$10M+ Business Ideas: Tractors, Toastmasters & Franchisees (#450)

At the beginning of the show, we do this thing where we're like, put your hand— like, raise your hand if you're an entrepreneur. Now most of the hands go up. Okay, keep your hand up if you've launched your business. All right, like 15% of the hands go down. Okay, keep your hands up if you have more than $100,000 in revenue. Okay, so hands go down. $1 million in revenue, $10 million in revenue, $30 million in revenue. We just keep going up to see kind of like who is— who wins the No Small Boy Stuff competition of that, of the crowd because we're like, there's the people who are there, they already kind of know our story and they know our bits. We don't know them. And so that might be actually more interesting. And there was a guy who was one of the people who's got like, he was at the kind of like 30, 40, 50 million level. He's like, yeah, I sell gear to fire departments around the country. And he's like, you know, like, we're like, like hoses. He's like, like hoses and uniforms and, you know, nozzles and like, you know, just stuff for the fire department.

Did he say that he did $57 million in revenue of that? Is that what he said?

Something like that. I don't remember the exact number. It was something like that.

All right, we're live. What's going on?

I'm back home. The live pod is over. The show. The show is over.

Let's talk about your time in Austin. The LiPod, we should talk about a little bit. We might be airing that episode. We got to go back and listen to it to make sure that there's nothing that we had to bleep out. But what did you think about Austin? It seemed like you had a great time.

I had a great time. Dude, I know more people in Austin than in San Francisco somehow. So I think, I don't know if that's about Austin or that's about me. I think it's more about me not leaving the house here in San Francisco. But when I left my house and went to Austin, I saw tons of old friends, you and a bunch of with the crew. Um, had a great time. Stayed, uh, started off in a haunted hotel and then moved to a better hotel. And then, uh, yeah, it was a good time.

You, uh, came in on something like a Wednesday, you left on a Sunday, or Thursday and Sunday, or something like that.

Tuesday. 5 days.

Tuesday. Tuesday to Sunday. You had— you spoke at 2 conferences, you were on the Chris Williamson Show, which was, uh, that guy's interesting. Yeah, but What, what was cool having you here was I felt, I felt, um, I missed our times in San Francisco, the 2012 to 2018 era where it was like, it felt like all of us were doing the same stuff. Then when you came in town, we had everyone, we, we, we had like 3 or 4 dinners of like 8 friends and it felt like, oh wow, this is, it feels like it's happening again. And actually it feels like it's not happening to the extent of what we experienced then. But there are a lot of really special people here and it felt really cool like to, to appreciate that.

Yeah, you're right. Uh, I think people should do whatever we did in our kind of like 20s, which was move to the city where there's a bunch of other people that are, um, chasing the same dream as you. I think that's like a, that's an amazing, like you could pick a city based on weather, based on location, you could pick it based on cost. Those are some factors. But if you're in your 20s and you're the type of person who listens to this podcast, you're sort of entrepreneurial, you're ambitious. I think the move is move to a city where— move to a place. I don't even— not even say city. Move to a place. This could just be a house in the town you're in where you will be around other people who are chasing the same dream as you. It is massively underrated. Like, you will not only get smarter faster, but also you bond with people and it's like those bonds don't go away. Uh, you, you will always kind of remember when you were all at the very upstart phase of what you were doing.

And we did this live pod and this live podcast and the con— so it was me, Sean, and Andrew. The content was fine enough, whatever. But we, we'll talk about that later or we'll just air the episode. But what was cool was I met people. I think we had 550 or 600 people. It sold out. And I met, and so we stayed out, Sean and I and Andrew stayed afterwards and like did like a meet and greet with everyone. And you always talk to these people and I'm amazed that these people would fly in from all over the place. I met a guy from Malaysia. Uh, I met people from all over Mexico, America, North America, uh, who came and they were like, I came here because in my town I'm a weirdo and it feels nice to be around non-weirdos. And I was like, what do you mean? And I looked at Twitter afterwards and I saw pictures of like, so like basically we didn't let people into the venue until right before it started. And in the line, I don't know if you saw this, there was people interviewing each other, like for their own content channels. There's like, people are like, oh, I met this person who's doing this. I met this person who did this. I met this lady. Did you meet this Mexican lady who moved to, from like Mexico City to Ann Arbor? And she flew down from Michigan. It was her and her 12-year-old daughter. Did you meet those people?

I did. Uh, love that. That they were. She's like, hey, love the pod. This is my daughter. She listens as well. We listen together. And I was like, oh, amazing. You know, what do you, I asked the daughter, I was like, what do you, what do you like about the show? Uh, cause she was, she was quite shy, uh, in the moment. And she was like, ah, just, yeah, I like that it's fun. Uh, it just gets me laughing. And then, uh, you know, I just learn different things and it makes me want to go do, like, it makes me want to go do stuff. And I was like, you know, that's the, that is the actual sales pitch, right? You'll laugh. you'll learn something and it'll, it'll get you excited to go do stuff. Um, and the mom was like, you know, thank you, uh, for the pod because it's the only, like, it's the only podcast we can listen to together that we can both, that we both enjoy. So it's like become a thing we do. And, um, you know, that's probably not that common, but, uh, that was one of my like golden nugget kind of moment takeaways from the whole thing.

Yeah, she was my favorite person that I met. But anyway, my point is, is that it was cool that like, Um, and what you were saying is what we saw, a very micro version of that with 500 people was like, go to the place where there's other weirdos like you and like cool stuff happens. And, and that's always really fun. I met a lady who was like, uh, yeah, you talked about me on the pod and I recently sold that thing for $30 million. And she was like waiting in line for like 30 minutes to talk to me. And I was like, what? Can I wait in your line? Like, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna learn about you.

Can I wait in your line? Exactly. Let me, yeah, let's do some of the interesting people that we met. So there was a guy, um, at the beginning of the show we do this this thing where we're like, put your hand, like, raise your hand if you're an entrepreneur. Now most of the hands go up. It's okay. Keep your hand up if you've launched your business. All right. Like 15% of the hands go down. Okay. Keep your hands up if you have more than $100,000 in revenue. Okay. Hands go down. $1 million in revenue, $10 million in revenue, $30 million in revenue. And we just keep going up to see kind of like who is, who, who wins the No Small Boy Stuff competition of that, of the crowd. 'Cause we're like, there's the people who are there, they already kind of know our story and they know our bits. We don't know them. And so that might be actually more interesting. And there was a guy who was one of the people who's got like, he was at the kind of like 30, 40, 50 million level. He's like, yeah, I sell gear to fire departments around the country. And he's like, you know, like, we're like, like hoses. He's like, you like hoses and uniforms and, you know, nozzles and like, you know, just stuff for the fire department.

And did he say that he did $57 million in revenue of that? Is that what he said?

