There’s 98 days until 2027...Do this and you’ll thank yourself on Jan 1st

Making the final sprint

0:00There are 99 days left in the year. 99 days. I almost feel like this 100-day left in the year is more important than the New Year's resolution.

0:18I just encourage anyone, man, it's the end of the year. Use this last sprint. Treat it like an athlete does the fourth quarter of a game. And really ask yourself, like, what do I want this year to be all about? Have I kind of made my mark on the year? And 99 days might sound like a short amount of time, but that's an eternity. You can make so much happen in 99 days. And I just encourage anyone to just hear that today and just ask yourself the question, like, have I made my mark on this year yet? And if not, there's one sprint right here we can use.

0:49I have two comments on that. The first is, I think the idea of quarters is so stupid. Quarters should be months. Don't make it Q4. Make it, like, M6 and then M7. Like, four weeks is a significantly better. I have, like, the time that something takes is often dictated by, like, the increments that we measure them in. Yeah, I can't stand that. Like, in Google calendars, it defaults to 30-minute increments. I'm like, no, make it five-minute increments. The second, I joke with a bunch of my Jewish friends, one of the reasons why they're so successful is the Jewish New Year is in September.

1:24So, Roshahana, I can't even say it correctly. That was in September. And so, I'm like, dude, you guys have, like, three months head start in terms of New Year's resolutions and, like, reflecting on your year. Right. So, I was thinking about that where, like, I've actually liked that where you make New Year's resolutions, like, two months in advance. And so, you got a two-month head start on everyone. Well, there's a, I think it's called Parkinson's Law, which is, like, work expands to fill the time you give it. It's, like, modeled after physics. Like, a gas will expand to fill whatever container it's in.

1:57So, if you shrink the container, the gas will be more compact. If you have a bigger container, it'll spread out. Your projects work the same way. And so, if you default to, like you said, Google Calendar, if the default meeting is 30 minutes or an hour, guess what? You'll find a way to talk for 30 minutes or an hour. If you had moved that same meeting to 22 minutes, you would have got it all done in 22 minutes. So, yeah, I think, take this 99 days and make it happen. I don't know, where are you at with that? Do you think this way? Do you, I know you're trying not to be the kind of ADD entrepreneur or the cortisol entrepreneur anymore that's, like, spiking in stress.

Systems over weaknesses

2:32Yeah. I'm trying to fight my natural instincts. How's that going? So, it's, it's good. I think my theory is that you can't change your weaknesses or it's really hard to make your weaknesses a strength. You can potentially neutralize it, but that's, like, the best case scenario. And so, instead, you do something where you just create a system where your weakness, like, can't really show itself. So, like, for example, if you don't work out, you're like, well, I'm never going to be self-motivated. But if I prepay for this trainer to show up at my home, like, I'm still going to be lazy, but, like, they're going to, I just have to do this. Like, there's no choice. So, with me, I've got a CEO, my co-founder, Joe. And so, we have set it up to where we only talk mostly about personal stuff throughout the day.

3:19But there's only one day of the week where I can come and complain to him or suggest improvements for the business. And that one day a week, it's only 45 minutes. And I have to write it out in advance. And so, because of that, I'll, like, see something and get pissed off. And I'll be, like, six days later, when we talk about it, I'm like, I'm not actually that angry. Right. And so, like, I'm a big fan of creating systems. So, it's worked for me. Do you have anything major that you want to do over the next 90? Yeah.

There's, like, one more event I want to create. I've realized that as the world is so online, so digital, I think it's just put premiums on everything that's IRL. So, I want to create one more IRL event. We have Hoop Group, which is our basketball event that we do once a year. And I want to create a second. And that thing's been, like, such a blessing, right? It's, like, super fun. Super fun to do. Unbelievable crew of people that come to that thing.

4:12And it's built this awesome network around something that I would just do for fun anyways. And I want to do another one of those. The problem with that one is it's so exclusive. Like, not only is everybody there, like, kind of, like, the top of the top, like, you know, in terms of their careers, but also, you have to be, like, really into basketball, which is fundamentally limiting for a lot of people. They're just not that into basketball. So, I want to create another event that is not limited in that same way. Launch it or host it?

4:43Yeah, it's going to happen before the end of the year. Okay. And I don't even have the concept yet. So, that's okay. But, you know, how long does an idea take? Like, that's how long an idea takes, right? How long does the decision take? A decision takes that long, too. So, you know, I kind of, people would normally say, oh, that's not enough time. If you ask any professional event planner, they'd say that's not enough time. Thankfully, I'm not a professional event planner, and I will make it happen in that amount of time.

Studying successful founders

5:08I think the best way to become successful is to see how other people did it, whether you're going to copy them or just use it as inspiration, because then now you know what's possible. So, starting at the age of 24, I did this relentlessly, and I was very methodical about it. And I created a spreadsheet where I tracked roughly 50 people who were uber successful. And I looked at the year that they were born, the year that they started their apprenticeship, and then the year that they started the first thing that made them successful, finally, the year that they broke through. And I aggregated all this data along with the stories of what they did to be an apprentice and what they did to finally break through, and I put it together in a database.

5:43And HubSpot went and found this thing that I, frankly, even forgot about, but it did change my life, and they resurfaced it. They made it even better, and they put it into a thing that you can download for free right now. So if you click the link in the description or click the QR code right here, you can see this database that I made when I was 24, and it changed my life. And so if you're looking to become successful or you're already successful and just want some more inspiration, check it out. So, for the listener, my last company was The Hustles, The Newsletter, but it started as an event. And it was basically one event that I would host, like, basically when I needed money.

6:15So, like, every nine months, like, I would do it, use the money, and go hang out for, like, two months, and then, like, do it again. I did that for, like, three events in a row, and then it became a newsletter. But the first event that I hosted, I'm going to try and get the dates correctly. The event happened, I think, on July 1st. I started working on it on May 15th. So it was roughly six weeks. And so I sort of had first-mover advantage, and so I could kind of be crappy and it'd still be kind of interesting. And I think I charged $300, and I think roughly 350 people came.

