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- [00:00]
Sam Parr
All right, Sam, I got a Billy of the Week for you. I'm excited about it. I got goosebumps thinking about this guy. He's an inventor. He's an innovator. You know, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Thomas Edison. Look, if those guys were going on a road trip, but there's only one set of keys, they would toss it to this guy. He would get to drive, and his name is Tom Ryan. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
- [00:26]
Shaun Neff
I put my all in it. Like, no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never.
- [00:30]
Sam Parr
Tom Ryan is basically the da Vinci of calories. Okay, this is a guy who has invented some of the most iconic foods in history. He invented the McGriddle. He invented stuffed crust cheese pizza. He invented Smashburger, the chain. He invented the beef dip sandwich at quiz. Does he. His guy has just been inventing things in the food category, the McFlurry. He's just been inventing things for, you know, just decades. And he is like the godfather of food science. And so I want to tell you a little bit about this guy.
- [01:02]
Shaun Neff
Okay? I'm. I'm interested because I didn't think that some, like, dipping a sandwich in aju. I didn't think that was, like, an invention. And so.
- [01:09]
Sam Parr
Okay, so some of these things, I'm using the word invention a little liberally, right? Some of them, he genuinely invented meaning, like, nobody had done that before. Some of it is he created that product at that company, which had. Was not previously a product. And so sometimes it might be like, oh, well, you know, somebody else said had the idea of, you know, a sweet sandwich. Okay, but cool. He. He invented the McGriddle. It's a specific thing that he invented that made it work, and here's why.
- [01:35]
Shaun Neff
But can we. Can we start by me asking, how did you even discover this? Were you, like, on the McGriddle Wikipedia page?
- [01:42]
Sam Parr
Just, you know when you're eating something and it's so good, you're like, I like to pay homage. Who's the man who invented this? I'd like to go put some flowers on his tombstone. That's not exactly what happened. I saw a TikTok about this guy, and I was like, there's no way one guy did all this.
- [01:55]
Shaun Neff
Okay. All right.
- [01:56]
Sam Parr
So this guy, basically, he goes to college, and when he's at college, he has his girlfriend. The girlfriend's taking a food science class, so she convinces him to take it. He goes there and immediately falls in Love. He's like, oh, my God, I didn't even realize. There's a whole science behind things like ketchup and ice cream. Like, there's literally, like, chemistry science, but then there's also sort of the brain science, psychology, the tongue science of, like, what flavors work. And so then he not only studies food science, he then gets a master's in something called lipid toxicology, right? So this guy's just studying, like, the science of fat. And I would say this guy, like, you know, I don't know what the. What the equivalent of the Nobel priest prize is, but for, like, obesity, what this guy deserves. So he. He decided. So he goes, and he gets a job at. At Duncan Hines. He then works at Jiff, and he's like, pioneering a lot of their peanut butter work that he. That, you know, does some really great peanut butter work.
- [02:50]
Shaun Neff
The best work.
- [02:51]
Sam Parr
Yeah, he's like, you know, these OpenAI researchers that are just getting poached from lab to lab. That was him going from Heinz Food Lab to the Jif Food Lab. And then he gets a call from Pizza Hut, and they recruit him as head of new products because he's got this reputation, because even at gif, he was launching new products. And so he gets this reputation as being, like, this sort of mad, mad genius. And his friend tells him when he gets the job at Pizza Hut for head of new products, he goes, dude, I'm so sorry. Goes, what? He's like, that's a tough position, man. Everything's already been done in pizza. Like, you're doomed. You're doomed to fail. Pizza is a solved problem. And there's a quote from. He goes, that pissed me off. He goes, it pissed me off. Not because the guy was doubting me, but because a lot of the world thinks like that. They think the world is full of solved problems. I don't think like that. I think there's always an opportunity. So he goes into the research, and he's doing research, and he's like, all right, what do consumers care about when it comes to pizza? And he's like, all right, Two things are very clear to me after studying how people eat pizza. Number one, cheese is the value driver. The more cheese, the better the cheese, the better. And there's really no limit to the amount of cheese that people are willing to have in their pizza. And second, the dogs eat the crust. He's like, the crust is the necessary part because you need a handle to hold the pizza. But it's the worst part of the pizza. People just Give it to the dog. And so he's like, all right, I need to put cheese in the crust. And so, you know, he goes to his team, and they're like, yeah, we'll just put some cheese on top of the crust. It'll be great. He's like, nah, it doesn't have that wow factor. He's like, we gotta have a wow factor. It's gotta feel different. It can't just be that we've added cheese to crust. It's gotta, like, be something that's marketable. And so he's like, let's figure out how to put cheese inside the crust. Which was a whole, like, physics problem, because, you know, he's like, the first one he made like that, he's like, it tasted pretty good, but it looked like a. Like a bike tire. Like, I burnt the whole outer crust. It was like this fat, you know, like, burnt thing. And so he had to figure out, how do you cook the pizza so that you can have gooey cheese in the crust without burning the crust? And so he does some work, and they figure it out. They get a special dough and a special pan, and they get it to work, and it becomes this huge hit. But then he's also a marketing genius, and so he creates. He's like, you know what? We don't need to do something new. What we need to do is. Have you ever seen this Malcolm Gladwell talk that he gives as his big TED talk about the perfect pastas? Have you seen this?
- [05:09]
Shaun Neff
No. That sounds great. What is it?
- [05:11]
Sam Parr
So it's Malcolm Gladwell's famous TED Talk from back in the day when he was. Malcolm Gladwell was the man writing Tipping Point and others. And he basically talks about this guy, another food scientist who got hired by a pasta sauce company, Ragu or whoever. And they were like, we need you to figure out how much, like, what's the perfect pasta sauce? Like, should it have, like, chunks in it? Should it be just smooth? Should it have, like, herbs in it or just be plain? Should it have cheese? Like, what. What's the perfect pasta sauce? And the guy and the big takeaway, the spoiler of this TED Talk is the guy discovers there's no perfect pasta sauce. There's only perfect pasta sauce is meaning you cluster people into, like, four or five categories. If you like chunks, then give them way more chunks than you're currently giving them. Like, they want way more. If you like spice, make it way spicier. It's too mild for them today. And if you like cheese, put cheese and so you basically like the middle that they're trying to serve, everybody wasn't working and they actually needed to like go extreme. So this guy discovers the same thing in pizza. He creates the meat lovers pizza, he creates the pepperoni lovers pizza, the cheese lovers pizza, and he creates the lovers line of pizzas there. And that becomes a huge success. So he's crushing it at Pizza Hut, which.
- [06:21]
Shaun Neff
But all this sounds like silly, like I'm laughing. This is not silly. This is great. This is actually, this is really hard to do in a corporate setting to.
- [06:28]
Sam Parr
Convince someone, true inventions, true innovations. Yeah, like I'm laughing, but because it's, this is legit. And this is moving billions of dollars of product, right? And this is like, you know, hitting millions of customers. And this is also, by the way, we have friends that work at Facebook and Google and they're like, yeah, I'm optimizing the, like the marketplace banner ads to be like, you know, whatever. It's like, you know, you were talking about this with, I think your wife.