I don't remember the exact number, but it was something like that. It was either $30 or $50 million, something somewhere there. He said he had an exclusive right to sell in 9 states. So like, you know, beautiful business, right? Because he's got a basically a monopoly on selling in these, in these certain states. He's like won the contract or whatever and really profitable business that, uh, like, you know, who even thinks of that? Like who even thinks about who's the, Who's the B2B e-commerce for fire departments? And it just gets you thinking, wow, how many niche businesses are there? Because you just kept meeting one after another. Uh, do you have any others that stood out? I got a couple more.

Uh, we went to dinner, so we had a dinner the night before. One business that I really like that, uh, I'm eager to see if it's gonna work out or not is called Boom and Bucket. And what Boom and Bucket does is, I, I don't know if it's rental or if it's for selling equipment, I think it's selling, but I, I think Is it selling? So basically if you are, if you own a, uh, or if you need to buy a, um, tractor or like a, one of the, like anything Caterpillar. So like dump trucks, I guess, uh, boom and bucket, whatever, you know, whatever has a bucket and carries heavy stuff. There's a marketplace. Yeah, it's a really good name. It's a boom and bucket and it's a really cool website. And so they, I think, uh, the founder, his name's Adam Lawrence. He previously was the COO of Bolt. Bolt was like this, like high-flying startup, one-click checkout startup, to be determined if it's gonna work out. But they raised something like hundreds of millions of dollars at multiple billions valuation. He left there after being there for a while. Then he went and started Booming Bucket and he's telling me all about it. I think it's only a year old or 2 years old, still new. So they're still figuring out if it's gonna like take off or not, I think. But really cool business that I actually think will work once they can kind of get to, you know, marketplaces, you need supply and demand. It's really challenging.

But if you go to their site right now, so Boom and Bucket, which also sounds like an amazing name for a bar in Austin, like, you know, a bar with like, you know, dollar jello shots and like, you know, the axe throwing in the back. I feel like that's actually in Austin. People just have that in their backyard, the axe throwing thing. That's like, that's what it seemed like.

So no, bro, we all have cold plunges and saunas.

That's the thing. So the first thing on here is a 2012 Caterpillar 420F. For somebody out there, they're like, oh, my favorite model. Uh, been dreaming about that one. Yeah, $77,000, ships nationwide. You click it and it's basically like, here's the thing, it was primarily used in construction for concrete. Uh, you know, here's the specs. Uh, we inspected it. Here's what we found that was great about it. Here's what needs work. It's got a residual oil buildup on the engine valve cover, no active leak seen. So they're adding value by doing inspections and doing close-up detailed photos of the equipment. And then they say, great, you can buy through us. We will finance it to you and we will take care of the shipping to get this to you. Um, this seems like a great idea. I don't know. Anything about this niche, so, you know, take that with a grain of salt. But, um, love the name, love the idea. And I love that this guy went from like the most Silicon Valley VC thing you can do, like a network effects VC funded multi-billionaire, you know, unicorn that's either gonna become $100 billion or go to zero. And he's like, I'm gonna move to Austin, grow a mustache and start selling tractors online.

Dude, he had a, he had a thick, beautiful mustache and he was wearing cowboy boots and he looked exactly, he looks like you want him to look.

He looked like he was in disguise. Yeah, he was trying to blend in in Austin.

So this guy's awesome. His name's Adam Lawrence. I love Adam. I've gotten to know him over the past year, so he was cool. Who else was interesting?

Another one that I thought was cool, these guys were in the meet and greet line. They come up and they're like, hey, love the pod, blah, blah, blah. No questions, just want a picture. Or actually, they had one question. They were like, you know, we do Franchise Marketing. And I was like, Franchise Marketing, what? Say more. And they're like, basically 5% of McDonald's stores use us as their digital marketing agency and social media marketing agency. And I was like, wow, 5% of McDonald's franchises. That's like, that seems really significant. They're like, yeah, it's going great. And this is actually the second time I heard about it. And this is kind of my rule of two, which is if I hear about the same thing from two completely separate people, it's like, well, roll up the sleeves. Time to go down a rabbit hole. Well, like, you know, plug the nose and take the plunge.

Wait, but you heard someone talk about the same business or the same, like, literally the, or the same style of business?

Same style of business. So our buddy Sieva had told me about this, these businesses. So there's two businesses called, one's called Scorpion Marketing and the other one's called Ferocious Marketing.

Uh, okay. I see a trend.

Normally seems like a little bit of an overcompensation, but they actually sound like badass businesses.

Yeah, I need like a, I need like a, like a, like a Rabies LLC. You know what I mean? Where it's like, like typhoid fever marketing or something. I need something like that. I love that.

Hey, we're from Dengue. Yeah, we're the boys over at Dengue Fever. We're happy to help. We make it hot, if you know what I mean.

Genghis Khan Incorporated. I love it.

We kill the competition. So he had told me that one of those two, I don't remember if it was Scorpion or Ferocious, does over $100 million as just a kind of like Google pay-per-click plus, you know, basically Google ad agency plus maybe Facebook ads as well for franchises. Like they go to every, you know, Goodyear tires in America and they're like, yo, You need to have a good presence online. This is what we do. We help Goodyear Tires franchisees make more money in your location. You pay us whatever, $10,000 a month, and we take care of your website, your marketing. We'll make sure you're visible on Yelp and on Google when people are searching for tires, blah, blah, blah. And that's what they do. And then they go do the same thing they did in tires, and then they'll do it in Jamba Juice, and then they'll do it in, you know, one franchise after another. And so I kind of love this model. I think that this, like, this idea of general, like generic agency, meh, but agency that is tailored towards franchisees, I think is great. Why? Franchisees all are gonna have the same problem set. You're gonna have a cookie cutter customer. I love that. Typically if something is a franchise, it's got scale already, so you know that niche is sort of validated. Third, it's the easiest marketing pitch in the world once you get started. Which is that, yeah, we do, uh, you know, over, you know, 5% of McDonald's franchisees use us, or we're the largest agency for McDonald's franchisees. We are the number one. We serve over 150 store, uh, franchisees. Guess what? The 151st is way easier to sell to once you got to the 150, right? It's like, it becomes a snowball in terms of your marketing. Um, your operations can get streamlined because they all, again, cookie cutter customer, they all need the same thing. And then lastly, that type of customer, a franchisee, they've basically put like their net worth on the line to own these franchises. They typically are not like these brick and mortar franchisees. They're doing that because they're not super tech savvy or online savvy. And so I think it's the perfect kind of customer and you could just provide clear ROI from month one. And I think you could do this in a lot of niches. Like I think you could do this in like senior living, like my father-in-law has a senior living facility and he is like, he basically like the entire business is just how's our occupancy? You know, occupancy's at 55% versus 65% versus 75% versus 85%. That's like the, that's a swing of like $10 million just in that, that question right there. Oh wow. And so I'm like, great. Hey dad. What are we doing for— well, how are we filling that occupancy, right? Like, you know, what are we doing? And he's like, well, I don't really know how to do online marketing because most people who own senior living facilities are not the most tech savvy.

