Brainstorming +$1M Weird Business Ideas With Morning Brew’s CEO Austin Rief (#543)

Dude, this is a great idea. This is why we started this podcast for somebody to come on and say, yeah, I just built a $100 million media company, but guys, smoke and meats is where it's at. What's up? We got the three amigos of newsletters. The short story of Austin is out of college, create Morning Brew, sold it for— I think I read $75 million, so don't— you don't have to correct me if I'm wrong, but $75 million. You still run it, hundreds of employees, amazing. You have a doc here of a bunch of topics.

Yeah, someone sent me this deck like last week, and I, I was going to text Sam about this. I was like, you know what, let me wait for the pod to talk to you guys about this. This is a, uh, I feel like a My First Million special. So I've been super excited about a bunch of these post-COVID, get out of your house, do exciting things. That's not go to a bar and just drink. I think that's pretty boring. And there are a bunch of these in New York. I don't know how, if they have where you guys live, but they have ping pong bars and pool bars and they get more and more out there. And I was tweeting about this and some guy sent me a deck. He goes, I got something interesting for you. So if you have your computer up, look up Bingo Loco, right? This guy sends me this deck for bingo. I'm like, what the hell is this? Right. Bingo Loco. It's basically a club meets bingo, right? So boozy bingo, performers, confetti showers, the whole thing.

This looks like a Tiesto concert or something. What is this?

I didn't know people played bingo off of cruise ships. Like, I thought bingo was either for old people or cruise ships. He sends me his deck. I don't want to disclose their numbers, But he goes, check out one of our competitors, uh, Bongo Bingo USA. And I'm like, there's no way. I'm like, there's no way there's a whole industry for bingo raves, for bingo parties.

Dude, the websites are exactly the same. They just copied each other.

It looks like those. I, I, again, he just sent me a deck. Apparently people in the industry said these Bongo Bingo guys, apparently, uh, pre-COVID, we're doing $20 million a year in revenue.

No way.

Explain this model. Do they own the place or they're just going in like doing a pop-up bingo night at someplace?

No, I think they go all— it's actually really smart, right? Because what they do is, I believe they go for pretty off nights for certain places, right? So, you know, so nights where a club or whatever, wherever they had these wouldn't be that popular, but they still bring that environment, right? So they still use a lot of the infrastructure that these venues have. And they bring, it seems like the whole show, the confetti showers, the performers, everything. And what I think is interesting is they keep you there with the bingo, right? So there's a shuffleboarding place in Brooklyn, right? They keep you there because you play shuffleboard for, you know, hours and hours and you're just buying drinks. And that, that's like the shtick. That's the hook to get you in. And it's the same thing, game of bingo. I'm sure they have performers mid-game. They keep you there for 7 hours. You just buy a bunch of drinks. So I thought this one was awesome.

Tickets are $53 right now.

Wow.

And they sell these out?

I guess so. They must be making money off the boots, right? I was trying to do more research. There's not that much information. I never heard of it, but they must be making their money off of the boots.

Well, look at this ad. So I went to their ad library. People of Minneapolis, a bingo rave is coming to Granada Theater March 15th, which is a couple months out. It says after a string of sold-out shows across America, Bingo Loco has Minneapolis in its sights. And then it's got like this TikTok video. Which literally looks like you're at like a rave and you go there and then that's the, you know, $30 ticket. And then there's like a, you know, what, what is this? Basically there's a host, there's music, there's confetti, there's, um, you know, dance-offs, lip sync battles. There's a, you know, there's drinks basically. There's alcohol.

This is like, uh, the sound. Bam, bam, bam, bam. It's like that on a website.

That's the business plan. You open up a deck and it just plays that sound.

I've got 4 words for you investors. Bam, bam, bam, bam.

Bam!

I'm sure the margins on this are crazy. Their costs are some, some random performers and, and, and bingo. Again, I, I, I, I played bingo one time on a cruise ship, and these guys are making what seems like $20 million a year off, off bingo. I gotta— we gotta figure out what we can do this next for.

All right everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's really easy for me to talk about because I'm going to show you a real-life example. So So I've got this company called Hampton, joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders doing between $2 million all the way up to like $250 million a year in revenue. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these cool surveys. And so we have a lot of founders who have high net worths, and we'll ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask, but provide a lot of value. So things like how much the founders pay themselves each month, how much money they're spending each month, what their payroll looks like, if they're optimistic about the next year in their business. All these questions that people are afraid to ask, but well, we ask 'em anyway, and they tell us in this anonymous survey. And so what we do is we created a landing page using HubSpot's landing page tool, and it basically has a landing page that says, here's all the questions we asked, give us your email if you wanna access it. And then I shared this page on Twitter and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they want this survey. And I could see, did they come from social media? I can see, did they come from Twitter, from LinkedIn, basically everywhere else that they could possibly come from. I'm able to track all of that. And then I'm able to see over the next handful of weeks, how many of those people actually signed up and became a member of Hampton. In other words, I can see how much revenue came from this survey, how much revenue came from each traffic source, things like that. But the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it. And a lot of times it takes a ton of work to make that happen. HubSpot made that super, super easy. If you're interested in doing this, you could check it out, hubspot.com. The link's in the description. And I'll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can actually see the landing page and how it worked and everything like that. I'm just gonna do that call to action then. And it's free. Check it out in the description. All right. Now back to MFM. So you make a lot of money at Morning Brew doing digital stuff and you just hit send on a little email. It's easy. Kind of, kind of easy. Uh, why on earth do you care about physical stuff? That seems way more challenging.

Yeah. I don't know if I would ever start something in this space, but it's just so fun to go see, to go see the way people, you know, I would never think this would work in a million years. I would never think bingo on steroids, bingo performers would work. But I think it's so interesting. I love going to these things around the city to try to see how people get people hooked on these things. It's so easy to hook people on a newsletter, right? It's content every day. It's very different for people to come back to play shuffleboard or bingo. So I love these.

I have an idea for one. Can I pitch you guys one? All right. So I'm sure, you know, as soon as you set this bingo thing, my brain starts, the wheels start turning. And Sam, you'll appreciate this. You like the UFC. So I don't know if you remember when Conor McGregor was on his come up. He was knocking people out. He was knocking people out. It was the best. And this guy, everyone's like, what can't this guy do? Because everybody thought whoever the next guy he's fighting, that guy's going to neutralize him with this, this, and this, knocks him out. And I remember watching one ex-UFC fighter. He was doing like an analysis and he's like, I'm watching Conor. He does all this. Spinning shit and he does this, he does this. He's like, I think it's all smoke and mirrors. He goes, I think everything is just a distraction because he's trying to land the left hand. And he's like, you know, that's every, all this stuff he's throwing. He doesn't care what happens with it. He's just trying to hit you with the left hand. To me, this is the same business model, like the bingo. It's, he's like, oh, do you hear about that bingo business? No, no, no. You hear about that alcohol business that uses bingo to get you to the bar? So similarly, we got to figure out what's going to get people to the bar and get them drinking. And so Here's my idea. I've always wanted to enter one of those eating contests. I don't know if you guys have ever done one. I've never actually done it, but like those places where it's like, if you can eat this pizza, it's free. And like, I've always wanted to actually go do it, but there's always like this problem where it's like, it's like you have to pay $75 to like buy the huge pizza. It might be free, but you, you know, whatever. I would love if somebody turned this into like, you know, if I was in college, I would have been all over this. If it was like, it's It's the contest is who can eat the biggest, you know, who can eat the most hot dogs or the biggest pizza, who can finish it the fastest. And you can go enter and you have to bring friends to be kind of your cheering section. They're all rowdy and drinking and cheering you on. It's free to play because the pizza is not that expensive, but you're going to fill up the bar with like, you know, whatever, hundreds of people who are in the mood to kind of like binge and go extreme because that's kind of the theme of the night in a way. It's like sports. Meets binge eating. Well, what's the best thing that goes with both those things? Binge drinking. Who's with me?