6:50I'll frame it differently. I think what you did brilliantly was the name of it was HustleCon, and the vibe of it was scrappy entrepreneurs, the real deal. And the beauty of that was you didn't have to provide a polished, luxurious thing because that was off-brand. So thank God I don't have any of that because that would be off-brand anyways. It's like I have a friend who created Summit Series, the big, like, event they do on, like, the mountain. They bought the event where they ended up buying the mountain. They bought a Summit, yeah. And he said the best thing Burning Man ever did was create the ethos of, like, hey, like, it's a piece of dirt.

7:27You create the town. You clean up the town. It's like there's no sign. It's like an AR event. If we didn't have the right sign where the bathroom was, people would get upset. Burning Man, they just changed the expectation where it's like, of course we're not going to baby you. You've set up your own tent. You survive. You bring your own supplies. You clean up everything. And he's like, from an event planning perspective, brilliant. Yeah. It's great. And so I'll be eager to see how you pull this off. It's definitely pull-off-able.

7:58It's just, like, a lot of pressure. It is a very stressful period. And it's sort of like running a marathon where leading up to it, you're like, this is kind of cool. It gets closer. And you're like, I'm scared. This sucks. I'm never doing this again. The day happens. You don't really remember a lot of it. It was a lot of work. A week later, you're like, I can do this again. And I can make it better. You know, it's like giving birth and hosting an event and running a marathon are all kind of similar. Hosting an all-male tech conference. Those are the two similar events. Yeah. I also think, you know, constraints are very, very important.

8:31So time constraint is one constraint. You said money. You know, we do the events out of pocket. We don't make any money off of them intentionally. So that's a little bit silly. Why do you do that? Well, because the constraint is, what is an event that is so good, that is so fun, so valuable, so meaningful to us, that we'd be willing to spend, you know, $150,000 to $250,000 to make it happen? And that literally just eliminates, like, 99 options of what you might do if the goal was to try to make $100,000 or try to make $200,000, make $300,000, or make a million dollars.

9:09And so using the constraint of what's an event so good I would pay to host it is what's led us to creating, you know, some very unique events so far. And that's kind of what I want to do again.

Independent thinking in investing

9:20I want to give you a little anecdote that I thought was pretty interesting. So there's this guy, Joel Greenblatt. Do you know who that is? He writes books on stock picking, right? Yeah. He's like one of the best investors, you know, of all time. So like Warren Buffett, he outperformed the market for decades using a different strategy, but, you know, nonetheless, outperformed and did really well. So he goes to give a talk. And he puts in the front of the auditorium, he's got this jar of jelly beans inside.

9:53And so he says, hey, I'm going to – anybody can – come on up. Come on up to the front. Take a look at the jar. And I want you to write down an estimate. Don't show your friend. Don't show your neighbor. Write down an estimate for how many beans are in this jar on this piece of paper. And he said, you know, you can't open it, but you can do whatever you want. Come up here and take a look. So everyone goes. They take a look. Some people are counting the beans in the row and then the height and kind of try to estimate it. And so he tallies up – he gets all the results and the guesses are 1,771 beans.

10:29That's the average of the guess? That's the average of all the guesses. Now, guess what? That's only five off from the actual. There's 1,776 beans in there. The average of this group of 100 people was incredibly close. But he doesn't tell them how close they were. So then he goes around the room and he says, actually, you know what? Let's make this a little faster. Why don't you just tell me how many you think are in this thing? Say it out loud. So the first person says, 850. So the next person who might have been thinking 2,000 was like, oh, shit.

11:002,000, maybe that's way off. 1,300. And then the person who was thinking 1,700 was like, 850 and 1,300. So they all say their guesses out loud. When they all said their guesses out loud, they went from being off by 5% to being 50% off. The average, I think, came down to like 900 or something like that. So they were off by a mile now. Same people, same jar. The only thing that changed was hearing what other people thought. And he gave this example.

11:30He goes, this is the stock market. For most of you, if you were able to independently think and analyze a business and try to come up with what you think the true value of that business is, you're smart people, you do pretty well. But the reason smart people don't do well in the stock market is because they're listening to the news and Jim Cramer and the analyst reports. And then they look at the ticker and it's going down. I guess it's bad. And then it's going up. Ah, I got to get in. And so it's going to go higher, right? And they let everybody else influence their thinking as to what the business is actually worth.

12:02And he goes, if you remember one thing about how to be a great investor, it would be to look at the jar and write down the number on the piece of paper and know that on average, you'll be much closer to the true value than if you just listen to what everybody is saying. And he goes, now, this is so difficult. There's a reason Warren Buffett says you should buy low-cost index funds, even though he doesn't. And I say you should buy low-cost index funds, even though I don't. Because it is so hard to do what I just told you.

Managing inner voices

12:31So we had Joe Hudson on the other day. So I consider myself to be a fairly easily influenced person. Like I'll hear about Sam Newhouse and I'm like, that's awesome. I love that. I'm easily excitable, maybe is a good word. And so he said something that was interesting where he was like, I forget exactly how he phrased it. But the way he phrased it, I went and started reading this book called Untethered Soul, which is kind of a fine book. It's only fine. But there was like one concept that I found was interesting.

13:03So have you heard of Transcendental Meditation? You basically sit down and instead of being quiet with your thoughts, you're chanting. And you're chanting something. It doesn't even matter what you're saying, but it's the rhythmic auditory thing. It almost drowns out the other thoughts in your head. I've done this before. There's a Buddhist practice that's like this that I was once taken to. I thought it was pretty awesome. But I don't do it regularly. Yeah, and I've done it as well. And I don't do it regularly anymore. But there was one line from Untethered Soul where he talks about the guy who created TM,

13:34Transcendental Meditation. His last name was Yogi. But he like tells the story where he's like, basically like, the most important key to have like a happy life is when you have these thoughts in your brain, you should treat that thing in your brain as a roommate. And so if you were to have a roommate that said, you totally screwed that up. You suck. Like that was not good what you did. You are never going to make up for it. Like everyone has these like negative thinking. You have to be like, dude, you are not me.

