3 mindset shifts from billionaires (you won't find in books/videos)

All right. You just got done hanging out with some big ballers. It wore off on you to where you think you have the audacity to wear a varsity jacket.

I have a stylist now.

Is it Marty McFly from Back to the Future? Is that your stylist?

It's A.C. Slater from Saved by the Bell. We just threw one of our annual events. It's our basketball camp for founders, what Forbes calls the Billionaires Basketball Camp. They never covered it, but I did pitch that to them in an email that they didn't reply to. And yeah, so we did this thing. It was amazing. And, uh, I guess what you want to debrief? Should we? What do you want to know?

Yeah, yeah, I want to know everything. So I've gone 2 out of the 4 years, and it seems like each time the average net worth has gone up, like you've added a zero to it, because I, I think I heard you did this event this year in Greenville, North Carolina, I think, which is a very small town and there were 17 private jets in town that weekend.

Yeah. Out of like 25 guests. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. So, okay, so I wrote down some learnings because I don't want to tell you too much about the event.

Well, can you give some background to it?

The 30-second description is I hate conferences because networking, suits and ties, icebreakers, awkward forced social interactions. Don't like that part. But I also do love meeting new interesting people. So the idea was like, can you have the good without the bad? Can you have your cake and eat it too? And I've learned in the past that basically every time you complain, you've planted a seed of an opportunity. So like, my complaint about conferences signaled to me that maybe there's an opportunity to reinvent this, right? Innovation comes from irritation. So my irritation at conferences led me to ask a different question: what would be the type of conference that I would love to go to? And so we kind of architected this thing that's basically just the 3 things we like the most put together. So it was, well, what if we got together and instead of being in like a ballroom, see, of the hotel and we're all just standing around awkwardly, what if we got to, what if we got together and we played sports? So what if you play basketball? So the icebreaker is when you get to the event, you get put on teams and within an hour we go play, pick up basketball together and you get to know each other that way before you do small talk and all this other stuff. The second part is, so you play basketball and sort of sweat all day, and then at night we all hang out in a house and we do, like, impromptu versions of TED Talks. So the idea is everybody in the room is world-class at something. It's like, that guy knows more about how to sell on TV infomercials than anyone else. And this guy could build the largest company in X category. This guy built the largest company in X category. And so you pop them up and you say, hey, tell us something, teach us about that. And they have little like rough slides that they, that they take a 10-minute talk about. That's the idea of the, the event is 2 days with 25 of the most interesting people in the world. You play sports and it feels, you have a summer camp vibe, but then you get the sort of lessons learned of a TED Talk event.

And you're, you're hosting it, um, co-hosting it. I don't know how you describe it with Jimmy, AKA MrBeast, at his campus. And last year, and I think every year you get like a tour. One of the activities was like a tour of his movie studio, if that's what he calls it. And it's pretty sick.

This year is cool. We actually played a MrBeast game. So like, we, they thought they were going for the tour, but we set it up so that he's like, well, I could show you this, or you want to do it? And he had the cameras and the microphones set up. And so everybody got to play this game and they made a video that's like private just for like, it won't go out on YouTube, but it's like just for the group.

It's like, uh, the rich man version of, of like going on like a Six Flags ride and they take a photo of you on the ride.

Yeah, exactly. I was like, have you ever done this before? He's like, yeah, we do this for the Make-A-Wish kids. I was like, oh, perfect. This is great.

And so do you want to, can you say who was there?

Or is that what you, uh, I don't want to talk too much about who was there, but I'll give you a couple of stories. I just wrote down 3 little lessons learned. I'm trying to, I'm going to try to keep this short because I can go all day about this type of stuff. I have like pages and pages of notes that I wrote afterwards, but I'll give you 3 things that I thought stood out. So this is my lessons from billionaires. Number 1, intensity is the strategy. So here's one of the things that happened at the event. We had, I think, 5 people who owned NBA teams at this event, which is crazy. That's like, I don't know, 1/6 of the league. And we were like, what's the hardest part about owning a team you didn't really anticipate before you bought it? Right? You've been a basketball fan your whole life. And he was like, well, the hardest thing is that here's a guy on my team who's got a 5-year, $150 million deal guaranteed. So he plays good, $150 million. He plays bad, $150 million. His knee feels sore. He's got boo-boo. He wants to sit out, $150 million. And he's like, it is very hard to lead an organization where your upside and your compensation is guaranteed regardless of performance. And he goes, in my life, I'm on a day-to-day contract with myself. That's how I've always been. Let's fast forward about an hour. Now people have broken up into smaller groups. And two, two rich guys in the corner are talking and I think they're about to get in a fight. They're talking so loud and so passionately. They're like nose to nose almost. I'm like, oh shit, I gotta get over there. So I walked over. I'm like, I don't know what to do here. Turns out they're not fighting. They're just both so passionate about this one idea, which is about living in the details. So one of the guys was an NBA team owner named Matt Ishbia. He owns the Phoenix Suns. He also owns one of, if not the largest mortgage company in the, in the country. So he owns United Wholesale Mortgage. You know, he basically took over this business from his dad. It was like a dad, his dad's side hustle and had 12 employees when he joined it and probably did, I don't know, like single-digit millions in revenue maybe at that time. And, you know, that was, you know, whatever, 2004, they did like 45 mortgages, you know, not, not huge volume. 2005, still slow. 2006, still slow. Then '07, '08, '09, it starts to take off because other mortgage lenders during the financial crisis, the subprime mortgage crisis, they went under because they were writing bad mortgages. He was not. And so they picked up tons of business. So they grew literally 10x in those years and grew and grew and grew. And so now they do like, I don't know, over $200 billion in loans, $2 billion a year in profit at the company level. So he's one of the wealthiest, you know, 50 wealthiest people in the country at this point.

