0:00
All right, we're live.
Search this video
0:00
Sean, I've got a little bit a few actually stories, but it starts with a person I hung out with out the other day.
0:06
You know Ryan Holiday, right? The author Ryan Holiday.
0:09
Of course, he came on the pod. He's awesome.
0:10
I was hanging out with him the other day, and he said something actually to me in person, but he previously said this on the podcast that we had I think he's been on twice.
0:19
He said something about how he actually made a funny comment.
0:21
He's like, "Most most authors say they make more money through speaking than they do actually selling their books.
0:28
Those people they just didn't sell a lot of books.
0:31
However, uh Ryan has sold a ton of books. We know that for sure.
0:45
But, he also mentioned to me that his other things, like the Daily Stoic, which is his daily newsletter.
0:53
So, Ryan Holiday wrote a book on stoicism.
0:54
He's written six or seven now at this point.
0:56
But, he has this other property.
0:58
It's a daily newsletter called the Daily Stoic, where they sell coins and merch and advertisements.
1:04
He has told me that that has made more money for him than selling books.
1:10
Like, which is crazy cuz that's what he's known as as an author.
1:11
And so, what I wanted to talk to you about today was I went down this huge rabbit hole, where I found ways that authors are making money other than just like writing a book.
1:20
Well, you you got you got to tell the coin thing cuz the coin thing is the perfect simple example of this.
1:26
I don't know what he confirmed exactly, but explain the coin thing cuz I think it's the perfect simple example of author making money not off their book, but a lot of money in some other way.
1:33
Ryan Holiday's whole stick is stoicism.
1:35
It's a philosophy that is fairly useful, and it's just like how to deal with hardship in your daily life.
1:38
And for some reason, he decided to come up with a coin.
1:42
And it's a coin that in Latin it says like you're going to die or like today's one of your last days alive or something like that.
1:48
Like, some like inspirational thing, but it's in Latin, so I'm not exactly sure what it says.
1:53
And a coin's a great product to sell because it costs 25 bucks to sell.
1:56
It costs like a dollar to make.
1:59
It ships for whatever, a stamp, two stamps.
2:02
So, however much that is, 80 cents. There's no returns. There's no sizes.
2:07
It's just like the easiest thing ever to sell.
2:09
And on the podcast, I don't remember if he said the exact number, but I believe he said tens of thousands of coins, which is millions and millions of dollars. Is that what he said?
2:19
He did He did say that, and he also said that he works with some mint some mint in the United States.
2:23
And I guess it's it's one of the old famous coin mints, and he I think he was like their biggest customer.
2:28
Also, like he's like, "They're minting more of his memento mori coin than they are anything else."
2:33
So, what I want to do, and that was surprising to me.
2:37
I had an inkling, and then he kind of revealed that that is true, where he made more money not from selling books.
2:43
But, I had uh I went down this rabbit hole, and what I want to do is I want to show you three people who are making significantly more money than you would think, and they are doing it in ways other than just writing one book, making whatever 10% of the revenue that they of which they sell.
2:57
All right, so we're going to start with the first one.
2:58
Sean, do you know who James Patterson is?
3:00
I do not know who James Patterson is. Who is James Patterson?
3:06
I did not think you would know who we were. sandwiches.
3:07
Maybe a former baseball player.
3:10
Who are we talking about here? You You are very smart.
3:12
You're a very high IQ smart person. Oh god, here it comes.
3:15
The fact that you don't know some of the most basic things like of pop culture.
3:19
Like, it's it's beyond pop culture at this point.
3:21
This is These are things that you see all over bookstores or whatever.
3:24
It shocks me that you don't know this.
3:26
Is he the vampire in Twilight? Yeah, I mean No, okay.
3:32
Your second guess was a lot further away from the first guess. So, listen to this.
3:35
So, have you ever heard of the Stratemeyer Syndicate?
3:37
You probably haven't, right? Of course.
3:39
If you haven't heard of James Patterson, you also probably haven't heard of Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys.
3:43
Have you heard of those things?
3:45
who those They they write murder mystery They write mystery novels, right? For kids or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:49
So, they are the main characters in murder mystery novels.
3:51
So, the way it starts is in the 1930s, there was this thing called the Stratemeyer Syndicate.
3:57
It was this one guy, he came up with this company in the '30s, where he was like, "Hey, not a lot of people are writing children's books.
4:01
I'm going to go ahead and start publishing children children's books."
4:04
And then he was like, "You know what?
4:06
I need to write more books, but I don't feel like dealing with the hassle of working with these artists authors who like are just a pain in the butt to deal with.
4:15
All I care about is making like kind of cookie-cutter novels that children like."
4:19
So, what he did was he goes, "I'm going to actually just come up with these characters."
4:22
So, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and he had a variety of other series.
4:25
And I'm going to have these authors write these books, but I'm just going to say it's written by the same author every single time.
4:30
I'm not going to give it a a person like their little bit of fame.
4:35
I'm going to pay them a fair rate, but it's and and and they're going to follow my rules, and maybe eventually they'll become a famous author, but for now they're just going to follow my rules. And that's what he did.
4:44
And there was at one point where like every kid in America could name Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, things like that.
4:50
Stratemeyer Syndicate, what a name. Uh so, wait.
4:53
So, the syndicate is I think I missed something here.
4:56
The syndicate is the set of novels.
4:58
The syndicate was the name of his company.
5:02
He called it a syndicate, which sounds like a drug like a drug syndicate.
5:04
It sounds like something illegal cuz usually syndi- That was just the name of his company, and it was a legitimate company.
5:11
This wasn't like anything shady, although he did a bad job of naming It'd be like naming like your kids children's book like warm candy in vans or something like that.
5:19
Like, he did a very bad job of like naming his publishing company called the syndicate. Kind of weird.
5:26
But basically, he came up with these rules, where he was like, "All books need to be part of a series.
5:28
Uh every chapter needs to end with a preview of what the next chapter is going to be.
5:36
The beginning of each book needs to give a summary of only one page what happened in the previous books."
5:41
And he just had this like outline of how to like make hits.
5:45
Well, fast forward 70 years, there's this guy named James Patterson.
5:50
At this point now, he's 75 years old.
5:50
He started in advertising in New York for the J.
5:55
Thompson advertising firm, which is some huge firm.
5:58
But on the side, in his late '20s and early '30s, he starts writing novels. And they do okay.
6:03
Like, they're not like that big of hits.
6:06
But, he keeps at it, and he's a workaholic, and he keeps going.
6:08
And eventually, at the age of 47, he retires from advertising and goes all in on publishing these novels.
6:16
So, he's been doing it now at this point for about 20 years, and he's finally starting to see success.
6:19
And the whole point of his novels is they're thrillers.