14:05You are my roommate. And with this guy who created TM, he was like, you just have to ask yourself all the time for every thought. You have to ask, why am I thinking this? And like, I'll just, I'll hear it, but I'm not going to listen to it. But I have to ask myself on a consistent basis, who am I? And why am I thinking about this? And what does this mean for me? As opposed to just listening. And just the act of asking yourself that is actually really important. And that simple question oftentimes can have breakthroughs for self-enlightenment. And so because I'm a very influenced person, I have to like read something.

14:37I'll be like, why does this excite me? Okay, but is this actually who I am? And like this constant, like, who am I? Is this who I am? It's okay to like this person's story. That doesn't mean I'm going to copy it. Like this, this like constant inner dialogue, because I've been asking myself, how do you become less influenced by people who aren't aligned with what your life's calling or like your mission is? And so when it comes to like this memetic discussion of like, how do you not let this

15:08person influence you? I'm just trying to look for exercises on how to actually combat that because it is incredibly hard. Yeah. Although you're talking about the, you're saying you're taking it to the extreme where you're like, even the voice in my head, don't let that, don't let that necessarily influence me because that thing is a monkey throwing feces all over the room. You know, it's like, it's not necessarily the most reliable, aligned source for me. Like it is not you. It is just a roommate. I love the roommate thing. I love the roommate thing. That's great. Have I told you about my five, five voices in the head theory?

15:41No, it's one of them telling you to kill because we should talk about that. So I believe that people, it's not one roommate. I think there's this five voices in the head. And once you know that these, these parts of you exist, you'll start to recognize them because they'll pop up. It's kind of like the movie Inside Out, if you've ever seen it. And inside the girl's head, there's like, she, they do it with emotions. There's like the red angry guy. There's the blue sad girl. There's the fearful one. And then there's the grossed out one. So the Inside Out showed this in a movie with emotions. But I think there's a similar thing going on with voices in your head.

16:12Who are the five? The first one is the critic. And the critic is like David Goggins in your head. You're never enough for him. You did, you did a hundred pushups. You should have done 200. You could have done more, you pussy. And he's there for a reason. He serves you, keeps you honest, prevents you from getting high on your own supply. There's a reason that he gets to have a room. But God, if you listen to that guy too often, you know, life, life doesn't end up very well for you. Then you have another voice. And I call this the voice of the mother. And the voice of the mother is a more caring voice, but it's also the one that's protective.

16:46It's trying to, you know, it's slicing your grapes for you, even when you're 19 years old. It just doesn't want you to get hurt and wants you to live a nice, safe life and be protected and wants everything to go well for you. And that's great too, because it's nice to be protected. It's nice to play at safety. You don't want to take too much risk. But at the same time, the dose makes the poison. Too much of that can also ruin your life because you'll play it too safe. And you go on and you go, you go forth. And so there's these different voices. I could go through all of them, but like that, that's the idea is that there's these five

17:17different voices. And then at the end of it, if you're able to hush up all these voices and get them to go back to their room for a little bit, the thing that's left, that's you. The last voice is you. That's the self. And the problem is we're so, it's so noisy in there because these other voices are constantly chirping that it's hard to hear what you truly, what you truly think, what you truly want, because it sounds so easy. Well, you should just do what you want. Most people don't even know. So why do we do things like meditation?

17:48Why does sleep help? Why do we do therapy? Because you're trying to get these other voices to just shut the up for a minute. So you can actually just figure out what you want and then go do that. It's pretty easy once you get there. Have you ever described anything to AI and you describe this really interesting thought? You're like, I think I just came up with this cool idea. And they're like, yeah, dude, that's called the theory of relativity. And you're like, so I'm as smart as Albert. We both, we invented this concurrently. Is this a thing? Is this a thing that exists? Yeah.

18:18Well, there's this great book called The Six Thinking Hats. I found this to be a very productive book. Edward De Bono? I believe, is that, I'm looking it up. Who, I think that might be him. Yeah, yeah, you're right. The lateral thinking guy, yeah. And it's like basically like oftentimes at work or like when you're working on a project, like typically there's always the guy who like defaults to like, that can't work because. Right. And I remember reading that and I'm like, or I'm thinking about that. I'm like, how do I change this guy or change myself? And so there's the six hats of thinking.

18:49And one of them's like, the guy, the white hat is focused on facts. The yellow hat is be optimistic. The black hat, be devil's advocate, whatever. And there's like six hats. And like when you're having a discussion, you're like, okay, I hear what you're saying. Can you go ahead and like, tell me like, if you were an optimist, what would you say about this idea? And like you, it just, it creates a significantly better conversation where you're like, okay, listen to this. Okay, I hear you are, you're being this person. That might be who you are. I need you to pretend that you're an optimist person and like, tell me like, or like, okay, you're this creative.

19:24Like we used to have creative people at the hustle and it's like, okay, you're saying this crazy idea. I need you to be a manager right now. Think through a manager's perspective and tell me how this makes profit so I can continue paying everyone's salary. And it's like, okay, let's look through that lens. And it starts like actually changing the conversation meaningfully. So what you've described is a little bit similar to what one of my favorite business authors of all time has described. So congratulations, you are now my favorite business author.

19:52All right, sweet. That's a win for me. By the way, I like doing this, the physical version of this. So I actually have like two hats that I use.

The two minds of a creator

20:01So when I was, I told you I was studying the creativity. Did you literally put your hat on? Yeah, so I was studying the creative process. And one of the biggest things in the creative process is that you need what Jerry Seinfeld calls two minds, the two minds of a creator. And the first mind is this childlike mind. So, you know, when you want to sit down and create, you're sitting in front of a blank page. The reason people have writer's block, the reason people struggle to create daily is because you're afraid. You're afraid of failure. You're afraid of looking bad. You're afraid of, you want so badly to be great that you're not willing to do something bad, to not put something bad down on the page.

20:34So you put nothing down at all as a self-protective mechanism. So he talks about how you need the childlike mind at the beginning who's just going to grab a crayon and just scribble. And then you almost want to have this attitude towards that version of you that's like, oh my God, sweetie, that's amazing. Can I hang that up on the fridge? And like you need to nurture that like that energy because it's what's going to get you going, right? It's going to get you to put things on the page and then you'll eventually figure out how to make it good. Good comes later. Don't worry about that. So you need this childlike mind. He's like, and then what happens is about four hours later when you come back and you now have a bunch of scribble on the page, you have to completely change into a ruthless asshole.

