← My First Million
My First Million
I talk to Ben about creating luck, his barbell method, plus 6 half-baked business ideas
01:12:05
Loading summary
Transcript181 lines
- [00:00]
Ben
All right, we got Ben here. And this is the real deal. Ben. This is Ben, the business partner. If you listen to every single episode of this podcast, you hear me two hours a week. I probably talk to Ben 20 hours a week.
- [00:10]
Sam
Yeah, pretty much. I feel like you have 100 times more great stuff that never makes it anywhere. It just goes into our text thread and dies immediately. And we got to bring it out. 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 a road, let's travel. Never looking back.
- [00:29]
Ben
Ben. I was counting before we started this episode. So together, we've been working together for five years now. We've created nine different things. I don't know if you've seen this. We've created nine different projects that have made more than a million dollars each. So the very first thing we did together is the all access pass, which was a pretty batshit crazy idea where I was like, what if listeners of the POD could actually see what I'm doing every day to build a business? And I basically was like, for three months, I'm 90 days. I'm gonna send an email every day just showing you what I worked on each of those days while I'm try to do X thing, whatever. The thing I was going to try to do was like, one of them was like, start an income ecom brand. One of them was raise a fund. One of them was start a course, whatever. And so that one did over a million dollars.
- [01:15]
Sam
The craziest part about that one is you were basically like, hey, dude, I just met you. Or we barely work together, want to do a 90 day sprint where we just figure out what we're going to do and then tell everyone in the world what we're doing. But we've never. We basically never worked together before then.
- [01:28]
Ben
We've never worked together. Also, we have, like, the. What's the opposite of a romantic comedy first meeting, you know, like in a romantic comedy, they're like walking down the street, then they, like, bump into each other, and then the papers fall on the ground. Then they scoop up, they look, they make eye contact and they're whatever. They're like, it's a thing. Ours was completely different. You, I think you, you were just a listener to the podcast. And I was testing out an idea that was like these CEO mastermind groups. So I basically, I said, hey, I need five or six people who have a business that does over a million dollars a year, come join this group, which Basically became Hampton, by the way. Sam ended up turning that into a real business called Hampton. I did one group, and you were in it. And the funny thing was you had a business that was doing over a million dollars a year. And Ben, how many. How many customers did you have in that business?
- [02:13]
Sam
One. One customer.
- [02:15]
Ben
Ben had a business with a single customer that paid him a million dollars a year. Can you say it's over now? You can say who it is?
- [02:21]
Sam
Yeah, it was Anheuser Busch at the time. Budweiser.
- [02:24]
Ben
So. So Ben is basically like, yeah, my customer is Budweiser. There are no other customers. They pay me a million dollars a year to do this, like, very simple thing where you were like, I don't know, you were like, building their SMS list for them or something like that, but you seemed bored out of your mind. And also, like, you seem bored out of your mind. And I was trying to do new things, and I was like, hey, I like this guy. He's got a good vibe. You want to try some stuff with me? Does that. Is that the summary of. Of how it went down for you?
- [02:52]
Sam
Pretty much. I mean, the only other thing is, like, Peak Covid, I specifically remember, like, it was those masterminds and watching the Jordan doc, and those are the highlights of the month, basically.
- [03:01]
Ben
Why did you say yes? Because you had a business that was doing a million dollars a year. I was not offering you more money than that. Why did you say yes to the. To the offer, by the way? I think there's something. You have good instincts, and I think there's. I've never asked you this, but why did you even say yes to begin with?
- [03:14]
Sam
I mean, at the time, I felt like I tried everything to figure out how to grow that business, and I just had zero answers. I'd been like, you know, it had been a year, and it was like, I've tried literally everything I can think of. Not one thing is working. Like, this is kind of going nowhere. I'm running, I'm hitting on the wall every time. That was one and then two. You know, I thought you had a ton of juice. And I feel like I text you this all the time, which is tmj. I just feel like you have too much juice, which I felt then I feel now, which is like, you know, this guy's a beast. This guy is like, you know, the next Joe Rogan.
- [03:45]
Ben
Is it tmj, like the thing where your jaw hurts? It's like when you have, like, too much jaw. To me, yeah, that's what I have I. I got. I got a bad case of tmj, too much juice.
- [03:54]
Sam
So, you know, I just had belief in you, and I was like, I'm gonna take a bet. And also, I had felt like I just ran against the. You know, I'd hit the wall a hundred times in a row trying to grow that thing, and it had gone nowhere.
- [04:06]
Ben
Well, I do appreciate that you. You do have a shit ton of belief in me, which is cool. We actually have this phrase we call. What do we call it? Like, your first believer, which is basically everybody I know who's successful in life at some point had somebody who irrationally believed in them. Right. Bill Simmons calls it the irrational confidence guy. I think there's that for the entre, for entrepreneurs too, which is before you've proven anything, before you've actually done it. And honestly, when you still kind of suck, somebody is just like, no, I believe I'm in blank check. Belief in you. Like, for me, that was this guy, Michael Birch, initially, when I was 23, 24 years old. And he kind of, like, recruited me for a job I wasn't really qualified for. And then he gave me. He named me CEO. He gave me his job as CEO. I was the youngest person in the company. And that was irrational. Like, there was really no proof, no logic, no nothing. But, like, I will never forget that. And then we've actually taken that where if we believe in somebody, we don't believe it in private. We go tell them. We're like. And me and you will text them and be like, dude, like, this guy, Billy Oppenheimer, who I think. Who I think we both are big believers in. And we'll just text Billy and be like, I'm buying all the Billy Oppenheimer stock on the market right now. Like, I'm cornering the Billy Oppenheimer, you know, market right now. I'm trying to build a huge position here because I am a believer in you and your talents. Have you seen that? And who else are we kind of first believers in? Do you know?
- [05:27]
Sam
Yeah, I think George Mack says that you were one of the big. One of the first believers in telling him he should stop doing an agency. He should just go all in on betting on himself. Ean your old intern.
- [05:38]
Ben
Yeah, I was a first believer in him for sure. Yeah. He was, like, probably 18 years old. We started working with him, but I think everybody needs that. And if. And whoever was that for you, you should send him a note today and just be like, by the way, thank you for that. That was huge for Me. And you did. You had no reason to believe me, but you did. But I think. I think more people need to do that. It's like an angel investor, but before money, you need at least belief that you can do something right. Like, it's actually more important as a starting ingredient than. Than cash initially. And I think people. More people need to have that, like, belief. Angel investor.
- [06:08]
Sam
You need someone to give you minutes in the game. You know, I just want to get. Give me two minutes. Don't leave me on the bench.
- [06:13]
Ben
A coach that puts you on the floor. Dude, you were just. Speaking of basketball, you were just at this fantasy camp thing. Can you explain what this was like two. Two weeks ago? Ben goes, hey, I'm going to be offline for a week. I'm going to the Duke Basketball Fantasy Camp, Coach. The K Academy. Can you explain what this is? Because I think this is kind of amazing.
- [06:35]
Sam
Yeah. So two weeks ago, I basically decided to go to K Academy, which is Coach K, obviously. You know who he is? Sean. Famous Duke coach. Every year he hosts a basketball camp for people that are 35 and older. Spoiler alert. I just turned 35, like, six months ago. So first time I could go, I immediately decided to go. I took my dad with me. So it was me and my dad. We haven't hung out for five days in a row, years without kids. So we go to. We go to North Carolina, and it's unbelievable.
- [07:05]
Ben
It's basically rich dude fantasy camp. It's like summer camp for. For rich dudes, right?
- [07:11]
Sam
Yeah. It's basically rich dudes that want to go back to high school, where they were on the basketball team and they're competing like their lives depend on it, and every other hour someone's 10.
- [07:20]
Ben
Honestly, that's an amazing pitch, because I would. I would happily pay ten grand for that right now. If you could take me back to when I was on my high school basketball team, that's like, the happiest days of my life, you know, that's what I thought.
- [07:30]
Sam
And then immediately when I got there in the first game, I got way less minutes than I thought. And my dad was, like, cussing under his breath that I should have got more minutes. I was like, I don't know. I don't know that I actually want to go back to high school again, where I literally had the same exact experience. But so we. So we get there, and it's 150 people, and everyone there, like, one for me, actually.
- [07:52]
Ben
So do the math on that. 150 people.
- [07:54]
Sam
What is the price of this thing, it's $13,000.
- [07:58]
Ben
All right, so it's a 2 million, 2 million dollar kind of five day camp basically for them, revenue wise.
- [08:04]
Sam
Yeah, $2 million. But I think everyone there, like basically becomes a part of their fund and helps support Duke athletics. So it's great for that. It's like great. Top of funnel for key people, for.
