How to manufacture a billionaire childhood

Introduction Story

0:00I got something, Sean. I just had the craziest thing happen to me. One of the craziest things that have ever happened to me. Do you want to hear a story? Does it have to do with those glasses? No, but I am a cool guy, so that's why I decided to wear them. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel. I had one of the craziest things happen literally just 45 minutes ago. I was walking down the street in New York City near my house. Do you know Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?

0:32Yeah, the movie from back in the day. Of course. Rick, what's his name? I know his first name is Rick. I had to look up his last name. The Crowlinger dad? Yeah, I saw him walking. I saw him walking down the street, and I felt bold, and I walked up to him, and I said, excuse me, sir, I'm just a huge fan. I grew up watching your movies. And I kid you not, he was like, what's up, man? I appreciate that. Also, I've seen your videos. You're cool. I like MFM. And I was like, are you kidding me? And I go, Rick, I'm here talking to you now. If you know MFM, then you know it's part of the shtick. Did you just kill it in the

1:0690s with movies? And he goes, I killed it. I go, really? Really good? He goes, do you have a few minutes? I go, yeah, Rick, I got a few minutes. He goes, let me show you something. Brings me up to his apartment. This beautiful apartment overlooking Central Park. Beautiful. I'm like, you really did well, huh? And he was like, yeah. So, like, you know, I bought this from Harrison Ford. It's a beautiful apartment. And he's like, look, in the 90s, VHS were just pieces of plastic, and they were $25 a piece. Of course I killed it. And I walk, and I'm like walking through his

1:39apartment. And I'm like, Rick, is that an original Salvador Dali painting? And he goes, he points at it. He goes, Ghostbusters. And he just kept walking.

1:53So awesome.

1:56None of that happened. I did see him walk by, though. What?

2:00None of that happened. He did walk by me, though. And I imagined that that could have happened, though. What a rollercoaster of emotions you just took me on. That was fantastic.

2:14Wait, so you even see the guy? Or the entire thing was fictitious? I saw him. He lives near me. I did see him. And in my head, I went through all these things. Like, you know, when someone, like, insults you, and you think of a comeback, like, 30 seconds later, I, like, thought of all these things that could have happened if I said hi to him. But I didn't, you know, I'll never know. Turns out, though, he, uh... That was an episode of TV. That was fantastic. Yeah. Turns out, he, uh, quit acting because his wife passed away, and he decided to raise his kids. So, you know, he's just a nice old man now. He's in the 70s. I don't know what you're doing to me today, dude. It's Wednesday morning. Give me a break here.

TV Show Discussion

2:49Do you ever watch the TV show, Dave? Of course. I love it. My favorite show? There's an episode. I don't know if you remember this episode, or if you've seen this episode. It's, like, in one of the later seasons that, um, he, where he accidentally fakes his own death. Have you seen this? No. I've only seen season one, but that is something he would do. Well, basically, his, they have this janky tour bus. This is not too big of a spoiler. The tour bus, like, explodes, and someone was filming, and it's, like, his face on the side of the tour bus. So, it looks like he died, and his phone had died. They just have no signal.

3:21They're, like, out somewhere. And so, for, like, you know, eight hours or whatever, after the tour bus exploded, he doesn't have any signal. So, the whole world thinks that he died, and then he logs in. He's, like, oh, my God. Everybody thinks I died. And he's, like, I got to tweet out that I'm okay. And his manager's, like, but just wait a minute, because there's all these, like, memorials. There's, like, this outpouring of, like, people saying how much they love him. Like, Drake is in his DMs. It's, like, bro, like, you know what? I always loved your shit, man. I'll miss you, bro. And he's, like,

3:52kind of reveling in it, but then there's no way out because, you know, he's, like, the longer he lets it go, the harder it is to get back to it, to just, like, come out and be, like, just kidding, guys. I'm here. Because then you're seen as, like, the ultimate asshole, but he can't resist because the idea of what it would be like is too intoxicating for him. I feel like you did something like that to me just now. He's, like, he tweets, or his manager tweets out, like, you know, Dave RIP, and he's, like, he's not dead. I just want him to have peace, you know?