21:14And now this is the editor. And the editor is basically saying, no, no, no, less of this. Trim the fat. Too many words. Too many syllables. Cut down. Rearrange this. And you got to be able to do both. You know, somebody who can only do the free play and never edits, never has any kind of like discernment or taste or judgment. Doesn't work. But if you bring the judgment into the room early on in the brainstorm, you're not going to have a very good brainstorm. And so we created these two hats, literally like Diego got them made for us, which was like, it says Rick mode, which is like Rick Rubin.

21:44So it's like Rick mode when it's like, dude, we're just messing around. We're playing. We're just, we trust ourselves. And then we have Rick mode and then we have prick mode and you put on the prick mode hat. It goes the other way. It's a different color. And if you were, if we were in prick mode, then it's like, well, that's who I'm supposed to be right now. So let me go ahead and do that. And I, at first I felt kind of silly. And then I started noticing there's a lot of examples of great people who do this. So Warren Buffett has a, a actual thing on his desk called the too hard pile because his investing philosophy is that, look, you can't have a great opinion on a hundred straight stocks or investment opportunities.

22:20He's like, you should be able to pretty quickly figure out the five that are very interesting, probably like, you know, good, good, no brainer things to do. The five that are absolutely terrible, duds, stay away, red flags everywhere. But then 90%, it's too hard to judge. It's too close to call. Can't tell. And so he literally creates the too hard pile on his desk so that he can put things in there. Just mentally say, look, I, I don't have to come to an answer. It's just in the too hard pile. I don't need to worry about it. There was a guy, Zach Dell. So the son of Michael Dell from Dell Computers.

22:51And Zach Dell's got this really interesting company called Base Power now. And he was on a podcast and he was saying, he's like, I have two notebooks. So he's like, so I got the, I forgot what it was like, the red notebook and the blue notebook. And I think you will like this because this is every business, like CEO, business owner has this. He goes, the red notebook is working in the business. So if I have an idea of what we should, you know, what we should do, what we should change this, you know, this customer thing. And then the blue is working on the business, which is, oh, you know, this person's not in the right role or we need to hire somebody for this.

23:23Or, you know, we need to, we need to get an office space. We need to rearrange our office space. So these two groups are sitting closer to each other so that they're going to have better chemistry. And so in the business and on the business. And he's like, I have two separate notebooks. So I know which one I'm doing when. And I know if I'm spending too much time in the business, it's like, I'm all over the red notebook. Is that it? Do you have the same thing? Two notebooks, baby.

23:46Can we just admire the showmanship? Can we just do that again? Instant replay. Sam picks up the notebook, shows it like that, where it looks like one thick notebook. It turns, fans it out, two notebooks. Yeah, I have got two notebooks. I actually have a third. Hang on. But wait, there's more. The Ultimate Showman. Hey, Zach, suck on this.

24:09In the business, on the business, and out of business. Well, one is like, this is like, it's like the five-year journal that I write, where it's like, here's how I feel today, like right now. The next one is like content ideas, like just random ideas. And then the next one is like, here's what I actually have to do. And like, I need to like work through the actual problem.

Daily journaling habits

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25:03So this one, I do almost religiously every day. So this is the five-year journal. So every day I write like, here's what I did today. Here's something to be grateful for. So this is like five, ten minutes in the morning? What do you do? No, three minutes. So it could be like, today I read about Aristotle, and I loved it for these reasons. And I need to be reminded to do X like Aristotle. Or it could be like, today I went to San Francisco. It was amazing. We brought help with us, and it made the trip so much easier.

25:34So it could be like, just like, I'll look back at a year. I'll be like, ah, that's a good reminder. The next one, this one, will be more like, let's say I'm reading a book. And I'll have an interesting idea related to that book. So I just need to get it on paper. And then the next one is like, here's what I have to do today. And it's mostly checklists, but I'll kind of brainstorm solutions to the problem. So you boys got books. And by the way, that's like a consistent thing I've noticed amongst creators that I like,

26:12is that they, I think the easiest way to say it is they write drunk, edit sober. Yeah. So I've noticed that consistently. But then you have stories like Eminem, the famous story where he walked in with Dr. Dre, and like Dre plays the first beat. And then within five seconds, he goes, hi, my name is, like, you're like, okay. So like, it definitely could just happen. But typically, the people who are systematically great, including Eminem, like people I've seen, I think Anderson Cooper did a thing, a story on Eminem, where they're like, dude, he writes like crazy.

26:43Like, I've never seen someone write down so much stuff. And another thing that they would say about him and Eminem, when he was younger, came off as this like party guy. Maybe he was, but they're like, he's at the studio at 9am and he goes home at 4. Like, it's a workday. And like, I noticed that there's way more systematic ways to being creative than there is examples of epiphanies. Right. Well, the analogy I would use, because I think it's, yeah, both. Like, I think, yeah, you have those moments where the song comes on, the beat comes on, and he starts doing, hi, my name is.

27:14Or that you hear this a lot where somebody is like, 24 hours, they wrote both of the hit songs that define their careers in one day. All it took was one day. And it's like, no, all it took was every day for their whole life. Yeah. And then they had that day. And the analogy I use is, you know, you're- You have a 2% conversion rate, and the conversions just came like a number 98 and 99. Yeah. Well, the analogy I use is, imagine your brain is this like old mansion, old mansion on a hill. And you go to, you inherited it. You find out you inherited this gift from your, you know, your great-grandfather.

27:46You didn't even know you had it, but it was yours. And so you go, you walk in, you're like, wow, this thing's amazing. It's in terrible shape, cobwebs everywhere, but this thing could be amazing. And you decide, you go to the restroom, you go to the bathroom, and you see this like wonderful, this old tub, this amazing tub. And you're like, man, this is crazy. I've never had a bath like this. I'm going to turn it on. You turn the water on. And of course, right when you turn the water on, it's creaky, takes a second, it sputters, and then out comes brown, muddy water. Like the most disgusting. And you flinch.