6:21
Some people might say they're kind of like trash formulaic thrillers, but the thing is is people love them.
6:30
And at this point, he's sold something like 500 million copies of his books.
6:35
And at one point, he accounted for 16% or sorry, 6% of all hardcover novels sold in America.
6:42
So, the guy's a hitmaker.
6:44
He sold He sells a ton of them.
6:46
But, here's the craziest part.
6:49
Since he started writing about 48 years ago, he's published on average seven books a year.
6:57
And at this point, even though he's 75 or 74, he's doing something like 30 books a year.
7:02
Now, how on earth does a guy do that?
7:05
That's like ridiculous, right?
7:06
At this point uh to be doing that.
7:08
It's ridiculous to be doing that at a young age.
7:09
It's more ridiculous to be doing it in his '70s.
7:11
Well, than a book every 2 weeks. It's ridiculous.
7:14
Well, here's how he does it. He has co-authors.
7:15
And a little secret with James Patterson, even you know, he's well-loved in America, he actually has only written about 20% like solely written 20% of the books that his name is is credited with as writing.
7:28
The way that he does it, he has a team of uh of co-authors.
7:34
And so, what he does is he pays these guys out of his own pocket.
7:37
He kind of comes up with a framework. They flesh it out.
7:38
He reviews it almost like a movie script, and he's like writes notes in the in the in the margins, and he gives it back to them, and they kind of flesh it out.
7:46
And at this point, he's done it so much that he'll see that there's James Patterson with Dolly Parton.
7:52
I think there's a James Patterson, and then the co-author is Bill Clinton, and then the other co-author, who's like the person doing the actual work, is listed below it.
8:01
But, this has been so successful successful that at this point, he's made something like 800 million dollars. What?
8:09
Yes, that's how rich this guy is.
8:09
He owns like three or four homes, each of them are worth 40 million bucks.
8:13
He's donated something like 50 million, according to his website, to small bookstores.
8:18
But, this has been a smashing success.
8:19
I'm shocked you've not heard of James Patterson.
8:22
I think I have seen the name.
8:22
What's like his most famous book?
8:24
I don't even know the name of his books, but he's almost like uh Do you know Tom Clancy? Yes.
8:29
Okay, he's like Tom Clancy.
8:29
Does Tom Clancy do the same thing or does he write all his own books?
8:32
No, Tom Clancy would write them, but Jim Patterson does not write as much.
8:38
But, you know, like Jim Patterson at this point is sort of like Tom Clancy, where you're like, "Oh, it's a Tom Clancy novel."
8:42
And I don't even know what Tom Clancy I can't even name his novels, but I know it it means like it's like a spy novel. Right.
8:46
Okay, so um let me ask you a question.
8:49
Did this guy start out writing all his books, and then over the years was like, "How do I scale?"
8:55
And he's like, "What if I got another author?"
8:57
Or from the beginning was he like Did he have this plan from the beginning, or did this come about organically trying to scale up?
9:01
So, over the last 20 years that he's been killing it, I don't I don't think one of his books.
9:09
I'm not sure exactly, but most of his books have not themselves been bestsellers.
9:12
However, he has been a bestselling author, if you add up all of his titles, for many decades.
9:19
And he learned early on, he was like, "Well, like I don't know if any of individually are going to be a hit, but I'll just make a [ __ ] ton of them."
9:28
And so, he discovered early on to on his career, he goes, "We're going to be about quantity."
9:32
And at this point, he says that for the last 40 years, he's worked something like 70 hours a week, and he writes all day.
9:38
And when we talk about writing, it means working with a team and things like that.
9:42
But, he discovered early on, he's like, "We're just going to do quantity.
9:45
We're going to pump these babies out."
9:46
And so, at this point, Jim Patterson, he's a face, he's a guy, he's a real person, but it's almost like a brand.
9:52
And he's like gets these authors to kind of come under his brand, and he makes jokes, but he'll say things like they should pay these like these referring to his co-authors, they should pay me to be a co-author because I'm teaching them so much and they're giving their name out there.
10:05
And he actually gives them press, so they're able to like list, but it's almost it's almost like the way the music industry works of like have Nicki Nicki Minaj coming on your song, you have to pay Nicki Minaj, you know what I mean?
10:18
I like that that's the first one you went to, Nicki Minaj.
10:21
All right, so this is interesting.
10:24
What What do you like about this guy?
10:25
You like that he basically To me one of the one thing I like is I feel like he broke the like precious rules of like like writing and book like being an author is this like high prestige, usually it's a high prestige low volume labor of love, you know, that may you know, almost never makes money and if it happens to make money, you you kind of got lucky with this one smash hit.
10:46
And you know, the honor is in slaving away at this novel for four years.
10:51
And he's sounds like he broke all those rules.
10:55
He's not precious about it. He's like, cool.
10:57
Let's write books people want to read. Let's make it formulaic.
10:58
Let's make it so that I can hire people that are going to write these books.
11:04
Let's scale this baby up.
11:04
No individual We're hitting singles and doubles, baby.
11:08
We're not going for home runs necessarily cuz these will all add up.
11:11
And it sounds like the cool thing is that this guy almost like productized this type of book and Exactly.
11:15
More like a business person than he did a artist.
11:20
Well, in reality what he is is he's he was he was the CEO of the Thompson Agency Group.
11:26
That's like a that's part of a huge corporation and he's basically an advertising executive turned author and he brings some of that pizzazz to being an author and it has worked really well.
11:38
So he's both a business person and an advertising person.
11:40
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.
11:47
When I say I, I mean not my team.
11:47
I mean I'm the one who actually made it.
11:49
So I've got this company called Hampton.
11:51
You can check it out, joinhampton. com.
11:54
It's a community for founders and one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys where we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people a lot of times people are afraid to ask.
12:02
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.
12:10
So you can check it out at joinhampton. com/wealth.
12:14
You can actually see the landing page that I made.
12:15
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.
12:22
So I needed the landing page to look a very way.
12:26
HubSpot has templates, that's what we used.
12:28
We just changed the colors a little bit to match our brand, very easy.
12:31
They have this drag and drop version of their landing page builder and it's super simple.
12:35
I'm not technical and I'm the one who actually made it.
12:38
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.
12:49
This is where the revenue came from.
12:51
So it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn.
12:54
Whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it and I can say, oh well, that worked, that didn't work, do more of that, do less of that.
13:00
And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it.
13:03
Look, I'm actually doing it, but you can check it out, go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started.
13:08
All right, now back to MFM.
13:10
Let me give you two more that I think are even more interesting.
13:13
Have you seen these books lately written by this guy named Jack Carr?
13:16
It's kind of all the rage right now.
