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uh really here's here's the the hook okay so this is my Billy of the week we used to have a billy of the week theme song I don't know if we still have we should dig one up or get AI to make a bil of the week jingle for [Applause] [Music]
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us million dollars isn't cool you know what's cool a billion dollar okay so I let me tell you how I got hooked on this I read this story in the information and I don't really read the information normally in fact I can't read I don't buy the I don't pay for the
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information but you like it gives you the the preview and then it starts to fade you're saying by the way the information.com yeah and it and it fades and it totally gets you hooked it gets me hooked but I'm reading the fading part and the as it's fading away there's
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a line that just caught my attention it goes it's like residents of the small town in Idaho were complaining because suddenly dozens if know like you know dozens of private jets were suddenly flying into this private airport and you
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know like basically like armored vehicles were showing up and they're wondering what is going on they called the mayor and like did something happen and they're like oh it's just Thomas tll who's that exactly who's that and then it faded out I was like oh I have to ask
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my friend who's got an information account to Bootleg me a copy of this story and so he did so this guy is I think kind of a legend he is a stealthy billionaire he starts off his career in lrom mats shout out to Cody Sanchez then shifts to auto repair shops
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then shifts to uh buying small accounting practices and does basically a rollup and ends up with 500 worldwide locations for his accounting thing that he put He put it all under one Banner like American Financial Services or some
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[ __ ] like that and no like private Equity background just like a blue collar he had he had worked he he first was Blue Collar then at some point he gets I don't know he he did have a like a stint in private Equity he learned a little bit about the private Equity
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business either as an internship or something else um but I'm pretty sure he quit college or just like was Moonlighting while he's at College doing the laundromat thing uh you know grows up single mom uh you know doesn't have a
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lot of money so he's he's basically like I need to fill a need so he's like okay I'll start with launder mats okay this is not a very good business but like gets me going and he's the whole time he's kind of a data nerd so even with the lrat business he um start starts
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buying these washing machines that can do surge pricing so it's like when there's more demand the cost goes up he's like why wouldn't it do that uh all the rush comes in at one period of a time that's why I need to make money and so you know he's a little bit of a data
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nerd and he ends up becoming famous because he takes that same data philosophy and he applies it to a business that never had it which is the movie business and so he does what's called Moneyball for movies so the Moneyball strategy that was famous for
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uh in baseball to find undervalued assets and to build a team construct a team with like you know sort of the using data as an edge rather than these old school Scouts that are you know spitting sunflower seeds and looking at a prospect and being like I like his ass
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you know like let's he's going to he's got something I always trust a guy with a big ass you know like it's like what what are you talking about um you see he gets on base a lot like no he's too fat never they'll never make it they're like I don't know seems like got
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some strong loins yeah or be like he's got a strong jaw I think he's got star potential it's like okay he'll be a leader in the clubhouse all right great and so Moneyball was basically like forget that side of thing the qualitative let's
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focus on the quantitative so this guy does that for movies and he creates legendary ENT M which is the movie production company the movie financing company that financed and produced movies like The Batman series so the Dark Knight all that stuff Batman Begins
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300 The Hangover on and on and on now recently Dune um and so he builds this thing up sells it for $3.5 billion do to the richest man in China and um this guy's just like fascinating so like the whole journey from laundr mats auto repair shops tax firms then has a dinner
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with a guy who's like I think he's a movie exec and he's complaining about film financing and he's like how does it work there and it was basically like the old um you know the baseball scouting thing like oh this actor um you know we
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like this plot blah blah blah and he's like do you guys do any like data analysis and he's he realized like they don't have the money ball side but they also don't have just private equity and he's like move the movie business is the largest industry that doesn't really
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have like a private Equity focused firm and that's what I'm going to do I'm just going to bring the capital I'm not going to be the I'm not going to have the full production system I'm not going to have the distribution rights I'll just bring
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the capital and so what he did was he partnered with Warner Brothers so he he to start this business he raises $500 million which he's like this is the hardest thing I ever done was Raising $500 million for this thing wow and he's
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he goes in and he partners with Warner Brothers he cuts a deal like we're gonna co-finance 30 movies with you but here's the deal we're gonna basically build up a data team that's going to figure out which movies we should bet on and which ones we shouldn't um and more
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importantly how we promote them so I thought this was interesting because in most of the articles I read about this guy they're just like it's like the handwavy thing it's like and then he started legendary entertainment and sells it for $4 billion like what how
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did this guy with no background in the movie business create this company how did they produce these hits and like what was he doing differently and do you know what he was doing differently no no keep going so so there was two or three
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insights so the first Insight he had was bigger is actually better so there's this romantic idea in the movie business about like Indie indie films and like let's go back to Quality just like real just genuine scripts and all this stuff
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and he's like most of the movies that fail are these like mid-market movies that kind of cost like a medium amount of money but they don't have like guaranteed slam dunk people will watch for this one reason like it's got this superhero it's got this A-list actor
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whatever and he's like they're making the plot too complicated that it only appeals to like an intellectual person he's like we need to have movies that have like Commercial Appeal it should still be elevated like he did Inception and he did Dark Knight like they're
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still great movies but like Dark Knight is still like Batman and Inception still has Leonardo DiCaprio right so he's like he's like yeah I'm gonna have some things that I could take to the bank to actually underwrite these films better
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so that was the first thing was like they need I need to go for bigger budget films that um have like a headline reason that people will have to go and pay for to to go watch this movie so he leaned heavily into IP so like license
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IP um he also leaned heavily into like mainstream actors and directors and he did a a ton of great stuff Straight Out of Compton the but Dune one and two Inception uh The Hangover which was huge Watchman Dark Knight just by the way great movies still a hard business I