4:22Yeah, rest peacefully. Rest in peacefully.

Billy of the Week

4:26All right, I have one interesting thing that I could bring up. Let's do it. Billy of the Week. We haven't done that in a minute. I have an interesting person. Billy of the Quarter, I guess, since we haven't done this in a while. Well, it's the Billy of this week. It's just we don't do it every other week. Have you heard of a guy named Jim Ratcliffe? Sir Jim Ratcliffe? No, I don't know who that person is. Okay, so listen to this. Here's a story of this guy named Jim Ratcliffe. He's really interesting to me. So he's born in Manchester, England, which is sort of like a blue collar. It's kind of like the Boston of America, of England.

4:59It's like, you know, white, blue collar, you know, hardworking, kind of poor. He studies chemical engineering. He becomes a chemical engineer at an oil company. But, like, things are only going okay. And then he has a background in accounting. He studies accounting and chemical engineering in college. And he gets a job at a PE firm at the age of 35. And he's like, this is pretty amazing. Like, you know, this is a great way to make money. I like making money. But at the age of 40, he was like, all right, I've worked for another guy for long enough. I want to try and do this on my own.

5:31He doesn't have a ton of money. I think he had a home that he owned. And he had like $100,000 or $150,000 to his name. And this was in the late 80s. And so he partners up with a guy. And they're like, okay, we've been buying companies for our employer, the firm that we worked for. Let's try and do it on our own. And they convince some of their old clients, some of their old LPs to invest in them. And they spend about a year looking for a company. And so with 3 million pounds in equity, they buy a $80 million,

6:02I'm going to say dollars, but I mean pounds, but $80 million company that is a spinoff of BP. Basically, BP, the oil company owns a chemical division, which basically makes like chemicals. So like the commodity that let's say like your toothpaste has like, you know, fluoride in it. Well, someone like has to get the fluoride. Right. Whatever it is, the chemicals that make like plastic packaging, whatever. They buy that unit from BP for $80 million, of which $3 million was equity and the rest was debt. So like a really heavy debt thing.

6:34And he mortgages his home. He uses 100% of his money. He has two kids and a wife. And he was like, my wife, like, we've talked about it for six months. Like, should we do this? Is this like, you know, this can ruin us. This is going to ruin our careers. This is going to, we're going to use all of our money. But you know what? We have to take a risk. And so he does that in 1990, I believe. And by 1997, it works. This $80 million company is now worth like a billion and a half. And that's how he makes his initial money. And over the years, he's kind of kept that one thing. I think it's called Ineos is the name of the company.

7:05It's a chemical company that you probably have never heard of. But to this day or today, it does about $40 billion in revenue, employs many tens of thousands of people. It's one of the largest chemical companies in the world at this point. And basically, the way that he's grown is a combination of PE and his chemical engineering background. So he understands chemicals. But his whole shtick was finding like spinoffs that conglomerates didn't want to own anymore because it was a distraction. He would buy it for whatever he would pay for. And his goal was to double the EBITDA in five years.

7:36That's like sort of standard stuff. That's kind of the boring thing that he did. But now at this point, he's, I think, the number one or number two or three richest person in England. Amazing. But the more interesting part, in my opinion, is what he has done with his money.

Jim Ratcliffe's Story

7:51So check this out. Do you remember the two-hour marathon with Ilud Kipchoge that Nike did like four years ago? Yeah. It didn't have recently, right? Well, someone actually just broke two hours recently. But like four years ago or three years ago, there's this amazing runner named Ilud Kipchoge. And they set up like the world's perfect setup for him. So they had like a pace car that was like perfectly in front of him that went on pace for an hour, 59 minutes. They did it on an F1 track. So it was perfectly flat. And they let him wear shoes or he decided to wear shoes that weren't technically allowed

8:24in sanctioned races. But he was like, you know, this is just a spectacle. Let's do it. And so he broke two hours in the marathon. Well, Jim Radcliffe is a huge sports nut. He's run 50 marathons. He's gone to the North Pole, the South Pole. He's climbed all these mountains. He's like one of these crazy guys. And he was the underwriter of that. He paid for the whole thing just because he also owns a ton of different sports leagues. So he owns Team Sky Cycling. So that's the team that won the Tour de France eight times. He has he owns one third of Mercedes F1 team. He owns one of the best America Cup sailing team.