28:16You're like horrified. You're like, oh, disgusting. You turn it off. This is, you know, the first thing you write when you sit down to write, the first thing you say. If I said, hey, freestyle right now, it's what would come out. You'd be horrified at your own disgust. It's your own, like your own output is going to be, it's going to disgust you. But you, you know, what do you do? So most people just turn the water off and say, ooh, never again. That bathtub has, it's nasty. Don't go in there. But a few people are like, they leave the water running. And sure enough, it's brown, it's brown, it's brown, it's brown, it's brown. And then eventually it starts to, little spurts of clear come out and eventually the

28:48water starts running clear. And I think what happens in that example where Eminem goes in and freestyles is that he's had the water running and he's running clear. And so, you know, when the, when the moment comes, he's able to perform, he's able to come up with an idea. He's able to have a good idea because that it's warmed up. The whole system is warmed up. The muddy water is gone because he's got putting in the daily reps, you know, along the way. And so I think that's a lot of how this works. And, you know, I feel that way about this podcast. Like, let's say we didn't do this podcast for three months.

29:21One might think that, oh, we're going to be, we're going to have so much saved up material. We're going to be awesome. It's going to be so much better. And then as you know, like, it would be way worse. It would be terrible. This podcast gets better the more often we do it. Obviously there's some limits to that. Like if I did it again in two hours, like maybe I'd be out of, I need a little fresh feedstocks, a little inspiration, a little fresh air in between. Yeah, but you got to get warmed up. But by and large, the more you keep the water running, the better you're, you know, the clearer it eventually starts to run. And it's when you stop using it for a while that, you know, it's like,

29:54there's this flywheel where the more it generates, the better it generates. And the less it generates, the worse it generates. There's this story about Tupac Shakur who died when he was only 25. And so he was very prolific for a very short amount of time. And there's a story, he goes to, he went to prison for doing some bad stuff. And he's there for like nine months. And someone was like, well, it must've been like, you know, let's find the icing of the cake. Like, at least you had like a lot of solitudes. You could like write. He goes, I can't write in here. It's the worst. Like A, there's like very little inspiration. And B, like, I can't get it out. He would write way better when he was like a machine gun in the studio.

30:28Like, just go, go, go. All right, we did that one. All right, let's try another one.

The Newhouse media dynasty

30:30Can I tell you an interesting story? And this is sort of related to like someone who followed none of the rules that people default to. And I think it's really interesting. And I think it's going to interest you because A, it's an obscure billionaire who I'm sure you've never heard of, but you know their work. And B, it's a family dynasty business, which I think you're tiptoeing into like your interests. I'm tantalized. Okay. Have you ever heard of advanced publishing? No. But you said I know their product. What's the product? Well, the most popular ones, but not necessarily the most profitable, are Iron Man, GQ Magazine, Reddit, Charter Communications, Warner Bros., Discovery, some smaller ones that you probably like is the, or that you've heard of, American City Business Journals, Turnitin.com.

31:16They just bought a mountain biking event. Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue. Reddit. Reddit's a public stock. What do you mean they own Reddit? But they owned Reddit before it was public. So I can, I'll tell you, and they still own, I think they own 30% of it still. But I'll tell you the story. So there's this guy named Sam Newhouse. Sam Newhouse was born, I think, in like 1895. He's born in this like Jewish family. He's like five foot two. He's like a little guy. He's tiny. And he, his father gets sick, gets really bad asthma. And so he can't work.

31:47And so he's got like four other siblings. And he's like, at the age of 13 and 14, the mom is like, hey, dude, you're the man of the house. You got to, you got to drop out of school and help me pay the bills. And so he does like a mail-in order course, basically the equivalent of an online course in bookkeeping. And he convinces this local business person to give him a job. He's like, how do your bookkeeping? So he does his bookkeeping starting at the age of 15. By 16, a year later, the business guy owns a very small local newspaper. And he's like, hey, I have this newspaper that I own.

32:17It doesn't really make a lot of money. And it made like the equivalent of like $800,000 a year in revenue today. He's like, can you just like keep an eye on this? You seem very trustworthy. You know numbers. Figure out how to make this work. Within six or seven months, he turns it around and start making money. And he's at this point 17. And the guy's like, dude, good job. Here, I'll give you a percentage of the profits now. And I'll also give you a little bit of ownership. And Sam Newhouse is like, I like this. I think I'm pretty good at it. So he does it for a couple more years. And then after about three years, he convinces a bunch of family members to all pitch in and

32:48loan them money. And he buys his first newspaper. It was called Staten Island Advance, which is why the company today is still called Advance Publishing. And so his whole shtick is basically he bought this newspaper and he goes into it with a few things in mind. The first thing he's like, look, we're just here to sell ads. Let's keep it real. The content that we create, we can make it as good as we possibly can within our constraints, but we need to make a profit. And so he's very, very, very good at selling ads. And he's very good at keeping cost controls down.

33:21And for the next, I think, 60 years, he buys a new newspaper every three years. And it slowly accumulates roughly 15 to 20% per year in revenue growth. And he grows and he grows and he grows and he grows. And by the time it's like 1980, he has one of the largest privately owned companies in America. And he's doing like, well, today, Advance Publishing does like $8 billion a year in revenue. Back then, it was doing like a billion in revenue. But what's interesting is this little guy named Sam Newhouse, he never had an office.

33:55He worked out of a briefcase. All he had was a briefcase. Most of the deals that he did was handshake agreements. He had zero partners. He had zero executive management team. And by the time the company was doing a billion in revenue, it was literally just him. Like just him making these decisions. And he would hire a publisher, which is basically a GM or like a CEO of a newspaper. And he would go to each one each week and be like, hey, what's going on, man? How's everything going? He was very polite, though. He was the headquarters just driving around. And he would drive from thing to thing to thing.

34:26And he kept doing this and doing this and doing this. And then after a while, when he's like close to 60 and 70 and 80 years old, he starts getting his sons involved. And they've now created this like dynasty. And it was his sons who was like, okay, our dad bought all these like kind of low prestige local newspapers where like they pretty much just exist to buy ads. Basically, the way that he thought about it, he was like, his whole thing was like, how much profit can I make in 10 years off of this particular newspaper? That's how he would value things.

