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This guy's story is kind of amazing.
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So, this is basically a farmer billionaire. Love it.
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And And Okay, let me give you this one.
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This is kind of a crazy story.
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So, do the words John Bragg mean anything to you? No, they they don't.
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>> mean anything to me either.
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Shout out to Shane Parrish over at Farnam Street.
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He did a great podcast with this guy that caught my attention.
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Um this guy's story is kind of amazing.
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So, this is basically a farmer billionaire. Love it.
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And And Like there was only two sources for this, Farnam Street and the Van Trump Report had written about this guy.
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Those are the only things I could find.
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And He's got a biography as well, but all right, so so here's this guy's story.
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I just think there's a there's a bunch of factoids about this guy that I just think you're going to love.
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You're going to love this guy's whole aura, his vibe.
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He is the billy of the week. Cue the music.
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A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.
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John Bragg, this guy grows up on a family farm, like a sawmill or something like that.
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And when he's in high school, you know, what do teenagers do?
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They start to experiment, they start to dabble.
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Maybe a little bit of maybe girls, maybe weed. No, no, blueberries.
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He tries to harvest blueberries for the first time at 13, 14 years old.
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You know, he starts to he gets the itch.
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And then he goes to a local blueberry farmer, he decides, hey, hey, can I pick blueberries for you?
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And he picks blueberries all year, his last year of high school.
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Him and four or five other blueberry pickers end up making $4,000 each picking blueberries, which was a lot of money at the time cuz this guy's very old.
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And he realizes, oh wait, I can pay for college if I just pick blueberries every year.
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And so he's making a college was like 10 or 12 grand, he's making four grand.
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He realizes, oh I can do this.
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My parents otherwise weren't really going to be able to send me, but I could do this.
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And so he makes more money the next year and the next year picking blueberries.
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Finally when he graduates, he's got a couple options on the table.
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Uh you know, plan A was going to be to become a teacher and he was going to make I think like $3,800 or something like that.
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Be a teacher an extra 100 bucks if he coaches like the basketball team or something.
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And plan B was, let me go work on the family business, maybe over time buy out my dad on the sawmill.
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But he decides to go plan C.
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He's like, I think this blueberry thing, there's something to it.
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And he decides to start his own blueberry farm.
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So, he buys a little piece of land and he starts trying to harvest blueberries.
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And it goes pretty well the first couple of years. He's doing all right.
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But a couple years in, he there's a problem in the blueberry industry, which was that one year there was just huge supply glut.
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So, there was way too many blueberries, not enough buyers and prices crashed.
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And so he's like, [ __ ] You know, could have quit, but he's like, no, no, no, I'm just going to figure out what I should have done differently.
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He's like, I need basically like a backup plan, a sort of, you know, an insurance.
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And he wasn't doing financial insurance, but he's like, I need another way to make money in case this ever happens again.
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Never again will I let this happen to be where I'm at the mercy of the prices.
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And so he decides, I think I need to build a packaging and freezing plant for blueberries.
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Now, he's got no money, but he's like, I'm going to try to do this.
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So, he goes to the other blueberry farmers.
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He says, hey guys, we all just got whipped.
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Let's put some money in together and I'm going to build this plant and then you can use the plant, too.
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You can freeze and package your stuff, too, if it ever if we ever have oversupply. And so they do that.
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He He borrows money from the bank, he gets money from the other farmers, he starts to build this thing.
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Never No experience, by the way.
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No manufacturing, no factory experience, but he's like, I can do this.
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So, he builds this plant.
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And in the first year that they build the plant, he's ready for 2 million uh like of capacity of 2 million, but they only produce 100,000 cuz there's this crazy frost that kills all the blueberry production that year.
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And he's like, oh my god, I owe so much money and like we came in at like 5% of the like the estimated like freezing capacity. This is terrible.
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I have this empty factory now. I owe a lot of money.
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And basically it's like, dude, you got to just let this go, declare bankruptcy, move on with your life.
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Instead, he calls another guy who he knows, guy McCain and he's like, McCain, he's like, yo, what's something you need to make, but you don't want to make? Is there anything?
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Give me the the last thing you want to do, but uh you should do it.
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And the guy's like, all right, I got you. Onion rings. He's like, onion rings? Okay.
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He's like, I He's like, can you send me like a file like about So, he gets like a little book on how to make onion rings.
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And he's like, all right, say less.
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I'm never going to ask you another question.
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I will figure this out from here.
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And so he He's got an empty factory, but he turns it into like just for that one season or whatever, he makes onion rings for this guy.
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It just tides him over enough to continue.
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And so he carries on and he ends up building something called Oxford Frozen Foods, which today controls about 40 to 50% of the global supply of blueberries.
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It's like 70 million pounds of blueberries they're making every year.
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Do they still have onion rings on blueberries and onion rings and mozzarella sticks on their website? >> Yeah. You never forget.
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You never forget who got you there.
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And so he builds this absolute juggernaut over time and they become bigger and bigger and bigger.
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His brother invents this like blueberry picker that can do the work of 35 like humans doing this.
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And he's like, oh, amazing.
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And then what he does is he actually like gives it out basically like freely shares it with other blueberry farms, too.
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He's like He's like, what's good for one is good for all, here we go.
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And so he wants the entire blueberry industry to grow because he's like, the more the blueberry industry grows, the better we all do.
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I don't want to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond, I want the pond to get bigger.
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And we're competing with all the other fruits out there.
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So, if we can up our production and we can have more blueberries, we can build more innovative products, it's going to be good for everybody.
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And so he's got this very interesting business philosophy.
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He ends up then going in to a new business.
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So, it's many years later.
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Uh actually I actually I think he kind of did this around the same time.
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I shouldn't say many years later.
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I I don't know the exact date on this, but it wasn't like once he was already like huge.
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It was like somewhere somewhere around the same time.
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Um TV was picking up and cable cable TV was picking up.
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And this guy's from Nova Scotia, population 9,000.
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And so they held a like an auction.
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They were like, hey, all right, who wants to buy the TV cable TV rights for Nova Scotia? Nobody shows up. He's the only guy there.
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And so he picks up the cable TV rights for that area.
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And he's like, all right, I don't even know what to do with this.
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Like I guess I'll put like some old recorded programming on here.
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There's like no programming, basically.
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But he's like, whatever, let's do this.
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And so he's in that business and he's losing money the first couple years.
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And his dad's like, bro, you got to figure this out.
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Like this you can't just keep bleeding money over here.
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And so he cuts his costs, he tries to figure this out.
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He He finally gets it to like kind of a like a break even point or whatever.
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He ends up over the next, you know, couple of decades building the largest private telecom company in the country.
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And he owns cable TV networks, you know, everywhere.
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He does a bunch of acquisitions, he takes out a bunch of debt and he ends up buying up others and he goes down He goes like sort of down the stack.
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So, whereas most TV companies want to do the sexy fun stuff, they get into original programming and content and they're like, content is king.
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He's like, yeah, no, yeah, you know what's king? Fiber.
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Like I'm going to go own the underlying infrastructure for for cable TV and he ends up building this juggernaut.
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And so this guy ends up now he's like, whatever.
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Uh like, you know, much older now, in his 80s or something like that.
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And he's worth a billion dollars.
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He built the largest farm fruit farm basically in in the world and he's built the largest largest private telecom company in in the country.
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Isn't this kind of amazing? >> This is amazing.
7:55
I've I'm as you're telling me this, I'm I'm noticing a the amongst this era of people.
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Was this Was he doing it right when cable was getting started? Yeah.
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Man, there's there's a trend.
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So, Ted Turner, who eventually went on to start CNN, he owned a billboard company, which he parlayed into a radio station and then eventually a cable news network, CNN cable news network.
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Uh do you know another guy named Jim Pattison?
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Have you heard of Jim Pattison? >> No, who's that?
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Dude, Google Jim Pattison. Another Canadian guy.
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Look at what he looks like.
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He's like a Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I've seen this guy before.
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He's like one of the richest guys in Canada, right?
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Yeah, he's like he's like one of these guys who is like he's like a Energizer Energizer Bunny.
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Like he like he is like a wind-up toy.
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Like he just can't stop like moving, but he I think his story was he at a young age opened up a car dealership and within 3 years he bought like a plastic manufacturer or something very like out of left field.
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And then another thing and then another thing.
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Now he owns a telecommunications business, but he also owns like Ripley's Believe It or Not.
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And I think that like the Pattison Group, which he owns the whole thing, I think has 100,000 employees or something insane like that.
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And then another one is his name's John Cat His last name is crazy. I'm going to butcher it. Cat Catsman Titus? Yes, is that it? He's got a condition. Cat Catsman Titus? Do you know him? No.
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So, he started a grocery store.
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I think it was called Apple Foods.
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Dude, let me just tell you this.
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Any guy who looks like this, if I just showed you this photo and I said, rich or poor?
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Yeah, you already know everything about him just by looking at him. One photo.
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Yeah, like when he This guy when he gives you a handshake, he's pulling you in. Do you know what I mean?
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You can just look at him and you know what he's going to do.
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He's going to pull you in and he's going to smack you really hard on the back shoulder. Yeah.
9:47
Uh No chance this guy has one wife, by the way. Let me look this up. I bet you.
9:52
I'll bet you anything right now. Let's just Wikipedia?
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If you Google his kids, they're they're beautiful. First wife, divorce. Yeah. New wife, Margo.
10:01
Uh this guy started um Apple grocery store. It's like a 20 What?
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It's a 20-store chain in New York City. Like it's it's tiny.
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But then he bought a radio station.
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And then uh that's like how he got extra rich.
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And then I think he also bought a cable news network as well.
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And so my point being is there's a >> a refining company and then Did he owns a like a like an airline?
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Like he owns I think he owns like a small private airline. They he owns everything.
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There's this type of entrepreneur where they're kind of cowboys where they start in one thing and they get into media eventually.
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And a lot of it happened in the '80s, the late '70s and the early '80s when cable was getting popular.
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Uh and it was sort of like uh the first version of uh of a of a SaaS business.
