10 Lessons We Learned From Filming 131 Episodes of My First Million In 2023

If you want to stay being a broke idiot, don't listen to this video. And then he'll be like, be like, here's the first lesson for you. Do this. And I know what you're going to say, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's what I say about that. And then he'll like flash his like fancy shit. So Sam texted me this morning and he goes, we did over 100 million views this year for the podcast. And 100 million, I thought he was wrong. I was like, no way, you gotta go double-check that. Uh, he was right, we did, and that is way more than I thought we did. That is a bonkers number. I remember when we started this podcast, that sounded completely crazy. And what we wanted to do today, it's the end of the year, we wanted to look back and find what were the key takeaways and lessons that we learned from the 100 million views that we had this year on the podcast. So what were the biggest things that stood out when we look at the whole year? What were the biggest takeaways that we had? Uh, Sam, where do you wanna start?

Yeah, let me, let's just get the lead out the way. Let's start with the numbers. So I'm gonna give you, I'll be transparent about a bunch of numbers, but not all, but a few. Um, all right, so in the last 12, 11. Uh, so we have 11, we have 10 days left in the new year. So I, we're not actually at 100 million. I think technically we're at 95 million, but I think it's the past few months it's been like 5 million a week. So on YouTube, we got 80 million downloads or 80 million views so far. That includes YouTube Shorts, which is, those pop off sometimes and we'll get millions of views. And so I don't put too much emphasis on that, but so, uh, YouTube was around 80 million. And then downloads for the podcast, the actual podcast. So we call, we call everything the podcast, but there's basically, we call it the RSS feed. That's Spotify, iTunes, whatever you listen to your podcast. That was around 15 million. And so collectively we're at about 95 million. We did 131 episodes, which is a ton, by the way, like this job, it's fun, but that's a lot of work. Do you agree? Like, or do you, do you say think that every episode is fun?

Every episode is fun to me, and I feel like I'm able to, um, I feel like I'm able to improvise well. So it is a lot of work, but there are some days— some of our best episodes are ideas we have 90 minutes before we record, and someone sends a text saying, actually, what if we tried this? And, uh, those turn out really well sometimes. I think it's because What we've tried to do is make this podcast the byproduct of the other work we do. So it's like the basic business model is do interesting business shit. So invest in businesses, create businesses, talk to interesting people, and then the pod is just distill the most interesting 10% that you're allowed to talk about and go talk about it. And so if we do that right, the pod's pretty easy. When we don't do that right, then the pod gets pretty hard.

But it's kind of like exercising. Like some days I don't want to do it. And then almost every single time, even if it's a bad episode or something I didn't like, I didn't love, I feel happy and I'm proud that I did it. So for me, it's, it's, it's like exercise. Um, all right. And I'll give you a few more stats. So do you want me to go through the most pop— the top 3 most popular episodes? Yeah.

What are they?

All right. So we actually have 2 categories. So, which is weird because the most popular episodes on YouTube are not the most popular episodes on podcast, so again, RSS feed. So the 3 most popular episodes on Megaphone, that's what we use to track this. The first one is The Greatest Businesses of All Times, PsyOps as a Service, Work Harder, Not Smarter Hack. That was the, the title. The second one was Brainstorming ChatGPT Business Ideas with Billionaire Dharmesh Shah. And the third one, shockingly, I didn't think this was gonna be the top one or one of the top ones, was Nick, Nick Huber, How to Make Millions from Content Without Selling Ads. That was the most popular, the top 3 most popular on podcasts, the top 3 most popular on YouTube. It was the same one actually. It was brainstorming ChatGPT business ideas with a billionaire. It was with Dharmesh Shah that has 450,000 views. I don't know this for sure. I think he did something, Dharmesh did, to manipulate this. I think he for sure emailed this out to his audience. I wouldn't be surprised if he bought ads or did something because Dharmesh loves to win and be number 1. So he's number 1 on YouTube. The 2nd most popular one on YouTube, 10 Years of Money Wisdom in Under 20 Minutes, 425,000. That is you by yourself. And I think you made that episode with YouTube in mind. Is that right?

Yeah. Made that as a YouTube first.

And it worked. And then the 3rd one was very recent. It was November 2nd, How I Bought a Multimillion Dollar Egg Carton Business for $0, 391,000 views on YouTube, Sarah Moore and Sean. And then I'll just say the fourth one was Martin Shkreli when we interviewed him that had 257,000 views. So that was a, some of those were a bit surprising. What do you think about that?

Those make sense to me. I mean, each of those is basically when I read the title, I'm like, yeah, I'd click, I'd click that. And that's basically what works on YouTube is I'd click that and then you got to deliver on the promise. And so, you know, maybe this is, maybe this whole content thing is a lot simpler and you just got to get the get the titles right, and then you work backwards from there, make the content off the title.

Well, and this, this point is for any content creator out there. We, you and I, this show, we are kind of bastard children of content creators. So we started without YouTube. We only went for podcast downloads on podcast apps. I think we had a YouTube channel, but it was really like you and I went to Best Buy and we bought a camera and we just set it there. And we just uploaded it and so we didn't really care about it. I think we only started caring about a year ago. And what's crazy is if you really want to do it the right way, or maybe not, but the really right way is you start with one in mind and you go all in on that. We didn't go all in on YouTube. I don't think we should have, but, but I understand the argument that we should have because what works on YouTube doesn't always work on RSS feed and vice versa. And so speaking of YouTube, by the way, do you want to hear, here's a few more stats. So we added, so we did 131 episodes. We added about 250,000 subscribers, sorry, 210,000 subscribers. We started the year at 150,000 and we ended with 360,000. And you want to know the biggest needle mover besides actually caring about YouTube? Do you want to know what it was that got us subscribers?

I'm going to guess it's the gentleman agreement. Is that not it?

The gentleman's agreement. And so for all the listeners out there, here's another takeaway. When you hear a YouTuber say, click the subscribe button and all that, and you hear everyone say that and it gets— you think it doesn't matter. We saw a— there's a distinct point in the chart where we asked people to subscribe and it went up. And so like, it absolutely works. And so it's sort of like the thing, you know how people say, why are you buying ads on Facebook? Nobody uses Facebook, no one clicks ads. Nonsense. That is absolutely not true. I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot.