34:57So he was like, okay, I can make $8 million in profit over the next 10 years off this newspaper. I have no problem buying it for $4 million, which is like, I think at the time that like he would buy them for six to eight times annual earnings because he was like, I'm looking for 10 years at a time. That's how I measure it. And he kept going. And then eventually his kids were like, okay, dad built like a cool company, but like, it's not like well regarded. We want to do something great. And so they buy the New Yorker, which was at the time very prominent magazine. They buy this little thing called Condé Nast.

35:28And Condé Nast was a series of magazines, including Vanity Fair, Vogue, and all this other stuff like GQ. And they were like, we're going to make this like, we're going to make our family great. And so they come up with this idea of Vanity Fair, which is hard to describe now because it's not as relevant. But they were like, we're going to hire these amazing editors. And that's where they get this woman named Anna Wintour, who if you've seen like The Devil Wears Prada, that's her. And their whole shtick was, we're going to hire these amazing editors and we're going to give them like, do whatever you want.

36:00As long as it like makes some profit, do whatever you want. We don't care. And that's what they were famous for. And so they've had a bunch of editors of these really awesome magazines for like three or four decades. I think she's been doing it for like 30 years. And then come the dot com era, they were like, okay, we've got to figure this out. What do we do? And so they buy Reddit for $10 million and they hold on to it and it grows and it grows and it grows. And eventually they spit it out and do its own thing. And so their $10 million investment into Reddit is worth, I think now, like between two and

36:32three billion dollars. Yeah, that's wild. They've like done this over and over and over again. They're still a privately held company. I believe his name is Steven Newhouse, who must be the great or the grandson of the founder. He recently bought Iron Man, the triathlon series. They've bought, they just bought a mountain biking event. They own Turnitin.com. But I think they recently bought that for over a billion dollars. They own 4% of Warner Brothers, which owns HBO, CNN, Discovery Channel, all this other

37:02stuff. They own 14% of Charter Communications. And so it's just this big like playground where they like buy these really cool things and they own them forever. This is fascinating. What's something you're going to, you know, you're like, I can steal from this playbook. So something that he did that I believe Warren Buffett did, when you're buying multiple businesses, something that you tell yourself that's cool is to consolidate the back end, the back office. It's counterintuitive. That is not the way to do it.

37:33Every entity should be its own thing that can run itself and is completely independent. That is the best way to make sure that they can move fast and act on what's good for their local business as opposed to having like some HR or sorry, some HQ that's helping make decisions. Another thing is, I need to be reminded of this all the time. I think everyone does is how if you know what business you're in, even if it's not sexy, and you're able to stick with it for a long time, and you are what you are, and you know

38:03what you are, it can really work a lot better than pretending to be something else. For example, he knew he was like, guys, ads are first. Okay. So if we hire journalists, that's fine. That are great journalists. But you have to like stick within this playbook. We aren't going to like appeal to like be sexy. It was his kids who got into that because they wanted to be that. But he was like, no, this is what we're doing. This is the mission. And we're going to do it over and over and over and over again. Like you and I will like talk about this podcast oftentimes. And we're like, this is a fake example, but we're like, should we talk about politics?

38:35And like one could say like, yeah, we should. It'll get more popular. It's like, or we just stick to what we know and like enjoy our niche and just be kings of that small niche. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's a big takeaway. Very tempting to, I wouldn't even say tempting. Like, I think it is interesting when people don't really understand the business that they're in. And that can be from a customer point of view. Like why, like, you know, for example, why do people listen to this podcast? Just to use a personal example, right?

39:07It's like, if you can't really understand why somebody's listening, what are the odds you're going to be fulfilling that, you know, at the highest level that you're going to be delivering to the person, the reason they came, the job to be done for why they're here.

Understanding your audience

39:19Right? Because on one level, you could say for this podcast, well, they're listening for business ideas because you would say, well, often we talk about different business ideas or opportunities. And certainly it's for somebody who's looking for their next business. So then we should go market this as a great podcast for somebody who's looking for their next business. And if you did that, it would be a shockingly small number of people and a small percentage of our actual audience. Because what our actual audience likes to do is be entertained by the talk of business. Right? Like I like to hear about business ideas that I have no plan on ever going and doing.

39:53It sounds irrational. Why would you do that? Why waste the mind space there? And it's like, well, because it tickles some part of my brain to hear people brainstorming about an idea or teaching me about an idea that I never am going to do. Or I hear about a business that's completely different than mine, but I'm fascinated by it. And I take inspiration from it. And for some reason, hearing about this dude's old newspaper business and how he was traveling in his car, checking on each HQ and how he took a simple idea seriously and he stuck

40:24with it for a hundred years, it made me reinforce what I'm doing over here in the restaurant business, what I'm doing over here in the oil business or whatever other business you're in. And so we have to understand that for us, it's inspiring stories. So stories of people doing badass things to make it so that you go do badass things in your business. And secondly, people who are just business junkies, they just like to know, they like to hear, they like the fantasy football of the whole thing. They don't have to go plan to actually go do that thing.

40:55And once you understand that, you might like run your product or run your business a little bit differently. So a lot of times people at the podcast, they'll reach out to me and they're wondering, Hey, Sam and Sean, how do you meet all these amazing entrepreneurs? How do you find all these stories? Well, I have a hack. You see, I actually have a community called Hampton. It's a community for entrepreneurs doing at least 3 million in revenue, although we do on average, just something like $25 million a year in revenue. We have the founders of DoorDash, of Figure, of Bluetooth. All these amazing companies are part of Hampton. And what's interesting is because of the environment in Hampton, which frankly is very similar

41:27to my first million, we have a very unique high trust environment. When people apply and go through this vetting process, they're put in groups of like eight or nine other entrepreneurs, and they get real about everything that's going on in their life and in their business. And sort of like when people listen to MFM, they get inspired to come up with new solutions for business. That's what happens in real life in Hampton. It's life changing. And so if you're a founder of a startup that does at least 3 million in revenue, and you just want to go ahead and pull forward 5 or 10 years worth of success, then check it out. The URL is joinhampton.com.

