0:00
Dave's back.
Search this video
0:00
And Dave's back in a big way. In a big way.
0:03
Here's some things that Dave has said.
0:05
He says he has a $600 million real estate portfolio that is fully paid off.
0:10
So, $600 million of real estate equity that he that he owns. That's kind of insane.
0:14
His media empire, which is like, you know, the combination of his um radio shows and then all of the financial like courses, training, seminars, all that stuff that they do outside of that.
0:27
He says on their website makes $300 million a year in revenue. All right, we're live.
0:41
All right, so what do you want to talk about today?
0:42
I've got a bunch of good topics.
0:43
Let me bring up one juicy one.
0:47
Last year or 2 years ago, you asked me a question.
0:49
You're like, "Who do you admire?"
0:50
I think you asked me that.
0:50
And I said this guy named Laird Hamilton.
0:54
Laird Hamilton is this like beautiful surfer dude.
0:56
He's like in his 50s now.
0:58
Basically, he's beautiful.
0:58
Like we got to we got to acknowledge that.
1:00
He's got like beautiful wavy blonde hair and like a nice skin and he's pretty ripped for his age and he always was ripped.
1:06
He's like this tough guy that surfs the big waves and whatever.
1:10
He launched this thing called Are you going to make fun of me cuz I'm dreamy about this guy?
1:14
not I don't even need to make a joke.
1:15
You've you've done it all yourself here. He's a Ken doll.
1:18
Like this is like this is like objective.
1:19
Like I'm just stating facts here.
1:21
He's he's a human Ken doll.
1:23
He launched this thing called Laird Superfood. Have you heard of that?
1:25
It's like a coffee creamer that's made out of like coconut, I think. Right.
1:31
Uh anyway, I uh they took the company public.
1:33
I don't know why they did that, but they took it public at a 300 or $400 market cap.
1:40
At the time, they were doing 50 million in in um revenue. Look up the company now.
1:44
Can you look Can you go and look up the uh Do you know what their market cap is today? Let me find it.
1:51
I know what it was yesterday.
1:51
I don't know what it is today.
1:53
Why would it be so different? Oh, wow. $9 million. $9 million.
1:59
So, this company Uh I if you click a I have a bunch of notes here.
2:03
You can click them and read them.
2:04
But basically, this company, they sell like a fair amount of like coffee creamer.
2:08
So, yesterday, I think it was 8. 8 million.
2:10
Dude, so listen, they have 20 million in cash, no debt at all.
2:16
Their revenue is decreasing.
2:16
So, it like in Q3, it was 8. 8 million.
2:21
In Q3 of last year, it was 10. 9 million. So, what's that?
2:24
Like a like a like a 4 * 8.
2:26
So, it's a $48 million or or $50 million a year business, but it's declining.
2:30
They're They have good decent gross profit.
2:33
They have an okay balance sheet, but like the business for some reason, it's valued so low.
2:37
I I'd have to dive deep into it and really look at the numbers, but it's kind of ridiculous, right?
2:42
So, you were talking about wanting to buy a company. You've said this before.
2:47
This is your target, dude.
2:47
You get to hang out with Laird Hamilton.
2:50
Sounds like it's your target, dude.
2:52
That sounds like this is like, you know, those things where it's like We're auctioning off a date with Laird Hamilton. Yeah, a hug.
2:59
What Why don't you buy this?
2:59
Yeah, you you just bought yourself a $9 million hug.
3:05
Dude, why is this Why is this company You haven't looked at this, but why is this company so cheap? No, I don't know.
3:10
I mean, I don't know how much debt they have, but None. I said that.
3:12
The So, I read their report.
3:15
They had their Q3 report.
3:15
$21 million in cash, zero debt. Zero debt.
3:20
So, I never understand when when companies trade this far below their just cash value cuz, you know, the obvious question then is, why do you not buy this thing for $15 million and just wind it down and distribute the $20 million to yourself and make $5 million, you know, like in the in the process? Or sell the inventory.
3:37
They have like $13 million or something in inventory. Okay. Uh interesting.
3:41
So, yeah, so I haven't I mean, I haven't looked at this cuz you just mentioned it, but um but yeah, there's a bunch of these right now that are like this.
3:48
Uh there was one the other day that I that I saw that was kind of in the same same bucket.
3:51
But there's a bunch of stocks that are down like 95% right now that seem like, you know, interesting takeover targets.
3:59
And uh we have a friend who was interested in doing this.
4:04
And so I made a list of like 10.
4:07
I was like, "Here's 10 that I think you could buy."
4:09
Is this friend aggressive? Is it aggressive friend? Got it. I know which Okay.
4:14
I know which friend that is.
4:17
How tight is that, by the way?
4:17
Just to be able to say "This is an aggressive friend."
4:20
And you're like, "I know who it is."
4:21
Does this friend Would Would this friend say to a budding entrepreneur, "Your business is one Google away from me ruining you?"
4:33
No, I don't think so, but maybe.
4:36
They They usually don't say things to to their to their faces like that.
4:37
They uh They're more just like an under under Like, you know, those sharks that swim only under the water, they don't put the fin out. He's more like that. Got it. Okay. Um but like wish.
4:45
com was the was the other example that that I had recently seen that was like this, which is uh Wish, you know, pretty big brand name cuz they spent billions of dollars marketing this thing.
4:55
10 billion dollar market cap at one point. Now 360 million.
4:57
So 10 billion to 360 million has seven 700 million in cash with no liabilities.
5:03
Um So you know, so so I don't know exactly uh you know, I don't ex- I don't know exactly how you can buy these things.
5:11
I think that's the the challenge is like to actually acquire the majority.
5:15
In doing so, you would push the price up cuz people would know what you're doing.
5:20
So I think you'd have to make like a tender offer at a specific price that's like, you know, what I whatever whatever you know, some something above.
5:28
But you know, the board will just reject it.
5:29
They'll say, "We have more cash than that on the on the balance sheet, so we don't need to sell at this price."
5:34
So I don't know exactly mechanically how somebody does this.
5:36
I don't know if this is like uh you know, fantasy math where you're like "Dude, what if Shaq was in the, you know, the 100 meter race?
5:43
He could just knock people over."
5:44
It's like, "Dude, that's not That doesn't make sense.
5:45
not how things work in the in the real world."
5:48
So, you know, this like idea of like public company takeovers is not something that I understand, if you know.
5:53
Is that like a drunken conversation you've had which is Ken Shamrock win the 100-meter dash?
5:57
You know, the one thing about this podcast is the number of on-the-fly analogies you have to create.
6:05
It just really brings It's like that's a different skill.
6:06
That's a different muscle.
6:08
And uh yeah, that muscle's not not so strong yet. Still working on it.
6:11
So, anyway, Laird Superfood, interesting company that I was that I was eyeing.
6:15
Laird maybe a little less hot in my book now cuz this company is worth only 8 million as opposed to 300.
6:24
Now, he's just a really hot fit guy.
6:26
Before he was hot, fit, and rich.
6:26
So, He lost the third leg of the stool.
6:31
Yeah, he's still famous, and famous trumps wealth in most cases in in most people's eyes, but anyway. All right.
6:37
Well, let me tell you Let me tell you about somebody who is rich.
6:43
And somebody who is famous. But he's not hot. That's oof.
6:46
Can I tell Can I tell you who this Okay.
6:51
Um Are you familiar with Dave Ramsey? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very.
6:55
Tell me what you know about Dave Ramsey, and I'm going to fill in some gaps for you.
6:58
So, Dave uh he's like a fi- personal finance guru.
7:02
He's based out of Franklin, Tennessee.
7:04
He's in his 70s probably now.
7:04
He started as a radio host where it was just like Dave Ramsey like show, and then he parlayed that into like the Dave Ramsey network.
7:13
So, now he has like four or 500 employees based out of Franklin, Tennessee.
7:17
And they do like 400 or 500 million a year in revenue where they sell like personal finance stuff.