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think they they only they've only ever had two consecutive years of profitability or something like that like in the like 10-year run it's not like every year just year after year they were heading bangers but the movie business it's a hit business so when
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they hit they hit really big in those years that they hit and other years they might lose 50 or100 million but then when they hit they hit 500 million or or billion dollars of of net gain and so you know anyway sells the business one of his first movies was uh was Beerfest
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you're telling me that wasn't a hit yeah so uh you know the big thing was they they they found Christopher Nolan pretty ear like he turned out to be like one of the best directors period and like he was kind of unproven at the time so you know it's not all not all
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easy second thing he did though was he's like China how do we make movies that have international appeal specifically appeal in China and he's like China's a big market and there's like a lack there's like a lot of demand there's not
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a lot of supply of American films that can cross over and so he's like we're going to be International and that's going to be one of our edges so he's like all right I'm gonna I need a simple-minded plot so I need a a it could be well done but the plot needs to
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be simple good guy bad guy right um he's like for most of these I need something that will transfer into China past the language barrier and just have like simple appeal like Batman uh has simple appeal and so and then he partnered with
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a Chinese company he did a joint venture with China film which is like a government own public State company for films and he's like we're goingon to bring the movies and we'll do a 50-50 JV with you over there and so he cuts the
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right deal there and it has the right distribution there then so that was the second good thing it did the third is the data analysis the Moneyball side of things so I didn't fully realize this but in both video games and movies you might if it says like you
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know this movie had a $200 million budget that's the that's the amount they might have spent on um making the film but then guess how much they'll spend on marketing the film I have no idea another 30% more another 100% more 150% more so if
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they spend 150 million on the movie they'll spend another 150 million or 200 million on the marketing of the movie so each movie each movie is like a like a meaningful size company that lasts for 3 years well sometimes longer right if it gets syndicated if it has like longterm
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like gets going I mean the actual work the the work of making it and marketing I mean it's almost it's it's like a presidential election same thing with Grand Theft Auto they'll spend like $500 million marketing Grand Theft Grand Theft Auto that's insane it's crazy
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that's insane big video games the triaa like video games they'll spend hundreds of Millions on their Market um so they'll usually like double the the amount they spent on making the thing and so you know what else spends that much money on marketing every DDC brand
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and what he realized in the same way that like what DC Brands did was they took the Moneyball approach and said hm if uh practor and gambles just like doing these like random like just sponsor the Super Bowl and like let's just take tide and then or let's take
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you know um whatever Old Spice and we'll just run funny TV commercials and like is it working I don't know right the old adage with TV commercials was um half my budget does nothing and half performs problem is I don't I don't know which
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half and um you know that's how brand adver in worked and then what happened is that guys like Moyes came in and built native deodorant and they're like [ __ ] the Old Spice model I don't have enough money to do TV anyways I have to
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do the Moneyball approach I need Performance Marketing where I can measure every dollar and attribute every single purchase to which ad I ran and how much I spent on that ad and that will tell me if I should do more of that ad or less of that ad or tweak it and
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then that's how he builds you know a really fast growing deodorant company on the back of Facebook and so what Thomas did was the same thing with movie marketing what's a direct response version for a movie that's what these guys do they run Facebook ads they run
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YouTube ads they run to buy a ticket to the movie to get yeah to get you to not exactly like go online and buy the ticket right away but to get you to be like oh yeah I heard that movie's coming out oh it looked good so they'll do [ __ ]
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let me just tell you some of the [ __ ] that they do so I thought this was pretty cool they'll take trailers so they're like the trailer is the ad creative right the trailer is the thing that needs to get you to say oh I want to see that that movie looks really good
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and so they'll do like AB test they'll do like 50 versions of a trailer and they'll do they'll take an audience of you know they'll take a hundred people they'll put them in a movie theater they'll play the trailer and they have a
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scanner on the seat in front of you that'll take like a facial biometric reading of you and they have they have you wearing a a heart rate monitor and they're trying to see like in a movie or a trailer or or whatever yeah like they're trying to see like do you react
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and what part do you react to does your heart rate Elevate does it Quicken now I don't know if this is just PR by because the guy who was talking about this was their head of analytics um and they basically poach this guy so there's some guy that was he built a
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sports analytics company in the Moneyball era sold it and then he gets a call from Thomas and says hey do you want to do Moneyball for movies he's like I'm in and so he became the head of analytics and he's like we have a 50 person applied analytics team like
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applied sciences team he goes that's 49 more than every other movie producer he's like he's like we have like 50 Engineers data scientists like the all of these people are like hardcore data computer science engineering type folks
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and he's like nobody else even has this department he's like or at least they didn't when when we started do you think they make movies dep like you know how sometimes when we create content we think headline first or thumbnail first or whatever do you think they think of
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the trailer as what's a good movie that could be an awesome trailer I think 100% they do in fact one of the films that flopped was this thing called The Great Wall or something like that I I don't know I never saw it but it's like they
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did the joint venture with the CH uh the Chinese company and they're like oh let's let's make a American movie but it's about the Great Wall it's like imagine if the Great Wall was actually built to keep aliens out and that's what they discovered the purpose was
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something like that Matt Damon's in it and uh movie flops China didn't love it America didn't love it it was like kind of neither it was they tried to make something for everybody it didn't work it was something for nobody and what he
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the analytics guy is like gonna die on this hill he's like he's like I don't know man the data showed that Matt Damon was he's like we we were under indexed on Matt Damon in China I was like I don't even know what that means but he's