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You know, it was um uh recurring revenue, huge TAM, uh kind of weird and not people weren't weren't sure what what to do.
10:56
And I believe that a lot of the cable new news networks they were regulated by uh the FCC and you had a certain satellite.
11:03
Like you'd only own X amount of satellites.
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Like there was some type of like limiting blocker where only a certain amount of cable companies could even exist.
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And so if you were able to like get in on that, it was almost a near monopoly.
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Ted Turner came along and he was one of the first guys that were like uh petitioned Congress and was like, "This is nonsense.
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We need more competition."
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And that's when CNN came about.
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But this whole era >> I like how sometimes when we explain these things it's kind of like when I explain stuff to my kids.
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Like they're like, "How does um like how does the picture come on the TV?
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Like where is this coming from?"
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And I'm like, "Oh, um satellites."
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And they and they're like, "But how does it get from a satellite to our TV?" I'm like, It shoots it.
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It's like it's a video it's shooting Gabby Dollhouse at our at the tower, I think.
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I think that's what the cables are for.
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Or maybe that's electricity.
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I'm not sure exactly what's going on.
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>> It doesn't matter though.
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Just Yeah, but you're like the there's only so many satellite you had to buy these letters, but they only had so many letters.
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I want to buy the letters, okay?
12:01
I do know there's a limited supply. That is true.
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Like there's some spectrum available.
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There's like a yeah, we know a lot about spectrums.
12:09
There was I do I do know there was a famous like like hearing where Ted Turner like made this passionate speech to like politicians to convince them that they have to change the rules to allow small upstarts to to get a satellite.
12:22
Uh but anyway, that's cool.
12:24
I like this blueberry guy. All right.
12:26
So a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and 3 years of experience to start a business. Nonsense.
12:33
If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely not true.
12:36
My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like 17 or 18 million dollars in revenue.
12:40
I started it with like $300.
12:43
My current company, Hampton, does over 10 million in revenue, started it with actually no money, maybe $29 or something like that. Nothing.
12:52
And so you don't actually need investors to start a company.
12:55
You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work.
13:02
And so my old company, The Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under $1,000.
13:07
These are models that if you do it correctly, it can make money this week.
13:11
You can get it right now.
13:13
You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now back to the show.
13:20
Let me give you some of his uh his little business-isms, his philosophies. Okay.
13:24
So And this is again some of this is from from from Shane Parrish's stuff.
13:28
Dude, I can just tell this guy is he Canadians are in Midwestern people where I'm from.
13:32
They're the same they're the same people, aren't they?
13:33
Yeah, it's a it's a species in its own.
13:35
So here's a great line by him. I have no reverse gear.
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I just thought this is an amazing line which is like he's like, "Yeah, you know, when things got hard and the blueberry crop died and then the factory is empty.
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Like I just didn't consider going backwards.
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I did not consider like it was just not a gear I have to either stop or reverse course.
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Like I just decided I have to find a way through.
14:00
And the onion rings were the way through."
14:02
Um another thing that I thought was interesting which was kind of counter to conventional advice.
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So you know, most people who are in uh the business the game of business, Buffett and all the real estate guys, the famous phrase they all say is, "You make your money on the buy.
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You don't make your money when you sell.
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If you buy it right, then you're going to make money."
14:22
Dude, I read that line like after I bought three real estate projects that I totally lost money on. I was like, "Shit." I I'm being serious.
14:32
Like I I >> It's not like the fine print, by the way.
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This is this is like the first thing you learn.
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Like I was like reading a Warren Buffett book and I like read that quote and I remember thinking I'm like, "That was literally the exact opposite of what I thought it was." >> the John Bragg.
14:45
So here's John Bragg's philosophy. Intentionally overpay. Okay. I'm in.
14:53
So he goes he goes, "Early on I intentionally overpaid for acquisitions. And word spread fast.
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If you want to sell, sell to John Bragg.
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You'll get a fair price, a quick close, no games." Which I love that.
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Like if I'm I'm going to put that on my on our like little mini private equity shop website.
15:08
I feel like that that that advice typically isn't right though. Well, typically not.
15:15
So here's the the caveats.
15:17
Here's the caveats of you know, they say like you know, the amateurs learn the rules or the amateurs don't know the rules, professionals know the rules and then masters know when to break the rules or whatever that thing is.
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This is kind of when to break it.
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So he goes, "I will overpay as long as it's something that's only available once.
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Because when opportunities are scarce, you need to pay what it takes.
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I know many people who tried to nickel and dime and then spent the rest of their life regretting not getting that key asset."
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So I think in the in the in the realm of buying the TV rights when there's only going they're only going to be up once and whoever gets it is going to own it.
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Um those are that's like a time to overpay.
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Um or if it's a key asset that locks down, you know, a certain competitive advantage, don't quibble on price.
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In fact, come in over so that you make sure you secure that asset and you develop a reputation.
16:04
He he said something like you can't buy a reputation.
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I was like, "I think that actually what you're saying is you can buy a reputation."
16:08
It's like, "Oh, but here's the reputation. I will overpay." Right?
16:12
Like it's like SoftBank in the venture game right now.
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It's like, "Oh, you want a bunch of money and at a huge crazy valuation?
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You go to SoftBank first." Right?
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And there's actually like some merit to that strategy when they you have these like you know, this this if if you can get the things that have huge upside.
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So was he like an M&A guy?
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Like or or was he >> It was a a lot of building the empire through M&A. And what was he buying?
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Other cable companies or other farms? Both.
16:37
Here's another banger of a line.
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So he has 40 to 50% of the global supply.
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And about half of that is like stuff that he owns and operates his farms and half his farms he's buying or owns like a you know, big stake in.
16:51
And he's he goes Here's the exact line.
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He goes, "We don't want to have 100% of the interest industry.
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That that wouldn't be good politics."
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Dude, that's like >> having the choice to have 100% market share and they're like, "Uh that's that's not polite."
17:06
What what's What a baller. All right.
17:08
Here's uh here's some Sam porn for you.
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So "Focus is absolutely critical.
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Probably the biggest single principle you can have in business.
17:17
Here's the big mistake people make.
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They make their first million and they think now I can succeed in any business, even ones I know nothing about. Been there. Sam buying the ranch.
17:27
Um and then he goes >> And then he goes I just wanted to he goes, "I wanted to just stick to my knitting.
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Figure out what I could do well and then just do more of it.
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Um you know, everybody else who came into this industry wanted to make a buck.
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I was this young guy who said, "I'm here to play this game for a long, long time." This guy's awesome.
17:44
This guy's awesome, right? I think he's my uncle.
17:47
>> And then he goes here's a couple other great great quotes.
17:51
"The guy who asked the question to me looks better than the guy who knows the answers." I like that. Done.
17:56
Did you get all this from Shane's podcast with him?
18:00
Uh Shane's and then there's like a couple other people that have written about him, but a lot of this is from Shane's podcast.
18:04
Uh which I didn't even get to watch cuz I I was doing the like I discovered this guy this morning.
18:07
It was like on my list of like things to check out.
18:10
And as soon as I checked it out I was like, "Oh man, this is amazing.
18:13
I got to I got to go watch this later."
18:14
So I have I have actually only like skimmed the transcript and stuff for this.
18:18
Um so I might be getting some of the details wrong. A couple other things.
18:20
He's one of these like Buffett types where it's like he's a billionaire.
18:24
But the vast majority of wealth came like after the age of 70.
18:26
So it's like you know, just same same way for Buffett where they just they keep compounding.
18:31
Um he had some other things I thought were pretty interesting.
18:34
So I would have thought he'd be richer.
18:35
If you own all half the blueberries in the world, wouldn't you be richer than 1. 5 billion? Yeah. Punk.
18:47
Weak [ __ ] He better be a huge like philanthropist and have given it a lot away.
18:54
Uh I definitely would have thought he'd be richer, right? I mean, I guess. I don't know.
19:00
I'm not going to I'm not going to knock him. Um all right.
19:02
So he believes in Buffett a lot. He loves Buffett.
19:04
And so he Buffett has this great quote which is, "I'm a better investor because I'm a businessman and I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor." Yeah.
19:12
So at age 70, he was worth, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.
19:16
So he goes to each of the executives at his companies and he says, "Today you're just businessmen. You're not investors."
19:23
He gives them $10 million each.
19:23
Not as a bonus, but as an investment portfolio that they get to run.
19:29
And he said, "I want them to see how strong companies operate and how weak ones fail.
19:32
There was no penalty for losing the money and no bonus for the gains. It was pure education."
19:39
Isn't that like pretty wild to do?
19:39
So he gave uh how many managers did he have? I don't know. Six teams. So 60 million bucks. He gave them what?
19:48
Like a stock portfolio or or he gave them $10 million and told him to million >> go invest go buy businesses.
19:55
Oh, within the the their portfolio. Sure. Wow, okay. That's badass. That's crazy.
20:02
>> and this was at age 70 and then he's like, "Most people stop learning once once they become successful, but the outliers never stop being students." Love that. Uh resonated with me.
20:09
All right, what else resonated with me?
20:11
Let me give you one more.
20:14
>> the fact that like I just Googled the Googled the Shane podcast.
20:16
Shane went to his office, uh which is really cool.
20:18
And he's 84 years old doing a podcast.
20:20
Like that's that's amazing that he's with it and he's sharp and he's had this pod.
20:29
Dude, when I'm 84, I'm going to be in the metaverse.
20:32
I'm going to be so just like plugged into what everybody's doing in the future. I hope. All right.
20:38
You want to do one or you want me to go?
20:41
Have you ever read about United Fruit?
20:42
If we're going to talk about fruits, have you ever read about United Fruit?
20:44
>> United Fruit, is that the banana king guy?
20:46
>> Man, that's a great book.
20:46
I'm in the middle of reading it and it's the story of United Fruit, which is basically centered around bananas.
20:52
So like You want to do the quick story?
20:55
I think we've talked about it before, but it's it's on theme. It's on trend.
20:57
In the late 1800s, I think bananas were discovered I think in Nicaragua or somewhere in Central America and they brought them to America and Americans were like, "Yeah, we we want every banana we can get our hands on. We love it."