- [08:14]
Ben
Duke athletes, for becoming a booster or an alumni, a sort of like a supporter of the program.
- [08:20]
Sam
Yeah, but what I wanted to do when I went there, I was like, yeah, I love basketball. It's going to be awesome. I. But I just want to meet every single person that's here. Because if you, if you're spending 13 grand to hoop for five days, you're probably rich and interesting or just rich.
- [08:32]
Ben
Maybe and not that interesting. That's also a possibility. All right, this episode is brought to you by HubSpot. They're doing a big conference. This is their big one they do called Inbound. They have a ton of great speakers that are coming to San Francisco September 3rd to September 5th. And it's got a pretty incredible lineup. They have comedians like Amy Poehler, they have D. Dario from Anthropic, Dwarkesh, Sean Evans from Hot Ones. And if you're somebody who's in marketing or sales or AI and you just want to know what's going on, what's coming next, it's a great event to go to and hey, guess what? I'm going to be there. You can go to inbound.com register to get your ticket to Inbound 2025 again, September 3rd through 5th in San Francisco. Hope to see you there. We should explain this. Like I always say, we're business partners. What does that actually mean? What do you actually do?
- [09:20]
Sam
I would, I describe, you know, the way I tell people, which you probably tell people differently, is like three things I say, you know, basically just try to make. Try to make whatever. Try to make the main mission happen. And the main mission changes very often, which is everything from make great content to make money to just have fun. And then I add the last part, which is like, well, also not working that hard. You know, like, I think I work hard, but I think in general, like, want to have a good time and want to also be there for my friends and family. And I'd say the fifth part is I probably spend 20% of my time playing basketball. So I added that in last year, which is I want to spend 20% of my time playing basketball. So I spend a lot of time just trying to find Interesting things that we can attack that may support the main mission. So whether that be buying a company, an investment, some interesting content, ideas, meeting people.
- [10:15]
Ben
So, so here, here's some examples. One of them was let's raise a fund, right? This was back in 2021, maybe 2020, we decided, hey, we want to raise a fund to invest in startups. We have all this deal flow, let's do this. And so that became the main mission for like a three month period. And we raised I think something like 20 million bucks to invest into startups. Okay, great. Then we did grow my E comm store. I think at the time you joined, maybe my E comm brand was doing 5 million a year in revenue. And then now it does 25 million or 30 million in revenue. And so for, for 12 months, like that was the mission. And so the funny thing is we'll just like pick a main mission. Roughly every, I would say three to six months, we pick a main mission. The longest we've done is probably a year or two. And we just do whatever it takes to figure that out. So for example, when we were doing the E comm thing, neither you nor I knew anything about E commerce. And one of the things Ben does that's brilliant is he's basically very, very good at getting insights from the audience. And so what you did was you created this group called Club ltv. And Club LTV was basically you put out a call, you go, if you own an E commerce brand that does more than 5 million in revenue, right? We were at 5 million. You were like, if it has more than 5 million in revenue, come hang out in this thing. I'm not selling you anything. It's free to join, but you gotta be legit. You gotta be the owner and you have to do over 5 million in revenue. And we're just gonna hang out every other Friday. I'm gonna host it. It's like speed dating. You're gonna meet a bunch of other e comm founders, we're gonna share what's working in our businesses, and then every week one guy's gonna stand up and say like, oh, here's what I'm doing with TikTok, here's what I'm doing with email marketing. And you're gonna learn something that's gonna instantly make, if you just implemented it, it'll make you more money. That was the general idea. And you got like, I don't know, 150 e com business owners in there in like, you know, the first month. And then suddenly we were Just getting whatever problem we had, somebody in that group had already had that problem and could answer it. And so it just accelerated our business learning so fast from doing that. And that's kind of where I figured out this model of, like, I create the content, I attract interesting people, but I'm kind of an introvert. I just like being alone. Like, I like doing stuff like this podcast. Just me in my bedroom. Like, I don't really like going out and doing meetups or hangouts or doing calls. Ben loves that shit. And so Ben would go meet people, talk to them, see what they're up to, find a way to help them, introduce them to people, make connections, be useful to them. And in doing so, they would. You know, every one out of every 20 of those people would do something that's useful to us. Maybe we invest in their company, maybe they teach us something. Whatever it is. That's an example of. Of how it's worked in the past.
- [12:57]
Sam
Yeah. And I think the two things I think about a lot are like, you know, I want to be useful. Like, you know, a lot of this is I don't want to take from people. It's like, hey, I want to help you. And, like, when and if we ever need anything, I know they'll take my call. But it's not really about that. Just like, hey, I talk to a lot of people. I might know something that you might want to know. I might know someone you should know. And then two, I think, like, I think this is a Warren Buffett thing, which is, like, you can't connect the dots. Looking forward to Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. All right. A lot of this is, you know, a lot of it is creating serendipity and luck and, you know, I just never know it's going to connect. You know, something that someone might have said a year ago might randomly hit that I never thought of for the past year.
- [13:36]
Ben
Well, we should explain, because people don't know how we do this. So first, explain who this guy. I think his name is Nick Dio or Nick Dio. Explain who that guy is and then how he kind of inspired us to do stuff on our side.
- [13:50]
Sam
Yeah. So Nick Dio. Let's just call him Nick Dio. I like that better than Dio. But essentially, he's Gary Vee's relationship guy, I think is the way I would say it. So Gary Vee obviously has tons of access, owns a huge agency, but he can only be so many places at once. So he's basically built this guy Nick, and what he does is he manages all of Gary's core relationships. So from what I've heard, he basically will host a dinner every night. Anyone that wants to meet Gary, he connects them. He's the main guy. That's the face of Gary. He's front, forward. He collects everything. He helps people.
- [14:24]
Ben
And sometimes, and I think a lot of times, Gary's not even there. So it'll be like, Gary really likes this person or these people. He wants to get to know certain people. Nick will go and host an event or take them on a trip or hang out with them. Almost like, on behalf of Gary, right? Like, Gary's not even there some percentage of the time, I think. I think a large percentage of the time.
- [14:43]
Sam
I think, like, 99% of the time, Gary's not there. I think it's literally.
- [14:47]
Ben
But the guy knows. He's just like, yeah, Gary thinks what you're doing is dope. We just want to get to know you. If we can ever be helpful, let. Let us know. I heard this, and this was like, in sports, there was this thing that came out several years ago that was like, LeBron James spends a million dollars a year on his body. Like, on just treatments, you know, trainers, food, all of it. Like, a million dollars a year just fine tuning his body. And other athletes heard that, and they were like, dude, I'm not doing it. Like, I just kind of go to the gym or like, I just use the teams guy. I don't do that. But it makes total sense. Like, if you're an athlete, your body is your business. Like, it makes sense to spend money maintaining and improving your body. So LeBron did that. And I've always had this question, which is like, what's my version of spending a million dollars a year on. On my body, right? And so when I heard that Gary Vee has this guy Nick, I was like, oh, that makes perfect sense. Gary is, like, building a magnet to attract people who like what he's all about, right? That's his content that he's putting out there. But he can't and maybe doesn't even want to just constantly be meeting people that he's attracting because it's too much. The audience is too big. So, of course it sounds crazy to be like, he hired a guy that just hangs out with people in his. In his orbit. And I was like, yeah, that sounds a little weird, but actually, that's obvious and logical, and we should totally do that. And I didn't hire you in that way. That's not what. But you do. You do End up doing that because you're extroverted. You actually, like, you get a lot of energy from texting people, talking to people. Like, like today, how many people are like, in the last 24 hours, 24 hours, how many people have you texted?
- [16:22]
Sam
I mean, you know, probably like 70. It's a, it's a ton.
- [16:28]
Ben
Like, if I look on my phone right now, how many people do I actually text on a day to day basis? There's my wife, there's the lady who we're getting our mortgage loan from my dad for Father's day. There's like seven people max that like I'm talking to in a given day. And even that I'm pretty bad at replying. Whereas you just love doing it. You do it all the time. In fact, you had this like little phrase. You're like, I was like, you know, what's the secret? You're like, I reply, bro, most people just don't reply. I reply, ben, he replies, that's what he does. And you also check in with people and see like what they're up to and what, how it's going. You congratulate people all the time on what they do. You have these like little things that just kind of keep people in our orbit. So that's one thing is, is learning from that. The other is we took luck and we actually made it like a business metric that you measure. Could you explain the luck system and how we do that?
