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Their TV show got canceled, but but Discovery gives them a whole network.
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Discovery's like, "Yo, we're going to make the Magnolia Network all around you guys.
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And you guys are going to create like hundreds of hours of of like TV that's Fixer Upper content, cooking content, gardening content, like all the like house [ __ ] right?
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And now they've built this empire that the kind of the the bottom line of the whole the the the headline of this story is this couple in a in a span about 10 years has built a billion-dollar brand around themselves. So it's that big? It's that big. All right. What what's up?
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They don't they keep in what just happened?
0:51
The so before we hit record, it's like 5 4 3 2 1 and Sam on three takes out a drink out of nowhere at 3 seconds left and just chugs it. Like tilts up.
1:00
Not only just tilted it up, squeezes the bottle like it's a it's a Kool-Aid or like a Capri Sun or something.
1:07
And he's chugging some carbonated drink.
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And then it goes to one and then he puts up the one symbol like hold on. Looks to the side.
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Burps, flexes, re-centers himself and is ready for the podcast. That was elite.
1:23
That was an elite prep for a podcast. Dude, I'm on top of it.
1:28
I drink so many beverages in We had this Fast Company article written about the Hampton launch and the reporter in like the first paragraph called out how I left the interview to grab a root beer and I came back.
1:44
Yeah, he skimmed the foam off the root beer like it was a Guinness. And then finished it.
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Held up the Held up the one second sign to my lips.
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Told me to shush as he as he drained his root beer during the interview.
1:59
You know how men drink like IPAs and crap and then they look at the glass after they take a drink and try to analyze it.
2:04
That's basically what I do with my Coke Zero.
2:05
Dude, you should you got to have more weird quirks cuz like you can't really be a billionaire founder if you're not super weird.
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So, you know, you got to start picking up some things like, you know, oh, he only wears, you know, open-toed sandals with socks and like, you know, he wears a shorts with, you know, EMF protection on his pockets cuz he's worried about radiation and what are the other weird things that you can do?
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Well, I had a I had carbonated water on tap for a while. That was pretty awesome.
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Like I I like only drink carbonated water, no normal water.
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Only sleeps during full moons.
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Do you have a you don't have any eccentricities, do you?
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No, that's why I'm broke, dude.
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I need I need some of these before, you know, otherwise how can I be how can I be the weird rich billionaire I'm trying to be?
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We have Sean and I have these friends.
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I won't name who they are, but they're they're young guys and the minute that they got like a mild amount of success, like maybe 500,000 in revenue, they clearly had read like Naval's book on like charging by time or something like that.
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And then they sent all of their clients, it's a client services business, saying, "We don't do meetings anymore."
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And that they were leading into that eccentricity thing and I wanted to tell them, "You guys are doing great, but you're not there yet."
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And their and their biggest customer dropped them. Yeah. It was like, "Oh, Yeah.
3:30
well, we kind of needed to meet to talk about the I get okay, well, I guess we'll just find another vendor." Yeah.
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I wanted to tell them like, "You great. I love the attitude.
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showed up to meetings with his shirt off.
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And then it was just like, "Well, that's cool.
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It's one way it's one way to wear your shirt."
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That that that's that's not the way that that particular client was willing to do it, so it's no longer their client, but that is our way.
3:55
Yeah, that is definitely our way.
3:56
They do have a nipple policy and unfortunately Yeah, they're not on board with the free the nip campaign, unfortunately. Yeah.
4:04
Oh, we forgot to shout out we're doing a live pod April 29th. That's a Saturday.
4:10
If you live in Austin or if you want to fly in, Shawn and I, along with MFM guest Andrew Wilkinson, are doing a live pod. So, if you go to mfmpod.
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com, you'll see the details and you'll see tickets.
4:23
Uh we're going to do a live pod.
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We did this in Vancouver a couple months ago. It sold out.
4:26
This one's going to sell out as well.
4:27
So, if you're interested in hanging out with Shawn, me, Andrew Wilkinson, as well as 5 600 other guests and fans of MFM we're going to be there. So, check it out. mfmpod.
4:37
com and you'll see the the banner up top where you can check out tickets.
4:44
Um dude, we have a bunch of stuff.
4:44
You have Chip and Joanna Gaines on there today. Yeah.
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And I went to Waco this weekend where they are from. Oh, no way.
4:52
Saw some of their houses, yeah. That's crazy.
4:54
Okay, so you might know more about this than I do.
4:55
Okay, so let me tee it up and then you tell me what you know about these people.
4:59
So, here's my my trail of events and I'll put the disclaimer out there right now.
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If you actually know about them, then this is going to all sound very elementary.
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This is going to sound very very beginner because I was a complete beginner about like, who are these people?
5:13
I'm walking around in Target the listener though, Shawn doesn't know like I I told him what Coldplay was last week.
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Like he didn't know he thought that was like baseball in the wintertime.
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He didn't know anything about like pop culture.
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So, this is you learning out loud. Yeah, exactly.
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Like I I still use a flip phone.
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So, I I would I would left my house.
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I go to Target and inside Target there's this one section that my wife always goes into and it's the only section in Target that looks like this where there's a giant picture of this happy white couple and it's their names.
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Like it's like, oh, here's I 1 2 3 4 5 Chip and Joanna Gaines 6 7 8 9 10.
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So, why do they have their own section?
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So, I noticed that first and I thought, "Hmm, that's interesting. Are these YouTubers?
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What What is the Who are these people?
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Do they Do this the owner of Target? What What is this?"
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And so, I noticed that and filed that away.
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Then, I was talking to Aldon who came on the pod uh or we talked about him on the pod who runs Missouri Star Quilt Company, the big quilt company a huge quilt company.
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And he did this thing where he started buying up a section of a town.
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He basically bought a town and started to build it out.
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He wanted to make it like, you know, quilt heaven.
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So, basically a Mecca for where quilters would go as like a as a pilgrimage to go and just like really indulge in their hobby.
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And he told me for grandmas.
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Disney World for Yeah, for for your aunties.
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So, so he was like, "All right, well, he goes I go Does anybody else do this?"
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And he goes, "Well, there's there's Chip and Joanna Gaines thing in Waco."
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And I go, "There they are again. Who are these people?"
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And you know, fool me once, shame on me and fool me twice, shame on me.
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Finally, I'll look you up and I looked them up and they got an incredible story.
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It sounds like you're pretty familiar with them, but um he had told me one thing that kind of like caught my attention.
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He goes, It It shocks me, by the way, you don't know about these people.
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I mean, like in the Midwest and amongst like moms, like you you are so California that you don't know about this.
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They've been in the game for like 10 years.
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Uh but I don't know too much about them.
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Yeah, it's you know, it's it's quaint, but um I I I I looked them up.
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They The YouTube videos are amazing, by the way.
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If you If you watch the YouTube videos.
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So, they own a part of town in Waco that they've just branded as their own.
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They bought these two abandoned, I think, silos, like grain silos.
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And so, they call it like whatever, Silo Ville or whatever.
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And they have the Silobration at the end of the year where it's just like this a huge party for themselves.
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So, their brand Magnolia is the like everywhere in this little area.
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So they have the Magnolia Market where you go buy your stuff and then they have the Magnolia Table restaurant which is served by the vegetables from Joanna's Garden.
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And then there's the Magnolia other thing and then there's the Magnolia other thing and it's just all them and they get about 2 million visitors a year just coming and making the pilgrimage to Waco, Texas which is really the middle of nowhere for Texas.
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I lived in Texas and I never went to Waco like it was not even in my top 10 places to go in Texas.
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And so they have made Waco a destination.
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They literally have raised the housing prices in that area by like 24% because they have made it an attraction and their story is kind of interesting.
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I don't know if you know their their backstory.