Grow better. Yeah, and actually that was one of my takeaways for the year was When we were like, all right, we should start growing on YouTube. What do we, you know, what do we not like about what's stopping us from wanting to do that? And one of the things is, dude, I don't want to be that guy who's like, all right guys, if you like this video, click the like button and smash the subscribe button and turn on notifications as well. It's like, oh God, I got to turn into, you know, like inflatable arm YouTube guy. And, uh, you know, like in front of the car dealerships, it's like that, that way, you know, inflatable arm balloon thing. I was like, ah, God, I don't want to do this. But you had a really great idea of this idea of the gentleman's agreement. So basically, how do you do the cringe thing in the non-cringe way, right? How do you turn lemons into lemonade? You did it with the gentleman's agreement. I think we also did it recently with the Thrill of the Shill, where it's like, yeah, all right, look, we want to have ads to promote our businesses.

Cool.

That's fine. And I think the audience gets that that's fine. But how do we not make this an experience that's annoying for us to do, like sit down and record these shitty ad reads. And then on the audience side, they just want to hit the skip button. It's like, what would be neither? What would be fun for us and actually fun for them to listen to? And then when we switched to the Thrill of the Chill, I feel like that was a good idea. And I think that's something that people should do more of if you could pull it off, right? You should basically set a standard of like, no, no, no, I'm going to have my cake and eat it too. And I feel like we did that in two areas. This year. And I feel like that's something worth remembering as we go into next year of like, all right, what would also be, instead of something that's kind of lame or a bit of a drag or just kind of extra work, how do we make it awesome for us and the audience? Because it didn't take that much more effort to do that. It just took a little bit of, you know, charm.

No, and it wasn't hard at all. The problem was the gentleman's agreement that we would always tell people about. It like faded out. Like it got, we forgot to say it got not novel and we were like, oh shit, we have to come up with another one. And I like watch all these YouTube videos and I just see one and I write it down and I'm like copying that, copying that. And I just have forgotten to say it. So we've screwed up by not being consistent. Do you want to go like tit for tat a little bit and like just go through like interesting things that you've learned throughout the year? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. I'll go first with one. So this podcast is steady eddy. This podcast is the tortoise, not the hare. So it grows very steadily. You could put up this chart from Social Blade that's like our YouTube growth. And it's great in that, you know, we started the year under 150,000. We're ending the year almost 400,000. But there's like no spikes. This thing is just a line that's just creeping up like a, you know, like this is like if my uncle goes for a hike, this is what it would look. This is like what it would look like. It's a map. It's like, this is his Strava right here. And so I'm like, what is this? This is so different than everything else I do because I am much more of a go for the home run, try to do something incredible. And then if it doesn't work, or even if it's like, you know, you find something that's good, I just don't really follow through. And this is like a leak in my game in a way, but I kind of took some pride in this. Um, let me give you some examples. So on Twitter, we all joined this group chat called the 100K Club. We all had, I don't know, 10,000 to 20,000 Twitter followers and we all, 5 or 6 friends, we all wanted to hit 100K. We independently had that goal and we all did it. We all surpassed it. Um, but we all did it very differently. Nick Huber, uh, Nick Huber did it and he's kind of polarizing. So he'll say controversial shit that, uh, he believes, but he'll kind of spice it up a little bit. He knows what he's doing. He uses controversy to grow. And Saul Hill's like, every day I wake up and I open a fortune cookie and then I type it out to whatever it was. I'll put that on Twitter. I'll do that every single day and I'll do a thread every Tuesday and Thursday. And why would I not? It works. And we're like, why would it not? Because it's so boring to do that. But he did it and he did it and he grew the most out of all of us. I think he's like at a million and he did it with what I'll call more cookie cutter stuff. Feel-good, you know, kept it, uh, you know, pretty safe. No controversy, no real, like, I would say like not much original, you know, storytelling or wisdom, but more like general best practices, like kind of, uh, you know, stuff we've heard before but packaged well.

He's posted so many videos of children and just probably titled it humans are amazing.

Yeah.

I love my son.

I'm like, I'm never going to write that shit. Right. Like, you know, I looked at my son and I was like, Hey, listen, you're never getting that, all right? You're never getting that from me. I'm not using you for that and you're not using me for that. All right? We're not doing that. But jokes aside, Sahil was more of consistency and just put out— he was ready to hit base hits and he just base-hitted his way to a million. And I did the opposite. I didn't have a schedule. I didn't draft things. I didn't have a ghostwriter. I didn't do anything. I just had a, I had probably 6 tweets that went viral. One was like this Clubhouse thread. One was about the metaverse. One was about Elon Musk. One was about whatever. I just had a couple of these things go, go really, really viral. And I would go weeks and weeks without even tweeting. And then I would just do that. And, and I got to maybe 350,000. And so here's the lesson learned. The joke's on me in the end. So this is kind of the, the long-winded takeaway is I was like, Your boy's a home run hitter. I just go for the big swings. I don't have to do all that consistency BS. I just come in, just mic drop with a viral thread, and I peace out. And I was so happy with myself. And I kind of looked up at the end of the year, I was like, huh, like the people who did the consistency thing got way further and had and did way less. Like, uh, they didn't have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to do it. And I felt like I was having to pull a rabbit out of a hat in order to get growth to happen. And because that's so hard, I could only do it so often. The podcast, because I do this with you and you are a more structured, disciplined guy, you're like, let's set recording dates and let's never miss them. And I'm like, dude, what if we did like 10 episodes in the next 2 days? But then like, you know, if I'm busy, let's not do an episode. Like, I would have had a totally different schedule. I would have such worse results. And when I look at this, it's like, damn, consistency wins again. This brings me to—

By the way, it's, uh, It's 500. I think we're, is this 550 or 520? So we're like 500, 500 plus episodes. Yeah. 533, Ari said. So we're 500 plus in. It's a lot. That's a lot.

And we record like clockwork, same time, same days every week. No excuses. And so I would have never done that on my own.

Some excuses. We've had some excuses.

Well, we have reasons. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Sickness, children. And, uh, that's about it.

So, all right. So, but. I guess this takes me to one of the biggest lessons I learned was through the podcast. We met Andrew Wilkinson. People know about him, but I also met his business partner who, you know, Chris. And Chris said something at a dinner that I've shared on the podcast, but it was the question of the year. He goes, you know, somebody was talking about something they did, they failed. They're like, oh, but I— and then somebody else to like kind of pat them on the back was like, well, but you know, you learned so much. And they're like, oh my God, I learned so much. Yeah.