He's like, so we need like a, like a come-die-with-us marketing.

He's like, we host a coffee and donuts like brunch for the local hospital nurses because that's like their number one source of deal flow right now. And then there's these search engines like like placeformom.com or something like that. And you know, you try, you tell them, hey, I'll pay you for leads, but they just don't bring you that many leads. And so somebody who can basically solve the search query for like, you know, senior living Austin or memory care Austin or whatever, the person who can rank you at the top for that search is going to be the difference between 55% occupancy and 75% occupancy, I think. And so I think if you found a niche or a franchise like that, doing the, the sort of digital marketing for it, I think becomes very appealing.

Yeah, you just have to run it, which can be challenging. Running those companies is very hard, but getting customers I think is actually easier than—

but what's the one thing that makes running a company easier? If you have good, a good way to get new customers, it is like for sure the number one, like, you know, Advil for all aches and pains when it comes to running a business is Well, at least we're getting a bunch of customers, like, you know, easily. We have a reliable way to do that. Every other complaint from there is like, you know, just a little bump and bruise.

Another interesting person who you met for the first time was Nick Gray. So Nick Gray was like the— we asked him to like emcee our event, and then he ended up just attending every other like dinner that we had, and he like emceed it hardcore. And what's interesting about Nick Gray is you guys should look him up. Is he's in like real time. You can watch him like become an authority on this very strange topic of like hosting small gatherings.

Right.

And he might be able to turn this into something substantial. And just to give you an example of what happened, we had this like fancy restaurant booked for this one dinner. It got rained out because it was like the table was partially outdoors. So we went to this kind of crappy bar and then we moved to another bar next door that was also somewhat outdoors but had a roof. And Andrew, one of our guests, was like, oh man, is it going to be cold? And Nick was like, yeah, it might be cold. Hold on. And he ran to a shopping mall across the street and bought like a $100 long sleeve t-shirt and goes, I got you. And how impressive is that?

He was the ultimate party host, which is no surprise because that's what he does. So his— I don't know him. You know him very well. I just met him and I'm just— I just got my first dose of Nick Gray and I can't wait for my second dose. So basically it sounds like he ran a company called Museum Hack, which was basically a kind of like a night adventure company. So you would go to a museum, the tour would be hosted by a local stand-up comedian or magician or somebody who's got some showmanship. And, uh, and basically he paired showmanship with something that needed showmanship, museum tours. And it was a good company. I think it was making a couple million, like maybe $1, $2 million a year profit. He sells the business, takes the proceeds, invests it into, I think, did you say all of it into Tesla or like just a lot of it?

So previously he had made money because he, him and his family started an aviation parts business. So they made like the screens that go in like private jets, like the navigation screens. With the earnings that he had from that business, he invested it all in Tesla. And there's these funny pictures of him during the New York Marathon years ago, and he would hold up signs that says, "Buy Tesla," because he was like trying to just show up everywhere and just Tesla bomb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he, uh, killed it on that. And then he started this, uh, museum company. With his proceeds, he put it into Cloudflare, which has not done well. But you'll see him all the time. It's really funny. You'll see him like— someone will be like, "What's the best service for this?" And he'll just reply on Twitter, "I hear Cloud—" Cloudflare is really good. You should check out Cloudflare. Like, he's like promoting it. And with his book, he does the same thing. He's got this book called Two Hour Cocktail Party. If you go on Google Photos and look at the reviews of any bar in Austin, he's been there and he's reviewed it. And when he reviews it, he takes a picture of his book in front of the sign or the food of that restaurant as like guerrilla marketing. That's all he does.

He does little things like that constantly. You had told me about this guy as this kind of like super social guy that's in Austin that's like, now doing this thing called a 2-hour cocktail party. And he sold like, I don't know, 10,000+ units of that book. And he was like, and I couldn't tell at first, I was like, well, is he an idiot or a genius? And I think this is a common game I play where I meet somebody and I'm playing the idiot or genius game. And the case for idiot was like, wait, so he like sold his company and now is all in on this just perfecting this, owning this little sub-brand, this content brand around hosting a 2-hour cocktail party. I can't tell you the last cocktail party I hosted. So I was like, he spent 3 years writing that book and he was all in. And then all the things you told me about the way he was promoting the book, and books in general are not a great business model. So I was like, what is this guy getting at? And that was my, is he an idiot? But very quickly I've shifted into, no, this guy's a genius and here's why. So First of all, it's a real problem. Hosting a, hosting a party, a hosting, hosting any kind of party, forget like a specifically a 2-hour cocktail party, but hosting a dinner party is something that is valuable if you do it kind of stressful when you do it. And there's a difference between bad, good, and great that comes into a bunch of details. And the details are things like when you invite people, how do you prep them for it? What is the email you send beforehand? That reminds people even that this is happening, what it's going to be about, and how they should show up. And that when they show up, how do people have to introduce themselves? Oh, he's a big— yeah, got to have name tags. Name tags help because whether you name tag Nick, name tag Nick, you got to have name tags. Okay, what else do you have to have? He's like, well, you kind of want the event to flow versus just having it be like, well, whatever happens if we break out into random cliques of people that already know each other or a giant group where it's kind of awkward, what's going to happen? And so he has his little system. He's like, I'm going to have some unstructured time and some structured conversations and then back to unstructured after the structured because the structured gave us all something to talk about in the unstructured time. He's got us. It goes into little things like, hey, if you host something at your house, nobody knows where the trash is. And so they're opening all your cupboards of your house trying to find shit. Now they're just going through all your shit and then they just leave it on the counter. And now your house is getting— now the party's looking like a college frat party. Just put a label where the trash is. Let's just do that. And he's got all the little reminders and tips and tricks for a host. Okay. So solves a real problem. That's kind of stressful and kind of valuable if you do it right. Like we've both been to parties where the magic happens. The conversation just gets really interesting. You meet 3 or 4 people that you're like, become really good friends with. You did this actually. Like, this is how we met was you hosted a dinner party at my office. And so like, you know, the right dinner party can lead to some really great things and the wrong one is just forgettable. Okay, so now why do I think it's actually genius? I think he's got a win-win scenario. And what I mean by a win-win scenario is that whether this becomes a big deal or not, he wins. The first part is by doing this, he is building like the ultimate friend group network.

Like I think, uh, Andrew called him, Andrew Wilkinson called him a friend billionaire. He goes, Nick's a friend billionaire. And he'll, and Nick won't brag about it, but I'll be like, what'd you do this weekend? He's like, oh, Oh, I was at a friend's house. I was like, who? He was like, oh, uh, Matt Mullenweg, the guy who started, uh, WordPress. Yeah. We were just, I was just at his house all weekend. And I'm like, what? How do you know Matt? He's like, oh, I met him at a dinner or this. And he like has so many stories like that.