- [17:22]
Sam
Yeah, so the core idea I think was basically, okay, if we're going to spend a ton of time creating luck, that's going to, you know, surface in a ton of ways. Maybe it's going to surface in content, maybe it's going to surface in an investment, maybe it's going to surface in a future business. You gotta track it. You know, it's really easy basically to say, oh, I'm every day I'm gaining weight, but I never get on the scale because I just don't want to look at it. And then I just gain 10 pounds. Like it happens so fast. But if I'm on the scale every day, I never gain any weight. And what I mean by that is I basically decided, okay, I want to track what I'm actually doing and what, I mean, I want to track what I'm actually doing. So every day I want to say, okay, here's like the five or six things I did today that I think will create some luck. And then I want to actually see did anything ever hit in any way looking back? So an example might Be okay if I pull up my spreadsheet. I found this tweet that then became a great piece of content for mfm. So, you know, another example might be. Okay, we ended up getting into this deal that was because I chased this guy pretty aggressively to get into this round, and then we wired him.
- [18:27]
Ben
So, like, you know, an example would be, you know, one thing you're great about is you're, like, happy for other people. I think a lot of people in the entrepreneurial game get bitter as other people become successful. You see that, oh, they hit this revenue, and your actual reaction is either like, you know, we're way less, or. Or. Or, you know, whatever. That's not gonna last. I think there's a lot of that bitterness. People don't really say out loud, but in general, I think that's a. A pretty common reaction for people. Whereas I've. I've been around you a bunch, you actually have the opposite. If something awesome happens for people, you literally are like, oh, that's awesome. Congrats. And so you'll do something, like, somebody hits a milestone, and you'll send them a cake with, like, the number on it. And. And so you do these, like, random things that seem to be, like, I don't know, unproductive in nature. Like, you took 15 minutes to, like, design a cake to send this guy, but then that guy calls you, thanking you, and then you catch up with him, and he tells you about this thing that he's doing, and you realize, like, oh, for our basketball event, I didn't realize this guy actually knows the owner of that team. We could ask him for an intro. And like, you create luck through just a bunch of these different activities that you're doing. Other simple examples would be, like, you are pretty willing to just refer people. Like, you find out that somebody's looking for X, you'll take an hour and go actually, like, hunt down a referral for them and go find them the agency they're looking for, the person they're looking for, and, like, make the connection. You'll do it same day for that person. It doesn't seem in the moment like there's anything to gain in that for us, but it builds so much goodwill that of course, like, there's business karma, it comes back around. And so what we did was we looked at, all right in the last two years, what are all the best things that have happened. And then if you kind of trace the. The 23andMe that the Ancestry.com like, what led to that. So we have this one business that's just going gangbusters right now. It's. We haven't announced it yet, but, like, you know, it's. We just crossed 10 million in ARR. Profitably bootstrapped in, like, less than, you know, 18 months. And that business is amazing. But if we look at, well, where did. How did we get the key customers for that? Where did we get the intro for that? Where did we hire that key talent for that? Each one of those came from basically Ben doing random shit. So we decided the Peter Drucker mantra, what gets measured gets managed. Let's actually treat luck like something you can actually manage. Could you measure it? If you could measure it, would you. Would that encourage you to do more of it? If you did more of it, would more good things happen? And the answer so far for us has been yes. Even though this is kind of a nerdy thing. This is like when. When Sam talks about how him and Sarah do off sites and have, like, OKRs for their relationship, and you're like, ah, dude, you're kind of killing the romance here. It's like most people treat luck the same way where it's like, dude, just let it happen. And we actually treat, like, creating luck as a skill. Like, luck is a thing you can actually influence how much of it you're going to have in your life. And then we kind of celebrate you doing things that generate more and more luck for us.
- [21:25]
Sam
I also think it makes you just think about the things I'm learning or seeing, because it's like, oh, if I write it down, if I just keep it in my head, one, you never hear it, it never goes anywhere. It's pretty easy for me to forget. But if I write it down, it's like, oh, that actually was interesting. Or this story someone told me would actually make sense to tell on the podcast, or we should follow up on that. So I think that helps a ton too.
- [21:47]
Ben
It also changes your decision making. Like, sometimes you'll be like, ah, should I go do this? Like, you. You went and flew out and hung with Jesse Itzler for, like, a couple of days. There was really no, like, we weren't trying to do a deal with him. We weren't trying to sell him on anything. There's no. There's no agenda. He's awesome. We thought he was awesome. He was like, hey, you should come hang. And you were like, you know, people just say that as like a figure of speech. Like, oh, yeah, if you're ever in town, hit me up. Whereas we were like, Well, I think doing that will generate some good, good things. Good. That increases our luck quotient if you do that versus if you just sit at home for the next two days. So Ben books a flight, goes, hangs out with them for two days. Sure enough, while you're there, the conversation leads to different, like, you know, different good things. Different either learnings, insights, opportunities, whatever it may be. And I don't think we would maybe have the green light to shoot our shot as we do now, now that we actually made it. One of our kind of goals is to create more luck. And actually our goal for the year is Ben's got to create 100 lucky breaks. And so he keeps track of the hundred lucky things that go our way. And in order to do that, you gotta do like 500 or 700. Just interesting things that might generate those hundred lucky breaks.
- [22:59]
Sam
Yeah. I will say Jesse Itzler's a proud member of the TMJ crew. Too much juice. So if you're in, if you got too much juice, you know, you get a round trip flight from me immediately if you're in that class.
- [23:12]
Ben
This episode is brought to you by HubSpot Media. They have a cool new podcast that's for AI called the Next Wave. It's by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands. And they're basically talking about all the new tools that are coming out, how the landscape is changing, what's going on with AI tech. So if you want to be up to date on AI tech, it's a cool podcast. You could check out, listen to the Next Wave. Wherever you get your podcast, explain your, your barbell thing. Cause I like this. This. I think more people should, should do this.
- [23:39]
Sam
The way I operate is basically two things. Either I'm constantly, I mean, you know, my phone is just constantly texting people with things. I see. So it's either, okay, we're constantly talking via text or I'm texting, but in.
- [23:50]
Ben
A very lightweight way. Right. Like it's very light communication. You're not sitting on a 40 minute Zoom call with them.
- [23:57]
Sam
Yeah, and I do say, I do go by the I reply thing. Although since I told you that instance, I think you said on the podcast, every time I don't reply, I feel very guilty because, you know, sometimes I just, sometimes I forget or sometimes it's just hard when you, you know, when you have a lot of texts and then, and then, you know, and then the barbell is just go spend more time in person with people. So I haven't done it as much as I want to. But I, I think longer hangs. I think this is also a David Sender idea, which is you do longer hangs.
- [24:25]
Ben
I think Coogan was the one who told John Coogan from technology builder tppn, he was the one who told us this idea, or he said it out loud, at least to me. And it was like the middle zone is death. It's death by a thousand zoom calls. So like a 40 minute Zoom call or 45 minute Zoom call is basically the worst of both worlds. It's like kind of takes a lot of energy to do it, but you don't really build that much of a bond or relationship in it. You don't even get into much depth. You would rather be like just quick, funny memes and texts or sending tweets to people just to kind of like. It's very lightweight, takes you 10 seconds. Or go hang out with them for, you know, five hours. Just go fly to them and hang out with them for five hours. Or go drive up there and go, go, go grab lunch, go for a walk and then, you know, have a coffee. And like, if you do that, you actually get like way more of a, of a connection and a bond and more insight, more. It's a different type of hang. And it's actually, it sounds like it's, you know, it's the equivalent of 10 Zoom calls, but no, it's like the equivalent of like 200 Zoom calls when you do it right. And so you want to spend your time on either end of the barbell, the lightweight side or like go really in depth. There's a good example of this, by the way. Chris Sacca used to do this. I don't know if you know this story, but he, he was an angel investor and he moved out of San Francisco, which at the time made no sense. It's like all the angel investors are in San Francisco. That's where all the startups were. But he goes, you know what? If I'm in San Francisco, I'm just constantly playing defense. I'm just taking all these random coffee meetings and kind of feels very surface level. It's just, it's not differentiated. So he moves to Truckee, which is near Lake Tahoe. He buys a cabin and he gets a second cabin, like a guest house right next to his cabin. And what he did was he would, if he found somebody who was interesting, he would like make a bigger effort. He would invite them to come to stay for a weekend in his cabin and let's hang out. And founders are like, oh, that's cool. I'll go to Lake Tahoe. That sounds like fun. And then he would spend like 48 hours with this person. They're in the hot tub together, they're skiing together, they're talking, they're drinking, they're eating, they're cleaning up, they're doing all this different stuff. And by the end of that, they actually feel like good friends. Not like you would get at a coffee meeting. Plus, he would really understand their business. And this is how he got into the Uber deal and how he got into the Instagram deal was he invited the founder of Uber and the founder of Instagram to come hang out for the weekend. And it was in that weekend where they kind of like solidified the bond. He understood the business in depth. He knew really how good this founder was and what they were really made of, which you couldn't get in a 20, 30 minute coffee meeting. And he knew to, to back up the truck and invest.