8:55He owns 25% of Manchester United soccer team. He used to own Chelsea, which is, you know, a big soccer team. But the really cool thing that he's done recently. Have you heard of a car? I think it's called the Grenadier. Have you seen this car? Google this car and tell me if you've seen this. It looks like a G-Wagon or a Defender. Yeah. Yeah. It looks a lot like a G-Wagon. Okay. So check this out. So in 2016, this guy Jim, he loves Defenders. Now, the thing about Defenders is Land Rover.

9:26And I think Land Rover is owned by Jaguar. So Jaguar still makes the Land Rover. But the real famous ones are the old ones. The ones from like the 80s and late 90s. Those are really cool. They're really boxy. But although enthusiasts love them and they pay sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars for these cars, you can't really buy new parts anymore because Jaguar just quit manufacturing it. And he is a huge enthusiast of the Defender. He loves it. And he's a rich guy. So he was able to get a meeting with someone high up at Jaguar.

9:58And they go to a bar called the Grenadier Bar. And the gym is like trying to persuade them like, hey, you know, I'll even help pay for the tooling. Is there a world where like, I think it could be for shits and giggles. It would be fun. Let's remake some of the parts for the Defender because the Defender is the most comfortable off-road car. But unlike a lot of new cars, it's still got a little edge on it. You know, it's got like it's like it feels not too luxurious. It feels like a proper off-road car. And they're like, no, man, this doesn't make sense. We're not going to do it. So he's like, you know what? Fine. I'm just going to create a car company.

10:28That's what we're going to do. And so within his chemical business, they create this thing called the Grenadier. It's a SUV that you just saw. I think it sells for like 80 or 90 grand. It has a small cult following in America. I think it's pretty big in Europe as well. And he's like, screw it. We're going to make a car company just because I love these cars so much, but they don't make them anymore. So I'm going to make what I think it should be the way it should be done. And so there's this famous line where just to give me an idea of what he's like, he said, it's the most comfortable off-road vehicle bar none.

10:58And the journal says like, yeah, but like those late models, they don't like fit the environmental standards of today, nor are they really that safe. And he was like, what's wrong with that? And he's like, he goes, what's wrong with that? They're effing great cars. Uh, and so he starts making these cars and that's where we are now. So these cars have a huge cult following in America, a bunch of like my car nerd buddies like them. They're known for being like kind of sparse in the interior. So if you look at the interior, they've got these like the switches look like switches from

11:32like a tank a little bit. Like it's like all mechanical stuff and they're kind of a pain in the ass. And the truth is, is that it's a horrible business. Since 2018, he has lost $2 billion on this car company. Last year, the company was a negative $300 million in profit. It's not going so good, but it's awesome. All right, let's take a quick break. This podcast is called My First Million, and it's probably the question we get asked the most. How do I go from zero to making my first million?

12:02And so I did an episode a little while back where I broke down exactly the sort of philosophy and frameworks that I would use. So things like finding your white belt business or identifying your bear on a unicycle advantage, the core way that your two skills can overlap. Or why maybe starting a service business is better than starting a software business for your initial businesses to make that first million. And so the team at HubSpot has created a guide that took the stuff I said in that episode. They laid it all out for you. You can get it for free in the description below.

Childhood Interests

12:30Just click that link and it's all yours. All right, back to this episode. What do you love most about this guy? He's got a f*** you attitude that I really dig. I really like if you Google him, you'll see that he's wearing a barber wax jacket, which is sort of like an adventurer's like jacket. It's like wet, like kind of like rough and tumble blue collar, like guys wear. It's like work wear. And I appreciate that he still has a little bit of edge to him, even though I think he's like the 90th richest man in the world.