21:11
Uh it even got to the point where like I think in the 1920s when immigrants would land at Ellis Island, we gave them a banana and that was like, "You're here now.
21:18
This is Amer this American thing."
21:20
And it's sort of American because >> get to Hawaii and they give you the lei and like a fruit basket. >> a banana.
21:27
And this the banana company United Fruit, it became so big that it was basically a monopoly and they did the same thing where they tried to hide that they weren't monopoly for years and years and years.
21:35
And Sam the Banana Man, I think his name is Samuel Zemurray.
21:37
He was I think a Ukrainian immigrant and he started out like with like a fruit cart, like walking the streets.
21:44
And his whole thing was he would sell ripes.
21:46
And so the way it worked is a banana train would start in one part of the country, I believe Louisiana, and it would slowly make its way up over seven or eight days to the northern part of America and along the way it would drop off that bananas at different markets.
22:00
And his whole stick was uh he was going to sell ripes, meaning bananas that were already becoming a little bit brown that they previously thought were uh throwaway bananas.
22:09
And he was like, "Oh, I'll buy them for a fraction of the price and I'll just be really fast at getting them to where they need to go."
22:16
And he eventually becomes so big that by the time he's in his 60s, he he takes over United Fruit and it's a big Well, he he starts with $150.
22:24
And by the time he's 21, he's got $100,000.
22:28
And this is like >> way back in the day, right?
22:29
So this is like a lot that's a lot of money. And he keeps on going.
22:31
And it gets to be so >> and so and that's you're saying he's basically he starts as just like a dude on the dock or whatever, like a dude on the side of the road taking their discarded trash and going and hustling and selling it.
22:44
And by the time he reaches his peak, he buys the he buys the whole company where he was initially just like taking their discarded trash.
22:53
And the book is called The Fish That Ate the Whale because he was the fish and he eventually ate the whale.
22:57
But it gets even crazier.
22:59
So Samuel Zemurray, he has a lot of admirable qualities.
23:01
You know, he's this like hardworking immigrant.
23:04
He's pretty quiet and he's like a stoic guy.
23:08
Uh but he's kind of a warlord because because at one point Nicaragua like they have like some type of meltdown and a new president or dictator comes in charge and they won't sell them bananas. And so he funds a coup.
23:22
So he basically gets like a small unit of like 10 or 20 people to like help this other guy assassinate the current leader and take over.
23:31
And that leader was like, "All right, thanks for getting our back.
23:35
Now you can have some more bananas."
23:37
And so that's kind of like the story of Sam Samuel Zemurray. It's pretty badass.
23:41
Got that killer instinct. Let's go.
23:45
Um Yeah, that's this is is pretty wild, right?
23:48
Like imagine a story like that today. Is there such a thing?
23:54
Uh I can't think of I mean what Elon does in rockets is like pretty like you're you're kind of like dominating another planet like potentially.
24:03
I mean that's like pretty crazy.
24:05
>> like the Republican Party this year. What?
24:08
Is that what you know, like going to the point of like actual like funding a militia that is I guess like Donald Trump is doing this like where he's like, "For shits and giggles, I'm going to like play a joke and run for president."
24:19
And it just kind of starts to work.
24:22
Uh but yeah, I mean it's a pretty crazy story.
24:26
Um yeah, so it's been great.
24:28
So I did something this weekend and I thought about you and I've been holding this in me like waiting to like talk to you about this, but >> Like a like a man in Lent or or November. Holding it in. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. If you know, you know.
24:46
So I saw a Broadway play for the first time ever this weekend. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Uh it's called Oh Mary.
24:53
It's basically about Mary Todd, who was Lincoln's wife.
24:56
And it's just like a comedy. It's it was fantastic.
25:01
Never been to a never really been to a play, honestly, my whole life.
25:02
Because you judged it or just happened to not go. What what's the deal? Yeah, I don't know.
25:08
Like, you know, it just wasn't on the list of things to do.
25:09
It just didn't it just didn't it didn't make its way into my life and I finally went.
25:12
The first thing is I thought of you because you had made an offhanded comment a while ago that you cared about like writing a writing a show.
25:21
Yeah, I just thought it would be cool.
25:21
I went and saw one and I was like, "Oh, that would be kind of a fun fun thing to work on." Yeah.
25:26
>> had the same thing I did, which is like it was like a new art form that you hadn't previously experienced and then you go to it and you're like, "I understand the appeal now." Is is that right? Yeah, yeah.
25:35
I had gone to a bunch when I was a kid and so I think I liked it from that like I was a theater kid when I grew up. So I I liked it.
25:41
Now, how's it relate to this podcast?
25:43
Well, for one, if you Google Oh Mary revenue, you can see there's a website called broadwayworld.
25:51
com where they estimate um the the revenue of each show.
25:55
I guess they look at like if they're selling out and the average ticket price online.
26:01
And this thing Oh Mary, I think it's been live for June of '24 it came out and it's been making a million dollars a week.
26:08
So it's doing quite well and it started off with about $4 million in funding to to get going.
26:17
And it all reminded me of this podcast that we did about 2 and 1/2 years ago.
26:21
You you didn't make it, but we had this guy named Michael Harris.
26:23
Did you ever look into who Michael Harris was?
26:25
He's what was it Death Row?
26:27
What what which which record label was he the the guy? >> Yes. So yeah.
26:31
So the short of it is some people call him Harry-O cuz his name is Michael Michael Harris.
26:36
They call him Harry-O like Harry OG gangster.
26:37
So Harry was famous because in his early 20s, he was basically a drug kingpin and he made a lot of money selling cocaine.
26:45
And at one point in the podcast with him, I said, "Yeah, you know," and I was trying to be nice.
26:52
I was like, "You know, instead of saying you were a drug dealer," I said, "I read an article saying that the article said that you were selling $1 million Yeah, the article said you were selling $1 million a day in cocaine."
27:03
And he goes, "I think that article said $2 million a day."
27:10
He's like, "I told that journalist it was two." I was like, "Yes, sir."
27:15
And eventually at the age of like 32, I think, he gets sentenced to life in prison, one for attempted murder, one for drug conspiracy, which basically is like the RICO kingpin law.
27:24
And he had a life sentence.
27:26
And recently, I think like 10 years ago, Trump commuted his sentence and that's how he got out of prison.
27:32
And when he was 32 years old, he founded Death Row Records with Dr.
27:35
Dre and Suge Knight while he was serving a life sentence in San Quentin.
27:40
And that's like how Death Row got started and one of the reasons why it's called Death Row is because he was >> Wait, they co-founded it with him while he was in prison?
27:48
And what did they what did they want from like what was he able to offer them while he was in prison for life? Money. Money.
27:55
So his wife his his wife was on the outside and she somehow had funds to fund Death Row Records, you know. >> Right.
28:05
Now, how's this relate to Broadway?
28:07
Well, on the podcast that I did with him, he said something that I didn't pounce on because I wasn't I didn't know anything about it.
28:12
But he made this comment to me where when he was 29, I think, he was the first ever black producer of a Broadway musical or Broadway show.
28:26
And he kind of told the story, but basically somehow he got in cahoots, I know he was he was considered uh like well known for being like a drug guy and >> you said cahoots to him.
28:42
Ryan, probably said okay okay.
28:42
I know you in the podcast.
28:43
What what button ends this podcast? I was like, "Holy moly." Harry-O, you dog. Holy moly, Harry.
29:02
So somehow he got in the loop of this.
29:05
But he funded Denzel Washington in early Denzel Washington, his first ever play. Damn.
29:11
Michael Harris, Harry-O, was the fund he was the investor that funded this show with a million dollars.
29:16
I think this was in '90 three or '92 when Denzel he was just getting going.
29:21
And he starts telling this story and while while I was at this play, I was like, "Holy crap.
29:29
This guy got his way into being the first ever producer of Broadway."
29:34
Like while I was there, I'm like, "Oh my god.
29:35
Like he was so much cooler than I even realized."
29:38
Dude, if I invested in Denzel before he became Denzel, that's like, you know, you know how Jason Calacanis is like always saying he's the fourth investor in Uber?
29:49
I would never shut up about it.
29:51
Google Michael Harris Denzel Washington.
29:55
You'll see a photo of them together and Michael Harris looks like a like a well-to-do guy. He's wearing a suit.
30:01
Turns out he was only I think 29 or 28 in these photos.
30:04
And he was a drug kingpin. Kind of amazing, right?
30:06
Yeah, that's that's incredible.
30:09
When he was 26 26 or something. >> Was he 26?
30:12
I think he was he was pretty young.
30:14
Very young and like allegedly had made something like a hundred million dollars selling drugs. Pretty crazy.
30:18
And when I was like sitting there in this play, I was like obviously what what do you and I do when we do everything?
30:24
We go to the play and you type in like oh Mary revenue on Google and I started seeing the numbers and I'm like >> the play's going on in front of you.
30:34
You're turned around counting how many seats are in the upper bleachers and they're like are you are you watching the show? What are you doing here?
30:40
And this is how I remembered Michael Harris saying that where it all like clicked together where I was like oh my god.
30:46
Do you know how much revenue these shows generate?
30:49
I'm looking at it's a it's astounding. It's astounding.
30:52
The number one This I'm just going to give you the top top five.
30:55
Top five highest grossing Broadway musicals of all time.
31:00
You have number one Lion King grossed over two billion in just just the ticket sales. Wicked 1.
31:06
7 billion Phantom of the Opera 1. 3.
31:09
Hamilton which is newer already crossed a billion. Insane, right?
31:14
>> course our guys from South Park. Are they number one? They're number five.
31:19
Book of Mormon number five 850 million dollars on their side hustle. That could be us, dude. Could be us.
31:26
Dude Just need to be talented and hard working.
31:29
That's all we're missing. They are so talented.
31:33
When I was at the show, I was like this it's just they're oozing with talent.
31:37
One of the guys um Abe Lincoln the character was played by what's the guy from Silicon Valley Kumail? Is is that his name? Oh, he's in the play?
31:45
Yeah, he's in the play and it's like it was like famous actors and actresses were like in the plays.