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basically like the price for Matt Damon versus the cache Matt Damon has with that audience it was a good trade and he's like no that was a good trade and people like the movie flopped dude he's like all right but that was right that one part was right which insane and so
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why does he have why is he showing up to Idaho with armored vehicles so now he's shifted into so he sells legendary uh to the richest man in China and then he he still owns I think like 10 or 20% um but like you can't own 10 or 20% of a
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Chinese company as an American like that that's a big Chinese company and so he they give him like Phantom stock so he gets like only a profit share uh he can't like own any equity in the thing but now what he does is he took that money and he's investing heavily in
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defense Tech so he invested in anduril he invested in some Shield AI like a bunch of Defense Tech so that meeting was basically a meeting of the minds of entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley who are building defense tech people from Washington who are like you know the
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lobbyist the the people that they Lobby they know the whoever the Senators Congressman whoever those people are and um the generals and the defense contractor like a meeting on the minds of all those people and they were just like you know probably get together and
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be like China we got to we got to stop these guys you know like and he's got this flywheel right because the flywheel is so amazing the flywheel is you start a defense company you then Lobby and Lobby for increased defense spending so
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they increase defense spending which goes to your companies right and so like that flywheel of like whining and dining Washington while then funding the companies that will win the contracts is just a very very lucrative model I'm not saying he's doing it in any any
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malicious or nefarious way not I don't mean that at all I just mean it's very it's interesting how that can work right it's smart if that's your model which is you you can actually influence the spend through PR through whatnot so you'll see
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like a guy like Joe Lonsdale and I think he believes this by the way he's got defense tech companies right he started paler um he also started a company called epis he's starting some like you know underwater drone company like he's starting a bunch of deep Tech defense
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tech companies but then he also spends a lot of time building relationships with you know public officials and and those folks and he'll go on CNBC and he'll be like we got to stop Tik Tock and like I I don't think he's doing it you know
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just for his dollar I don't think that's why he's doing it I think he's doing them all from a sense of purpose like he genuinely thinks that we shouldn't have Tik Tock kind of brainwashing the American like population while being owned or controlled or the data siphoned
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off to you know the CCP so like I think he genuinely believes that but it also happens to be a very strong flywheel where if you could shift the public perception or the government the government's perception to increase the funding in this that will also benefit
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the companies that you started to serve that that need dude and Thomas tol looks like a movie villain if you Google and and look at he has a cameo in Batman he is actually uh like in the owner's box you know that scene where Bane like
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blows up the football stadium he's in he's because he he owns a piece of the pittsbur Steelers too so the team the team playing in the movie is the Steelers he's in the owner box he is a partial owner and he gives himself a little Cameo this guy looks like a
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Steeler he he's huge he's like a big guy a former college football player I think this guy's impressive hey real quick you know one of the cool Parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual million-dollar businesses made
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their first million off an idea they heard on the show that is crazy that's wild that's why we want to do the show and we want to see more of that one of the questions we get asked over and over again is is there some kind of idea
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database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about well the answer is finally yes to find Folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50 plus business ideas and put them into a business idea database it's
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totally free you can click the link in the description below and get the database for you all right now back to the show let me tell you a couple other random things one he's like I don't live in LA so he built a Hollywood company without living in La he's like he's like
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I he had a great line he's like I just want to make great movies uh that people love I don't want to figure out you know like I don't want to make sure I have a dinner table at spago tonight like he's like I don't want the Hollywood status
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stuff like I just want to make great movies and so that's why I don't live there I I just do my thing from far away where's he based is is it Pittsburgh is he based I'm not sure so at one point he bought like 150 acres of farmland and
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was like I'm gonna live off this land he's like and what he did was he's like I want to use this to learn all of the advanced farming robotics companies and we'll use this land to to try those and he's like I want to learn the tech and try to see if are rebuilding the
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future of food and I want to be living in a self- sustainable way and like I'm going to try I'm going to try that for a period I don't know how long he lives there or if he does it full-time but this guy's pretty fascinating man he um
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I don't know he's just done a lot of things in a lot of different places and the through line for all of it was this Like Money Ball for X which I thought was pretty fascinating great fine this was that was really good this guy's so fascinating we should get this guy on
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does he do interviews or is he really he's pretty stealthy but he went on Lex and he also went on far Street back in the day and so I'd love to have him on to talk CU you could tell he's like a you know like he's a business guy he's
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very like practical like he's just I don't know he comes across very real I watch some of his interviews he comes across very very real very straightforward he's like well I just I just thought you know like I just thought X like he like that's it like
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and and then I just did it and he's like well you know for example he invested in the some company doing Gene Tech editing and these guys like are trying to bring back the woolly mammoth have you heard about this yeah I mean I've read about
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in headlines they're St there stated mission is to bring back the willly mammoth but I loved how we talked about him because it was very real and he was like which company what's that called I don't remember their name like Colossus I think colossal or Colossus something
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like that okay and so he's like they're like you invest in this company that's bringing back the woolly mammoth right it's like a very Buzzy thing to talk about yeah and he's like well like he's like look I thought they were doing really interesting things with like
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studying you know the genome and Gene editing crisper he's like I think the willly mammoth thing makes for great PR like he's like he was basically just like I don't give a [ __ ] about bringing back the woolly mammoth I'm not doing
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this as some like weird billionaire like fetish thing that billionaires do and they're just like oh I need to like you know resurrect you know I need to summon a god he's like the will thing is interesting but it's like it's like a