Was his dad's company big or is it like, was it a subsidiary within a successful company or he—

No, it was just his own 12-person, you know, side hustle.

Dude, that's crazy. I feel like there's also a bunch of different basketball or sports teams owners who are in the mortgage business.

Yeah. Dan Gilbert also is in the mortgage business. I don't know if there's any others, but definitely those two and they're rivals. So he's talking to this guy. So I walk in and they're, I think they're about to fight. They're not fighting at all. They're both just passionate and they're both talking about Dude, you got to be in the details. And it's kind of like a— and so he said this, this story that I thought was really great. One of the things is if you weren't on the private jet, we tried to get you on one of their private jets on the way out. And so my buddy Ramin got to ride with him on the way home. And I was like, what's the story? He goes, dude, I walk the floor of my company every day. I think his company has like thousands of employees, maybe 10,000 employees, something crazy like that. So he says, I walk the floor every day and I'm looking for 3 problems. And what he means by that is he talks to everybody, like entry-level people, janitor, the senior executives, whoever he bumps into. And he's just trying to find who's got a problem that's blocking them from this company being more successful. Like, where are bottlenecks? And he's just searching for it. And so he goes, I'm trying to find 3 a day. He goes, if I find a problem, then right there, I'll try to fix it on the spot. So, you know, I'll talk to my sales guy. He's telling me about a problem with the IT system. We call the IT guy. We're like, hey, this guy's got a problem with the IT system. And the guy's like, okay, I'll look into it. Thanks. You know, he's like, no, no, get off your ass. Like, this guy's got a problem, it needs to get fixed today. And the guy comes and fixes the problem. Now all those sales guys don't have that IT problem anymore. And he's like, I do 3 problems a day for 365 days a year. I'm solving 1,000 problems that are stopping my company from growing. So if you ask, how do you grow? It's you remove 1,000 bottlenecks to growth every year. And I was like, that is, that is awesome. I loved that.

Hey everyone, really quick. If you're enjoying this episode on CEO stuff, then I've got something for you. So the team at HubSpot, they actually went and put together a bunch of best practices that Sean and I use in our own companies, and they put it together in something that's really easy to read and understand. And so if you wanna just save yourself 10 years of headache and heartache, then you should check it out. I wish we had this a long time ago. Would've helped me a lot, but there should be a QR code on your screen that you can scan or a link in the description. So Check it out. It's totally free and totally awesome. Does he talk like that just talking to one other guy?

Yeah. So the other guy was basically saying kind of the same thing about how he lives. He's like, bro, I'm so in the detail. And it was a I'm so in the details contest that they were getting into and they were both loving it. They're like, they're because, you know, I think the perception of a CEO, of a manager is that you're sort of this visionary, 10,000-foot level sort of thing. And what they were saying that works for him, for them, is that they, they live in the details. They're on the ground floor solving problems. And we do this other thing, which is we do a store walk. So at night, there's so many people there that have built big CPG brands that we wanted to— we're like, instead of just giving the talk, what if we just went to Walmart or Target? You just taught us about it there. And so now we shut down a Target at night. So after the Target closes, they hold it open for an extra hour and a half for us. We go there and we tour the Target, and then basically it's like every aisle, it's like, oh, that's the pet food guy. Pet food guy teaches about pet food. Hey, um, you know, Jamie from Ring was there. He's like, we're in this home security aisle. Jamie, tell us the story of Ring, but standing in the Ring aisle, holding the Ring product. Tell us about this. Um, hey, this guy dominates the board games category. 8 of the 10 best-selling board games in the world are his. Tell us how the hell that happens. And he's like, look, check this out. He's like, uh, you know, they're so bad at restocking our games. He's like, check it out. He rips the panel open underneath the thing. He's like, they, like, for games, they don't restock in the back. They're just down here. He's like, so I will crawl under here and pick this up and put this back and restock this myself. And so you see the scrappiness of people who are literally, like, making billions of dollars. Um, and I just thought that's, like, at odds with what I think, which I think how most people view the role of a CEO.