13:18
I've I've heard the name, but I haven't read anything, no.
13:19
All right, so Jack Carr is a former Navy SEAL.
13:22
He served in the Navy SEALs from 1996, I think, to 2016.
13:28
And he started writing these books called The first one was called The Terminal List. It came out in 2018.
13:32
And if if you go to The Terminal List on Amazon, you'll see it's it's one of the highest reviewed books I've ever seen given the quantity of reviews.
13:40
It has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of reviews and it's like a 4. 5.
13:44
I read one of them two weeks ago.
13:44
I think I even suggested that you read it, but it's really great.
13:49
It's basically like the equivalent of a romance novel for a woman, it's like James Bond for the man.
13:56
It's like basically the story of a guy who goes through all these hardships where he's a he's an ex-Navy SEAL, his family gets hurt, he's got to save them, he's got to get revenge, whatever.
14:07
All that like epic man [ __ ] However, I started reading his book and I noticed something really interesting.
14:13
He names products and brands like crazy in his books and I'll give you an example.
14:19
So this is a a few excerpts or one excerpt from from one of the books where he talks about, he reached inside and removed the 9 mm Smith & Wesson M39 from his chest, better known in the SEAL teams as the MK22 Hush Puppy.
14:33
And then he goes on to say he grabbed a box of his 9 mm Super Vel subsonic ammunition that was sitting next to his Yeti cooler.
14:43
He is I swear to God, he'll talk about things.
14:48
Like for example, he'll talk about like his Athletic Greens He names brands like crazy.
14:54
Like there was one point where he was talking about like or like he needed the best most durable equipment, so we started using a Hill Person fanny pack or something like that and I'm like I like Dude, can we get like my He's like he he put on his headphones and turned on My First Million, his go-to on Tuesdays and Thursdays for all types of entrepreneurial inspiration.
15:15
And then dude, he went to war.
15:20
He names stuff like crazy and the the main character's name is James Reece.
15:24
He's like a James Bond type of guy where he does a lot of bad stuff, but like you really like him and you kind of want to be like him.
15:27
And he just names all of the products that he uses and it's crazy. And so I was interested.
15:31
I'm like, why is this guy naming all these products? So I go to his website.
15:34
I Google Jack Carr brands. I just Google that.
15:39
He's got this whole website.
15:39
I think it's just jackcarr.
15:41
com, but if you Google Jack Carr brands, what you'll see is he has jackcarr.
15:48
com and he creates Do you Do you know like that website um Uncrate or uh uh Gear Patrol?
15:55
He basically has created his own version of that where he has all these gift guides or he'll be like, here's all the gear that James Reece used in this book.
16:04
And he has these beautiful guides on his website and lo and behold, if you highlight over a lot of them, they're all affiliate links.
16:11
And in fact And in fact, often times on jackcarr.
16:18
com, he sells his own stuff.
16:20
And so one of the main parts in this first book that I read is he's got this fancy tomahawk, which is basically like an axe and he uses this tomahawk to kill people and it's like a really high quality tomahawk. Well, jackcarr.
16:32
com sells that exact same tomahawk.
16:36
And I thought that this was brilliant because when reading these stories, he's talked about the cars that he's in.
16:39
Like the type of car that he's in is like a main part.
16:42
I'm like, I want all this stuff because this character James Reece is so cool.
16:46
All I have to do is go to jackcarr.
16:48
com and I can buy all this stuff and it's amazing. I love this strategy. Yeah, this is brilliant.
16:53
I've never I never would have thought that product placement in books would work like product placement in movies does, but that makes perfect sense.
17:00
This is his this is his Feastables. This is his Prime. Tomahawk. Dude, it's awesome.
17:07
And by the way, I was just giving them a little [ __ ] Not all of them are affiliate links, but a lot of them are.
17:12
And if you go to like his Amazon page, he even has this cool feature on his Amazon page where it lists all of the products in the books and those are affiliate Do you think this is just like you know, for example, a lot of people ask us a bunch of questions about like, oh, what do you use for this? Whatever.
17:26
And it's like sometimes writing the [ __ ] down is actually just it's valuable to them, it's useful to me, it saves me time and I know that a bunch of podcasts do this, but it's it's like small income. It's side income.
17:36
It's not their main thing.
17:38
Do you think this guy is like he's got to be making more off of his books than he is off of this this Amazon affiliate thing, right?
17:43
I think he's making more off his books, but my third example is I'm going to show someone who's making way more off this thing and I think there's a world where Jack Carr will make way more off that side thing than the original thing.
17:56
Meaning, when you think of a Navy SEAL, you think of like many things including like the cool types of gear they have and you like see what they're wearing and you're like, that's neat.
18:03
I would love to have that thing or you know, it's like cosplaying to be a tough guy. There's a Here's Right?
18:10
Like He says in this part again. Yeah. Yeah.
18:17
As he walked around his home wearing Birkenstocks.
18:24
It's JC Penney like sell like really good boxers or something I could talk about.
18:28
Um the third one, Steve Rinella.
18:30
Have you heard of Steve Rinella? Um three for three, no. Who is Steve Rinella?
18:35
Okay, this one is I would I would not think you would know who this guy is.
18:37
So he originally starts as a magazine article guy for Outdoor Magazine.
18:41
So he basically he's from Michigan, went to school in Montana. He loves the outdoors.
18:46
He also loves writing and so he starts as a freelance journalist.
18:48
He works for Outdoor Magazine.
18:50
He works for like Men's Health, these things where he he's able to like talk about the outdoors and they pay him a small amount of money, whatever.
18:57
His first book that he writes is about foraging which is basically just he wanted to create The book sounds silly, but they're actually awesome.
19:04
He wanted to write about how he went and hunted and foraged his own Thanksgiving dinner, but like in doing that, you find like the meaning of life and you see like the history of food, whatever and outdoors. It's awesome.
19:16
The second book that he did is called American Buffalo and it's this amazing book about him hunting buffalo and how the buffalo are really important to American history, whatever.
19:23
If you're not into that, you're not into it, which I don't think you are, but for the people who are What gave it away? Yeah. This is like Yeah.
19:32
You know, my body language right now is the body language of a girl who's about to get grinded on by a guy at the club unwantedly. No, no, no thanks.
19:40
Foraging for my food, no thanks.
19:45
Would you like a free copy of my book? It's signed. No. Yeah.
19:50
You're You're not into this guy, but you're going to be into what what I'm about to explain.
19:53
So, he writes this book American Buffalo. It gets pretty popular.
19:56
So, then he creates this website called meateater. com.
20:00
Have you ever heard of meateater? heard of meateater, yes.
20:03
So, meateater starts as a series of podcasts.