The only thing you can add is a little bit of gambling. You need to have people gamble. Oh, this is like gamble. It's like gambling, right? It's Vegas meets a party. So just add some betting.

Beautiful yes and there, Austin. I don't know if you've been doing some improv, but that was a beautiful yes and. I really appreciate that one. Good riff.

I follow this guy on YouTube. He's called Beer Meets Food. And looks like he has, uh, 3.6 million subscribers. Have you guys seen this guy? He just goes to small restaurants in England that they have like, you know, uh, you get this free if you eat it. He eats roughly 10,000 calories in each of the challenges and he nails all of them. Like one time he ate, like, I think it was 5 pounds of chocolate. Have you seen this, Sean? This guy's channel? It's the craziest channel I've ever seen. And I watch all of his videos. It's one of the few YouTube channels I subscribe to. This guy needs to launch your food challenge gambling business.

And there's actually a bunch of these Instagrammers that you could do this with. So, uh, you know, there's that guy who eats the raw meat. I think he's called Raw Meat Experiment.

Read his bio. Read his bio, Sean. His bio is great.

I, so 142,000 followers. He goes, eating raw meat every day until I die from bacteria. Then it says line 2, seeing if I live for 5 days or 500 years. And literally he'll just take like a chunk of ground beef and he just sits outside of a Whole Foods. He buys the ground beef and he just eats it raw, or he'll just get a chicken breast uncooked and he'll just chew it like it's a, you know, I don't know, like a Slim Jim or something like that. And I feel like these, there's so many Instagram food mukbang, like different variations of this. Like there's a lot of YouTubers that, that do this where they order just an insane amount of food, watch me eat. And it is entertaining to do. I could feel like you could get them to host, be like kind of guest host promotional to, to do these pop-ups.

I used to, um, when I worked, uh, when I moved to San Francisco, I didn't have a lot and I would part-time, I had like a part-time job and I worked for this guy, Joe Garvey. He had a company called CLASH. It stood for California League of Adventure Scavenger Hunt or something like that. It was called CLASH SF and he was making 7 figures a year and we would host these citywide scavenger hunts and they were the best. It was so fun. And I got to see some of the like economics of like some of these in-person stuff. And I was actually pretty shocked at how great some of these could be. It was a lot of work. And then we have another friend, Nick Gray. Did you know, Sean, that Nick Gray had a business called Museum Hack and he eventually sold it and it was doing many, many millions in revenue. And the way the business worked where it was, eventually, or at first it was just like guerrilla where he was, he would like go to the, I think it was Met, the, the Met in New York. It's a free museum and people would pay $50 and he would give them a tour of the museum and he would explain the, the art. And then eventually he hired lots of theater kids to lead these tours and he had them set up in a variety of museums throughout the country. And eventually he had partnership after they like kicked him out a bunch of times. And he said that business was awesome.

Dude, I love the way he described it too. He uses the phrase renegade museum tours. I just thought that was just a great way to pitch it. He's like, yeah, my first business, I hosted renegade museum tours. And he doesn't really explain what it is, but you try to put it all together. And the word renegade, I feel like is underutilized, underhyped word. I think I'm going to try to bring that back into my everyday vocabulary.

I think they made him, I think Time Out made him the number one thing to do in New York. And I think that's what blew him up. Right. He blew up. And then, and then of course he went B2B because that's where the money in all this stuff is, right? Selling it. You sell it to consumer for $50, you sell it to Morning Brew for $20 grand, and our HR team just signs off and approves it.

Austin, last time you were here, I think we, we talked about like the creator economy, and I'm almost certain all three of us were like, this is going to fizzle out. And has your opinion changed? And I know like some things have happened in like the news or the media world. That has got you excited. Tell me about that.

Yeah, I think last time we spoke, I remember we were all talking and we're like, what's the next Milk Road for, right? Milk Road for X. We're all talking about that and we're like, oh, AI is popping off. Let's, let's— someone should launch the Milk Road for AI.

Milk Road for X. That just got Sean all— he's all hot, man. You're speaking to him perfectly.

Austin got on the call, called me skinny, and now he said Milk Road for X. X instead of Morning Brew or Hustle for X. And I am— this guy's a charmer. I love it.

Just trying to hype you up, Sean. I mean, look, but there are 10,000— I mean, there's beehives growing off the backs of Milk Road for AI. And I think the problem with these businesses are that their content's not very good. They've all grown with these crazy growth hacks, which is great for the newsletter ecosystem as a whole, but it's not sustainable. I think there's no more alpha in the newsletter game. Everyone talks about everything. And I think Beehive did for newsletters what Shopify did for e-commerce, right? E-commerce stores started and people got super pumped. They're like, you know, investors invested in Away and then all these businesses because they're like, oh, Shopify makes it so easy to start an e-com store. And that's awesome. The problem was they made it too easy to start an e-com store where everyone started e-com stores where you have to be either the absolute best Or you just can't raise a bunch of money. You have to be okay with it being like a fine business, but everyone's just pouring in again, not a ton of money, but a ton of people just think, oh, if I can just create the, the milk road for marketing, the milk road for AI, I'm going to have a milk road like exit. I just, I don't know what you guys think, but I just don't think these newsletters have a ton of value.

Let me ask you a different question. You spent a bunch of time in media now. How long you been doing this? Like 7, 8 years, something like that?

Coming up on 10.

Oh my God. Wow. A third of your life you've spent in the media business. I hope you don't spend the next two-thirds of your life on the media business too. If you were going to do something different, where would you go? Let's say media was off the table. What would you do next?

Yeah, so I think there are two types of businesses I love. I think one is, you know, B2B. I think, you know, We've all built businesses where the LTVs are like $15. That's pretty tough. I love selling significant enterprise products. The other one is building into passion audiences. That's, I think, where I'd actually go. So, you know, we went to Camp My First Million last year and we met that guy. I think his name was Al, who's building for Quilters.

Al Doan.