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headline he's like you know what I like is that he's like I met these sign these guys and they're really smart scientists and I just thought these guys are so smart I need to be around them and they're going to do really interesting things so I'll back them and if they
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want to work on this will M thing okay great he's like but I just think the science they're doing is really fascinating and he goes also I like their ethics because he goes when I the more I met with them it was clear that okay these guys are in the top 0.1% of
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intelligence but there's people like that in China and all around the world he's like but they don't all have the same ethical code that these guys do we're like they're going to use this for good and they're not just going to like be cloning random [ __ ] or editing things
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like in a Pretty Reckless way and he's like so I just thought it was good these guys needed the backing because like I I I [ __ ] with their moral code basically and so I don't know I like this guy I always find it almost romantic but like
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very intoxicating when I read about people who don't have uh a ton of education but dominate a certain area so for him the fact that I don't know what entirely what his back around is so I could be off here but it seems like he's sort of a blue cery guy who kind of
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kicked ass at at finance and deal making and but he doesn't have that traditional New York City you know big Bank background he didn't buy auto repair shops because he's like oh I can do a PE roll up and get leverage and raise
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prices and he was just like he's like well I live in Pittsburgh and I lived in a part of Pittsburgh a lot of money people aren't buying new cars so it's like you got a car if your car breaks you don't you can't really buy a new car so the auto shops were a good bet
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because they were goingon to try to fix it it's like uh if I can get like another year out of this beater I'm gonna do it so he's like I just realized like Auto Repair is gonna like be a thing here because that's what the community needs that's how we discovered
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the defense Tech stuff so he was like he was doing movies and he's like oh dude I want the like the fight scenes in the military scenes to be realistic so he's like let's bring in advisers from the actual military to tell us like what is
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the Weaponry what would what would be cool what would be the The Cutting Ed stuff that if we put in the movie that would be interesting and he's talking to them and he's kind of like damn they really don't have like as much Cutting Edge Tech as I thought like the Navy and
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the Marines like they kind of wished that they could do XYZ but they couldn't and that's when he started funding more defense Tech he's like sounds like there's actually just a need for this um and so like you know obviously you don't
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know how much of this is like reverse PR where you go back and you make up a nice wholesome sounding story but I don't know I I bought it which I I usually I'm pretty skeptical about that stuff but I bought it here I also like people so and
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this is really easy to read about and to think about but basically all right so you explained his idea I'm going to do Moneyball for movies and you think about it and you go okay cool that I guess that makes sense even at the time you could be like that's neat that's
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interesting but to have the courage to in confidence to believe that you are right even though you don't really know too much about something you're a total Outsider to have the courage to do it and to go that big I find incredibly intoxicating and inspirational because
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you I mean how many people do you think have told him like you have no idea about this industry we've done it this way for a hundred years what are you talking about that's not how it's done but just to be like look it makes sense that it's this this and this and this
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like Warren Buffett has that a lot of great I mean anyone who's great typically has that where it's like they they believe in their own logic and their own reasoning and they believe that their decision is the right decision even though most everyone is
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like that's insane I have so much love for people who are that courageous and confident in their own decisions I think that's very MB yeah conviction is attractive um you know one of the things that they talked about with the the Moneyball thing it's like cool like you
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can set you can read you can have an analogy like Moneyball for movies and then you sit down you're like cool so what are we going to Moneyball like in sports all of the data is public it's all there everyone's stats are there every is filmed on TV so even if you
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didn't have a stat you could go back and create it like what are you going to do for the movies it's like not the same thing and so what do you what are you actually going to do and so one of the things they did they were like the
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analytics guy had a great statement he goes I take this population of people he's like on the left side of the bell curve there's people who are never going to watch the movie no matter what we do we don't want to spend a dollar marketing to them that's my goal with
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that population is don't spend $1 dollar on one impression for those people who are never going to watch it's like then you have the people that are going to watch no matter what I also don't want to spend a dollar on them like they just
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they are Dune Fanatics they got a dune poster in their in their in their bedroom they grew up watching the reading the books they're going to watch doe no matter what I do so then there's the people in the middle and the people in the middle they're like our swing
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voters and they might watch it and I need to figure out then I start slicing and dicing that audience and I figure out this mom is going to watch because she loves that actor and this guy's going to watch because he loves a badass action
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scene so we need two different trailers that we're going to run in Social ads at each of those he's like and then we need a data set that tells us who actually goes to the movies and like basically need a map between the the email
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addresses that we're advertising to and the email addresses that are used that to buy tickets and we need to create these clusters and try to figure out like what's actually converting movie folks weren't doing this I guess not not in a serious way I don't know maybe
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maybe there's other producers that are like you know like kicking the wall right now being like God damn it we all do this like that's not special I don't know I don't know the business well enough these guys told the story best better than anybody else so seems to
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have worked this is awesome I mean the track record's also there too right like they had they just like I mean they built a really big thing in a really small amount of time coming in as a complete Outsider so you know that's pretty
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pretty impressive this guy's fascinating I want to learn more about this guy yeah he's cool one one other point on this it's interesting to think about where else Moneyball for X could be implemented so I don't know if you've read about Obama's data team or well
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I've read about Trump's uh Trump's i' I've read a lot about trumps and it is getting into election season coming up uh and I hate it because they they get I get so many texts and emails I mean they are intense about their marketing and I
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know that Jared Kushner kind of hired a bunch of tech guys and they crushed it even before Trump Obama raised something like a billion and a half dollars and they spent most of that I would imagine on marketing uh I mean what these what the politicians do in basically a year