41:57Again, the URL joinhampton.com. Yeah, like a good example of what not to do is, do you remember Jaguar had like a rebrand like two years ago? Oh, yeah. Everyone hated it, right? What were they doing? Yeah. So basically like Jaguar, historically, I think they were like, it's a British company, and it was like a cool guy car. Like James Bond would drive a jet. Yeah, it was like a cool guy, like a man's man kind of thing. And I think they drifted a little bit away from that, but that's like the heart of it. And so they were trying to figure out, they're like, look, we've kind of been like this middleman

42:30car company for the last 15, 20 years. We got to get back to our roots. And they go and do this rebrand. And somehow, when they did it, their spokesperson was like an androgynous woman, which isn't exactly in line with a manly man who loves to smell gasoline. It sort of seemed like a little like it was related to the LGBTQ thing, which is like fine, but that's not exactly the Jaguar customer or like the reason why people turn to Jaguar.

43:03And when they did that, all the customers were like, what is this? This doesn't speak to us. And so it was like the exact opposite of what you should do. Well, right now, Nike is in the news for the same thing. Nike stock is down 90, what was it down? 80%, 90%, something like that from its peak. I don't know if you've been following this, but... Yeah, what's the gist of it? I know it's down. Peak was 170, and it's currently at 36. So Nike stock has fallen dramatically.

43:34It's now a $53 billion market cap. And just to put that in perspective, they do $46 billion in revenue. So they're trading almost at one times their revenue. Like a shitty DTC brand, right? Yeah. And there's lots of reasons people can attribute to this. One of the popular reasons, I don't know if this is the full reason, right? I think there was some business model things they did. But one of the popular kind of complaints or things that people say is like, look, Nike, the brand, the premium you were getting was because you had this incredible brand. And it was worldwide, recognized, and respected brand.

44:06Athletes everywhere wanted to be a part of it. And Nike used to celebrate greatness. Famously, they would never show the shoe. They would talk about the athlete and the athlete being great. The athlete pushing through, the athlete achieving what others said was impossible. And they just so happened to be wearing Nikes. And the implication is, if you want to be great, Nike stood for greatness, stood for excellence. And if you wanted to be great, if you wanted to be truly excellent, then you should wear Nike. And it drifted. And so they started having all these body positives.

44:38So it's like, all right, there's a fat person wearing Nike. Great, great, like, you know, there's this person who's not great wearing Nike, not great at their sport. And it's like, well, nobody wants to buy the brand of non-excellent athletic performance for an athletic shoe. And you could see how a large corporation could drift and could lose that. And then they're going to have, now they're going to have their back to their roots moment, where they're going to trim the product lines and they're going to go back to their roots. They're going to overpay some athlete to go back. And they're going to have this new campaign.

45:09They're going to fire their ad agency and hire a new ad agency. They're going to get back to their roots. And I think about the athletes, they're like, I could be Nike's next mistake. Let's like, I have to get in. I have to get in before they realize how dumb this is. And so, yeah, like, I shouldn't have a chance.

45:28Being on the Nike billboard, right? Like, that should be impossible.

Turning hardship into content

45:31Can I wrap up here with a segment that I want to call, I Created a Monster Slash How to Turn Shit into Gold?

45:42Bro, this is brought to you by Jiffy Lube. Yeah. I feel like every segment needs a sponsor, even a fictitious one. Yeah, this is called, I Created a Monster Slash How to Turn Shit into Gold. So, and this is like a positive episode. So, this is perfect. So, a few months ago, I kind of alluded to it, but I didn't want to, like, say it. My sister-in-law got breast cancer recently, which sucks because she's pregnant. She's due in October. And she got cancer, like, the same day Ben called me, she called me.

46:12She called my wife. And she was like, okay, this is horrible. I'm pregnant. And I have cancer. How could I make this awesome? And so, she got inspired. And I guess got inspired by me because everything, that was taking way too much credit. But it runs in the family. I pulled you over for a speeding violation there on that sentence. But go ahead. Citation back on the road. I'm the pregnant one with cancer, but you are the hero, Sam.

46:44But I guess what I'm saying, like, you know, as you know, being a creator, you get a lot of free stuff. And I think everyone's like, I want that. I want a free mattress. And so, she started making TikToks about being pregnant and having cancer. And she's, like, doing amazing. Where, like, the video I don't like watching is, like, when she finally shaves her head, it always makes me cry. But then there's, like, her working out and doing stuff. And, like, she's, like, basically starts off every video. I'm 30 years old, I'm pregnant, and I have cancer.

47:15And, like, here's my workout today. And she now is on TikTok. She's getting, like, tens of thousands of views on a bunch of videos. I think she's doing, like, a video a day. But I just thought this was really awesome. I thought this was really, really, really cool and admirable, what she's doing. Because getting cancer and being pregnant, that's literally, like, one of the worst lots that can be drawn ever. And I like to tease her because I'm like, the shitty thing about both of those things, your shtick, is that ideally, they're going to end. You're going to have a baby, and the cancer is going to go away. So you better get everything out of this, you know, while you can.

47:48But I think it's pretty cool. And I thought you'd get a kick out of this, what she's doing. I am getting a kick out of it. I think this is awesome. I'm going to watch some of these videos after this. I do have a suggestion. Now that she's taking suggestions. I do have a suggestion. Well, she's in the arena now. Well, kind of like you said, like, you know, that initial hook is, like, obviously, like, a shock, right? Like, I'm 30 years old, I'm pregnant, and I have cancer. By the way, let me give her a shout-out. It's Sid Glander.

48:18Her first name is Sidney. Yeah. Her first name is Sidney. Last name, Glander. G-L-A-N-D-E-R. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, everyone, let's go follow her. I think she should tweak it a little bit. Maybe try it. I'm 30 years old. I'm, you know, I'm an expecting mom and future cancer survivor. Because I think the words matter, the label you put on yourself, the identity, especially as a content creator. There's this weird thing where the more public you are about an identity, the harder it is to ever switch it. And this is one she would want to switch, not having it, but surviving, you know, like, conquering it, you know, beating it.