- [06:52]
Shaun Neff
I was like, like, if the, like my wife worked on the team of them put stickers on photos and she's like, well, if the dog's tongue is out of the mouth, the click, the click. The rate is 5% versus if it's in the mouth, it's only 1%.
- [07:05]
Sam Parr
Right. And there's definitely like a cynical side of this, which is like our world's greatest minds are basically just fine tuning knobs inside of giant slot machines, which is really what's happening inside of most big tech companies and most big food companies. But hey, I'm not a hater. Let me just see some positive things of this. Okay? So he gets the call, he's at Pizza Hut. He's crushing it. He creates all the, all those products. Ring, ring. Hello? Yeah, this is Tom speaking. And then on the other side. Ronald, is that you? And Ronald McDonald calls. He gets called up to the biggest of the big leagues. He gets called by McDonald's. McDonald's says, we need you.
- [07:42]
Shaun Neff
Is he a kid right now or is he like grown ass man?
- [07:45]
Sam Parr
Okay, so he has a great thing by the way of one of his frameworks because they're like, how do you invent? Because like, honestly, he's like one of the more creative inventors of our lifetime. And they're like, how do you invent? And he goes, I try to get inside the mind of an ambitious 32 year old. And I was like, he's like, Basically when you're 32, you have money, you have taste. So you kind of know what you like and you don't like. But you're still open minded. You're not closed off to the world and you're not like, easily swayed by the latest and latest trend of everything. So you're. But you're still like, you still with it. And like, you're still a part of every major trend that like, has staying power. And so he's like, I study the mind of the. Of an ambitious 32 year old, okay? And he works backwards from that. So he gets a call from McDonald's, he goes there, and they're like, all right, where's the opportunity? And he's like, all right, let's look at breakfast. They start looking at breakfast. And he's like, all right, you got coffee, check. And then you have all your, like, savory foods, check. He's like, we've got nothing sweet. And he starts thinking about it. He's like, all right, you know, casual answer. We need French toast, We need pancakes. And he's like, oh, this average first level thinking, ew, get out of the room. And he says, no, no, no, what are we really gonna do? And he goes, so he's a master of constraints. So he says, how do we take the Denny's Grand Slam breakfast and put it in your hand? And they're like, what? And he's like, I want an entire Grand Slam breakfast. But that will just fit in your hand because that's what McDonald's does.
- [09:22]
Shaun Neff
This guy sounds like a South park character.
- [09:26]
Sam Parr
And so he creates the McGriddle, which is exactly that. It's a sweet breakfast item that fits in your hand, pops off. McGriddle becomes a huge hit. McDonald's breakfast surges on the back of this, creates billions of dollars in market cap and all because. And he had to do some invention. He's like, well, we can't have this messy, drippy, syrup, you know, sticky sandwich. Like, yeah, I can't put a sticky thing in your hand. Then your whole day's ruined. You're not coming back the next day. And I've never had a McGriddle. Have you had one?
- [09:59]
Shaun Neff
Hell yeah. Yeah, of course. You've never had a McGriddle.
- [10:02]
Sam Parr
I've never had a McGriddle. Never had a Farewell Qaeda.
- [10:04]
Shaun Neff
Like, this is like the greatest, like the greatest amount.
- [10:07]
Sam Parr
I've been in one of those CA seeds.
- [10:10]
Shaun Neff
Where have you been?
- [10:11]
Sam Parr
I thought the war was still going on. Yeah. What the hell, man?
- [10:14]
Shaun Neff
This is the best. They're the best.
- [10:16]
Sam Parr
Honestly, I never even considered it. But after this, after this, I'm. I'm so in. Apparently, there's. You tell me, I don't know, is it not, like, covered in syrup and actually there's something called syrup crystals that are inside the pantry.
- [10:28]
Shaun Neff
Little, little balls of, like, sugary, like syrup. And it's wonderful. And it mixes perfectly with the salty sausage.
- [10:36]
Sam Parr
Okay, so that's it. That's what he did. Tom does it. So he does that, he creates.
- [10:40]
Shaun Neff
And you don't get a mess on your hand. So you get the syrup without a mess on your hand. All right, so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely not true. My last company, the Hustle, we grew it to something like 17 or 18 million dollars in revenue. I started it with like $300. My current company, Hampton, does over 10 million in revenue. Started it with actually no money. Maybe 29 or something like that. Nothing. And so you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work. And so my old company, the Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now, today, with under a thousand dollars. These are models that, if you do it correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now. You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now back to the show.
- [11:38]
Sam Parr
Now you might be thinking, all right, is this guy like, you know, what's he really about? Is he just about. Is he just in this for himself? Is he an elite? Is he one of these elites that I should hate? Or is he a man of the people? Well, he's a man of the people. He creates the dollar menu. The dollar menu. Dude, what a. What a iconic. What an iconic move.
- [11:57]
Shaun Neff
Is he an employee at McDonald's right now or. No? I mean, in the story. In the story at this point, of.
- [12:05]
Sam Parr
Course, that's what he did.
- [12:06]
Shaun Neff
He's a mercenary, he's a hired gun. And he drops in like. He's like a one man Navy SEAL who drops in and like nails the target and bounces after a handful of years.
- [12:16]
Sam Parr
I don't know why there's no movie about this guy yet. Right? Like, I don't want to see Jason Bourne. I want to see Tom.
- [12:23]
Shaun Neff
The only question that we have at this point is, does he come in via parachute or just does he storm the beach on a boat? Like, what's he going to do? Yeah, the story's been told.
- [12:31]
Sam Parr
Talking about like a hot dog truck barges in. So he creates the dollar menu, creates the McFlurry, and then he goes to Quiznos. Quiznos poaches him. He does a little bit of work there, but the owner of Quiznos is like, yo, this is the guy. So he says, forget Quiznos. Let's just create a whole new concept together. And they create Smash Burger together. Which I don't know if you've paid attention, but as a former QSR operator myself, I have a lot of respect and esteem for Smashburger.
- [12:56]
Shaun Neff
Smash Burger is just, it's just thin. I mean, it's a burger that you, when you grill it, you put the meat, you, you stick the thing, the metal in the meat, right?
- [13:05]
Sam Parr
So it's kind of like a thin crust pizza, but for burgers. So they kind of smash the burger, which gives it like a more of a char on both sides, which is.
- [13:13]
Shaun Neff
Better for them too, because it's less meat.
- [13:15]
Sam Parr
Well, I think it's the same. It just gets wider. Got it. Okay, but, but it tastes better, I think. Okay, so they create Smashburger, becomes successful. But what a prolific career for this guy. And what a, what a, what a track record. Like, who has dominated their industry the way this man has dominated fast food science? Right? Like fast food food science. Pretty inspiring.
- [13:36]
Shaun Neff
When I googled his name, it came up with Jobili Foods Corporation. Is he associated with that?
- [13:42]
Sam Parr
Yeah, I don't know what that is. He's got like new stuff that he's doing. He did like a, like a new, like, like sports bar type of deal. He's got Smashburg. He was the CEO of Smashburger for a while. I don't know what all he's doing now, but they were like, you want to retire? He's like, retire? I wake up every day. I wake up every day. I'm trying to dominate the palette. You think, you think I want to go play golf? What do you think this is?