31:48
He's like a jacked Indian Abe Lincoln?
31:49
Like what what do you mean what do you mean he played Abe Lincoln?
31:52
It sounds crazy and honestly it is crazy.
31:54
The guy who played Mary Todd was a was a guy.
31:59
So like it's all types of crazy.
32:01
Yeah, there's a it's a whole thing.
32:04
But I just had to like nerd out with you about this.
32:07
So I looked into this pretty hardcore.
32:08
So it's definitely a like outlier hits business just like most businesses.
32:14
>> Yeah, it's angel investing because uh and then I was looking at the venues.
32:16
I was like should I own the best venue in San Francisco?
32:20
Like can I go buy the San Francisco like you know I forgot what it's called like the the the theater or the opera house whatever.
32:26
There's like a bunch of there's like three or four different um theaters for this.
32:30
And I was looking at them because the theaters make money either way cuz the shows have to pay rent.
32:33
They got to be like hey we want to do 60 days on stage.
32:37
Like great, we'll take your money, right?
32:38
Whether that show becomes a hit or not, they paid the money up front.
32:40
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
32:44
Then I was looking at the shows.
32:44
Then I was looking at how much it cost to produce the shows cuz I just seen the one about Lehman Brothers which I recommend by the way.
32:52
It's like a it's too long first of all. It's way too long.
32:54
It's like three Dude, the one that I went to, we only went to it cuz it was 90 minutes.
32:57
I can't sit there for more than 90 minutes. Yeah, less is more guys.
33:01
Less is more here in the theater.
33:03
But but it was great and it was it was business entertainment which is what I considered to be my genre and I was like damn if they could take I wasn't even interested in learning about the Lehman Brothers.
33:13
If they took an uninteresting subject to me, but they made it great and I remember the story because of it. This is cool.
33:20
This is a really cool format.
33:21
And so yeah, I'm definitely definitely interested in that.
33:23
If somebody actually knows how to do these things, I would love to to talk to you. Email me.
33:26
Maybe we can make make something.
33:28
I have a story in mind, but We had Tim Ferriss on the pod and like the top comment on YouTube was like rich guys finally discover board games and like and like this one's going to be like >> attention to the rich guys part.
33:41
I was like yeah, hell yeah. Thank you.
33:43
Now this one's going to be like the bros discover plays.
33:46
Uh Like like Sam, they were singing in the middle of that.
33:51
They're talking one second then they're singing. It's incredible.
33:55
And it's all part of the story.
34:00
All right, I got one more uh cool business story for you.
34:02
So I'm watching a lot of sports lately.
34:05
I know it's like everything's kicking like football season just kicked off. Tennis was awesome.
34:12
Um by the way, did you see the have you been following do you follow tennis?
34:14
You follow the US A little bit.
34:16
Like I went last year and like I kind of watched a little bit on TV.
34:20
The the Russian gal, she's she's an athlete, man. She's a freak. What's her name? Sabalenka, I think.
34:27
She looks like a terminator.
34:30
So I follow I've I've gone in and out of tennis, right?
34:36
There's many years where I won't even pay attention and there's like oh my god, Nadal he's amazing and I'm watching these guys in the A great tennis match is up there.
34:43
It's like very thrilling to watch a great tennis match.
34:45
It's like a great UFC fight.
34:48
Like there's some sports where um you know the the median game is like really good.
34:54
I'd put like you know NFL in that category.
34:56
But then there's some sports where just the peak is just like peak drama, right?
35:01
Boxing and UFC are like that where like the average thing's not that good, but the peak the biggest personalities when it's all on the line and it's just two guys going in there and they're trying to take each other's head off.
35:11
Like it's hard for a basketball game to match that. Okay.
35:13
So tennis tennis is kind of up there in that sense.
35:17
So there's the new the new wave of tennis players.
35:20
There's this guy Alcaraz and this guy Sinner.
35:24
And did the did did the men's final happen? It just happened, yeah.
35:26
And so so I really wanted Sinner to win cuz I just like went down the rabbit hole of this guy's YouTube highlights and he's unreal.
35:33
And and the other guy is also unreal, but he's he's unreal when it's in the sense of like um Do you know a guy who just like does all the right things?
35:43
So like he try he works out right.
35:45
Like he just does it he just like prepares really hard. He's very talented.
35:48
He's maximizing his potential.
35:52
He's not like there's not a lot of like flaws to like attach with there, you know?
35:56
There's not a lot of like it's like oh he's he work hard and do all the right things. Great. Yeah, that's fantastic.
36:00
Um In fact, they showed the warm-up right before cuz I think Trump showed up at the US Open.
36:05
So it was delayed like half an hour or an hour or something like that.
36:09
And so the guys were just in their locker room like supposed to be warming up.
36:12
And Alcaraz is like you know doing a side plank in midair with his trainer and like activating his core to get ready.
36:20
And the other guy was playing dodgeball with his trainer and like running around the gym like just throwing balls at each other.
36:25
Like >> Yeah, so I was like I was like I kind of like this other guy.
36:29
Um anyways, they go out there.
36:31
Sinner loses and he just keeps losing to Alcaraz.
36:33
He's the he's the he's ranked number one cuz he beats everybody else.
36:38
But Alcaraz has beat him I don't know four out of the five last times that they've faced each other.
36:41
And he's like I and so he had this great quote that I thought like forget tennis.
36:45
This is just like a great like mindset quote.
36:47
So they were talking about like you know hey, you know, must be tough.
36:51
You're at the top and then you you're ranked number one, but this guy seems to you know, you've had some tough matches.
36:58
This guy's got your number a little bit. And here's what he said.
37:00
He goes I was very predictable on the court today.
37:02
He changed up his game and the style of how he plays and now it's on me if I want to make changes or not.
37:08
I'm definitely going to work on this.
37:10
You know, for example, I didn't use a lot of drop shots.
37:12
I didn't do one serve and volley.
37:15
You know, you arrive at a point where you're going to play this guy.
37:16
I got to go out of my comfort zone.
37:18
So here's what I'm going to do.
37:20
I need to start playing more unpredictably.
37:21
I might even lose some matches, but I'm going to have to do it.
37:24
I'm going to have to make some changes.
37:26
I'm going to have to try to become more unpredictable as a player.
37:29
That's what I have to do to become better at tennis and at the end of the end of the day, that's my main goal.
37:34
And I really just love this mindset from the number one ranked guy who's beating everybody else.
37:39
And he's like, you know what?
37:39
I'm here, but the top of the mountain is still a little higher, but this path I'm on doesn't get me to the summit.
37:45
I got to go back down for a bit and I got to find a new trail.
37:49
And that is so hard to do in life.
37:52
It is so hard to go back to the bottom and reinvent yourself.
37:54
He's like I'm going to I'm going to learn how to play tennis, but I'm really learning how to play the game of life.
38:00
It's like one of those type of moments. Totally. Totally.
38:03
Like and and to be like I'm going to lose I'm going to probably lose some more matches because I'm going to have to learn this I'm going to have to experiment with this new style and that's going to suck, but I'm going to do it.
38:11
And like I whatever you're doing in life, that analogy probably holds true for you right now.
38:17
Whether it's you as a parent, it's you on the book that you're writing, it's you at your job, it's you in your business.
38:22
Like whatever it is, I guarantee you there's an element of like if I want to get to the next level, what I've been doing doesn't probably get me there and I need to like be willing when the time comes when the when I recognize the moment, I need to be willing to go back down the mountain for a little bit and then come back up a new way.
38:41
I have you ever heard of this guy named Meb Keflezighi?
38:44
If you Googled him, that's a hard name to Google. >> up names, I know.
38:47
Yeah, that's a that's a hard last name to Google.
38:49
But if you Google marathon Meb m e b, you might recognize this face. Marathon Meb? m e b. You see Meb?
38:59
I don't recognize this guy. He's 50?
39:01
Yeah, so I think in 2004, he was the gold medalist in the Olympics in the marathon for America, but he's an immigrant and so when he won, it was sort of one of these things where everyone got behind him cuz he's a nice guy and it was like the American dream type of energy and I think it got to the point where he uh like spoke at Obama's a a bunch of Obama events and and and whatever. He's he's a big deal. He's he's great.
39:27
His brother listens to MFM.
39:29
His brother Howie and he reached out to me when he heard that I liked running and I've been friendly with him for a couple years now.
39:34
And this past weekend was this thing in New York called the Fifth Avenue Mile.
39:39
And so they get all these guys these Olympian milers, and they get them to run 1 mile down Fifth Avenue, which is basically a huge street, and it's slightly >> it down or they just run on the sidewalk?
39:51
>> No, no, no, they shut it down. It's a big event. It's like a huge event.
39:52
And there's tens of thousands of people there.
39:56
And so I went with Howie, and I got to like be like his like sidekick.
39:58
So in Howie, who he runs a management company, who he originally Howie was managing his brother Meb.
40:06
Now he manages other runners cuz Meb was like, "Can you do Can you help me make more money?"
40:10
And he was like, "Yeah, fine, I'll do it."
40:11
And then eventually now he manages, I don't know, 40 runners or something.
40:15
And a lot of his athletes were running at this race.
40:19
And so I got to be his like assistant, basically.
40:21
And he like took me in like I got to meet all these cool people, whatever.
40:24
And these guys are flying, by the way.
40:26
I think the guy who won ran 3 minutes and 46 seconds for the mile, which is which is crazy.
40:30
And the guy who won >> mile time?
40:34
Dude, back in high school, a minute slower.
40:35
4 minutes and 47 seconds.
40:37
>> Okay, Ted Bundy, now what's your mile time now?
40:39
Not What is your mile time 18 years ago?
40:41
That was not my question. Uh 7 minutes.
40:43
Not good I mean 7 minutes.
40:45
Like very like recreationally like average.
40:47
So wait, did you run it or you just hung out with Howie at the race?
40:49
Uh hell no, I didn't run it. I was watching. I was watching.
40:51
I was just sitting on the sidelines watching.
40:53
And we got to watch these guys run, and they look like uh like gazelles. They look like animals. It's like crazy.