And when you are a friend billionaire, what does that mean? That means you, you know a lot of cool people. So you're constantly inspired by the people you're around. You got a lot of people who, you know, got your back and who love you. And you, you have a bunch of, of like real connections and like real, a real social life, which I think is like, I think is kind of like one of these silent epidemics that's going on right now is that most people I know have a really weak and feeble friend group. Maybe I'm just in that world, I don't know. But a lot of people have this feeling of like, great, I work from home, I live at home, I eat at home, I order food on DoorDash, and I don't see another human being for like, I can go 7 days without seeing another person with a pulse. Or even if you are seeing people, it's all transitional transactions. Great, I live in SF or LA and I go to Barry's boot camp and everybody rushes in and does the thing and then rushes out. And like, what happened? Where am I supposed to make new friends? That's not really that easy for most people. So anyways, I think that what Nick has is actually quite rare. So whether all this is, is he makes a bunch of friends, has a bunch of fun experiences, and, you know, he was showing me this video on his phone. He's like, check this out. He's like, last night after we hung out, I was on my way back and my friend texted me and said, you gotta check this out. It's flooding in my area, but it's created like this almost like fake surfing thing. Like it was like flooding on some street and the water was running really fast, but there was like a lip in the, in the road. And so he could, you could go on a boogie board and basically feel like you're surfing. And they just did that for like hours. And he had these fun videos and I was like, Cool. I was just like on my phone scrolling while you were doing that, right? Like this guy's not only a friend billionaire, he's going to have, he's like an experienced billionaire. So I think that's the, that's the bottom of the win of if nothing else, he gets that. But at the top, I'm like, dude, I kind of think this should be a local franchise. Like I think that he should basically turn this into like the modern day Toastmasters. Like I think if he wanted to, This could be an enormous business and it could help a lot of people because he could basically say, look, join, open up a local chapter like Toastmasters. And, um, it's just dedicated to hosting awesome get-togethers of awesome people. I'll train you how to host them, right? You fly out to me, you, you attend one of these as part of your training and, um, and then go wherever you live and start hosting these things. And, uh, pay your membership dues to be a part of this. And let's create an international wave of people who want to get better at hosting things and having an awesome social life. I think he could create the next Toastmasters. What do you think?

So Toastmasters, so for those who don't know Toastmasters, I don't know entirely how they describe themselves, but I knew it as like a public speaking club. So you spend $50 or $100 a year, something like that, and you get to go to a local chapter. Where you like, everyone practices public speaking, but I think they weave in some type of leadership component where you can like learn how to lead, but it's all related to public speaking. There are nonprofits, so you can look them up. So Toastmasters has $63 million in assets, of which it looks like about $35 million of that is just cash. And then they did last year, something like $18 million, $19 million in membership dues, sorry, $25 million in membership dues and about $30 million in aggregate in total revenue. So like, not a nice subs— that, that's very nice. So it definitely worked.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that like, you know, there's a lot more people who want to be able to host the party and build an awesome kind of like social life for themselves than there are people who want to get better at public speaking. And so I think this actually has a lot more legs and it reminds me of The Game. So I haven't read his book, but, but Neil, the way Neil Strauss wrote The Game and was like, Hey, do you wanna get better at, you know, like meeting women? If so, you know, this is a book that's gonna tell you a bunch of sto— awesome, you know, sort of war stories plus techniques that, that can help you do that. And I think that this reminds me a little bit of The Game. It's got the benefits of The Game without the sleaze factor of, of The Game. And so for that reason, I'm in. And I just gave him, I just gave him, I just gave him the thought leader triangle with my hands. For those who are listening, I, it's where you, you start with the, the pyramid of hands going upwards, and then on the, on the inflection point of the sentence, you got to flip it down. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Whoa, I can see the client's whole history—

calls, support tickets, emails—

and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better.

Did you meet anyone else that was interesting or have any other, uh, thoughts about, uh, people you met or experiences?

I got a couple high-level thoughts, a couple high-level thoughts. The most— so we did the meet and greet for like, I don't know, it was almost like 2 hours or something after the show, uh, just like people.

Are you tired after that?

Um, I have this thing where relief gives me a lot of energy, so I was so relieved that the show was over, that I felt like people had a good time. Um, and that I didn't, like, my trip was over. I was going to go home and get to just like be in my bed and not have to be— I was traveling with my two little kids, which is, you know, it has its own challenges.

I had no less than 10 people reference the size of the cotton candy that your children had.

They were like, my wife wanted to see the show, so she brought my kids who are 2 and 3 years old to the show. And that's like, you know, that's like, you know, opening up a lighter inside of a natural gas factory. Like, you kind of know this thing could combust at any second. And she just had a backpack of bribes, which I think actually should be its own product from traveling moms. It's just a pre-made backpack full of, like, little dollar store toys that you can give out every 15 minutes to be like, all right, be occupied. Don't scream and cry and think about anything. And just unbelievable amounts of crazy candy that they never get to eat.

Like a bathtub-sized container of cotton candy.

They had a 7-layer lollipop. It looked like, you know, those, like—

Dude, someone told me they're like, We saw Sean's eating, Sean's kids eating a kebab or like a hot dog or something, except it was like sour patch kids.

It was like, uh, you know, when the Sheikh builds like a 95-story like apartment for himself in, uh, in Dubai, it was the Sheikh Dubai Tower of lollipops.

It was incredible. Yeah. I had a bunch of people tell me about that, but anyway, what were you saying?

So I would say in the meet and greet line, the most common, I would say the most common questions, and I don't know what you experienced because you had your own line and I had my own line. So maybe yours was different. I got a lot of people being like, hey, whatever, love the show, can take a selfie, and then got one question for you. And the question, I was like, oh, this is going to be a, it's probably going to be a doozy, right? That they're using their one shot on this question. And it would, the most common questions had the most obvious answers. It would be like, you know, I'm trying to decide between this or this. What do you think I should do? Well, what do you want to do? I really want to do this. All right, well then you should probably do that one. Or like, I don't know. It's like, if you like, I mean, do you like one more than the other? Do you want one more? If you did know what you wanted, what would you say? Yeah, I know you don't know what you want, but if you did know, what would you say? And they're like, B. I'm like, cool, do B then. Right? Or it'd be like, yeah.

And I hate giving that answer because it's like, Not that we're someone's hero, but don't meet your heroes because like, yeah, we just give you the most obvious, obvious answer. Or the second one is like, I'm doing this, this, and this. And they go, oh cool, what are the results? They'll tell me. I'm like, what were the results last year? Okay, well just, yeah, keep going. Yeah.

