
47:40
Nobody cared about profits.
47:41
Now, everybody cares about profits.
47:42
Well, one of the biggest cost to every business is their labor and if you can basically reduce your labor cost by even, you know, percentage points, that all drops straight to the bottom line.
47:51
And so your your your EBITDA goes up.
47:53
When your EBITDA goes up, the company value goes up.
47:56
Like that became the focus for a lot of real companies now.
47:58
Uh And I think the last thing is that I don't know, people like me and others have started to talk more openly.
48:03
Like, it used to be, and maybe still is, I don't know, kind of a douchey thing to be like, "My assistant." Or whatever.
48:09
Like, "I have an assistant."
48:09
Like, it's kind of like a thing most people didn't brag about or talk about.
48:14
But, a lot of people are now more open about like, "Hey, here's what I Here's what I did.
48:17
Here's how it's benefited me.
48:19
Here's how Here's the systems I used to set it up."
48:20
So, that if you're in a similar position, maybe that'll benefit you.
48:23
And that I think that the gospel started to spread. It was also more fringe.
48:26
So, like, for example, before COVID, it was like, "This company's all remote. Wow, that's so crazy.
48:31
It's almost as crazy as like a a company serves a lunch. That's insane.
48:35
They have like free washer Like, they'll clean your clothes." wear deodorant? Yeah. [laughter] Bold choice.
48:40
Like, it was it was insane.
48:43
And then, Shepherd and a couple other people actually did a really good job of kind of repositioning it.
48:46
Uh they packaged it a lot nicer cuz obviously, Upwork has been around forever.
48:50
But, it was still considered uh low status a bit, where it was like, "Oh, I just use Fiverr and like, I can't believe it actually worked."
48:59
Whereas now, companies like Shepherd, you guys like like your team is your team, and it doesn't matter which country they're in. You know what I mean?
49:07
And so, they've done a good job of repositioning it to make it seem Well, it did not make it seem cuz it is the the same thing, but it just it made it feel better.
49:15
with Shepherd overseas, are you racist? I don't know.
49:17
This is an open question.
49:19
Just putting that out there for the for the for the masses.
49:21
All right, enough of the enough of the thrill, enough of the shill.
49:25
All right, let me tell you about something.
49:25
So, in 2017, this guy comes to my office.
49:31
I was currently running The Hustle.
49:31
We had just gotten going.
49:33
We were probably only a year and a half in, but we had some some some hype, so people started to talking to us.
49:38
This guy named Caleb reached out to me.
49:40
Caleb originally was my account manager at SendGrid, which is what we were using to send emails.
49:46
I get lunch with him, whatever.
49:46
I think that he's just going to upsell me on SendGrid.
49:50
Turns out, he was like, "Hey, man, I've been working on this idea.
49:54
I've been working on nights and weekends on it, but I'm going to make a bed for kids who have autism, Down syndrome, a variety of things like that, because they need a special bed.
50:01
They need a bed that helps with some sensory issues.
50:05
They need a bed that has a camera that can be tracked more easily."
50:06
And I was like, "All right, Caleb, that sounds cool.
50:09
Do you have a kid with autism?
50:09
Is Is that what inspired you?"
50:11
And And I think he was like, "No, I don't I I'm I'm unmarried. I don't have children."
50:15
And I was like, "Well, this is This is just kind of a weird, uh, like problem to solve."
50:18
He's like, "Yeah, well, I just think it's a uh a good a good problem to solve."
50:21
Um, and I was like, "Well, I I just don't ever think you're going to pull that off. So, uh, God bless you.
50:28
Start a newsletter, nerd.
50:30
[laughter] You work at at SendGrid."
50:30
Well, about a week ago, I see this guy who joins Hampton, and he reaches out to me, goes, "Hey, you remember me?"
50:37
I go, "Caleb, of course I remember you. How are you?"
50:39
He goes, "Well, that thing you told me that was silly, Cubby Beds, it's a thing now.
50:43
And we bootstrapped the entire thing."
50:45
And he was like he sent me the website, so you guys can you can check it out at cubbybeds. com. It's amazing.
50:52
And I go, "I cannot believe you pulled this off."
50:54
And he shows me pictures.
50:55
He's like, "Yeah, look, here I am in my garage, we are assembling the piping.
50:58
No factory wanted to take us on, so I just had to like buy a bunch of piping in order to like make the original bed, the MVP.
51:04
We We sold a bunch of it.