So intensity as a strategy is interesting. Let me ask you if you, if you've noticed this to be true or not. I often wonder, do you think that they were intense when they were in their 20s on the come up, or are you just— intensity and sharpness dial up the more you progress and the bigger opportunity you see that you maybe didn't actually think was big, but you kind of fell into. For example, there's this famous one of Jeff Bezos's famous pitches was he's like, man, I think if we kill it, we're going to be this is going to be a $100 million company. It's going to be pretty big. And then, like, as the opportunity opens up, like, did the intensity dial up or was he already intense?

So I think, like, with most things in life, it's— if you go to the people at the top, it's always the combination of nature and nurture, right? It's the talent times the, the ability to exploit the talent. And so, you know, there's nobody up the top who's just totally talentless. Like, you know, they didn't get there with zero intensity. So, for example, with Matt Ishbia, he's a small white guy who basically was a bench guy at Michigan State basketball, which is like the most hard-nosed, grittiest college basketball team and program under Tom Izzo. And so he even said it during his talk. He was like, look, if you guys saw me on the court today, I'm not the most talented guy, but I've always been like this mentality of I'll outwork you. And I wanted to clarify one thing. So, like, it's never one or the other. So when I say intensity is a strategy, that doesn't mean they don't have any strategy or vision. It means like all of one or the other wouldn't work. So if you're all vision, no walk, right? You're not down on the floor at Target getting the stuff out from under the shelf. Like, that's not going to get you anywhere. If you're only restocking the shelves and you have no vision, you have no, no, no key insight, it's also going to get nowhere. It's the combination that makes you dangerous. And so, for example, the guy who does it with board games, uh, Ilan, who, who came on the podcast. He said he had the right vision at the beginning, which was we're going to make games and the game is not fun. The game helps the players be fun to each other. Right. So he got the right big idea, which was how do we make games where the game itself is not fun, but the game makes the players fun. So when they're acting it out in Charades, it's not that the card of Charades was fun. The card of Charades let you be a fun or funny person. And that's the secret. We're going to be the best in the world at that. And then, you know, and then we pair it with the scrappiness. Same thing with the United Mortgage, United Wholesale thing. He had like a strategy which was different than everybody else. Most people like Rocket Mortgage, they sell mortgages to the end customer, right? Like you need— you're buying a home, come buy it with us. What he did was different. He's like, look, there's all these mortgage brokers out there. What if we sell wholesale to them? Then they win, but they become our sales channel. And all of a sudden there's 33,000 of those guys in the country. We turn them into our salesmen for us. That's our sales fleet. And he had very simple metrics. He's like, cool, we think that brokered mortgages is going to become a third of the market, and we think we can get to 50% market share of that. If we do those two things, we're the biggest mortgage company in the world, right? So like a simple two-sentence level of clarity about like, what the hell do we need to do? And then everything else is just intensity at that strategy.

I have a bunch of questions about that, but do you think that owning a basketball team is sort of like owning a house where you like dreamt of it and you finally get it and you're like, this is a pain in the ass. I want to rent.

Well, there was like a guy there who's a minority owner and I was like, yeah, that's the way to do it. Uh, because the minority owner, yes, you don't have the control, but he only goes to games when he wants to.

And he could say that he owns it.

He gets to chime in and feel like an owner, but he doesn't have like all the headaches. Whereas like the other guys, you know, they're going to every single game. Regular season Tuesday game against Charlotte and you're in town for that, it takes over your life completely. And for some of them, that's exactly what they wanted. For me, I probably wouldn't want that version of it. There's other ways to have it.

Poor guys.

No, but you give yourself a job, right? Like, you have total freedom at that stage and then you give yourself a job. So it is, in a way, poor guys. Now, they don't feel that way. They like that job. They chose that job. It is no doubt a job.

One time I got to go. It's so funny. I was— I participated in this charity, this charity thing. My buddy has this thing where we were— he and I participate occasionally, help inmates get jobs out of prison. And it's like a universally loved foundation. And one time I went to Indiana State Prison and I was sitting next to this guy just like talking as we were like— it was 20 of us outsiders getting ready to go to the prison and talk to these guys. I didn't know who this guy was. I was just talking to him and talking to him for a little bit longer. And then eventually it came like, so what do you do? And he's like, oh, I own the Pacers. And I got to go to the game with him afterwards. That night we went to the game with him and seeing him walk around the stadium of his team was the best feeling ever.

Restaurant owner energy. It was times a billion.

It was restaurant owner energy times a billion. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen where I'm like, Have you seen Napoleon Dynamite where the lady's looking at the little ship in a bottle and she goes, I want that. That's, that's how I like whispered.

I was like, I want that.

It was awesome. It was so cool. All right. What's the second thing?