7:23
A lot of his I think he's pretty controversial because a lot of his like rules His lot of his personal finance rules are based in like biblical like rules.
7:31
He also believes in like zero debt, and he uh he's pretty conservative.
7:35
So, people who aren't conservative aren't into him.
7:39
Okay, well, you do a a more than I would have guessed. so.
7:42
Dude, I I live in I guess the segment's over.
7:46
Like Franklin, Tennessee, how do you know this stuff? What's going on here?
7:49
He also bought all of his buildings without any debt, so he owns like a campus in Franklin, Tennessee. Yeah, yeah.
7:55
So, I didn't know all this, but did I I don't know.
7:57
No, you know, well you spit in my food, but all right.
7:59
I'm still hungry, so let's go.
8:04
So, Dave he's 62 years old.
8:04
He was a realtor turned radio host in Franklin, Tennessee.
8:11
Uh so, basically what happened is by his mid-20s, this is like back in the '80s.
8:15
So, back in the '80s But, dude, you didn't know who Dolly Parton was, and she's also a Tennessee person, so like Yeah, I guess I I lesson learned.
8:21
I'm not coming at you with any Tennessee trivia anymore.
8:24
You're a ringer for that stuff.
8:26
So, by his mid-20s, he's got like a $4 million property portfolio, real estate portfolio, and it's kicking off some cash, maybe like 5% a year cash-on-cash return.
8:36
So, he's making 250k a year off his real estate portfolio at that stage.
8:40
Um at this time, 1988, so the you know, the year I'm born, his bank basically revokes his line of credit and um demands that he pays it back, and he couldn't sell fast enough, so he gets foreclosed on and declares bankruptcy.
8:55
This is like the trauma of why he's like um don't use debt. No debt.
8:58
And he's like, "Debt bad. Debt bad." Why?
9:01
Cuz I burned my hand on the debt stove before this.
9:05
And so, he's like he's got no money now.
9:07
He's you know, his marriage is on the rocks.
9:09
He says he's considering committing suicide.
9:11
Uh but, you know, he gets back on his feet.
9:14
So, this is kind of like his story.
9:15
So, anyways, today, fast forward to today, Dave's back.
9:21
And Dave's back in a big way. And a big way.
9:23
Here's some things that Dave has said.
9:25
He says he has a $600 million real estate portfolio that is fully paid off.
9:31
So, $600 million of real estate equity that he that he owns. That's kind of insane.
9:35
His media empire, which is like, you know, the combination of his um radio shows and then all of the financial like courses, training, seminars, all that stuff that they do outside of that.
9:48
He says on their website makes 300 million a year in revenue. I believe it. Which is absurd.
9:52
Do you know any people that go to that? What's that?
9:56
No, I don't know anybody that goes to this.
9:58
Dude, in the South it's a thing.
9:59
So, I had Texas employees and like if you're just like a normal couple where each employee makes or each wife and husband makes like 60 or 70 grand a year, you all like pay to go to like a Dave Ramsey like he trains these financial advisors and they host seminars and you'll go to this like 5-day weeknights thing where it's like instead of Bible study it's like we teach you how to like save and like invest, I guess.
10:22
like Jesus on the front and a P&L on the back.
10:24
This new this new remix Bible, I love it.
10:26
And so, his company His company Ramsey Solutions is just absolute juggernaut. It's insane.
10:33
So, so, okay, let's break down the the media side.
10:37
So, he launches this thing in 1992 and basically he's done content for 30 years about the same seven steps.
10:48
It's like this guy's just been talking about the same thing.
10:49
I don't know he feels like hours.
10:51
I've never listened to it to like a full thing, but I don't know he feels like 4 hours a day of radio. It's a good show.
10:56
Just saying the same thing every time. Like, oh, you got debt? Pay that off. Right?
11:00
So, he's got these seven tenets.
11:02
So, here's his seven tenets, all right?
11:04
Uh number one, you establish an emergency fund of $1,000.
11:08
That's your first baby step to financial freedom and Jesus bliss.
11:13
Second one, you want to pay off all your non-housing debts ASAP starting with the smallest one.
11:16
So, that he calls this the snowball.
11:18
So, don't pay off like the highest rate interest, just pay off the smallest thing you can just to get momentum. All right, I like that.
11:23
Then you increase your emergency fund to 3 to 6 months of income.
11:27
Then you put 15% into a 401k or IRA.
11:29
Then you start your five five, you know, 529 plans or whatever like the college funds.
11:33
Uh you pay off your mortgage and then you Now you're fully paid off.
11:38
You got your You got your safety net.
11:40
Now you start to build wealth.
11:42
And so that's his like Those are his seven steps.
11:45
His company, Ramsey Solutions, is a biblically based, common-sense financial education media company.
11:54
Not going to lie, that's a bar. That's a bar.
11:59
You know, like You you know, I was like, "Hey, YouTube editor, play that clip of like, you know, Jay-Z the first time he hears like the intro to like, you know, um Timbaland Timbaland's Timbaland's playing him a beat and he's like, "Ooh, this is nice."
12:15
That's how I feel when I hear the the biblically based, common-sense financial education media company. So, that's amazing.
12:21
Then he's got You said you talked about this like uh nat like his Tennessee like empire he's got.
12:25
He's got a thousand employees working there.
12:28
He owns all the real estate.
12:30
So, he's got uh He owns I don't know if this is correct.
12:34
The researcher might have just gone off the rails. Dude, he owns a lot. He owns a lot.
12:40
two office towers that are 200 million square feet. That sounds absurd.
12:44
I I don't That's I don't that that's too much. not real. Um yeah.
12:47
We got to get the researcher, you know, stop drinking your your product that you were selling from from from college. Yeah, strike one.
12:54
Um but but he's got basically like, you know, a 50,000 square foot event center.
13:01
He's got 60 acres of just like property land that he bought for $10 million.
13:03
So, owns a bunch of land, uses that land to to run his kind of like, you know, you know, common-sense, biblical financial empire uh out in Tennessee.
13:13
He's doing his show for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week.
13:15
People call in and they're basically like, "All right, Dave.
13:17
You know, long-time listener, first-time caller."
13:21
Uh and you know, there's part of it that's the sort of like My First Million.
13:23
I actually think we should steal his stick, uh which is he goes like They'll call in and be like, "I got I'm worth $4 million."
13:28
uh And be like, "How How old are you?"
13:30
And be like, "I'm 32 years old." And be like, "Fantastic. 34 million."
13:33
He's writing notes this whole time.
13:35
And then he'll be like, "How much debt?"
13:36
And they'll be like, "Yeah, I got my mortgage, you know, $800,000."
13:39
And you can just hear him like Just hit them with a little a little tisk.
13:45
Uh, he's just, you know, it's like dad's disappointed in me.
13:47
And then he'll be like, you know, "I'm making this much a year. I put this much away." And blah blah blah.
13:52
And then he gives them financial advice, which is kind of the same advice financial advice every single time.
13:56
But somehow people I get really into this, uh, this thing.
14:02
And then the other things he does, which is just these hilarious segments that he has.
14:05
Uh, so he's got everyday millionaires.
14:07
So, somebody calls in and he interviews somebody that's that's worth a million dollars.
14:10
But then he has, and this is good, the debt-free scream.
14:16
Have you seen this before?
14:18
It Well, I I used to think that it was like the equivalent of ringing a bell.
14:21
Like there Yeah, he had like a He had a thing where people would call in and be like, "I finally paid off my debt."
14:26
And they like celebrate it.
14:28
They celebrate it with the debt-free scream.
14:32
I think there's things we can learn from this guy.
14:33
I think we should steal some of this guy's stick, um, and so he's he's he's really got something going here.
14:40
Anyway, so he's Wait, you've never heard of him?
14:41
No, no, I've heard of him.
14:43
I didn't realize how rich he was.
14:44
I just thought he was like someone's dad that gives basic financial advice.
14:48
Cuz it's He's got the dad vibe.
14:50
He He's got the vibe of someone who calls diabetes diabetes.