- [26:55]
Sam
And I think it's also cool that just go hang out with people and see how they live. I think we've talked about this a lot. It's like, you know, you go see how someone like Mohnish Prabh lives when we go to his house and hang out with him, and you can taste their lifestyles and decide whether or not it's actually interesting.
- [27:10]
Ben
Right. By the way, I'm looking at the luck sheet right now. This is a great example. Your mission was to grow MFM at one point. So you were spending a couple of months trying to grow my first million, and you were like, dude, you guys don't bring enough guests on. The guest episodes do. Well, you. But you and Sam are pretty lazy. You don't like to reach out to guests. And so you're just like, you know, it doesn't really happen. So you went back, you looked at the archive and you were like, all right, let me find somebody who was awesome on the pod before. Bring them back. And so you found that Jesse Itzler was on a year or two ago. You tried to get him on. He didn't reply. He didn't reply again. And then you saw that he had like, I don't know, his, his calendar or his book was coming out, and you basically bought a hundred of them proactively. And you were like, hey, I think your calendar's awesome. I bought a hundred of these and I'm going to give them away on my first million. You know, just keep doing what, you know, keep doing what you're doing. This is great. He replies to that because he's like, oh, dude, somebody just came and bought 100 of my product because they think it's awesome. Like, thank you, you know, I appreciate that. And by the way, yeah, like I'm happy to come on again. And then he comes on the podcast and it reignited maybe a relationship that was kind of dormant. And you've done that a bunch where you'll like, somebody comes out with a product, you buy it, you hype it up, you celebrate it and then that makes them feel good and that leads to like good things. But all this stuff is like pretty unpredictable when you're doing it. But it works out.
- [28:28]
Sam
Yeah. I think it is important to say none of this is transactional. I kind of do this again. Goal is to be useful. I want to help people again. I think we all win together. This is not a zero sum game. We help people, they help us, et cetera. That's how it goes.
- [28:44]
Ben
Yeah, exactly. And also for every one thing I'm saying that led to this, there's 11 other things that didn't lead to anything. And we're totally fine with that. It was just fun to do, it was nice to do, so we did it. That's all. There was no expectation something happening. Except for you just know, like, hey, if I do a bunch of great stuff with great people, like good things are going to come out of that. So that's the, that's the luck thing. You sent this doc with other stuff on it. I want to. Let's talk about some of these other things.
- [29:11]
Sam
All right. I know normally, basically you always do business ideas, but I feel like you and I talk business non stop. It's just constantly business ideas. So I made a list of things that I wish existed. Basically stuff I want to be customer number one of that. I want to talk to you about and show you and see what you think.
- [29:28]
Ben
So things that, things that don't exist today, but you kind of wish you low key wish existed.
- [29:34]
Sam
Yeah. And you know, I'm an early adopter, so someone, someone makes these. I'm going to buy them.
- [29:39]
Ben
Ben tries weird stuff. He'll be like, oh, I'm eating this peanut butter that's made out of caramel only. And I'm like, what? And he'll buy any product that's like weird, but there's a chance it's amazing. Most likely sucks, but there's a chance it's amazing. So I'm guessing these ideas are going to be like that. Probably weird. Probably suck, but there's a chance it would be Amazing. Am I right on that?
- [30:00]
Sam
Yeah. And one out of ten hits and, you know, hey, I'm glad I tried ten random peanut butter protein things, you know?
- [30:06]
Ben
All right, so this is Ben's random wish list. Let's go.
- [30:09]
Sam
So I've got. I've got three ideas. I've got 10 ideas, but the first one I'll give you is courtside seats. So whenever you. Obviously, you know what courtside seats are. Whenever you're watching an NBA game, they always show, you know, at the Knicks games, they show Timothee Chalamet every time going nuts with Kylie Jenner. But I just think there's way more to do around courtside seats. Let me give you three. I have three courtside seat spinoff ideas. So one. Okay, I want to make a YouTube channel where basically all you do is buy courtside seats and you interview someone courtside every game goal is figure out, what do they do, how much money do they make, how do they make their money? And all you do, all you have to do is buy a courtside seat and you immediately can get someone every single game. What do you think?
- [30:52]
Ben
Okay, so the upside is you get to be courtside. So worst case scenario, your YouTube channel fails, but you got to go courtside at a bunch of games. It does use that, that thing that seems to work, which is on TikTok, people go and stop a rich person in their car. They're like, hey, just, nice car, man. I just want to ask, you know, what do you do? And then they say something and it creates, like, you know, this one minute thing that tends to. Tends to go viral or people like that stuff. So you're basically piggybacking off of that. But the investment here is pretty substantial, right? Like, how much is, how much are courtside seats anyways? Like, how much would this even cost to do? 40. There's 40 what? 40 court. 40 home games a year. So what are you spending to do this?
- [31:29]
Sam
It probably depends where you're doing it. I think if you're doing it in Orlando, you're probably spending a hundred grand. If you're doing it in New York, you're probably spending 400 grand, 500 grand.
- [31:39]
Ben
Which you could probably go get like a fanduel or seat geek or somebody up front to. To sponsor you for this and be like, hey, look, I'm gonna, you know, this is the, this is the concept. I bet you could pitch them enough to be like, this is gonna be kind of like a. A show where you're the main sponsor. And I think this will do really well. I kind of think you could get it paid for for. You don't need the. You don't need all of them paid for, but like enough to do four or five. And then once you get some views, then you can kind of go from there. It's not a bad idea.
- [32:05]
Sam
And then the tangent I have on is like, why are there not courtside seats at the Apple Demo Day YC Demo Day OpenAI? Like, why is Timothy Chalamet not sitting courtside there? Like, they should definitely have Timothee Chalamet or whoever sitting there needs to be concert seats, right?
- [32:24]
Ben
Like, you know, like pretty much any event. It is kind of interesting to know who's up front, who's there, who came. I'm kind of interested in that. What I want is not the interview, though. I just want to know, literally, this is my version of LinkedIn. Whenever I'm watching a Warriors game, I'll basically pause the screen and I'll try to see do I recognize anybody or who are these people that are sitting there? Because it's my first million. All those people have some interesting success story. You don't get to be courtside without an interesting success story. And I want to know who those people are. Like, I would pay, I'd gladly pay 20 bucks a month if somebody was just photographing who's courtside at the games and then just telling me who those people are and what they do. It's my version of paparazzi or TMZ that I actually give a shit about. It's like this weird mix of business and basketball. Very niche, but I would do it.
- [33:17]
Sam
Yeah. The other day, it was a highlight of my week. I was watching the Thunder Pacers game, and I saw a guy that we know on Twitter sitting courtside, fist pumping Mike Beckham from Simple Modern. I was like, damn, that's cool.
- [33:29]
Ben
Yeah, I saw that. That's cool. All right, what's your next half baked idea?
- [33:32]
Sam
All right, so the next one I call Lunch Bounty before we got to buy lunchbounty.com. so the idea is basically this. You've seen things like you've seen these social networks where basically you can buy. All your tokens are available, and to claim them, you get $100,000. Right. That was bit clout, right?
- [33:49]
Ben
Yeah.
- [33:50]
Sam
And then we've heard these stories of people where they spend, you know, $30,000, $100,000 to go get lunch with someone like, I believe Warren Buffett or Warren Buffett or I've heard stories where people used to pay $35,000 to get dinner with peter thiel. And it changed their entire life. But there's no real marketplace to find those opportunities. Like maybe you'll occasionally find them on ebay or their twitter. I want to create a marketplace that's basically like, okay, if there's $100,000 sitting here and bill ackman, all you have to do is hit yes. And then your lunch is. You know, Ben is willing to pay $100,000 to get lunch with you. Just to have a marketplace where it's just a one hour lunch and someone can basically preemptively bid on how much they're willing to pay for lunch with.
- [34:35]
Ben
X. I like this. This is. When you first said it, I didn't know where you were going with this. But this is actually kind of an interesting, simple idea, by the way. I think the right lens for this is these are non serious business ideas. Like, we have a bunch of serious, more boring business ideas, but these are just like fun ideas.
- [34:52]
Sam
And the key to this one, by the way, is charity. The key is like, everything is a charity.