So many lessons learned.

So many. And Chris goes, like, what? And you would think for somebody who went through this traumatic experience and had so many lessons learned that they would be like, number one, this, that's the most important lesson. Number two, this. Number three, this. Those lessons weren't at the tip of their tongue. In fact, the lessons weren't even in their head. They learned actually nothing. And Chris correctly called it out, and I had never heard anybody question this assumption that when somebody says, I failed, but I learned, he was like, you know, I don't think people really learn. He goes, and in fact, some people who, when I ask them what they learned, they say something that tells me they learned the wrong lesson. And I think that's what happened to me this year on the consistency versus like big home run virality thing. I think I learned the wrong lesson. I was cursed by the fact that I did go viral a few times and I did pass my kind of $100K goal. And actually the lesson was, dude, if I just had consistently tweeted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, probably would've took me 30 minutes. I'd probably be at a million followers instead. And, um, and so I think I learned the wrong lesson. And I think that Chris's question of did you even learn the right lesson from this experience? It showed up everywhere for me this year. Everybody I talked to, I realized, uh, yeah, more people fell into that camp. The outlier was somebody who went through something and had the right takeaway from it. The outlier was that.

Well, I would say to you, and this isn't a leading question, but it is for me when I ask myself this, which is, is that even worth it? Is having, is being popular on social media even worth it? And I talk to a lot of people who are significantly more successful than I am in terms of traditional success. They've built bigger companies, whatever. And they'll ask about getting popular on social media. And my immediate response is like, but why? Like you're doing, you're doing awesome and you could be private. That sounds way better. And so I would wonder, is it even worth it to have a million for you? In your case, actually, the answer is probably yes, but that's something that I always ask people when they talk to me about social media.

I think for a lot of people, the answer is no, because it's almost the cliché example of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It's like if you play the, I want to be popular on social media game, you win the wonderful prize of having a bunch of followers who don't really know or care about you and you basically turning your life into a performance for them, right? So you sort of win the stupid prize in the end. For me, my, like, you know, after a bunch of soul searching, it became very obvious that the thing I actually wanted to do, the thing that would bring me the most joy in my life is like if I get to be kind of like One of these like thinker guys. It's like, I think, you know, I don't actually want to be Elon Musk. I want to be Tim Ferriss. And once I realized that, and that sounded very true for me, I was like, okay, then I got to do that. I got to go learn cool stuff. I got to synthesize information from a bunch of places. And then, which is super fun for me. And then I'm going to try to teach it. And I like teaching it. And I'll, you know, I'll try to share it. I'll try. I like sharing it. Why not? I'm so excited about the stuff that I'm figuring out. I'd like to create content. and I'm good at creating content, so it's a good fit for me. And so, um, for me it is probably the right game. I wouldn't say being popular on social media is the right way to phrase it. I think it is like, uh, getting to be a thinker, like making that your, your actual job.

Sure, sure, sure. Um, but you're right, me, me calling it popular on social media, it's like calling it a creator. Like it just, it's like, oh, that's cute. That's not how I meant it, but that's how it sounds like. Um, all right, the biggest thing I learned this year, And I have a bunch of them, but number one, the biggest thing, so I'll set the stage here. So I think last spring, I do remember what month it is. We were like, all right. I had, I was at the two. So basically when I sold the company to HubSpot, I had like a two-year deal where I stock had a vest, whatever that ended in February. And then we had to renegotiate some stuff, some contracts. And I think we started that. When did we start that? Do you remember which month?

End of April.

End of April. It didn't end until September. Is that right? Did it? Was it September where it ended?

Something like that. August, September.

So we go to negotiate this and I'm a pretty soft guy. I have known all along that I'm bad at negotiating. I just, I don't—

You're like a Ferrero Rocher, hard on the outside, soft on the inside. Yeah.

Like I, I just, I'm not good with uncomfortable conversations. I, uh, I, I just, I don't love confrontation. I want people to think that I'm easy to deal with, but I leave a lot on the table. I leave a ton on the table. And we go to negotiate this contract and Sean, you were like, let me take a lead on this. And you did so many things that I thought were the stupidest thing ever. And I was like, you're being rude. This is stupid. You're being like, you're asking for too much. You're being difficult. You're in the weeds too much. Why do you care about this one? You know, it'd be like a 5-page or 8-page contract and you're like, this one sentence, guys, we need to talk about it. Like, we need to change this word from like, uh, uh, you know, like mandatory to optional, or I don't even remember.

Yeah.

Like it, like you were like, I think we probably had 10 revisions and I, and we had a, we, you and I had to hire a lawyer to go through all this stuff and we sweat the details so much. In my heart, I was like, everything about this is wrong. And you want to know something? I was wrong. You were right. You negotiated this wonderfully. And I learned so many things and I could summarize this in something you'd said. I think you said someone told you, which is the person who could be most uncomfortable in a negotiation will oftentimes win.

Yeah, I think that, I think that's it. So the way you said it isn't actually the way I would say it. So you said, you know, whoever's more uncomfortable will win. And it's actually like, The first thing in a negotiation is realize it's not about winning. Like, both sides want things, usually different things. You have to make sure both sides get what they want so that both sides feel like they win. But that, uh, it is true that you have to be willing to be uncomfortable for much— like, almost like the definition of the word uncomfortable— for longer than you're comfortable being uncomfortable, right? That was the— that's what I was trying to say, because, you know, um, it's very easy in the moment to say If I push this button, the pain stops and the uncertainty goes away and the item goes off my to-do list. And it's very tempting to want to push that button.

Well, like, I'm not particularly that— so at The Hustle, we did enterprise sales basically. So we, you know, $100,000+ advertising deals. I wasn't particularly good at that, but one thing that I learned early on was it's— for any salesperson, it's best to not be like a hard-hitting, like, I'm going to sell you this, I'm going to sell you this. Instead, you say, All right. So what are you guys looking for? Like, what would, what, what are you trying to get out of this? Um, what do you need more customers or, you know, you, you basically ask them what they want and then you tailor a solution or, or, or position your solution to fit their needs. You did a really good job of that where you're like, all right, HubSpot, um, tell me everything you guys want and we'll try to accommodate or, or, or I'll phrase my solution to fit your needs. And, and, and we, you did a really good job at that.