- [14:06]
Shaun Neff
Have you googled him? He, he's got, he's a beautiful man. He's just got the most beautiful head of hair I've seen in a long time.
- [14:12]
Sam Parr
He looks like, he looked like that British reporter. Like, who? Like covers, like sports.
- [14:17]
Shaun Neff
He looks like that guy in the 90s. In every ROM com the woman was vying for an editor in chief job at Vogue or something like that. That was like, well, no, he looks like the second character now. The second character is a British or California record label executive. So they work in AR or they're running the label and they miss the kids baseball game because they have to check out this band, right? Like he, he looks like that character. He looks like the record label executive from every 90s rom com movie. Is he like this alpha, like get after it type of guy or is he like a kooky, forgetful professor who wears two not matching socks?
- [15:00]
Sam Parr
Okay, that I don't know, but he's an alpha in my mind. He's an alpha to me. I'm gladly a beta to him. This guy's amazing. Did I tell you, by the way? Back in the day when I was doing my sushi restaurant chain, we went to a, you know, like these industry conferences that you like, you just sometimes like, you know, we went to farmcon, it's like a farmer's conference. Well, I went to like a food version of this. I don't know if you've ever been to any of these quirky, like, industry trade show conferences, but they're so funny, dude.
- [15:29]
Shaun Neff
So I went like, I went to Inbound. The Inbound. The HubSpot's inbound marketing conference coming up next week. Yeah, you mean like that? There's a whole talk on converting MQL to SQLs.
- [15:44]
Sam Parr
Yeah, like that. So I went to this thing because there's a QSR magazine, Quick Service restaurant. So there's a Quick Service magazine and we, we apply. We're like, hey, we really want to go to the conference. Can you give us free tickets? And they're like, yeah. So we go. And you know what the icebreaker was we got there? The icebreaker. When you come in, in the lobby, they have three tables set up of just like dirty dishes. Like, it's a restaurant table and it was a speed busing competition. So you would go with three other people and you'd have to try to like bust the table as fast as you can. And whoever had, like, that's pretty good. The best bus was, you know, like, succeeded, basically. Like one that won the contest got like a keychain or something like that. It was amazing. The guy who organized it, his name was literally Tom Hamburger. It was unreal.
- [16:31]
Shaun Neff
Dude, this is, this is. We've done 750 plus, I think, episodes of MFM and this happens a lot where a lot of people don't realize this, but for the majority of episodes, you and I don't talk in advance because we like to like surprise each other on air on the topic. This is funny. What you're saying is very similar to the topic that I had brought.
- [16:51]
Sam Parr
Okay, what you got?
- [16:52]
Shaun Neff
And so this can all actually be related. And I have what I think could be like a nice little bow at the end to, like, how this could be good for entrepreneurs or business owners listening. I found a photo of a billboard that I saw recently that stopped me in my tracks. And so I want you to look at this billboard and tell me what it says.
- [17:09]
Sam Parr
Okay, so this is boiled cod, and it's a picture of cod. Slightly more protein per calorie than our bars. David, The David Bar.
- [17:16]
Shaun Neff
Okay, so good. Have you seen this?
- [17:18]
Sam Parr
No. Amazing.
- [17:19]
Shaun Neff
Okay, so I want to tell you a story about this, and I want to explain a little bit, like, nerdy marketing about why it works. So the story behind this. We had Peter Raja on the podcast, I think, like, six months ago. So Peter was the guy who started RX Bar in his mom's basement, and he eventually sold it for something like $650 million. Only six years after starting.
- [17:40]
Sam Parr
By the way, the episode he did with us was awesome. Like, if you. If you want to. Let's go listen to a fun episode. Listen to that one. It basically, he tells a story of how he built RX Bar, how he's building David Bar, but also he had, like, four or five other ideas of, like, if I was going to go into a category, this is the type of category I look at and how I would attack it, which is, like, what you always want from a. An entrepreneur who's got, like, expertise that comes on the pods. Like, great, tell me how you did it. Tell me what you're doing now. But, okay, that's great for you. What about for me? And do you have specific ideas and, like, a specific approach you take that I can learn from for, like, white space right now?
- [18:18]
Shaun Neff
And he actually had a third part of that, which was he had a beautiful attitude, and not beautiful in the sense of fun to be around. Like, he was sort of like Napoleon. Like, he had this, like, conquer the world energy that I thought was, like, actually kind of cool. Very intense energy that I thought was interesting. And so when he came on, he told us the story of RXBar. He told us the story about David protein bars. I don't think David had launched at that point, but the background behind David is when he was. And I have to give a shout out to New York Times Daily. I'm using them as the source for this. But when he started David, the idea was with RX Bar, it was a natural bar. It was made out, I think, dates, and it had a very small amount of protein. And he noticed that had I had more protein in this bar, I think I would have been able to approach a larger market and I could create something a lot bigger. And so David finds this thing called epg. It's a delivery mechanism for protein. And eventually David, actually the company has bought the company that owns the patent for epg. And EPG is a type of chemical that allows protein to be delivered to you faster.
- [19:27]
Sam Parr
So, so let me explain, let me just ask this question, because the doc here says it's a modified fat called epg, which delivers the texture of fat, but it passes through your body with 92% fewer calories. Is this everyone? Palmer Lucky came on and he was like, diet Coke is amazing. And he's like, I just wanted to make like, Diet Coke for like any food into the equivalent of Diet Coke. So it's just like food that tastes really good, but it basically just passes straight through your body and it can't be absorbed and therefore, like, doesn't make you fat. Is that what this is? Basically it's like something that tastes good. You could put it in a bar, but because it can't be absorbed by your body, it's, you know, it doesn't have the sort of caloric impact. Is that what it is?
- [20:11]
Shaun Neff
So basically it's the, it's, it's, it's one of the most efficient ways to get tons and tons of protein into your body per calorie. And the way they do that is via epg, which is a incredibly ultra processed food. So I don't know if it's what you're describing, but the criticisms for David, of which we had Justin Mares on the podcast, he's one, he was a very loud, vocal critic of this. He has basically said, David may get you lots and lots of protein, but it's incredibly ultra processed. And there's the argument as to why that's not good. Because this, this chemical or whatever you want to call it, epg, there's a lot of people who want to criticize it and say it's bad. And I'm not going to place judgment on either side. I'm just telling you there's two sides of this argument, which is what I'm going to get to. But people loved it. And so David, which I think is it even two years old yet?
- [21:05]
Sam Parr
I think it's one year old, roughly, because he was on about a year ago on the podcast and I think it was just about to launch or had just launched.
- [21:12]
Shaun Neff
So this year they're going to do close to $200 million in sales. In roughly the second year of business, they're on a tear. They did $1 million in the first week of sales. And if you go to like any store right now, I don't know what it's like in California, but any store in New York, they're everywhere, David. Protein bars are everywhere. And they've crushed it on the marketing in particular, they've crushed on the product side, but they've really killed it on the marketing. And so when I saw this sign, boilcod, it stopped me in my tracks. And the reason it stopped me in my tracks is I'm reading this book, I'm rereading. We had Tim Ferriss on the podcast and he had mentioned this book that he loved. It was called the 22 immutable laws of Marketing. Have you ever, have you ever read of that? I haven't.