Yeah. I think he does hundreds of millions of revenue. So I think I want to find a niche there and figure out what is a weird niche. And so the one I've been spending a lot of time researching I almost did something here. I ended up not doing it is meat smoking. I am obsessed with my Traeger, right?

How do you use a Traeger? You live in an apartment in New York, like on your balcony?

Yeah, on the— I live on the first floor, so I have access to the common space.

So I don't, I don't meat smoke. What even is meat smoking? Can you just give me that first?

Dude, it's such a pain in the ass. It is such a pain in the ass.

Is it just called grilling or is it different than grilling?

You cook meat at like 200 degrees for like 10, 12 hours.

It's like barbecuing, but 10 hours and no fire, and they use smoke instead. I— all of my Jewish friends are into this because you guys grew up eating brisket. You got to wait 10 hours to eat, and you've got to buy like special like wood chips for it. It's a fucking pain in the ass. I've got friends that will wake up at 4 in the morning to like get their brisket started.

Okay, but I'm a believer, anything that's a huge pain in the ass that people do, there's like a shit ton of money there.

Exactly right. And so there's a couple big brands in smoking. There's Traeger, Right. Traeger's the one I have. And the thing is, to Sam's point, you don't just like— it's not electricity. I was like, turn it on and it goes. You have to— it's wood pellets, right? You literally smoke wood pellets and these pellets. Traeger gets you to buy the $1,000, $1,500 smoker, but then also you're spending $50 every time you smoke meats because you're just burning these pellets. And there's a lot of meat smokers, influencers out there. He's actually in Nashville. Guys in Texas, and literally it's like how to smoke a ribeye, how to smoke a brisket, and they have tens of millions of views and they're all like kind of sophisticated. They have these rubs that you put in your meats, but none of them are taking big swings, right? None of them are built or building the Traeger competitor. I want to build the Traeger or the Green Egg competitor, sell the $1,500 product, sell the $50 a month, $100 a month pellets, and build the next Traeger, which I think is a multi, you know, billion-dollar brand.

Dude, I'm fired up. I'm smoked up right now. That was a good pitch. And you, you seem pretty lit up about that. Why did you not do this? This sounds awesome.

I've been talking to some meat smoking influencers. I'm working on it.

The meat smoking boys. That's what we'll call them.

What I like about these guys are they're just so much more down to earth than these New York City influencers. You know, it's not like that. The TikTok 22-year-olds, these are people who just love life. They just want to smoke meats. And if they can sell a grill, even better. There's this guy. Have you heard of this guy? Jonathan Moses Katz?

No. Who's that?

So he's a woodworking creator, right? And he's done kind of what I'm saying, but in the woodworking niche. So what this guy has done, he was a big woodworking creator. And he built some tools for, and it's cool because obviously he's a woodworker, so he can build them himself for his audience.

Oh dude, his site, his site gets so much traffic. This guy kills it, I bet.

Crushes it, right? And so I spoke to this guy one time, so I don't, I don't have, you know, any insider information, but he crushed it. And what he started to do is he started to partner with every other woodworking creator and said, hey, look, I'm doing, you know, crushing it for myself, selling a bunch of whatever widgets to my audience. Let me make you your own custom little thing in your woodworking niche. And I'm going to help you all sell them as well. And then we can build a collective store of all our, all our products. And, and Sean, if you sell one on behalf of Sam, you'll kick him an affiliate. This is a big business.

I bet you he does $50 million a year on— so it's called KM Tools, I think, right? Yeah, KM Tools. I bet you this does in the $50 million range.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it does more.

Dude, this is a great idea. This is why we started this podcast for somebody to come on and say, yeah, I just built a $100 million media company, but guys, smoking meats is where it's at. This is a niche you're never really thinking about. There's an opportunity here. Here's the, here's the distribution model we're going to use. I'm going to partner with these influencers and then do this kind of affiliate network and build this competitor. This is awesome.

We're going to call it the Meat Smoking Jerky Boys. And we're gonna— this, this one, this, this way it allows us a little bit of a lateral expansion into, uh, the beef jerky space. But we're gonna call it the Meat Smoking Jerky Boys.

You know that, you know that, um, that cigarette brand that we, we love the branding and the packaging of? Oklahoma Smokes. Yeah, I feel like you kind of gotta do an Oklahoma Smokes or like a, a Nashville, Nashville Smokes Club, uh, or something like that. Brought to you by the Jerky Boys. And, you know, I think it all needs to come together into one mega brand.

I have not seen this branding. This is awesome. Oklahoma Smokes, we're stealing this. We're buying the company just to steal the branding.

Dude, they're so good.

Google like some of the most popular towns in Louisiana and just pick one name that like stands out, you know, like Tupelo Meats or something.

I'm just hoping A big meat smoking influencer creator listens to this podcast and DMs me on Twitter and goes, I'm ready to ride.

The Baton Rouge Smoke Company. God, there's just so many possibilities here. Austin, I know when we started this conversation, I didn't even know what Smoking Meats was, but I'm in and hold a little check space for me on this company because I would love to be a part of this. You know, I'm the opposite of an expert advisor here. I'm actually going to be your, You're in-house beginner and that's how I'm gonna add some value to you.

Dude, even Zuck's into it. Remember the whole, the Zuck meme about smoking meats?

Big Ray or whatever you wanna call him.

Yeah, he loves smoking meats. And you're into this. I know that for a minute, Austin, you were talking about how you're like, I wanna partner with creators 'cause like once you can attach with some of these folks, you just, you kill it. Is that what you would do?

I mean, for this, yeah, I think that is still, ever, it's very popular these days to partner with creators. I still think that's the future. I still think we're scratching the surface. You know, there's Feastables and Prime and everyone talks about those and it's definitely been played out in terms of talking about, but I still think ultimately you're going to walk into a liquor store, you're going to walk into Target and every brand is going to have a face and association because why wouldn't it, right? If there's a brand that could have nobody attached to it, or a brand that could have someone attached to it, why wouldn't that brand have the built-in distribution of you guys or someone, you know, more widely well-known or just someone? Like, I just don't see how that doesn't play out. And so, you know, it's been done with the biggest creators. I think the real opportunity is in the niches.

Sean, how big do you think, first of all, we don't really have that many like cool interests that you could have like an MFM product in Target. Like, what are we going to fucking sell? Red Solo cups? Like, I don't even know. Like, what is there? Like Tupperware? Like, I don't know, like what we could possibly sell.

What would be the dumbest thing that would be associated with us?

Like a notebook? I don't know. I have no idea.

But MFM slinkies, baby. Let's go.

How popular? Like what's like, so Barstool has like the Barstool Razor. They're in stores. So, and they're a way bigger brand than we are.

Well, they have the frozen pizza. They have like other things.

They have a bunch of stuff. How famous do we have to be, do you think, in order to make a dent into like getting sales at Target?

So I don't think that famous if you pick the right product. I actually think we're past the point—

or do you become more famous? Do you get more famous because your shit's in Target? You're like, oh my God, they're actually in Target.