41:00
And I was asking him, I was like, "What separates so like cuz when I was watching the race, the winner and the guy who got third, they're really close.
41:08
Like it doesn't seem very far when you see them, but like it's like a second is only it's not that much, but it is a lot when you're running.
41:19
And I was like, "What separates Naguse, the guy who won?
41:20
What separates him from from the guy who got last?
41:23
Because they kind of look the same.
41:26
They're tall and they're skinny and they look like freaks. Like what's going on?"
41:28
And he was like, "It's mindset."
41:30
He was like, "Once you get to this level and you're already a 9 out of 10, what separates the guys that get first versus last in these big races is when they step on the lines, they're killers.
41:42
He go He wants to kill you.
41:44
And he acts like a nice guy, but when they when they step there, they think, 'I am here to win. I'm built to win.
41:50
I am not trying to finish second.
41:52
I'm trying to be the best, and I'm trying to win no matter what.'"
41:53
And I was like, "Well, your brother was like a happy-go-lucky guy.
41:57
Like he looks like really kind."
41:58
And he was like, "Yeah, he is.
42:00
But he would sit down for hours and envision winning the New York Marathon.
42:06
And then when he got to the starting line, you couldn't talk to him. He was an animal. He was out to win."
42:09
And I thought that was really fascinating, and I'm always finding it fascinating, particularly in sports, particularly in these individual sports, tennis, swimming, track and field, cycling.
42:19
I think we had Lance on, and like we talked to him a little about this.
42:22
What separates these the freaks of the freaks?
42:26
What makes you a freak among freaks?
42:28
And it appears as though it is not physical. It is absolutely mental. Yeah. Yeah. Uh that's pretty crazy.
42:35
Have you heard this phrase?
42:38
You probably heard it cuz you're like into running, but I I don't don't run. I don't do it.
42:42
It's not a It's like motorcycles.
42:46
I just don't get on that.
42:48
Um so one of the guys who was filming for us, he was talking about this he wants to film this documentary about this woman, and she's like this amazing long-distance runner.
42:59
I I don't know her name, you probably do.
43:00
But the point is she he was talking about this phrase called the pain cave.
43:04
Yeah, we go to the pain cave. You go to the pain cave. Yeah.
43:08
>> And I was like, "Look, not into running, but I'll just take that phrase out. That was a cool phrase."
43:12
He's like He's like, "So the pain cave describes like when you're in these like ultra long races, 100-mile race, or whatever, and it's like mile 60 or 70, you hit this just like extreme level of like physical, mental, spiritual exhaustion and pain, and you go to the pain cave."
43:31
And I'm like, "But what do you mean What does that mean?
43:34
You go to the pain cave."
43:36
He's like, "You go to the pain cave mentally, okay?
43:37
And you basically I mean you you probably describe it better than I can, but my understanding was you accept that there's going to be this stretch where you're going to be this extreme pain.
43:46
You go to the pain cave, you know you're there, you become comfortable You become not comfortable, but enough You you you become acclimated to the pain cave.
43:55
And you're able to stay there where others want to quit and other and you even want to quit. Others would quit.
44:00
And then you push through and you end up getting, you know, to the to the second to the you get your second wind, you get out of there, and you get get to the end.
44:06
Did I Did I butcher the pain cave or did I describe it right? No, no, no.
44:08
And a lot of athletes You've visited?
44:14
I've been on vacation a couple of times.
44:16
No, I I was training for an ultra before, and it was miserable, and I hated it, and I remember going out for a 3-hour run, and it just is it's it's horrible.
44:24
It's not a fun experience.
44:24
And like you get to a certain point, and what's it's crazy to do a sport or an activity where even if you are winning, you go through hell.
44:35
So we had Brendan Schaub on the on the pod, who is a former UFC fighter, and he said that one time he was fighting on a on a card, and the guy who was fighting above him, Cro Cop, who was the main guy, afterwards Brendan saw Cro Cop like on a stretcher, and Cro Cop had just won the championship.
44:54
But Cro Cop still had gotten hurt.
44:55
And he was sitting on the stretcher holding ice on his head or something like that. And he looked horrible.
45:01
Like he just got beat up really badly, even though he won.
45:02
And Cro Cop was like giving him a thumbs up, and Brendan was like, "These animals think that this is winning.
45:08
And that's why I'm not going to be the best.
45:10
It's because even when you win, you are beat down and broken, and they still are giving you a thumbs up of like, 'Yes, we did it.'"
45:18
And that's what separates the winners from the losers is the guys who like are willing to go through the pain cave.
45:23
Because in a lot of sports, I think it's so fascinating.
45:25
And I honestly I think this way about business or anything really in life that when you win and you get everything you wanted, you still have to go through hell.
45:34
And that's kind of fascinating and interesting to me.
45:38
It's like the the the mindset of of of these winners who can just eat so much [ __ ] And honestly, business is the same way.
45:46
It's not as physical, but it's still emotional where even if you think that you're on top of the world or things are going well, I don't know if you've experienced this where but where everyone on the outside thinks like, "Oh, you're the man. You must be killing it."
45:57
I'm like, "Dude, it's really, really hard, and it feels like it's going to fall apart all the time."
46:03
Yeah, I find that um these phrases like pain cave or whatever, there's some there's a lot of power in just having like a label to put on the thing so that when you're feeling it, you don't feel like this is this is bad thing that you don't panic, um and you don't feel like it's forever.
46:19
You realize it's like a temporary phenomenon.
46:20
And so I I know that one of the things that people brought up to me is that this analogy that's been very useful.
46:28
And it's like if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you know intellectually there's going to be these ups and downs.
46:34
If I told you that, nobody would be surprised at that idea.
46:37
Yeah, when it's happening, you're like, "Oh," you got that feeling in your stomach when you're going up and down a roller coaster, and it does not feel good, and you want it to stop, and you don't like it, and you think this is bad.
46:47
And then you're like, but the thing we talked about on the podcast is like, "You got in line for the roller coaster.
46:53
Like what What did you think was going to happen? You stood in line. You waited. You chose this first.
47:00
You knew this is the nature of roller coasters, and that there are no there are no ups without downs and there's no downs without ups.
47:04
Like you This is has to be it's a necessary condition of doing this activity.
47:08
So don't complain, and don't be surprised, and don't feel like woe is me, and don't victimize yourself, and don't think this is forever because it's not.
47:15
And so like that's been a very helpful metaphor for people is just remembering like you got in line for the roller coaster, baby.
47:22
Like you there was going to be ups and downs.
47:25
Don't be surprised when they come.
47:25
And then a tactical thing that's helped me is I have this Slack channel I've told people about.
47:30
It's called highs and lows.
47:31
And anytime there's an extreme high or an extreme low, I go immediately I put it in that channel.
47:38
And I put my exec team in there as well.
47:40
And the beautiful thing about it is when you go in there, you see something from like 4 to 6 months ago that was like an extreme low in the moment or an extreme high in the moment, and now it has like no effect.
47:50
You're like, "Ah, obviously we If it was a low, it's like obviously we survived. It was fine.
47:54
And if even if it was a high, it was like doesn't have that same pull.
47:57
And so it keeps you from in this moment going too high and too low cuz you could just scroll back and see all the other moments that in the heat of the moment you thought were such a you know, such an extreme, and now are like whatever.
48:12
You know, just random random things in the past.
48:15
How often are you adding stuff to that?
48:17
All right, so our last one was 4 months ago, and it was, "Oh, cool.
48:19
Trump just tariffed all of our goods 150%."
48:27
So like imagine a thing used to cost us $10.
48:29
Now we pay the $10, but then we pay an extra $15.
48:31
That same item cost us $25.
48:36
That's the full sales price of some items. You know what I mean? Like, "Oh, cool. We make no money now." "Oh, got it. Cool.
48:41
Business makes the money thing out of our control. Like got it."
48:46
The And then there was another one.
48:46
And then there's a high 2 months before that when, you know, this celebrity with 6 million followers is posting about our brand.
48:56
And it's like, "Oh, that's awesome."
48:56
But like now that I look at it, I'm like, "Who cares? I don't care.
48:58
Nothing Nothing My life didn't change."
49:00
For either one of those two things, my life didn't change.
49:03
We got through the We got through the low, and I already forgot about the high. You know, another one.
49:09
Rihanna's manager emailed us asking for product.
49:12
Like, you know, they she Rihanna wants our [ __ ] That's cool. That's exciting. Wait Wait, hold on.
49:16
Was Rihanna asking for free stuff? Yeah.
49:20
Yeah, they always ask for free stuff. Really? Yeah.
49:23
Rich people don't pay for things. That's insane to me.
49:27
You thought rich people buy things?
49:29
They request things, and you gladly give it to them.
49:32
Have you DM'd I think I've I've done it maybe twice.
49:34
Have you DM'd people asking for free stuff? Asking for free stuff?
49:40
Uh No, I've never DM'd anyone.
49:41
I think I've been like, "Yo, this is a great product.
49:45
If anybody wants to send me one, I'm happy to take it."
49:46
Like that's the I think that's the lowest I've stooped.
49:48
I don't think I maybe I have.
49:49
I don't I can't remember ever DMing asking for free stuff.
49:53
In fact, like we usually we go the other way, which is like if it's like a friend's product or somebody we know's product. >> buy it.
49:59
We want to be their like first customer and we want to like purchase it to like show cuz you know, like I don't feels good and seems like the right thing to do.
50:07
Another one, Christmas Eve.
50:09
On Christmas Eve this last year, the Mexican president blocked all imports.
50:14
So like, "Hey, that's cool."
50:14
Our warehouse is in Mexico and on Christmas Eve all imports are blocked with no notice and no there's no other thing you could do.
50:24
The dude I think you did the [ __ ] at the port.
50:27
Do you have a coup staging team?
50:32
And this is just in one business.
50:32
This is just in the e-com business.
50:34
This is not even like I have five other businesses.
50:37
So imagine like if this is probably there's a high or low every 2 months, 3 months maybe.
50:41
But now you multiply by six businesses, that means every single month you're getting hit with a high and a low in one of the businesses. I think it was um cool.