- [21:49]
Sam Parr
I have it, but I haven't read it yet.
- [21:50]
Shaun Neff
It was one of these things where, like, I skimmed before when I was younger, but when we had him on, I, he made a comment that it was a great book and I was like, you know, I should actually sit down and read that. It's really short, it's only 100 pages. You could basically read it in one or two sittings. And one of the laws is called the law of the opposite. And, and the reason why this is relevant to the story that you just said is because it goes to like, the science and the methodology behind in 22 different ways to stand out and be different and to focus on something that's not better, but different. And so the law of the opposite states that if you're not the leader of a category, your strategy is then dictated by the leader, which means it's best to not to be better than the leader, but to be the opposite. Customers already have the leader's position locked in their mind and, and you win by framing yourself as an alternative. And the key is to embrace the differences and often exaggerate them. And the reason this all works is marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products. The challenger doesn't need to disprove the leader. They need to define themselves as the antidote. Meaning we are not them, we're the other choice.
- [22:53]
Sam Parr
Right.
- [22:53]
Shaun Neff
And so why is this so interesting? Because David took the criticisms of them being an ultra processed food and they ran towards the fire. So much so that on their website I thought that this was a joke. And so what they're doing is they are positioning themselves as an alternative to natural foods. They're saying, yeah, natural frozen cod, better free. That's the best. That's. It's definitely the best, but like, it's disgusting. Who the hell wants to eat that? Eat this other thing that tastes good and it's like, it's just a little bit less good in terms of protein per calorie, but you're actually going to be able to consume it.
- [23:30]
Sam Parr
They're actually selling.
- [23:31]
Shaun Neff
So that's what I was gonna say. If you go to their website, they sell it, they're selling it. And so this is a master class on how to handle this situation.
- [23:41]
Sam Parr
By the way, on the site, it's their cod. So they're wild caught cod and it's like 23 grams of protein, 100 calories, no sugar. You can get it. It's four filets, flash frozen, add to cart. And then there's all their bars, like chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter chunk. All sold out. Here's all the sold out bars. Here's cod, fully available. We got a lot of this stuff still in stock.
- [24:03]
Shaun Neff
And there's a bunch of examples of the law of opposites. Do you remember, I don't know if you remember this as a kid, but you would see commercials for Avis. Do you remember Avis?
- [24:11]
Sam Parr
Yeah, the rental car.
- [24:12]
Shaun Neff
Yeah. So basically Avis was number two in the market and Hertz was the biggest company by far. And Avis had this amazing brand campaign where they said, we're number two, so we try harder. And that was their, that was their campaign, which is like, we know we're number two, we're going to try harder. That's another example of the law of opposite. But David has executed this flawlessly. Isn't this like an amazing thing to lean into? And this is like, not something that.
- [24:36]
Sam Parr
Like, dude, I'm just kicking myself because when he came on, I literally fell in love with the guy. I was like, I love this guy's intensity, love this guy's honesty, love his approach. He's clearly like an expert in this field, in this industry and attacking this. It was so obvious that they had nailed the branding and packaging of the bar. So I'm just mad that I didn't push to like try to invest in this thing and be like, hey, I just, I'm so bullish on this. And it has played out exactly as I would have guessed.
- [25:04]
Shaun Neff
I think he, I think we said, what's your goal? He goes, well, I actually think we're going to expand The TAM and I think that this is going to be a $10 billion company.
- [25:12]
Sam Parr
Yeah, that's crazy. I like their copy on their site. We thank our predecessors in the protein industry. We'll take it from here.
- [25:19]
Shaun Neff
It's so good, right? They, they, they nail it on, on branding. They nail it a bunch of stuff. And I saw, when I saw this COD billboard, I was like, oh, that's, that's so good. That's exactly what the book 22 immutable laws of Marketing. That's exactly what they had mentioned with the law of opposites, and they completely nailed it. And if you are a small business owner, very similar to what this guy Tom Ryan did, I would highly recommend reading this book and then downloading it and uploading to ChatGPT. It's so cool and interesting to give you ideas on your product or, and, or your positioning and what, what he just was explaining about with the, with the MC riddle and all that stuff. It's all very, very, very similar to this, which is, it's not. The goal is not to be better. The goal is to be different. Because a meat lover's pizza, that's not particularly better. It's just. That's remarkably different than anything else. Listen up.
- [26:08]
Sam Parr
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- [26:55]
Shaun Neff
Yeah. Is there any.
- [26:57]
Sam Parr
Pretty stupid and dangerous because, like most likely just going to get. Be wrong and get ripped apart here.
- [27:03]
Shaun Neff
Not entirely. So the last time we talked about this type of stuff, you picked. So we're all disclosure. We're idiots. Don't do anything. We're saying the last time, though, you picked ufc.
- [27:15]
Sam Parr
Yeah. So we did an episode called Stockapalooza about a year ago. I don't know when that was. And the idea was that me and Sam would go research and we'd just try to pick a stock. So we'd try to make a call similar to the SOHN Conference, where you try to find a company that you would believe in as an outperformer. And then we made our case, and I picked tko, which is the parent company of UFC and wwe. And you picked Ferrari.
- [27:41]
Shaun Neff
Ferrari.
- [27:42]
Sam Parr
And I think I believe we did that episode. So, February 12, 2024. Let's see what the stock price has performed since then. Okay, so the stock at that time was trading at $85, and it's currently at $185. Okay, so, you know, up. What is that over 100%? 117%.
- [28:06]
Shaun Neff
Did you put any of your money into it?
- [28:08]
Sam Parr
Of course not, bro. You think I'm here to make money? What's going on? Not because. Not for any particular reason. I was just, like, lazy. I didn't pay attention. So, anyways, that pick has performed well. I don't think Ferrari's done well. I think Ferrari's down, like, 5%. So I'm better than you. So let me.
- [28:25]
Shaun Neff
Let me.
- [28:25]
Sam Parr
You just stay quiet for a minute. Let me just do this segment here. You could give a pick. That's bad after this. I was hanging out with somebody recently who's a guest, you know, as a guest on the podcast, super successful, like, billionaire type of dude, and asked him two questions. One was, what would you be doing right now? What would be your AI play if you're just, like, young and broke, but, like, wanted to do something with AI? And he gave a pretty interesting answer to that, which is, he's like, I would go into. He's like, I would go find a business owner who's built a successful book of business. Like, let's say it's in insurance or home mortgages or, you know, some. Some. Some nice industry, some juicy industry. And, like, the owner kind of knows, like, oh, AI probably could benefit. Like, I probably. I could probably benefit from AI in my company, but who cares?
- [29:10]
Shaun Neff
I'm 60.
- [29:11]
Sam Parr
But I'm 60. I'm too old to, like, actually figure this stuff out and go to. He's like, I would go to them. I would go to as many of those guys I can. I try to build up a list of it and be like, hey.
- [29:21]
Shaun Neff
I.