- [34:56]
Ben
Yeah, exactly. So you need basically. And are you saying do it permissionlessly? So, like, are you saying you'll go. You'll just put up bill ackman lunch, New York, you get it to $50,000 or somebody who wants to go have lunch with bill ackman, and then you basically are telling bill ackman, hey, by the way, we're auctioning this off. It's at 50,000. The proceeds will go to your favorite charity. Would you be. Are you willing to honor it? Are you willing to do it? The guy doesn't get charged anything if you don't do it. And you're basically going to publicly pressure them to do this to get it off the ground.
- [35:26]
Sam
Yeah, exactly. That's the exact idea.
- [35:29]
Ben
It's sort of a gray area. But how mad are they really going to be? You're raising a bunch of money for their charity of choice. I think you could do this. I think you get away with this. I know Andrew wilkinson did this not long ago. I think he did a $20,000 lunch or something like that. We know that Mohnish Prabhai paid $650,000 to go to lunch with Warren buffett. If you just think about, like if you had. Let's just pretend you had two of these a week, right? Maybe you have it as like a successful person. And then maybe either an actor, celebrity, musician, or like an athlete, something like that. But even two a week. And let's say the average one of these would go for what like you think 25k?
- [36:06]
Sam
10 to 50? Yeah. $25,000. Good ballpark.
- [36:11]
Ben
So you're going to raise basically two and a half million dollars for charity if you could even just do two of these every week.
- [36:19]
Sam
Yeah, I think it's. I actually think it's a good idea. It is a crazy idea, but I think it's a good idea.
- [36:24]
Ben
Yeah, exactly. I think if you're trying to do like fun slash social impact, this is kind of an interesting idea. And by the way, you would end up meeting all these people because you created this like whatever this thing is. The lunch program.
- [36:36]
Sam
Yeah, exactly. If that's my idea.
- [36:38]
Ben
Yeah. All right, what else you got? Well, hey, do this one. Everyone needs their Birkin bag. I'm surprised you even know what a Birkin bag is. What are you thinking here?
- [36:47]
Sam
I don't know much about Birkin bags other than it sounds cool and I think it's really expensive. So for me, what that was is one of my buddies started this company called Stockx and he called me, I don't know, a year ago and he was like, dude, I'm starting a new company. We make these awesome collectibles and what we do is we basically, the website is I think ghostwright.com and what we do is we basically make figurines of fame, we do licensing deals and we make figurines of famous people. Very similar to this thing called KAWS kws.
- [37:20]
Ben
So and by figurines are these like small figurines? Are they big? What are, what are the, like the plastic?
- [37:25]
Sam
I think he makes both, but for this specific one. He calls me out of the blue. Six months, they're, I think they're glass plastic. A mix of everything. But six months ago he calls me out of the boy. He goes, dude, I know you're a huge Phoenix Suns fan. I've got something just for you. I was like, what is it you're calling the right guy? And he goes, you know, we're doing this special run of six foot tall figurines. It's like, all right, I have no idea where I'd put a six foot figurine that's I think made out of.
- [37:54]
Ben
That's like a nutcracker that you put at the door, right?
- [37:58]
Sam
It's like, I have no clue. But hey, you got the word Phoenix Suns. And like, honestly, you might have sold me already. And he goes, so it's, we're doing a special run. It's only, only a certain Number of NBA players. And we're making a Devin Booker. So a six foot tall Devin Booker figurine. And it was like, all right, how much? Like, you know, I guess I've been looking for my Birkin bag. So how much? And if he goes $10,000, which, you know, I, I don't think I've spent $10,000 on myself really on anything outside of investing in bitcoin. I can't think of the last time I've spent $10,000 on something and I didn't even think about it. I said yes immediately. And then later I told my wife and I was like, and by the.
- [38:43]
Ben
Way, this is like a one of one or there's going to be thousands of these.
- [38:46]
Sam
It's a one of one. So I'm the only guy with the Devin Booker. And I don't know what I'm going to do with. I'm the only guy with the Devin Booker. And I was like, okay, it's going to be cool because maybe one day he's going to call me. He's going to be like, dude, I respect that you own the other one of one. Like, that's cool.
- [39:02]
Ben
Devin Booker's going to call you. That's the dream.
- [39:04]
Sam
The dream is that Devin Booker is going to call him FaceTime me one day and be pretty fired up.
- [39:08]
Ben
Hey, man, I heard you bought that six foot figurine of me.
- [39:11]
Sam
Yeah, exactly.
- [39:11]
Ben
Do you want to be friends? That's what you thought was going to happen?
- [39:14]
Sam
I mean, that's a terrible dream now that I say it, but that's what I was hoping for, right?
- [39:17]
Ben
There's a small part of you.
- [39:19]
Sam
And then I told my wife, I was like, yeah. So I got this thing coming in six months. I don't know when it's coming, but like, it's from a buddy. But here's the good news. Here's the good news. It's a six foot tall figurine. And the even better news is that it was a gift. But unfortunately I left out the fact that it was a $10,000 gift. It was a gift. So it's kind of led me to my new take, which is that everyone needs their Birkin bag. So the idea is basically empower everyone to make that crazy purchase. It makes absolutely no sense and just, you know, just call it a gift. You know, Tell your wife it's a gift.
- [39:59]
Ben
Tell your wife it's a gift. It's a gift that I bought for myself. You know, you, I think you might be onto something, right? So collectibles is now a bigger and bigger space. Right. One of the investments we missed on, which I think still kind of eats at us a little bit, is whatnot. We had the ability to invest in whatnot pretty early on. We tried to. The guy was like, I don't know. There's not enough room in the round. And we didn't really push it. We were like, okay, well, we hope, you know, we want. We want to. And then we. We didn't really follow up. It's now. How much is whatnot worth now? I think at the time, whatnot was, like, valued at 50 or 60 million dollars.
- [40:33]
Sam
I think it's 5. I think it's 5 billion dollars now.
- [40:36]
Ben
5 billion. And I think they just said that they. They've done 5 billion in sales on their thing. If you don't know what whatnot is, it's basically you open an app. It's a live video of someone basically opening up, like, a pack of Pokemon cards or NBA trading cards. And they're. You basically, you buy it. So you push a button, you, Apple pay. You could buy the pack. And he'll be like, oh, Sean, all right, Sean, you bought the pack. All right, man. Good luck. It opens up the pack in front of you, shows you what it is, and then it mails you the cards after the fact. So you kind of, like, you just shop live, and then they open the pack. You see, it's like a lottery thing. You see if you win or not, and then they mail you the thing after the fact. It's kind of like a crazy idea, but it's all collectible. And they've sold $5 billion in the last, I don't know yet 12 months or something like that of collectibles. So, like, people are getting their Birkin bags. For some people, it's Pokemon cards, for some people, it's NBA trading cards for some people. For you, it's your statue of. Of Devin Booker for, you know, for your wife, it might be an actual Birkin bag. I think the question is, who doesn't have their Birkin yet? So, like, basically, what niche does it? And we have a buddy that is going pretty hard at tech collectibles. So he's trying to buy, like, the original Macintosh or, like, you know, a piece of the first SpaceX Falcon stuff that there's not really a market for now. It just feels like random memorabilia. But I think over time, tech has become so much more important in culture. Right. Like, growing up, tech was a side thing, but now it's like, you Got movies, you know, like the Social Network. And everybody knows who these CEOs are. You know who Zuckerberg is, you know who Elon is. They're like the most followed people on the planet in some cases. I think that tech collectibles is going to be a big thing. And our friend who's doing this, I'm sort of jealous that they're doing this because I think this is a smart idea.
- [42:26]
Sam
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. But I am curious, what's your working bag like? What have you bought? Dude, that's insane.
- [42:36]
Ben
What is the definition here? So it's got to be something that's totally irrational. Right? Like, it's not about the utility of the product. Like, I bought a piano, but like, I bought a piano, I play the piano. It's an instrument. Like, yeah, I could have bought a cheaper one, but I bought a more expensive one. I think that doesn't count. I think it's also got to be kind of like status or collection driven. And I don't know if I'm a collector. I'm not a car guy, I'm not a watch guy.
- [43:02]
Sam
You did buy a Cryptopunk like three years ago.
- [43:06]
Ben
I did, I did, but I didn't buy it. I mean, we bought that just as like a marketing gag for Milk Road. We didn't really. It's not like I actually was like, oh my God, I love the art.
- [43:17]
Sam
Yeah.
- [43:17]
Ben
It's never been a thing for me.
- [43:19]
Sam
Yeah.