13:01And so I really appreciate that. And I also appreciate that he does shit just because. Yeah, there's something great about the, I don't know if you want to call it side quests or the just because or the FU attitude, but I think both of us love that. I have this thing that I keep running called the SideQuest Hall of Fame. And it started because Palmer Luckey was on Joe Rogan. You know, Palmer created Oculus. We created the leading VR headset, sold it for a few billion to Facebook.

13:32Then he created Anduril, the leading, you know, the first kind of like significant tech company that was doing defense stuff. It's worth like whatever, a hundred billion dollars, whatever it's worth right now. And he goes on Rogan and he says, oh, you know what I want to do next? And I'm expecting him to say a company, like another startup. And he's like, I want to create like a privately funded version of the X-Files. He's like, I just want to go hunt for aliens. And he's like, I'll fund it and then we'll go find them.

14:03We'll figure out what's going on. He's like, I feel like the government's not telling us everything. I was like, well, that would be an epic use of this person's talent and money. And, you know, since then he's done, he did this thing where he like basically brought back the Game Boy. I own one. I was about to bring that up. He's done N64 and Game Boy. Yeah, he's got Mod Retro and so he's just, he just does cool shit. And then, you know, he's kind of like these, you know, dresses eclectically, all the stuff. And I saw this video recently that it was, I thought, a more endearing side to him. Did you hear the video about why he wears the Hawaiian shirts?

14:37No. Would someone make fun of him one time and he like was going to do it out of spite? Well, he was like, we grew up, he's like, I grew up really poor. And so I didn't have any, we didn't have any money for new clothes. And so I had to wear my dad's old Hawaiian shirts every day. Like, that's just all I had. My wardrobe was like seven of these. And I wore them and I got made fun of, but that's all I had. So I wore them. And he's like, and then when I sold my company, you know, he says something where it's like, I got like, I got some money and I tried to change, like I tried to change. And then he's like, basically reverted.

15:09He was like, actually, I'm just going to wear the shirts that like I like and I know. And like, this is what I'm all about. And I don't need the fancy clothes to like validate me as like I've done it. And I love that. I just think he carries that FU energy with him pretty much everywhere. A thing that he has that I don't find him to be a hard-o. I don't find him to be insufferable. I find him to be someone who's confident in his opinion. And you could challenge him and he's open to new ideas, but he's very confident. I find him like at a very young age.

15:41I mean, when we talked to him, I think he was 33. And he was like saying like, here's the thing about defense contractors. They're doing this wrong. That's a very bold thing to say, right? And I appreciate that about him. And I used to meet these people and I used to think, how do I become like that? But now I think, how do I raise children that are that way? How do you raise kids that are that confident at such a young age, but not in an insufferable way and also in a way where I think they've backed it up by studying whatever they're going to say? Have you ever thought about what do you think his parents were like?

16:11I guess you said he was raised poor, so he had not a wealthy family. And yet they still were able to instill the sense of like, you can do it and you can figure this out. Well, I'm not sure how much it is watering the plant versus the soil you grow up in. So, for example, there's a reason that the most successful people on earth typically come from disadvantaged backgrounds. You go look at, you know, why is, you know, sort of dyslexia so common amongst successful people?

16:45It's like, is this disproportionate? You know, you would expect it to be the proportion of dyslexia in the population, but no, it's a higher percentage in successful people. Or, you know, why are, you know, so many athletes come from, you know, poor families and single mother homes and things like this. Like, you know, they don't have all the training and the advantages and the best gear and the best anything, right? But like they have the one thing that can't be bought, which is like this sort of insatiable hunger. And so I think that confidence is a byproduct of the adventure