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Do you know do you know pretty well?
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So they the story goes something like this and again, I'm a beginner so I'm doing the thing where you read the press release and you're like, oh that's how they met.
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How how fortunate or you know, like when you hear about somebody saying like, how did you think of the idea?
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It's like, well, I saw a single mother struggling and I just decided that that would be my mission.
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It's like, no dude, you read a report that said this market was growing and that's why you you you know, you started this business but like here's the PR version of their story.
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They live in Waco, Texas.
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Chip, the guy, goes into this car repair shop that her dad owns, sees a picture of her on the wall and decides I'm going to marry that girl. Suspicious but okay.
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Keeps going back to the car repair shop.
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That that that story it could it could go a different route and this totally It's like It's like when you whispered someone's ear like, I see you versus like write it on their mirror when they're in the shower, you know what I mean?
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Like it's Context matters here.
9:19
The ending of the story really makes it makes it okay but it could go either way. end up in a freezer. So yeah.
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So he keeps going back and he eventually bumps into her, asks her out on a date, they go on a date, whatever.
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They end up getting together.
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This is back in like 2003-ish.
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And so he was doing house flipping and she was kind of like I guess like working with the doing like commercials for her dad's car car repair place or whatever.
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And they get together and they decide they they don't have anything to their name, but they decide to try to try to make something of this house flipping thing.
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She's like, "Oh, I can use my design sense, you're a contractor, and let's So, they move into this like 800 square foot house and they renovate it while they live there, end up flipping one, flipping two, flipping three.
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And then they start to, you know, successfully flip some houses in Waco, but still no big deal.
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And then a TV show from HGTV starts casting and they read about the this husband and wife house flipper in in Waco, Texas.
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They said, "Well, Waco, we were kind of hoping for somebody in LA or New York or maybe Atlanta or something like that, but like okay, whatever.
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Let's go down to Waco and meet them."
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And uh and he's got this like kind of big personality.
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He's he's real outgoing and she's really good looking and so it like plays well for TV.
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So, they get their show on HGTV called Fixer Upper.
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And basically the show like from day one is a hit.
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And so, they go from kind of husband and wife small time house flippers, like very small houses that they're flipping in in Waco, to now on TV um and they they're doing this and they do five or six seasons.
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They become very famous on on HGTV.
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Show gets canceled, but what they did was they had built this uh this following and they had built the they had this brand in mind that they had called Magnolia.
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Like they had opened up a retail store back in the day, they closed it cuz it wasn't really going too well, but they had this idea for this store called Magnolia.
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So, when the show ends, they do two things.
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They reopen Magnolia as a beautiful place in Waco, and then secondly, they go to the the just the channel, Discovery Channel, and they go and their TV show got canceled, but but Discovery gives them a whole network.
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Discovery's like, "Yo, we're going to make the Magnolia network all around you guys.
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And you guys are going to create like hundreds of hours of like TV that's fixer-upper content, cooking content, gardening content, like all the like house [ __ ] right?
11:40
And now they've built this empire, the the kind of the the bottom line of the whole the the the headline of this story is this couple in a in a span of about 10 years has built a billion-dollar brand around themselves. So It's that big? It's that big.
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So there's no real numbers that like have come out.
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So like if you go look for their net worth or their revenue super hush-hush.
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Which you know just makes the little hairs on my arm start to tingle a little bit.
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I know I know when it's that hush-hush that that means it's a lot bigger than you think.
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Especially because you see it like Target partnered with them to develop that line of goods in their store.
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So like when Target It's not even like they got their brand into Target.
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It's like Target came to them and was like, "Let's make a brand." That's like a big deal.
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They have Killers move in silence. Killers move in silence.
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And you hear Yeah, it's like if you don't hear about it If you don't hear about it in TechCrunch, you know it's doing good.
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I thought you were going to hit them with a G's and lasagna type of line type of No, no?
12:37
No, not Well, you know, I I think I've I've milked that one dry.
12:41
Dude, it's like my mom when she was on the phone with like a customer service person and you're you're like A as in apple, B as in Bob, whatever.
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She goes, "K as in knife." I just lost it.
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I was like, "I don't think you understand how that works."
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Yeah, I was like That's hilarious.
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So K as in They they operate like K as in knife.
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Um I grew up on the street called Simpson.
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And I'd be like I'd be like, "You know, my address is this this this Simpson like O. J. Simpson." And uh It works.
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Um Anyways, their their app that has their TV show network has like tens of thousands of reviews on it.
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So that means that that app is doing pretty well.
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And that's a paid That's like their own version of Netflix, right?
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Like that's like kind of stunning.
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You never really see an influencer that has their own whole subscription network.
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And so they have cookbooks, journals, retail stores, brand paint brand, furniture brand, they have their TV show network. They got everything.
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And this idea and they have their own town which gets 2 million visitors a year.
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Like if your website gets 2 million visitors a year, you're doing pretty okay. You're you're out there.
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Let alone 2 million people making the pilgrimage to your small town in Waco to come buy [ __ ] from your stores.
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That's kind of impressive.
14:01
I guarantee you that these people will end up billionaires off of this Magnolia brand.
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This Magnolia brand has to be worth high hundreds of millions if not over a billion dollars already.
14:12
Have you been to Waco ever? No.
14:15
Dude, so I went to Waco this weekend because and I'll tell a quick story then we'll get back to this.
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But basically last year I I randomly came across this guy who had this new Airbnb.
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It was basically a piece of land that he built a lake on and he puts and he built seven Airbnbs. I was so curious.
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I couldn't find him on social media. I call him up. I get him on the phone. Yeah, he built a lake.
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Like it was like like a plot of land and they built not a huge lake.
14:41
More more a pond is a better is a better word to describe it but but it's it's a lake I guess.
14:44
But I call him up and I go, "Tell me your story."
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He goes, "Well, I had a part I was a an accountant.
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I had my own small business for accounting.
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I just built this Airbnb thing.
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I think it's going to be really successful but I really describe myself as an artist.
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I love to paint and play music."
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And right right away I'm like, "I'm in.
15:00
Do you want to hang out?"
15:03
Start hanging out with him.
15:03
He's part of this thing I mentioned it called Homestead Heritage.
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It's this religion / community.
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They It's like all different parts of Christianity in it and they believe in like sustainability and and the weird part is they believe in craftsmanship.
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So the way that they like find God is by like doing things with their hand and doing doing it well.
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So, anyway, this weekend I went and celebrated Easter at his church and like they like had a whole singing thing. I stayed at his Airbnb.
15:30
for a long time or did this was like a recently created religion? Okay.
15:34
Basically, the story is is that one of the the main guy, which is his wife's grandpa, I believe, her the wife's Isaac's wife's grandfather lived in New York, was atheist, found God somehow, and felt like the best way to like show that I love God is to like just be excellent to everything I do and be kind to people among other things, but that was basically it.
15:53
For some reason, they moved to Waco, they get 500 acres, and they build a whole community on there, and then this guy Isaac now has built this Airbnb a few miles away, and he tweeted out his profits in in his first year business he did a million in profit.
16:08
And so, I went and I became friends with them, and I went and hung out there, and I drove through all all through Waco, and basically in Waco Waco's Sorry, Waco people, it's not nice.
16:18
It's not It's not It's It's like objectively like a a fairly run-down place as if maybe it was like an oil town.
16:23
It feels like there was once something there, and then now it's not.
16:27
And when you drive through that area, you see like not nice house, not nice house, nice house.
16:31
And I told him that, and he goes, "Oh, yeah, that's the Chip and Joanna's house."
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Like they like started here remodeling homes, and you could distinctly tell which one is their brand.
16:42
And it's and and so, like it's like basically like Isaac French who like brings in all these people and Chip and Joanna like, you know, way above him, but that's like my my understanding of Waco at the moment.