14:51
Like that's what the You know what I mean?
14:53
Like Like the thing about your head is definitely a rough to him, not a roof.
14:59
You He's got that type of 100% on the diabetes thing, dude. That's the good vibe. End the podcast. So good.
15:09
I need to now laugh for 30 minutes.
15:09
I don't want to do the rest of the podcast. That's That's his vibe.
15:13
He's a little judgmental, too.
15:14
And he's like, "This is the only way." Yeah, he's opinionated. I mean, he's Dr. Phil for money.
15:18
He's, you know, yeah, know, got his thing, which is like this is how you do things and He's like a guy with a big belly who wears suspenders vibe.
15:25
You know what I'm talking about? Like Like that. Like that type of vibe. So, he's not wrong.
15:32
It's just sometimes his energy, I think, is a little bit judgmental. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um Yeah, exactly.
15:38
Okay, I'm I was going to make a bunch of jokes about his look, but I decided to to turn the other cheek or whatever he would want me to do.
15:44
So, he he his show is like nationally syndicated on radio, which I think is like the hack.
15:48
So, 20 million people a week apparently listen to this.
15:52
I don't know how they do that, but like When I used to drive, I would listen to it all the time.
15:57
Yeah, yeah, of course you did.
15:57
Of course you're his target market.
15:58
Um So, he you know, he's basically carried by like 600 radio affiliates.
16:03
I think think that's amazing. So, he's got his books.
16:06
He's got 23 best-selling books.
16:06
I don't know what that even means.
16:08
Um but that's like their that's their think that means?
16:11
That's their personality.
16:12
So, he's got like his daughter does it now and he's got these other people like Ken and Dr.
16:15
John and like all these other people that he's created as other other kind of personalities or brands.
16:20
They're called the Ramsey personalities.
16:24
Um so, he's he's got them in.
16:24
Anyways, live speaking, courses, they got an app.
16:31
They have, you know, all kinds of stuff. It's kind of crazy.
16:33
So, let me give you some of his some of his tweets.
16:34
I Some of his tweets or quotes, I want you to react to them with a hallelujah or a no, brother, not for me.
16:41
All right, so the first one.
16:45
If you're working and paying off debt, the only time you should see the inside of a restaurant is if you're working there. Yeah. A hallelujah. I'll give you that. hallelujah. That's fine.
16:58
If you come to work late and they're paying you, you're stealing.
16:59
Don't steal and expect to be promoted. Hallelujah. Um I'm a capitalist pig.
17:04
There's nothing socialist about me.
17:06
I'd put my my receptionist on straight commission if I could figure out a way. 100% hallelujah. Love that one. All right, Dave.
17:12
Now you now you're talking my my style. All right, here we go.
17:17
Um If somebody calls in and they got more debt than their annual income, he'll say, "That's a small shovel in a big hole." I love that. Love that. Dave, man. Dave.
17:29
All right, but that's the Um Okay, then he also says, uh quotes He quotes the Proverbs 22:7 and states, "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is a slave to the lender."
17:43
No, I think that that's wrong.
17:43
I think that you can use debt like effectively uh to help you. Um carries a gun.
17:48
The guy's guy's guy's awesome.
17:51
Guy's awesome, and uh I did not a gun? Carries a gun. He carries a a .
17:56
45 with hollow point bullets, according to himself. You know what a . 45 is?
18:00
That's a pretty big round.
18:03
Uh yeah, that's the biggest round I know of.
18:07
That's a big That's a big round.
18:07
Um yeah, so anyways, fascinating guy in his 60s that like I could not believe his empire generates this much cash.
18:15
300 million a year is a is a pretty absurd number for this.
18:20
Dude, and he's been doing that for decades.
18:21
It just shows you how big the Tony Robbins empire must be.
18:22
Like Tony Robbins says this thing uh during his his things, he goes, "My businesses bring in over $500 million a year."
18:30
Um but I didn't know what that means, cuz like it's like when a ad agency guy is like, "Oh, I've spent over $100 million."
18:38
You know, uh you know, 100 million We've I've generated over $100 million in revenue.
18:42
It's like, "No, dude, you took a cup The company gave you a budget, you pushed spend at the average normal rate, um and you've done this for 10 years, and you added up their total revenue number.
18:52
Like, that's that's not you.
18:55
Um or like, you know, a lot of people will say they own $100 million of real estate with And like, "Okay, cool, you know, so what's your equity in that?"
19:03
And they're like, "Well, it's 80% bank loans.
19:05
So, the bank loan's 80% of it.
19:07
And then of the 20% down, I syndicated that out, and so I got a 3% broker commission on it, and I own 2% of the of the property.
19:16
It's like, okay, let's be a little more real about it.
19:17
So, to me, it was pretty stunning to hear that he's got a $600 million fully paid off real estate portfolio and a $300 million a year business empire.
19:24
If those numbers are to be believed.
19:26
I can also see this being totally full of by the way. No, no, no, no, no, no.
19:30
It's not full of It's definitely not full of I don't have any way to verify it, but like I know his reach, and I know that that is like very attainable. God?
19:41
Dude, did you just read a book on on words Christians say?
19:44
No, dude, it's the flooding.
19:46
It's I I just have a little special something in me today.
19:51
Either I'm going to get canceled, or I'm going to get a good laugh out of you, and that is worth the risk to me.
19:56
Have you been south of the Mason-Dixon line, man?
19:57
Have you like been in the Midwest?
19:59
What is the Mason-Dixon line? Apparently not.
20:01
You went to Duke, but Duke's not really the South.
20:03
Yeah, I don't think my skin color is allowed south of the Mason-Dixon line.
20:06
I don't know what that is.
20:08
Have you hung out in like Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Alabama?
20:12
You've never hung out in any of these places, have you? Hung out?
20:16
Is Is there something to do there? Have you ever even been?
20:19
I drove through when I came to California.
20:22
I had to step through the mud of the Midwest to get here.
20:28
Dude, you got to go, man. You're so out of touch.
20:31
Oklahoma, all jokes aside, so you know.
20:33
I got my I got my southern street cred.
20:36
Dude, that's like I got my southern birth certificate.
20:37
Just cuz you've been to the airport don't mean you've been there.
20:40
That's like with the South thing. You got to get out, man.
20:42
Even just go to like This sounds very Get out is right.
20:46
If you're in Tennessee, you do got to get out. Dude, just go.
20:51
You're go drive an hour and a half north and go to a Walmart and just chill and just watch what people purchase and what they buy.
20:57
You got to get out of your little San Francisco bubble, my man.
20:58
You got to get out and see like There's 350 million people in America.
21:02
Is I got to tell you a funny story.
21:04
Yesterday, I went to go I left my house for a meeting.
21:08
So, I go meet somebody very interesting.
21:09
I might tell you about this later uh in the pod.
21:11
So, I go meet somebody very interesting and Um I'm I'm deciding if I want to save it to do a bigger thing or he's going to come on as a guest or maybe I'll tell you about it. I I haven't decided yet. So, Do I know them? No.
21:23
Uh I I don't think cuz they're they're not in your world, right?
21:24
Like you know about Dolly Parton, you don't know about like, you know, the NBA.
21:27
Uh you know, so it's like a different different Yeah, not a big baseball guy.
21:32
So, uh uh brought by uh my wife and kids came with me.
21:36
It's like a kind of kind of a long drive.
21:36
I was like, "Oh, why don't why don't we all drive down there together?"
21:39
Uh you know, nanny's out sick.
21:41
Just drive down together.
21:41
We'll go to a McDonald's afterwards.
21:42
And my kids love like getting a Happy Meal toy.
21:44
So, it's like we'll do that. There's none around us. We'll go go out there.
21:49
So, we go to this McDonald's kind of out in the you know, I've driven an hour away.
21:52
We're going to this McDonald's out there.
21:54
And um there's a So, I'm I'm like waiting in what I think is the line.
21:58
But, you know, McDonald's is kind of ambiguous with the line.