- [29:22]
Sam Parr
Will do all of the work to use AI to cut our costs internally. Like, I can automate a bunch of processes and jobs and whatnot. Like, I can increase our accuracy and decrease our costs. And if I do that, like, can I carve, basically, will you carve me out 10% of this business if I successfully do it? I'LL do it totally on contingency. But like, here's the deal and we can like measure the OPEX change that I'm going to make in this business if you just give me free rein for, you know, 12 months. He's like, it's the fastest way to kind of like own a piece. He's like, he's like, you know, and then I would try to, in that agreement, maybe create an option to buy the majority of the business at a fair value if I can pull that off. So he's like, I thought that was interesting. That's the first thing. Second thing he was talking about, he goes, he was like, yeah. He's like, SpaceX? He's like, I just think it's unbelievable that people, that there's any counterargument to SpaceX. He's like, SpaceX is the most defensible company in the history of humanity. Like, what's the second best SpaceX? Like, is there anybody, you know, like there's, there's so few companies that can even compete with SpaceX. And think about how monumentally difficult it would be to compete with SpaceX. Like, yeah, you got to literally get into the rocket business. And like, not just the rocket business, the reusable rocket business. Not only that, but to do it and like be competing, you know, competing for these giant government contracts and you have to successfully demonstrate safe launches over a period of time. He's like, at this point, SpaceX is so unbelievably defensible. He's like, I think it's the safest place to put money. And so I thought that was kind of interesting. Just like generational defensibility and really the question of who is set up over the next 20 years who just has an incredibly competitive position for the next 20 years. So I just took that frame and none of these names are unpopular, so I'm not giving you some like obscure pick, but I just, like, this is my honest take. And like I, you know, I'm basically trying to get into all of these companies because I think over a 20 year period, I think all of these companies have a very combination of, they have a tailwind behind them so the wind is in their sails of they're in the right place at the right time. Like clearly the industries they're in and the tech wave that they're surfing is the big tech wave that we're going to see play out over 20 years. And two, they don't have much competition. Which was my case for the, for the, the TKO stock Pick also because I was like, there's no competition to UFC and there's no competition to wwe. Like the number two mma, you know, promotions, whether it's pfl, like Bellator, like these were companies that's literally on the brink, on the brink of bankruptcy. And like they're, they're like not just like in second place. They're literally like 100 or 1,000 times smaller and behind and they, and because of the network effect, they have no chance to ever catch up.
- [32:14]
Shaun Neff
UFC is a tens of billions of dollar company and the second best one, like they get in trouble for not being able to like make payroll. Literally.
- [32:23]
Sam Parr
Yeah, it's like a rich guy's hobby.
- [32:25]
Shaun Neff
Typically, it's not even close. Like, it's like, it's like, it's like LeBron versus the freshman. The freshman team. It's not even in the same category.
- [32:33]
Sam Parr
And so when you're in that category of one, it's like, that's a pretty big deal. Plus you have growth behind you, but like the fact that there's just no competition. Same thing with wwe. There's really no competition to wwe. And of course, since then they both signed major, major like streaming deals way bigger than, you know, people thought they would sign like billion dollar a year plus streaming deals.
- [32:52]
Shaun Neff
But what's this have to do with the first part of AI?
- [32:54]
Sam Parr
Oh, the AI part that was separate. All right, so now, so here's. Here's five other companies I think are extremely well positioned. So the first is a company that I was wrong about. I owned the stock very early on and I got so mad during the GameStop thing that I sold out of principle. I'm never going to let those stupid principles in my way again.
- [33:11]
Shaun Neff
Are a bad way to. They give you bad directions like en route to making money.
- [33:17]
Sam Parr
Yeah, my big moral stand didn't seem to hurt this company. So Robinhood was the company. I owned the stock when it was like, I don't know, $5, $7, whatever. It was like really early on, like right when it IPO'd basically. And it was like actually after the IPO kind of dipped or something. And when the GameStop thing happened and they basically shut off the ability to buy but continue to let people sell GameStop, I was like, that is the most corrupt thing I've ever seen.
- [33:42]
Shaun Neff
Same.
- [33:43]
Sam Parr
And it pissed me off so much that I was like, f these guys, I don't trust these guys. I'm out. Since then, they've just basically proceeded to like build what's clearly like Morgan Stanley for the next generation. So, like, the tailwind behind Robin Hood is the following. There's some, like, absurd amount of wealth. I don't know what it is, like 20 trillion, 50 trillion. There's like some stupid number, like with a trillion behind it of wealth that's just going to get transferred from like the parent, you know, boomers to millennials or Gen Z over the next 20, 30 years. And so the question is, as that money gets handed down, what will those people do with it? And it's pretty clear that, like, if you're a Gen Z or you're a millennial, the platforms you trust and gravitate towards, the financial platforms you're already a user of. When you have small check deposits is Robinhood. And then they were like, great, we have crypto, we have 401s, we have home mortgages, and we got credit cards. What else do you want?
- [34:37]
Shaun Neff
Wait, they do all those.
- [34:39]
Sam Parr
They have prediction markets, which is a code word for sports betting and gambling. So you can gamble on there, you can buy crypto on there, you can buy stocks on there, you can buy fractional stocks of private companies. You could buy. You could do all the margin trading and options trading. If you want to get really degenerate, you can do your. You can put a 4, you can open up a 401k with them, you can get a Robinhood Gold card, and you can use that as a credit card and you get a home mortgage. It's like an unbelievable amount of financial products that they've rolled out all in one app. And it's basically this financial super app that Gen Z slash Millennials are most comfortable with. And as the wealth transfer happens, they're going to be the beneficiary of that. So I think next 20 years, they're extremely well positioned.
- [35:18]
Shaun Neff
So Austin Raf, the founder of Morning Brew, one of my closest buddies, he has been texting me for the past six months, maybe longer, to be honest, longer.
- [35:26]
Sam Parr
He's been texting me too, about this. In fact, he's the only reason I bought it. So I did buy it back again, like maybe six months ago. I was about to have a call with him and he had been talking about Robin Hood, but he's kicking himself because he doesn't own any. But he's been. It was like his call. He was like, it's going to be great. I'm just waiting for a dip. The dip never came and he doesn't own any of it. And it's basically ripped up like in a 5x7x. Since he's been like wanting to buy.
- [35:48]
Shaun Neff
Yeah. He's been talking about a concept.
- [35:49]
Sam Parr
I had a call with him. So before the call, I bought a hundred thousand dollars of Robinhood stock just so I could get on the call as a Robinhood shareholder and be like, oh, thank you for the tip. And since then it's up 30, 40% also. And so he's responsible for my Robinhood conviction, even though he doesn't own any of it now.
- [36:04]
Shaun Neff
Yeah. And I think his reasoning, I forget what it was exactly. Or he had more than one point, but one of the points was like young people and he owns a company called. Or he did own Morning Brew, which probably had 200 employees, of which a lot of them were like 23 year old, like 100,000, $150,000 earning people. And he was like my staff, that's the, the default. They all have 100% of their net worth in Robinhood.
- [36:30]
Sam Parr
Right.
- [36:30]
Shaun Neff
And that is only going to continue to grow. So they, because they keep their money in there and it's just going to keep on growing. This is, this company's unstoppable. And he's been bragging about it or calling that for, for maybe a year and a half. And so he's absolutely nailed it. I, and I agree with you, I did not buy into that argument at all. I thought Robin Hood was silly. I would, I thought on principle, I'm not on board with what these guys.