16:53
Yeah, there's these like these these like kind of simplicity-based um communities or religions or or or cultures where it's like like I'm on their homepage right now.
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It says, "Homestead Heritage is an agrarian, craft-based intentional Christian community.
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It stresses simplicity, sustainability, self-sufficiency, service, and quality craftsmanship."
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And then there's literally like a video of a cow eating leaves, and then like a boy stitching a baseball himself.
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Which I'd say I never did.
17:23
Well, I was like Isaac showed me around.
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He goes, "Here, let me show you the orchard I planted last week."
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You know, and it's like got it has 200 apple trees.
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He's like, "We did this for the community.
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Anyone can come take an apple.
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It'll be ready in like 5 years."
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And that's what he does instead of watching TV.
17:35
So, if I like I'll be like, "Hey, have you seen this movie?"
17:36
He's like, "No, I don't really watch movies. I'm planting trees."
17:41
Not a lot of 5-year-old podcast listeners out there probably. There were a few.
17:45
I think there was a few, but you know, they're more famous of like Johnny Appleseed than Sean Perry.
17:52
I don't think Yeah, you know what I mean?
17:54
Like there are there are no like Johnny posters in their room.
18:00
Yeah, but dude, when I So, I've sold the story many times.
18:03
I used to work for Mike Wolfe from American Pickers, and that was where I first learned about like entertainment and business and things like that.
18:10
But Mike Wolfe was American Pickers at the time was like the second most popular show on TV when I worked there.
18:16
Number one was Pawn Stars, and like number four was David Letterman, to like to give you an idea.
18:19
And And we I know, for real.
18:21
That's the That was the real rankings.
18:22
And then I would be at the store, and some days we would sell $30,000 of t-shirts at the store.
18:29
And these like were not nice t-shirts.
18:30
They were just normal like with the logo on it.
18:32
We would sell like 10 grand worth of mugs.
18:34
And so, like these shows kill it.
18:37
And what Mike did was he would film himself basically the show was he would drive to barns, find old stuff, tell you the history about it, buy it, and then sell it.
18:43
And he would he spent like 4 years driving around with a video camera filming this, trying to pitch it.
18:51
And then when he finally did pitch it, he got the production rights or I guess he kind of like what Rob Dyrdek did.
18:56
And I think that's where the money is, and it sounds like that's what Magnolia did, too. Yeah, exactly.
19:00
They they I mean, the the breadth of this empire is is kind of stunning to me, right?
19:05
It's like uh whether it's HomeGoods, it's the restaurant, it's the coffee books, it's the it's the bakery, it's the TV show network, it's the target line, it's like And and their brand is like they're this relatable you know, blue collar, you know, salt of the earth people.
19:23
It's like, yeah, like they are, but they also have some part of them that's Rupert Murdoch.
19:28
And they're they are flexing that Rupert Murdoch over the last like, you know, 10 years.
19:33
I wonder if they have like a manager or if they're just doing this all themselves.
19:36
Like Rupert Murdoch in Wrangler jeans.
19:38
You know, like it's We're relatable, but we'll gut your heart out if we had to.
19:44
Right, if Succession was in denim. Yeah.
19:48
Uh no, I dig these I dig these people.
19:50
The worst thing that would happen to them is a Jon and Kate Plus 8.
19:51
Remember Jon and Kate Plus 8? Of course. How could I forget?
19:56
Man, they were they were some of the first guys to get popular like in the reality TV world of TLC and then they get divorced and it ends horribly just like Honey Boo Boo, man. Honey Boo Boo. Same thing. It always ends horribly.
20:05
So, hopefully it doesn't end that way.
20:07
I remember like seeing If your stick is just how many kids you can have that is not sustainable It's like sometimes you see these YouTubers and they come out real hot because it's like, I'm buried alive with tarantulas. 10 million clicks.
20:25
You're like, yo, but where to from here, son?
20:30
Where are you going to go with this?
20:31
Like, this is not a sustainable path for you.
20:36
Yeah, I but I like these people.
20:36
I mean, they seem like pretty like I don't know, wholesome, but we'll see how how money impacts things.
20:44
Well, you have Oprah on here and I think that Chip and Joanna Gaines and other people like them like Brené Brown, they're kind of filling this Oprah gap.
20:51
Like, Oprah left some big shoes to fill, I feel.
20:56
And I've been amazed by Do you know Do you follow Brené Brown very much?
21:01
Yeah, my wife is reading all her stuff and like she's kind of killing it amongst like the empathy crowd.
21:06
The vulnerability crowd, yeah. Yeah.
21:09
Against those offense who are all about authenticity. Yeah.
21:13
Yeah, the capital E empathy.
21:16
Uh or like if I hear one one more person say the N-word, nuance.
21:21
Uh then like that's like that's that's the thing, man.
21:23
It's nuance, it's empathy.
21:25
My butt clenched a little there.
21:26
I didn't know where you were going with with that with that joke.
21:27
I was like, "Sam, don't end it here, man.
21:32
We've had a good run, but don't end it here." Nuance.
21:34
Uh have you seen her Netflix special? No, no.
21:38
I I like her, but that's not my speed.
21:41
You it's a it's a got to watch. Um It's that good? It's that good.
21:44
So, go watch her first Netflix special.
21:45
It's some it you got to watch it just cuz you've never seen anything like it.
21:49
It's basically Tony Robbins, Oprah, and a stand-up comedian at the same time.
21:56
Like she comes out on stage like a stand-up comedian, and she's funny without telling too many like jokes.
22:03
Like it's not like set-up punchline, but she's funny.
22:06
But then she starts talking about vulnerability and herself, and then people in the crowd are crying, and you're just like, "What is hap- What kind of event is this?"
22:13
You It's like, you know, Twister with my emotions.
22:15
Like I don't I don't know what's going on.
22:17
I got right leg on sad, and I got, you know, left left hand on empowered.
22:21
I didn't know what was happening.
22:24
It's kind of an incredible little live show that she's created, and I could At first I was like, "Why would Netflix give a special to this person?
22:31
I don't even understand what that could be."
22:32
But it's actually pretty pretty well done for what it is, and you I could see why she's so likable, why she's so like uh relatable to people.
22:42
You quickly went from like "Wow" to "Wow." Uh yeah. Exactly.
22:50
Uh no, I'll I'll watch her.
22:50
Do you Do you want Can I tell you a little about Oprah?
22:54
So, we we we were going to talk about Oprah last time.
22:56
We didn't really know what we were talking about, so I dug in a little bit.
22:59
guess the theme of this episode then is uh you know one of the TV empires or female TV empire something like that I don't know.
23:06
Let's get let's let's see if what where we go with this.
23:09
TV TV empires that everyone knows about that you and I are just discovering 20 years after the fact.
23:14
Empires with empathy that the boys discovered seven years after they they're off air.
23:21
Capitalize both those E's.
23:21
All right, I'll tell you a little bit about Oprah.
23:24
So she started at 17 by doing beauty pageants.
23:27
She won Miss Black Tennessee at age 19.
23:29
She got her first job at a CBS station in Nashville.
23:32
A few years later she moved to Maryland and then back to Nashville and eventually she was the first African-American news anchor on TV and that was in Nashville.
23:43
She basically had an issue where she struggled to show objectivity because she couldn't really report the news because she was showing too much empathy and she was pretty casual.
23:52
And at the time like this was like hey Oprah you got to like you know keep it straight.
23:58
You can't like express remorse or like show too many too much emotion and she was like well let's let's take this a different way.
24:05
So she created a show called People Are Talking and that aired originally 1977 and she would improvise and she was casual.