17:16and adversity you've faced in your life. So you don't just say, be confident. Actually, the advice to somebody who wants to be confident is go have more adventure in adversity. It will make you get hardened by confidence over time because the more adventure you do where you put yourself in unfamiliar situations or the more adversity you face and you come out still surviving, even if you didn't win, you survived, then the next thing doesn't seem all that scary. You sort of think to yourself, well, I did all those things. Of course, I can go into this new unfamiliar situation and thrive as well. And so I think that the confidence is not so much like, you know, as parents told you,

17:50but like, you know, the environment. Like if you grow up and you're poor, but you're tinkering or you're nerdy or you have access to certain books, you know, it's kind of amazing how these very small things make a difference. There's a story I read this morning, actually, about Dan Brown. You know who Dan Brown is, the author? He wrote The Da Vinci Code and like a bunch of other like thriller adventure books, right? Where a hero goes on a quest, there's sort of a puzzle, they got to figure it out. Growing up, Dan did not find Christmas gifts under his Christmas tree as a child. His father, Richard Brown, a math teacher, instead put a treasure map under the tree.

18:25And Dan would have to follow the treasure map for a trail of clues all over the house and sometimes all over the neighborhood until he finally found the present. This sparked a deep love of solving puzzles, cracking codes, and hunting treasures. He channeled this into Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and other thrillers that have sold more than 200 million copies, all about cracking ciphers, untangling coded messages, which is the heart of his books. A lesson from this. A childhood obsession can be a source of infinite inspiration. If you want to seek a meaningful quest as an adult,

18:56look towards the childhood toys and games that you couldn't get enough of. There may be clues in there.

Parenting and Confidence

19:01It's so funny. That sounds like a cute thing, but there's been so many times, and I wonder if there's actually research that verifies this, but there's been so many times. We had Robert Greene on MFM a while ago, and that was really great. And he said, define the thing that you want to dedicate your life to. You have to do something that sounds easy, but it's really challenging, which is you have to revert back to what you were like as a 12-year-old before you had people who put pressure on you, before you realized that something was stupid or uncool, and before you got jaded and when you were excitable.

19:31And you have to ask yourself, what was that thing? And I've heard people talk about this constantly of like, in order to be great as an adult, you have to do this challenging thing of pretending to be a kid. Where were you weird as a child? What would it be for you? So if you think back to that era, what were you doing? You're 12, 13, 14. Let's take this window, 8 to kind of 14 years old. Skateboarding a ton. I was skateboarding a ton, and I was always taking apart remote control cars and building them in interesting ways to get out doing chores.

20:04For example, I spent a whole six months trying to rebuild a remote control car so it had a mop on it because I hated sweeping the floor. And I distinctly remember doing that and being obsessed with it and building model airplanes, like assembling things that had clear instructions. I love doing. So, I mean, in a way, you chose to build things instead of doing 9 to 5, instead of doing a job. Yeah, well, I also loved, I had a huge passion for selling CDs.

20:34I remember I used to make like $30 selling like $3, you know, burned CDs. And I loved doing that. And for the longest time, I thought I was going to be in the entertainment industry. My hero was Ari Gold from the TV show Entourage. And I went to Belmont University because they had this degree called a music business degree, which I made it through three years. And then I was like, I'm going to drop out of school. Just give me like the easiest degree I can get, like with the credits that I got. So I didn't get to complete that degree. But the reason I got into media and the reason why I probably enjoy doing this and working in the content game

21:05is because I wanted to work with entertainment people. But then I realized that Hollywood is full of idiots and I hated them, but I can build my own little world like that. Yeah, I don't know how much of this is like horoscopes or whatever, where you just sort of, you try to back test and fit anything into it. But I just was in Austin yesterday and I did a podcast with Monish Pabrai. And Monish has this thing where he tells these stories about Buffett. And he says, his theory is basically that a huge percentage of your personality

21:38is pretty hardwired and baked by the time you're five years old. And you don't want to spend your whole life fighting your nature. So that's the first thing. And then he says that for kids, we do pretty much the opposite thing we're supposed to do. So he says, the human brain, if you just look at brain science, is that there's a golden window between, I think he says, the ages of eight to 18. So there's this 10-year window where a child's brain is developing in such a way that it can specialize and do some incredible things

22:09if you specialize during that window. And the people who do, and if you go look at like, oh, Bill Gates when he was coding or Mark Zuckerberg when he picked up programming or Mr. Beast when he started doing YouTube videos at age 12, like it's often that these people who become the extreme performers, that they were doing something pretty specialized during this golden window. And he's like, in school, we tell them to do the exact opposite. Hey, go to school, spend 30 minutes in eight different subjects. Don't, you know, go an inch deep in each one. Don't care about anything. You know, don't specialize.