51:06
I think the beds cost 5 to 10 grand, and people's insurance pays for it."
51:11
And at this point, he's going to do many tens of millions in revenue this year.
51:15
And so, I think this is just proof that A, I don't know if this guy actually looked up to me.
51:19
Maybe he little he did a little bit, because we had a little bit of hype, and I told him it was stupid.
51:23
So, A, don't listen to me, or don't listen to anyone. Just do the damn thing.
51:27
And B, this is just awesome.
51:29
Yeah, this is amazing, dude.
51:31
So, okay, smart smart beds for special needs. The thing looks amazing.
51:32
I don't know why this is special needs.
51:34
I would love to sleep in something like this.
51:37
This is This amazing cocoon of peace and solitude.
51:40
Why would I not with like padded walls and whatnot? This is amazing. It's amazing.
51:44
And And if you go to the website, it looks awesome.
51:46
It's like uh This is better than Eight Sleep.
51:49
This is better than the Purple mattress.
51:51
This is better than all those companies. I love this company.
51:53
And it costs I I don't I don't know the exact price.
51:56
I actually I'm not sure if they even put it on there because people's insurance pays for it, which is just this a whole 'nother beast.
52:02
I'm like, how on earth do you figure that out?
52:03
Um but it I think it costs 5 to 10,000 dollars. It's quite expensive.
52:07
And they are selling the crap out of these.
52:10
And I was telling him, I'm like, "Dude, not only is this an awesome business.
52:13
This is like one of the few things that you can make where you can make a lot of money and I think it's like actually good for the world and everything like that."
52:18
Um Can you believe this guy pulled this off?
52:20
Like, would you have had the same reaction to me as I did years ago?
52:23
No, I would have seen the genius in it and I would have invested on the spot and I would have told him, "You're a legend for doing this."
52:31
[laughter] You and I are not the same.
52:33
We're a little different.
52:36
[laughter] Uh but I want I got to give a everybody bring your ideas to me, not Sam. He's a hater.
52:40
I got to give this guy a shout out. I think it was awesome.
52:44
[laughter] I got to give this guy a shout out. I think it was awesome. He told me the story.
52:48
I was like, "Dude, I haven't heard from you in like 8 years.
52:49
That's so awesome that you're doing well."
52:52
that it's covered by insurance.
52:52
I'm sure that was not simple to do that, to get that done.
52:56
Um but now you have this $14,000 bed that's uh yeah, I I just put it in my cart. It's about $14,000.
53:01
What are all the features that it has?
53:04
So, it has like a camera a camera system that I guess is good and it has yeah, like the kind of safety kind of like it's like a contained thing that has like soft you know, walls and whatnot so you can't get hurt.
53:15
Um It's a bed besides that, yeah. It vibrates.
53:20
It has uh light that comes uh the It has a camera.
53:22
And it has lights that like dim with the sunset and come up with the with the sunrise.
53:26
It has camera or it has speakers in there so it can help with meditation and like certain breathing patterns. It vibrates. It's pretty cool.
53:33
It's a pretty cool bed and it's been totally bootstrapped.
53:38
I honestly think somebody should make this for adults. Am I wrong?
53:39
Like, should there not be a version of this for like the Huberman acolytes who are like, you know, I need to optimize my sleep? Why not?
53:46
Yeah, I I definitely think that this could work for I told one of our mutual friends who is definitely on the spectrum and his immediate reply was Yeah, they need to make these for adults. I want one.
53:59
[laughter] Dude, I I went to Rob Dyrdek's house and he has this nap pod in his office.
54:05
And it's like this thing it's like a giant helmet.
54:07
So, you he lays down and like his body is out of it. That's so lame.
54:12
His like chest up is in this cocoon.
54:14
[laughter] And I don't know if it works.
54:16
I don't know if it doesn't work.
54:20
But if there is something like that that works, I would definitely pay.
54:21
And in fact, I feel like that company should exist.
54:25
If somebody's making that or somebody has one of these that works, please reach out to me.
54:28
I want to I want to learn about this.
54:31
Yeah, I I think that nap pod is just absolutely ridiculous.
54:33
I think a blanket and a couch will suffice, but what the [ __ ] do I know? Clearly, I'm wrong.
54:38
[laughter] Um Congrats on your comfy beds. Good job.
54:41
Uh where do we go from here? Maybe we wrap up. Maybe that's the pod.
54:43
All right, that's the pod.