- [43:20]
Ben
You know what I would do? I would do if musicians did their version of Birkins. So like if a musician was like, hey, we have like a kind of like a one of one collectible. Maybe it's a recording or it's a freestyle or it's like a variation of the song and they're only gonna, you know, they sell one of them and you get to collect it as a piece of art. That's music. I would be pretty into that. I think that's pretty cool.
- [43:44]
Sam
Maybe MFM needs to come up with its own Birkin bag that we can offer the biggest MFM fans.
- [43:50]
Ben
It'll be a six foot statue of. You did. All right. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of Choice for over 200,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of. And then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder, it's an entrepreneur. You could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and annoyances and decided to actually fix it himself. And really any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency. Well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers and stay current on your balances, all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury is great. Highly recommend you check it out. And thank you for sponsoring the show. For more information, check out mercury.com Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank Check show notes for details. All right, what else you got? You got any other good ones? What's your best one? What's your, what's your best idea?
- [45:01]
Sam
Okay, I think my best idea, I've got a bunch of good ones, but I'll give you a great one. So I think I've been thinking a lot about when you're post economic, which I am not, but I hope to be at some point in the future.
- [45:14]
Ben
The defined post economic, what does that mean?
- [45:16]
Sam
People don't know that basically, if you've made over $10 million and you don't have to work, what are you going to spend your time doing?
- [45:25]
Ben
I would say post economic is when you no longer make decisions based on money. That's both spending decisions. You decide what you want. The price doesn't really matter. Right. And this happens first, that like you buy guac at Chipotle, you don't care that it's two bucks. Then you buy. You can go to any restaurant, buy anything. You go to any store, buy anything. It just levels up from there. You travel first class, you don't even think about it. You travel private, you don't even think about it. Right. Like spending is one side and then the other side is earning. Meaning you decide what to do with your time, not based on how much money it's going to make you. That's, to me, that's post economic.
- [45:59]
Sam
Yeah. So like once you're there, you could, you basically, you have all these nice things and you just quickly get used to them. Right. It's like you move into a nicer house after a week. You totally, for you Just don't even, you know, for lack of a better word, you don't even care. Right? It's like, yeah, I'm used to it. Get a nicer car. So I've been thinking about like what are actual experiences that change like people want and I think when you're there one, you want to feel, you want to feel pain again. Like you kind of want to go back to where you were when you were starting something, when everything was hard and you want to feel pain. So my big idea is Survivor. So we all, you know, obviously, you know what Survivor is basically TV month long TV show where you go in the middle of nowhere and you have to compete. But imagine a world where we basically created an island where you have to pay 100 grand to go compete in a real life Survivor. So you get dropped in the middle of nowhere for a whole month, you pay 100 grand to be there and the winner wins money. But the whole idea is basically an actual Survivor that you pay to be there, all your friends and family can watch, it's live streamed and it's purely for when those people are post economic and they're sick and tired of flying all over the world, they're sick and tired of just staying at random hotels. It's just not that interesting. Go back to square one and go beyond Survivor.
- [47:20]
Ben
You know, I think when you first said it I was like, this sounds kind of dumb but actually, you know, we have so many friends that basically sell their company and immediately start training for Ironman, right, Or triathlons. And actually if you want to get in great shape like, or like an ultra race, right where you're going to run 100 miles or 50 miles or something like that and you know, like marathoners and ultra racers, like they're in good shape in one dimension but it's not actually like good for your body. Like they end up just kind of shin flints and just sort of destroying their body a little bit. They don't get in like very good aesthetic shape to do it right. You don't like put on muscle, you kind of like skinny yourself out. But they do it because they want to do something hard. And you're right, you kind of feel alive and you feel tough and you got a story to tell and you challenge yourself and like you do this like voluntary hardship, cold plunge, same thing, voluntary hardship that you get to show. And so I actually think that you're probably right that there's a number of people who would sign up for like a combination of it's A digital detox. Right. Because you're not going to have your phone, Internet, you're going to be totally disconnected. It's hard. And so you're going to get that hardship experience without having to train to run a long race. And I think it's like transformative, rite of passage type of thing, which it seems like people need more and more now that, like, the whole world is so easy. You push a button and someone will, like, literally deliver a platter of nachos to your door from doordash. Right. Like, the life has never been easier in one sense, which creates a craving for hard. But if hard is not natural, then you have to sort of create an artificial hard. And I think that's what this is. It's an artificial hard. And I think that's why people like this David Goggins, Jocko Willink. Like, I think that's why people gravitate towards that type of stuff, because there's some itch they're trying to scratch. And it seems like you're saying, here's a version of that. Pay 50 or 100 grand and you're going to go for. What did you say, 30 days?
- [49:18]
Sam
Yeah, 30 days. That's all it takes, 30 days.
- [49:22]
Ben
And you have to survive just with your own bare necessities on an island.
- [49:27]
Sam
Yeah. And you know, this works. You take it to other franchises, too, right? It's like Love Island. It's like, don't go on match. Don't use matchmaking.
- [49:34]
Ben
So this is actually just like, branded as part of the game, as part of the show, is what you're saying.
- [49:39]
Sam
I'm just saying, you take all these. All these popular reality TV shows, and people just go pay to have their own versions of them because it's better.
- [49:47]
Ben
Than, you know, dude, love is blind. I swear, I can't believe there's not just, like, a Love is Blind tour going around city to city where people who are single and see Love is Blind are like, all right, I want to do it. I want to go on the pods. I want to meet somebody that way. And I'll spend, you know, basically three or four days doing this and then come out and then I date that person. You know, trim the, like, marriage part because that's the drama for TV that doesn't make any sense. Like, oh, we propose and we have to get married in 20 days. Like, you could take that part out. But just the, like, the pods experience. If I was single, I would want to do that. And that's kind of an insane thing. I can't believe that's not on tour.
- [50:23]
Sam
I mean, for real life Survivor, I'd pay 100 grand right now to go there. And, you know, basically, like, it was just like, hey, you don't have to pay 100 grand.
- [50:30]
Ben
I could just drop you off somewhere, dude, and I'll pick you up for 30 days.
- [50:33]
Sam
Yeah, I think that. I think, like, reality TV done well for people that want to pay for that is a great idea.
- [50:41]
Ben
Yeah. It creates the desire and the curiosity of, like, could I do it? How would I do it? Right. Like, and so if you just made that accessible to people. Yeah, for sure. For sure. People would want to do that. And by the way, is this, like, are you saying this is a business or what are you. What are you saying here?
- [50:56]
Sam
I'm saying it's a fun. Fun. Maybe it's a business. You know, maybe it could be like the new Tough Mudder. It's like, you know, back in the day when Tough Mudder was pretty big, maybe it could be the new Tough Mudder. It's just a five, ten day experience, you know, maybe.
- [51:10]
Ben
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think you got to bring the price down. I mean, 100,000 is really. It's. It's very high. I think you really. I think if you did this for $10,000, this might work. Not to. Not to cheapen your idea, but I feel like you could get some scale with this thing because what does it cost you to run it? It's like you just need, like a medic and then there could be like 20 people doing this together. They could live as a tribe. In fact, it's probably better as a tribe and not you on your own, right?
- [51:37]
Sam
Yeah, it's probably way better. Like your five friends as a tribe in there.
- [51:41]
Ben
Are you doing the whole thing? Are you voting people off or. No, it's just 30 days of survival.
- [51:44]
Sam
No, you're voting people off. I think you got.
- [51:46]
Ben
Oh, it's the whole thing. Okay, Gotcha.
- [51:48]
Sam
I think it's the whole thing.
- [51:50]
Ben
All right, you got some more on here. So let's do cool carpal tunnel brand. Oh, I know what this is.
- [52:00]
Sam
Yeah.
- [52:01]
Ben
Ben, put your hands up right now. If you're on YouTube. So Ben, right now, he's not wearing this glove. I've never seen Ben's right hand because every time I get on a call with Ben, he's wearing this Michael Jackson glove, this absolute OJ Strangler glove on his right hand at all times. And it's because you had, like a carpal tunnel issue. And so he just wears that all day.
- [52:22]
Sam
Honestly, I don't even know if I have carpal tunnel anymore. I'm just used to wearing the glove and I like to fit. So I'm like, oh, yeah, people make cool batting gloves for baseball.
- [52:30]
Ben
It's just my thing now.
- [52:31]
Sam
Now we just need cool gloves for working. Like, where's the cool carpal tunnel brand?
- [52:37]
Ben
Okay, so I guess I can explain this. You started having pain, you googled how to fix it, and then this came up.