22:41Become this like super generalist. That's the factory model that we have. So he's like, we're doing them kind of a disservice. He's like, your job as a parent is, you know, by five, their nature is somewhat baked. You observe it. And eight to 18, if they show an interest or an obsession at anything, feed it. Let them go crazy with it. Let them get obsessed. And lastly, like get them around as good of a peer group as you can. Those are really the only things you're going to be able to do is kind of his opinion. I don't know if I fully agree with that, but I think it's interesting. And then he tells a story of Buffett

23:11and he's like, you know, when Buffett was a kid, he did all kinds of little hustles, right? Like he would buy a thing and he would sell it, right? So Coke bottles and pinball games inside of barbershops. But one of the things he loved to do was he would go to the racetrack and he would watch other people betting. And he didn't bet. He was a kid, but he would watch other people betting. He would watch the horses, study the track. And then what he would do is at the end of the day, he would go collect all of the discarded betting slips that the, you know, people go to the horse track, they drink, they watch the thing,

23:41they're having a good time. They just check away their betting tickets. And he would see that, oh, actually this wasn't a losing ticket. That actually they got a third place payout here, they didn't realize it. Or they got a second place payout here, they didn't realize it. He would collect all the, you know, 80, 90% of it's trash. But if even five, 10%, he could make some money, then he would ask his aunt to go cash the tickets for him and that's how he made money. And like, it's not that different than what value investing is, right? He would go look at a thousand companies, a thousand tickets,

24:12you know, most of them are rubbish. But when he found one that had like hidden value, he would pounce on it and he would make money. And that's essentially how Warren Buffett, you know, invested for the first, you know, whatever, 10, 15, 20 years of his, of his investing career. And he bought his first stock when he was seven. And, you know, so he was doing things in this kind of golden window as well, which I think is interesting, especially, you know, for you and I, we have kids not at that exact age yet, but, you know, I think about that stuff. I don't know to what extent you can control it or you want to try to control it, but it does seem like it's worth knowing that

24:43and looking out for the right signals rather than being blind to it. There's this, I'm not religious, but I grew up going to Catholic school and you got to read the Bible a lot. And there's this biblical story where it's like someone's by a volcano or I forget what it is, but if there's like a loud like earthquake or like a natural disaster and then they're told like, you have to listen to what God's telling you. And they're like, well, I hear this really loud noise, but it doesn't like, I don't hear like a person talking to me. And they're like, even when things are really loud, the whisper or the God talking to you,

25:16it's going to sound very faint in a whisper. And that's the challenge is you have to like, you know, like really pay attention when there's a lot of loud noise because the most important stuff is just going to be a really faint whisper and you have to like try and hear it. And I don't really care about the message when it comes to God on that one. But I do think that like one, that's what this thing is because it's like that, that whatever you're being told what to do or you feel compelled to, it's a lot of times it's not a yell. It's like this really small whisper that you have to like, and that's like quite challenging. It's really hard to try and listen

25:47to like where you're being drawn to, you know, like or where your energy is pulling you to. It's not a push. It's a very, very, very small, like faint nudge. Right. Yeah. And there might be false positives along the way. And it's only obvious in hindsight. Like when I was thinking about that, like what was I doing when I was 12? Because I wasn't, and I used to actually be like kind of insecure about this. I was like, I wasn't really selling lemonade as a kid and, you know, flipping CDs and sneakers and whatever. Like the, the pattern I see now that I invest in a lot of founders,

26:19I'm like, I didn't really have that. Like the light bulb didn't come on for me, at least in terms of like trying to do business until I was, you know, 21. And frankly, like I don't think I'm the best entrepreneur or CEO anyway. So like maybe that's, that's true that that was the signal. But there were a couple of, a couple of signs that I, when I did think back and I actually like took more time to think about, I was like, what the hell was I doing back then? What was I really into in a way that like, or what was I naturally pretty good at that I didn't maybe pay as much attention to but now I can think about it.