Sounds like it's working. Exactly. Either it's working, don't, don't mess it up. Or sounds like it's not working. Do you wanna, like, you're asking me for investment and, uh, actually you should be asking for advice, right? Because it's not working. Uh, you know, The same thing was like, I'm doing these, I got these two ideas. So I got one company, I do this and another company I do this and I'm really, it's really hard because blah, blah, blah. Cool. Sounds like you're doing two companies. Do you think the optimal strategy is going to be to do two startups at once or one? And they're like, yeah, one probably. Cool. So which is the better business? Which one do you want to do? Which one is working better? Then they're like, well, no, but see, this one kind of feeds into this one. And I'm like, no, it actually eats away at all of your time and mindshare. It doesn't feed into anything. And they're like, hmm. I'm like, you know, like Elon Musk can run two companies at once. He might even be able to run three. But until you have, you know, like until your palm is like, you know, a physics textbook, like, you know, until you can, unless you're built the way he's built, like, it's probably not the optimal strategy for you. Like, if you're in this meet and greet line, I'm just gonna tell you right now, probably don't want to be CEO of 3 startups at once. And so the obvious answer for most of them was like, well, what if you just focused on the one that's, that you like more or is working better? Like, I think that would probably work better than trying to make both of these, these fledgling things work. And so I felt almost silly that that, that was the case.

And what were you saying here about everyone was searching? Because we met like a bunch of successful people. For example, probably one of the more successful people we met was this guy named AJ Patel who is like 32 or 35 or something like that. And he started a dog supplement company, which whenever I hear about that, I'm like, that's the greatest thing ever because who knows if like the product works. But he originally sold a portion of the company at like $200 million valuation and then a few years later sold it for $650 million in valuation. And he seemed pretty like zen-like, like he kind of had his act together. But still, there was some things where he was like trying to figure out what to do next. And like he had normal questions that everyone else had. And on here you had everyone searching.

Yeah, actually, I want to say one last thing about that previous thing about most common— most of the common questions have the simplest answer. That's not a knock on those people. What I meant is, dude, this game is not as complicated as we make it. I have the same— I do make those same mistakes. And all it takes is just a third party with like a fresh set of eyes, just be like, well, sounds like you just pick the one you want to do, right? Or like, instead of doing 3 things, try focusing on the one and it'll probably work better. Or like, you know, whatever. And so I think that it's useful to almost have that— be your own coach in that way and save yourself a lot of heartache. Because that— it wasn't a knock on those individuals. It's— that is the common problem, um, is that we, we we don't have complex problems. We have simple problems. And a simple problem doesn't need a complex answer. It needs a simple answer. So that was my point there. All right. The, to the second thing. Yeah. Everyone is searching. It didn't matter who we were hanging out with. Net worth zero, net worth $100K, net worth $1 million, $10 million, $100 million. And the billionaire we had dinner with, everybody was searching, searching for meaning, searching for what's next, searching for what they should be doing with their time. Searching for a better challenge, searching for a way to solve the problem. It just felt like everyone's searching. And specifically, a lot of people were searching for like direction. And it really made me like, it really highlighted to me the value of when you know you, when you have a clear direction, the value of that to like to be grateful for that and find people who are good at figuring that out. Because I think if you stay in that searching state for too long, That shit's dangerous. It's like in Inception. It's like we can only be in the dream for an hour before we forget that it's a dream. We got to do that thing where we fucking cold plunge ourselves to get back out of it and wake back up. It's okay to be in a wandering mode or a searching mode or kind of a thinking mode, like, what do I want to do? But after 6 months, after 12 months, after 18 months, that shit becomes— you get lost in the sauce. I felt like there were kind of a lot of people that were lost, lost in the sauce, uh, that, that they were— their search was sort of like almost indefinite. And I think that's, that's dangerous.

That's interesting. And that's actually really scary. That's that kind of a— because it's one of those things where if it goes on for too long, it gets even worse. And then, you know, you're like, you know, ass deep in it and you're like, oh no. Yeah, you forget how to even start the engine.

It's like, this car hasn't been on for a long time. Does the engine start? And I think you're good at this. I think the way— I think you're really good at this. The way you are very structured helps you because I think you're very like regimented. You're like, for the next 3 months, I'm going to only talk to people and figure out what I want. And after 3 months, I'm going to have a conversation with myself and shift into the next gear. And because you're— this is my read of it, at least. I don't know what goes on in your head, but my read of it is— no, that's exactly how you timebox things. And there's an argument to be had for just wandering around and letting— you can't control everything. But I think having these creative constraints, these time box constraints, helps keep you honest. Am I even learning from my wandering at this point? Or have I forgotten my head from my feet? Do I even remember what the hell I'm supposed to be doing right now? And so I think you had a period post-Hustle and pre-Hampton That was like your searching period, but it was like, I think you knew you were gonna search, you knew you were gonna wander and explore, which meant don't jump into something really fast, but also don't let that last forever. Is that right? Yeah.

Well, I'm obsessed with time, so like even when I was 20 years old, I had this document. I think if you Google like my name and then CEO doc, you'll be able to find this spreadsheet. And I would map out, I, I think I had thousands of them. Of all these biographies of people I read, and I would type in, uh, like when they started their apprenticeship, when they got successful, and the time it took to do that. I was obsessed with time. And the reason time's important is I think that the constraint is incredibly necessary. I read this book by Robert Greene and he talked about urgency, and that was the first time that I learned about the importance of urgency. And so that's why I'm obsessed with time. And so usually what I do is I have this thing called worry time. Which is very similar to like searching time, but worry time is like, here's the period that I can worry about this, these following things. So like, it could be like, you know, I'm not sure that here I'll make a list of all the things, uh, going on in my life that are happening right now that I'm not sure about. Like, it could be like this podcast, it could be, um, my relationship, it could be anything. And it's like, all right, on Sunday from 3 to 8, I'm gonna worry about it, right? And I'm not— and then I'll like set time aside to worry about it, and then I'll set it—

versus letting it bleed into every moment of every day and be this underlying worry or anxiety that just sort of like plagues you. Yeah.

So it's just like, uh, you know, like, have you ever used Headspace, the meditation app? There's this like Calm guy. Go ahead. Yeah, I like Calm too, but Andy, the guy who would narrate it, would be like, all right, today we're gonna, uh, we're gonna do the meditation, whatever. Now the cloud is above you. Let's put all of our thoughts and feelings and worries in that cloud above us. Now let's just walk a few feet away. Now we're away from the cloud. We can acknowledge that like our worries are up in that cloud, but we're no longer under it. And we can go back under it when we're ready and worry about it. And so that's kind of where I came up with like worry time. And so I have worry time and I also do the same with like searching time. So it's like, all right, I'm gonna search for this. And then in 3 months I'm gonna say, did I find it or not? No. Okay, fine. We'll give it another 3 months. And then once I find it, it goes searching's done. We are no longer searching. So I actually, uh, turned off, like, this is just a very small example. I turned off the Twitter DMs of my Twitter handle cuz I would get all these interesting opportunities, but I said, Nope, we are done with opportunities. I have the opportunity. We are going to pursue that. And then at a later date, we'll open back up to pursue new opportunities maybe. But right now there's nothing new. Right. And I, like, we, my wife and I were joking, but it's not really joking. It's like my rule right now is no new friends. I don't need new friends. I have the friends that I want. That is perfect. I'm not going to go out and hang out with new people. No new friends because, you know, like the searching time is done for now. And we'll open it up at a later date. Auditions will come at a later date for new ideas and new friends. Dude, that's great.