24:14
Kind of like you and I one could say Yeah she was like the MFM of the 70s um and by the end of the decade so after like three or four years she was beating Phil Donahue in the local ratings and Phil Donahue was God.
24:26
So he was like the man in charge.
24:28
So eventually she keeps doing that for a little while longer but in 1986 so about 10 years after starting that she gets her own show it's called The Oprah Winfrey Show and she along with a a couple of outside investors established her own production company called Harpo Productions.
24:42
Harpo's Oprah spelled backwards and at 32 years old she became the first black woman to have a nationally syndicated show and she still owns 80% of that production company.
24:53
And all along the the way she started like innovating innovating.
24:55
So in 1996, she created the her her book club, which made 130 million in sales in year one and arguably set the groundwork for this like massive influencer industry that we have.
25:07
Then in '98, she co-founded the Oxygen Media Group, which has programming towards all types of shows, mostly towards women.
25:15
She launched Oprah Magazine. She had a radio show.
25:17
In 2010, The Oprah Show ended after 24 years and she had, you know, all the best guests leading up till then.
25:25
2011, she launched OWN, Oprah Winfrey Network.
25:28
And then all along has been doing all types of stuff.
25:32
So, for example, in 2015, she bought 10% stake in Weight Watchers and then the stock 6x'd like within a year or two of that happening.
25:39
In 2008, she sold most of her stake to OWN to Discovery and she's done a ton of interesting stuff between now and then.
25:47
But, let's look at her empire.
25:49
So, she has The Oprah Winfrey Show, which had over 20,000 28,000 guests, giving away 570 cars, had five presidents on.
25:56
Um she got 20,000 fan letters. The finale had 16. 4 million views.
26:03
She also owns Harpo still to this day.
26:06
They've collectively it's done $2 billion in profits.
26:08
It made a couple movies as well including The Color Purple, Beloved, and Selma.
26:11
They have 200 employees in Chicago.
26:14
The OWN, so that her network, Oprah Winfrey Network, it started with $100 million in funding.
26:22
Eventually, she sold most of the stake, but she's still CEO of that.
26:24
She has Oprah Magazine, which in the first year did $140 million in revenue just from subscriptions.
26:33
And then she has Oprah and Friends, which is a XM radio contract or or show where she got $55 million in the first 3 years.
26:42
She's invested in Weight Watchers, True Food Kitchens, which is basically a restaurant that has 42 locations.
26:46
She helped start a food science startup backed by Oprah, Katy Perry, and a few others that has a billion dollar evaluation, and she also is a big investor in Oatly.
26:57
Then, and this is finally, she has a $45 million dollar estate in California, a $14 million dollar one in Washington, in Colorado she has 60 acres for 14 million, in Hawaii she has over a thousand acres, and she has basically her net worth grew from at age 32 she got her first million, at 41 340 million, 97 at the age of 43 550 million, and at the age of 48 she became a billionaire.
27:21
So, that's Oprah's story. Um super fascinating.
27:26
I mean, she's been in the game forever it seems, and I think she's what 60 something now and still killing it.
27:32
I didn't realize she was the CEO and like active in all this.
27:33
I thought she was more so like a face, but I think she's actually not, you know, not just a face, but it seems like she's like actually like a like a mogul, a tycoon. Right.
27:42
You know, what's one thing that stands out when we talk about these is that there is this like flywheel that happens.
27:47
Once you become a certain level of famous, it's almost like you know, that that graph that's like going viral that the [ __ ] around and find out graph?
27:58
It's basically like [ __ ] [ __ ] around and find out, but the positive version.
28:00
It's like you could kind of like if Oprah was like, "Here's Oprah's maple syrup.
28:05
Here's Oprah's you know, like new line of spoons.
28:08
Here's Oprah's you know, new board game."
28:11
Like what does it really matter at this point?
28:14
It'd be like her board game does 50 million in sales, her syrup is the number one syrup in the in the country right now.
28:20
Like it's kind of at that point you just choose and because so much trust and distribution has been built up, and I have a friend who this week, I can't say the details, but they went to a very famous person.
28:34
They went to a very famous person, and they said they had a business idea.
28:35
They said, "Hey, our friend has a has a a background in a certain industry."
28:40
And said, "Hey famous person, you should be doing something in that industry.
28:44
Let me walk to you, show up at your door, knock at your door, and say, "Here's a full business plan of exactly how you would dominate in this category."
28:55
So, they go, they fly out, knock on the door, um first they don't meet the famous person.
29:00
The famous person sends a a manager to them.
29:03
Sends a And by the way, are they are they like A-list famous?
29:07
They're super famous, yes. Super super famous. Got it. Okay. A-list famous.
29:11
And so, they go to them and first they get hit with a manager and they say, "Hey They're trying to like look over the manager's head, be like, "Hey, is a famous I just wanted to talk to Just hoping to get a word in with the famous person.
29:21
Can you get out of the way?"
29:23
And they're like, "No, no, no, you have to get through this wall first.
29:25
They have to talk to the manager first."
29:25
They say, "Hey, look, here's my background.
29:27
I've been super successful in this industry.
29:28
I think you guys could crush it in this industry.
29:32
Um why don't can I meet the famous person now and tell them the idea?"
29:35
They say, "No, no, no, tell me the idea. I'm in charge of this."
29:37
I say, "Okay, here here's the idea."
29:39
And then the person says, manager says, "That's a good idea. Okay, cool."
29:43
And um then they get the meeting with the the famous And but and the whole time they were told, "Hey, uh you fly in on Monday, you'll meet with the famous person sometime this week.
29:51
Just hang out in the hotel. Just be here."
29:52
Which is a pretty big time move to try to try to pull on somebody.
29:57
To not give you a time, but say, "Hey, we'll we'll hold this walkie-talkie.
30:04
When you hear me, put your pants on, get ready, we're the meeting's happening.
30:06
But I I can't tell you when it's going to be."
30:09
like they've got a special calendar in Google.
30:11
It it it everything ends in ish, but it's you know, Monday-ish, you know? Like it's all ish.
30:16
Right, you're given a window.
30:18
And you better be prepared during that window to to strike.
30:20
Okay, so end up getting the meeting with the with the famous person.
30:24
Famous person comes in, explain the whole idea.
30:28
Famous person uh likes the idea, but also has a bunch of their own ideas, of course, as famous people do.
30:35
And so, I asked my friend later, I said, uh "So, what happened?"
30:38
And uh the response was this.
30:38
They go, "Well, I'm pretty sure we convinced famous person that they should do this and do this with us.
30:46
And I'm pretty sure they convinced me that I should not do this with them."
30:53
And I thought that was just a hilarious takeaway.
30:54
And I was I was like, "Okay, well, why?"
30:56
They said, "Well, you know, they have all their own ideas."
30:57
They go, "Honestly, everything they're trying to do in this space probably won't work.
31:03
Like I think they're going about it the whole wrong way.
31:06
But they'll probably end up being successful anyways.
31:07
That's the crazy thing about this."
31:09
So, like uh their margin for error is so large, and they can kind of do anything and still have it work because their brand, their celebrity, their distribution, their trust and loyalty in their audience is so large that you can kind of mess up eight out of 10 things and still get it get it to work eventually.
31:28
Um and whereas most startups, most businesses don't have that margin for for error.
31:32
And so, I don't know what the big takeaway is.
31:34
It's kind of a no-duh, but it's uh if you're mega mega famous, it's not hard at that point to to do the empire thing because uh it's like uh what was his name?
31:43
The guy Moiz from Native, how he he when he was selling his company and they're like, "You sell just deodorant.
31:49
You know, you're asking for this big valuation."
31:52
He goes, "Yeah, because uh do you know how to write the word Native on a bottle of shampoo?
31:56
Do you know how to write the word Native on a on a bottle of toothpaste? Cool.
