my wife is like insane about this stuff she has a drawer full of coupons so we went to Costco this weekend because we had a $20 off or something like that coupon so we still use coupons or [Music] [Music] coupons all right what's going on this is Sam Sean's out with some surgery I've been telling people he's getting a nose job I don't know if that's true but let's just pretend it is but anyway we
are doing a quick 10 or 15 minute Q&A session I asked some of the listeners and some of my Twitter fans what type of questions they had for for me and we'll talk about it let's get into it so all right what's the uh first question what do we got let's start with one that's really timely you're about to be a dad someone's asking what is top of Mind as you become a dad so I'm gonna have a child November 1
that's the due date we'll see a little girl what um so in preparation of having this baby I was like freaking out about like just the actual uh like the physical her physical wellbeing of raising her and so I read the biography of Louis and Clark because I remember that sacka joa had a kid like on that Journey or something like that and so I wanted to read the book and so it turns
out she had a three-month-old that she carried like in a little sack across America for two years and like you know in the winter and um that kind of like encouraged me like I'm not going to hurt this baby so I'm not too worried about that I would say the biggest thing though that I am freaked out about is raising a spoiled kid and raising a kid that's going to be a drug addict um I'm
very like like that like I I genuinely have like a deep fear in me and so I've been trying to figure out how do I like in a very healthy way withhold things from her like how do I not give her what she wants just in order to instill some types of grit because the sounds kind of douchy but I can give her anything she wants like in terms of like physical stuff and I'm really freaking out about
how do I stay strong and not give her what she wants in order to create grit and how do I make sure that she's not spoiled and works hard but my biggest fear is Raising like a kid who is freaking out over that or or or who like just feels like she doesn't need to work and so my current thinking this has not been settled but my thinking this is just me not my family me is the only thing that I'll pay for
is free tuition and free medical for life and beyond that give her nothing um that's kind of like my current thinking um that's what I had growing up my parents paid for my school and I never had to worry about getting braces or anything like that and that's kind of like where I am now I read the Titan by John Rockefeller and he was the richest person in the world and his wife has this famous quote where
she says something like the biggest joy that I have in life right now is withholding from my children things that they want because I know it's going to make them stronger and I'm kind of in that camp at the moment on how to do that but I um I don't feel very confident on the right way that I'm going to do that but my fear is the outcome of a drug addicted indulgent child who won't work hard that
that's my biggest fear at the moment and so I'm preparing by like getting my mind right on how to like withhold things from her and not give in because I do give in to a lot of things is that a good answer you have kids am I am I I'm I'm a very withholding weather so I totally get and speaking of you being effing Rich this is a next question that I personally am curious about it's what's the biggest
difference in your lifestyle now that you're effing rich I have nothing to do with picking these questions I just want to say that I hate talking I don't like that topic but I will discuss it so basically before I sold my first company I I my four years of salary leading up to it was 20,000 a year 20,000 a year I think I paid myself 150,000 a year and then the last year I think I paid myself
$350,000 a year so for the first while I didn't have a lot of money I was I was I I didn't have much and then all of a sudden I sold the business and I I had enough uh at first I did something that I advise everyone not to do which is I bought a few things I bought some real estate I think that I bought a fancy car I think that that brings close to no happiness um and might be one of those things that
you have to go through in order to um to truly appreciate but I think that if you do have a windfall you likely shouldn't buy anything crazy fancy for the first year or two and just get used to it but I've also learned there's this like um story about a um this study about these people who studied uh amputees and they found that after 6 months the level of Happiness went back
to where they were when they had both legs so you you get hurt you lose your leg you're bummed for a little while after six months you go right back to feeling as good as you did with two legs that kind of happens um when I think when you make some money um but the biggest thing that it did was not what it could purchase you but the biggest change is my confidence my confidence went through the roof I'm incredibly
confident in my ability to start something and to see it through to be a success I don't think that I have the confidence where I think everything I'm going to do is is going to be a success I think I still have paranoia that I'm going to lose everything and I still have massive fears about going broke um that is something that my therapist and I are working through still um but it
hasn't changed significantly I think that someone had asked a question about monthly expenses before I sold I think I was spending anywhere between1 and $15,000 a month my apartment at the time was $4,000 a month I thought that was astronomical I had a girlfriend my wife now we live together so it was 2,000 each and I was like that is insane $22,000 in rent I can that is just
like that's evil I thought um now when I rent the place it's a bit more it I you know 10 or 12 or 13,000 sometimes when I go to um New York for the summer and so I increased my rent price my home that I live in in Austin I paid $900,000 for it so my monthly nut or my monthly mortgage and taxes I think it's 5,000 or or 6,000 somewhere in between that with taxes and so I think I increased my spend from