I think we're past the point where just fame is going to drive, right? I think that works for, for a few people, but I think you actually need to have a great product. I think you had them on the pod You know, Dani Austin and her husband Jordan. Yeah, Dani's big, but Dani's not as big as some of these other creators. But her brand is worth way more than almost every brand out there because it's actually a product that has a need. It's not, hey, we're going to rip off, you know, one of the biggest brands on the planet. It was a truly— it's a great product.

Oh, Sam, we could have done Hims or like the TRT subscriptions.

Yeah, we should have done Hims.

That would have been our move. Have you ever taken it?

I don't know.

Is it good?

I've never taken it either. I've never tried it. Austin, have you? You're younger than we are. Have you done it?

No, I have not.

All right, guys, we know what we're doing next time we hang out.

Yeah.

Playing games and doing a podcast.

We're going to be playing swords.

So I think that this is going to be like the new newsletter thing. I think that people looked at Feastables, they looked at Prime, and they looked at Skims, and they're like, creator brand. And every creator's like, I need to do a creator brand. And every like former dropshipper is like, I just need a creator and then we win. And they're all going to go do this and then they're all going to wash out. There's obviously going to be a few winners because the difference, right? Like what Logan Paul did with Prime is so different than what most creators do with their product. Like that guy, A, had like actually like a humongous audience, took it everywhere, built the brand sort of like brick by brick. Oh, he's at WrestleMania, guess what? He's going to fucking hit the guy over the head with a giant bottle of Prime. Or like, you know, there's one, and it was him and KSI, right? So they got two huge creators, two big markets to pair together to go into this industry. You know, MrBeast is like, I'm going to do Feastables, but he's not just like, hey, go ahead guys, go buy my chocolate. He's like, I rebuilt Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory for $3 million, and that's how I'm going to launch this thing. I'm going to make the product the content. The content is the product. There's no line between the two. And, you know, so, you know, he, those worked because the creators really were like actual entrepreneurs and partnered with world-class operators to pull them off, right? Like we talked about the guys behind Prime. Those guys are monsters. Uh, you're right. Those guys are in their 20s and mega billionaires for a reason, have built multiple beverage brands for a reason. The guy who built Conor McGregor's whiskey brand was also the guy who did like, whatever, 2 other alcohol brands that were multi-billion dollar million dollar brands that they, they partnered with him to do Proper Twelve. And same thing, Conor is like mega, mega famous and went all the way with the promotion versus other people may not. I think the Dani Austin story is good because it was like her real story was like postpartum. I was losing hair. I was ashamed of it. I bought wigs for the last year. I've been wearing wigs while I've been an influencer. But instead, I really wanted to find a product that would work. And here's the product. And here's my before and after. And it's like, that's like the perfect combination of things. You have high margin product, you have repeat purchase, 'cause people are gonna have to, they have to keep applying the thing. You have a visual before and after, and you have a true story around the creator's like actual need versus just like a nice to have. And you know, that is like the, you know, that's the, the Yahtzee of putting these, these together. Most people are not gonna be able to do that.

Yeah, but Austin, you could do it. You, you, you've got that operator gene. You could be one of these nerds.

Well, the thing is we're all doing it in the B2B space, right? So what we're doing is not, is like, okay, we have 1/100th the audience of a MrBeast or a Logan Paul. Cool. So we need to sell a product that's 100 times more expensive than a bottle of Prime, right? He sells his for $4 or whatever. We're trying to sell products that cost $4,000 or $40,000 or $400,000 a year by doing B2B software, right? That's why HubSpot did it with us. And I think this is the other thing, like, Austin, you did a thread that was like, this is the new thing, but it's like, dude, people have been doing celebrity endorsements forever. The difference is that now the celebrities own equity.

I'm like, oh yeah, people can do this. Wait a minute. We did it. That's us.

Exactly. That's good for their brand, right? Like to help them sell a product that's worth thousands of dollars, right? It would be smart of us to do that. Not the, uh, the MFM, whatever, like Target brand nail clippers. Yeah, like, yeah, exactly. Adult Legos. Yeah.

And Sam, I think really that is you and Hampton.

Like you really are, I mean, it's a, what, $8,000 product. Like I think that is the perfect example. You may not be Tony Robbins, right? You may not be Gary Vee, right? Maybe they're the equivalent of like the Logan Paul in B2B, but you found a great product and it makes a lot of sense for your brand and your audience. And so I think it's a home run.

Yeah. Keep shilling.

Speaking of Tony Robbins, Austin, you know, this episode's going to come out right after the episode with Tony Robbins. So, uh, yeah.

Which is good for Austin. I think that's good for you.

No, I mean, maybe, but I meant to start with this actually. So maybe we'll cut this and put it at the beginning. But you know, when you start a, not to shill Hampton again, I hate to do this, but when you start a Hampton session with your group, you air grievances, right? Everyone says, can you be honest with everyone? Can you really have a good dialogue and discussion? Or is there anything you need to get out in the open? Well, clearly we could, because I didn't say this, but I do need to tell everyone that Monday You and I were supposed to talk like 1 o'clock. Sean's like, I'm going to call you, Austin. I'm going to give you a call. 1 o'clock comes by, no call. 2 o'clock comes by, no call. So I text you, I'm like, Sean, what's going on? You're like, oh, I'm prepping for the big guest.

You texted me, thanks for the call. Which is even better.

And so I'm like, Sean, what the heck's going on? You're like, I'm prepping for the big guest. I'm like, oh, Sean's hyping me up. Like 10 minutes later, by the way, that was actually Tony Robbins, not you.

Yeah. So basically like he reached out or someone on his team reached out. I had a thing planned and also Sean is like the biggest fan. So Sean, it was awesome that you got to like just hang out with a guy you admired. How was it?

It was intense is the way I would explain it. I mean, when I tell you I prepared for this, not only did I basically spend every waking moment for 2 days just like preparing for this thing, which I never do for podcasts. I've also kind of been preparing for 10 years because I follow the guy and I'm a big fan of what he's done. I've been to 3 of his seminars, like, right? I know a lot and there's kind of a curse of knowing too much going in.

And so, like meeting your heroes type of thing.

Yeah. It's like you want it to go well so bad. It's almost like you squeeze the, like, don't squeeze the bar of soap too hard. It just squirts out. Like if you want it to go so well, it's going to fuck up. I'll tell you guys the funny part.

So like, interesting analogy. Interesting analogy.