31:59
That's your expansion plan.
32:01
Like I left a lot of room for this to grow.
32:03
If you can still write the word Native on something, it will work."
32:05
And that's that's how I feel about these mega celebrity brands, which is like if you if you put my face on something, it's going to work.
32:14
So, let's just let's put this in in a very realistic context.
32:16
So, you and I have that minus or no, divided by 100.
32:21
So, we're Oprah divided by 1,000, whatever it is.
32:22
But we we have a very small taste of it.
32:26
And we also have friends, you know, like the Tim Ferrisses of the world and and whoever else who have it, you know, times 10 or 20 for us and are in this like potentially billion-dollar space.
32:36
There's been three things, I think, that I've narrowed it down to that make this empire strategy um that hold hold me back and and I imagine someone like Tim who's uh a perfectionist or someone like that holds them back.
32:50
Number one is reputational risk.
32:52
So, putting your name on crap products and then how on earth can you actually like track it all to make sure that you're not you're not putting your name on bad on bad products that you actually stand by.
33:02
And so, because of that, it's almost like you have to pick and choose, but then there's other people like Richard Branson that put, you know, Virgin on everything.
33:08
And it kind of has seemed like it worked out.
33:13
Uh so, that's like the big thing.
33:13
Number two is finding people who you can trust.
33:17
When you have five or 10 or 30 different things going on, you need really trustworthy people.
33:21
And even if it's your family, even if it's your brother and your cousin, people can screw you.
33:26
And like you have to really stay on top of it and you have to find a partner who's good enough to like really have your back.
33:32
Like even my accountant, or I imagine if like your lawyer, your accountant.
33:36
And every once in a while you're like, is this person actually thinking of me or how are they incentivized here and who's actually making the right decision?
33:43
That's actually exhausting and I think in in quite hard.
33:47
Um And then the final thing is like, do they want the headache of that?
33:50
So, like a Joe Rogan, uh he just like, no, F this.
33:54
Like I'm on my island here. I have what I need.
33:56
I don't want to put my name on anything. Uh screw that.
33:58
I'm I I don't need anything and I want to keep things small and tight.
34:02
And so, those are kind of the three things I think prevent like empires from being built like this.
34:09
Yeah, I think that's true.
34:10
Um So, say say that say the the first one again. What was the first one? Do you remember?
34:14
Reputational risk, having people that you can trust, and then just like not wanting more headache.
34:18
And here's the counter to each.
34:19
Okay, reputational risk, putting your your name on crap products.
34:22
Do you uh have you drank Prime? Uh once. I tried it. It's fine. It's fine.
34:30
It's also the fastest growing drink in the country right now, and it's fine.
34:34
And I think that that's the the counter to that is Yes, you can't put it on a crap product or do something that would, you know, hurt people or do something like that like you know, something nothing nothing on the sort of terrible under the register.
34:46
But there's a lot of leeway between the best product in the market and it's fine and you just got to fall somewhere there, right?
34:52
It's like a like you're playing golf and the fairway is so wide.
34:57
You really got to screw it up if you hit to hit it out of bounds and that's how I feel with these products.
35:00
Like is a Kylie's lip product the best product on the market? I have no idea.
35:04
Is for most of these products, I can't tell you that Conor McGregor's whiskey or The Rock's tequila is uh is anything better than fine.
35:14
They might just be You're saying there has to There's got to be a threshold.
35:17
There's a threshold and the threshold is pretty god damn low.
35:19
So, I think the reputational risk is is a little bit less than than what I what I think a lot a lot of people would worry about. The rest is true.
35:27
It can become a headache and you do have to find competent people to to run them.
35:31
The good thing is when you have that brand, it's like Prime.
35:34
The you know, Prime didn't start by Logan Paul and and KSI saying let's create a drink.
35:39
Let's go to the flavor house and and create a formulation.
35:42
There were some entrepreneurs who approached them that said, we do this.
35:46
We've done this at you know, medium scale.
35:48
With you guys, we could go super scaled.
35:50
We will take care of everything. You guys take the cut.
35:53
You guys help us with the promotion.
35:54
But like look, we come with this track record.
35:56
And I think that's what happens for most of these these celebrities is they're approached by people with track records.
36:01
Like even the example I was just giving.
36:02
Somebody with a track record came and said, I know this industry. I've done this before.
36:07
With your brand and your distribution, we could do this again in a big way.
36:12
And I think those opportunities just come knocking at your door.
36:14
So, it's not even like where do I go find somebody great? It's like can I filter?
36:17
Can I just like recognize great when it shows up shows up at my door is really the the question for most of these people.
36:26
Do you think you would enjoy that type of fame like Chip and Joanna? No.
36:33
Um not only would I not enjoy it from a like oh I don't want to get bothered when I'm out and about with my kids and stuff like that, but also I more than that is I don't enjoy what it takes to get there.
36:47
And that's actually what goes like that's actually the most important question of business.
36:50
I was talking to to Ben Levy about this the other day.
36:53
We're talking about business ideas.
36:54
Earlier earlier I asked you this a while ago and you go there's a price to pay I ain't willing to pay it. Yeah. Exactly.
36:59
Know the price and then decide if you're if you're going to pay it.
37:03
Um when we we were talking about business ideas it was like oh do we like this idea or this idea and the easy thing to do I think everybody gets this wrong is like I love basketball so I want to do a basketball based idea or I love I'm really passionate about like helping people so I'm going to do this health care startup whatever it may be.
37:22
And they think that their enjoyment of the of the thing is going to be based on the product or category that they're in.
37:29
But in reality most of the time you spend when you're an entrepreneur is trying to grow or sell.
37:35
It's trying to get more customers and grow grow the actual business.
37:39
And so your Not playing basketball.
37:41
Your day-to-day experience is actually about selling and trying to grow and what ends up happening is that some ways are more enjoyable or suit you better than others.
37:50
So for some people they love Facebook ads or they love SEO.
37:54
And for some people they love phone calls and for some people they love high-level business deals, enterprise sales where you're nurturing a long relationship for a long period of time.
38:06
And the big mistake people make is they think oh I'm creating a basketball related startup.
38:10
What they don't realize is that the only way for that business to grow is through enterprise sales and they hate enterprise sales or they're unwilling to go and sell to these facility managers of NBA stadiums or they're unwilling to sell to blah blah blah.
38:23
And they think they're in the basketball business, but they're in the enterprise sales business because 90% of their day-to-day work and they're they're the challenge that they're faced with and the the the stuff they have to do, the whether they're selling basketballs or ping-pong balls or books, it doesn't matter.
38:40
It's the the sales channel, the sales process is where you're going to spend most of your time.
38:44
So, you got to figure out which sales process do I like the most or at least tolerate the best, and then find a business that uses that sales process.
38:53
I I think that is like a uh I wish somebody had told me that earlier cuz I got tripped up with this for many many years.
39:00
And then when I look back, I'm like, "Oh, I just really like growing things through Facebook ads.
39:05
It's like it's to me it's way better than these other ones."
39:08
And so like So, I have a a list.
39:10
I'm like, "My favorite sales channel is just mention it on the podcast."
39:13
There couldn't be anything easier than that.
39:16
Like, if I can just tell people what I think about this product and then they go buy it because they already trust me and they like me and we have enough listeners to this product uh to this podcast.
39:23
That is the number one easiest sales channel, most pleasurable.
39:25
So, if I can think of a business that works in that, fantastic.
39:28
Number two for me is Facebook ads. Why?
39:31
Because I got I don't have to talk to anybody.
39:33
I sit behind the computer.
39:35
I set up the budget, and when it works, I just scale it up with the push of a button.
39:38
I don't have to hire more sales people.
39:40
I don't have to like go do something new.