26:49And the two that came to mind was I randomly like entered like improv class and improv competition when I was like in sixth or seventh grade. And we like made it to like the Texas state finals or whatever for like what we were doing. It was like a duos improv, which like, that's what this is. This is duo improv, what me and you do twice a week. And like, that actually did come pretty easily. I did have a lot of fun doing it. I didn't triple down into it because I, you know, whatever life happened, my parents didn't, didn't help me and I didn't know to ask for it.

27:20But like, maybe there was a signal there of like, hey, you kind of like this making things up, thinking on your feet, riffing off a partner. If there was another way to do that, what would that look like? And you know, I don't think I could have predicted podcasting, but it does make a little bit of sense now that I look back on that one. I was in a podcast the other day and someone asked about you and I was like, in another lifetime or maybe even this lifetime, Sean's going to be either like a comedian or something in show business. So that would check out. Yeah, I was in a movie or two when I was like a little, like in the same era, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, something like that.

27:50And then the other one that I noticed was, I love video games, which is pretty common, you know, boys love video games. But the way I played video games was a little bit weird. And so if I said, hmm, what was, let's pay attention to the weird. You know, I used to play Madden or NBA 2K, but I would basically never play the games. I would only do franchise mode, which is just where you're the general manager. You're building the team, drafting the players. You're basically making bets. You're investing, essentially like scouting, investing, simulating to see the result. And I would just simulate like decades in these games without ever playing the actual game.

28:21And my sister would make fun of me like, are you ever going to play this game? Like, what is this like fantasy roster you're building? But yeah, I don't know. I think, I think it's interesting to go look back. I'm not sure, again, how much of it is like forced narrative versus reality, but maybe there's something to it. I've now heard this enough times where I kind of got to take it somewhat seriously. And I think it is important because it's like when you are screwing a screw into the wall or whatever. And if you start out crooked, right, if you're at the wrong angle, no matter really how hard you push,

28:52it's just constant friction, right? You're just like breaking the wall, breaking the screw and breaking your own wrist, trying to make it go in. And then if you get things aligned right, it's like, oh, just four spins to the right, click. And I feel like a lot of my life was pushing screws into walls at the wrong angles, you know, trying stupid projects, trying things that weren't really in my nature, trying to be somebody who I wasn't. And man, life got a lot easier and it got a lot more successful when I sort of figured out like, oh, what am I actually like naturally pretty inclined to doing?

29:23Well, do you think you figured it out? Yeah, I think like what we do is like probably the closest approximation to it. Like if I look at what I do today, I get to nerd out on topics, which has always been something that I would do. Like I would always go down these like rabbit holes. And then this kind of duet improv type of thing, like being able to riff on topics and being generative with ideas has always been good. And then the other side of it is investing. I don't want to like play the game, but I like being the GM. I like being the sort of the franchise mode

29:54of doing this. And so I've had way more success, you know, investing or even incubating companies with other CEOs as operators now, right? Like I think in our portfolio is probably like, forget like angel investing, just like in the companies we own a big chunk of. There's like four companies or so where there's four CEOs and I don't do any of the day-to-day work and it's performing so much better than, you know, back when I used to do my own startup and I was all in on it, right? So this is a better fit for me to do that. I didn't know you had four. You're doing shit that you don't even talk about.

30:26Well, I want to talk about some of them soon and hopefully I will have some news sometime in the next few months that I can come on and maybe start to tell these stories.

30:37All right, let's take a quick break

Austin Trip

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31:03What did you think of Austin?