20:05
They have a show on this thing called the the outdoor the sports channel, something like that.
20:08
And it starts working out.
20:11
Well, eventually Chernin, I think you know Chernin, they invest into it.
20:15
And at this point in 2023, meateater is a website where Steven Rinella blogs about outdoors.
20:21
He publishes books his books under the meateater name. He has recipe books.
20:26
He has more podcasts, whatever, newsletters.
20:30
However, they went and bought a bunch of brands.
20:32
They bought a duck call business.
20:33
They went and bought um a clothing line.
20:39
Now, in 2023, they announced that they did 100 million in revenue from selling all of the products on meateater.
20:44
com, of which his kind of claim to fame, or at least where he gets a lot of his traffic from, is his books and then his podcasts and things like that.
20:52
And so, this is an example of a guy who I think has made significantly more, or will make significantly more in terms of enterprise value, from selling the product that he talks about in the books, or selling the lifestyle.
21:05
This guy's super fascinating.
21:09
Dude, going from American Buffalo, a book about buffaloes in America or whatever, to having $100 million in revenue on your business is like that that's not the American dream, but it's it's something.
21:22
It's someone's dream somewhere.
21:24
It's it's an American's dream.
21:27
It's yeah, it's that is I can't believe that that happened. That's insane.
21:30
Chernin is so smart, by the way.
21:32
They took this one thesis of content to commerce.
21:35
So, they were like, "Hey, anybody who's world-class at content, it's not valued properly in the market because media is such a [ __ ] business that they're valued as a media business.
21:45
But if you can flip their business model from content to commerce, then this thing is going to this thing is going to take off.
21:51
And it's going to take off in the same way that our YouTube subs are going to take off.
21:54
When you go to YouTube and you say to yourself, "God damn, I'm learning a lot from Sam today about meateaters and about authors and about all these people."
22:04
And they're going to go to YouTube, you're going to go to my first million, and you're going to click subscribe because you love us so much. Thank you very much. That's the plug. That was a good one. Good job.
22:13
I think if I had to make a prediction, I think that meateater will be worth many, many, many hundreds of millions, maybe even a billion dollars in the next 10 years. I I believe it.
22:22
These these lifestyle brands, once you get like there is no no niche too small with these lifestyle brands.
22:29
Meateater is actually pretty big compared to some of these lifestyle brands, like the Hodinkee, the watch brand, luxury watches only, right?
22:35
Or there's things for like, you know how people when they get into biking, they become like, you know, lamer.
22:41
They start dressing like SpongeBob, spandex and like clip-ons and then they they walk into a coffee shop after like a 90,000 mile ride that morning.
22:49
Like those people are super valuable as an audience and they need content that's like so lame, like that that it's the thing that they care about.
22:57
And so, there's like an endless niche of these like really, really hyper-specific lifestyle content brands that I think can be built.
23:05
You just have to come from that space.
23:07
It sounds like this guy, Steven Rinella, you know, came from that space, which is pretty pretty cool.
23:10
You want to know the here's a curveball to the situation. He lives in Brooklyn.
23:18
For real, he lives in Brook he lives in Brooklyn. Brooklyn.
23:21
Yeah, I well, he lives in Brooklyn.
23:21
I was doing research on him and he's like from Montana and he's like, "I know Montana better than anywhere on anywhere anyone else in the country."
23:30
"I knew enough to get the hell out of there." Yeah.
23:33
And now he lives in Brooklyn, which is what I thought was kind of weird.
23:37
Um But anyway, those are my three examples of strange ways or shocking ways that a bunch of these authors are making money.
23:44
I know that you were thinking about becoming an author.
23:45
Does this change but I think you've paused it.
23:47
I'm not sure if you paused it or if you I think becoming an author to make money is just that's like saying, you know, I was hungry, so I went to church.
23:56
It's like, yeah, just cuz they have some food there doesn't mean that's why you go.
24:00
And so, like I don't think making money is the reason to to write a book.
24:02
If you're going to want if you want to make money and you're smart about marketing and all that, there's 100 times easier ways to make money.
24:08
Did you just make up that analogy?
24:10
That was a really good that was a really good analogy.
24:13
I did my morning routine today, so, you know, the brain is on. Um the brain is awake.
24:17
The thing that I've looked into is how much these authors make.
24:21
So, there's like tiers to this.
24:23
So, uh if it was 10 tiers, the first five tiers, you know, of tier 10 through five, is just all of them made no money.
24:33
Actually, maybe tiers, you know, like uh 10 all the way to number three, all made no money.
24:38
But a couple of interesting data points that are in our world.
24:40
So, I think the top tier is like the J. K.
24:45
Rowlings of the world, J. K.
24:45
Rowling, James Patterson, which is like you actually are mainstream canon, right?
24:53
You are you're a part of the meta.
24:53
Like you you became the equivalent, you know, you're going to get a Netflix show type of thing.
24:58
Dude, have you ever thought about by the way, have you thought about J. K.
25:01
Rowling and how she invented an entire universe and made up rules to like a game or a language that people refer to now, like the word muggle?
25:08
Like she just thought of that word. At least twice a week.
25:12
You know how people do the Roman Empire thing?
25:13
I don't give a [ __ ] about the Roman Empire, but dude, I do think of like Diagon Alley. I think about Hogwarts.
25:18
I think about all these places, right?
25:20
Like I think about that twice a week.
25:21
How cool that is that someone made it up. It's weird to me.
25:27
That that when I think about that, I'm just like that's that's so odd.
25:30
[ __ ] What percent of you is like might be real?
25:35
Is there any part of me that's like Well, I I I'm I am just a muggle. How would I know?
25:41
The way that I think about it is it she is so good at inventing this thing that she couldn't possibly have invented it and she's just telling a true story.
25:48
Like, you know what I mean?
25:50
Like it's just impossible to think that one brain, like our brains are each 6 lbs, but that came out of hers.
25:55
I don't understand how that happened.
25:59
Dude, I've been at an airport where it's like you have the smart card thing and I'm walking between, you know, nine and 10 and I don't run at it, but like, you know, I'll take my finger and sort of drag it against the wall just in case there's a little little give in that in that wall, you know, I'll I'll play I'll see.
26:16
Um so, there's that that tier, right? That's like god tier.
26:17
Then there's the James Clear, you know, Atomic Habits, David Goggins, Mark Manson.
26:25
I think these guys have cleared like 30 to 50 million dollars off of a single book. That's a lot.
26:28
I would say more like 20.
26:31
So, James Clear, I think I don't know how many he's sold now.
26:34
It's his thing is escalating, by the way, which is really interesting.
26:36
He tweeted this out recently and it was it was something like I'll try to find it, but it was basically like he first year was like, you know, maybe like 100,000.