50:53
You You said something actually that was quite good, which is uh it feels nice to label certain emotions cuz it makes it feel better.
50:58
I went through a period it's sort of what's that that's we always reference that meme where like >> Midwit. Yeah.
51:04
This is like the opposite of that, which is like when I was really young and not very successful, I consumed tons of motivational stuff.
51:09
And then I started like doing some stuff and I'm like, "Oh, that's for weaklings." Yeah, all [ __ ] Yeah.
51:17
>> now I'm like, "No, I actually do like reading about like other success stories."
51:20
And I love me a good quote nowadays.
51:22
Yeah, like I I actually do love that stuff because it feels nice to like label something.
51:27
It's sort of like when you read a book and you're like, "Well, that was the best books."
51:32
They People say the same thing about them.
51:35
They go, "Everything they said was obvious."
51:36
But it felt nice for them to say it out loud for me to read it and to be told what to do and remind me of the right things to do and that has helped me all the time.
51:45
I That's like I pretty much read like lots of like or it's actually my YouTube page is like only motivational [ __ ] Here's the trick. So I've rebranded it.
51:56
Cuz liking motivation, that's a pretty low-class thing to do, okay?
51:57
That's That's you know very low status.
52:00
Low status [ __ ] Oh, oh, I need motivation. I'm so so weak.
52:05
I need It's like I need a blood transfusion.
52:09
It's basically what you're saying.
52:10
You don't need motivation.
52:11
You don't like motivation. You like wisdom. Oh my god.
52:14
High-class thing to like, right? There. I helped you out.
52:19
I listen to tons of wisdom.
52:19
I think it gets me fired up.
52:25
My favorite wisdom channel >> speaker.
52:28
Yeah, there's this YouTube channel called Motivation for you. Best the best wisdom. Yeah, exactly.
52:35
I'll give you another little label.
52:35
So I was reading this book uh another high-class thing to do.
52:39
I found this like old book out of print, had to like call a guy to get this book and it's like it's amazing.
52:45
It is such a such a thin book and it's it's really amazing.
52:48
But I'm not going to I'm not going to tell anybody but it's my secret gem.
52:50
And so in it though, he talks about It's a It's a book about um how to have better ideas.
52:56
So he's like this this is great advertising exec who's basically like he's like, "You know, and somebody asked me this and I laughed when they asked me the question and then I realized I didn't have a good answer for it."
53:08
He's like, "And then I started thinking about it.
53:09
I couldn't get this question out of my head."
53:10
And he's like, "I have now come to the realization that producing great ideas can be as reliable of a process as Ford producing Model Ts on the assembly line."
53:19
And here's how the assembly line works to produce great ideas.
53:22
And one of the things he says in the book, he goes This is just a great quote.
53:25
He goes, "The brain, much like the body, has a second wind."
53:28
And cuz he's talking about like there's going to be this point like pain cave.
53:31
There's a point in the process where you kind of fatigue out.
53:35
He's like just And you're just going to hang in there for like give it There's going to be another You have a little like 10 15% left?
53:40
You're just going to give yourself a chance for the brain to have a second wind much like the body.
53:45
And literally like the for the last 2 weeks as I've been working I've hit this point where I'm like ready to like stop the thing, go be distracted.
53:52
I'll go I want to open up Twitter or I want to go like go do go eat some food or do something.
53:56
And I just the brain had the brain has a second wind.
53:59
Let me just give it a second here.
54:01
And then I push through for like another 15 minutes and it's actually like very like very very productive.
54:05
This little this was one little simple idea.
54:06
Can I make a guess as to who wrote that?
54:09
And ignore this if it gives away too much.
54:12
It was by a copywriter if I had to guess. Is that right? It was by an ad man.
54:16
Yeah, so he he copyrights. It's crazy.
54:18
Copywriters like there's this weird underground world.
54:21
I don't know I don't know if you've ever have noticed this.
54:25
There's copywriters out there where they sort of have a weird mystical like wizardry about them.
54:31
And they end up learning about copywriting.
54:34
But in order copywriter, you have to understand how humans think.
54:38
And then if you could if you could be a master copywriter, you're basically a master at learning about what motivates human beings and thus you can teach all about life.
54:45
But I've come across all these guys that are like old school internet marketers but also people who were around even before the internet.
54:53
And they often have these weird auras around them that if you find a bunch of their old landing pages, they explain some of the things that you're talking about.
55:00
And you get on their web pages and you're like, "I have to give you my money."
55:04
And there's not even a buy now button.
55:06
I have to track you down.
55:07
But I've come across a bunch of these guys.
55:09
One of them is Bill Bonner, the guy who started Agora.
55:13
So Agora publishing is like the billion dollar a year um newsletter newsletter business that is quite shady.
55:18
But another one is Mark Ford.
55:21
Do you know who Mark Ford is? No, who's that?
55:23
So he has this book called Ready Fire Aim on business.
55:25
And he's pretty under the radar guy.
55:28
I think he's probably in his 70s at this point.
55:30
But he helped make Agora really popular. There's uh Eben Pagan.
55:34
Do you know who Eben Pagan is?
55:36
Yeah, Double Your Dating.
55:39
Yeah, Double Your from Eben Pagan was a guy who was one of the first internet marketers because he got going in the 90s when the internet was just getting going and he had a an ebook called Double Your Dating and he wrote it under a pseudonym called David DeAngelo.
55:50
And Eben Pagan is another guy where if you Google Eben Pagan and come across his courses or books on copywriting you get entranced.
55:58
And it sort of becomes like a moment where you're like, "I used to think this way. Then I read this.
56:02
Now my life has just changed."
56:04
Eben Pagan was one one of those guys.
56:06
A lot of old Russell Brunson stuff is like this.
56:08
Um but there's a copywriting world that like you come across these old guys or they're not old.
56:14
Russell Brunson is not old. These guys are age. No, yeah. I mean like underground.
56:18
I don't know how to explain it.
56:21
>> No, yeah, it's like almost like they ruled the world but they're not Today they're less uh relevant and on the forefront and up in in the center of attention as they were 15 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
56:34
There's a bunch of people like that.
56:35
Yeah, and what happens and a lot of people don't realize it is you can just copy exactly what they do and it still works and you don't have to invent anything.
56:43
So I'll give you an example.
56:44
There's this guy named Dan Kennedy.
56:45
We talked about Alex Hormozi.
56:48
And a lot of people say this to Alex as if it's an insult.
56:50
I don't think it's an insult at all.
56:51
But they'll say, "You just ripped off Dan Kennedy."
56:53
And so I started reading a bunch of It's not an insult at all.
56:56
It's totally okay to steal from the the greats.
56:58
But if you read a lot of Dan Kennedy's stuff, first of all, if you Google Dan Kennedy, you're going to see what he looks like and you're probably You You'd probably dismiss him.
57:06
You'd be like, "Oh, what does this person know about business?"
57:08
cuz he literally looks like a cowboy.
57:10
But you read their books and their advice is beautiful so long as you come with an open mind.
57:13
And it's incredibly effective.
57:16
But it's sort of like um we talked about books that where you say phrases like, "Oh, it's banned in prison cuz it's too powerful."
57:23
They all have catchphrases like that. I love copyright.
57:27
I think there's certain professions where it's almost like Darwinian, right?
57:31
So like the only way to survive as a copywriter.
57:33
Let's say that was your your goal.
57:35
I know copywriter then we'll kind of extend that to like an ad man, right?
57:38
Um like the Ogilvys of the world.
57:40
And the only way to survive is to have these breakthrough ideas and be super persuasive with the written word.
57:48
So it's like a an animal that was grew that was on an island and the animal had to develop this shell if it needed if it was going to survive.
57:56
That was the only way to survive in that climate.
57:57
And so if you want to get great at persuasion, you want to get great at the written word you could learn from a bunch of people.
58:05
You can go learn from an Elon Musk or Steve Jobs.
58:07
But those guys in order to do what they did, they grew up in a they they had to have other disciplines that they were great at.
58:14
And they could be good or maybe even really good at copywriting.
58:16
But there's people who that was the only way that they could make it.
58:21
And so those people like sharpen that.
58:23
And you see this with a bunch of different things.
58:24
So you see this with a lot of investors.
58:28
When we have them on the podcast, we're like wow, like I wanted to ask you about like stocks and like, you know, analysis.
58:34
But 95% of things you thought you think about and talk about is like mastering your own like your own psychology and disciplining yourself and like learning like impulse control and learning how to like be a little you know, to to think for yourself and be comfortable in your own skin.
58:51
And it's like, "Yeah, that's actually what that's the thing it was required in order to be great in the investment world.
58:56
Combination of like independent thinking and then like self-control and playing the long game and patience, right?
59:02
And then you talk to people who are, you know, maybe comedians.
59:06
And comedians are like, "Wow, you're actually like kind of a truth-teller."
59:09
It's like, "Well, yeah, like that's kind of what comedy is."
59:14
It's like basically like seeing things for what it is that nobody's saying out loud and then we say it out loud and then everybody laughs cuz everybody knew it.
59:20
Um and so you realize like, "Oh, these comedians are actually like pretty wise and pretty like spot-on at spotting like the truth, the underlying truth inside."
59:28
He's like, "Yeah, cuz if they don't do that, they don't make anyone laugh."
59:30
And they get booed off the stage and it's horrible.
59:32
And so the ones who survive are the ones who figure out how to do that one thing at a world-class level.
59:37
And so you could study different disciplines where like the Darwinian, you know, pressure and the natural selection forced them to become like A++ at a certain thing.
59:47
Who uh who who do you think falls in that category where you learn about them and and they've done the same thing to you?
59:52
Where you went to them for like, let's say, writing uh and they changed your life. Seinfeld.
59:58
Seinfeld is the easiest example.
1:00:00
So I I wanted this year I was like, "Oh, like, could you like make yourself funnier?"
1:00:05
I just sort of assumed that like, you know, growing up, it's like you either are funny or you're not.
1:00:10
And in my house, like my sister's really funny.
1:00:11
And so it was always like, "She's the funny one, and she's the great storyteller, and I was like the nice kid."