31:06Austin is a funny place. A funny place.

31:11I went to my like hotel room and I walked in and housekeeping was in there, but I was surprised and I came out and I told Ben, I go, y'all got white housekeepers here? I had a white housekeeper that my wife hired and I was like, I bet you she's going to be a drug addict and I was right. She was a drug addict. I don't hire these guys anymore. It's like, there's this great stand-up bit where, I forget who it was, like Aziz or if it was Hassan or I forget who it was, like an Indian comic was talking about like

31:42how they made it and they were like, I'm going to go adopt a white baby. Like just bring a white baby to like events and like stunt on people because it's like, yeah, I adopted a white child. So I don't know, Austin's a fun place. I mean, one interesting thing is because we're, I'm in Austin, which is a much more populated city and we were just sitting like in a coffee shop basically working all the time. So many people came up that love the podcast. That was fun. That's crazy, right? And then they would tell me their story, right? And it's like, oh wow. So you know, it's almost like you get a lot of ideas

32:13for the podcast, just talk to these people. Like this guy came up and he's like, I'm all in on social selling, social commerce. I know those two words apart. Like what is it together? What does that mean? And he's basically like, you know, people who are making, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, just making TikTok videos for products and they're just getting affiliate fees, just making content. And they're not influencers. They're not famous people, but they make like the best way to sell this soap,

32:44this teeth whitener, this, you know, these leggings, this hoodie and that they're generating, you know, 40,000 a month, 100,000 a month, you know, 200,000 a month, 400,000 a month. What platforms? On TikTok and whatnot. So like there's the lot, there's like live selling. That's like whatnot and TikTok. And then there's like just short form video. And I mean, I'm not, I wasn't like unfamiliar about this concept. We use it in our e-commerce brand. But it's amazing just to hear the individual person's story. It's like, yeah, she worked at this like hair salon

33:16and then she just took the product from the hair salon and started talking about it on TikTok. She doesn't have a following, but the way TikTok works is any video, you know, it's like America's Fundamentalist videos, any video gets to have its, you know, its day on the For You page. And she realized like, wow, if I just get good at kind of like authentically, and I use quotes because it's like obviously not authentic, but like they tend, they don't look dressed up. They're not in a fancy place. They're in their bedroom. They look like they're just talking informally to you. Like they're, hey,

33:46y'all just want to tell you about, oh my God, this or like whatever this thing is. And they're just making a killing on it. And so, you know, this guy was like trying to build the agency around it and a podcast around it. Like what's an example product? Soaps, you said? Just anything. Anything, dude. I don't know if you've seen, are you like, are you tapped into this like wave of what's going on? No, no, no, no. So I don't, I don't have a TikTok and I've seen whatnot, but I buy a ton of stuff off eBay. So like I know about like buying used stuff. I'm not stupid. So I don't know what you're talking about.

34:20I mean, it's not part of the eBay trend, right? Like this is all new shit. eBay? I should say eBay. What I mean is social commerce, like it's all like new products. It's not like, it's just commission based. Like they're selling someone else's stuff and they're getting an affiliate fee. They're not selling like, they're not without permission. So it's not like they needed to cut a brand deal, right? Got it. You just grab the product from the shop and then you sell it and then brand starts and then brands can see if you move product, right? You move weight on your corner and then they start sending you free shit

34:51to try their stuff. And then you could send, you could try to sell their stuff and if it works, it works, right? Like, and if your video is good, then the brand puts ads behind it. So like there was a good, a really good podcast by our buddy, Sean Frank. I think their podcast is called the Operators Podcast, like an e-commerce specific podcast. He did one with the CEO of Comfort. Have you heard his brand, BMFRT? I see that guy and I see this other guy named Greg Lubecki who started a thing called Bloom, which I think is energy drinks. But I'm seeing these guys all over the place and they're using phrases that I've never heard before.

35:22Like I knew what UGC was, but like they're using it in way different phrasing and they're also like implying that they have like tens of thousands