like 10 to 15 a month to like 20 to 25,000 a month maybe 20,000 a month when I'm not in New York so I don't spend what I think is a significant amount of money I don't have any car payments I have two cars a Tesla and a Mercedes those are paid off I have a cleaning lady who comes once a week that's $120 a week um I do some health stuff so I have a fancy gym and I go to fancy doctors collectively that's a ,000 a month I
don't own any jewelry I I wear I'm wearing a fresh clean tea it's a $10 t-shirt I wear those constantly um so I don't buy a lot of fancy things so my burn I think is relatively low um um when I go out to eat I don't look at prices and when I go to Whole Foods I buy the fanciest stuff and that's basically besides that I budget everything else out and so like I have a my wife is like insane
about this stuff she has a drawer full of coupons so we went to Costco this weekend because we had a $20 off or something like that coupon so we still use coupons or coupons um but it has not changed significantly I guess one significant thing I hate flying I do not like to fly at all so typically if I have to go somewhere even if it's like 12 hours away I tend to drive I do not like to
fly when I fly now I fly business class um and so that makes a $300 flight $800 something like that but my increase expenses rent went up um um business class but I don't fly often um and then my home doesn't have fancy Furnishing my whole house cost $30,000 to furnish so it hasn't really changed significantly other than my confidence my confidence has changed significantly the idea of like creating
something from nothing that changed significantly how was that did that answer those two questions love loved every minute of it so now you can get out of the hot seat on your personal life and I'm going to throw to you the this was the most liked question so what were were your alternative business ideas if you didn't do Hampton so I um I'm I think I mentioned this last podcast there's this thing
called eeky guy that I'm totally bought into I'm very fascinated with Japanese culture Japan has this like this philosophy where I think I said it last time it was like a vend diagram of like what the world wants what the world wants to pay for what you're good at what you love doing I try to find something in the middle one thing that I'm obsessed about is data and numbers I really am um like I
if you search if you go to my personal blog which don't judge I started when I was 21 and I quit blogging there but I used to have this document called the CEO document and I tracked hundreds and hundreds of people I read lots of biographies and I tracked when they're born when they started their apprenticeship when they found success and then like what the success was and I
made these like in-depth databases I'm obsessed with databases I'm obsessed with researching things so I have hundreds of PAG pages of my notion document where I deconstruct how different companies work so I thought about creating a research company or database company the the the reason I didn't start it was because I couldn't find an appropriate problem to solve for so I have all these databases of
information and I like to analyze them and figure out what they mean but I couldn't find a good use case or I couldn't find a reason why people would pay money for it other than it's interesting but I sought out like for six months like different companies in the space and I couldn't figure out the right like go to market strategy so I wanted to start a database company or research
company because I love it I thought about starting a media company I do have a non-compete so I can't start like a business news email for another one year I think um and so I couldn't do that and so I kind of fell into Hampton because I thought it was a it was perfect in my little eeky guy it was like what I'm good at what the world wants but I was really obsessed with research businesses
we just had Jason yanowitz in the Pod this episode will go live but he came uh the episode before this and I asked him a lot about research businesses I think they could be really big I also think that there's not a lot of like youngish entrepreneurs attacking that space because it's a pretty stodgy old space that hasn't had a significant amount of innovation and I'm but I'm very fascinated by it so research in
databased businesses is what I wanted to do one of my favorite examples is CB insights I love CB insights I love pitchbook I love those companies and I wanted to build something like that all right I got to tell you about one thing that's one of the great joys of my life you I'm not a cars guy and I'm not a watch guy but there's one thing that gives me a lot of joy and that is having
a virtual assistant uh you know here's the scenario I'm running my companies and even though I'm supposed to be this uh CEO we all know I spend 20 30% of my time just doing random [ __ ] stuff that is not high value but it's just tedious it's stuff that has to get done but it's not creativity it doesn't require me and it doesn't add a bunch of value to the business it's just stuff
just stuff that has to get done and so that stuff is what a virtual assistant does like just this week alone you know I lose my wallet so she goes to the DMV website fills out a bunch of forms gets me a new license or um you know every morning people have their morning coffee I have my morning metrics and my morning metrics are basically all the business metrics that I care about compiled she
goes she finds them from all the different sources puts it in Excel sheet takes a screenshot texts it to me so that when I wake up in the morning I don't go on Twitter or check my email I'm looking at what what are the metrics at and what do I need to do I'm focused on the right things so having a virtual assistant is a no-brainer whether it's travel booking email inbox or just knocking stuff off your personal to-do
list that would have just lingered there forever um I think it's a no-brainer if you're a business owner you should definitely do it um I I think one of the best places to find assistant is Shepard so go to support shepard.com you know I pay my assistant I think $8 an hour something like that that's double what she was making in her previous job so it's a win for her and for me it's super