22:02
There's not like they don't have like the port order at the checkout.
22:04
Or you have the self-checkout, too.
22:06
No, there well, there's like self-checkouts like to the left and to the right and then there's like the cashier in the front and there's some people just waiting for their order.
22:12
You don't know if they're in line or not.
22:13
Like you don't know what's going on.
22:15
And so, there's a guy in front of me and uh the cashier is just like waiting.
22:17
And I was like I was like, "Oh, uh you can go. She's ready."
22:21
And then the cashier just goes, "He doesn't have money."
22:27
I like peeked my head in front of like, "Oh, yeah, sure enough.
22:28
This guy doesn't have money."
22:30
And I was like I thought it was such a funny thing for the lady to say, "Now he doesn't have money."
22:35
Like that's so funny to me.
22:35
Like so outrageous of a comment.
22:38
Like why did she have to say it like that?
22:42
But, it was like the most direct line to the answer.
22:44
Like not like "No, you can go ahead.
22:47
He's not He's not ready." Or he he's not ordering. "He doesn't have money."
22:51
I was like wow, judging a book by its cover.
22:54
And he didn't even He just kept standing there just hoping that he could I don't know, take someone's food that didn't show up or something.
23:01
I don't know What are you doing?
23:02
I was in the bathroom at the airport recently and uh there was like a there was like a line for the urinal, but there was also like a line for the stalls and a guy walks up to me and he looks at the the stall and he looks at me and he goes He goes "You waiting to poop?"
23:26
I was like I started laughing. Yeah, dude.
23:35
He just says the weirdest man.
23:39
And then you have to answer, too, right?
23:40
Like you can't not answer at that point.
23:42
I'm like, "Why am I Why am I paying it playing into this?" He was just a dead face.
23:46
He's just looking at me and he goes "You waiting to poop?"
23:51
And I was like a 12-year-old.
23:51
I don't know why I thought that was so funny. Um Oh my god.
23:55
Uh I have another business.
23:58
You want to talk about business or no? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Um We're idiots.
24:04
Um uh By the way, if you're listening in Austin, um we're doing an event Well, actually we're doing two events, I think.
24:11
The second one's not confirmed.
24:13
The second one is Shawn and I doing a live pod late April.
24:15
We're going to have more on that, right? it's confirmed. We're doing it.
24:18
We just don't know what the venue yet.
24:19
We don't know the venue yet.
24:22
to know is it going to be 300 people, 1,000 people, or 3,000 people?
24:24
That's That's kind of the only thing that that we're missing here is how many of you will show up to this live show in Austin where we can We're going to We're going to put on a little show.
24:34
We're going to meet and greet, have some fun, maybe do a little private dinner with some people afterwards.
24:39
So So I think we should We're going to do that end of April.
24:44
Where do they go to like sign up for that?
24:46
We'll put the link in the description here.
24:46
Yeah, and then go to What What's our website called? mfmpod. com? mfmpod.
24:50
com, which is like my first million pod. com.
24:55
And then we're we're doing another one.
24:57
This one is not a we, this is a me.
24:59
Sean's not coming to this one.
24:59
It's just a casual hangout session.
25:00
We're doing that uh mid When is When is that in a week? Mid-March? Is it March 15th.
25:09
So, Wednesday, March 15th. It's free.
25:11
You can just show up and we're just going to hang out.
25:13
And you can find that also on mfmpod.
25:15
com or by the time this episode airs airs, I will have tweeted it, so you can go to my uh Twitter handle the Sam Parr and see it.
25:23
Sam, I'm in a great mood. Can I tell you why? Yes.
25:26
I did something that I forgot is an amazing tactic and techniques.
25:29
I'm going to say it out loud here, so other people could do it, but also it's a reminder to myself to do it.
25:34
Have you ever heard of something called flooding? Mhm.
25:39
No, is that when you text someone a lot of No, I have no idea.
25:43
It could be a lot of things.
25:43
Don't Urban Dictionary, it's probably something weird.
25:45
But, uh here's here's how I learned about it.
25:48
Uh Tony Robbins talked about this thing.
25:49
So, he goes, somebody asked him, they go, "What's a like, you know, marriage like advice or a thing you do in your marriage that like, you know, uh makes it better?"
25:57
And he he basically had like two stories that I I really loved.
26:01
I'll skip the first one for now. I've told it.
26:03
I teach it in my course, but I'll I'll skip that one for now.
26:06
The second one that he had said was he goes, "About once a month, we'll do something called flooding, which is basically us we sit down on on the couch, you know, like we're about to watch Netflix or something else, but instead of just mindlessly vegging out to some TV, we watch videos or photos uh we go of of some part of our past, some some era of our past.
26:28
So, maybe like this vacation that we went on or our wedding or whatever.
26:32
And you basically you'll get this flood of memories and emotion that are linked and anchored to those moments.
26:38
Uh but, most people don't like revisit it in a kind of like in in a like a like a conscious way or an intentional way like this.
26:46
And I do this in two ways.
26:48
Um one, I'll do it with like life photos or memories, uh videos videos or photos.
26:54
The second one is and this is the one I did before this, which is why posts or something?
26:59
Or go through some old up a bunch of videos that were really funny to me back in like the day, back in college.
27:05
Like back when YouTube was like the new Ebaum's World.
27:07
And like, you know, things would go viral, but it was like, yeah, Ebaum's World.
27:13
Like things would go viral and like everybody knew about that that video, you know, whatever, the Charlie bit my finger or whatever.
27:18
But there's this set of videos that were so funny to me and they're not even that fun.
27:22
Now that I go back and look, it's kind of like an old movie where you're like dang this movie doesn't it doesn't hold up.
27:29
It doesn't it doesn't have the same juice.
27:30
Like things are much funnier now.
27:32
Like the average Tik Tok is funnier than the best videos back in like 2006.
27:35
Which which videos did you look at?
27:40
Uh okay, this is going to sound dumb, but have you ever seen this video?
27:44
Uh you know, 12-year-old boy, uh disclaimer, here we go.
27:47
Have you ever seen this video of this cop pulling over this guy?
27:51
He's got his hands above his head.
27:53
It's like this Yeah, yep, yep. Yep, yep.
27:54
And he goes he's patting him down and he goes he goes, "All right, let me just check your pockets. Hold on, here we go. Up What's this?"
28:01
And the guy goes, "That's my penis."
28:03
And he goes, "That's your penis?"
28:04
And then he continues on.
28:07
And this video wrecks me up.
28:07
Just the way he goes, "That's my penis."
28:09
And the guy goes, "That's your penis?"
28:14
And so there's that video, but then there's just a whole bunch of these that were like just goofy videos.
28:16
Like a lot of them were like, you know, the news anchors interviewing some like that kid who like I like turtles kid or like the grape stomp video or like whatever.
28:24
This is a whole bunch of these.
28:27
And I watched like six of them and they just cracked me up in this like way.
28:31
It's like uh a simpler time.
28:31
Yeah, the evolution of dance. wife and a mortgage.
28:35
I didn't have it, you know, it's just literally that was like those videos were just took me back. They just teleported me.
28:41
And so highly recommend this this this of flooding.
28:45
Uh you probably have done some version of this on accident, but like make it a practice.
28:49
It's pretty awesome and it just puts you in an amazing mood.
28:54
This data is wrong every freaking time.
28:57
Have you heard of HubSpot?
28:59
HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.
29:01
Woah, I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better. So I did it recently.
29:14
So I'm going to tell a story that I we you and I were texting about and I can't reveal what I was selling because it was kind of against the law and I didn't know it at the time.
29:23
But I tweeted out recently of limitations?
29:26
You you're way past that.
29:28
It's been more than 10 years. Is that a real law?
29:33
That's definitely a That's definitely a legal speech? Here's what we'll do.
29:36
We we can mention I'll I'll say it was alcohol. That's all I will say.
29:40
It was legal alcohol that I was selling.
29:41
That's all I'm going to say.