I love the way you said that. I do a similar thing, but without— I hate the word time. I'm the opposite of you. I want to get off the concept of time altogether. But in reality, the result is actually very, very similar. What I do, which is I focus on the word constraint. So how can I use a constraint to my advantage? I love this because naturally I'm always constrained, right? Like I don't always have every resource at my disposal to do what I want to do, right? Let's say I'm traveling and I don't maybe have the time or the equipment to get to the gym to do the same workout that I was doing before. Then how do I get excited about the constraint? Okay, I got this wall, I have the floor, I've got my suitcase. Ah, interesting. I can air squat the suitcase and then I can, you know, do these, like I could do a pushup challenge where I'm gonna do 100 pushups in the next 5 minutes and I'm gonna see, you know, if I, how far under that time I can get. And you know, you do that and you've used a constraint to your advantage to have a better experience. So I, I always have this thing which is I'm not going hour to hour. I think that's a really, I think time creates a lot of stress in people's lives. So I want to use constraints without the stress of time. So what I say is like, all right, I'm trying to have an experience right now. What kind of experience do I want? I want a sweaty workout experience. Okay. How can I now use an exp— use a constraint to ratchet that up and make it even better? Right? Like, and that's how I want to do things. So I'll do the same thing where I'll constrain myself. All right, I'm going to turn off DMs or I'm going to do no, do a no new friends season. And I'll use these words like season just to sort of time box them, but without the sort of urgency or stress of like the thing you did where you're like, How successful were these guys by 30? Dude, that would've just made me feel miserable. So I had to like tweak that a little bit for myself where I didn't want to always feel perpetually behind in life. And so my way of doing that was focus on, all right, I'm about to walk into this room. What kind of experience do I want to have? And get good at choosing that and then be like, how can I use a constraint to, to like level that up to enhance that rather than feeling constrained by lacking some resources that I otherwise would want to make this happen?

I think the time thing is important because you do compare yourself to others and comparing yourself to others, everyone says is bad. I actually think in some ways it's really great because you see what's possible. Just like if you're like an athlete where you're like, I want to be like this athlete, I want to be strong, but I want to be stronger than them or faster or whatever. But whenever we do these events and I meet all these amazing people like an AJ, like a Suli, like an Andrew Wilkinson, and I hang out with them and I think I'm behind. I'm way behind. And that's the, and that's dangerous. That's dangerous.

That's the thing I referenced the other day when I said there's the, there's the, um, the science of success and there's the art of fulfillment. What the comparing yourself will help you in the science of success. It will motivate you. It will put a chip on your shoulder. It'll get a light of fire under your ass, but it's not going to help on the art of fulfillment side. And so what some people try to do in life is be like, let me solve the success thing first and then I'll do the happy thing after that. And I think what you do, if you look at, remember my back to my everyone is searching thing, what ends up happening is people solve the success thing, they try to throw a bunch of money at the happy thing. It works to an extent, but not all the way there. They're kind of disillusioned and they just sort of fall back on, well, let me just go do more success shit. At least back then when I was only focused on success, I felt better and I know how to do that, but more than I know how to be happy.

And, and so, or, or it's like I thought this number would Give me the answer. Turns out I was wrong. It's just 1 more zero. 5 times that. Yeah, it's actually, it's not, it's not 50, it's actually 150. Somebody said this to me. I was just wrong.

They said it's always 3 times more than what you got. Like people always think 3 times more, then, then I'll chill out after that. I'll really move on to that next phase. And I think while I don't think that's a bad path, I don't think you end up in a bad spot. I do think there's probably a better version of it, which is like, can I do happy and successful at the same time? Is that possible?

Well, we were talking and I'm going to out him here, but it's nothing crazy. But we had dinner with Andrew. Andrew, you know, his company as of Friday, I don't know what it is today, was worth $850 million in Canadian. And I was like, we were talking about like what's next and, or like we were talking about like just personal, like motivating factors. And he was like, oh, I was motivated because I wanted to feel secure financially because for some reason I always felt insecure as a kid. And you know, everything comes from like issues you had as a child. And I was like, do you feel secure now? And he was like, you know what? Not really. And I'm like, wow, you don't— we're still not going to feel secure at that number. Uh, like you, you always need more. And I always, and I couldn't decide if I felt negative about that feeling or positive, but I have realized that that might be the learning is that like, you don't feel secure. A lot of people don't feel secure regardless of what they have or what they don't have. Like it's the, It's the same feeling of it's not enough. Like it can get taken away.

I view it a little differently. It's more like the security doesn't come from the money. That feeling you want, is it going to be, is it going to change when the money changes in that, in that way? Right? Like, uh, I feel secure now and I have one, one billionth of whatever he's got. Right? Like, it's like, you know, he, why? Because I just view, I just view it differently. I have different insecurities that he's got. Right? Like, uh, but on the, on the financial one, I'm like, as long as I still got my wits about me and my two hands, I'm always gonna be fine. If I got my brains, I got my hands, I'll always be fine. So what do I care? I could lose all my money in crypto. I could lose all my money in this. This business could tank. Podcast— I could say the wrong joke and get canceled on the podcast tomorrow. Still got my hands and my, my brain. All right, I'll be all— I'll be, I'll be all right. And so if you— it's like fitness, right? Like, if I put you in any fitness test, I think you would feel pretty secure, right? Like, yeah, I don't think I could be like, Sam, we're gonna do a work— like, I think if you invited me over, you're like, let's do a hard workout, you know, I'm not eating that morning. I'm like, I don't know, I gotta be light on my feet. I gotta, I gotta do like, hey, what's creatine working one day? Let me take some of that. Like, you know, I'd be stressing out because I don't have the fitness security. Whereas I think if I invited you over for a hard workout, you'd be like, we'll see. Or even if David Goggins invited you for a hard workout, maybe at that stage you would feel a little bit of the lack of security. But I think for most people in most situations, you would feel pretty secure. And so I think everybody's chasing a feeling. They think the feeling comes from a thing. The feeling doesn't come from the thing. The feeling comes from you and comes from practicing having that feeling. And I think until people grok that, they're just not going to have the type of feelings they want of happiness and all this other shit.