affordable it's something that um you know you don't need to have the biggest business ever be the biggest big shot in order to afford it so it's amazing I now do this for my co and my CMO too like I just give them assistance without them even asking because I know it makes them more productive that's it does that for me so of course it's going to do that for them too so go to support.com check
them out um get an assistant and tell them I sent you they'll take good care of you if you do that so sport.com check it out our software is the worst have you heard of HubSpot see most crms are a together mess but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous I think I love our new CRM our software is the best hub spot grow better okay this next question I love although it's
painful for me even to ask it because it's really it it cuts deep uh this comes from Omar what was the most painful thing someone told you and how did it change you okay I saw that question and I was trying to think of a good answer answer my answer is boring so my best friend his name's Neville madora I met him because he had a great blog on copywriting and one year in 2013 I think it was 14 I cold emailed
them and I said Neville my name is Sam I'm going to host this conference and I want you to come speak and I'm going to pay for your flight and I'm going to take care of your accommodation well the conference was really like 15 of my friends hanging out talking and I bought him a $250 Southwest flight and he slept on my couch and we became best friends after that and when he was there at my in my
couch I gave him a towel to like take a shower and it was like a moldy towel and he was like dude you are disgusting you're acting like this bachelor 23y old which you are but like you need to be a man you need to get your act together this is disgusting and I remember that changed my life when he and so I like got together some of my like my uh my domestic skill set I also
so like I was like I need to act like a man I need to dress better I need to like be more appropriate like I get I got to get my act together so that helped me a ton he also Neville does this a lot he criticizes me all the time but in a really nice way where he's like I'm going to tell you this because I love you but I'm going to give you feedback and another thing was when I met this woman that he was like dating
or maybe one of his friends I think it was one of his friends he was like you're asking way too many intense questions the first time you meet someone you need to chill and quit talking about work and that was like painful to hear because that was my identity and so that changed how I uh had conversations and so he's done a good job Neville's eight uh six years older than me so he's kind of done a
good job of like being my brother a little bit and like teaching me how to like act like a man so that was like a good thing I remember when I started my first company the hustle and this CEO of a large multi-billion dollar media startup that everyone knows I'm not going to call him out he told me I go I'm going to start this thing called The Hustle I think it could become a huge thing he said this
will never make more than a million dollars a year just come and join my company and I was so hurt because I admired this guy so much and my admiration for him turned to hatred not really hatred but like rage I was like I wna like I want to destroy you now and the reason I thought that was because I was so hurt my feelings were so hurt that this guy that I admire just totally [ __ ] on me and he was wrong but I
believed him for like 6 months I like doubted everything I was like this is stupid but he told me that he won't even remember saying this this guy by the way he probably made he thought it was like an off-handed comment or that something like that but it hurt my feelings so badly that I remember that uh like terribly and then the last thing was like anytime a girlfriend has ever like
broken up with me that like that has always like stung me I I I I'll remember that for for decades like I'm still like trying to like prove them wrong so like I'm pretty sensitive uh to like rejection yeah for sure the most painful moments always come from high school I think everyone can agree with that yeah like high school and college girlfriends where you're still trying to figure out
yourself a little bit and they like and you get and and they're right like you're not doing things the right way but and they're rejecting you it's like H it's the most painful thing ever girls are so brutal okay this next question is from Caitlyn what is one trendy business model uh you think is overhyped um I think the nft and web 3 stuff is just complete nonsense I think it's inferior entrepreneurs slapping
their web 3 name on crap that no one wants and hoping that it's going to work so but everyone knows that now um I think um what's overhyped I think starting a newsletter is really popular right now most people don't realize it is a treadmill it is very challenging to create new content just like this podcast it's hard this is a hard job I like it because I think I'm good at it or I'm decent but it is very challenging
any type of content business very very very very hard to do for like two or three years um and newsletter the the newsletter space significantly different than when I started it is way more competitive way more challenging so I think that is a bit overhyped although I would still start one because I like it I think that most of the people in the space are not going to work and it's
pretty bad their content stinks because it's just a rinse and repeat of what already has existed so so I think that's quite overhyped I would say getting popular on the internet can be awesome because you get an audience but um in general I think that creating businesses based off your or like getting popular on Twitter and and Instagram and things like that I think it's incredibly empty
feeling for most people and I think it's complete nonsense and your time would be spent building a company or focusing on your family than getting popular on social media I think it's empty I think that it's like small boy stuff I just and I find it incredibly uninteresting and there's many days that I regret trying to like become popular on the internet okay are you up to do one more