It's not the bar of soap analogy you thought I was going to do. You know, I took the road less traveled there. So, so we're getting ready for the pod. It's me and Ari. We're sitting there and his team's like, you know, team's like swarming the computer setup. They're like, Tony will be here shortly. Uh, you know, just everything's okay. And I'm like, all right, sweet. I never get here early. You know, I'm like chronically late, but for this one, 20 minutes early. So I'm sitting there for like 10 minutes and I could just feel myself getting cold. I'm like, oh no, I can't just sit here. And I was like, I gotta use the shit Tony teaches you. You gotta be in state. You wanna have a peak performance, you gotta be in a peak state. Of course, right? Athletes do that. Well, guess what? What's one step down from an athlete? A musician. What's 25 steps down from that? A podcaster. And so I got up and I start doing my like Tony Robbins power move where I'm like, I'm basically doing this like really dorky, like mid-back stretch to like, you know, unlock my fucking chakras or something like that. Try to get some energy flowing. And then I just hear, hello? And it's Tony Robbins. And I like rush back to my desk. I'm like, oh, hey. Yeah, sorry. You were just staring at my chair there as I was doing like, you know, Tony Robbins stretches in the corner trying to get hyped for this.

He just hears like offscreen Sean saying like, I'm the man. Who's the man?

I'm the man.

I'm the man.

Even better. I'm visualizing. Thanks, Tony. I had a good time too. You want my number? Let me get it for you. I'm working backwards from the desired end state, just like you did to me. But here's it off camera.

And it went well?

I mean, I'm not going to give away too much, but let me just say this. Tears were shed and they weren't mine. And if there's one mark of a successful Tony, like life accomplishment, I wouldn't say he cried, wouldn't say, but he, you know, teared up. And so, you know, I thought that that was a, you know, a good thing, but it's really hard to interview somebody who is a stage performer. Like Sam, you must feel like this sometimes when I'm just monologuing, monologuing, monologuing, like right now he's on, he's like a next level at that. And it's all good stuff, but it's like, you know, it's like you poke the thing and an avalanche comes out.

Were you ever like, uh, all right, Tony, shut the fuck up.

Let me ask my next question. So, uh, this guy's like, I only have 45 minutes.

They were like, um, look, you got 45 minutes with Tony. And I was like, 45 minutes? Geez, this guy does 9-hour-a-day seminars for 4 days straight. Like, what am I going to do in 45 minutes? And then, and then I'm like, hey, uh, you know, actually it might be better if we do this in person. I'm, I will fly to you tomorrow and I'll be there. And his team was like, um, no thanks. Uh, we'll do it. You stay over there. We'll do it this way instead. But it was, it was good. I enjoyed it. Uh, I do think I'm going to just make a prediction. Austin, sorry to big dog you with the Tony Robbins thing, but I'll give you this compliment. I think people are going to like this episode more because the rapport and also just like the style of stuff we talk about is so like, you know, on point for, for what this podcast is. Can I ask you a different story though about a big name?

Yeah, go ahead.

A couple of years ago, you texted us that you were going to dinner with SBF. And at the time, SBF was the next Mark Zuckerberg. SBF was multi-billionaire of the fastest growing private startup, boy genius from MIT who wore like cargo jorts. And we were like, dude, tell us more. And you were like, I can't, I gotta put away my phone right now. Like, you know, see you later, suckers. I'm going to go have dinner with SBF. Can you now, 2 years later, can you tell us the story? What was it like going to dinner with SBF?

Yeah, he's not going to do anything now, right?

He's in jail for a long time, I think. So maybe one day he'll get out and he'll listen to this episode. I don't think I've told this story publicly, so I'll tell it. But I have a friend, investor at a big VC, invested in FTX. And this is probably, I don't know, 2021. So SBF was SBF, right? This is pre him obviously getting caught as being a fraud, but he's at the height of his power. He was, whatever the stat was, the top richest per— you know, the richest person under 35 in the world.

Oh, the one-liner for anyone who doesn't know who SBF is: Sam Bankman-Fried. He was like the Bernie Madoff of crypto, 31-year-old worth $20 billion, and it all came crashing down. Now he's in prison for fraud. Okay, go ahead.

Great, thanks for the background. Um, it's going to make me look really good. Um, so I, uh, didn't know that much about him though. Like, I didn't do any research I'd heard him talk a couple of times, but I didn't know any of the stories. And so my friend's like, great trip to the Bahamas. I'm like, I'm in. It's for his birthday. So we show up and I've been to nice places, right? I've stayed at the Ritz-Carlton. I've stayed all these nice places. And so I thought I knew where the rich and famous live. I was wrong. This place, it's called the Albany in the Bahamas. This is where the rich and famous live. Like this place was, there are 250-foot yachts. Everywhere. I mean, this is, I think Tiger Woods owns it. Justin Bieber, who I actually met the next day, lives there. Will Smith lives there. Like, this is where the rich and famous live. It was nuts. And so I get there, I'm like, oh shit. Like, yeah, we're in for it. So we show up, we actually stayed at someone else at FTX's house. They put you in the guest boat, which was a pretty, pretty nice guest house though. No, it was not a boat, but it was a house. And so we show up. And we get there. Here's the first thing I observe, right? It's like the penthouse corner, $25 million apartment. I had no idea what I was walking into. I walk in and there are 50 pairs of shoes lying everywhere, like crappy Nikes. I'm like, this dude's worth $30 billion and there are all these weird Nikes laying around. And my friend's like, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, like the entire exec team lives together in this one apartment. And I'm like, oh boy, what are we, what is going on? And so Obviously now we know in hindsight, like, you know, there are articles, who knows if it's true, they were having orgies and all type of weird shit. So we, I knew all this, like I knew some weird stuff was going on because 50 people.

Did you get the orgy vibe? Did you get like, did, could you smell it?

Smell?

Yeah.

Smell, but there was a weird alpha attitude that people had towards Sam. Like he was clearly the alpha in the room, even though he's super nerdy, super techie. But he just had this weird thing where people, anyone who said anything, looked to Sam to make sure they approved. Like it was clear he was in charge. He was the man. And so again, first thing, shoes. Second thing, you look to the left and Sam Parr is in the kitchen cooking food, which I was like, oh, well, probably the chef cook us dinner. No, Sam is there cooking us food. He does not turn his back, his face to us. So he's, his back is to us and he starts having a full conversation with us. Without ever making eye contact. No eye contact. He goes, the first thing he ever says to me and my friend is, so what do you think about Indian crypto exchanges?

What?

And I'm like, what is going on?

He thinks you're Indian because he hasn't turned around yet. He doesn't realize you're a white guy.

I don't know. So, so my friend goes, did you have an answer to that? I probably said 4 words the entire dinner. They were speaking a different, a different language, you know, all crypto stuff. So I show up in the kitchen and Sam's cooking us dinner. I put dinner in quotes. Everyone got one Beyond sausage and two Brussels sprouts. That was the meal for everyone. So I think the vegan stuff's true because he cooked us all Beyond sausage, right? So that was pretty weird. We sit down. So again, $20 million apartment, but there's hardware everywhere, cables everywhere. It was like post-apocalyptic, right? It was super, super weird. Being in this $20 million apartment, but there's like PS3s and Xboxes like everywhere, a complete mess of an apartment. And so we sit down and I think the craziest thing about the dinner was Sam was a genius when it came to the things he had to know for FTX and crypto. So for example, Tom Brady was sponsored by FTX, right? Sam could have told you every single thing about Tom Brady, could have told you his stat line, everything about him. But I don't think Sam knew what a first down was. I don't think he knew a single thing about football. But if it benefited crypto, he was the smartest person on the planet. Same thing with politicians. He could go every single senator, every Supreme Court justice. He could tell you their exact stance on crypto. I don't think he could tell you a single other thing about them. It was incredible.