All right. Second thing would be culture is an action word. So one of the things I was like, you know, I'm looking up these guys and I'm thinking, What do they do better than me? Where can I steal from their game? Where can I notice some delta, some difference? So obviously intensity is one where they have this sort of psychopathy, like enjoyment of being a maniac in the details. Um, great. That's one. What's the second difference I noticed? The second difference I noticed—

not all of them are psychopaths, by the way. I hang out with Mario a bit, who, uh, went, uh, Mario, who's one of the founders of Oscar, which is like a $4 or $5 billion publicly traded company. Not psycho at all. Have you talked to him?

Not at all. He is, uh, technically brilliant and the CTO. And I think the CTOs and the technical brilliant people—

what is the CEO though?

They have a slightly different, like, superpower that they're bringing to the table.

But even guys like Jesse Itzler, who I think went this year, has gone previously, you know, he's like a pretty nice, calm guy. He's a psycho just like in being calm. Do you know what I mean?

He's like an adventure psycho.

Yeah. So he is still has a little bit of that psycho, which is funny. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.

Jesse, what do you do for leisure? He's like 100-mile races. Yeah, you're like, no, no, he's cool, he's chill. All right, so culture is an action word. Okay, so I think for most companies, culture is just a, you know, a set of generic words that are written on a wall that nobody remembers and definitely nobody's using in their day-to-day action. And I think that probably what— if you look at the companies that I thought had the most unique outcome, most unique output of what they make, right? What is the unique input that leads to that? So Jesse Cole was there. Jesse Cole from Savannah Bananas. We had him on the podcast, you know, unbelievable story. He made minor league baseball essentially, right? Like something that almost like in the dictionary definition, nobody gave a shit about. And now has like a 3 million person waitlist for tickets, sells out 80,000 person stadiums, has more followers on social media than every other baseball team, including the Yankees combined. So, you know, obviously has done something magical with, with the product. So what's the, what's the magical input? All right. So he's telling this story. So this story was very inspiring to me. So he goes, okay, the CEO, the founder has some vision of how we want to deliver this magical, wonderful A++ customer experience. But how do you get— if that— if it's in— if your experience is in the hands of, you know, some new guy who joined 9 months ago and, uh, you know, is getting paid a modest salary and, you know, they've never worked in an environment like this, how do you get them to care the way you care. It's very, very hard, right? I think this is like the biggest challenge. I once met the founder of Chipotle and he said, um, you, oh, you're going into food service? Anybody in food service can make a billion dollars if you can figure out how to get a minimum wage employee to treat the customer as if it's their guest. And, um, you know, so, so that's like the mindset. Okay. So how did he do it? So he, he goes, you gotta show 'em, not tell 'em. He goes, so we have this value called, you know, you always, uh, plus the experience, meaning like whatever the experience was, we plus it the next time. So he goes, this year our players were coming to like first day of minicamp, so before the season even starts. So they've got all their players, and he goes, you know, he was thinking about it with his team. He goes, you know, we want them to put on a show for people. We want them to know how special it feels to go to something. We want them to make the fans feel special, but we never make them feel special. He's like, so here we go. He goes, we have like, I don't know, he had like a week to plan this or something like that. And he goes, we're going to turn their first day orientation into a show. And so he goes, they get down from there, they're all at the hotel. It's, you know, we're going to report, we're going to go through orientation. So they're kind of like how anybody is from first day employee orientation, you know, player for first day player on the job. You're just sort of, you know, zombie walking through life at that point. He goes, they come downstairs, the cars have been replaced by this like special bus. The bus is surrounded by a police escort. They're like, what? And he's like, we're only going like 1,200 feet away, but you have a police escort to go from here to there because you are special. You are a star and we're going to treat you like a star. And he goes, as they start going with the police escort, all of our headquarters staff and employees, we're outside, we're cheering, we got signs, we got— they get there, they come out of the bus, boom, fireworks go off. We got fireworks going into the sky. We start singing the song to them. They're being serenaded by us. They walk through the aisle, they enter the stadium. In the stadium, we have the motivational video on the screen. They're seeing themselves as kids when they were baseball players, and now they're grown up. And the story is telling them is that you made it to the big show. You are here. And he's like, he tells this story about how he fired up his players and how they were like, what just happened? For their— and there's no fans, no customers are even at this. This was how he trained his employees. Basically, this was just how he welcomed his new, new players. And he goes, you think after that they're going to walk a little differently for day one of doing their job? He's like, of course, of course they will. Of course they now know what we mean when we say you put on a show, you plus the experience, all these values, like you got to live it, you know, if you want them to live it. And I was like, I had goosebumps, dude. It was awesome.

Ari, can we cue the soundbite of Sean making fun of me for caring about culture and values? It was literally 10 days ago. He was like, you care about that?

Yeah, because you were like, you know, we've, uh, I've been working on culture for like the last 2 months and I think I decided that integrity is going to be a culture for us.

And that is not how it went down.

We're going to really, we're going to really do a good job.

