Decoding The Extreme Personalities of The Top 1% (Savage Mindset)

Egan is great. He has a very aggressive bedside manner. An aggressive bedside manner is like the nicest way possible of calling the guy a dick. This guy's definitely an asshole. And they're like, oh, it's like he's just very direct. He's very honest. He's a straight shooter. And those are all just ways of being like, this guy will trample you. What's up, Sam? Are you— I don't know if you're ready, but I'm going to ratchet up the intensity a little bit here. I'm going to start high intensity on the podcast. I'm going to talk about some high intensity individuals. Would you like to hear about some high intensity individuals?

I wore my high school letterman jacket. If you're not, if you haven't noticed, I'm shocked you haven't made fun of me. So I'm ready for high intensity. If you can't tell, I look like a, like the I was the big man on campus, really.

You look like Al Bundy right now, like just dreaming about the good old days. So I don't know if you're ready for this.

I want to be— I wish I could have took state. That's the vibe I'm in. And so I'm ready for some intense stuff.

I'm going to tell you about some people that I think you know of. A couple of them I think you know a lot about, but they're all tied together and they are all what I will call all-in individuals.

They're all insane.

They're all kind of insane and they're insane in the same way, which is that they are all the way in on what they're doing. And I was reading their stories and I was kind of inspired and they're all very different stories, but then I realized, no, no, no, it's actually the same story. It's about being all in. Okay, so who are these people? First, I wanna start with a guy named Egan Durbin. I think you know who Egan Durbin is, but I don't know, do you know his full story?

I don't know his full story. He kind of is shrouded in mystery a little bit. I know that he's been on top of the game since he was probably 30 or 35, and he kind of controls, it seems like, almost LA a little bit.

A little bit. Yeah. So he is the managing director of Silver Lake, and Silver Lake is a giant private equity investor that invests in technology. So they have $72 billion in assets under management, which is, I'm pretty sure that's bigger than every venture fund combined.

Did you say 72?

Yeah, 72. So if you take out the Vision Fund, I'm pretty sure this is bigger than like almost all VCs combined. Okay, so who is this guy? And, uh, you know, he's got a crazy track record I want to talk through, but like first I just want to give you a few quotes again about these all-in individuals. And I give you these quotes because even though I don't do anything like this guy, I'm not a fund manager, I'm not a managing director of a private equity fund, I have no desire to be so, I do see some of these descriptions of him and I'm like, it'd be nice to be called that. It'd be nice to have that be a true thing somebody could say about me. And sometimes you just got to hear it. You just got to hear that level 12 exists for you to even unlock that part of your brain. Okay, so let me tell you something. So he goes to school, goes to Georgetown, he goes to Morgan Stanley, and then he is known immediately in the banking world. They interviewed some people and they go, He came in as an entry-level junior guy, right? Early 20s. And they go, Egan was immediately comfortable at the grownups' table. And they go, he just carried himself very differently. It's not that he had the experience. It's not even that he was smarter than anybody, but he carried himself like, I belong in that conversation and I'm going to show up that way. And I'm not going to just like label myself as a, as a junior here. And I'm just here to learn. I'm just happy to be here. Didn't ever have that energy. The next thing that I heard, Egan is great. He has a very aggressive bedside manner. An aggressive bedside manner is like the nicest way possible of calling the guy a dick. This guy's definitely an asshole. And they're like, oh, it's like he's just very direct. He's very honest. He's a straight shooter. And those are all just ways of being like, this guy will trample you. And aggressive bedside manner is the next thing I learned. 1999, he leaves his banking, the banking world to join Silver Lake. And he's like, I think technology, the internet, this is 1999. It's the dot-com boom is happening. He's like, I think this is the next big thing. I'm going to go here. And so he goes and he's like, he does a very smart career move. And if you see this career move, you know, this person's a winner, which is they join a thing that's working, but instead of staying at the mothership, they're like, hey, what's the next frontier? And they're like, oh, we need to expand into Europe. He's like, cool, you got like plans or like a person in charge of that? They're like, uh, not yet. We want to do that next year and we're going to do a search to find somebody. He's like, cool, I'll move there now and I'll do it. And so he moves to Europe and he builds out the whole European business for investing in European tech companies. Exactly. And one of the big tech companies that he invested in Europe is Skype. So Skype was a European company. Skype had already had its run-up, but then it had, um, you know, kind of faltered. And so he partners with A16Z at one point and he buys Skype out for $1.9 billion. And people were like, this is like, it's hard to turn a technology company around. It's kind of on the decline. It's riddled with lawsuits right now. This is a messy buy. And he goes in and he basically is like, all right, we're going to do two things. We're going to hire a great CEO. We're going to settle all these lawsuits and we're going to actually invest in making our product better because the product's just been atrophying for or whatever for so long. And so he immediately settles the lawsuits, hires a great CEO, starts investing in the product, and in 18 months he sells the thing all cash to Microsoft for $8.5 billion. So $1.9 to $8.5 billion. He basically triples their money, but on a billion-dollar base, like principal amount. And so immediately makes a name for himself after doing the Europe thing with that. And he's doing this at a time when there's a bit of a power struggle at Silver Lake.

And by the way, he's only like 35 at this point.

I don't know how old he is exactly. Yeah, he's probably, let's see. Yeah, he's probably 30 or early 30s is my guess. So 2008 financial crisis happening and the founder of Silver Lake, this guy Glenn Hutchins, one of the founders, and he's like this crazy guy. If you go watch interviews of him, he's like mustached. He comes into the office with like barefoot. He never wears shoes. He's kind of like one of those like You know, one with nature founder type guys, but he's in private equity, which is usually like suits and, uh, you know, cut, you know, cutthroat type of guys.