Dude, Sean, you and I, I don't wanna, I don't wanna say their name because I don't want this to be an insult, but you and I hung out with someone who was the best in the whole world at what they do. And, well, fuck it, I'll say it. It was MrBeast. He was the best at whatever. This is not an insult, I guess. It was MrBeast. You know, he's the best in the world. And I remember, I think it was either you or me or me and someone else. And I, we were just shooting the shit about like a TV show. That I thought everyone knew about. And he had, he had no idea. And I was like, I was just like curious about this. So I asked him more pop culture stuff. Didn't know anything about like this normal stuff. He's like, sorry, I just pay attention to YouTube. Like I, that's all I do. He had the exact same thing where he didn't know anything about anything outside of his expertise.

There's a funny interview with Conor McGregor on BBC. It's like, you know, usually UFC gets covered by these small niche outlets, but one time like he got on the main BBC, they were like, They were shooting the shit before the interview. They were like, oh, how about the game? You know, whoever, like some soccer game, like some famous soccer game. And he's like, he just laughs. He's like, he's like, haha.

Yeah, it was great.

He goes, yeah, it was great. And they go, you don't watch soccer, do you? He goes, no, I have no idea what you're talking about. And he goes, he goes, he goes, um, I don't know what's happening in the news. I don't know what's happening in the world. Uh, he goes, I have lost my mind to the game and I only know about my shit. I don't give a damn about anything else. And I think that's like actually kind of common for people who get like top 0.0111% of like what they're trying to become.

It's like when they asked Trump what his favorite like verse in the Bible was and he goes, you know what? I love all of them. I love all of them. Yeah.

Too hard to pick.

I love them all. That's what Conor McGregor was like. I love all the sports.

Well, you seen the video of LeBron? He's on Instagram Live and people are like, oh, who are your favorite soccer players? And LeBron's like, cause he's like, I love soccer.

And LeBron asked him about the team he owns. They were like, who are your favorite PSG players or whatever? And he's like, he owns the team. And he's like, he names one and he's like, you know, such as, such as, I mean, you know, so and so forth. There are so many, et cetera, et cetera.

Such as you only use the middle words of a sentence.

You didn't say the subject.

Did you get fraud vibes when you were there, or were you also tricked?

I mean, I was totally enamored because the perception at the Albany, like there was a buzz. We took a cab to the Albany and the guy's like, oh, you're going to, you know, like the Albany. That's where they, that's where FTX is headquartered. Like, oh yeah. We're like, we're going to see Sam. And everyone's like, oh my God. Everyone's like, you know, one of the security guards said, You know, here, you know, you think the celebrities are famous, the famous people, they want to meet Sam. Sam doesn't want to meet the people, they want to go meet Sam. Like this guy, he just had this aura around him. Everyone wanted to meet him. Now in hindsight, I feel like a complete moron because there were so many red flags. Every, you know, the whole effective altruism thing he, he parodied. You guys know about that?

Yeah. Make as much money as you can to give it away.

Yes. So I heard about this and everyone's like, yeah, you know, Sam lives a really low-key lifestyle. I'm like, guys, he lives in a $25 or $20 million apartment. It's the nicest apartment I've ever been in. And they're all like, no, he only lives there because it's the most convenient to the FTX office.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. He lives in an orgy compound and he lives a low-key life.

We just drove by the FTX office. There were 75 neighborhoods in between here and the office. Like that doesn't add up. What is going on? Yeah. Because these videos came out that was like Sam's still drives his '93 Corolla.

And he's just like, shrugs, like, why do I need to get a better car? And it's like, oh damn, this guy's full of shit. You know, like, wow.

He's got like a full Olympic-sized swimming pool on his balcony, but he's an EA. He's not spending his money.

There was a rumor that he was, that they were high on some type of like, you know, Adderall type of medicine that was like a patch. Did you see any of that shit laying around?

No, I wish again, like hindsight's 20/20. I wish I was looking for this stuff 'cause I was just so enamored by this guy and how well he knew crypto. But I just wish I started like digging and looking through more stuff. I'm sure there was crazy shit everywhere, dude.

You also, I don't know if you probably can't say this, but you went and hung out with Kid Rock as well, which is like a crazy story. You've hung out with some cool people. You've had some diverse experiences.

Yeah, the Kid Rock thing, I think I might spoke about that last time. The Kid Rock thing was awesome. He is, He's obviously super interesting. He told us he is the only person to play at both President Obama and President Trump's inaugurations. And he knows both of them.

He's the only one that can heal this country. He's the only one that could bring us together.

He lives on this compound. He actually, on his compound, which it is a compound, he has like a full bar. And I don't mean like the physical bar. I mean like a whole a pub at, on its compound. He also lives, and I, it was being constructed, but he lives in a house that is a replica of the White House. I'll show you guys pictures. It, he modeled it after the White House. And so you walk up, you're like, oh my God. Like it actually looks exactly like the White House looks like. It's nuts.

All right everyone, really quick. This is Sam. I'm going to do a thrill of the shill. So basically I've got an ask for everyone out there. I just launched this new podcast. It's called MoneyWise. It's a personal finance podcast for high net worth people. You can find it by looking up MoneyWise on Spotify and iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts. But here's the deal. This podcast is a ton of work and I'm only hosting the first handful of episodes. I need someone to be the host of this podcast. I have a feeling it's going to be pretty big and it's going to be great for whoever hosts it, but I need help hosting it. I don't want to do all the work. Our first episode, you can find it on whatever, all those platforms. It's pretty great. I think it's with the guy who sold his company for $200 million and we get to hear like how he breaks down his net worth, how much he spends each month, all this transparent money stuff. That's pretty interesting. And so if you want to host it, I'm actually not going to give out my contact information. You've got to figure out how to contact me because that's what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to find guests. So contact me and let me know if you want to be the host of this and send me something that is impressive that shows that you have what it takes. All right, back to the show.

Austin, did you ever hear the story Cody Ko told on our pod about when he went to Elon Musk's house for a party?

No.