That is not how it went down. And 2, you got to start somewhere.

Did it feel like how I made you just feel when Jesse Cole was telling that story? That's what I want from you, Sam. That's the level. That's the bar.

Dude, I don't have a bus or a place to go to.

Get a bus!

Get a bus! We have no reason to leave the office.

Do more jiu-jitsu. Whatever you gotta do, you do it.

It is pretty dope. I mean, that is, I have been working really hard at this and when I hear this, I'm like, ugh, that's like a 10 out of 10. I'm doing like a 2 out of 10. I wonder what it was like in year 1 versus the year whatever he's in now. But that is like actually inspiring. I do totally buy into treating people a certain way and you do things that don't math out on paper, and it definitely does math out on paper, uh, eventually.

Right, right. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, because I mean, obviously that's just a cost, right? Those fireworks aren't free. That bus isn't free. That police escort isn't free. Where's the ROI?

I can't put into Excel sheet the ROI of getting people to care.

Of getting people goosebumps.

But it just, it just feels right. Uh, you know, like it's intuition is a hard thing to justify, uh, within a company, which is, uh, very strange.

And it's the same thing, by the way, with all of MrBeast's crew, because it's like you work with Jimmy, you're doing things a certain way. He makes you feel like you're a part of something huge, something special, something unstoppable, something that's going to be, you know, something that's a once in a lifetime ride. And so people give a once in a lifetime level of effort towards it.

I'd be curious to hear how some of the people who have more boring companies, like a mortgage lender, how they instill this. Because, you know, excuses are assholes and we all got them and they all stink. This is an excuse. But when I hear Jesse, I'm like, okay, that is a baseball team. That's— I can make that cool. How does the insurance broker do it? And so that would be curious to hear how they do it. And like, yeah, it's easy to do that when you're MrBeast. I don't actually think this way, but this is like an excuse that a lot of people listening to this would say is, yeah, it's easy when you're MrBeast and you have— and you're making videos online. That's pretty cool. What about if you're selling notepads? I don't know, like something boring.

Yeah, I don't think it changes at all. Like, if it's boring to you, then yeah, it's boring to them. Is it boring to you? Like, the guy selling the notepads, is he selling a notepad? Or is he selling something much bigger than that, right? Is it like, you know, Jesse Itzler, he's there, he sells a wall calendar, a piece of plastic you put on the wall. It's $30. Now you could look at that and you could be like, it's just a calendar. Who cares? Or you could be like, you know, he told me the story, you know, about like people in his life that passed. Like, why did you get so into this? And how did you turn away from the money monster? Because that's what I think is really remarkable of him. He's unlike the rest of the people in the room. Like, he seems so secure that he's, he's not still chasing something. He's just like living the life he wants. And he was like, you know, I had people in my life pass away, right? Like, you know, people very close to me, my family members pass away. And I realized, like, how short life is and how I'm just pissing years away. Like, years are important, bro. We don't get very many of them. And he starts talking about years, and when he talks about years, it's like you're holding bricks of gold and that there's only 25 of them or 30 of them left in your life. And like, if you only got 30 of these bricks of gold left and every year one melts right through your fingertips, like, are you going to let that happen? Like, we got to be really intentional about how we treat our years. And what do you think? It's just going to happen or you think you've got to plan it? If you're going to plan it, guess what? You need a big-ass calendar on your wall, right? Like, you know, he takes you down that road. He didn't— that's not him speaking. That's me speaking for him. But I think with any product, if you don't have a big why behind it and you're not trying to play at a high level with it, then obviously you can't instill that in anybody else.

So for the listener, Jesse Itzler has been on our podcast a bunch of times and he's famous and popular on the internet for being— he was already a very— he was a successful entrepreneur, started and sold some companies, married a very successful woman who started it and sold to build a company. What I want to ask you, Sean, is did you— whenever I'm around incredibly ambitious people like the billionaires of the world, like, for example, I've been to Ramp, you know, Ramp, the credit card company, which is like a takeover-the-world startup. I've been to their office. And whenever I'm around these guys, you start like getting these mimetic desires where you say like, A, I want what they have, and B, their energy becomes contagious. You know, the most successful people, the energy is contagious where you're like, I should work harder, I should do this. You know, if you're around Elon Musk or something, you're going to want to like work harder. But then when you're around a Jesse Itzler, you think he's doing it right. You know what I mean? Like, like people who are really successful and regardless if they're in the grinder or the calm path, they're contagious. Were you finding yourself getting, like, you know, caught in the—

I'm a leaf blowing in the wind at these events. I talked to one guy, I'm like, I should start a YouTube channel. I started— I talked to another guy, I'm like, board games are sick. And then I talked to Jesse, I'm like, I need to run a race. Why am I not running? Yeah, I'm so easily manipulated and influenced. It's wonderful.