26:44
And then the next year was like 200,000.
26:46
The third year was a million.
26:48
And then the fourth year was like 4 million.
26:50
And the fifth year was like 15 million.
26:52
And he's just gone up and up and up.
26:54
I think now he's sold of basically, I don't know, 20 million copies or something like that worldwide. No way. Really? That many? 20 million? Yeah.
27:04
Yeah, his book is like a it's like a runaway train, basically.
27:08
Um so, I I think I'm pretty sure his his book has grossed like 150 to 200 million dollars.
27:12
Probably 150 probably 150 million dollars worldwide. It's my guess.
27:16
I you know, I might be off by 30 million in either direction, but but I'm I'm not off by by half, you know.
27:20
Um And he's just a guy in Ohio.
27:22
I think like he's just a he's just a guy.
27:24
Like I I knew him before the I I talked to him before the book and he was just like a blogger in Ohio.
27:30
Like it didn't seem particularly fancy and now a million years or whatever.
27:37
I knew him before he stopped talking to me.
27:40
So, so I think that's like the next tier.
27:42
David Goggins' book, I think has done like 35, 40 million dollars in sales and he did it through Scribe, so he kind of like owns more, owns a lot of it.
27:50
Um Tim Ferriss surprisingly didn't sell that many copies of Four-Hour Workweek.
27:56
I thought Four-Hour Workweek was like a to me it was like that was a huge book.
28:01
It's obviously did super, super well, but I think it sold 2 million copies.
28:05
You know, so 2 million versus 20 million, right?
28:06
10 X more for for Atomic Habits, which is pretty crazy.
28:07
A fun one is Eric Jorgenson.
28:09
So, you know Eric Jorgenson, um he he was like a startup growth guy.
28:17
He lived in some I don't know where he lives.
28:18
He lives in like Kansas City or something like that.
28:20
And Eric Jorgenson wrote the Naval Ravalmanack, which is basically he's like, you know, "Naval's tweets are the [ __ ] What if I printed them out?"
28:30
Basically, like what if I printed it out and stapled it together, right?
28:34
Obviously, he did more than that, but the core idea was he didn't write the book.
28:37
He didn't do a he didn't study Naval's life and write a biography.
28:39
He didn't create a bunch of original wisdom.
28:42
He just took Naval's existing wisdom that was super fragmented, packaged it up into a really easy-to-use book, and then and he actually gives away like the ebook for free, I think, online.
28:50
Um I'm pretty sure Eric he's never told me this.
28:54
This is my my guesswork based on some some back-of-the-envelope stuff.
28:58
Pretty sure Eric has made like 3 to 5 million dollars off of the Naval Ravalmanack himself. No way. I don't believe that. That is so much money.
29:04
I am 82% confident that that's a a real number.
29:09
Dude, if you're even half right, I would be He's definitely made more than a million dollars.
29:13
I think it's like 3 to 5 million dollars off the Naval Ravalmanack.
29:16
Okay, well, that's insane. Does Naval get anything? Naval got distribution.
29:22
I don't think he gives Naval any money from it. I don't know.
29:24
to make you famous, baby.
29:24
You're going to be a superstar.
29:25
That's what I'm going to tell you.
29:26
I'm going to create the Shawn Shawnamanac.
29:29
Dude, you said that way too naturally.
29:32
That was not the first time you said that.
29:35
Is that what you told Trung? That's insane.
29:39
I that that basically, the concept is ridiculous, right? I mean, it's good.
29:44
concept genius is what it is.
29:45
He he took somebody else's genius that was fragmented.
29:49
It was like, "Why would I write my Nobody wants to read the Eric Jorgenson book, but a lot of people want to write the Naval book, and Naval is kind of open source with it."
29:57
He has He's said this many times.
29:58
He's like, "The the best thing you could do is let other people reshare your ideas.
30:03
They're, you know, stealing your ideas, but really they're propagating your ideas.
30:06
It's one of the highest compliments, one of the best strategies you can have to get more distribution."
30:11
And so, you know, I think he was happy that Eric You know, and it took him like a year.
30:14
He put a lot of effort into it.
30:16
Not nearly as much effort as the guy who actually came up with the content.
30:17
Well, Naval's made 500 million in his life, so I think he's done fine, too, right?
30:24
That's That's the whole idea.
30:25
No, and Eric, by the way, I think Eric's now the CEO of Scribe, David the company that did David Goggins book.
30:30
So, and the company that I think you might you be using.
30:34
Uh yeah, not yet, but um okay, so another crazy story.
30:39
So, I've never heard of this book, and I doubt you have either, cuz are you a sci-fi reader? Not exactly.
30:44
Only like the most famous ones.
30:46
So, have you ever heard of this book called Wool? No.
30:49
Uh Talking to me about science fiction is like talking to you about bison. You know what I mean? It's not going very far. Yeah.
30:55
This conversation's got a lot of dead ends. Yeah.
30:59
That's a hard yes and here's the here's the idea.
31:00
I was looking at the at the charts, and I saw all of the Game of Thrones books.
31:05
So, it's like, you know, A Song of Ice and Fire.
31:07
And it's basically George R. R. Martin, George R. R. Martin, George R. R. Martin.
31:10
There's five of his books, and there was one book on top of it called Wool.
31:13
And I'm like, "I've never heard of this book. What is this book?"
31:16
So, I went and researched it.
31:18
So, the author, this guy Hugh Howey, which sounds like a fake name. Might be, I don't know.
31:21
Um His origin story is he's living in North Carolina. He's broke.
31:26
He was doing some odd jobs.
31:29
He was like, "Oh, there's a roofing gig?
31:30
Yeah, I'll go help you out, you know, I'm a technician?
31:32
Sure, I'll I'll help you out."
31:33
And basically, at some point he's unemployed.
31:35
He's like, "You know what?
31:36
I'm going to write a book."
31:38
His wife was kind of supporting the household.
31:39
He's like, "I'm going to write a book."
31:40
And she's like, "Okay, honey, great.
31:41
Uh Sure you don't want to get out there with the old resume?"
31:44
And she's like, "No, no, no, I'm going to write a sci-fi book."
31:47
And he's like it was like the idea was like something he's like, "What if aliens had this flying car or whatever?"
31:51
I don't know what it was. Some crazy idea.
31:54
This conversation could go way different.
31:55
It'd be like, "Hey, by the way, like, I know that you love having these action figures in the plastic still, but can we make a little bit room for the baby?"
32:04
"Oh, you're going to write a book?
32:04
I'm going to go find another husband." So, Yeah.
32:08
So, he puts the book out.
32:08
He sells less than a thousand dollars of the book.
32:12
Okay, so, first first try at it, failed.