- [36:51]
Sam Parr
You're more of like a Schwab type of guy. I feel like you, you want, when it comes to money, you want boring. You want like a bow tie, you want like, you know, got a man with a briefcase is what you want.
- [37:03]
Shaun Neff
You know, the I, I, I potentially have a lot of money and I didn't want to keep it in an app. Like, to think that I'm keeping it in an app was like kind of, that's a little nerve wracking. And like the interface is so cute that I thought it was like they cared more about looks. I was like, I want the ugliest website that's got the biggest vault.
- [37:20]
Sam Parr
You didn't want to keep it in an app as if it's like a shoebox. Like where, where do you think the money's kept in any of these? Like if it was a website, that's better. What did you want?
- [37:28]
Shaun Neff
I wanted the like forgot password button to be like hidden. Like, I didn't want someone to like, I don't know. I just, it was too user friendly. If it's too user friendly, to me, that means it's easily hackable. That was the issue, that it was too good. You know, it's like you find good deals on Craigslist because you're finding something like, interesting that no one else uses. Robinhood scared me.
- [37:47]
Sam Parr
Honestly, I get, I actually get what you're talking about. I actually felt similar. I was like, I don't want to keep huge amounts of money in this.
- [37:52]
Shaun Neff
App, but I did keep, I had some money, I think I bought like crypto on it before. And like they, for years they did this thing where instead of giving you like Uber for your new ride, if you referred someone to a new ride, they give you $10. Robinhood had this amazing thing where you could like do a scratch off. You could pick option 1, 2 or 3, which obviously it's not actually 1, 2, 3, it's all the same. And they would give you stock. And so like I owned like dollars of stock. Yeah, I owned like $10 a Ford and that is now worth more because I did this like, you know, right when they launched. And so I like Robinhood though, as a company. I just googled it. Is it true? Did they do $1.1 billion of profit on 3 billion in revenue?
- [38:29]
Sam Parr
Yeah, basically when interest rates went up, all of the like financial service companies started printing money because now all the money that they hold, they're able to, they're able to like and money that they lend out at high rates. But like the money they hold, they're earning like 4 or 5% on their float, which is like pretty crazy. So they're, you know, they're very interest rate dependent right now. By the way, the criticism for all of these is that these are already.
- [38:51]
Shaun Neff
The valuation is crazy.
- [38:52]
Sam Parr
The valuation is crazy. Look at the fundamentals. Oh, you know, Tesla, you know, they need to sell this many crazy amount of cars in order to justify this or like even self driving, it'd have to be like bigger than Uber to, to just be where it's valued at currently. Right. So like your upside is priced in would be the counter argument. And by the way, I have no argument against that. I just think very simply, this has actually served me pretty well. Which is like I told you this story like in 2010, I was kind of like, oh, like these Internet companies seem to be like pretty dominant. Everybody uses them, everybody keep using them.
- [39:25]
Shaun Neff
Let me get some of that. That's the thing.
- [39:27]
Sam Parr
Yeah, let's just. I don't really know how to do discounted cash flows. You know, I can't, I can't really tell you much about that, about the PE ratios and, like, any of that stuff. But, like, I don't know, this Internet thing, that toothpaste is not going back in the bottle. And so, like, similarly, it's like, pretty obvious that with some of these, it's.
- [39:43]
Shaun Neff
Like, yeah, yeah, like, I like Dap Partners. That's the name of your. That's the name of your firm. I like that running my company, Hampton. It gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses, and I'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets, emails, and clunky tools that do not talk to each other. It's like watching someone build a house with duct tape. So here's my take. Custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient. It's a competitive advantage to transform the way you do business. And that's why you need to know about a no code platform called Bubble. With Bubble, you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements on the screen. No coding required. By the way, I use Bubble on a ton of different apps, including Hampton. And if you want help building something complex on Bubble, you have to bring in zero Code. They're the top bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plugin creator for the platform. They can build anything, custom portals, SaaS, products, and they do it about 10 times faster and cheaper than traditional development. Zero Code is also all about AI business automation, transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones. So stop cobbling together different tools and solutions and head to 0Code.com. That's zero code, as in the word zero. And then code Q, O, D, E. Again, code is with a Q. And tell them that Sam sent you. All right, what's the next one?
- [41:07]
Sam Parr
All right, let me just run through a couple of. Coinbase is basically the same case, except what they have is Coinbase has nine product lines that do over $100 million of revenue each. I thought that's a stunning, stunning statement. I can't believe how many different ways that they make a lot of money. I think basically it's like I'm bullish on bitcoin in general and crypto. And if you're bullish on crypto, the. The most trusted exchange that basically everybody. That takes a fee on everybody's interest, everybody's enthusiasm around crypto, they take a fee of every buy and every sell. Like, that's a business going to do very well. And also, like, as now, like, the government's. The government's pro crypto, they're buying crypto. There's ETFs, it's in people's retirement accounts. Like same thing. You can't, can't put the toothpaste back in the bottle on that.
- [41:53]
Shaun Neff
And that CEO is an animal. He's an animal.
- [41:56]
Sam Parr
And so I just think they're, they're extremely, you know, well positioned similarly for.
- [41:59]
Shaun Neff
For, you know, the future when it, when it IPO'd. I never do this, I've only done this two or three times or something like that. I bought.
- [42:07]
Sam Parr
You jumped up and clapped.
- [42:08]
Shaun Neff
I, I.
- [42:10]
Sam Parr
You clicked the heels.
- [42:13]
Shaun Neff
Right after I purchased like 100 grand worth of stock and I just looked at my, I just looked at it. I, I just made the money back. Now that it's like on a, on a tear, it looks like I've, I've, I'm, I'm even now after I think four years or three years. All right.
- [42:30]
Sam Parr
The other two, again, this is, this is so cliche. I mean I almost didn't even want to do this segment, but I do believe in this.
- [42:36]
Shaun Neff
So like it's not cliche to me because I don't follow all this stuff. So I think a lot of people won't find it totally cliche.
- [42:42]
Sam Parr
Yeah. Okay. All right, well, unfortunately the YouTube comments aren't as forgiving and kind as you are. All right, so Tesla is the next one, which is basically, if you think about what are the next big industries to get unlocked. A combination of self driving cars is going to change the world and then the robots. Now the timescale is obviously the question here, but again I'm taking, if you take a 20 year outlook, nobody's better positioned to do self driving cars and robots than Tesla. So. And then I also think, by the way, he's going to end up merging XAI with Tesla. Like he's going to, he's going to put it all together.
- [43:14]
Shaun Neff
I don't understand that. I don't get that, I don't get.
- [43:16]
Sam Parr
That combo, why it would go together. Well, it's basically one is an AI lab and then all the future of Tesla is as an AI company. And if he's able to basically like financially engineer his way into owning more Tesla by having Tesla buy Xai. He's also done this before with SolarCity where he bails out his own companies in a way. Right.
- [43:38]
Shaun Neff
I guess I get that. The way how Twitter has basically become AI, which is then a Tesla owned thing. That's a wild journey. That's the wild part. I wouldn't own any. I don't want to own any stock that Elon controls because a crazy person. And I don't mind being. I don't mind him being crazy. What I mind is, like, when he tweets something, the stock changes or. And so I'm like, well, what if he gets shot? Which is definitely not unreasonable. Like, there has to be, like, a 1% chance that he gets assassinated or a 1% chance that he dies doing something reckless.