48:53And so, that's my only suggestion is consider that. Yeah, I actually think that's great advice. She's been texting me. She's like, Kettle and Fire reached out to me. They're offering to send me free bone broth. And it's like, I made it. Like, every influencer has this moment. It's sort of like making your first dollar. The first time a brand reaches out to you and offers, like, product, you're like, I did it. And so, I think it's really cool that she's done it. I got a huge box of Chomps from Pete from Chomps at my door. And, like, all the kids on my son's soccer team just thought, like, they don't know what a podcast is.

49:30They actively don't want to watch this. But the fact that Chomps sends me free Chomps, they were like, this is unbelievable. Because I don't know if you know this, but kids, kids freaking love Chomps, chopsticks. Dude, Pete from Chomps. DM me. I want some Chomps. That's, like, one of the few things I would gladly accept. It's like a lifetime supply of Chomps that I have at the front door right now. Is it really? Can I tell you a fun, a funny, just, like, this is the Tales from the House episode. So, I don't know about you. Who's this sponsored by? Clorox? This is, no, I need, like, a home insurance company, maybe, like, Geico or something like

50:05that for this one. So, it was unrelated to business or anything like that. But I don't know if you guys are like this, but does Sarah, like, panic when guests are coming over?

50:16She seems cool as a cucumber. If anybody's ever met her. She seems cool as a cucumber. She's literally cool as a cucumber. Maybe you're the one who would be panicking. But my wife. She's pretty stoic. But I do empathize with that, like, when you clean before the cleaning lady comes. Yeah. So, this is, like, the extreme version of that, where my wife, like, we have the Tesla Model X, which is awesome. But she hates the doors. And I was like, oh, why? Look, it's so convenient to get it out. She's like, no, everyone can see in our car at school drop-off. Like, I open up the kimono every time. Everyone sees every goldfish that's on the ground. I'm like, they don't see your care?

50:47She's like, no, like, park over there farther away so nobody will see when we open our trunk. So, anyways, we're cleaning out the house. We're getting rid of some toys. And so, she doesn't want to waste it. So, she posts on her IG, like, hey, does anyone want to take these toys, like, pick up these toys? And her friend, who's a kindergarten teacher, is like, oh, perfect. I'll take them for the classroom. And she's like, oh, great. Okay, great. I'm so glad these are going to a good place. Awesome. She puts it, like, up front, like, right by the door. Just come, grab them, and go. And so, five minutes before she picks it up, she's like, hey, we're on our way.

51:20And then my wife's like, who's we? Oh, no. Who's coming? And she's like, yeah, it's me, husband, all the kids. We're just going to come over real quick. We're just going to do this. And so, we're in emergency clean mode. She's cleaning downstairs. She starts going upstairs. And I'm like, nobody's going to go upstairs. Like, this is, like, comical. Nobody's going to go. Nobody's going to see that room. Don't even worry about it. Yeah, if you want to pick up some stuff here, that's fine. But, like, don't worry about this. You ever seen those videos where, like, people get pulled over by the police, and they want to prove a point, and they barely roll their window down. And they just like, I don't answer questions.

51:51That's, like, basically. That's what she was trying to do. Yeah. She wanted to, like, crack the thing open and, like, do, like, an exchange through the slot, like a prisoner in, like, solitary confinement. Anyways, they come over. Kids are playing around the house. It's time to go. And they're like, oh. Because they're, like, calling his name, their kid's name. And they're like, oh, he's doing that thing again. And we're like, what? And they're like, he always does this. We go to someone's house, and he just goes and finds a random room in their house that just hides there. And we're like, oh, that's funny.

52:22He's so silly. And they're like, no, it's not funny because he won't come out. Like, he'll go an hour, two hours. Like, you won't find him. And then we're like, oh. And then my wife starts to pay. And she's like, let me go upstairs and just see real quick. And they're like, no, no, no. You don't know this kid. I know how he thinks. We will go send the search party up and find him. So they go upstairs. Dude, your wife's like, Billy! Billy! Exactly. By the way, the husband is a real estate agent. So he's, like, you know, just finely attuned to paying attention to home. Yeah, he's scoping the sitch.

52:53He scopes the joint out. And so he's going room to room. And my wife's just following him, making excuses in each room. Like, we haven't had a chance yet to clean that up. We're actually, we're moving. That's why this is like this. And, like, I don't know who did that. Somebody came here and did that. And so she's just making excuses while he's opening up every closet, every drawer, looking under the beds. Like, everywhere you would never think anyone would go. Linen closet. What's in there? And so, because he might be anywhere. And finally, in the last room, finds him inside of a closet. And, like, they're coming down the stairs.

53:25And, like, you know, I feel like my wife just saw a dead body. And, like, I think it might be hers that she saw on the way out. And we didn't talk for, like, 15 minutes after they left. It was just, like, silence. And she just processed, like, her worst nightmare, like, playing out. But you know, like, the stoic thing where you, like, visualize your worst fear? Yeah. She lived it. And I feel like she came out a better person now that, like, she survived her worst nightmare. So I thought I'd share that with you. Does she know that you're going to talk about it? No. No, no. So she gets to relive it now. Thankfully, she's never listened to an episode of the podcast.

53:56So we're safe. This is a safe space here.

The zombie email strategy

53:59We used to have this email that would get sent on The Hustle. It was, we called it the zombie email. So emails who have never opened the email ever before to, like, reengage them. And it was like, hey, I'm sending this email because, according to our records, you've never opened an email. Which gives me an opportunity right now to explain some of my deepest darkest secrets because no one's reading this. So when I was 12, I open mouth kissed a cousin once. Not only, not only can I not see why George Clooney is attractive to women, I too think he's incredibly attractive. And I would, like, we could, like, say all these, like, crazy stuff.

54:34And it was, like, a huge hit. Like, the few people that would actually open it, we would totally get it back on the hook. Just when they thought they were out, you want them back. Yeah. Dude, that's such a good email. That's so funny. This is your zombie newsletter.

54:46This was a pod full of laughs, full of goodness. Congratulations. We did it. And that's it. That's the pod.

54:57All right. Let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about Marketing School. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. And it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Su. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real-world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.