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and a half it's pretty phenomenal in terms of like deploying money for marketing and they're Savage about it dude the presidential election is a marketing contest between two agencies and they each get to pick their their front man and then they run a marketing
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Blitz and they spend 500 million to a billion dollars marketing over the course mons and and like that's it so it got two pres the last two presidents elected was the money ball for X they used it in politics it helped the Red Sox win the World Series uh you know
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worked in baseball it built tons of DC Brands the Moneyball approach also is you know in finance with all the quants Quant funds or hedge funds that are using using this or Renaissance um so it's pretty interesting to see how you
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can use Moneyball in a in a IND any industry that is still like not data first so not data driven and if you asked you know how do you guys make decisions and it's basically some version of gut uh gut eyeball you know taste uh there's probably a Moneyball
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like variant there I know a guy who uh is doing it in with HVAC he has an HVAC business doing like 150 million a year in revenue and he tells me constantly all the data stuff that they're doing and he's like no one people don't do this uh in our industry no one is doing
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this where uh it's as simple as you know we're looking at the data of what can we send and how many emails can we send to get more Google reviews but they just like Chang their their data is it's like they're running it like a tech company a
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little bit where they have a small data analytics team and he says that very rarely is anyone else in the HVAC industry doing something like this dude uh Sam I gotta ask you I already know the answer to this question but I gotta ask you did you watch UFC
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300 on Saturday the full five hours or six hours yeah set the whole time it was amazing did you make like a seven layer nacho dip and just sit there for seven hours watching it I I watched the entire thing I think it started at 6 o'clock
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and it ended at 1 o'cl my time so I want to talk about it because a we're both UFC fans uh and it was amazing but B there's actually a great business CEO lesson in it that I want to I want to go to but first can we just explain for for anybody what Max Holloway did because I
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think the max Holloway thing alone if you don't even watch the fights you need to know that this happened well let's explain UFC 300 so UFC's been around since the '90s uh they've done thousands of events but the major events they number them UFC 1 2 3 4 5 this past
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weekend was UFC 300 typically what they do is a card has five main fights and then before the five main fights there's 10 prelims which are no-name fights that up are up up incomers this time they didn't have they had 15 fights but all
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of them were famous great people and so it created like 5 hours of epic fight cards right yeah it was crazy and um one of the fights was for a madeup title called the bad mother effer belt the BMF title and it was two guys who are
28:12
popular but they're currently not at the tippy top of their thing so one guy this guy's name is Max Holloway and he's fighting this guy Justin gatei and they're fighting and Justin G is a big favorite coming into the fight people think he's going to win Max Holloway has
28:25
kind of gotten he's he's kind of looks like he's on the back end of his prime or maybe on the decline a little bit and um so two things happen One Max H starts to win okay that itself was cool remarkable but nothing compared to what
28:38
happened at the end so the guy the way UFC fight works is five rounds let's say and basically what happens is if you're winning you each round gets scored if you're winning each of the rounds you have it locked up so what happens is let's say you are winning three rounds
28:51
to two or four rounds to one your corner tells you hey you're way ahead just play it safe just the only way this other guy can win is if he knocks you out don't you just play it smart right that's n times out of 10 however this is fighting
29:03
entertainment and some Fighters understand that and some Fighters don't Max Holloway understands that so what he did was he wins all five rounds so he's not even up 32 four one he wins all five rounds and at the end of the fifth round he's basically broken this guy's nose
29:19
he's got this guy kind of uh batter and bruis the only thing this one guy can do and this guy's a power puncher the only thing this guy can do is knock him out Max Holloway decides in the last 10 seconds where most guys kind of just
29:30
circle around raise their hands try to tell the judges they won he points to the middle of the Ring it points down and he's like stand right here neither one of us backs down and just let's swing as hard as we can and try to knock each other out for the last 10 seconds
29:45
now this sounds very Savage what this actually just say is incredibly courageous and brave and entertaining and Reckless and stupid all at the same time rolled into one and they both start just swinging absolute Haymakers at each
29:56
other and then he and the last second of the fight knocks the other guy out cold I feel like I can't even do it justice if you if you watch the fight you already know what happened if you don't want you probably don't care about this but it was remarkable to watch it was
30:10
probably the best UFC moment I've ever seen maybe for sure top for sure top three probably number one and I would actually say it was one of the best moments in sports that I've ever seen exactly it was like I felt so much adrenaline watching this I was like it
30:28
was in the middle of the night my baby was sleeping and I yelled like as loud as I could I was in awe it was so adrenaline inducing it was amazing it would be like in basketball if LeBron James was about to win the NBA finals and normally they're just trying to hold
30:43
the ball you know stall let the clock run out and instead he handed the ball to his opponent said no come here you have the ball come to the middle of the Court everybody get off the court oneon-one right now for the game for the championship for the glory and uh and
30:57
then somehow also if he risked getting knocked out in the process uh so pretty insane moment Mark Zer by the way was sitting Ringside at every fighter would run up to him and start pointing at him and talking to him it was awesome it was
31:09
so exciting by the way don't you think that Zuck should lean in more to this I feel like this is the best PR that Mark zucker's ever had is his own his own um you know heel turn into becoming a fighter being at the UFC Court uh ringside hanging out there and all the
31:26
fighters really loving going into the tough man sport right basically and he looked cool he looked cool he had like a little afro and he had a white T-shirt on like baggy white he looked like a cool guy he did yeah he has like the
31:36
oversized tea now he got like he like went on Tik Tok shops and bought like the oversized tea from some like 18-year-old who was doing a dance video and his wife looked cool too this it's called mob Chic what she was wearing it was like all black she looked cool they
31:49
both looked cool Google that I I Google it I read a Business Insider article I learned that word mob Chic so you know what he should do by the way this is a little PR lesson for him I think think that um he should create his own Zuckerberg bonus so he should have the
32:02
Zuck like idea the Zuck 500 and he just gives 500,000 to whoever had the most badass performance so it should have just been like Max Hollow it's like whoever just really put it all on the line win or lose doesn't matter somebody who showed the most heart like the
32:16
underdog bonus and because these guys don't get paid and Zuck has all of the money so if he just did that for every pay-per-view I feel like that would be its own storyline he'd get so much good that you literally real Gladiator stuff
32:30
you couldn't buy it yeah um by the way the singer Saia CIA she does this for Survivor so the winner of Survivor wins a million dollars and C is a super fan of Survivor and she just called into the reunion one time and was like Hey I just
32:44