32:14
Most people would obviously quit. Strike one.
32:16
He's like, "Oh, I'm just getting warmed up."
32:18
He's like, "I That was That was good, but I can do better." And he still has no job.
32:22
He needs to kind of start, you know, paying for the bills a little bit.
32:25
So, I I love this part about the story.
32:27
He gets a job, but he's like he's trying to find not the highest paying job.
32:31
He's trying to find a job that will make a minimum amount of money that he needs to live with the maximum amount of free hours.
32:37
So, he ends up finding this job that he could do for about 25, 30 hours a week.
32:40
It pays only 10 bucks an hour, but he's like, "I'll take it, cuz there's a lot of downtime where I'm just sitting there not doing anything.
32:48
I could be writing during that time, and it's only 30 hours a week, so I can spend all of my free time doing this.
32:53
And I also don't even want a good job.
32:54
That'll make it hard to quit later, cuz I want to be an author.
32:58
And I'm not going to trap myself in a job that's like hard to leave."
33:00
Then he changes his schedule.
33:02
He's like, "I'm going to wake up 2:00 a. m. every day.
33:06
I'm going to write before my job.
33:06
I'm going to write during my lunch break.
33:08
I'm going to write after dinner."
33:08
It became a compulsion for him.
33:10
And in 3 weeks, he writes this book Wool. 3 weeks.
33:14
So, again, just like James Patterson wasn't precious about the whole idea of writing books, this guy was like, "3 weeks, not 3 years."
33:21
And so, he bangs He bangs out this book.
33:23
He puts it on Amazon for 99 cents.
33:24
And he sells like a thousand copies.
33:27
He's like, "Boom, thousand bucks. All right, love it."
33:28
And he's like, "And the But like, you know, his small reader base, it's kind of like YC.
33:33
They say you want like a small number of people.
33:35
You'd rather have a thousand people that love you than a hundred thousand people that just kind of like you."
33:39
So, he had a thousand people that really loved the book, and they were like, "Dude, you got to write a sequel."
33:45
So, very next month, before they get cold, he writes a sequel.
33:47
By the way, Wool Wool's 530 pages. He did that in 3 weeks? Yeah.
33:53
So, then he he writes the sequel a month later.
33:55
He like, you know, 2 months later, whatever it is.
33:58
And he sells 3,000 copies of that one.
34:01
He's like, "All right, I got to keep going." So, he writes two more.
34:02
And he sells 10,000 copies.
34:04
And finally, he puts out the collection, all five of the books that he's written in a very short period of time.
34:11
And the first month, he sells 23,000 copies of the set.
34:12
And now he's selling it for $6 instead of 99 cents.
34:17
He makes basically 140 grand that in in gross revenue that month.
34:20
And he's self-publishing this whole thing, so he's keeping 70% of it.
34:24
Whereas a normal author is going to keep 10%, maybe 15% of it.
34:29
And all of a sudden, you know, the months roll by, he's now sold 500,000 books uh before you know, before anybody knows it, which is a [ __ ] ton of books to sell.
34:41
That's like, you know, you're in the top top, you know, percent of percent uh that are of authors at that stage.
34:48
And he's getting approached by publishers, and they're like He's like, "Okay, what's the deal?"
34:50
And they're like, "We'll give you, you know, $250,000."
34:54
He's like, "I'm already making $250,000."
34:55
They're like, "Okay, we'll give you more money."
34:57
He's like, "Well, I'm What Why would I give you Why would I take some money today for like now I give up all my upside?"
35:02
And they're like, "Well, we can help you get distribution."
35:06
He's like, "I've sold 500,000 copies myself."
35:07
And they're like, "How the hell did you do that?"
35:11
And he's like, and so his strategy, he's like guerrilla tactics to get his book out there, where he's like, "All right, I need to influence the influencers."
35:18
So, he sent basically like copies of the book to bloggers and reviewers at Goodreads.
35:22
So, not like influencers, but book influencers.
35:24
So, people who review books at Goodreads, like high-ranking good good reads people.
35:28
So, then he's like, "All right, that's good." Next step.
35:33
He goes on Reddit, and he's got He does an AMA on Reddit for 12 hours.
35:35
And so, he's just like, "I'm just going to like soak up all the Reddit love for this day on on Reddit." All right, does that.
35:42
Then, he starts encouraging fan fiction and fan art.
35:45
Whereas most authors are pretty again precious about like, "It's my IP."
35:48
They try to like, you know, take down anybody who writes like variations of their book.
35:53
He's like, "No, no, no, go crazy.
35:54
I built the universe, but you guys can fill up it all the stories."
35:58
And he would basically incentivize people to design other alternative book covers for it.
36:01
So, now their little audience would you know, their our that artist's audience would see them designing a book cover for this book called Wool. That was pretty cool.
36:08
He picks 30 of the diehard readers, and he's like, "Okay, how do I get my diehards to help me and become like, you know, super evangelists?"
36:16
And so, he made them beta readers.
36:17
Again, everybody's so precious.
36:19
They keep everything under lock and key.
36:20
He took his super fans and was like, "You're going to be readers of the of the early editions of new books before they come out."
36:27
So, he did a bunch of community building essentially, like stuff that doesn't really scale, that each one individually wasn't a game changer.
36:32
But if you add up that and the 20 other things that he did, you could see how he like That's not what made it successful, but he did start turning the crank.
36:39
And at the beginning, the crank is pretty hard to turn, but eventually, you know, you you you if you power through that first part of the crank, it'll start to move on its own.
36:49
And that's basically what happened for this guy.
36:50
And so, then someone comes up to him, they're like, "Look, I don't think you should sell your book rights, but I do think you should sell your film rights.
36:57
You haven't actually You're not going to make a film yourself."
37:00
So, he sold his film rights, and um and he kept his his book rights, you know, as an independent person for a while.
37:07
I I think maybe he sold it now, I'm not sure.
37:10
But he he also met George R. R. Martin once.
37:12
He went to a book signing for for George R. R.
37:14
Martin, and he's like, "Hey, George, like it's me, you know, Hugh Howey."
37:17
And the guy's like, "Never heard of you."
37:20
And he's like, "I'm the number six guy on the sci-fi list.
37:23
Like, you know, it's your five books, and I'm number six." And George R. R.
37:27
Martin, he posted this thing that George R. R.
37:29
Martin signed his book and said, "To number six, keep trying."
37:33
And then a couple months later a couple months later, he actually hit number one.
37:36
And so, just a pretty cool story of like a self-published author that that really made it happen.
37:41
Like entrepreneurial hustle story. That's a great story. Do you use Goodreads?
37:45
Do you know anything about Goodreads? I've used Goodreads.
37:47
Yeah, I met the founders of Goodreads.