- [52:45]
Sam
I mean, I think it's like One of those WebMD things, though, where it's like, oh, one day I was like, oh, my hand feels kind of weird when I'm typing. Maybe I've got bad form. And then you just go down this whole thing and you start watching YouTube videos about, oh, maybe I have carpal tunnel. And then I went to Amazon and I probably spent $500 on 50 pairs of these gloves that I now wear every day.
- [53:06]
Ben
We were talking about Touchland the other day with Harley from Shopify. And the thing about Touchland is they took a very boring sterile category. Hand sanitizer, literally sterile. And the founder rebranded it, remade it into something that was kind of sexy, kind of cool, smelled good. And then they started collabing, made the designs look good. They started branding, collaborating with Disney and others and licensing the ip. And I think about, like, actually all kind of like braces. Like, you know, basically, like, you're talking about your wrist brace, your wrist glove. I have like a knee thing. There's like arm sleeves. There's like, you know, a lot of people wear these because they have pain and they're. They have plantar fasciitis, they have knee pain, they have elbow pain, they have wrist pain, they have frozen shoulder, whatever it is. And actually all of those are very ugly and very sterile looking similar to hand sanitizer. And you're probably right that somebody could just make a cooler brand in that space, charge more for it. But, like, if you want to, it's. It is fashion. It doesn't have to be ugly. It is a thing you're wearing. Why not make it look better and see what, what comes out of that?
- [54:15]
Sam
Yeah, man. I think it's a no. I think it's a no brainer. Again, I kind of want to hide this glove when I wear it, but, you know, hey, I think it's a no brainer.
- [54:23]
Ben
Yeah, but although I don't know what glove would look cool on you. Like, what would I do to that glove to make it not look like you're wearing the Michael Jackson glove. I don't really know. And if it was a different color, would that really change anything? It's hard to say.
- [54:35]
Sam
I think it needs Jony. I've, like, you know, if we had. If we had $5 billion, we could get Johnny. I've on it.
- [54:43]
Ben
All right, what else should we talk about?
- [54:44]
Sam
I've got one more that I think we should hit, which is seen at the top of this episode. We were talking about how I went to K Academy. You know, basically went and spent a week at Duke basketball, competed really hard and coach. You know, the cool thing about it is Coach K was there the whole time. He's sitting there. He doesn't talk much. He doesn't talk much, but he does give like two or three speeches. And, you know, he said one thing in his speech that I wrote down that I thought was really good or he said two things. One of them is part of the half baked idea. The other one's just interesting. He said, you know, at Duke, we pursue moments, which I wrote down because I think it's really, you know, basically he's like, everything's a moment. I want to hold these moments that are awesome. So, you know, one, I kind of took that and said, all right, I want to pursue moments. I think that's.
- [55:27]
Ben
What does that mean? That sounds cool. What do you really mean? But like, what's an, what's an example of that? What do you mean by pursue moments?
- [55:32]
Sam
I think it's basically just like, be present and like you're looking for, like, very enjoy very specific things and remember those things. But also I was just like, oh, it sounds cool. It's like a cool thing to tell.
- [55:45]
Ben
My mom that I do, like, pursue moments. I think that, like, I think about, like, whether it's with my kids or it's like, you know, yeah, you're going to do a business for five years. That's a long time. And like, if I probably just told myself that, like, all right, I'm just trying to pursue this moment. What's the moment I'm trying to pursue? Or like, if I'm in the moment, really pursue it. Really go. Really go for it. Lean into it. I think I kind of like that. All right, I mean, I buy that. Go ahead.
- [56:09]
Sam
And then the second part was like, you know, he was talking about how he worked with Kobe and, you know, he was basically telling this story about how he made Kobe cry before they played in like this USA gold medal game, I think, and 2008 when they beat Spain and he was talking about how he motivated him. So I went around and, like, you know, at this K academy, everyone there is like an ex Duke player. So, like, there's 50x Duke guys just kind of walking around that you can talk to. So I went and asked, like five of them, like, you know, what. What was Coach K so good at? Like, what. What was the A plus plus at? And everyone just says motivation. And I know you're like a motivation guy. I know you're a Tony Robbins disciple. And everyone talks about how he just made these incredible custom videos. So it'd be like, all right, before this game, he's going to bring me in and he's going to have this custom thing that he built just for me just to focus on my hustle or my intensity. So I kind of had this idea, which is like, Coach K in a box, which is with AI. Could you essentially make something that does custom motivational videos based on all these inputs that exactly you need today? So it's like, okay, if I wore this device and it knew everything about me, I just want a custom motivational video right now for this workout I'm about to do or for the sales call I'm about to take. So that's the idea. Like, Coach K in a box. And I know you have a bunch of thoughts. Let me hear them.
- [57:39]
Ben
Well, when I was at Duke, my roommate Trevor was trying to walk onto the basketball team and he ended up being the last guy cut. So he didn't end up getting on the team, but he was a manager for the team for a few years. So he would tell me all the time about Coach K. Like, yeah, what is he doing all that? And I had the same question, like, you. Right? Like, this guy's the. I think he's the all time winningest college basketball coach. He was the men's. He's the Olympic basketball coach for a long time. So, okay, he's a goat. Okay. So, you know, I think you asked the right question. Like, what makes this guy so great? Because I want to learn from that. I want to learn from the goats. And Trevor told me, he's like, dude, he would do this stuff in the locker room. So what he would do is I thought when a coach gives a motivational talk, they walk in, they say, all right, everybody, listen up. Like, we got a big game. We want to get out there. Give it your all. Are you going to give it your all? Yeah. No, let me hear you say it. Yeah, I thought that's what it is. No, no, no, no, here's how it worked. He was like, before Coach K enters the room, they dim the lights, they would turn on the big screen that they had in their locker room and it would be edited video, kind of like what a 16 year old kid on TikTok would make. And it's basically a spliced video that was like, let's say it was them playing the last time they played this team. But then intersplice was like footage from Braveheart. It'd be like the speech at Braveheart, the war scene spliced in with the game. And you're like, all right, it's kind of cheesy, but they're like, no, no, no, trust me. In the moment that shit hit hard, it's like the music, the splicing, the speech, the footage of you. And then at the end, literally, Coach K came out, face painted, like Braveheart rolled a ball onto the ground. And Coach K is old. Like he was like in his 70s. He had like double hip replacement. And he would dive on the ball and basically like, like, you know, like the ultimate sign of hustle and basketball is diving for a loose ball. And he would, he would run into the locker room, face painted, dive onto the ball, screaming and be like, and be like, let's fucking go kill these guys right now. And people would be like, whoa. Like it was total shock value for the team. And he would really light into them and get, get into them on that. And so he would do the motivational up videos. And then last time we did, or two years ago when we did our basketball camp that me and you do, we call it Hoop Group, where we basically take 25 or 30 of the most like ambitious founders we know. Like, there's like, I don't know, half the people there are billionaires, but they love to love play basketball. And we went to go visit Duke campus and we played in Duke Stadium, Cameron Indoor Stadium. And when we were there, we were asking one of the ex players who's now a coach, we were like, can you tell us a great Coach K story? And he did. He goes, I was on the team, I was a captain and I had a bad game. And after that bad game, the next day at practice, I thought maybe Coach K would kind of like rip into me a little bit or tell me I needed to play better. That's kind of what I expected. And you know, if you do what people expect, you don't really get much of a response. Right. They're ready for it. It's like somebody who's They've. They're tensed up. You can't. You can't really, like, you know, push them over. They're ready for it. And so he. He's like. He doesn't say anything during the practice to me, doesn't talk to me. And we're practicing. I'm kind of like, huh? He didn't. Didn't say anything. And then he calls me over to this room, and they have this film room where they normally, like, review game footage. And he's like, that room has, like, six TV screens or eight TV screens in the room. And I walk in, and it's. My face is on every single one of the screens, and it's just me and him in there. And it was basically a slideshow of his facial expressions from the last game. And it was just his face kind of whining. I didn't get a call, being I missed that shot, kind of being bummed about it. I got taken out of the game. I had bad body language there. Then in the second half started, I was having a bad game, so I was just kind of, you know, I was checked out. When we were doing the team huddle, and then again, I fouled this guy. And I disagree with the call. And I'm pouting. I'm doing this with my hands being like, oh, come on, man. And they froze it on that screen. And he goes, coach K looked at me. And he goes, if I ever see the palms of your hands again, you will never play for this team again. He's like, I don't ever. He goes, you're a captain. You're a man. You're a leader. Leaders don't look like this. They don't beg and whine and pout for something. You know, like, you need to carry yourself like a leader. He goes, I don't care what you do. I don't care if the ball goes in or not, but you will not act like this again. And he goes, dude, that burned into my skull. Like, he's like, I just. I would never do that again. And I thought that was an incredible story. I was like, dude, this is a. Whenever I talk to people about, like, oh, what's it like to work with Elon or Steve Jobs? I'm looking for a story like this. What do they actually do that's different. That's something I would never do, that I would never think to do, but it makes sense when they do it. That, like, holy shit. Yeah. That would actually, like, shift the way that somebody operates and somebody works. I couldn't believe that story. Do you remember that one?