It's so funny. It's a very short story, but I find it hilarious, even though it's not meant to be a funny story. He's just telling what happened, but the whole idea is so funny to me. So he goes, he's like, yeah, I was hanging out with, uh, so Cody's like, you know, LA YouTuber, cool guy, also makes some music. So I think they were hanging out with, um, Post Malone. So he's at a thing with Post Malone. He's like, oh, Elon asked us to, you know, come over for a party. He shows him his phone. He's like, you want to go? And he's like, He's like, uh, of course. Okay, let's go. So they go to Elon Musk's house. I was like, what's it like? He's like, first thing, no furniture in the entire place, an empty house. And he was like, uh, does anybody live here? Like, what is this? And he's like, no, no, Elon's house is across the street. This is like his party. He hosts people here. He lives over there. I was like, oh, naturally. Okay. Stupid question by me. Dumb. All right. I won't ask you a question. He's like, so we're just sitting there and he's like, uh, it's like a fire and they're just kind of like eating, you know, like, uh, eating marshmallows or whatever the fuck. And he's like, he's like, you know, it got kind of late. People are doing their own thing. And he's like, you know, all right, I'm just going to go. I'm just going to kind of dip out of here. This is like, you know, it's, it's late. This was weird. And he's like, so he's trying to leave. He doesn't know his way out of the house. So he's like trying to get out. He turns the corner and it's just Elon making out with Grimes. And so he just turns and he opens this door and he's like, He's like, he's like, dude, I thought I was just going to open this door and there's just a rocket. And they're like, get in. There's no time. He's like, I just wanted to leave so bad.

Have you guys read the Elon book?

I didn't read it. I'm kind of over Elon.

Sean and I are both over him hardcore, but I don't want to read that book because it sounds so stressful.

Yeah, I just finished it. I read it over the holidays and It definitely gives you a different lens into Elon Musk. You really see the full spectrum of who he is as a person. And I think people try to draw inspiration from Elon, and I think you can in little bits and pieces. But to me, my big takeaway from the whole book was like, Elon is hardcore. Like, that is the one word he uses, and like, that is who he is. He's hardcore. He's extreme. I don't think you can be like 70% Elon and be successful. Like he just has no regard for any person he works with. He's basically fired everyone he works with, right? He, he, you know, he treats his family like shit. He's scarred from issues with his dad. And my big takeaway was like Elon's this unique one, you know, one in a billion, one in 10 billion people. And all these people who are inspired, that's great, but don't try to copy him because this guy is, is to the extreme. And I don't think almost anyone can, can be as extreme in every facet of life. He doesn't sleep, he doesn't vacation, he has crazy relationships. I mean, obviously that's all public with, with all, uh, you know, he has so many kids, but it's all, everything's extreme. Every single thing he does is to the, as extreme as you can possibly do it. It's, it's incredible. You get, you should read the book.

Dude, I just don't want my blood pressure to rise reading that. Like just hearing you talk about this, because on one hand I'm like, when I hear about him, I'm like, Oh, I'm soft. I should step it up. And then on the other hand, I'm like, his life sucks. I do not want that. And so there is that whole, you can't be, you can't be like him and be 70%.

Have I told you my David Goggins point? I think that's what applies here. Which is what? You only want to be David Goggins for 1 hour a day. And that's the whole trick with David Goggins. You, you, you can't be, you don't want to be out on all of David Goggins because he's inspiring and he's so tough and he's so like mentally strong, that there's something to learn there. You also don't want to subscribe to the David Goggins lifestyle or even like try to emulate, you know, half of what he's doing. You would just want for 1 hour a day when you're working out to just shift into David Goggins gear for that 1 hour and then never, never touch it again. Like, I don't know if you saw this post that was, uh, so David Goggins is engaged and his fiancée, fucking insane.

It sounds like an Onion article.

I was just gonna say, there's this video of her fall. I didn't even know he's engaged. I don't know how he's in a relationship, first of all, but here's what I actually saw. We put this on the YouTube, but just like, YouTube may delete our account.

Are they like, we just got home from dinner or something?

First, there's a picture of his toes, which is just like, I don't know if you've ever seen an ex-athlete's toes, but they're like all nasty as hell. This guy, I don't even know what's going on. He's literally just ripping off his big toenail because he's like, ah, don't need this shit anymore. Like, and then his spouse is like, no, David, please don't.

And like, whatever.

And he's like, why are his feet so jacked up? Because he's running 100 miles at a time. And so she posts this thing. She's like, yeah, a lot of people think that David only turns it on for the camera. I just want to show you this. He just, he's 2 weeks, 2 months out of, uh, you know, 2 weeks off of surgery for his leg where they like broke his leg and fixed it for whatever reason. And, um, he just came home and was like, I want to run 100 miles tonight. And so she's following him in the car. She's been with him in the car for like 8 hours. She's following behind at like 5 miles an hour or whatever. And he's just running. He's on, you know, hour 7.

Yeah. Hour 7.

It's like, you know, 3 AM and he's almost done with 100 miles.

I think it said like, I think it said like, we got home from dinner and David just looks at me and goes, I've got to go run 100 miles now.

Or like, I got to run a truck. What are they called? Trucks or something like that? I got to go do a truck tonight. I forget what they're called, but like a ruck. So I'm going for a ruck tonight and I don't, I'm this out of shape.

I don't even know what a ruck is, let alone running with a, it's running or walking with a backpack on that has weight in it.

Okay, so he's doing a 100-mile weighted run. And then you see that, you're like, well, this is fucking stupid. This is not the way to live. That's like the only intelligent response to that is that. And so the trick with David Goggins, you want to be David Goggins for 1 hour a day. The trick with Elon Musk is you only want to be Elon Musk like 15% of the time in your company, right? When you're establishing the vision of like thinking big about what you're doing. He's amazing. You want to channel your inner Elon. When you are, you know, telling a story about your product, the way he demos, you know, Tesla every time and sells hundreds of thousands of cars before they're even ready. People pay money just to wait for the car, right? That's when you want to reserve your thing. Or like when he came into Twitter was like, I'm going to do this really hard thing, hardcore. I'm going to do a sprint. I'm going to sleep in the office. And like, I'm going to make sure everybody knows if you're in this, you're in this in a hardcore way versus like, dude, Austin, I don't know how you run your company, but I was always on eggshells with my employees. Like, Hey, we got to do this tomorrow. But if that's too much, Tuesday's okay. Right? Like, yeah.

Is that okay with you?

I don't know. I just don't know what the boundaries are versus like MrBeast or David Goggins or Elon. These guys have like kind of no sense of boundaries. They just, they're on their mission and you're either all in or you're out. And I think that's pretty cool. And that's the part to steal.

Yeah, I think so. I think the thing to steal in particular is that vision, right? Elon starts with the vision and then builds the business, builds the business model. That's really impressive. I think the way he treats people, the way he, you know, some of the things he says that could, that could be in the 85% of stuff you leave out.