37:48
And I was like, Yeah, Otis Chandler.
37:51
Yeah, they're they're really cool people, really nice people.
37:53
It's a cool product, but but it's old now.
37:56
It's been around for a long time.
37:58
But it's got a great moat.
37:58
I I I can tell you a little bit about Goodreads, but this guy, Hugh Howey, he has So, I'm I use Goodreads religiously.
38:04
I'm I'm I'm I'm That's kind of like my It's where my library I keep everything.
38:08
This guy has 750,000 ratings, which is huge.
38:12
And if you're in the hundreds of thousands of ratings, and you have over a four-star review, you're like the best of the best. He has a 4.
38:21
15 review out of five for almost a million reviews. It's amazing.
38:25
Yeah, and it all started with a standalone short story, basically.
38:29
It wasn't even like a full book.
38:30
It was like a short story that he published at the at the beginning of that first 3 weeks.
38:33
But again, that's kind of what you want. It's a prototype, right?
38:36
He treated it like an entrepreneur would, not like an author would.
38:38
He's like the blue-collar version of sci-fi.
38:40
This guy's like the Larry Bird of sci-fi. You know what I mean? French Lick, Indiana.
38:49
Dude, how insane is it that Larry Bird was so amazing and would just literally drink beers like on the bus to the game?
38:57
And like people used to smoke cigarettes at halftime of those games?
39:01
Like, isn't that absolutely insane now?
39:02
Like, now LeBron James sleeps in like a hyperbaric chamber.
39:07
But like, the guy who was basically the LeBron James of his time was literally just like downing Bud Lights after games.
39:13
And he was like so skinny and so pale, had the worst haircut, the shortest shorts. The best mustache.
39:21
The best mustache, but he like kind of looked like a like a human version of like Big Bird, and he just killed it.
39:26
And he's considered one of the top five.
39:28
Yeah, that guy's amazing.
39:28
He He gives He gives the weirdos hope.
39:30
Uh this story's amazing, Hugh Howey. Um That's a good story.
39:35
You want to do one or two more thing? Yeah, uh My Shell. Use Shepherd. It's great.
39:41
You need to hire somebody? Go check it out.
39:42
It's how I hire a bunch of people.
39:44
If you want to hire people like I do, use Shepherd. How's that? All right. There, that's perfect.
39:51
thrill in that chill, but I kept it short.
39:53
Do you have one more thing?
39:53
Oh, well, I guess we didn't talk about this. This is kind of cool.
39:56
James Clear just launched an app yesterday, which I think was the stimulus for this whole thing that we didn't we didn't talk about.
40:01
Andrew Wilkinson, he put out this tweet where he said, "We partnered with James Clear.
40:07
Tiny owns 40%, James owns 60%. We made this app."
40:10
I actually didn't look at the app.
40:12
Is it a productivity app or a habit tracking app?
40:15
What if it was just something completely different?
40:17
It's just a social media app. Just a network. Photo sharing app.
40:22
Just some like stupid game.
40:22
It's like you like they recreated like snake from Nokia. That's so funny.
40:33
By the way, okay, so let's talk about a couple things here.
40:35
Great idea to release a habits app.
40:38
You want an app to be habit forming.
40:40
Literally, that's like only successful apps are ones that you use habitually.
40:45
So, creating a habits app is a good idea.
40:46
There's lots of There's habits apps, but they're not made by James Clear.
40:49
So, I think this is like no no-brainer idea.
40:51
He could have just created anything that was a habit.
40:52
Like just like some supplement or drug.
40:54
Like I'm going to get you addicted.
40:56
We're going to make this habit. Watch this.
41:00
We're going to call it crack.
41:02
So, I think genius idea by him.
41:05
Maybe doubly genius idea by Andrew to pull this off.
41:08
I think it's amazing what he's doing.
41:10
He's done this now with Huberman.
41:11
So, he launched the Yerba Mate drink with Huberman, which I think is also a genius idea.
41:15
I think what Andrew's doing now is the new playbook of what Chernin did.
41:19
Remember I was saying like Chernin's playbook with the content to commerce.
41:22
They did it with Barstool. They did it with Eater.
41:25
They did it with like a bunch of these media media publications.
41:27
That was a really good model and it's played out over the last 10 years.
41:33
I think what Andrew's doing now is going to play out over the next 10 years, which is he's partnering with these experts and authorities.
41:39
And he's like, "Look, I already have Metalab that can do the design, the engineering.
41:44
I have I I own a portfolio of businesses.
41:46
I've, you know, made a billion dollars doing this whole thing. So, let me find a CEO.
41:49
We'll build the whole thing.
41:51
You just have to promote it and it's a perfect fit with what you do."
41:54
I think it's just like such a good model.
41:57
It's also really fun for him, right?
41:58
Cuz he's going to get to hang out and rub shoulders with people who he likes and respects.
42:01
He's got like a cool cocktail story of being like, "Oh, yeah, we built the James Clear app.
42:06
We did the Huberman drink. We did the whatever." Right?
42:08
They've done a bunch of these these apps now.
42:12
So, I just think it's an awesome win all around.
42:13
Like I'm I'm really happy for him.
42:16
We should have Andrew on to talk about it, but my prediction is that this won't make nearly as much money as some of his other boring things that no one would ever talk about, but it's cooler than all of the other ones.
42:29
Like it's significantly cooler.
42:29
It won't make as much money, but it's way cooler.
42:33
Like to be able to like this thing's going to make a lot of money.
42:35
Why do you think this is not going to make money?
42:36
Well, I just think that it's his other stuff just is so much better if I had to guess.
42:40
I think the like the normal do like hundreds of millions on meditation, I'm pretty sure that you can get like 30, 40 million of ARR on a habit app.
42:49
I think maybe you can, but Andrew also owns all these boring agencies that are like the thousandth most popular agency and they also make many many tens of millions a year in profit. No, no, no.
43:02
If you add them all up, they do, but each individually does not, right?
43:05
Like If you add them all up, they do.
43:05
His agency you add up what he's going to do with Huberman, with James Clear, and the next five that he's going to do like this, those are going to add up to be much bigger.
43:15
The Huberman drink is a brilliant idea.
43:17
That is a absolutely brilliant idea.
43:19
The James Clear app, like he's getting the right type of things.
43:22
Like you don't want necessarily the A-list celebrity cuz the A-list celebrity for every, you know, George Clooney or Ryan Reynolds that you get that that have a hit, there's tons of others that they don't really care about promoting. They're too busy. But it's not a fit.
43:35
They don't have like a direct relationship with their audience cuz they're actually on Hollywood.
43:38
They're not like have a direct channel through social media.
43:42
And so, the people that he's finding are like, "This is meaningful for them.