29:43
Um I was like Anytime you have to specify it was legal, probably not a good thing.
29:50
So well So here's the story.
29:53
I tweeted out that I think it always bothers me when when people collect domain names.
29:57
That's a That's a pet peeve cuz I cuz I'm saying if you're doing that, you're doing the wrong stuff cuz people will say I'm going to I've got this great idea.
30:03
I'm going to buy a domain name or even worse they'll say I've got this amazing domain name.
30:06
I should build something for it.
30:09
I'm like dude, don't build something just cuz you have a domain name.
30:10
So anyway, I tweeted out I'm like just make money first and just use like a you know, storename. squarespace.
30:16
com for like the initial like 100 bucks in sales and then go and get the domain name.
30:20
Like And someone's like you can't do that.
30:22
I was like oh no, I've done it a bunch of times.
30:23
I'm like yeah, well you're doing it because you have a name.
30:25
I was like no, I did it actually in college tons and tons of times.
30:26
In fact, I found this old website that I had and it was um alcoholname. wordpress. com. Right.
30:36
And I went and looked at the old stats and it's getting 5,000 views a month still. On a wordpress.
30:43
com free website in this it's a store it's a quote a store that is a blog post and a click to PayPal.
30:53
And basically what I did was there was this really unique drink that was sold in Nashville and for some reason only one or two stores were carrying it but this particular type of drink was popular across the country.
31:03
And I thought well I should set up an online store to sell this stuff and I did.
31:07
And I made friends with the person selling it the the liquor store whatever and I go hey I'm going to sell this for 3x the markup but I'll buy a bunch of it from you so whatever and I did it.
31:17
you so whatever and I did it. And I didn't I'm an idiot I didn't realize that like as this thing was growing I was making like a lot of money and I went and told the legal team at my college I was like hey I think my business is like working really well do I need to set up like an LLC or something and they're like oh you're
31:33
breaking the law you like you can't you can't sell this without like a liquor license so I was like but it's like a collect it's basically this thing that I was selling it was a it was a very rare whiskey that was in a very particular type of bottle that was like a collector's item and I thought like it was just a collector's item I don't even know if people are going to drink this thing. So anyway it was making like a
31:48
thing. So anyway it was making like a thousand dollars a day sometimes and I looked at the old blog post that I was selling this and it was hilarious and it reminded me like of a simpler time when I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor
32:01
and life was good and I was building motorcycles in my living room and it was working out well so I was like I was building motorcycles in my living room sleeping on the floor and selling collector's whiskey illegally on the internet. It was a simpler time. You know the It was a simpler time.
32:19
You know the American dream. The American dream.
32:21
I was one of those kids that had you probably had this too.
32:24
I didn't have beer like you remember those college kids that would have like beer cases the cardboard on their walls?
32:32
I wasn't that bad but I did have an American flag.
32:34
I definitely had the American flag so I was pretty trashy.
32:38
But, uh yeah, I was So, I was looking at my old like blog that I used to do and I couldn't even remember the password.
32:43
And, uh so, I flooded myself a little.
32:48
I'm just flooding my pants today. It's great.
32:51
Um the the good thing is by the way, this whole If you're If you're not watching on YouTube, you're missing half of it cuz Sam's wearing a Harvard sweatshirt while we tell these stories.
33:02
We just signed about someone illegal.
33:05
Whiskey, waiting to poop.
33:05
We're You made a bunch of jokes about the South. This is so stupid. Uh Oh my god.
33:12
Um All right, I have a something for you.
33:14
So, there's this company that's for sale that I came across. So, check it out. Go to chambers. com. Chambers? Okay.
33:21
Yeah, like that Harry Potter stuff. Chambers. Chambers and Partners? Is that it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Dude, check this out.
33:29
So, this website, they uh I think they're mostly in Europe, but they are in America as well, is they put out these rankings once a month or once a quarter, something like that.
33:38
And, they go and they interview lots of I think they have 200 employees who do this.
33:42
200 employees who go out and interview different lawyers.
33:45
They talk to your past clients.
33:48
And, they try to like see which cases you're winning.
33:50
And, it's all done manually.
33:50
Like, there's not like a lot of like tech behind it.
33:52
And, then they create these rankings for like best legal firm or whatever like that.
33:56
Or like, you know, uh a good firm for this, good firm for that, like different niches.
34:02
And, then they put out these rankings.
34:04
And, if you're a lawyer, you can pay money uh and and get like a plaque.
34:08
They'll send you a plaque.
34:08
And, then also, they'll allow you to use their like thing in the in the like when you send an email, it could be like voted a top lawyer by Chambers.
34:16
And, you could do And, you could do all that.
34:21
Dude, this company, they do 44 million euros or Yeah, so or sorry, 44 million pounds.
34:27
So, what's that in real real money?
34:29
That's like 60 million in revenue.
34:31
and then 18 million in profit.
34:33
And they're selling right now for close to $500 million.
34:39
It's a crazy company because I've been for sale somewhere?
34:43
Uh just like in a trade magazine for uh media companies that I follow.
34:46
It's like this small thing called Flash and Flames.
34:48
Because this that website they cover like B2B media stuff cuz I'm like been obsessed with B2B data business. of the B2B media thing? flashandflames. com I love it. Okay.
34:59
It's like my favorite site.
34:59
I didn't even want to tell people about it cuz I don't want to tell I I like how you tried to just mutter it.
35:06
That's when you know it's a good one. It's a good one.
35:07
Like I'm a paying subscriber to it, which is like ridiculous.
35:10
Uh but dude, these lawyers pay like $1,500 to $4,000 a year.
35:15
And they said they have like no churn.
35:18
They're like, "We have we no one churns from our from us because these lawyers want it for so much this these lawyers want it for so much."
35:23
And I uh I'm interested in this and I found like eight or nine other businesses.
35:27
They call them like data businesses or data bases or intelligence businesses.
35:31
And they're not really much tech, but right now a lot of them are selling for eight to 10 times revenue.
35:37
And I found 10 examples of companies that have sold in the eight to 10 times revenue range for one of these data businesses. It's ridiculous. It's crazy.
35:44
And this sounds like a scheme um because what they do is they rank you and then they go, "Hey, if you want like to make like a special profile on our website, uh we'll do that and it's $4,500 a year.
35:57
And what we'll do is uh like once ranked you could purchase this one-pager where you get a profile on our site.
36:04
It's almost like a Wikipedia page where they like one of the journalists just writes like two paragraphs and it says like, "This legal firm is known for X, Y, and Z."
36:10
And then you you could put that if you're a lawyer, you could put that in your email signature, and you're allowed to do that, and then people can click and see whatever. It's crazy, man. This is a caper.
36:20
They're pulling it off and I and I love stuff like this. You know, it's like J. D. Power.
36:23
We talked about You know how you You they're smart?
36:24
Because their logo is like it looks like a medallion like a like it looks like a special emblem or award.
36:32
Like it's a C with this like I don't know what you call these but like the pedals going around it.
36:39
Um put this on the YouTube channel so that people could see it but like It's yeah it's like a it's like a wreath around it that like just looks like you know what the Olympics in Athens would would would award their the top performers, right?
36:51
So like you you they're they're really playing into the whole thing with their brand.
36:53
Uh so I think that's pretty cool.
36:55
I have a business that's sort of like this.
36:57
and their name is Partners.
36:57
I'm going to create like something like this.
36:59
Just do you know just Mayonnaise and Partners, you know?
37:02
Like we'll just do something for the people, you know?
37:06
We rank we rank best condiments. Mayonnaise and Partners.
37:07
I got to figure this out.
37:09
We can put this on the logo.
37:11
But I love these rating businesses.
37:14
What's the one you have that's similar?
37:15
Uh so I was Have you ever done like like a trademark search yourself? No, what's that?
37:23
Like when you start a business and you want to look up is this a good name? What do you do?
37:26
Do you pay a lawyer and say, "Hey, can you just tell me if this trademark's available?"
37:28
Do you do that later once you get going a little bit? later once I get going.