All right, um, so let me do a simple one. This year my cash flow, so my monthly income, I think went up by like 4.5x. However, I didn't— I, I was very focused on making money and I didn't— and I normally don't care about like, you know, expenses or, you know, it's like you know that phrase, it's like, it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep. That's true. I just don't really follow it very well. And the biggest expense—

sounds good, always sounds smart—

the biggest expense always is taxes. And I didn't do a lot of tax planning, so this is a very simple one. One of my big takeaways for the year is, um, a lesson learned again that taxes are your biggest expense once you start making real money. And I looked into a bunch of different opportunities and at the, only at the end of the year did I do something smart, which was I know somebody very well who is phenomenal at real estate. They have a very niche application of real estate. They crush it. Like I'm talking about went from zero to owning a billion dollars in real estate with no outside capital. In like, you know, 8 years type of thing. And I watched them do that brick by brick. I know this, this method, this like specific thing that they do where they have a little bit of an unfair advantage, where, why it works. And I never really asked them to participate in a deal. I was like, you know, they don't take any external money, so why not? But I know that we have a good, really good relationship. So I was like, maybe they would take it. So finally towards the end of the year, I was like, hey, can I like deploy some capital here? Because if I can invest with you, I think I'll get a great return, but also I'll get that sweet, sweet depreciation. And, um, so I will get a, you know, sort of a double return on my side because I get the, you know, returns for the property, but I also get the tax savings today. And I just started doing it and it is so good. It is so smart. And I'm, I am so regretful that I didn't take this more seriously earlier. And Jess Ma came on the podcast and she said, it was her that triggered me to go take action on this. She goes, I go, do you spend a bunch of, she goes, oh, I want to talk about what rich people do with their taxes. And we didn't even really get to that in the episode, but during the pre-call I was like, what do you mean by, uh, we should talk about it? Like, and she's like, well, I think just the general thing is that most entrepreneurs really don't spend enough time on, on their taxes. And I get it, they want to build their business. But she's like, if you just look mathematically, like this is going to be, you know, between, I don't know, 30 to 50% of all your income every year gets taxed this way and 20 plus percent of your gains. Of all your investment gains gonna get taxed this way. She's like, it's financially irresponsible to not at least spend 5 to 10% of your time on this. And then I did the math and I was like, 10% of my time would be 5 full weeks of a year. I was like, there's no way I'm gonna do that. But I was like, I should at least spend like 2, 1, you know, like something where I'm actually focused.

So who did you hire? Like a, did you like a tax strategist?

I talked to a few, but I, you know, the reality was it's not that hard. Like the real, real estate really is the best way to do this. 'Cause what you do is you take, you know, you take income and you have taxable income coming from one place. You take that cash, you deploy that cash into real estate. And my, you know, my wife is a real estate professional, so we have, we can offset the active income. And so you put the cash there. Now that cash is going to grow in the property, but you got all this tax loss to wipe out your taxable income, if that makes sense. So, so you get cash on both sides, but the taxable income gets, gets, uh, you know, reduced by using real estate. So it doesn't really take, like, I don't need to do anything.

By the way, it is hard. It's hard to find deals that are, are good. I mean, like, I've bought—

well, that's the key. Like, I knew this for a long time. I was like, great, what am I going to do? Go look for fourplexes in Missouri? Like, I, I don't have the time or the energy or expertise to do this. Then you have a bunch of different like, you know, fund manager type people. You're like, all right, I gotta vet them and figure out if they're any good and do a couple deals with them. And I could do that. In this case, I was lucky that I had a very longitudinal relationship with somebody that I had seen do this with their own money. They're not a money manager. And so, and they get, you know, far above average returns because of what they do. And so anyways, that became, you know, the thing I'm going to do. So Anyways, we should talk more later. You should do this too. I'm like so convinced that this is a good idea for people in our position. And I think most of our friends in our circle, we're all like internet money people and we like kind of suck at the real world money stuff.

Yeah, I suck at it. All right. I've got another one. I've titled this Loose Cannon, Loose Results. So for the majority of my career, I've been a loose cannon. I would say silly stuff and it would get a reaction and I would get results sometimes. I gotta put that asterisk sometimes. The result being what, a laugh? Or like I was in the media business. We are still in the media business, which is like I can go the obnoxious or blunt or ridiculous route and I can get clicks. And the problem with that is as you get more popular, you have to decide, are you going to go all in on that? Or are you going to not go all in on it? Or you want to be this medium ground? The medium ground is bad. And so here's a, here's an example of someone who goes all in on it. Dave Portnoy, the guy's a missionary. He, but here's what, here's what that means. So he says ridiculous stuff. He had a sex scandal this year, regardless of what the facts are. I'm not even debating what the facts of that, of his issues were. He was accused of being, I, it might've been like crazy, like assault, like some really bad shit. And he went all in on it and he came out with like, and he like, he kind of, I don't think he joked about it, but he like confronted it head on. But then there's other things that he's done where he's like, look, I'm so rich, I can do all this stuff. And, but there's a downside to that. The upside is he got lots of traffic. He, you know, whenever he goes through any type of scandal, he gets lots of views and somehow imagine he gets paid for those ads. The downside is obvious, which is you are now this guy where you've gotta live this life where you're this loose cannon guy. You say whatever you want and you're a huge target. Then we've gotten really close with Andrew Wilkinson, who is not a loose cannon. He says some stuff bluntly, but in— and he's a very honest guy, but he's reserved a bit more measured. Yeah, he's more measured. We had Syed on the, what's What's Said's last name? Said Balki. He's one of the best guests we've had. Very measured. The guy's only 32 or something, and he's in the ballpark of being a billionaire. He owns all these companies. And off air, when I've hung out with him, he's a little bit less measured, but on air, he was definitely like, he was very like, I look, my reputation matters. I need to have a good reputation. And he cared about that stuff. We also had Kevin Ryan. Kevin Ryan, probably. The second or third most successful guy we've had on the podcast. Very measured, very honest, but very straightforward, but also calculating. Sarah Moore was another person. Sarah Moore, she explicitly said, I don't want to be famous. I'm only going to be here. And she still said good stories, but I'm sure that she, like, her reputation was in mind, things like that. And I think that I'm not willing to go the Dave Portnoy route. For sure. I don't want that flack. I've said very mild things and I'll get flack for it. And I'm like, yeah, I just don't want to live this life where I, where I go hardcore. So anyway, a takeaway is I've actually wanted to pull back some public persona stuff, not reveal certain numbers. I don't want to be a target. I don't want to have to fight these battles. I don't get joy from that. I used to get joy from that and I would respond to haters constantly online just to prove like, See, you can't talk shit to me. I'm like, I'm a real guy. I read all the comments. That's stupid. I don't want to be that person. That's a pretty big takeaway. You've done a good job of like, you've not, you've actually had a few fires this year where you said some stuff that you got called out on and you didn't back down from it, but you also didn't engage in it.