Speaking of which, we have a very sturdy audience. I was putting my hand around on people's backs, take a picture. Yeah, we had a whole bunch of broad backs.

Bunch of deadlifters there. What's going on?

There was a, there was a bunch of sturdy ass people. Maybe it's a, a Texas thing, but there was a bunch of big old boys that we were talking and, and women, like every, like there was so many strong people. I, I probably said at least 20 times, like, you know, it's like you're awkward. The meet and greets are weird. I don't know what to say to people. So it's usually like, oh, I like your shirt or you look huge. You're yoked. But I said that so many times. Yeah. Yeah.

We got, we have an interesting demographic. There's like the people that look like you, the people that look like me, and then there's the people that look like neither of us. But it's kind of amazing how well distributed it's like. A bunch of Indian dudes. A bunch of really strong white guys, and then like, and then, and then the other group, which is a blend of normal people.

We had so many Indians and so many Indians with really thick accents. So I guess they just moved here. Do you think that we are, are we popular in India because of the topic or because of you?

Well, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of business topics out there. They don't all have that.

I think, you know, like anything is, where's Chamath from? What's he, he's, uh, in Is he Indonesian?

He's from Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka.

I mean, I don't know.

Do they, they probably love him too, but it was like the 6 million people underwater or something like that. It's like very like, I don't know how many of them even have access to like, you know, know about, know about him. But, but yeah, if he goes to India or somewhere, it's like the, uh, cult phenomenon. Him, Naval, Balaji, like they really, really look up to, to those people. And like, it's like if you go to in China, the most popular person was Kobe Bryant. It's like Kobe Bryant was the star of stars because of some combination of like, he's got the thing that they want, like crazy, like athleticism. Plus they piped those Laker games into China and like only Laker games for like a period of time.

And so he was just, and everyone in China wishes they were a black man.

Yeah, exactly. And he was just like, look like a god compared to them. Right. And it's like, I think you, you like people who are, they're like you. And so you feel like you could be them. And then there's people who are so unlike you. That you're like, you are so different. I am in awe of what you are. It's like the Björk effect.

So Björk is from Iceland, which only has like 5 million people, and Björk's music sucks. But every once in a while she would be like number one on the charts is because everyone in Iceland would cheer for her because she was doing something interesting in America. Or like Bruno Mars. If you go to YouTube and look up Bruno Mars's videos on YouTube, they have like 3 and 4 and 5 billion views on YouTube because everyone in the Philippines, because he's like Filipino, is like, that's our guy, you know what I mean? So I guess that's why we have a really nice Indian contingency, because you're their guy. Whereas with me, it's just a bunch of like, uh, you know, like guys from Ohio, but whatever.

Dude, can I tell you, speaking of Ohio, can I, um, do a little bit here on Jerry Springer? What about him? He died 2 days ago, I think. Yeah, his story is kind of crazy. Do you know much about Jerry's backstory?

Wasn't he the mayor of someone in somewhere in Ohio, Dayton, Ohio or something? Cincinnati. Cincinnati. He was really the mayor of— was he the mayor first and then talk show? Yes.

So basically his career is like, at 25, he's the advisor to Robert Kennedy during his presidential campaign, who I think died or got assassinated or something. Yeah. Then he's like, okay, goes on to do kind of like local city politics, ends up becoming the mayor of Cincinnati for a brief period of time, gets fired because he solicited a prostitute, I think, and got busted for it. And so he's like, oh, sorry. Yeah, shouldn't have paid for an escort or something. So now he's out of the political game and he's in his 30s, I guess. and he's like, what do I want to do next? And so he gets casted onto local TV to do a political show. It's like, oh, you could be like our political kind of like talk show type of guy. So he does that for a little bit and then he gets his own show. So he's— I don't remember what year this is, like, I don't know, '91 or something like that. And he gets his own political— he's doing his own political talk show. 3 years go by, kind of unspectacular. And then the moment happens. A new producer comes in, is like, hey, look, it's a political show, it's going nowhere, let's switch it up. And the Jerry Springer Show is born. So the producer comes in, he's like, look, we're going to shift it towards controversy, um, dirty laundry, and basically like we'll captivate, we'll make captivating TV by putting scandal on air.

And we'll have like— was it fake though?

So Contra— uh, there's, there's different opinions on this. I read a bunch of like Reddit posts of people who are producers on the show or went on the show. Here's, here's where I think it netted out, which is they would cast for Scandal, people would say, yeah, that happened to me. The producers would intentionally not fact-check anything. And, um, so you could— it could have either been real for you, or you could have just been like, if I do this, I get to get on TV, I get a flight to New York, I get to go Basically me and my, my whatever person get to go on vacation to New York. All expenses paid. We get to be on TV and you know, that'll be that. And so for some, I think it was like truly real. For a lot, they were like, kind of like make it up or they would embellish. So it'd be like, yeah, I cheated, but like actually they weren't best friends and I didn't steal, like we knew each other first and blah, blah, blah. And he actually knew about it already. He's not finding out on air, but like whatever, we'll kind of recreate that.

And was it daily or weekly?

So I think it was a daily show. It, at its peak, wow, it's higher rated than Oprah. So he becomes the number one daily show and for the first time in people's— so, so here's some of the kind of amazing things. It goes 18 years on TV. Jerry knows it's stupid, but he is like, this is what people want and I'm gonna give 'em what they want. And I, I had a few takeaways from this whole thing, right? So first of all, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, like just that's iconic. It's just so iconic and I love it.

Yeah, that was, it was, it was the pre-WorldStar. Yeah.

Dude, WorldStar, WorldStar lives in the shadows of Jerry. So here's a couple things that stood out to me. Number one, he gave people what they wanted, not what they, what he thought they should want. And in fact, he started with what he thought they should want. Oh, here's the latest on the local political issues and where we stand and blah, blah, blah. And he pivoted and he pivoted the right way. And I think as entrepreneurs, um, there's a great like Gary Halpert quote where he says no more. Never has more money been lost than trying to market to somebody what they should do versus what they want to do. And as a marketer, you got to internalize that. Now, there are some people that are not in my cult that hate that phrase. They think that's terrible, that the world is terrible because of that. They say, no, shouldn't we strive to be better? Shouldn't we strive to help the world be a better place? And not that, like, these sugar-filled cereals and these dopamine social networks and All this stuff. And so some people hate that that's true and they're fighting against it. As an entrepreneur, I'm in the camp of you are here to serve customers. You're here to give them what they want. If you want to win, you give them what they want. You get, if you want to win really big, you give them what they want in a way that no one's out, no one else is giving it to them. Or maybe even that they didn't even realize that they wanted. People didn't know they wanted this and you're the first to provide it. But that's the game of business. And, uh, to me, So anyways, I think he's a great example of giving people what they want. Two, he pioneered a new format. So his whole format of putting this dirty laundry on air and the fights, the bouncers, the pregnancy test for the DNA test reveals, this guy's a goddamn innovator. Number three, he became number one. He bigger than Oprah in his prime.