39:42
You can take one image that works or one video, one 10-second video that works in Facebook ads and put millions of dollars of spend behind it and make multiple millions more off that ad. I love that. I love that model.
39:56
I like that I can look at the dashboard, see a number, and know what to do.
40:00
I Yes, that's like my number two.
40:00
And my number three is cold emails cuz I'm good at cold emailing, and it's kind of a pain in the ass, but I've done it before.
40:07
I can train people to do that of how to cold email in order to generate customers.
40:10
Those are my three favorites.
40:12
Everything else, I don't like as much.
40:14
And so when I think of an idea, it's got to fall in that top three.
40:17
Have you So, we had I guess technically the Hustle kind of was enterprise sales.
40:21
I mean, we had six, maybe once or twice we had seven-figure deals and that's like a long process.
40:25
I wasn't allowed to go to those meetings because like I remember like I had to go and buy like brown shoes and like tight jeans and like tuck my shirt in in like a certain way.
40:35
I was like, "Dude, like I'm Todd, huh? Nice to meet you." Like it wasn't for me. all the details wrong.
40:41
Just a tank top tucked in some khaki pants tucked into some brown shoes.
40:48
Yeah, you're like tunnel you created with the tucking in everything.
40:50
Right before the meeting, they're like, "Psst, Sam, the the buttons are supposed to be in the front."
40:55
Like, "I thought it was a breakaway."
41:01
Yeah, so I was like was learning as I as I went.
41:03
But, as the owner of a company that had enterprise sales, it is awesome.
41:07
Because what I didn't realize, there's this amazing thing that I learned, which is that sales teams can create demand.
41:13
So, even if your product Our product was great, but even if your product is okay, if you have a good sales team, you can truly create demand and I didn't understand that until like year two or three of like having a team like this.
41:26
I'm like, "Oh my god, this is how the world works."
41:28
Because most big companies, they just have a certain amount of budget, they have to spend it on something and if you just get in with them and you wine and dine them and you they like you, half the time the product doesn't even matter.
41:40
They just have to spend it, otherwise next year they won't have the same budget.
41:43
If they don't have the same budget, they don't have a job.
41:46
So, and you can like that or you can not like it.
41:48
Frankly, I don't love that that that's like the truth, but if you can make it work, it's pretty amazing and I like learned that the hard way while running a company like this.
41:57
And if you don't know which one you like, your best bet is to go get exposure to a bunch of them.
42:00
So, go go try your hand and do like a a six-month rotation where you're basically like, "Okay, how do I do this enterprise sales thing?
42:08
How do I do cold calling? How do I do Google Ads?
42:11
How do I do these different things and figure out which one of these appeals to you because once you do that, then then you could kind of pick and choose.
42:18
I I know most most people and I I would I would think you you would find this to be true.
42:23
Most successful people we know, they don't really hop around sales channels that much. It's like No.
42:28
if they're good at Find one thing and and you and you kill it.
42:30
Yeah, they Oh, you're good at SEO, they just do it SEO four different times in four different flavors.
42:33
Oh, you're good at Facebook Ads?
42:34
You do Facebook Ads for one business than another business than another business.
42:38
If you're good at uh enterprise sales, you just figure out, you know, which businesses to plug into that over time.
42:43
And they kind of make a career out of really understanding one growth process because being a master at any growth thing is uh is super super valuable.
42:56
I can't find this client info.
42:56
Have you heard of HubSpot?
42:58
HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares data across every application.
43:04
Every team can stay aligned.
43:05
No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot, grow better.
43:13
Um do you want to talk about Hustle GP GPT3 or do you want to go to another topic?
43:19
Um which Let's do some quicker ones cuz I feel like we did a long a long-winded thing.
43:24
So, I have I have a a couple quick ones. Tell me. Okay.
43:27
So, I'm going to give you my two uh bad dating ideas.
43:30
And by the way, I'd like to to put another drunk ideas on the books to uh to just put that out there.
43:36
This would have been in my drunk ideas thing, but we we don't have it scheduled.
43:39
So, I'm just going to do it sober.
43:41
So, um two bad dating ideas. Um number one.
43:45
Do you watch the TV show Love is Blind?
43:49
Sarah does, so it's on my TV all the time. Okay, good.
43:53
So, you know the premise.
43:55
You and my wife have like the exact same TV stuff.
43:57
Like for the listener, Shawn and Sarah are texting about Bachelor or Bachelorette, whatever it's called. Yeah.
44:03
Or no, what are you guys talking about? The Challenge.
44:05
but also these other shows.
44:05
So, um So, Love Is Blind is this like sensation show on Netflix, which is basically like you get a bunch of single people together, they're in these rooms, they can't see each other.
44:16
So, you kind of speed date you date you date other people, but you never get to see them.
44:21
So, you're only supposed to, you know, fall in love with their personality.
44:22
And then after you choose who you like the best on their personality, then you get to see them and you get to see what happens.
44:29
Okay, so And don't you like get married at the end?
44:31
Yeah, well, of course to to like any great story it needs stakes.
44:34
And so, they raise the stakes by saying, "You don't just get to pick say, 'Oh, I like Sam the best.
44:37
I mean I want to see him now.'"
44:38
It's like in order to see him, you must get engaged blind and get married 4 weeks later.
44:43
So, they like, you know, that's how they make it a TV show, but people walk walk on the altar. Yeah, yeah. decide at the altar.
44:50
of people when they see the other person, they're like, "Oh, hey, it's so good to see you."
44:53
Like they just like, "Oh, man, like I imagined something different and now I'm stuck with you and now I look like an [ __ ] because I fell in love with your personality and I fell out of love with your face."
45:03
Uh but they can't say that.
45:05
So, they have to find some other excuse.
45:08
One guy on the show was like they're trying to get an idea of how uh how they look.
45:12
So, they go, "So, I'm pretty The guy was like, I only weigh 150 lb. Yeah.
45:17
Could I give you a piggyback ride?"
45:19
he goes he goes and it was so smooth the way he did it.
45:21
He And by smooth I mean terribly.
45:23
He goes, "I love to go to music festivals." She's like, "Me, too."
45:26
He goes, "At music festivals, you know, I uh I usually put my girlfriend up on my shoulders.
45:33
Um do you think I'd be able to do that with He's like Did she catch it?
45:40
Yeah, she was like, uh like, "No, that's my worst nightmare is a guy like struggling to lift my body weight."
45:49
Oh, and so, she was just like, "What the hell?"
45:50
But I like what size rowboat do we need?
45:53
On this on this season, there's one guy she they fell in love and then they meet and he's just he's not he's not bad good or whatever, but he's does really intense eye contact.
46:03
Like the guy doesn't blink.
46:05
She's like, "You're going to never known this from behind the wall."
46:07
And so she's like, "Haha, like how come you're not looking away?"
46:11
And he's like, "What do you mean? I am blinking."
46:14
And she's like, "No, like please look away.
46:19
It's like so uncomfortable to watch." So anyways, great show.
46:23
I think somebody should take this show on the road.
46:26
Literally, I think somebody should do a I think the show, but if not the show, then somebody should spin this off.
46:30
Do a Love is Blind tour where you go city to city and people pay to be a part of the experiment.
46:37
So people pay to actually like do the show themselves.
46:39
I also think you should do a podcast version of Love is Blind.
46:43
Because podcast is audio only, so it's already no visual.
46:46
So you could have two people talking and you could sort of edit and cut this together and make a a pod version of Love is Blind.
46:54
So I think people could take this concept of this dating show, or it could be other dating shows too, but make a make a tour out of it.
47:00
Make a show out of it where it's going from city to city and people get to participate almost like American Ninja Warrior.
47:06
So people get to participate and other people get to watch the the show going down.