- [44:12]
Sam Parr
Yeah, there's crazy man risk with him.
- [44:14]
Shaun Neff
Yeah, it's too crazy. Like, when he tweeted that Trump was a pedophile, what, did it go up or down? Like, did it move?
- [44:21]
Sam Parr
Yeah, it went down and went back up.
- [44:25]
Shaun Neff
Yeah, I don't have the stomach for that.
- [44:27]
Sam Parr
The stock trades in completely crazy ways. In the short term, they'll be like, oh, we missed delivery estimates by a lot. My bad. And the Stock's, like, up 10%. It's like, what. What's going on here?
- [44:38]
Shaun Neff
It's weird, man. Tesla's too weird for me. Yeah, I'm too old school for that, but I do. I understand the argument.
- [44:45]
Sam Parr
I mean, again, the idea is, like, we're going to have robots doing human labor. If you disagree with that, then you're wrong, and we disagree. But if you realize that robots are going to do human labor and that human labor is the biggest market in the world, is the market for human labor, then the company that makes the robots that do the human labor is going to sell more. It's going to be like the iPhone. The iPhone was like, this product that everybody in the world bought that, you know, sells billions and billions and billions of units. As soon as they have robots that can actually do functional work, they're going to sell billions and billions. There's going to be more robots than humans. Because why would you not. I'd be like, yeah, give me five. Give me five of those guys to be doing shit around my house, my backyard, my factory, my warehouse, my whatever. Right? Like, as soon as people. As soon as that exists, then the question is, do you believe it will exist? Do you believe that Tesla can pull it off?
- [45:35]
Shaun Neff
Yes, it's definitely worth betting that they.
- [45:38]
Sam Parr
Will pull that off. So once you go down the logic train of, like, the biggest market in the world, human labor, we now have the technology wave happening where robots will be able to do that, human labor and that. If you had that, what would be the demand for that? Okay, pretty much the biggest demand we've ever seen for anything ever. Okay, great. So let's go to the next one. Who is Going to be able to, you know who's going to be able to do it? Who's well positioned to do it? Tesla. Okay, great. You see you go down that chain and you realize like, okay, they're pretty well positioned.
- [46:03]
Shaun Neff
It's just hard because. So I have a friend that joined OpenAI in I forget the exactly what year, but at the time I think they were worth $30 billion. And he was debating, he's like, should I do this, should I not do this? And he said, we all said the same thing, which is, wow, $30 billion. That's a lot of money. Is there any upside to this? Well, he joined, I believe he's made about $30 million and as of now, the stock that he was granted back then, it is now worth 10 million a year. So every vest it's something like $10 million, right? And he sold a little bit to, to where he's good. But we were talking the other day and we were like, this could definitely 10x again, like your grants could be $100 million a year. And that's, that's, it's very hard to like overcome that, that, to get to that conclusion just because, not logic, because of emotion. You know what I mean?
- [46:59]
Sam Parr
Totally the smartest investors I know and the reason why I think there's merit to just having a very like, simple, simpleton model of investing is for most of the like, I guess if I look back at the last 10 years, I look back a couple of the smartest investors I know, they always had like a very like two sentence, two sentence level of conviction. And they sort of pointed out, they're like, hey, like all you needed to do was BTC and chill. Like all you needed to do was bitcoin and chill, right? You know, when we sold to Amazon and we got our Amazon grant, it was like, okay, you own this much Amazon stock now. Guess what? I did all these side projects, I did all this other shit during the meantime. I like tr. I like work. Got up every day and went to work. All I needed to do was hold Amazon and chill. Like if you get a big enough lump sum, you're just going to let things compound. And so like one of my friends, Zach, he has this phrase that basically every year there's one investment that's sort of like the power law. Like, you know, when Ozempic happened, he was like, oh, I think I just need to own the companies that are like the Oz Epic companies. And he's like, yep, like that was the only thing that you needed to do. Oz Epic was the investment theme of the year. You just had to recognize it and you had to take action on. Didn't take a. Like, a literal genius to do it. Right. You don't have to predict Oz Epic. You didn't have to, like, be knee deep in clinical trials six years ago. Like, even if it just, like, after it happened, you just had to, like, understand what was actually happening and buy and hold and, like, that was what you needed to do. And he basically has a list of every year. What's the one thing that mattered?
- [48:37]
Shaun Neff
What was the one deal that matter? I think you said one year was like, only fans.
- [48:41]
Sam Parr
Yeah, one year he was like, it's only fans this year. And I was like, onlyfans. This was like, before it was. This was actually, I think in 2019.
- [48:49]
Shaun Neff
We talked about it.
- [48:50]
Sam Parr
We sold and we sold to Twitch. And he texted me and he was like, onlyfans, I believe, is going to make more money than Twitch. I go, bro, Twitch is making like. And I shared him with him. You know, I was like, twitch was making a lot of money. He's like, I said what? I said, everything else is noise for me this year. I just need to figure out if I can get into only fans.
- [49:07]
Shaun Neff
Did he get it?
- [49:08]
Sam Parr
Yeah, he did. And so, you know, he's, you know. But I. I just really respect that level of thinking that. That type of thing. In fact, one of my friends who's like this, he came to. He came over my house and he goes, take two. Take two. Take two. Let's take two.
- [49:23]
Shaun Neff
Did your friends talk? Really? Strangely.
- [49:29]
Sam Parr
There'S no, like, no connecting words.
- [49:32]
Shaun Neff
It sounds like it was a Kramer. You just knocked on the door that take two.
- [49:38]
Sam Parr
I asked him. I'm like, what's the thing right now? Because he was. He was the one who early on was just like, you need to have 100% of your net worth in bitcoin. And he was just like, every day he would just tell me this. And he would just tell me this every day. This is 2014, 2015, 2016. Every day he's just telling me the same thing. And he would tell me exactly why, and he would write it. He wrote it down for me, and he just kept doing it. And because of him, I own more bitcoin than I would have otherwise. So I didn't do 100%, but I did listen to him. He was basically making a case why the company that makes Grand Theft Auto. He's like, grand Theft auto is coming. GTA 6 is coming out. And when it comes out. As of right now, the stock is a little depressed because it's. The game's been delayed for like multiple years. He's like, the game is going to come out and when the game comes out, it's going to be the biggest selling game ever. There's no competition. And he's like, uses all these like economics words, like, you know, some word for like there are no substitutes. Like there's no substitute for gta.
- [50:32]
Shaun Neff
Yeah, he was using words like elastic. Elastic or something.
- [50:34]
Sam Parr
Yeah, exactly.
- [50:35]
Shaun Neff
So he's like, rubber bands are stocks, bro.
- [50:38]
Sam Parr
He's like, you know, a great investment has these like six properties and like, you know, here's the six properties and, and I'm like, and Grand Theft Auto fits all those. He's like, yes. And so that's like, you know, his big piece. This is what he was saying a year ago. It's already up like 30% or something since he told me this. And he would, you know, whatever. There's more to that story I can't share here. But like it's that type of thinking that's like, I don't know, it's very, very attractive to me. I fall, I get seduced by that level of that type of thinking very easily. And obviously I'm cherry picking like, you know, things that worked. I'm sure there's, if I really thought about it, I'm sure I have a bunch of smart friends who, you know, fell in love with random single securities that didn't, didn't do anything. I'm not saying this is like a foolproof thing.