I don't even remember.

Um, there was a, there was a time where you criticized someone who worked for you and it caused a little bit of a spat on the internet. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't remember another time, but I think that that's what I'm referring to. And in my head, when I'm hearing you say that, or, and when I'm seeing that, I'm like, I want to stay out of this. I don't want any of this drama. I don't want to, I don't want, I don't want this stress. You know, we've seen it with Chamath a bit where he put himself out there and he's done some contradictory things and he's taken a lot of flak. And I respect that he's like owned up to it and he like faces it head on. I don't want to live that life. I thought I did. I don't. As we've gotten more popular, I, I for sure do not want to live that life. And I prefer to be more private now than I was in the past.

That's a good one. I have kind of a related one. So one of the best meetings I had this year was with James Currier. James Currier, for those that don't know, he is the founder of something called NFX, which stands for Network Effects. They basically They have like, I don't know, $1 billion of assets under management. They invest in tech startups. He's been in— he's a Silicon Valley OG, so he's been building successful tech companies for like, you know, 20 years or something like that.

Yeah, he's had, I think, multiple $100 million plus exits.

Correct. And super fun guy. So I go to his office. So I drive down to Palo Alto. I don't usually leave the house, but for James, I'm there. And literally it's just me and him in the office. I was like, where's everybody else? He's like, yeah, we don't really even have that many people. But also, yeah, nobody's coming to work anymore.

Everyone works from home.

So it's just me and him in his office for a couple hours. And he shared with me a piece of advice that really stuck with me. And I started seeing everywhere something I hadn't really thought about. So he goes, can I give you some unsolicited advice? I was like, please. And he goes, today he drew this line on the whiteboard and he goes, I really like what you guys are doing with your show, but I don't know Like, where do you go from here? He's like, you're kind of in the middle. He's like, meaning if I think about really upmarket, he's like, you know, when we make content, we're not making content that we don't want a million views. If we did a million views on a piece of content, we probably made the wrong piece of content. He goes, because what I'm doing, I've— and if I was like, I'm trying to invest in, you know, whatever, it's the next Airbnb, the next Twitter, the next whatever. So he's like, I need the most ambitious founders in the world who are building, you know, like venture-backed tech companies to read our stuff, really care about it and think, when I'm going to raise money, I'm going to go to NFX. And he's like, so you have us and a16z and others that are trying to be really upmarket because we're trying to attract a certain quality founder of which there's only, you know, a smaller pool, but they also care about different things. They're only going to, you know, they don't want to hear about the The vending machine side hustle, like we'll, we'll be like, oh dude, this guy's got 18 vending machines. He's making $22K a month. Isn't that sick? And like, he doesn't care about that. They're trying to get, you know, only people who are going to like disrupt the healthcare system or some shit like that. I don't know. It's such a big idea. Who even knows what it means?

By the way, I would disagree with him. I think that the, I think they care enough to listen, but not enough to actually do anything about it. You know what I mean?

Oh yeah. And the vending machine thing, actually, you're right. Cause I meet a lot of these people and they're like, pretty fascinated by like, uh, the economics of stuff that's outside of their world because they're just business nerds.

I think they actually care enough to be entertained by it, but that's, but that's about it.

But like, then you have on the other end of the spectrum, you have, you know, let's say, and I love Gary Vee, but you know, Gary Vee is basically like motivation grind. Like, hey, you gotta like, his content will be literally, he's like, I'm going to pull up to this garage sale and I'm going to flip this VHS for, you know, on eBay. And imagine if I did that every day. You could, you, you, that could be your hustle. And it's like, so I could make, you know, $100 grand a year. It's like, I kind of, a job can do that, but this is, I guess, the, the entry level of entrepreneurship. And it's like, and he, so he has a huge audience, which I respect, by the way.

I just don't want to do it.

Gary, you know, like what's the deal for like the best investments Gary's made, I think came from his peers, like his friends he hung out with, not like his listeners in that way.

Right.

Not, not his fans. Right. And he probably, like, I shouldn't speak for him, but I guess it's very easy if you're in that position to be like, it's great because I get huge numbers, but I'm not necessarily— it's not like a two-way thing. I'm not learning back from my audience as much. Maybe I'm happy to sign autographs and take selfies, but I'm not excited to go have dinner with 5 people in this group because I don't feel like it's going to— iron's not sharpening iron there, right? Like, I'm a black belt. I'm more hanging out with white belts. And so I kind of want to When I'm trying to spar, I want to spar with black belts anyways. So he's like, you have a decision to make. You're in the middle right now with My First Million. You kind of have a foot in both camps. And he's like, it's going to be very tempting for you to go downmarket. And he's like, don't do it. He's like, go, if anything, go upmarket. And I agree, in the long run, you're going to want— you're going to be more interested in the topics that those people are interested in. You're going to not want to keep saying the same, like, beginner level here's how you, you know, literally here's how you make your first million. Here's how you get, here's how you should quit your job and here's how you get a startup idea and here's how you incorporate an LLC. Like you're not going to want to make that content as you grow. And he's like, you should steer up market. He's like, my only advice to you is that. Um, I think that was so smart. And so I don't even know why he said that to me because who's even thinking about that? I wasn't even thinking about it, but now like, I'm just going to give you an example. Alex Hormozi, I think, is on one hand absolutely killing the content game. I think Alex is awesome. I think he's super, super talented, but I think he's making a mistake in that he goes very downmarket. I'm just going to read you some titles of his last videos he's posted in the last, like, 2 months. Okay. How to Make So Much Money It Makes You Sick.

How to Get Rich This Black Friday.