Right, right. And actually SBF is kind of the same way. The SBF book kind of highlighted a bunch of things that happened. My friend read the SBF book and he was like, I think I'm supposed to hate SBF, you know, because of everything that happened. But reading this book made me like him more. And it wasn't because of the spin. He's like, Actually, I found a few things I really respect about what he did. He's like, let's take away the fact that he was taking customer funds to do these things, but like, let's just say he was using the company's money or his own money or whatever, right? Which he was also doing. He just overextended and used company, uh, the customer funds too. But they were like, the fact that he was like, okay, if I have $100 million, he didn't like feel any fear towards losing it, nor did he feel any attachment to it. He's like, great. Let's use the $100 million to pay off Steph Curry, you know, Tom Brady and whoever, because we're going to build the brand that way. And like, go and cut absurd deals in order to pull these things off. Or like, there's that email that leaked of him and the guy in LA where the guy, he's like, I went to this dinner with this guy in LA. He's the most connected person I've ever seen at this dinner was whoever, like, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Leonardo DiCaprio, and like, whatever, 12 other people. He's like, we need to give this guy $200 million to invest in his fund. And I think he'll open all the doors for us after that. Wire him the money now, please. And like, just the ability to throw your weight around is actually pretty badass. And if you take away the fraud stuff, I know other successful people in our life that do this. Andrew Wilkinson does this. He throws his weight around when he wants something, or he like sets his target on someone, a relationship, or a business he wants to buy or whatever. He really throws his weight around in a way that I definitely don't, right? Like Sam, when he wanted to buy The Hustle, dude, he's like, he flew me private up to his house.

Yeah.

He's like, oh, you, he is like, I want to buy this company. Let's talk. And you're like, cool, we can talk on the phone. He's like, no, let's meet in person. You're like, ah, I don't like to fly and Canada's far away. He's like, my jet will be there tomorrow. Let's go. And he throws his weight around in a way that I think I am like often either too cheap or too afraid or just don't even think about those options. And I'm learning to steal that part of my game. Have you guys thought about that or do you guys think about how you're going to use that?

I'm the same way as you. I appreciate it and I'm fearful of it. It's a very scary thing. And, but I, when I see it, I get inspired.

Yeah. I think it's a, for me, it's a conviction play, right? I'm more inspired by, like I read the Warren Buffett book, for example, right? And he's more cerebral in the way he does it, but it's the same thing. It's like, He sees an opportunity and he's not dipping his toe in the water. He's not a diversification guy. It's like, oh, Bank of America's going under. I'm going to buy a ton of preferred debt. This is a can't-lose bet. And by the way, I'm sitting on however many billions of dollars on my balance sheet, so I'm going to own whatever, 10% of Bank of America. And so I love when people have conviction and they say, you know what, this is it. I'm taking all the chips, all the social capital, everything I've made, and I'm doubling down on this.

Dude, your chips on the table moment right now is just praying Bill Ackman doesn't crush your company because Morning Brew is owned by—

Taking your chips and running away, hiding under the table, actually. Speaking of throwing your weight around, right? That's what he's doing right now. He's trying to throw his weight around in a way.

I think, I actually don't think it's going to happen. Morning Brew is owned by Business Insider, which is owned by Axel Springer, and Bill Ackman is at war with BI and Axel Springer.

Austin, I'd like to hear your response to this.

Yeah. What's their official response? You just gotta message Bill Ackman and be like, Bill, same team, same team. Like, I'm all right.

Yeah. I'll save my response for the private group chats.

I think that, uh, the, I think you don't want to be excited to, to just like plow chips into something because you're, you're, you're naturally going to just kind of make that, make an impulsive wrong decision. But I do think there's a good question, which is, am I throwing my weight around? Right? Like, am I, You know, how hard, how much gas versus how much brakes am I applying to the things that I want in my life? That's one of my themes, I think, for this year that I'm going to focus on.

Ramit Sethi has this good thing where he talks about spending and he was like, and he'll message me privately. He's like, what interests you? And I'm like, well, I've got this cleaning lady that comes every 2 weeks. I wish they would come every day almost. And he's like, I'm going to challenge you to figure out what makes you happy. And I want you to spend 10 times the amount that you're spending now. And so like for him, it's like travel. And he goes, when I travel, I will spend $50,000 on a trip. And that's a ton of money, but I know that's what makes me happy. And I'm going to 10 times spend what I used to spend because that's what I love. And that's what he was saying to me about services like cleaning ladies, things like that. He goes, I challenge you to spend 10 times more. And that's like a miniature version of what you're talking about.

Also, what about you? You've made a bunch of money selling Morning Brew. Do you use it in any way that was interesting or like improve the quality of your life meaningfully?

Yeah. The big thing for me is I love traveling. I love staying at nice hotels on vacation. And so I, when I, when I travel, that, that is my money dial is traveling. I think roomies is too, actually.

You were texting me about this Aman Hotel. What's the deal? Do I need to know about this? What is it?

Have you heard of it? It's just like supposed to be the fanciest hotel ever.

I've heard about it like 2 times this year and I don't know if I just started hanging out with different people or it's new. Is this, I'm guessing this has been around for like, for like a while.

We're growing a lot, but essentially Aman, I think, is the standard for customer service for any business, right? You know, we're talking about the, the Milk Road for X. I think the— a good way to think about a business is what's the Aman for X? So Aman is just the absolute top customer service. I mean, I think the cheapest Aman— there's maybe 60 or 70 of them— the cheapest one is maybe $1,500 a night. I think they're regularly $2,500. There's one out west somewhere, I think I'm like, you're Arizona.

Yeah. That's what people love.

It's like $6,000 a night and people go there and they're like, it was worth it.

What do they do?

Why is it? How would that be worth it?

Well, it's beautiful for one, but it's sort of like, remember Sean, The Bear, that episode? Like, it's like season 2. I'm like, you better be touching my body for $6,000 a night. But yeah, but you remember, like, you, I, like, I remember the, there's like season 2, episode 6 or something is where the guy goes and learns how to like wash the silverware perfectly. It's like that. And I think that, that, that type of excellence helped make it popular where people are like, oh, I respect this craftsmanship. But have you been, Austin? I've never been.

So I've never stayed at one. I'm— that's— I'm planning my honeymoon now, and that's, that's our goal, is stay at a bunch of, uh, Ammans. But I've been to a bunch when I travel. So I travel, I always try to get like a drink or go to them. They're also interesting because they're typically not in the heart of a city. They typically are on the outskirts a little bit. They actually— and I think this is really cool— I think they just intentionally, they make you travel there a little bit, right? It's not accessible. And that's part of the allure is it's like a destination. You have to really want to go to an Aman to be at the Aman. Now they've grown and they have one in New York City, so maybe that's not quite as true, but they really want you to, to like be in the Aman essence when they're there. And it's just, again, it's, it's the pinnacle of customer service.

Give me an example. What are they doing that's such good customer service?

Yeah, like I went to a Motel 8 with a slip and slide. Do they have that?

I mean, just the highest quality food, the best quality bed, bedding, the mattress, every little thing, right? When the toilet paper is folded the right direction, every detail is perfect. And if nice hotels is not your money dial, you're going to be like, I just wasted $5,000 a night. But if luxury and having everything you need catered towards, if that's something that you get joy out of, You're going to go and you're going to love it.

I get why you like it.

A no-slip slide.

Yeah. Is there a mini fridge though or not? I just need like KitKat and animal crackers at midnight and I'm gravy. Like, like, life's cream cheese. Just give me that and we good. And a little Keurig machine. Austin, thanks for coming on, man. This is good.

Yeah, this is fun.

All right. That's the pod.