Whenever I go to these things and, and the truth is, is like, just like this podcast, the truth is not— I mean, in your setting of hanging out with him for 48 hours, that is not actually the truth either. Like, you know, there's always bullshit on the back end that everyone's like that you don't truly see. So nothing's as good or probably as bad as it seems. But were you attracted to one lifestyle?

I mean, the truth is, over time I've figured out, uh, how to do these events. And how to do these events is you are curious about everybody, so you should not write anybody off. Open mind. Second thing, you're looking for the parts, not the whole. So you're looking for what are little elements that I want to steal from my game, because nobody's perfect on the whole, and nobody's the right match for you on the whole. No advice is right for you. It's just what was right for them. And so you sort of, you're looking for the parts that resonate, the parts that make you excited, the parts make you interested. You sort of note those. You become aware of those because there's something in you that's, that's there. Even after it sparks some interest in you, you have to sort of ask, like, do I want the life or the lifestyle? It's like, yeah, I would love to walk through Target and be like, that's my product on the walls. Then I hear about what it took to get there, and I'm like, this is an absolute, like, death game to play. I don't want to play. I would not want to play that game.

Yeah, I'm not willing to pay that price.

Yeah, yeah, cool. I like that, um, you know, Jimmy's the— you know, he gets to do all these incredible things because he's the most, like, followed guy in the world. That's, I mean, incredible. Wow, how inspiring. At the same time, he's got 4 assistants at every hour of his day. They're like, you got to be doing this, you need to be doing this, you need to be doing this, you need to be doing this. And like, he just got off a flight from here, now he's got to go on a flight from there. He's I mean, that is not a lifestyle I would want. So you got to understand, like, you have to want the lifestyle of doing it, not the life of having it. And it's too easy to want the life of having it.

There's—

that doesn't count. That's like, I like checkmate. Yeah, sure, so do I. But like, do you actually like to play chess? Um, like, you know, that's kind of an important distinction to make. So I'm always looking for the lifestyle, not the life, because if you like the lifestyle, you'll actually do it. You'll stick with it long enough to get whatever your results are going to be based on your talent and your luck as you go.

What about the third one?

All right, third one. You can't top pigs with pigs. Have you ever heard this phrase before?

No. What's that mean?

So it's a Walt Disney story. One of Walt Disney's early movies was Three Little Pigs, and it was like a short, basically, that he made, and it was really successful. I think he won like an Oscar or something for it. Won like— it did very well. And so, of course, the distributor comes to him and he's like, Walt, what's next? You know, Walt's like, yeah, I'm working on what's next. He goes, hey, I got a tip, more pigs. And he's like, he would, but they're serious. They're like, you got to do a sequel. And he's like, Walt had this thing. He goes, I don't think you can top pigs with pigs. And he had this belief that like, if I want to do the next great thing, I can't just try to do that again. And in fact, he ended up sort of getting influenced over time to do a sequel. And it did okay, but he was never proud of it. He thought it was like, shit, I should not have done that. I knew it. I knew it. You can't top pigs with pigs. And he had this emphasis on originality and reinventing yourself. And I would say at this group, there was kind of two groups of people. There was what I would call the exploiters, you know, guy who sells a company in one space for $300 million. And guess what? He's back in that space again with a new company. It's going to sell for $3 billion this time. He knows the space so well, he's exploiting his deep, his depth of knowledge and maybe his passion for the space. And that was one group of people. And there's like 10 of them at the event. And then there was 10 at the event that were just reinventing themselves. And I personally was very drawn to the reinventors. Maybe it's just like a, you know, romantic, as you would say. Like, I think it's just more romantic of an idea for how to live life.

Can you give an example of one of them?

Yeah. So, uh, Joe Gebbia, the founder of Airbnb, he's there. And Joe actually, like, he left Airbnb. He initially started a company, really cool company, but it was also in the kind of housing design space.

What's it called? Samsara?

Samsara, I think. And it's basically like backyard ADUs. If you're in California, you're allowed to have a backyard unit. Well, here's like a manufactured prefab backyard unit. Cool. And it was doing well, but Joe reinvented himself. So at this event, he gave a talk that just like brought the house down. It was unbelievable. Literally, like, you had 30 people chanting USA, USA at the end because he told the story of his meeting with Trump where he ends up becoming the chief design officer for America, which wasn't even a role before Joe got there, and how he wanted to serve and he wanted to use his superpower, which is design and creating this, like, delightful, like, user experience, but bring it to an area which had been, like, zero care about user experience, which is like you know, government paperwork, government websites, you know, things that literally look like the first version that was made in 1986. And, um, you know, actually like taking the time and care to like up, up those experiences. You know, very simple example was the, you know, people— this has been talked about publicly, so I can talk about this. Um, to retire from the government, the paperwork was kept in the mine, like an actual like physical mine, and it was paperwork. And that's what made sense in the '60s because that's all we had.

It took like 6 months just literally physically walking around and fetching the paperwork and getting all the right people to sign off on it.