Watch this if you're tired of being broke. Uh, the real reason your business isn't growing. Um, a bunch of these, right? So like, I, I don't want to, you know, pick on these, but these are more downmarket video concepts and they'll get views for sure. And like the comments will kind of show you people like, oh my God, you changed my life. You're my hero, blah, blah, blah. And like, it's not that he's not doing a service for those people, however, I, I look at that and I think for me, the game I want to play is definitely going to be not to go downmarket, to resist the temptation to try to create that content and to focus on creating upmarket content, which is going to have a lower view count number, but it's going to have a higher value per viewer and more of the audience. And it's like, I'm creating a magnet. I'm not creating an audience. I'm creating a magnet with my content and I want to attract the right people. And so anyways, that was a big lesson or takeaway for me that I wouldn't have otherwise thought about.

Yeah, I think so. Like sometimes some of the contractors who work on this podcast will suggest ideas because they're just looking at like YouTube analytics and I'm like, no, I, I, I, 8, 8 out of the 10 things I don't think would, would work.

If Apple sold iPhones for $5, they'd sell more units too, right? Like, but if you're building an upmarket brand or if you're Louis Vuitton, like you don't want to, go down market. There's another guy we met and we fall victim to it as well.

I don't want to act like our shit don't stink, but like, even though you and I will fight it, like sometimes we will.

Correct. The only reason this lesson resonates is because it's something I'm wrestling with, right? If I have a solved problem, I don't really care about it. It doesn't stand out as a big takeaway because I didn't, I didn't have the problem in the first place. This is a problem I have. So I'm trying to figure out where to go. And this advice was very helpful. There's another guy who does this. Have you seen this guy on Instagram? The Genius CEO.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I came to— he's in Austin right now. I think he's so funny. I think he's so funny.

So like, I find him hilarious. And like, when I met him, I can't tell if his Instagram's a joke.

Like, it's like, there's a lot of like nuggets in there, but he'll be, he'll be like, Bad Bunny is only making $30 million a year. What a bitch move. We're going to teach this guy how to make a billion. Like, he'll like insult these people. And it's pretty funny.

He'll be like, uh, he goes, this product, this product is going to bust faster than a bunch of you chumps out there. So let me tell you how I would do it. I was like, whoa, what a hook. Um, but so we met this guy in real life, in real life, total sweetheart and very smart guy, right? Super nice dude, humble, whatever. And then I'm like, and then I'm like, why do you have this like ridiculous mustache? Your fingernails are painted. You got this like crazy chain and a Gucci purse, but like, Well, he looks like a celebrity.

He's like a tall, good-looking guy.

You look like an IG, like a male IG thot, but you're in person, you're totally respectable, humble, nice guy dad. And he was like, oh yeah, I created this character. He's like, I realized like what hits on IG is going to be like fancy cars, fancy shit, six-pack abs, hot girls. And so he's like, you know, I just do that. It's my character. And I built a following. So he's got 200,000 followers on here. His content is hilarious.

It's so funny.

He's, but he's selling, uh, you know, FBA, you know, uh, you know, basically like I made my millions selling dropshipping basically, you know, doing FBA brands. Uh, you know, you're, if you want to stay being a broke idiot, don't listen to this video. And then he'll be like, here's the first lesson for you. Do this. And I know what you're going to say, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's what I say about that. And then he'll like flash his like fancy shit. He's like, this is a video of me buying this Van Cleef necklace.

It's so funny. I love it.

And I'm like, wow, what is happening with this guy? But I think he's also going to be trapped in the downmarket thing, right? He's selling a mastermind you got to go pay to get into. He's going to make millions of dollars doing this, but I don't think he's got any, like, you know, I don't think he's got any way out. You know, that is a, he's cornered himself in that way.

Sure, sure. Yeah. He's a good follow. He's very funny. All right, let me give you another one. So the biggest takeaway that I want people to have from this podcast, we've done it now for 3 or 4 years, is, and at first I like, I'll go get a haircut and they'll be like, so what do you do for work? And I was like, oh, I do this, I do that. I work on this podcast. And they're like, what's the podcast about? And I'm like, well, it's called My First Million, but it's not like the title is inaccurate. And I'll explain what it's about. And what I tell people is that, look, we've had multibillionaires on this show. We've had employees at companies on this show. I think what we care about is people who create a path and they do it. Not necessarily, like, I don't necessarily think just because you are a billionaire, you are particularly better than anyone else. Like, what I care about is someone who says, I'm going to be great at this weird type of art.

Intentionally choose a game. So they choose a game with intention. And then they play the shit out of that, their game, right? That is, is that the description? Because that's what it is for me.

That's exactly it. And so, for example, the guy I talk about all the time, Brett Adcock, he's not like me. He's like, well, I'm going to raise billions, billions of dollars and try to create a $500 billion company. I'm inspired by that, but I will never, I don't want to do that.

Or even this example we just gave, the Genius CEO, he chose to play that game and he's playing the shit out of it. I respect that. I don't want to do that, but I kind of admire people who intentionally choose their game and then play the shit out of it.

I admire the hell out of it. Or we've had John Coogan. John Coogan started Soylent, which scaled to be a fairly large business. He's got another company and now he's like a full-time content creator. He has a YouTube channel and it's beautifully done. He's doing it wonderfully. And then we've had Rob Dyrdek on, we've had Laird Hamilton on, guys who aren't, Silicon Valley type of lifestyle, but they kill it in whatever they do. And I admire all of them equally. And so the takeaway that I've had, which is there's a million ways to get to where you want to go, or there's a million ways to get to a certain way, uh, to a certain place. And for a lot of these people, it's money, but there's still a million ways to get there. And there's, you shouldn't just like, for example, when I moved to San Francisco, I was like, you have to raise VC, you have to do this, you have to do this. But then we meet Syed. Who breaks all the rules. I imagine, yeah, I imagine he's worth $500 to a billion. He started a WordPress blog, which sounds crazy stupid if you don't know what you're talking about, which I didn't. Turns out that killed it. Then he bought tons of gas stations. Now he owns 50 different WordPress plugins collectively that does over $100 million in revenue. He's a young guy in Florida, not even a cool part of Florida. He's not Miami. I think he's in like Tallahassee or I forget where, like somewhere in Florida. Yeah, no disrespect, Tallahassee. I see Ari, but look, I'm from St. Louis.

There's just people that listen to this pod just like, oh man, their hometown where they grew up.