1:00:16
And so I always had this probably like from a young age desire to be more like her.
1:00:20
And like today it's so funny, people would be like from the podcast they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, you're a great storyteller."
1:00:25
I'm like, "You haven't seen my sister.
1:00:26
My sister's amazing at this. I'm just okay."
1:00:27
But I Over time, as I've grown up, I've realized like a lot of these things that seem like you either have it or you don't, creativity, humor, storytelling, like no, these are just skills you can develop.
1:00:39
Like you if you just try, you can get way better at it. And so humor was one.
1:00:43
This this year I went into and I was like, "All right, let me just take 2 weeks and be like, let me just learn what there is to learn.
1:00:48
Let me just see if I can make myself funnier."
1:00:49
So I went and studied Seinfeld.
1:00:51
So I went for the jokes and then I came out being like, "This man is wise and has some of like the best sort of like he has this incredible creative process.
1:00:59
Like the way he works has changed the way I work like completely, like night and day difference." In what way?
1:01:06
So Seinfeld does this thing in the morning.
1:01:08
You you know about this, but like uh maybe other people don't.
1:01:11
Seinfeld, for the last 45 years, has a morning routine.
1:01:13
Seinfeld's morning routine is very simple.
1:01:16
He's like, "If you want to be a comedian and you want to write you want to you know tell great jokes, you've got to write jokes every day."
1:01:22
So he wakes up in the morning, he sits down with a yellow legal pad, a pen, and a coffee, and he has 2 hours where before these pre-input pre-everything. Nobody No meetings. Nobody can call him.
1:01:34
He doesn't read the newspaper.
1:01:36
He doesn't check social media.
1:01:37
Doesn't do anything else.
1:01:39
He's like, "I'm going to do 2 hours of this, and then I can do whatever I want for the rest of the day."
1:01:43
And he sits down and he does his 2-hour morning block.
1:01:44
It's 2-hour morning routine.
1:01:45
He's done that every day for 45 years to the point where there's a photo where he took the pages from his yellow legal pads over the 40 years, and he laid it out on the street in I think in New York. No way. You haven't seen this? No.
1:01:57
I'm going to Google that.
1:01:59
>> becomes the yellow brick road. This is awesome. Are you kidding me? This is so cool.
1:02:04
>> So So he To promote his book, so he he published a book basically of like all of his like scrap jokes that he didn't put into his stand-up.
1:02:09
Um it's called Is Is this any Is this anything?
1:02:11
I think it's the name of the book.
1:02:13
But to promote it, he did this yellow brick road of all his yellow pages.
1:02:15
And you know, like for example, you know, how did I work before this, right?
1:02:19
I'd wake up, I'd check Slack, I'd check my email, I'd then start to think about what I'm going to do, but then I got kind of hungry, then I go do this, then oh, I had this meeting scheduled at 9:00, so I'm going to get to my main thing at 11:00.
1:02:28
And just Seinfeld's like keeping it sacred of like, "Yo, what's your main thing?
1:02:33
You spend two If you're going to be creative, you're going to spend 2 hours in the morning creating. That's it."
1:02:37
Um Tim uh Urban from Wait But Why told me the same thing.
1:02:40
He goes, if he goes, "All I have to do in life is wake up and spend the first 2 hours writing.
1:02:46
And if I do that, life is amazing.
1:02:46
And if I don't do that, my life sucks.
1:02:48
He's like, "And by the way, it's only 2 hours. It's not 8 hours. It's not 10 hours.
1:02:52
I don't have to keep grinding all day.
1:02:54
2 hours is more than enough if I actually do it."
1:02:55
So Seinfeld does that and he talks about writer's block where they're like, "But Jerry, like what do you do on days where you don't know what to write?"
1:03:01
He's like, "Uh like what do you do with writer's block?"
1:03:03
He goes, "Oh, you know, it's funny you ask cuz there is no writer's block."
1:03:08
And they're like, "What do you mean, Jerry?
1:03:08
Like of course like we've all felt it. There's writer's block." He goes, "No, no, no. There's lazy. There's afraid.
1:03:16
There's um having too high of expectations, but there's no writer's block. Let's be clear."
1:03:18
And he's like, "Here's the cure to writer's block. You ready?
1:03:21
Accept your own mediocrity.
1:03:21
Don't sit down and think, 'Today I'm going to make this great thing.
1:03:26
It's going to be so amazing.
1:03:27
Um the words are going to flow.
1:03:29
I'm going to make this funny joke.'
1:03:30
He goes, "That's what stops you.
1:03:32
What you need to do is almost an anti-affirmation.
1:03:33
You need to sit down and say, 'Today I'm going to sit down.
1:03:36
It's going to be hard to write.
1:03:36
The thing I'm going to come up with is going to pretty much suck.
1:03:38
I'm going to look at it and I'm going to hate it.
1:03:40
I'm going to want to crumble it up and throw it in the trash.
1:03:43
It's going to be that bad. But you know what?
1:03:44
I'm going to put it down on paper anyways, because every once in a while there'll be a little nugget of something good.
1:03:49
And then after I find a little nugget of something good, I might be able to polish it with a ton of work later and make it great."
1:03:56
And he's like this sort of like anti-affirmation, right?
1:03:57
So like I have taken that and completely stolen that as my daily process from this guy I went to to learn about like how to make people laugh, and I'm like, "I learned how to work, how to live."
1:04:07
Like he talks about he does transcendental meditation.
1:04:09
They're like, "Ooh, is that that's really great. You love meditation?"
1:04:12
He goes, "No, I just want to write great jokes."
1:04:13
He's like, "But you have to whip the mind.
1:04:15
You have to whip the body."
1:04:17
He's like, "So why do I work out? To be a better comedian. Why do I meditate?
1:04:20
To recharge my battery so I can be a better comedian."
1:04:22
He's like, "All this stuff I do is to be a better comedian."
1:04:24
He's like He's like, "You'll learn pretty quick if you don't work out, you're leaving, you know, some of you on the table from being able to do your best work.
1:04:31
If you don't do something like a meditation or you know, something to recharge your mental battery, you're going to do worse work.
1:04:36
Like it's just as simple as that, right?
1:04:37
Uh he's got a ton of stuff on that."
1:04:39
I've been That's so great.
1:04:42
Jerry, I listen to I listen to a lot of his YouTube videos, his interviews, um because it's the same thing where I learn more about life than anything.
1:04:49
You know, there's a famous one where he talks about like consultants like in in in comedian uh comedians and making jokes.
1:04:56
>> Making What What do you say about that?
1:04:58
>> joke is uh he's getting interviewed by I think like Harvard Business Review, and they go, um "You and Larry David famously wrote Seinfeld together with no writer's room. Just the two you guys.
1:05:09
You wrote every single season, every episode.
1:05:12
And burnout was one of the reasons you stopped the show in the end.
1:05:14
Like, you know, you uh was there He goes, the Harvard Business Review goes, "Was there a more sustainable way to do it?
1:05:19
Could McKinsey have helped you find a better model?"
1:05:23
And he goes, "Who's McKinsey?"
1:05:25
>> did they really ask that?
1:05:25
Yeah, he goes, "Who's McKinsey?"
1:05:26
And they go, "It's a consulting firm."
1:05:28
He goes, "Are they funny?" He They go, "No."
1:05:30
He goes, "Then I don't need them.
1:05:33
If you're efficient If you're efficient, you're doing it the wrong way.
1:05:36
The right way is the hard way.
1:05:38
The show is successful because I micromanaged it.
1:05:40
Every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting, that is my way of life."
1:05:46
>> have this up right now?
1:05:48
Dude, I have like a dossier of Seinfeld like I told I studied this man.
1:05:50
Like I went deep on this. That's awesome.
1:05:55
Um Have you ever seen him live?
1:05:59
Yeah, I've seen Seinfeld live.
1:05:59
Honestly, wasn't that funny.
1:06:01
I was going to say the same thing.
1:06:02
I was going to say the same thing. He's a >> guy.
1:06:04
Don't love his comedy, actually.
1:06:06
>> His His stand-up is meh.
1:06:06
His writing is the best, but his stand-up for some reason is just fine. Yeah. It's just okay.
1:06:15
I've been obsessed >> it's it's in part why I really love this guy, right?
1:06:17
Cuz he's been touring for 50 years as a comedian. 50 years.
1:06:19
This is an unbelievable like LeBron James is jealous of Jerry Seinfeld's longevity.
1:06:26
It's like a 50 years unbelievable longevity as a touring comedian.
1:06:27
And he's also I I think it's remarkable.
1:06:32
He's one of the He's the first and only billionaire comedian.
1:06:35
Mostly cuz of Seinfeld the show, but also like, you know, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, he sold for like $100 million.
1:06:40
Like he's touring for a long time.
1:06:44
Yeah, Netflix picked it up for $100 million.
1:06:46
He's a super He's an outlier.
1:06:46
But the great thing about Seinfeld is if you see him, he's not like naturally just oozing charisma and like talent.
1:06:54
Like there's some guys that could do amazing impressions.
1:06:57
You're like, "I could never do that." Right?
1:06:58
Or there's other guys that are just like they have just this knack, this gift for gab.
1:07:02
And you can just see it like the way they grew up.
1:07:05
Like these guys are just so funny.
1:07:05
And Seinfeld is like a He looks like a HR manager, right?
1:07:10
Like he doesn't look like he's the most naturally talented guy.
1:07:13
And that's kind of why I love it.
1:07:15
Like the guy's the most successful comedian, and he's because he's just this craftsman.
1:07:17
He like squeezed everything out of his natural talent.
1:07:21
And I think how often does that really happen?
1:07:24
Like how often do people really maximize their potential? Very rare.
1:07:26
I remember when I was starting the Hustle, Scott Belsky, like I cold emailed him and asked him to invest, and he didn't want to invest, but then I just like added him to the Hustle, and I started writing like extra good emails.
1:07:40
Uh and he eventually replied.
1:07:40
He's like, "This is so good.
1:07:42
Can I invest like a very small sum, but I just want to let you know like this is like you're you're fantastic. This is great."