- [51:17]
Shaun Neff
Dude, when you, whenever we talk about this, I like, I started thinking I would be like the Warren Buffett thing where I'm like, well, I just don't understand it. So I'm going to stick to that thing, which is a really novel way of saying like, you know, whatever, I'm, I'm not doing it. And then I started thinking about this recently where I was like, well, it's been eight years. Maybe I should learn about it.
- [51:35]
Sam Parr
Maybe that circle of confidence needs to expand a little bit.
- [51:38]
Shaun Neff
Yeah, it's like six months ago I went and bought a book on it and started reading it and I was like, oh yeah? Yeah, I wish I would have read this a long time ago. This book was published like years ago. What am I doing? Well, I don't know it, I don't understand it, so I'm not going to do it. But that's been eight years. Yeah, I should have read Ways Sooner. What's the fourth company OpenAI is one of them.
- [52:04]
Sam Parr
But I think that's the most controversial one because I think there's so much competition, who knows? And I just was thinking like, who else is uniquely positioned on a 20 year timescale where they have the winds of technology behind their back so they're in the right space where clearly they're sitting in the lane where the highest velocity of, of change and sort of upside is, but then also that they have a unique defensibility, they will actually capture it. I think SpaceX is uniquely defensible. I think Coinbase is uniquely defensible. I think Tesla is uniquely defensible. None of these things are completely foolproof. Of course there are competitors, I'm not saying that, but I just think on the sliding scale of defensibility, it's very, very hard to compete with any of those companies because they built up these durable, durable moats, right? Like whether it's regular regulatory modes, whether it's brand, whether it's network effect, whether it's like hard, you know, hard technical, you know, technical things that, you know, take years for other people to catch up to, but then by then they're on the next generation.
- [53:08]
Shaun Neff
Dude, I wonder, like this is total like the bro science of financial investing. But I don't look into like, I don't really read about the fundamentals of certain companies and the only few times that I've bought an individual stock it's been mostly because the founder, the entrepreneur behind it. And so when we hung out with Mario, the guy who started Oscar Health, he like explained a little bit about Oscar and I was like, okay, it's a health insurance company. But I, I don't really know anything else but like you, you're really inspiring. And so I bought a little bit of that. And then the first one was Atlassian. I read an article about Atlassian and their office. I don't know if you remember this, but my office was at. Where was it? It was in Somalia and their office was like on the street of my, of my office, the Hustle. And I used to like look in their office and I was like, wow, I love the interior design of your office. And I read a little bit about the founders and they seemed really smart. And I bought I think $1,000 worth of it because I didn't have any money and I think it turned into 50, 50 grand. I think it like 50x and it was. And so both of the times that they have made money, it's literally just been because the founder was interesting to me. Total bro Science. No. I don't even know what Atlassian does to this day. Like, I. They make software, but I don't know what software. I don't know.
- [54:22]
Sam Parr
Australian software, I think.
- [54:24]
Shaun Neff
Yeah. Like they. They say words like schedule instead of schedule. Like, like, you know, it's a scheduler. I don't know what a schedule is, but it's been like, that's kind of been like an interesting way. It just seems like someone has willed something into existence and the cool factor. So for example, Palantir, I'm pretty sure they're trading at like 200 times revenue or something like that. And I have to imagine there's got to be some research on what the Alex Carp like, cool factor adds to that multiple.
- [54:57]
Sam Parr
Yeah, these become cults. Like there's enough, like, there's enough sort of like retail energy now where these things become cults. Like right now they're trying to make it happen for Opendoor. I don't know if you've paid attention to this.
- [55:07]
Shaun Neff
I have, I have. I've seen Open Door. I don't understand why there's. What's. Who's the culture leader behind, like, why do people care about comp.
- [55:14]
Sam Parr
And it's like this guy Eric Jackson and others. I mean, I, I don't know. I'm. I'm not too far in it. I, I stay away from the, like the, you know, everybody's got their, their, their vices meme. Stocks is not, not one that. That does it for me. So, like, fortunately I don't get sucked into that.
- [55:30]
Shaun Neff
So your buddy was like, I should just pick one stock and go all in. If there's one skill set that you should go all in. Honestly, like, I learned it a little bit with her Mosi, and we've seen it time and time again. But like, becoming a very charismatic person that knows how to talk to the masses is obviously the answer. That's the skill set that you have to learn.
- [55:48]
Sam Parr
Like manipulation.
- [55:51]
Shaun Neff
Everything else, just learn that. I think Rob the Bank who you had on a while ago, he like talked about some book. He's like, I don't even want to say the name of this book. He like teed it up perfectly. And I think you did. I think you did the same. He's like, there's this one book on how to manipulate people. I don't even want to say the name. It's just too powerful and I don't want the price to go up the dark. Do you remember what he said?
- [56:11]
Sam Parr
That maybe I don't like you said on our podcast or somewhere else.
- [56:16]
Shaun Neff
Yes, or maybe he said it on. I started following him after you had him on, and he said something like that. And I went and like, read it. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. This is like the. This is like the skill that everyone should learn. Screw products, screw being okay.
- [56:27]
Sam Parr
Well, what is it? I want to know now.
- [56:29]
Shaun Neff
I'm not going to say.
- [56:32]
Sam Parr
Give it to me.
- [56:34]
Shaun Neff
I'll tell you after.
- [56:35]
Sam Parr
No, but I don't even know Robert Greene. They say this about his book, right? 48 Laws of Power. Like, I think one of the, like, marketing shticks, which I don't know if he completely made up or is true. And then he used it to like, to market his book, but it was. This book is banned from prisons. It's the best because they don't want the prisons to, like, the prisoners to be able to like, overtake.
- [56:56]
Shaun Neff
So powerful.
- [56:57]
Sam Parr
It's so powerful that it's banned in prisons is, ah, just perfect marketing. Yeah, you know, that's. That's like the COD level marketing.
- [57:05]
Shaun Neff
And I, I have it somewhere in my goodreads that I'll say that I'll. That I'll find it, but it, It's. I don't even remember the title, if I'm being honest, but it was.
- [57:12]
Sam Parr
Okay. So you think I should go all in on. On struggles and manipulation or what?
- [57:17]
Shaun Neff
Yeah, I mean, you're. We're kind of. We kind of do that already. Yeah, like, I'm just saying, like, go all in. Yeah, just be better. Just do what you're doing now, but better? Is that it? Is that the pod?
- [57:34]
Sam Parr
Yeah, that's it. I feel like I can rule the world.
- [57:37]
Shaun Neff
I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it. Like, no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.
- [57:45]
Sam Parr
All right, let's take a quick break because as you know, we are on the HubSpot podcast network, but we're not the only ones. There's other podcasts on this network too, and maybe you like them, maybe you should check them out. One of them that I want to draw your attention to is called Nudge by Phil Agnew. And whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you could make, the new habits you could do, the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference, that's what that podcast is all about. Check it out. It's called Nudge. And you can get it wherever you get your podcasts.