love that guy he didn't even come close to winning but I want to give him 50 Grand and so it became the the sea bonus of like whoever won her heart gets like extra money at the end it's it's pretty genius dude that's so funny that's awesome um all right and so Max Max
32:58
knocks out the guy what happens what what what's the business angle here the press conference at the end is is always entertaining Dana White is a very unfiltered guy Dana please come on the Pod he goes on the press conference and
33:09
somebody asks him they were like Dana you know on a night like this UFC 300 you try to build a car but after that it's out of your hands you know then it's up to the fighters and like how happy are you that it just turned out that way like such a moment um and such
33:21
a great great overall night and Dana goes you know people ask me what I do for a living I don't he's like I don't organize fights I sell holy [ __ ] moments and tonight I sold a I sold millions of holy [ __ ] moments basically he's like I
33:36
sold a holy [ __ ] moment to millions of people and I thought it's a great little lesson which is what are you really selling what are you really selling in your business is he selling a mixed martial arts contests is he selling an event is he sell he says I'm selling
33:53
holy [ __ ] moments and I thought about this and I you know marketers for a long time have known this which is there's levels to marketing and I want to give you my five levels to marketing based on the Dana White principle of selling holy
34:05
[ __ ] moments okay you ready for this level one you sell a product and this is every shitty startup website you go to it and it just says we are a um Healthcare CRM using AI they're just describing some product and it's not compelling because I don't give a [ __ ]
34:24
about your product I give a [ __ ] about myself and uh your product is some abstract you know we're a blockchainbased um you know web 3 arcade sidescroller it's like what uh you know and if you go to most product websites to be honest they're just selling a
34:40
product that's level one this is what failing companies do okay um level two level two is you don't sell a product you sell a solution and this is effective but it's competitive this is um like Head and Shoulders Head and Shoulders says hey you're retire having that dandruff on
34:58
your shoulder use Head and Shoulders it gets rid of the dandruff okay so selling a solution to a paino and this is where I would say okay if 50% of companies just do sell a product another 45% are going to sell the solution to a pain
35:15
Point okay now we get into the championship rounds where we're going to have more interesting ways of doing things so the next one level three you sell a lifestyle this is Lululemon this is slack so if you've ever if you don't believe me go read the Stuart
35:32
Butterfield who's the CEO of slack go read his post called we don't sell Saddles here and I'll spoil it for you which is he says imagine you're a saddle company you make saddles we could just describe the product the Saddles we could describe some solution like oh
35:45
your butt won't be sore on our saddle or we could sell the lifestyle the joy of horseback riding and get people to want to be on Horseback to feel free to have the wind blowing through their hair you make that lifestyle aspirational and
35:59
then when they're like I got to do that now they're super motivated and they say well what do I need you're like well you need a saddle and ours are the best and so he says that this is how the yoga companies Lululemon and whatnot this is
36:10
how they got popular too is they didn't say here we have the best yoga pants which was a small Market of people looking for yoga pants they got people into the idea of doing yoga and once you get into doing yoga and the benefits of yoga you're going to want to invest in
36:23
buying better gear as you go and L lemon will say well we have the best gear and so you this is how you create a category or you just want to make your your ass look dope but the lifestyle of being a big booty queen and if that's a lifestyle you want to be a part
36:38
of we are the pants for you yeah yeah the MFM merch store will soon have uh soon have fat margin bottoms and the real bottom lines that's pretty good all right and four and five four is where I thought we stop there's actually five but four is
36:59
where I thought we stopped this is the Dana White level you sell a feeling and I'll tell you that that line that somebody told me once I hired this consultant and I was talking about my content I did the lamest thing I hired a consultant for my personal brand just to
37:12
know what do these guys know I didn't ever end up implementing really anything but I did take away this one thing he said he goes I go you've worked with all the big names you've worked with uh you know who I don't want to out him I guess
37:23
but he he's works with a bunch of big names I said what do they do differently than what I'm doing and he goes you make content they give out a feeling I said what he goes as any content creator you are The Merchant of feelings you g if
37:37
you give someone a feeling more consistently and more powerfully than anybody else that's What Makes You box office and I was like man I love using the word box office that's great and um this is what Dana White was saying right we sell holy [ __ ] moments we give you
37:52
that feeling that you can't really get anywhere else like in your life can you really get like there's a reason you love UFC my buddy Julian Shapiro loves the UFC like none other like and he's like I can't watch other sports he's
38:03
like I can't watch TV or movies if UFC has ruined it for me well Dana White said something amazing he goes he goes think about this you're at the you're at the Super Bowl It's the final down it's the greatest moment in in Sp in NFL history and a fight breaks out a few
38:17
rows down from you what are you GNA do you're gonna stop you're gonna stop watching football and you're going to go and pay attention to the fight that's what people do and that's the business that I'm in that's why I knew this was going to be the greatest sport ever
38:29
exactly and so the greatest Brands let's say uh Disney Disney's amazing at this Disney doesn't say come to our theme park um we have the fastest rides or we have the shortest Lines no they they tell you about the magical family experience right this is going to be a
38:44
lifetime memory for you um this is going to give your kids a magical feeling a magical moment all of their movies are the same way right you watch a Pixar movie because it's going to give you this feel-good moment right that's the and they give you feel-good moments more
38:57
consistently than anybody else um so the breast bar do this Louis vuon Louis Vuitton gives you a feeling of status of importance UFC gives you the holy [ __ ] feeling Nike gives you a feeling that you know uh of the feeling of greatness
39:10
when they advertise their shoes they don't advertise the rubber shoes they basically show you someone's striving for greatness and it's that inspiration that motivation that they sell okay so now level five level five I realized is the highest one you didn't sell a
39:23
product you didn't sell a solution you didn't sell a lifestyle you didn't sell a you sell an identity and this is what the religions do this is what political parties do they basically give you a a tribe they give you a label they give
39:36
you a purpose uh they give you a sense of belonging it's almost like buying a a Subway franchise they're like here wear this uniform put this logo up here's the packaging here's a here's a portrait of bread put that on your wall you now have
39:50
an identity we gave you a brand for you to have because you didn't have one on your own we gave you a purpose we gave you something to do it's an identity in a box I think that is the highest level of what um of what you can do is you you sell an identity to people first of all
40:04
very good I'm this you've you this was a really good monologue you tied in some of my favorite stuff congratulations second of all were you just watching the UFC taking notes on this stuff and just like no I heard him say that in the I
40:18
heard him say that in the press conference and I go that's exactly what he does that's why I watch because I can't get that holy [ __ ] feeling from anything what else is as real as that and once you know the the stories of the fighters right that's really what works
40:31
right if you're personally invested and you understand the stakes you understand what's in it for each guy there's like you know it's it's pretty hard to compare that to really any of sport maybe boxing is is the other one uh no boxing doesn't even come
40:44
close to what these guys do like they're they're in A League of Their Own in terms of giving me a feeling like I wore I wore a heart rate monitor one time to see what would happen cuz I I noticed going into the fight I was so anxious
40:56