47:09
And I think that these things could generate a lot of money ticket wise because Netflix has done the hard work of educating the market.
47:15
And so once you get that education in the market, now somebody should go to them and get the license.
47:22
Like we talked about this with kids cartoons.
47:23
Or they can just call it like Love with Poor Eyesight. Fuzzy love. Yeah.
47:35
I forgot my glasses love.
47:35
So So like people did this with the cartoons.
47:38
That was a That was a three out of 10. Yeah, it's okay.
47:40
I gave you a laugh to try to like, you know, smooth it over.
47:44
Um But like kids cartoons like Blippi or Cocomelon, there's these companies that go and they license the rights to create the Cocomelon live tour or the Blippi live tour.
47:54
And I've gone to these and these I did a segment on the pod about these.
47:58
These things make millions dollars a year.
47:59
Yeah, well the every parent loves it's like where can you can't really there's not many places you can take a tiny kid that's like kid-friendly, but this is perfect cuz they already love these cartoons on YouTube.
48:07
And so I'm willing to pay 50 bucks a ticket times four.
48:11
So I pay 200 bucks, then I buy the merch, then I buy the the snacks cuz of course my kids want snacks.
48:15
And you know, we go there and we've dropped 400 500 dollars by the by the end of it or you know, something like that.
48:21
And so these these shows can make a lot of money.
48:23
And so I think somebody could do this with other television shows including the dating shows.
48:29
That's not a bad idea at all.
48:31
Well, that's that's a great idea.
48:31
You should you should have come up with something worse.
48:33
Yeah, you should have seen an average person try to explain that idea.
48:38
You you would have laughed them out of the room.
48:39
Okay, here's my second Love is blind on tour.
48:41
Ah, even that sounds all right.
48:43
So my second bad dating idea.
48:45
Okay, so you've heard about this like dating app Raya. You know about this app?
48:51
It's basically a dating app originally for famous people, but now it's like dating apps for people with like verified on Instagram or something.
49:00
Yeah, I don't even really understand it.
49:02
I think somebody needs to come over the top on Raya and make the even more elite dating app. So I'm calling it Daddy. Here's what Daddy is.
49:11
So Daddy Daddy or Zaddy, you know, we're we're we're debating it internally.
49:14
So Daddy is an app where for a guy to be on Daddy actually let me first start with the girl side.
49:21
Okay, for a woman to be on Daddy she's got to basically audition or apply.
49:26
And we're only accepting the top 1% of eligible women.
49:30
So this is beautiful, but not just beautiful.
49:36
Smart, but not just smart.
49:36
You got to be living in a in a in a town a big city so that you know, you're available to be to be to be you know, reached to be dated.
49:44
So beautiful smart top 1% maybe even top 0. 1% of applicants to in.
49:49
More more elite than Harvard.
49:53
And then on the guy side you got to pay $25,000 a year to be on the app. So, that's the app idea.
49:57
5,000 men, if you can get 5,000 men who have the money to drop 25 Gs on their dating app they get access to this elite pool of women who want access to this rich group of men. And it is what it is. That's our slogan. It is what it is. Isn't it right?
50:19
Nah, but it is what it is, okay?
50:23
And so, it is what it is.
50:23
It's rich guys with beautiful smart women.
50:26
And the business model is if we can get 5,000 guys to pay us this amount, that's a $100 million a year business.
50:34
Does that sound like something you might be interested in?
50:38
So, when I was studying like for Hampton to launch Hampton, I was like curious about communities.
50:42
And there's a bunch of a lot of people are like, you should charge like a hundred grand a year.
50:44
And the reason being is there's a bunch of communities out there where the whole thing of making it elite in community is just can you pay the money?
50:54
And I was thinking about that and I'm like, first like the audacity.
50:58
And second, if you can get My first question is How dare you? Who are you?
51:06
Uh and the but if you can get past that how amazing is that where your whole business is just uh if you can pay it, you're probably good.
51:16
So, we'll just uh we'll we'll be we'll we're happy to that and check it out.
51:20
And so, there's this app called The League.
51:21
Do you know what The League is? It's a dating app.
51:23
It started over here in San Francisco by this woman named Amanda Bradford who I'm friends with here in Austin.
51:29
She sold it recently to what's the big the big company?
51:31
IAC who owns like Match and Bumble and or not Bumble, Tinder.
51:38
And what when Amanda was getting started, she was or the the league kind of took off.
51:43
And so, I don't you probably don't know this.
51:44
It was like only was the premise, right?
51:46
It was like only Ivy League.
51:49
But then, she one day she was like, "How hard can I push this?"
51:52
And so, right now the league costs, I believe it's either $499 or $999.
51:57
So, it's either $499 or $999. It's one of those two.
52:03
And the reason being is that's the highest price per month that you can charge on Apple's on the Apple Store. per month. Sorry, yeah. $399 per month. So, yeah.
52:16
It's It's the highest that you can possibly charge. And she goes, "Screw it.
52:19
That's what it's going to cost to get premium features."
52:20
And people like at her I think her team was like, "This is crazy. We can't do this. No one will do this." And it crushed it.
52:28
And IAC came to her and they're like, "We want to buy you because how on earth are you able to charge this?"
52:32
And I imagine in her head she was like, "Well, it was actually pretty easy.
52:36
I just added an extra nine at the end of Actually, you're right.
52:42
The The highest tier is called investor. Uh it's member, $299. Owner, $399. Investor, $999. 99. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:52
Yeah, it's like it's like there's like an episode on South Park where they come up with this like new MBA and they're like, "Look, I don't make up the rules.
52:59
I just think them up and write them down. You can't argue with me.
53:01
I didn't make up the rules."
53:04
And it's like, "Well, how did you increase pricing so much?"
53:05
Well, I just clicked at that button nine and we added we made it instead of 999, we made it 900 or instead of 99. 99, it was 999.
53:11
So, anyway, it's killed it.
53:15
And so, I actually think that there are a lot of interesting opportunities in the market where you can just charge way more.
53:21
And it feels very weird and that's the business model.
53:26
And actually, now that I think about it, $25,000 a year, that was complete small boy stuff and I apologize to the entire audience.
53:33
This needs to be 100 grand a year.
53:35
This This has to be 100 grand a year. And guess what?
53:37
We only need 1,000 members now.
53:39
We only need 1,000 guys who are willing to drop a hundred grand in order to get access to the most And in fact, you know what we're going to do?
53:47
We're going to take a portion of that money and we're going to pay some women to be on this app.
53:50
We're going to say, "Look, you are so great.
53:52
You were casted onto this and you are going to be paid to be a part of this network because um we want to blur the lines between prostitution and legal dating." Oh my god.
54:07
It is what it is, as we say. God bless you.
54:11
Maybe this will work, but yeah, good luck.
54:14
think there's there needs to be more uh apps that do this, that go over the top uh with it. Like I agree.
54:20
Basically find the theoretical max of uh uh of what what the market will bear or what uh what people actually want to do, right?
54:27
Like what what is the actual behavior people want and what are they willing to do?
54:31
And it's usually more than you think um or more than, you know, sounds sounds reasonable.
54:36
Like what What if you just took an unreasonable approach to the same thing?
54:39
What would you do differently?
54:40
Is it a question you can ask about really any business.
54:45
Like there was this guy they created this thing called the Unreasonable Institute back in the day and I loved it. real?
54:49
Yeah, it was a great it was a great idea.
54:50
It was called the Unreasonable Institute and it was for I just loved the name because I I loved the entire premise, which was "What good has become from just taking a reasonable approach to something?"
54:58
If you're trying to make any big [ __ ] happen, you're trying to do anything, change the way anything works, you know, like create a new system or improve something or innovate, you know, in a way, by definition, you're going to do something slightly unreasonable.