And lastly, what I love was he, dude, he did 5,000 episodes.

He got his friends to win too. So his security guy, Steve, who became like, a character on the show. Like, they're best friends. Steve says, you know, the most wonderful things about Jerry, and Steve gets his own spin-off show later after the Jerry Springer Show. So I love that he kind of brought friends along the way and that they— when he eats, they all eat. And, uh, there was a few, few good examples of that.

And the other funny thing about this— and people, people liked working for Jerry.

People, from what I could tell, yeah. Like, it was like the opposite of Ellen. Uh, like, Ellen is seen as this, like, you know, America's sweetheart, and then behind the scenes was like, you know, a menace. And apparently Jerry was the opposite. It's like he was seen as a menace to society and actually was kind of a sweetheart from, from what people said. Now, maybe it was just the guy dies and no one wants to trash him, but like, that's what I found. The last thing, though, that I thought was interesting was that in a weird way, because this show was really popular, like in the early '90s, his show was actually the first show to expose people to like to people being gay or trans or like all kinds of stuff that's like totally LGBTQ. Like, and he was like, this was a, for a lot of people in America, they had never met or heard of anybody who was in any of those categories. And so he kind of was like the Band-Aid ripoff moment for, for a lot of America on these things, which I think is also kind of amazing. The real world was kind of like that too.

I went to a, I went to an all-boys high school and, and like, I remember being like 14 or 15 and for some reason the high school, it was like a good, the, the culture of the school, like young men felt fine coming out and saying they were gay. And I remember like meeting these kids and it was like the first time I've ever done that and like met someone who admitted to being gay. And at first I was like, uh, you know, back then you, you would make fun of people and then you realize, oh, that, that's, that's horrible. Obviously we shouldn't do that. And they're my buddies. Um, and then it goes back to, and therefore, because I love you, I'm gonna make fun of you just like I make fun of all my other friends. Yeah, and because I love you, I'm not going to treat you differently. We're all boys. Boys, and we're just gonna tease each other over someone has braces, someone, uh, you know, likes men, whatever, it doesn't matter. We're gonna make fun of ourselves, and that's just a way— that's the way that young boys show that we accept each other. That's how we show love. It was just a mini— it was a mini Jerry, you know. Jerry was first, you know, like, like, well, we're not not gonna make fun of this person because of this and that. We're actually going to do it because it shows that we're gonna— it's normal, we're gonna normalize it. So who knew Jerry was so progressive, you know what I mean?

The guy was, uh I mean, we got Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, we got Jerry Springer. These, I mean, like, he's just one of many in a lineage of pioneers breaking down social barriers.

Yeah, I saw he died. Dude, he seemed, he always seemed really likable. I remember watching him, like, did you watch it? Like, did, when your grandmom like babysat you or something? Like, that's like what I remember doing is like, no, I was just home after school by myself. Yeah. Like at, like it was like 4 o'clock when you get home from school, you watch Jerry and Oprah. I remember watching all, or when you stay home from school being sick. Sorry. You watch Maury. Yeah, stay up for a sec, watch Price is Right and shit. Yeah, I loved Maury. Maury was the best too. He's gonna die soon too. I just looked him up while we were talking. He's 85, I think. Uh, so the legends, the legends. It's a, it's a, it's a passing generation, salt the earth type of, type of people. Who's doing this now?

Is there like a thing now? Like, where does this happen? Does this happen on TikTok or like Twitch or YouTube or something? I, I don't see— that's a good question— this style of content, even though it's a good one. You know another great one like this? My sister still listens to this every day when she drives her kids to school. Cheaters on radio. This the show where they really bust cheaters? Like, like, that's still a thing. It's a big— it's a, it's a big thing in the, uh, FM morning radio space, which is a very small thing in the world now.

I think that is actually— it was Joey Greco. You remember Joey Greco, the host? Is it just one?

I feel like every city just borrowed this format.

Joey Greco was like the more famous host, and at one point he got gets stabbed. You don't remember that episode where he gets stabbed, dude? He like gets stabbed. And like, the thing about— the thing about that era of like the 2000s and '90s, the reason it was cool was we don't know if it's fake because there is no one, right, tweeting, you know what I mean? You like think it's fake, but like no one has a platform to like expose like that they went on the show. And so that's kind of why it's hard to like recreate some of these things, is like we didn't know. Like, I, I wasn't sure wrestling was fake or not until like 5 years ago. I, I, who knew? You know what I mean? Held out hope.

Uh, yeah. Tooth Fairy and, uh, Vince McMahon. Maybe, maybe there's a way.

Yeah. No one knew. No one knew. But no, that's a good question. I'm looking it up now.

Cheaters. Yeah. So he was the TV show.

Joey Greco. He did the TV show version. And then the later host was Peter Gunz. Right.

The radio version is basically they call, the wife calls in, it's like, I think my husband might be cheating. So then they call the husband as a woman. I don't know how, I don't know actually how they pull this off. I gotta ask my sister what the, what the actual format is, because I don't know how, dude, it's all fake. I don't know how they trick them that, that easily, because like, I mean, you'd have to get a cold call from somebody and be like, yeah, I'm down. Uh, so I'm not sure exactly what they do, or maybe they called, oh, I think what it is is they're like, he might be cheating with my friend Rebecca, and they fake call as Rebecca. To try to like to catch him in the act. And then they just do, they hit the button and three-way call, merge in the wife and she just goes off on him on air. It's, it's incredible content. I mean, like anybody who's a, who's a content creator out there, like if you're not studying cheaters, you're not even trying.

If there's a subreddit called Public Freakout, you ever go to Public Freakout?

Yeah, I've seen, I've seen Public Freakout on a, on my—

That's my favorite subreddit. That's my favorite. That's my version. That's my version of Jerry Springer. Public Freakout and Popping where they just pop like zits and shit. I love that. Big fan of that one. And public freakout. I was on the front page of Popping one time. I had a picture get 60,000 views, so it's just whatever. Can I endorse you for that on LinkedIn? How do I— Dude, I swear to God, I had to get like a cyst removed from my head and I— right before I went under surgery, I was like, hey, Dr. Brian, can you do me a favor? Here's my cell phone number. Can you take some pics while we're in surgery and send them to me? I want to post them on the subreddit. And he did. And I got 60,000 views. I have a, I have a folder right here on my Safari or my Chrome. So it's called Brain and it's like, I took like before, before, during, and after photos. I was the number one on popping. So no big deal. I think it's literally no big deal actually.

That's the cool part about it.

I guess that's the episode. We did a recap and we talked about Jerry Springer. Alright, that's the episode.