because I was so emotional invested my heart rate went up like 20 beats per minute like before this fight like it it was insane I get so into this that I find myself like tired the next day it's one of the very few times that I felt this in sports it's the best I feel a
41:10
little bit in the Olympics because I get into that but no I mean what he has done and what the UFC has done in terms of uh what did you say selling emotions it's the best I mean if you go go look at the old cigarette ads if you want to see
41:23
this so if you go look at old cigarette ad obviously not selling the product they're not selling a solution to a pain point they're not saying a hey your lungs need a little more tar in them you know like they're not doing that um they
41:36
it's all about a feeling and an identity right so they're giving you a feeling of uh of Greater you know self-importance a cool self-image right so all of the marketing around cigarettes was a cool self-image it's a cool guy and in his cool moment he takes out the Sig and he
41:54
lights it up or the woman doing the same thing the go watch the desis commercial right the most interesting man in the world sitting in a bar surrounded by women but not paying them any attention looking at you dead in the camera making
42:05
eye contact he's a man's man he's done this he's done that he's done this and when he drinks beer he Dr do dois right it's he trying to give you a a cool self-image that's what a lot of luxury products and a lot of commodity products have to do and so once you realize that
42:20
you're like oh and I love this because in our world the tech world the business world most people are like absolute rookie white belts at real marketing and um and like even the best inclass is just saying sell a solution to a paino just tell the benefit not the feature
42:37
and that's like level two and they just stopped there nobody really goes beyond that and um and so I like taking what is what does the best-in class look like when it comes to like you know marketing and brand and and and actually doing
42:50
something that gets people to to move and take action um and you know how do I bring that into our world because then then you're you know you have an unfair advantage and it's not always around violent so if you're listening to this
43:00
and you don't know anything about the UFC go to YouTube and type in UFC Rose I'm the best one of the best uh moments from UFC is also this young woman named Rose Nunes and she's about to fight and she clearly is scared and you see her Ming to herself I'm the best I'm the
43:17
best I'm the best and I remember distinctly where I was she looks like your little sister and the person across the ring from her looks like the Terminator and so you could you can just put yourself in in that person's shoes oh man they're about to fight somebody
43:29
who's clearly just bigger stronger faster everything and she's mouthing to herself I'm the best to kind of like it's like she's walking into the lion's den and she's got to believe this otherwise she doesn't stand a chance and
43:39
she knocks her out she knocks her out in the first round or something like that and it was one of the it was another great sporting moment so the two other moments first of all there was two Chinese women fighting uh which is uh the first time that's ever happened uh
43:50
for the championship and one of the ladies chokes out another woman and she goes unconscious right when the bell rings so she they're able to keep fighting she doesn't really wake up until she gets punched again on the second round which was like just epic
44:04
and then the third thing that happened was in the last fight Alex Pereira gets kicked in the gro the ref goes to stop it he waves him off and then 10 seconds later knocks out the other guy it was just full of badass moments where this
44:17
whole thing it was just it was epic it was an epic event and by the way to just tie this principal back by the way um I did this with the podcast so I was like what is what are we really selling here on the podcast is it ideas do people show up because they want a business
44:33
idea that's kind of lame like sure it's fun to hear ideas fun to talk about ideas but if you're really like you know what to be successful I'm going to go to this YouTube channel and find a business idea that these random guys are gonna
44:44
say Allah like that's like honestly that's a bad plan like it might happen but don't don't do it for that reason um and the same reason like you know we might talk about the UFC or something else like that's probably not the most effective thing for to do every day so
44:58
it's not our product it's not a pain point so what one thing that I figured out was like I and when I talked to a bunch of people and I I tweeted this out I go what is this what is something you remember and what's the reason you actually listen to the Pod regularly
45:10
like what what keep keeps you hooked and the number one word that kept coming up was oh man I feel so inspired after I listen and they're like not in a Cheesy way but they're like literally if I'm driving and I'm listening I sometimes
45:21
will pull over because I'm I got to write something down right you guys said one phrase that really stuck with me and that was like oh that's going to be an unlock for me either personally or in my marketing or whatever or it's I heard
45:32
about this idea I'm not going to go do that idea but I'm inspired by that idea or you tell the story of some Billy of the week some guy who's really crushed it or some business that's under the radar that's crushing it and all of a sudden I feel like you know success is
45:43
abundant I'm inspired to go go make my [ __ ] happen I'm not going to do what they did but I'm gonna go make my [ __ ] happen and so we sell inspiration that's the first thing we actually sell one secondary thing which is have you ever
45:54
seen that Meme of the kid eating cereal next to his TV box it's like three there's three friends on the TV box and he's just like cozied up next to it it's like me and my four friends but it's just like oh that's awesome one's a photo and it's basically like
46:07
companionship and and people have posted before like this is me when I listen to podcasts it's like kind of like you're hanging out with your friends except for they're not there but it feels that way um and so that's the other thing is like
46:17
for a lot of people who listen what what I learned was that even more than the the inspiration the ones that are super sticky it's companionship it's basically my real life friends aren't as nerdy about business business as I am or I live in the middle of nowhere Iowa or
46:30
I'm in Biz or I'm in you know wherever and I don't know six other people that I can hang out with twice a week and just nerd out about business with and so you guys are basically my substitute for what I what I don't have or don't have the time for in my my day-to-day life
46:45
this was an a A+ segment good job I dig that let me tell you uh let me tell you let me tell you about something so I I launched something a couple weeks ago or uh a week ago and I think there's only a 30% chance of it working but I thought I
47:00
could like reveal some of the numbers behind it so I launched this thing called Sam's list it's samslist doco did you see when I when I shared that online the other day yeah I did all right so let me explain the background so I was
47:12
at the airport in January and I had just gotten an email from my accountant and it pissed me off that they didn't catch an air that they I thought they should have caught it or caught and so I tweeted out who has an accountant that they love I got about 300 responses and
47:27
I noticed that tons of people were bookmarking that tweet as if they're going to come back and hire an accountant which was on the tweet and so I thought you know I think I could make a thing out of this and so I hired a developer who works on Bubble do you
47:42
know what bubble is have you ever used bubble yeah the website builder yeah man it's awesome it's like a whole app builder and so we built this website where we got it was basically I wanted to create like a Yelp for accountants uh like a place where you can identify an
47:57
accountant that's good based off of your friends and I thought like this could be a good idea because when you hire an accountant you don't really have a place to see reviews you mostly hear about an accountant through word of mouth and if
48:05
you hire the wrong accountant it's basically like a year that you have to stay with them before you find out that they kind of stink so I was like all right I'm going to create this thing it's called Sam's list we're going to build this out it's going to be awesome
48:14
I spent about $15,000 to build it out and so here's what I did I got 300 replies to that tweet I called all of them so I got most of them on the phone or some of them via email and I asked them all types of questions I asked them
48:28