Dude, Fort Lauderdale. I don't care. I'm from St. Louis. All right. I could say these things. I'm not from a cool place. So all the Baltimores out there, you know, like I feel love for you.

Shout out to the tier C cities out there.

It's objectively not like the place to be. And, but what I'm saying is I appreciate the hell out of people like that and learning about all of these different ways. And my biggest takeaway from this year and doing the podcast, which is there's a lot of different ways to do it. You just have to choose where you want to go and you got to choose what rules you're willing to play by, but there's not one way to do it. And I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even go as far as to say there's one that's likely. In fact, if I had to say that, I would say the one that's likely to get there is starting a small services business. And just growing it over 50 years and paying yourself a good salary after year 10 and doing that for decades, which is not at all what I would've expected. You know, it's just a normal small business owner that does it for a long time is significantly more likely to have a higher income and die rich than any other way. But there's a lot of different ways to do it. And that's one of the things I appreciate by doing this podcast.

That's a great one. And I do think that that's the, if you zoom out, that is kind of the point of the pod. The point of the pod isn't saying do X or do Y. It's check this out. You can do X. Here's how that works. You could do Y. Here's how that works. You could do Z. Here's how that works. And by the end of it, you're either going to be in one of two positions. Some people hear all that and get overwhelmed. They don't know where to go. There's too many, too many paths, too many possibilities. Um, they, it sort of paralyzes them, but I hope that's not most people. I think for most people, the net reaction is kind of like, wow, winning and being successful is this thing that feels scarce if you're not around it, right? Like where I grew up, I didn't know any business people. Nobody in my family was a business purple person. Nobody, not my cousins, not my aunts, not my uncle. None of them did businesses.

Were you raised in Tallahassee? Born in Oklahoma.

And, uh, And so, you know, I wasn't around it.

Ari just flicked me off, or make it better, tell her I asked you, by the way.

And so, so, you know, I, I wasn't around it. It seemed like this far away thing that I didn't really even understand. There was no map and I thought maybe there's one path, but I don't know it and I'm not invited to that, to that party. And then my hope is that if you listen to this podcast, you're going to hear over the course of a year. A hundred different examples of ways to win and how they work. And at that point it's just a matter of choosing. And all of a sudden winning and success becomes this thing that instead of being scarce and difficult is abundant. It's everywhere and it's right at your fingertips. If you just start, start doing whatever sounds most intriguing to you and then you just keep playing the game, you, you know, it'll, it will work out for you. That's, I think that's what, the pod ultimately does for people.

Good. I hope it does. I have one more. Do you have one more?

You go.

All right, my last one. So we had Scott Galloway on. Scott Galloway is a guy who, he said on the pod, he goes, I'm worth over $100 million. And he also said in that same sentence, I'm deeply afraid of running out of money. We had Morgan Housel on most recently, and he said something like, He knows that you shouldn't necessarily set goals for money, and he knows like objectively he's got enough that he likely won't ever run out, and he knows that he shouldn't check his net worth. But then also we pressed him on it and he was like, but of course, like if I'm laying in bed at night, like just because I know what I'm supposed to do, I still wonder what it would like be like to have more. And I don't think we've ever had anyone on the podcast, maybe Jack Smith, Maybe Jack Smith, but Jack Smith's like a freak. But I don't think we've ever had anyone on the podcast, regardless of what they have, they don't want more. And that sounds like a really negative thing of like, uh, uh, what you have enough, why do you need more? Why do you need to achieve this and that? I think it should be the opposite. And I think the takeaway is no matter what you have, you're always going to feel that there's another level and that you should one-up. And I don't think that's a depressing takeaway. I think the takeaway should be. You will always want more accomplishments, more achievements, and that is okay. That is totally okay. And that is normal. And just expect that wherever your goal is, once you achieve it, you're going to feel satisfied only for a short amount of time, and then you're going to want to achieve more. And that's basically 95 or no, I would say 99% of the time that's true. And that's okay. It's okay to want more. I think there's a healthy way to go about it. And there's an unhealthy way to go about it. I would say Scott probably has unhealthy ways. I would say I have unhealthy ways, and I think you can change those unhealthy ways to healthy ways. But no matter what you have, you will accomplish whatever your goal is and you'll get there. It'll take 6 months and you'll say, what's next? How do I do it again? How do I do more? And just expect that that's going to happen.

Yeah, I think when people hear that, it sounds like Yeah, you know, it sounds wrong or sad or bad or something like that. But another way of looking at that same thing is the concept of infinite and finite games. And so the, my understanding of it, I haven't spent a ton of time on this, but my understanding of it is a very simple understanding is a finite game is one where you play for the result. So you play in order to achieve an outcome and you're hoping to get to that outcome That's the purpose of it. And then an infinite game is one where you play for the sake of playing. And so you play because you want to play. Now, if you look at that in practice, so for example, for me, basketball is something I consider like an infinite game, right? Like I play because it's so fun to play and I want to play. And my goal is not to like win and stop. My goal is to win, but I wouldn't stop if I won because, but not because it's like greed. It's like, well, winning is a, is bait. The scoreboard makes the game more interesting. And in a small burst, yes, of course we're trying to win the fourth, you know, by the end of the fourth quarter, I want to have the higher score, but ultimately like, you know, hey, all right, let's run it back. Let's play again. Let's play again. Let's play till our legs fall off is basically how it's always felt for me. And that's the closest thing I felt to an infinite game until kind of business came in. And it's actually very, very similar. It's like, I like having a scoreboard. It makes it more fun to play when you do keep score, but I'm not trying to get to a result to— I'm not doing work to get to a result and then I'm going to stop working. It's, I like playing. I plan to keep playing. I'm playing for the sake of playing. And, but the scoreboard makes playing a lot more interesting and fun and intense.

And that should be the takeaway that way. The takeaway is that because I had the, I previously had the, if I get to this, I will not feel stressed and I won't work anymore. The reality is I still felt stress. I felt less stress though. There's no doubt, no doubt about that. I felt a lot less stress and 6 months later I was like, but I have to go and do something. I feel like a piece of shit just sitting here and I feel good contributing.

By the way, why do you think you, uh, if I just said, why do you still feel stressed? Why do you think you feel stressed after, even after the event?