we'll do one more okay this one comes from Jared seed he is moving to San Francisco he's curious about this idea of proximity to power so he's moving to SF with the clear intention of start a company and Surround himself with high Achievers his question is what did you do when you arrived d uh or what did Shan do when he arrived in SF to start laying the foundation to meet interesting people and business
Builders moving to a big city when you are young and have no family I think is absolutely awesome my time I lived in SF for 8 years I got angry at the government and I left because it was dangerous otherwise I would still be there in a heartbeat I have no problem paying the high taxes in order to live there I think it's a beautiful place I would still even go back there today if
my wife wanted to maybe so 100% worth it I loved it um what I did when I got there was I went to meetup.com and I went to Crazy amounts of meetups I also did uh I started an event so I created it's so funny CA cuz it's so sea is one of my best friends sea has a business that does like close to 100 million a year in Revenue we've had him on the Pod you guys maybe have heard of him um he
so I created this book club called the anti- MBA and the idea was we're going to read one book per month and we're going to break it up into quarters so week one we're going to read a quarter and discuss it week two the the second half or whatever and I would have an expert come in on the book's topic and we would just shoot the [ __ ] uh with like 30 or 20 people on this book and I um posted ads on Craigslist on
meetup.com and where else I think I bought an ad in the newspaper for like $200 like I just posted these ads and sea was one of the people who replied and after doing that for every week for about a year I had an email list of like 2,000 people who were like following this book club online because I would write out my notes from the the meeting and doing that book club changed my life so I just hosted a book club and it was
awesome it was so good it was uh such a fun way to meet interesting people and so that's what I did in order to meet interesting people is we just read cool books and we brainstormed and talked about them most people by the way didn't even read the book they just wanted to talk about it because I wrote notes ahead of time on like I wrote a summary on the book so that changed my life the
way that I met Shawn was I had this event called hustle con and there was this article in TechCrunch about monkey Inferno which was this incubator that Shawn ran and I saw a picture of the his office and it was magnificent and I cold email Sean and I said hey man um I'm hosting this event can I host the pre- dinner at your office we we'll take care of all the food I'll even hire some
someone to clean it up but can I just like host it at your sick office and in exchange you can come to the dinner and meet all these wonderful speakers and attendees and he said yes and that's how I met Shawn and so I think what I did what I think more people should do is you just reach out to tons of people and I would say don't even reach out to like Ballers or people who are like ahead of
you find other peers who seem like they got the juice who got the the Charisma or who have who seem like they're going someplace like for me it was Ryan Hoover Ryan Hoover started this thing called Product hunt we were buddies before he even started it and I've got lots of friends that are now incredibly successful um where we were just all like losers who were ambitious but we had nothing and we and I did a good job
of like cold emailing those types of people and we hung out a lot and we just I I became wonderful friends with them and it was through my book club it was through cold emailing Twitter wasn't popular I didn't even have a Twitter back then so I just cold emailed tons of people and I would highly recommend that's what you do is find peers who you think are going to go places and you
guys all try to succeed together and you try to be pretty selfless in the sense of like um like when I hosted my events they all volunteered to help me out when they needed something I helped them and so just like succeeding together I think was a really big deal now the issue is that takes like 10 years or 15 years but it's worth it um and you're not doing it just because someone's going to be
successful like I had friends who are artists and like they financially weren't successful but it was just people who were like kicking their dent in the universe and that was addicting to be around that and we all kind of did it together and that's what what I did I had a book club the anti- MBA is what it was called because I was so jealous of the I I didn't go to a fancy school I
remember when I moved to San Francisco I took a bus out or a train out to Stanford because I was like I want to see what this shit's about like what's what's so special about this place and I felt like in awe and I was like so jealous that I didn't know what Stanford even was when I was in high school so I was like I need to create my own Stanford cuz I'm jealous of all these people that went here and so that was
kind of the idea it was the anti- MBA it was for and I organized it so I would suggest book clubs meetup.com I don't know is meetup.com still a thing I bet you it is right now when I was in San Francisco I went there like six months ago and there was and someone someone like recognized me and they go Sam I love the Pod we're hosting a AI Meetup and a hackathon right now do you want to
come and my wife and I were like yeah let's go and so we just you got a car here we were like at the farmers market and they're like yeah I was like all right come on I'm going with you and so we went to this guy's Meetup and it was magical I met all these AI people who I knew nothing about and it was magical to be in those meetups at these places where you have like uh a homogeneous
group of people working on something that is not mainstream it felt really magical so I I would say go to those events right awesome book club another thing that you and Oprah have in common I love it yes we have a lot in common me and Oprah so there were a lot of other questions we didn't get to but we'll do another one a little later let me know if you guys like this stuff [Music] peace