37:31
Is there is there an importance to having a trademark? Yeah.
37:36
It's very hard to sell a company without a trademark.
37:37
Did you sell The Hustle without a trademark?
37:40
I didn't have a trademark. Yeah.
37:42
Typically it's very hard to get acquired without owning your name because it's a giant liability.
37:47
So for example like if somebody else owns the trademark and you get 60 years in, you're going to have to change your name because the more valuable you get, the bigger your exposure is for them to say, "I own the trademark to this.
37:58
You have to change your name."
37:59
Or Well, but maybe my name I mean it was called The Hustle.
38:03
Maybe it was too broad of a name, you know what I mean? Well, I don't know.
38:06
There's probably some troll out there listening to this be like, "Hey, hang on. Let me go get this guy."
38:10
So um Dude, I'm I'm past the reps and warranty like the escrow has been paid out so There's a great uh there's a great um story I think the early episode where Mois came on and told the Native story.
38:23
So, it's like I don't know, episode 10 of this podcast.
38:26
Uh Moiz tells a story about like when they tried to sell Native, um they they got in trouble with it.
38:30
So, they go there they have a deal to sell Native.
38:33
And as they're doing the diligence or like as they're prepping for the diligence, they're like, "Shit, we don't have the trademark for Native uh Native deodorant."
38:43
And they're like, "Okay, well, let's just get it."
38:44
And they're like, "Well, you can't get it because somebody else owns it." They're like, "What?"
38:47
"Who owns Native deodorant? Like, what?"
38:50
"Well, the Native deodorant.
38:50
Look, I have the domain."
38:51
They're like, "Well, no, there's this guy."
38:52
And I think it was like someone in Palo Alto, if I remember the story correctly.
38:55
I might be butchering a little bit of this, but somebody in Palo Alto who was like kind of like a true patent troll type that owned the name to it and owned a bunch of names like this.
39:04
And they were like, And he's like, "Okay, I guess I can go buy it off them cuz they're not doing anything with it."
39:09
So, he goes to them, tries to buy it for like whatever, 20K. They're like, "No."
39:13
Then he's like, "Okay, you know, whatever." Goes up to 200K. "No."
39:18
And like the guy wanted millions of dollars for this name cuz he knows, "Your business is valuable. You need this name.
39:23
You're going to change your brand name for your consumer packaged good?
39:27
That's like, you know, you can't change Doritos to go be called, you know, like like Fluffies, you know, tomorrow. It doesn't work. You lose a lot of value.
39:34
And so, they were like going back and forth.
39:37
I forgot exactly how it got resolved.
39:39
I think he ended up buying it for $2 million or something like that or I think so or um something else happened where they like threatened to They were just like, "All right, screw you.
39:50
We're not going to do it at all."
39:51
And the guy like realized it was like his last ditch effort and like and they ended up getting it for whatever, some amount.
39:57
Um you know, I forgot I forgot what it was, but they acquired it in the end.
39:59
But yeah, anyway, so so I've had this problem with a business of mine, which was that I up for I'm I'm like you.
40:05
I'm like, "Oh, I don't need a fancy domain.
40:07
I don't need a fancy name.
40:08
Let me just start the business and go."
40:11
And then I start and it goes and it gets popular and then I'm like, "Okay, I should probably like incorporate the company and do like payroll and do like all these things that I should I you know I should have been doing at the beginning but I didn't want to do all that stuff if there wasn't like a real business here.
40:24
And so then you try to go back and some things are easier than others to correct going backwards.
40:31
One of the things that's hard to correct is if you chose a name that wasn't right, you know, you have a problem.
40:34
And so with one of my businesses, I had done the actual search myself.
40:38
I should have just paid a lawyer to do it.
40:40
But I went on the USPTO search website which I don't know if you've ever gone there but it's like you know, imagine like a government It's like the DMV website.
40:48
And so you go there, you try to search and I searched for our brand name and nothing came up.
40:53
But it turns out there's like a fancier way to search where it's like yeah, that brand name or like with an S at the end or like with associated other words that would make it too close. And I didn't know that.
41:02
And so I remember being so frustrated with this interface and I was like somebody should make a cuz this is a it's a public database.
41:10
It's like somebody should just make a more consumer-friendly layer on top.
41:15
And then I found a business that does this and I got in touch with the guy who who I don't know if you've heard of this but there's a business called trademarkia. com.
41:19
So it's like trademark with ia. So trademarkia. com.
41:24
If you go to it, all of a sudden it's like like if you just compare side by side.
41:28
Like in the YouTube channel you should do this.
41:29
Like take USPTO and try to find even where do you go find search for trademarks and then like how that looks versus this where it just says search 11 million trademarks for free. Search your thing. Example, Mickey Mouse.
41:40
And it's like you can just type in your brand name.
41:42
So like if I typed in, you know, the Hustle.
41:47
Uh I'm going to search for this and it's going to tell me what trademarks exist for this, who owns them, what what categories that they're in.
41:53
Okay, so so HubSpot HubSpot owns it now.
41:54
So it says the Hustle HubSpot owns it. It's pending.
41:59
Uh and it was filed December 3rd, 2022. When did you sell?
42:03
Uh December 3rd When did I two years ago? What would that be? 21? Yeah.
42:08
So Okay, so Wow, so they Yeah, I didn't know it.
42:11
And I They also it also looks like you abandoned one in 2020.
42:18
Um So, you know, so somebody did something on your team.
42:21
Maybe tried and and didn't get it or whatever.
42:23
It tells you what class it's in, etc. etc.
42:24
So, it's a great great little thing and you can search for like associated names or whatever. It's a great website.
42:29
And so, I reached out to the guy who owns it.
42:31
I was like, "Dude, this is a And so, I I I said um "Trademark is a great great idea. Brilliant interface.
42:38
Um you know, you know, props to you."
42:43
And he goes uh so, the guy lives in the Bay Area actually and he goes, "Yeah, it's really cool website.
42:48
Um you know, we have 5 million in ARR.
42:52
Um And I can't you know, uh we never raised VC. 5 million in ARR.
42:57
It was kind of declining from the peak, but I just came back to the company, removed the subscription.
43:00
I got big plans now, you know, I want to talk to you about it."
43:03
And um you know, he's going to try to make this like he wants to go for like the billion-dollar outcome.
43:07
And I was like, "Dude, I think you have a $5 million a year cash cow um that you could probably get to like eight or nine with just like some simple tweaks and like, you know, chill.
43:14
Like that that sounds awesome.
43:18
Um but but I thought this is really cool website.
43:20
Again, it's just a simple Like these businesses are everywhere, man.
43:24
These businesses are hidden in plain sight.
43:26
And in this case, it took a public data set.
43:28
It just put a much more user-friendly wrapper on top versus what you were talking about with Chambers is they created their own data set and then have then they own that proprietary data.
43:40
It's called uh you know, an uh um Who was it?
43:44
Uh Anan from CBM sites was on and he was like, "No, we just like taking public data that's messy and we just make it a little bit easier to Yeah, we just make it clean."
43:51
Um by the way, My First Million is owned by Advance Magazine pub- publishers, which is a big company in New York.
43:57
And it's a entertainment services, namely an online non-downloadable video series featuring star athletes explaining their life as millionaires.
44:07
I guess that's that GQ thing, which I search or where I see when I search on YouTube. But uh anyway, badass. I love this company.
44:15
do you want to hear I'm going to go trademark this before this episode comes out because now somebody's going to go squat on this.
44:21
Do you uh and um a funny story about Native Deodorant.
44:27
I've always remember this story.
44:27
I never put it up to you.
44:28
So, you and I, The Hustle's office and Twitch's office was just a block or like 50 yards from each other.
44:35
So, if you know, there's there was like Kearney or whatever you were and then you were to the left.
44:40
If you go to the right, there was a little cafe that was lovely that I that I really liked.
44:44
And I believe Moiz, the So, Native Deodorant is a company called Native Deodorant. They sell deodorant.