55:10
Um and so called the Unreasonable Group?
55:13
Yeah, it was called the Unreasonable Institute.
55:16
Then they had the Unreasonable like tour where they like they like got on a cruise ship and went into international waters.
55:23
Um and then they did a bunch of these Now it's probably called This is like 10-plus years ago, so yeah. That's so funny. It's probably changed.
55:29
Well, there's a thing called Unreasonable Group and it's The Unreasonable Collective is an international community of sophisticated investors.
55:34
We pool We pool capital as a community and co-invest in world class.
55:39
But then there's the unreasonable institute which is a fast-track program to give altruistic entrepreneurs skills and funding to affect large-scale change.
55:47
Yeah, I think that's the one.
55:48
sounds maybe a little Yeah, the first one maybe sounds cooler though. But uh that's cool. I like that name.
55:54
Speaking of unreasonable, do you want to wrap this up by talking one thing Elon Musk? Okay. Did you see what he did?
56:01
So you see the Twitter thing?
56:03
Well, which which Twitter thing?
56:03
I feel like every day there's an Elon Musk Twitter thing.
56:06
the where he blurred out the W. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. This is news to me. This is news to me. this. I saw this. I saw this.
56:13
This is This explain this. This is dumb.
56:16
There's this There There's this thing in the UFC called If you win, so basically the UFC and all about fighting it has weight divisions.
56:23
And every once in a while someone like Conor McGregor or someone else comes along and they achieve greatness.
56:27
And they earn what's called the champ champ status, meaning they have a champ They're the champion in one weight division and then while having that belt they also gain few pounds and go up and win another belt. It's unheard of.
56:40
In my opinion, Elon is the champ champ. He has amazing products.
56:43
He's one of the best entrepreneurs out there. He's the champion.
56:48
He's also the most tringeous.
56:51
He's the champ champ right now.
56:51
And he does whatever the [ __ ] he wants.
56:53
That's what champ champs do.
56:55
And recently, like last night, he tweeted out that there was a dispute with the landlord saying you can't like alter the sign or something like that.
57:03
So he took like a piece of white sheet or paper or something and he blurred out the W.
57:10
So now Twitter, the sign is a huge sign when you live in San Francisco.
57:14
I lived a block away from it. It says Titter.
57:18
And it's the most cringe thing I've ever seen.
57:21
Why on earth would he do that?
57:21
I love a good troll, but that's not like funny.
57:24
It just makes like people like Look, I like trolling. I love punching up.
57:30
Uh but this is like This is punching yourself in the face.
57:33
I like making people uncomfortable.
57:35
This is the bad type of uncomfortable.
57:38
Go to his Twitter right now.
57:41
Do you see what his name is on Twitter right now?
57:42
Cuz you thought that was the cringiest thing he's done in the last 48 hours.
57:46
Well, he's one-upped himself. Oh my god. What an idiot.
57:53
Uh god, it's it's really His name right now is H Hairy Balls.
57:57
He spells balls b o l z, but it's hairy balls.
58:02
That is his name on Twitter right now.
58:04
Oh, Elon, you're so you're so irreverent. Yeah.
58:10
Dude, it's this is too much, man. of humor.
58:15
Like we're They're just like us.
58:17
love to see what Elon thinks the like other people's reaction is.
58:20
He must type these in and just sit back and s just smirk.
58:24
Just have a smug look on his face.
58:26
Just imagine, oh man, the internet's going to love this.
58:31
I I'm super rich, but I don't take myself too seriously. Look at this. Yeah. Jeez.
58:36
Next week it's going to be like like Elon Baller 69.
58:38
Like it's just like uh uh This is the lamest thing ever, man.
58:43
I don't know how I mean, I guess like look, when it with extreme personalities comes extreme success, but they don't tell you there's another end of that bell curve, and that's extreme That's extreme cringe.
58:53
And that And we're experiencing that a little bit right now.
58:57
I know a lot of billionaires Not a lot.
58:59
I know a a couple billionaires, and I know I know a lot of wildly successful people, and they do every once in a while, like you're like, "Oh, hey man, you don't know how to hold a conversation appropriately.
59:07
Let me help you out here."
59:08
This is kind of what's happening with him.
59:10
It just so happens that it's in front of 125 million followers.
59:13
He has like the cringe version of Tourette's. Like, dude, just stop.
59:16
He can't He can't stop just blurting out these cringey things.
59:21
Yeah, it's it's ridiculous.
59:24
Um he's he I I actually think that he's kind of ruining his legacy for sure here.
59:28
Um like maybe 5 years ago he was the man.
59:31
Um and he still is the man frankly.
59:34
Like his accomplishments are amazing, but he's a little less of the man at this point.
59:39
There was a funny funny back and forth.
59:41
He uh somebody tweeted out a a graph of all the billion dollar a chart of all the billion dollar companies and what industries they're in. Yeah, I saw that.
59:48
And uh Paul Graham retweeted and he says, "Oh, you know what's interesting here is like we're clearly like over indexed on like software and like you know real world things like uh hardware or manufacturing.
1:00:00
You know, there's only like a few companies in that bucket."
1:00:04
Um But don't let that hold you back. You should still do it. still do it.
1:00:07
I think there's a lot of opportunity there.
1:00:09
And Elon replied and was like um yeah, like a complete waste uh you know, says something like it was like a a big waste of um of resources or brainpower or talent that that was the case.
1:00:23
And then um And the the response was the biggest own and I've seen in a week.
1:00:25
It was It was a really good reply.
1:00:28
Paul Graham goes "Yeah, can you think of anybody right now who's really talented and uh and and could be doing those things but is wasting their time on a software project?"
1:00:39
And it's so good because obviously talking about Elon.
1:00:41
Um and uh yeah, he's like a a perfect self self own really by Elon.
1:00:46
Yeah, it was pretty good. Too good. It was good. That was good.
1:00:51
I'm a big fan of him um of Paul Grant. I'm still an Elon guy.
1:00:54
I think I might get myself a Tesla, but I don't like this.
1:00:59
It makes it hard to want to wear like a Tesla t-shirt, that's for sure.
1:01:02
Not that he cares, but uh it it makes it challenging to like root for him publicly when he makes these stupid comments.
1:01:09
People in people in our comments hate when I make fun of Elon or or diss Elon or Chamath or these guys cuz they're like fans of them, which is totally fair.
1:01:17
You can be fans of whoever you want.
1:01:19
Uh but I just want to for the record. I'm out on Elon early. Cuz guess what?
1:01:24
More and more you got to be out on this guy over time and I just want to plant the flag.
1:01:29
I'm out on him early because his cringe will eventually wash away all these people or he's going to get canceled for something.
1:01:36
I'm telling you it's it's going to happen and I I would like the record to show that I was out early.
1:01:42
Dude, these these people in our comments are crazy to me because why can't someone do a lot of really good stuff and also some bad stuff?
1:01:47
Like why can't like someone kick ass at a at at a ton of different things and make a huge amount of mistakes? Totally.
1:01:55
Uh cuz whenever we talk about this, we say, "Yeah, he's he's the best at a bunch of different things."
1:02:00
He's the greatest entrepreneur he's of of I don't know, the last 30 years, 50 years. That is true.
1:02:04
Also true, he's pretty cringe and uh corny and disingenuous about some some things, right? Also true. Yeah.
1:02:16
It's like I can love Michael Jackson's music and also not love what he did, you know?
1:02:21
Like both like both can exist.
1:02:24
I can like Chick-fil-A chicken and also not stand by what they what they stand for, you know?
1:02:32
Both can be true and I and I can't stand that with the with the commenters on our on our stuff, but we're going to get a reaction on this.
1:02:40
I'm eager to see what it is, but uh anyway, that's an action-packed pod, I think.