Exactly. So like, let's say you've served, you know, 30 years, you're ready to retire, and now you go through this sort of brutal 6 to 12 month paperwork process to retire. And like, look, nobody's ever— that's never going to be a top priority for anyone to go fix. So you just have these like tragedy of the commons type problems where it's no— but nobody wins political points for fixing these. Nobody makes any money. Nobody enriches themselves by, by, uh, fixing these things. And therefore they just never get fixed. And so it takes somebody like Joe who's just like, I just don't like seeing bad, bad design, bad feelings, bad user experiences. Like, I just think we could do better. Like, why can't we do better? And so he's bringing that to all different types of government. But he told this incredible story and you, I think you've seen him talk when he, when you just chat with him one-on-one, he's, you know, he's a quiet, more thoughtful guy. When he talks, he's an absolute showman.

Well, he's got politician energy a little bit where— not in a bad way, but in a good way where he like turns it on.

He turns it on. My man could use a pause. Let me just put it that way. My man knows how to use a pause. He is unbelievable at public speaking.

I've seen him do a public— a few talks. I went to the Airbnb office and I've seen him talk. And then I've seen YouTube videos of him talk. And then I met him in real life last year. And I was like, do you hate me? I was like, why? Why aren't you talking? Like, I thought you were this like extroverted guy. And he was just incredibly quiet. He was just super quiet, very low-key. And then I've seen him turn it on and it was like, that was pretty remarkable.

There was a— so reinventing himself. So that was a reinventing himself, literally created a— the perfect role for him that didn't even exist in the world. And I thought that was an example of like, you can't top pigs with pigs. Like he couldn't top Airbnb with another tech startup, but he could top it by doing this incredible thing that's like takes his genius applies it in the act of service at the nation scale.

What has he designed?

So like, have you seen— he showed us some, some stuff, but, uh, have you seen like, uh, so there's the retirement side of things, like the National Parks website. Uh, like, national parks are one of the like best things that America has. Like, most countries don't have this amazing, free, beautiful land that anybody can go and explore. And he redid the national park stuff. He redid the food pyramid. So like, he's big into like the Bobby Kennedy side of things about like, look, it's crazy. We're so unhealthy as a country and we're chronically ill. And then you go look at the original food pyramid, which is like the foundation of your day. Cereal, carbohydrates, bread, grains. And it's like, so they made the new food pyramid and the new, a new website that kind of educating people about that. So, you know, just every, every touchpoint. And, uh, so I think there's, there's some more big stuff coming. Another one, there was a guy on the phone, on the phone there and we're like, hey man, we, yeah. We got a no phone policy here. You can't just be taking calls. Otherwise everybody would just start taking calls here. This event sucks. And so we walk over and someone's like, hey, you gotta let him do this. He's selling his company right now, today for $5 billion. It was the founder of Brex. And so he had just sold his company same day for $5 billion. And he's just there. Like he's there with us, but I'm, I assume like part of him is just like somewhere in the clouds, you know, like enjoying himself at a whole different level. But did you see people on Twitter like, like mocking that? Yeah. How big of a loser do you have to be to try to mock somebody who just sold their company for $5 billion?

Isn't he like 29 years old or something insane?

He's— yeah, I can't even fathom how people do that.

Isn't that funny?

But a few hours later, you know, he's in the sauna and he's telling us about like how he's just been tinkering with Claude code and how he's in it, uh, how he's just building these things and he's like relearning to code basically through AI and what can be built now. And he's really like asking these questions and he's going into a whole new space now with his next company. And doing something completely different. And I just thought, wow, that is like the same day he's, you know, sells his company for $5 billion. He's already a beginner, already back to being a white belt at something new and full, like, beginner's mindset with that. I was pretty inspired by that. There was just several people that were, that were in that, in that boat.