44:50
It was sold for $100 million in in cash and it probably does hundreds of millions now.
44:55
And it has like a really cute branding. They make shampoo. They make everything.
45:00
And I remember walking by this lovely cafe and I thought, "Huh, this cafe's called Native, too, and their logo looks just like Native Deodorant."
45:09
And I realized that Moiz worked nearby.
45:14
Uh and so, I put kind of two and two together.
45:17
So, if you Google Native Co SF, Yeah.
45:20
you'll see a little you'll see a little cafe uh you'll see their Yelp page.
45:24
They've changed their logo to uh green, but it used to be yellow.
45:26
Or sorry, it used to be blue.
45:28
The exact same as Native Deodorant.
45:30
And so, I have a feeling that he was thinking of like good branding.
45:37
this and I was like, "This is I remember thinking, dude, Moiz, they're ripping off your brand or are you doing it?" Exactly.
45:43
And now it's realized the obvious.
45:47
He was like, "All right, I need a name."
45:49
Looked out the window, saw it, and was like, "That's my name and my logo now." That's mine.
45:55
If you go to this go if you look up at Native Co, is exactly the same exactly same. And it used to be blue.
46:02
It looked like they're It looked like they're in COVID they like It was exactly like Nivea blue.
46:07
It was it it was the same white background with the same blue. Now it's green.
46:11
It looks like they closed in COVID and they moved to a new location, but that old location that we were at, it was the same logo and it was called Native Co.
46:17
And I think Native deodorant was The domain was also Native Co for him. Yes, it was.
46:21
It was the exact same thing.
46:24
And so he must have been just walking down the street and he goes like, "Yep, that's me. That's mine now."
46:31
You know, it's just like there's that meme on the internet of like a stick figure handing an item to another stick figure saying, "Hey, I made this."
46:37
And then the second stick of a figure looks at it and goes, "I made this."
46:40
That's basically what just happened.
46:42
And I don't think I've ever like said this to him, but I would love to hear what his rebuttal is, but he 100% stole the entire branding, the name, everything from this company.
46:53
I don't know if stealing is the right word, but kind of.
46:56
I mean, that one looks like stealing.
46:56
It looks like he actually went to took a screwdriver, took off took their sign off their office, moved it across the street and put it on his office. It's the exact logo.
47:05
I remember seeing that for years and being like, "Huh."
47:08
And I just never like put two and two together.
47:11
I didn't realize he worked there, but I was like, "Wow, they're really ripping off his branding."
47:16
No, that's that cafe has been there for years.
47:19
I remember walking by it for years.
47:20
Well, now they're shut down.
47:22
That's that I mean, this is like everything that's wrong in society.
47:25
You know, he sells his business for 100 million dollars.
47:26
Poor cafe, you know, shuts down uh you know, you know, sadly during COVID during the pandemic.
47:32
This is the way the world is going.
47:33
Dude, have you seen people ripping us off?
47:35
I don't know if you've seen this, but No, but that's cool.
47:39
In the next two weeks, you're going to see Twitter threads, LinkedIns, short videos on TikTok, other podcasts talking about the exact same stories that we tell here.
47:48
There's like this group of 10 people that just take our content and then they just say the exact same thing.
47:55
And then they just tell that exact same story.
47:56
They're going to be like, "Dude, Dave Ramsey.
47:58
Dave How Dave Ramsey built a $600 million empire." Animation. This, that.
48:02
And then they're just going to like literally steal our stick.
48:06
It's it's kind of annoying. I get it.
48:10
Um Michael from Our Future has done it a few times.
48:13
Yeah, they do Yeah, he he's one of the 10 that that does this all the time. Who are the other nine?
48:18
Uh I mean, I don't even really want to give them shine of of doing that.
48:19
You know, this is literally if you're one of those people, just you know, this is have your own silent embarrassment.
48:26
There's nothing wrong with sort of like taking ideas and remixing them.
48:28
Um but what most people do is they just take the same idea, they just tell the same story uh the same way we that we already told it in their own Twitter thread or their own LinkedIn and and whatever else.
48:38
Um which is fine, but like give credit at least.
48:40
If you're going to If you're going to say the same thing, be like, "Oh, I was listening to My First Million and they told this great story. Check it out." All right?
48:46
And then you know, yeah, that that's I think a slightly better way to do it.
48:49
Um but you know, whatever. It's It is what it is.
48:54
But this is why So, I have a new project.
48:55
I'm actually going to announce it in a month of month or 3 weeks.
48:56
This is why I didn't announce it.
48:59
I've been working on this for almost a year now.
49:00
I didn't want to announce it. Copycats.
49:04
Everyone Everyone talks about building public.
49:05
I hate building in public.
49:07
Building in public is not cool when you're popular.
49:08
Building in public is really cool when you want to get popular. Yeah, exactly.
49:12
But once you already have a following, I don't want to do it.
49:13
Like The Milk Road, did you guys have a bunch of copycats? Yeah. Yeah, tons.
49:17
Uh there there's like there's tons of embarrassing ones that are out there.
49:21
Uh there's like people that literally just took the same exact newsletter and they would Some people would translate it.
49:27
So, they're like, "Oh, I'm you know, leche leche whatever."
49:30
And it's like the Mexican Milk Road.
49:33
And then they would translate it to Spanish and did just like Google Translate and then publish.
49:38
Um there's another one that uh there's one I don't know if I want to put this guy on blast, but um someone who tried to buy The Milk Road and failed.
49:49
Yeah, I know you're talking about.
49:51
Then just to copy it, in its own like way, and you can just The funny thing is they very rarely work. Um They don't.
49:59
And it's like kind of surprising. Why don't they work?
50:00
I kind of expected them to work.
50:02
Um like for example, when people take our content and then write a thread about it on LinkedIn, like it does pretty good.
50:08
Like that that kind of works for them.
50:10
Otherwise, they wouldn't really keep doing it.
50:11
But the copy the whole newsletter thing, like for some reason that doesn't really work.
50:15
I'm not sure not 100% sure why. why. I know why.
50:18
Do you want to know the So, basically, if for people who have been raised on the internet, they have a very high detector.
50:23
And do you want to know the best way to circumvent someone's detector? How?
50:30
Don't You don't Don't That's how you circumvent that detector.
50:34
You don't And people can sniff this out.
50:38
And so, if they read something and it's like, "Dude, you're like an not cool older guy trying to act like a cool younger person.
50:45
I know that this is not good. Like this doesn't work."
50:49
you about the NQR, right?
50:49
The the the KFCs in China, not quite right.
50:51
And it's like, "Dude, it's the same menu.
50:54
Like the this is this is the spicy chicken sandwich."
50:57
And it's like, "That's not quite right."
51:01
And people they just doesn't taste right.
51:02
The taste buds reject it.
51:02
Now, I believe that when it comes to if I use one product and then somebody tries to copy it, I'm like, "Why would I want this shitty copy?
51:10
I'm just going to keep going with the original."
51:13
But in markets where you're you're reaching a new audience or people haven't heard of the original, I'm surprised it doesn't work.
51:17
And I think my theory of why it doesn't work in those cases, I think you're right when it's when people have tasted the original, then they don't really want the the shitty Or when it's like community community brand like personality driven.
51:28
You know, it's it's that one moat that Peter Thiel doesn't understand, brand. Yeah.
51:36
The one the Asperger proof defense one Asperger proof weapon we have.
51:42
So, you know, the one thing that I think is is true, which is like this like iceberg theory, which is which is like if you look at an iceberg, like the part you see at the top is like you know 5% of the total mass that's there.
51:54
And so what I think people get wrong when they try to copy a business is that they only see the top the 5% and they're like, "Okay, I'm going to copy that."
52:02
But they don't know what goes on underneath.
52:04
They don't know that basically the uncopyable thing is the the people, the personalities, the engine underneath that's coming up with the creative ideas.
52:12
That's coming up with the next marketing theme because this one starts to decline.