- [62:35]
Sam
Yeah. It's insane. And that's, like. That's what I want. Like, okay, he's a good motivator, but, like, tell me the stories that he, Like, I want to, like, I'm like, oh, we should just go write a book where you go get 25 Coach K stories that are just about how he motivates. Because it's insane.
- [62:50]
Ben
Yeah, exactly. And also just kind of makes you think, like, damn, I wouldn't even think to do that. Like, I'm. How. You know, there's no rule against something like that, but, like, what a. It just feels against the norms. But I guess, like, as you build up your own credibility, it's almost like, lean into that power and basically use your credibility. Like, he could kind of say anything. He could do anything kind of crazy and get away with it because he's Coach K. I guess there's a method to the madness. I wonder, like, I wonder if he was doing that stuff early on, and I wonder if he got more bold about it as he went along. But I'm with you, dude. If I had a Coach K in my life, I'd be good. I don't know if I could do the motivational speech because, like, I think part of it is you need, like, the B roll needs to be me, like, playing sport. Like, the B roll of me just, like, typing emails, like. Like writing a document. Like, I don't. I don't think there's any.
- [63:43]
Sam
You.
- [63:43]
Ben
You could play Fort Minor on that track. It's not going to do anything for me.
- [63:46]
Sam
It might. Pulse is not going up.
- [63:49]
Ben
It might. I don't know.
- [63:50]
Sam
Yeah, and also, there was this one story, like, a few years ago, the Heat had that miraculous run of the finals, and I specifically remember this moment where this guy, Bam. Adebayos, like, up there at the end, they're, like, interviewing him because he's the Eastern Conference finals mvp and he's just. He gets on the mic and he goes, dude, you donis. Haslam had this insane video for us that changed how he approached game seven when they beat the Celtics. And I spent the past two years, like, trying to figure out what that video was. So at this camp, the last thing about K Academy is I. I went up to Justice Winslow, who played for the Heat. I was like, dude, what did the Heat do to motivate? Like, what was in that video? He's like, I wasn't on the team then, but I could text some guys. He's like, but I'LL tell you now. It is exactly like the thing you heard from Coach K. It is going to be something so custom. It's going to be Braveheart. It's going to be Fort Minor. It's going to be like they're pulling out all the stops. And, you know, it's like, in that setting. And ever since then, I'm like, dude, I just want to, like, next hoop group. I just want to experience that for, like, 10 minutes. That's my only ask, you know?
- [64:56]
Ben
That's too good. I love that story. Yeah, I really love that story. That's like. That's in my, like, hall of fame hall of fame of, like, you know, motivational stories. What else you got? Do you want to do anything else or. We're going to wrap up?
- [65:11]
Sam
Let's see. I think we should wrap on one final thing, which is earlier you were talking about Club LTV, which was awesome. I think we had 150, 200 people in it back in the day, meeting, I think once every other week to talk business, meet each other. I think we should bring that thing back in some way. What do you think?
- [65:30]
Ben
What would we do? I don't think we need to do the ecom version of it anymore. I think. So. Here's my thesis. Thesis is a very fancy word for what I'm about to say. So let me bring that expectation down. MFM has roughly a million people who listen to it. Maybe not all regularly, but that's like, kind of our reach is a million people who are all entrepreneurially. They're all what I call, like, entrepreneurs with a sense of humor as to who I think we attract people who are entrepreneurial and they have a sense of humor. And so my. My thinking is I'm never going to meet all those people. Honestly, I don't really want to meet a million people. That's not really my goal. However, the top 1% of our audience is fat is like, a fascinating group of people, right? They're very interesting. They, you know, it's going to be like, people who are like, CEOs of public companies. It's some dude in, you know, Wichita who's got a $40 million, like, chemicals plant that he runs. There's a guy who's got this, like, tutoring business side hustle thing. That's whatever. There's a bunch of interesting people in that top 1%. I think what would be dope is if we did Club ltv, again, which was like your thing you would curate. It was a curated group. I think that's key, because you want everybody else in there to be somebody you're happy to have met, right? Like, that's the goal. Take the top 1% of MFM listeners and then basically do like, what, Like a happy hour, kind of like a speed dating thing. That's. That's kind of the way we did it before, which was like, you meet once a month, roughly. And Ben kind of puts people in groups, and then you go, you talk with a specific prompt, and then he switches, he shuffles the groups. And so you meet in an hour. You're gonna meet a bunch of cool people, and you're gonna learn one or two things. And I think that would be awesome. We should bring that back.
- [67:17]
Sam
Yeah, we should do that.
- [67:19]
Ben
By the way, people don't know Club LTV stands for in E. Com. Ltv means lifetime value. It's like the key metric there. So we made it Club ltv, which is basically the name, the gimmick of the thing. But the funny thing was Ben would always do these, like, he would pursue those moments. He would make these little things that would make it fun. So, like, you would send everybody, like, custom zoom backgrounds or like the start of every Club ltv. Because it was. We called it a club. It was like a nightclub. He would have like, like DJ Khaled would record a cameo, and you would play it for the whole group at the beginning. It was awesome. It was a lot of fun. I think you should keep doing those things because that I. I still remember that. And I think we had.
- [67:56]
Sam
I think we had a set, the right vibe. I think we had Red. I think we had Method man and Redman too.
- [68:00]
Ben
I think every time there was like some washed up rapper who would hype the shit out of us for like the first 30 seconds of the. Of the thing. Ben's just burning like $500 cameos to make that happen.
- [68:13]
Sam
Yeah, man. I mean, to me, it's like, you know, it's like when you meet someone that also likes mfm, even for me and you too, it's like, oh, I. I like this guy. Or I like this woman. I like this girl. I mean, actually, you meet. You like that person.
- [68:26]
Ben
No, I know what you mean. We're not for everybody. So if you like it, the odds of you getting along with somebody else who really likes the podcast are pretty high. So it's kind of like one of those things where if two people were wearing the hat, you would do the nod and be like, okay, I'm sure we would have a pretty fun hangout if we hung out. And that's kind of the idea here.
- [68:44]
Sam
Yeah. And it's not Hampton. It's not a group. It's just, like, very lightweight. Meet some other cool people, you know, get to know the other people in the mfm.
- [68:51]
Ben
And it's free. It's free, by the way. It's not like a paid thing. So what do you want? How do you want people to, like, apply? Because you're going to curate the group. So what do you want people to do to. How should people do it?
- [69:02]
Sam
Let's see.
- [69:02]
Ben
Should we put a link in the. Just put a link in the.
- [69:04]
Sam
Let's put a link in the description.
- [69:06]
Ben
All right. If you want to do it, if you think you're in that top 1% of interesting, fun MFM listeners, put yourself down there and tell us. Tell us who you are, and then Ben will kind of curate a good group every. Every month for us.
- [69:17]
Sam
All right. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, BenMlevy, I don't tweet much, but, you know, I will DM you.
- [69:23]
Ben
Why would someone follow you? When was your last tweet, dude? It was like, in 2018.
- [69:28]
Sam
It's been a long time. It's been a long time.
- [69:32]
Ben
So that's. That's Ben. Thanks for coming on, dude. I'm going to talk to you probably right after this, because that's what we do. I call you after every podcast, so I'll see you in a second.
- [69:40]
Sam
All right, thanks, guys. I feel like I can rule the world world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off on a road let's travel Never looking back.
- [69:59]
Michael
All right, so when my employees join Hampton, we have them do a whole bunch of onboarding stuff, but the most important thing that they do is they go through this thing I made called Copy that. Copy that is a thing that I made that teaches people how to write better. And the reason this is important is because at work or even just in life, we communicate mostly via text. Right now, whether we're emailing, slacking, blogging, texting, whatever, most of the ways that we're communicating is by the written word. And so I made this thing called Copy that. That's guaranteed to make you write better. You can check it out. Copy that dot com. I post every single person who leaves a review, whether it's good or bad. I post it on the website. And you're gonna see a trend, which is that this is a very, very, very simple exercise. Something that's so simple that they laugh at they think, how is this gonna actually impact us and make us write better? But I promise you it does. You got to try it atcopythat.com. i guarantee it's going to change the way you write. Again. Copy that dot com.