43:46
It's a perfect fit with them.
43:48
They have a direct relationship with their audience and they haven't like they have like love from their audience.
43:55
It's not just like people who are fans of them.
43:56
It's people have deep trust in them.
43:58
And I think that that is a I think he's picking the right influencers to do these things.
44:01
I would bet that he's going to make hundreds of millions off of these plays.
44:06
If you if you add up the, you know, three to five that he's going to do in this category, I would bet that that's a three to three like a $300 prize.
44:12
I guess we'll have to have him on and ask him about it.
44:14
I'm he he's like a spider, man. He's or like an octopus.
44:19
He's got his tentacles like all over the place. I see this.
44:21
I'm like, "How the [ __ ] did you weasel your way into that thing?"
44:24
Like he just like he knows everything.
44:26
Like he not knows everything. He knows everyone.
44:28
I don't know how he gets his fingers on all these things.
44:31
I'll be like, "Check your email."
44:32
Like, "Hey, uh Where's our email?
44:35
We're influencers, Andrew. Where you at? Well, where's our offer?
44:39
He also plays dumb with me all the time.
44:41
I go, like you're I I'm I'd probably be like, "Hey, have you heard of this guy named Huberman?
44:44
I've been loving his podcast."
44:45
And Wilkinson will be like, "Yeah, I think it's a nice podcast. I also enjoy it."
44:49
And then like weeks later, I'll be like, "Yeah, we partnered with him and launched this company."
44:53
He's like, "Yeah, we did that 18 months Yeah. Like, okay."
44:55
Like he does that he does that kind of on a regular basis with me where I'll be like, "Have you heard of this thing? It's kind of neat."
45:00
And I'll be like, "Yeah, I agree. That is neat."
45:02
He he is a super networker.
45:02
He is a absolutely incredible networker.
45:06
I am I admire his networking skills.
45:09
Like he's like, "Cool, I like Bill Ackman.
45:14
Now I'm friends with Bill Ackman and he's an investor in my company."
45:17
"Oh, Charlie Munger's my hero."
45:20
Years later, I'm having dinner with Charlie Munger and he's offering me, you know, XYZ.
45:23
It's like he is really able to When he puts his mind to it with who he wants to meet, he is able to make that [ __ ] happen.
45:29
And I think he does it in a way that's mutually beneficial.
45:32
It's not like uh You know, most people when they're like, "Oh, I want to meet this person."
45:36
It's like just begging for it, you know, time or attention in a way that's not additive to the other person.
45:41
I think he does it in a good way that's additive to the other person.
45:44
Yeah, he's he's fascinating in the way that he's able to But he also he also turns a weird networking opportunity into like real businesses.
45:54
Like usually more often than not when I meet people, I'm like, "That was nice to meet you.
45:57
I'll see you never again." Yeah. This is awesome, right? High five.
46:01
And that's like where my brain stops. Yeah. What a guy.
46:10
Like I'm literally like, you know, Dumb and Dumber when he's walking out of the 7-Eleven, he's like, "Big gulps, huh? Yeah.
46:16
All right, catch you later."
46:18
Like that's that's me at every networking event. Same.
46:21
That's exactly how I am where it starts and ends right there.
46:25
It's like a passing memory.
46:25
And yet Andrew somehow like makes it into money and turns it into dollars.
46:30
I don't know how he does it, but he's very good at it.
46:34
he told one story on the pod where he was like, "I wanted to meet Dan Gilbert. I met Dan Gilbert."
46:36
And then they had this challenge with this like or he had a product I have a design agency.
46:39
So, we just made him a website for free that was really nice cuz I he used that as his currency to like, you know, "Hey, I think you're awesome and we did this thing. This is awesome, right?
46:50
Oh, it's cuz my agency's awesome. Cuz I'm awesome."
46:51
He just uses it to sort of like open the door.
46:55
He'll put in the work, basically.
46:56
And he's he'd be like, "Oh, whenever you're free, I'll fly there and let's, you know, I'll meet you.
47:00
You know, I'll make the effort to come to come make this happen."
47:02
The takeaway is to have an agency.
47:06
To either have like an an agency or like a sick house.
47:08
It's like, "Oh, you're in town?
47:09
Come and stay in my home."
47:09
And then, you know what I mean?
47:10
Like you have to have like some like awesome excuse to like Anytime someone's traveling, like, "Oh, do you want to stay in my house?"
47:15
And I just rent an Airbnb for them to stay in.
47:20
They're just absolutely indebted to me.
47:23
Well, it's kind of a good tactic.
47:23
Chris Sacca said that he had this house in Truckee and you know, he would like lure, which sounds weird, more weird than it actually is. Right.
47:31
He would lure these like interesting founders in. Come to my bed. I got eight credits. Come over.
47:42
And he would like get these guys to come up and he become friends with them.
47:43
And it was like they're they're like, "Well, I would love to hang out in Truckee and just so happens you have a house."
47:46
And that's how he become friends with them.
47:49
But maybe having an agency is better than having "When I lived in San Francisco, I was just constantly getting like meeting requests or event invitations and it was like a good problem to have, but at still a problem."
47:59
He's like, "I was playing defense.
48:00
I was just reacting to whatever was going on."
48:02
He's like, "When I moved to Truckee, then I played offense.
48:04
I would figure out who it who it is that I want to actually spend time with.
48:07
And then I would proactively plan and like set it up so that Travis Kalanick came for the weekend and stayed with him.
48:13
He's like, "We're not going to just get coffee.
48:14
We're going to hang out for a weekend."
48:17
And like for every 50 coffee meetings I do, like one weekend is just so much more powerful than 50 coffee meetings.
48:24
And so, he's like, "We hang out. We spend time together. They meet my family. We chill in the hot tub.
48:30
We brainstorm in the morning.
48:30
Then later that evening, we a new idea comes."
48:32
And I'm just very helpful for these people.
48:35
That's how he did his Uber investment.
48:36
He did the same thing with the founder of Instagram.
48:37
That's how he did his Instagram investment, too, was he invited Kevin Systrom to come stay at his place in Truckee and he stayed there for whatever, few days, a week, or whatever it was.
48:45
And by the end of that, like they were kind of bonded.
48:47
And I I think that was Chris Sacca did a lot of cool things and that's definitely one of them.
48:51
I don't know if uh a three-bedroom place in the 'burbs is going to do the trick.
48:57
I think both of us are going to have to step it up.
49:02
Can I interest you in Walnut Creek? Yeah. We'll go to Safeway. We'll come back.
49:12
Like the only appeal Do you like marble countertops?
49:14
I got I got marble countertops.
49:16
Like Um All right, is that it? Is that the pod? That's the pod. Mhm.