52:16
And so I think that's the part that's typically hard to copy.
52:21
But honestly, I'm surprised that more of them don't work because if you're sufficiently talented, I think it I think it sadly does work more often than it doesn't.
52:33
We should do an episode where we talk about the things that people have copied and it's become better than the original.
52:38
Um like there's stories of the Samwer brothers.
52:41
So it's these three brothers in Germany and they have the company called Rocket Internet and it was a clone factory.
52:46
And they basically it's a it's was publicly traded till recently, but the reason they started this company was they like cloned Amazon and all these other companies, Zappos, Uber, things like that.
52:57
But before they started company started that company, they cloned other things and they sold it to the original.
53:03
So they cloned eBay in Germany and they sold it back to eBay for $90 million in like 3 months.
53:08
And then they were going to do the same thing with Groupon, but they uh got bigger than Groupon and they realized, "Oh wow, once you get huge, this business sucks. We got to offload it."
53:22
And then they tried to do that with Zappos, the shoe company, but they got bigger than the original Zappos.
53:25
So the bigger they were their market cap was larger, so they couldn't sell it.
53:28
And they uh like this is their whole strategy.
53:32
It's a very fascinating strategy and it so far it's not panned out for them other than like HelloFresh.
53:36
They did HelloFresh and they copied Blue Apron and HelloFresh worked. Right.
53:40
Yeah, I think um there's an art to there's an art to copying.
53:44
This is this is a whole whole I think we could do a whole podcast about like, if you're going to copy, here's how to do it.
53:48
Here's how to do it in a way that feels good to your soul, feels good to customers, actually works, and is not just going to result in like a massive waste of time.
53:57
And so I think there's there's a bunch of different little factors there.
53:59
I think one thing the Samwer brothers did, one of the factors for example is they um they did the same business in a different country.
54:08
And so I think, you know, geographic geographic differentiation is important.
54:13
Um I think that's one that that that you can you can copy and make things work when you do a geographic difference.
54:19
Uh but then there's some traps with that, too, that we could we could talk about.
54:23
But um All right, where do you want to where do you want to finish up?
54:25
I think we should Well, there is one thing that we should do.
54:30
And Yeah, I forgot about that too. aware of it. I think I'm aware of it.
54:31
I can't seem to find my pen, but I need That's okay.
54:36
You don't need you don't need a pen.
54:37
So basically thought I had to sign something. Some sort of agreement.
54:40
You do, but you you sign it, but just with a click of a button.
54:43
So basically at this podcast, My First Million, our content, unlike every other content on YouTube, is actually not for free. Right. Not a free podcast. It's not a free podcast.
54:51
Because what you have to do, if you've seen one more than one episode, you have to do this thing called the gentlemen's agreement, which is it's called that because we're not there.
54:59
I'm not behind you to stare at your screen.
55:01
That's why it's a gentlemen's agreement. It's an honor code.
55:02
You have to basically go and click subscribe on YouTube because we'll get more subscribers, that helps the algorithm, we get more views, and then we'll do more dumb stuff for you.
55:12
So it's called the gentlemen's agreement.
55:14
If you watch more than one video, you have to do this. Everyone's doing it.
55:18
a addendum to the gentlemen's agreement.
55:20
Came from a from a listener. She pointed it out.
55:23
She goes, "Not only have I signed the gentlemen's agreement, I've signed the ladies understanding."
55:30
What's the ladies understanding?
55:30
You know, there's not many phrases that will stop me in my tracks, but I was stopped in my tracks.
55:36
The lady's understanding, I thought that was phenomenal.
55:40
understanding, that's actually when you also click subscribe on the iTunes or the I always call it iTunes, on the podcast app and the Spotify app.
55:46
That's the lady's understanding.
55:50
go that extra mile and give us the lady's understanding along with the gentleman's agreement.
55:53
So since we started doing this So two things about gentleman's agreement.
55:56
Number one, it's funny because we're talking about copying, you stole this stick from somebody and we're trying to make it I stole it.
56:01
He called me, by the way, and he was like, "Isn't that awesome? It works so good."
56:04
And he invited me to a UFC fight with me and him. you gave credit to him.
56:07
Uh you put your own spin on it and uh yeah, you you credited him most importantly as being like, "This guy did this awesome thing."
56:15
and I was like, "Wow, I I got to try doing this."
56:18
Um so, you know, you credited him and that's cool that you guys are are going to see a fight together. That's that's amazing. It's cute.
56:23
The second thing is we have s- grown a lot since we did this.
56:28
So, we started doing this, we had 100 Would you The first time you did it, I believe we had 145,000 subscribers on YouTube. It's like a month ago?
56:34
We have Yeah, that that was like, yeah, maybe 45 days ago, something like that.
56:38
And now we're at 180,000.
56:41
And the people who watch the YouTube videos, they know this.
56:42
I In fact, I'm looking at a tweet right now which he goes He goes at He just at mentioned us.
56:47
He goes, "Watching on YouTube is better than Spotify."
56:49
Yeah, no I told you this.
56:51
It is way better to watch the show on YouTube.
56:53
And in fact, what I think we should do to really like juice the agreement, to even add more, you know, see appendix A of the gentleman's agreement, I think we should do a piece of content that is only good when you watch it.
57:07
So So, here's my here's my proposal to you, Sam.
57:09
I think we should do basically like a Shirtless? Yeah.
57:14
Sam's going to be shirtless and I'm going to screen share.
57:20
But I think we should screen share us going through like a pitch deck and making it taking one from average to awesome or like good to great uh and just show how we would tweak the copy, how we would make it look like better.
57:31
And we'll use a real one.
57:31
And so, I think we should do that and put that only on the YouTube channel cuz it would only make sense to see it and react to it on YouTube.
57:37
you should log in to chase.
57:37
com and uh show show your checking account.
57:42
And if we'll react, but we won't say the number. That's genius.
57:47
You know, this is why you complete me, bro.
57:52
I gave you a shitty idea and you you gave me the old yes and.
57:58
We're going to go to chase.
57:58
com or whatever Bank of America, whatever you use, and you're going to all just we're going to watch you log in and we're just going to react, and that's it.
58:05
By the way, the yes yes and is the corniest thing that the startup world tried to take from from like the cool like, you know, people who are actually funny world because actually it's a no, but which is what you just did there.
58:20
No, but we should do this instead is is a better version of yes and.
58:24
and improv people are are one step below acapella people in terms of the nerds.
58:30
So, like there's no way we're cool and improv people.
58:32
You ever been around around an an improv person?
58:33
It's like being around someone who does CrossFit.
58:36
You know, like just stop talking about it.
58:38
I can't stand improv people. They're exhausting.
58:39
It's like a uh with Theo Von like Uh Dude, I I Theo Von said it's like it's like a a blind Jack Russell. You know what those are?
58:48
It's like that dog that's yapping everywhere and when it's blind, you just can't stop it.
58:51
It's going all over the place.
58:52
That's how I feel about an improv person.
58:53
Yeah, I think you're I think you're right.
58:55
I did improv, so I can confirm this is correct.
58:56
Um and you're correct that it's below acapella.
59:01
Which is below anything that's actually cool.
59:04
Yeah, acapella is the worst of the worst.
59:06
I remember hanging out with people from New England and they like were bragging about acapella and I was like, "Dude, shut up.
59:10
Why are you talking about that?
59:11
You don't want people to know."
59:12
And uh they were like people hang out with each other and they're like ordering or they're like waiting for their food at the table and then one guy's like and then it's like and then Cuz like harmonizing.
59:25
It's like, "Dude, you got to stop like you know. Yeah.
59:27
If I hear The Lion King song one more time I'm going to put a bullet in my head.
59:33
That's how I feel when I'm when I'm with these people.
59:37
I've ever trapped on a subway and like this they do a flash mob around me and start singing.
59:41
Oh, those people are are above.
59:43
Flash mob people are are above the a cappella people.
59:47
to do something I'm going to start vomiting just to out out rage them in that moment. That's the part of