1:07:47
And he let me hang out with him.
1:07:50
So for the anyone listening, Scott Belsky, at this point he's known as like a legendary investor, but before he was this amazing investor, he had started Behance, which which he had sold for I think $175 million.
1:07:59
Now he he was nearly the CEO of Adobe, which is one of the largest companies in the world.
1:08:05
I think now he works at A24. Is that right?
1:08:09
Like the big shot Hollywood production company?
1:08:12
He's the like chief strategy officer and something else.
1:08:14
And I didn't listen to his advice when I when I met with him, and I always regretted that I didn't listen to his his advice.
1:08:23
And I didn't understand it until now.
1:08:25
He basically was saying the exact opposite of scale, scale, scale.
1:08:27
I was like, "I need to automate this.
1:08:30
I need to hire more people.
1:08:32
I need to get away from writing this email every day and making it great.
1:08:37
I need to add more revenue.
1:08:38
I need to get more advertisers."
1:08:39
And he was basically like, "You need to go in a room and just not have anyone around, and you just need to write this email every single day for about 4 or 5 years, and be He used the I've never heard anyone use the word steward.
1:08:52
He was like, 'You need to be a steward of greatness and a steward of taste for your audience.'
1:08:56
And I didn't understand what that entirely meant, but what I thought in my head, I was like, 'But you're wanting me to act like I'm a small business owner.
1:09:03
You're wanting me to act like a craftsman.'
1:09:05
I was like, 'I'm not trying to be some garage band.
1:09:09
I'm trying to be Lady Gaga.
1:09:12
Like I'm trying to sell out stadiums.
1:09:14
What are you talking about being a craftsman?' Do you know what I mean?
1:09:18
Like I don't understand what you're saying.
1:09:19
Why am I going to stay small? I want to sell out.
1:09:23
I don't want to Like that's the whole goal."
1:09:27
And it took me years to understand what he meant, which was you can become this like huge successful person and also be a craftsman.
1:09:34
You know who honestly does a great job at this and it seems silly is Dave Portnoy.
1:09:37
Dave Portnoy has has had it and I don't even like the comedy anymore, but he's had his hands in it and he's been consistent now for 25 years and he's ridiculous.
1:09:45
He's a ridiculous person.
1:09:47
He's sort of obnoxious, but you know what? He's done it.
1:09:51
He's done exactly what Scott Belsky has said, which is you need to be in the thick of it and you need to be focused purely on creative and you need to be a steward for taste.
1:09:57
And I didn't understand what that meant until I was about 32 years old.
1:10:01
I think he told me this when I was 26.
1:10:03
And I and I and I was like, "Scott, how are you so successful?
1:10:06
You don't know anything about business.
1:10:07
You're telling me not to like focus on scaling and all this." Gaga, Scott. Gaga.
1:10:14
And but now that I know like some of these people who are actually making the most money are actually still craftsmen.
1:10:20
Uh and like and and so like I distinctly remember I'm like, "I want to sell out stadiums. I'm trying to sell out.
1:10:23
I'm trying to be a small little like Korean family-owned bodega.
1:10:26
Like I'm trying to take over the world, baby."
1:10:33
You uh you said Dave Portnoy.
1:10:33
Uh there's another guy who's like that, Bill Simmons.
1:10:36
And uh he's probably you know, he's probably reason I'm doing a podcast today is cuz I was back in college in I don't know what what that was, 2007, listening to his to the BS Report.
1:10:45
You know, I used to like fall asleep listening to the BS Report.
1:10:49
Like it was like that it was that like and at the time podcasts were nothing.
1:10:52
And he he had been a blogger before that, then he was a ESPN columnist, then he did the podcast, then he did 30 for 30 documentaries, then he went he gets fired from ESPN because he does the he does The Ringer. Why did he get fired?
1:11:07
Um he was pretty outspoken against Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner.
1:11:10
He's like, "This guy's like kind of covering [ __ ] up and like not like he doesn't care."
1:11:15
So it could be contained.
1:11:17
That's the best type of fire. >> violence thing.
1:11:18
There was like the concussion stuff.
1:11:20
And he was basically like he would make jokes, but like the NFL's ESPN's biggest partner.
1:11:22
And so he was get he got suspended a couple times and then they were just like, "This guy's too hard to work with."
1:11:28
And so they um they killed his project, Grantland, and they fired him.
1:11:33
And so he comes back after licking his wounds a little bit.
1:11:36
He comes back with The Ringer, which is just the Grantland Grantland again.
1:11:40
Um and he'd been doing this now for like a long time, but he ends up selling to Spotify for $200 million.
1:11:45
And there's a great tweet that was going on the other day.
1:11:48
So the tweet was basically a video of Simmons and he's walking through the office.
1:11:55
He's carrying like a chair, like a school chair.
1:11:56
And he's carrying a chair and a microphone and he's like and they're like they're like, "Bill, what are you doing?"
1:12:02
And he's like a trade had just happened in the NFL, the Micah Parsons trade had just happened.
1:12:06
And it's like kind of like a you know, in the grand scheme of things not like a big story, but like you know, it was like the biggest story that week.
1:12:13
And uh his his company has like 15 other podcasts.
1:12:15
And so there's like this NFL podcast going on.
1:12:17
And he's like, "I got to go talk about this."
1:12:19
So he's just carrying a chair through the hallway and there's a guy behind him like filming him like, "Bill, what are you doing?"
1:12:24
And uh he just barges in and he like puts down his chair with his microphone and he wants to like talk about it with the guys.
1:12:28
And there and somebody tweeted they were like, "Honestly, respect.
1:12:30
This guy's been doing this for like 20 years.
1:12:34
He's got he's worth like $200 million.
1:12:37
And yet on a like Thursday, he can't wait.
1:12:39
He's literally carrying his chair and his microphone and wants to sit with his friends and do his do a podcast about this trade.
1:12:44
Like that's kind of goals, you know what I mean?
1:12:46
Like that's actually like career goals.
1:12:48
And um that really like I don't know.
1:12:50
That that kind of like stuck with me.
1:12:52
Like that that is really what you want is like a job that's so fun and so like so you that it doesn't matter what's the money in the bank.
1:13:00
Like you really just want to do it.
1:13:01
You just want to do the thing to the point where you're just going to carry your chair down the hallway and try to find a podcast to go do about it, you know?
1:13:07
I thought that was great. Where is he now?
1:13:09
So is Grantland still a thing?
1:13:12
Grantland died with ESPN. He creates The Ringer. Ringer sold to Spotify.
1:13:16
>> And so it's part of Spotify.
1:13:16
Um and he's been, you know, making bank uh ever since.
1:13:20
Why haven't we been able to get him on here?
1:13:22
You've talked about him like four or five times as like your number one.
1:13:28
>> that girl at the dance I don't want to approach. Yeah.
1:13:29
I'm like, "Hold on, I just got to like I'm going to fix my shirt real quick.
1:13:33
I got to take in my shirt.
1:13:35
I got to go I got to go get some punch. I'm thirsty." Uh yeah.
1:13:38
I got to do I'll do everything else except for ask him.
1:13:39
Yeah, I mean he looks pretty awesome.
1:13:42
Uh I I don't know really anything about him.
1:13:44
I would I would love to talk to this dude.
1:13:45
Uh uh he seems great and you've talked about him like six or seven >> Yeah. Is he Is he?
1:13:53
Yeah, I mean to go from a dude who couldn't even get hired by like a local paper basically.
1:13:59
So he starts blogging early on on the internet.
1:14:01
Parleys that blog into like getting his own section and being the highest-paid sports writer at ESPN.
1:14:05
But the thing is it's not just that he was the highest it's not just that he was successful. He did it his way.
1:14:11
Like he created an entire style of writing on on on like a a publication like ESPN.
1:14:17
He basically wrote like a blogger on ESPN. Nobody did that. He wasn't impartial.
1:14:21
He was like, "No, I love the Red Sox. I love the Patriots. I'm from Boston.
1:14:25
What are you talking about?
1:14:26
I'm going to write like a fan.
1:14:27
Like I'm going to write like a fan and sometimes I'll be pissed at what my team is doing, sometimes I'll be excited about it.
1:14:31
I'm going to make a bunch of references to like MTV Road Rules, The Challenge.
1:14:35
Like I'm going to I'm going to do what I'm interested in even though that makes none of it is like by the book.
1:14:41
And then he does podcasting early on, then he does the documentary.
1:14:43
So he builds the most successful sports documentary series. What, 30 for 30? 30 for 30.
1:14:50
He like it was his brainchild. He conceived it.
1:14:51
He created inside of ESPN.
1:14:53
Like nobody believed in it basically and he he you know, he kind of fought for it, got it done.
1:14:56
It became super successful.
1:14:59
I mean he's he's he's epic, dude. What he's done.
1:15:03
And still on the podcast, he um you would never know.
1:15:05
So he'll never reference the fact that like he's basically richer than like a lot of the athletes he covers at this point.
1:15:11
He's super well connected to him, but he's tried to like never really he doesn't let that sort of creep into his content.
1:15:17
Also, he didn't really rub it in ESPN's face.
1:15:20
Um which he very much could have because they like literally kicked him to the curb and didn't believe in him and told him like, "Grantland, the idea is a failure.
1:15:26
Like that that that is a that is a money loser. It doesn't work."
1:15:28
And he replicated the same business and sold it for $200 million.
1:15:32
So you know, like he he he he could have done a victory lap and never did. That's awesome.
1:15:37
I'm a I'm a Bill Simmons fan now. There you go.
1:15:40
>> Should I interview him without you?
1:15:42
Yeah, I think you should.
1:15:42
I would love that experience.
1:15:44
So Sean's not here today, but he says you're his you're his inspiration and he would do anything for you, but he's not here today.
1:15:50
>> of these guests where you fan girl, that would be one where I'd be I'd be too much of a fan girl and uh it really would be counterproductive to the podcast.
1:15:58
That would be great to get you rattled.
1:15:59
You're not normally uh someone who gets rattled.
1:16:01
Um all right, that was a good episode.
1:16:04
I enjoyed that, but uh that's that's the pod.