how much do they charge who the perfect client is who's the not perfect client what services are their Specialties things like that as if I was going to hire them I think you had told me one time when you went to hire an account and you created like your own data room
48:40
and you like sent it to people and you're like yeah who can handle this best well I I kind of did like a thing like that I put them all on this website on Sam's list and I it took me a few weeks to get it going and then I shared it and I want this thing to work I don't
48:55
think it's going to why are you saying that is that like some weird humble like are you just doing some reverse thing where it's like if only the community would rally and you like what are you doing here is this reverse psychology
49:06
it's not reverse psychology I'll explain why this will be hard to work and so here was here here was my math my math was basically if I can get 500,000 people a month to come to this website 3% of them would answer the or would contact an accountant somehow I could
49:22
charge the accountants $100 per person I sent to them per lead that I sent to them and if that were the case that would be something like $1.5 million a month in sales I figured that would take years to get to but like if I could get
49:35
to that that's like an interesting thing well I shared it online in the first week I got 13,000 visits we made this really cool quiz where you could like say like how much revenue you have do you want this for your business or personal whatever and then we would
49:49
recommend three or four accountants that you like or that could fit your needs we had 6,000 people answer the quiz um and we also created this feature where you could schedule a meeting right there on the website with that with those
50:02
accountants that we referred you to very few people scheduled appointments and very few people even submitted their information to the accountants what's very few so we had 6,000 people take the quiz in one week I think we had like a
50:16
100 or 200 people like submit information to the account and but that's not the issue the issue isn't the user the issue is accountants are not clamoring for these leads like like my big learning was that there's a massive and this is for someone can go and solve
50:34
this problem there's a massive shortage of accountants there's not a uh shortage of people looking for an accountant there's a huge shortage of people who are becoming accountants not only that the people who are accountants they don't really want to like grow their
50:47
business to be that large um and I thought that they'd be dying to get more customers they're really not which shocked me that was like a really big shocker and when I launched this business I basically copied or I didn't copy I use have you ever heard of smartasset.com
51:03
um no so smartasset.com I bet you've seen them if you've Googled like what's California's taxes or California tax calculator well the reason why they have all that stuff is they're actually doing well I'm doing what they're doing but they're doing what what I'm doing for uh
51:19
CFA so certified financial planners um or advisers and what they do is you take this quiz and they tell you all like you answer these questions about you know how old you are if you're retired if you're not retired what you're trying to
51:30
do with your money are you trying to invest it or just live off it whatever and then they recommend like three or four people who might fit your needs but what I found on that website is if you click around they have to tell you how
51:41
much they're paying per person per lead and so they actually say if a person has between a million and five million assets this adviser is paying $700 per lead if it's over 5 million they're paying uh 250 to or it gives you like a range per like uh per cost per lead per
51:59
net worth and it like tells you all like how they do their business I thought I could just replicate it turns out CPAs aren't like dying for business and so the it's the exact opposite they're actually overwhelmed with business um and so that's why I don't think this is
52:14
actually going to make a lot of money uh I think you're wrong I think there's a need for this I think that it will do well I also think you know that and I think you're no I don't I'm to I think you're playing us just G to put it out
52:25
there I'm G to shut it down on May 30th no I went Trump on you for a second that was good if it doesn't work if I I'm losing money right now on this if it doesn't start working by May 30th I'm shutting it down like I'm not going to
52:37
invest more money on it dog just give it to me I'll make this work this is so easy uh you're just being impatient and it's going to fail because you're you have a much better business that you're busy with called Hampton and uh you should focus on that that's why this is
52:50
going to fail and that's why this is a bad idea but otherwise it's a good idea let me point out a couple of the product details that I like and I'm tell you some of the things that you should do differently so we can screen share this
53:01
all right I love when I go to the site and it pops up the uh so I go to the site and it pops up and it basically like normally where there's an email pop up but it's like no email no BS know something like let's go I was like okay already I think you should just actually
53:17
call that out a little more and be like you know we want to help you we don't need your email address and then just have a button that says thank God and then you know they thank God it takes them down the funnel you I love this part that you did where you you WR read
53:28
this first and you wrote I have this many Twitter followers I asked if they have a CPA account if they that they love then I called all them I asked them how much they charge blah blah blah why would I do this because I'm a nerd and I
53:38
needed an accountant I thought well how about I make this useful for others blah blah blah that's great I love how you do that I love how you put everybody's Twitter profile attached to their name nice touch uh like your name here every
53:50
accountant you can go see their Twitter which for our Market is actually a good idea you know most people for us it's cool um you should put the prices on the front thing because I think that's like makes it a lot more value add to the person coming in it's
54:06
like oh good these people already went and found what the rates are for these and you also said like I asked them who their sweet spot customer is and blah blah blah like what I can't tell is like you know when um you know when you go to cars and bids and Doug deorro has the
54:23
Doug speech bubble and Doug's like here's what I think um I think you kind of need to lean into that I agree that's a good idea I don't trust reviews I trust review and I really just trust you and so the question is like can you you know not
54:37
just call them but call like you know 10 of their clients and be like tell me everything and then end up with one speech bubble that's Sam saying talk to them talk to their clients here's roughly what they charge and like you
54:48
know this is like you know people are screaming endorsing or they're like yeah it's pretty good and like you know so I think they're solid and they seem to specifically help out this type of customer I think that would make it better I think that's a good idea the
55:01
reason why we haven't I haven't done that yet is I would have to hire someone to help me call those people and I was like I need to figure out does this thing even make money in the first place in order to like justify all this work the dreams baby if you build it they
55:13
will come did you see uh so a few things the design I liked our design I just ripped it off it's we made it looked like old Microsoft and then the image is I just copied clippy you remember clippy from Microsoft Words this because it doesn't make any
55:29
sense it's Ai and on the calculator face it's only four digits it's a two it's a five it's a nine and a q uh yeah putting the Q in as the last letter is the AI knows something we don't yeah and so uh anyway I I thought I'd fill people in on this I I think I
55:50
it's hard I don't want to be in the business of selling leads to small accountants and having like hundreds and hundreds of different clients paying me versus is I think in order to make this work you actually what you do is you get
55:59
someone's information and then in order to do lead gen you usually only have a small amount of very large companies who pay you a large sum per month for a certain amount of leads versus one off you know what I mean um so I'm still trying to figure this [ __ ] out but uh
56:14
we'll see if it works out all right uh you got anything else are we done no I'm uh you did great you that was good two two bangers that's what I'm tell my wife when I go downstairs how is the Pod double Banger double Banger um all right that's the pod [Music]