Because I think that I, the stress, I think that I, well, like to get like therapeutic, it's all baked into some type of childhood trauma and that just takes years to like unwind. But why does it, why part of the stress is comparing yourself to others. And so you want to achieve more and also wanting more stuff, which is what do they say? Desire is hell. Or desire is pain. Yeah. Or desire is suffering. So wanting more stuff, which I try to combat by just, I'm like, no, that won't. I try to like say this won't make me happy. Comparing myself to others, wanting more stuff, and also just wanting to get rid of a chip on my shoulder.

Right. I'll offer you a different answer that might be true for you. I don't know if it is or not, but I think I believe this is more true because I hear a lot of people talk about it and it's like, Childhood trauma. It's like, all right, well, nothing I could do about that. That's literally the past. It's written and it sounds like it's a long unpacking process that I don't want to do that. Like, I still got suitcases over here I haven't unpacked from vacations I've been on. Like, I just don't want to, I'm not trying to unpack years of childhood trauma. Similarly, it's like, oh, I have to like stop the feeling of envy or desire. Oh my God. Which will never happen. I'm wired as an animal to do that. That sounds like a game I'm never going to win. So I actually think there's a different answer, which is, um, emotion, the emotions you feel are much like muscles. It's basically you've had a lot of practice at stressing. So what happens is people practice feeling a certain way and they don't think about it as practice, but what does it mean when you do something all the time or regularly? You are habituating yourself or practicing doing that. You're getting reps at doing it. And then some, one day, suddenly they change the environment and they think that all that practice and that muscle that they've basically developed and practiced and repped daily will just go away and this new muscle called contentment and happiness will appear because the money, the amount, the bank balance in your, you know, Bank of America account has changed. No way, right? And so I would actually say it's the opposite. If you want to change that feeling, it's not the money. It's you have to find a way on a daily basis to practice having that feeling. You want to, you want to feel happy? You got to practice happy. You want to feel content and peaceful. You got to practice content and peaceful. You got to practice that more than you're practicing anxiety and fear and stress and all these other things. And so for anybody out there who's listening, Sam is absolutely right. Your feeling is not going to change, but I don't think it's because of these like deeply rooted psychological and historical reasons. A simpler example, a simpler explanation might be that I've really just gotten a lot of reps practicing one thing. and therefore that's easy and familiar and habitual for me. And I gotta start practicing the other. The same thing happened when we sold the Milk Road. I talked to Ben and I was like, Ben, how's it feel? First kind of big exit for you. And he is like, honestly, it doesn't feel like I, I'm kind of disappointed. Like it doesn't feel like very much, like it doesn't, I don't feel that much. And I go, he's like, maybe it's because maybe if the number was bigger, maybe this, right? He started going down that path and I was like, no dude, it's because You're trying to feel like this kind of victorious joy. How many days out of the year, the last 365 days, did you feel that? Like zero. Did you let yourself feel that? Zero. And so what do you think? All of a sudden today you're going to turn on and be really good at feeling that? Like, no, dude, it's practice. Like, if you want to feel that, we got to do that regularly so that that muscle's there.

And, uh, do you, uh, did you come up with this theory on your own? Or did you steal it from someone?

Tony Robbins, when I was at that event, he has a similar thing. He calls it your emotional home. He goes, everybody's got an emotional home. He's like, look, watch this. Raise your hand if you're somebody who sometimes gets a little pissed off. Everybody raises their hand. He's like, raise your hand if sometimes you are just super silly, having fun, being playful. Everybody raises their hand. He's like, okay, so we're capable of both. You are not just an asshole or just a super nice, easygoing guy. We all fluctuate. And he's like, but it is true that we have an emotional home. It's the place, like your home, it's the place you spend the most time. And he is like, if your emotional home is that you are stressed out, it doesn't matter if you sell your company for a billion dollars. If you did, if you grinded for 7 years and you were stressed all the time, you're not just gonna become a different guy all of a sudden, right? Because that's your emotional home. But he's like, good news is you can move it. He's like, you can move it if you basically practice it, right? And he's like, so we want to basically, um, you know, you don't want to wait for the, for things to happen to feel a certain way. He's like, you want to have it on call that you can change the way you feel like that fast. Can you do that? Can you change the way you feel that fast? And a lot of the events of Tony Robbins, and the reason why people feel like almost like he's manipulative is because he literally is manipulating the way you feel. He's showing you that like you can change the way you can go from focused to jubilant to, um, zen and calm and reflective to motivated and inspired in like a 30-minute span just by the way he's kind of prompting you. And, uh, the trick obviously is to learn to do that yourself so that you now are in control of your own mood. You're the master of your own mood. And that's, that was big. That became a big focus for me after that event. That was my big takeaway from the event was that. And then I started practicing that for the last like 6, 7 years.

I wish you had come up with that on your own because you don't realize it, but one of the big 3, like, uh, psych, uh, you know, so there's like Sigmund Freud and then there's 2 other guys who are considered like the godfathers of 19th century, like psychoanaly— analytics and all this stuff. And one of the guys is Alfred Adler and he's got, there's a book called The Courage to Be Disliked that's quite good. And what You are saying is exactly in parallel with what he has said about like happiness and like, it's like, well, you're anxious because you're choosing to be anxious and you don't, you're not choosing to do this other thing. And he's got this whole book on it, but you didn't realize it, but you've just discovered relative, uh, you know, the theory of relativity, uh, uh, just like Albert Einstein. You didn't even know about it. So you're kind of like, uh, one of the big three.

This Adler guy sounds like a smart guy. Yeah. Like, I like the sound of this. I'm going to go check this guy out.

Yeah. So, so, so So that's you. Um, all right. Where do we go from here? Is that it?

That's it. I think we wrap it up. Uh, thank you for everybody for listening. You know, those, those views ain't going to view themselves. It's because of you guys, but you know, we, we, we just talked about wanting more. Sam, are you satisfied? Are we, are we done? Do we have enough subscribers? Would you say?

We only have 360, you know, MrBeast has 100 million. We're nothing. We're losers. I'm anxious about this. And so if you've enjoyed this episode, if you enjoyed any of our episodes, subscribe on YouTube, but also go to Spotify, go to podcast, the, the Apple version and subscribe on all those.

You could go to therapy and stop wanting this, or you could just click the button and make us feel happy. Which one? Save us years of therapy and just click subscribe and just say you're welcome in the comments. And we know when you say you're welcome, it's because you saved us years of therapy. You just gave us what we wanted instead.

Alright, that's the pod.