So, you and I have founded companies, and I believe both of the, or all the things that we have founded have, range from millions to tens of millions in revenue, and a huge percentage of our friends are in that category, which is like, yeah, very successful. But then there's different levels of success. Did you notice— and this is a very selfish question for myself because I want to get better— did you notice any distinct differences for the people who had like relatively mild success companies versus these breakout home runs, like companies. So for example, I've met, you know, when I used to host HustleCon, I distinctly had probably 100 people speak. It was my conference series years ago and it was all the hot startups from like 2014 to like 2019. And like, I remember talking to like one of the founders of WeWork, not Adam, but the other guy, Miguel. And I remember talking to the founders of Casper and all these like great companies and then a bunch of other companies that were in the billions of dollars. And I remember thinking, Oh, you're definitely not more special, uh, than like a normal successful person. You just, um, uh, have been at it for a while, or there's been like some luck that happened your way, or you, um, you just didn't give up, which is, which is special. But then I've met occasionally, I'll meet other people, like I met the founder of Grammarly, and I remember talking to this guy Max, and I was like, oh, you're just a, you're a genius. You are legitimately better than me. Or same with, uh, Mario, the founder of Oscar. When I talk to him, I'm like, yeah, you're, you're like 1% of the 1% of the 1% of IQ. And also you're fairly bold. So it's a no-brainer why you're successful and we will never be the same. And so did you like notice any trends like that?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I would say if you ever want to get a really big number in math, you probably can't— like, you're probably not just changing one of the variables because these are multipliers, right? So it's like you multiply several variables together and suddenly you get this sort of gargantuan number at the end. If you just try to add numbers together, it doesn't really work. It's a multiplier. And so, for example, what are those— what are some of those variables? I would say one variable is endurance. So a lot of the people there had sold their company. And like, if you just look at the people who'd sold their company for, let's call it $50 million, $150 million, $500 million, a lot of times that same company is now worth $5 billion. And it's like they just sold early and they were ready to move on. And the— what's the difference between them and the guy who actually is worth $5 billion or their company's worth $5 billion? They've just stayed at it longer. They stayed in the company for a longer period of time. So I would say an uncommon level of endurance is, is one. I would say, um, there's a multiply by zero moment. So almost every company, there was like, tell me a story about when you almost failed. And they're like, oh, happy to. I remember when, um, it was Christmas time and we almost ran out of— we were growing fast. We actually ran out of cash. We didn't realize it because we were so dumb about inventory planning. And so here we were, we were going to do $380 million in revenue and we were about to go broke. And I had 2 weeks left and I had to go get a loan. I had to go get funding. And then the funding got pulled out within 24 hours of the deadline. And then I personally, you know, like, mortgaged my house, and then I got this, and then this, and then this and this. Or like, you know, we lost the deal to get into retail to this other company, but then I came over the top and I guaranteed we would spend $3 million on TV ads. And by the way, I had $300,000 in the bank, but that sealed the deal. Then I had to hustle to get the $3 million, and then that got us into retail, and now we do $500 million in retail every year, right? Or whatever it is. There's always a story like that. Everybody's got their own flavor. And so they avoided the multiply by zero events. When you hear Joe from Airbnb talk about Airbnb, the number one takeaway I had is this company shouldn't exist. It's a miracle child. Like, it should have died at any of those 5 points you mentioned, because that— those are we're effed, it's over moments. Like, there's no recovering from that. But you guys did, and that's miraculous. And it was like 5 miracles to get there. So I feel like that's another one. So endurance is one. I would say not getting multiplied by zero, not dying. At a moment when you could have died, or like you didn't get the deal, but then you did get the deal. Like they were going to go with somebody else at the last minute. You flipped it like, and those turned out to be huge fork in the road moments for what the outcome of that business was going to be. I think project selection. So, you know, you know, like James Clear is there and James Clear has written— his book is like the number one selling book in the world over the last 5 years, all categories. It's not like just nonfiction, not like just in the US, everything. And why? And you know, part of it is he talks about like this moment when he was making, he's like, he really wanted to make the book about deliberate practice. He's like, that was actually the insight was that you have to do this deliberate practicing. It's one of the core insights. He goes, it could have been a deliberate practice book that talked about habits, but guess what? Nobody would buy a book that says deliberate practice on the COVID But a lot of people, turns out, wanted to buy a book that has habits on the COVID about breaking bad habits and building good ones. And it has deliberate practice as chapter whatever, 3 or whatever it is. And so just picking things that have like the right TAM, either because you knew it in advance or you stumbled into something that actually had a huge market, but even though it sounded kind of small and silly to begin with. So those are my 3 takeaways. Uh, to recap, intensity is the strategy, being at the ground floor level, that idea of 3 problems a day for 365 days, solving 1,000 problems in your company. I thought that was great. Culture is the action word. The Jesse Cole story of treating the players to a show to instill in them what it means to give the fans a show. And then you can't top pigs with pigs. Being willing to reinvent yourself after success, go back to the beginning, have the beginner's mind, go back to the bottom of the mountain and do it again. I was inspired by that. So those are, those are 3 of my big ones.

All right, well, that's pretty cool. I'm happy you had a good time. I'm happy that you, um, it even happened. You chose literally the worst weekend of the year.

I know. There was the biggest, like, storm in the country happening the same day. So we had to 24 hours before change the entire event that we've been planning for months with, like, you know, all these planners and whatnot. But, uh, we pulled it off. It worked out.

That's why I hate the events business. It's, it's very stressful. It's, it's like running a marathon. Sucks while you're doing it. It sucks in preparation. When you get done with it, you're like, that was awesome. I want to do it again.

Ours is worse. It's not even a business. We don't charge anyone anything. We just pay for this out of pocket. So you have all of the headache without the reward. The reward is just getting to attend something that's dope and, you know, hang out with cool people.

Well, I'm happy you did that. I'm happy with a good podcast. That's it. That's the pod.