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 gonna show you a real life example. 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 them 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 want to 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 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 works 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. By the way, I think the other guy, I think all 3 of the founders are like hippies. The other one, Roger, uh, uh, McAmee, I think his name is. Do you know who he is?

I didn't look him up too much, but yeah, I saw him.

He's a little bit of a hippie. Like he's in like a Grateful Dead cover band. Like if you like, more people know him, I think, as the, as a musician than founding this multi-billion dollar company.

And they kind of had to be because if you're, if you're in the '90s and you're doing technology, then you're early, right? And you're early because you're a believer in something and you're usually an early adopter. You're not, you usually it's like the MBAs come later, right? The, the, the business school kids come later and once, once the opportunity's already defined.

Which is crazy because Silver Lake now is known as this like buttoned up place.

Of course. As, as, as is Microsoft now and Facebook now and all the things that at one time was just like college kids just living in a hacker house type of thing. So 2008, uh, financial crisis happens. That guy Glenn, he's getting real stressed out. He's like, I just need to take a step back. Egan Durbin's like, I'm here. I've been here. I'm ready for this. And so he starts to step forward. He had just done the big, he just does the big, um, Skype deal. So he's kind of riding the, the wind of that. That's, that's like the big news basically in the, in the industry. They're, they're out to raise a fund and he's like, I'll help you raise that fund. You can use this track record in my name and I, I'll be one of the, but I need a seat at the top. And so there's a bit of a power struggle. The other founders don't really want to step back. He wants a seat at the table, power struggle. There's sort of the coup and Egan and 4 new guys basically become the new managing directors and the founders basically all end up stepping back.

But a PE firm, there's not like one owner. It are PE firms a little bit like law firms where there isn't ever like an owner, but as you rise, you get an equity stake. And so it almost becomes becomes a partnership, not like a—

Yeah, well, it's a partnership either way, but usually you raise a new fund, and when you raise a new fund, you define who are going to be the— how is that pie going to get split up? And so as they raise fund after fund, the guys who were the main principals of the first might now have a smaller stake because the new people who are doing all the work are going to have the big stake in the new fund. So that's kind of what happened. So anyways, he gets it, and then he starts doing just crazy aggressive stuff. So just if you hear this guy's strategy, here's what he says. So in 16 years, they've basically grown the thing like crazy since that all happened. They've added like, I don't know, $25, $30 billion of assets under management during that time. And he says, my goal is to be the best risk-adjusted investor, tech investor in the world. What I'm trying to do is find 1 or 2 bets per year. I'm looking for all-in bets, opportunities that I can't say no to, 1 or 2 bets per year. And that's it. I spend my whole year just trying to find one deal that is worth doing. And then when he finds it, he just pushes all the chips in. So he did this like with Alibaba. They put in like a whole bunch of money at $35 billion in market cap. And then they 6x'd their money from there because Alibaba became a multi-hundred billion dollar market cap company. And he was like, just at the time, they were like, we see this as a Google-sized opportunity. And this is like, this is the Google of China. We need to be in this. And other people thought $35 billion was pretty overvalued at the time. Didn't think so. Another example of this is he went to some conference and he spoke on stage and he's like, yeah, I don't usually do this, but, uh, you know, whatever, it'll be worth it, I'm sure. So he gets off stage and he bumps into Michael Dell backstage. First time he meets the guy. About a year later, he does the biggest tech buyout deal in the world ever, uh, which was taking Dell private, uh, where it's like a multi-billion dollar buyout where they took it private and ended up, you know, revamping it. It was the biggest deal I think ever at the time. He's also made some pretty like crazy bets. So some of the crazier things this guy's done. So first I'll give you some personality crazy things. So he sucked at golf, but he wanted to be good. He's like, golf is like the businessman's sport and I want to be good. So do you know what he did to get good at golf? No. Have you heard the story? So they had a gym for all the like employees or analysts at the company and he just goes and he just locks the gym. He shuts the gym down. He's like, there's no more gym. I'm going to convert this into like kind of like over a weekend or whatever, he converts the gym into a golf practice, like a practice facility essentially. And then the employees are like, hey, where do we, what happened to our gym? Like that was a key perk. Where do we go now? He's like, I don't know, go across the street, go ask BlackRock if you can use theirs. So for years, the analysts all went across the street to other firms like, hey, can we use your gym? Egan turned it into his own private golf simulator. We can't do it anymore.

That's kind of an asshole move, right?

I mean, kind of an aggressive move.

I mean, what did his— I wonder what his employees said. Like, hey, uh, that's kind of lame, right? Like, what about us?

Now he's an 8 handicap golfer. He's got memberships at golf clubs around the world. That's the ending of that story. Another one. He's kind of like, um, he gets criticized because he kind of wants like power in, uh, like the Hollywood world. Like you said, I think he's like a power player in LA. I don't know if that's true or not, but he became the biggest backer of WME. He also did a bunch of other things like The joke was, you know, he's buying things so he can get, you know, access to the Oscars. Like, this guy is just like an absolute, you know, sort of like savage individual. Another thing that he said, so he goes, he goes, I'm not trying to take the most risk, but I am trying to be very concentrated in my bets. He says, just the way he phrased this, I like, he goes, we get paid to hit singles and doubles, then we steal third and we come into home on a passed ball. And it's just a different mindset than I'm trying to hit home runs. He's like, no, no, we hit singles and doubles. Then through our kind of good operations, we steal third. And then we, we, we get to score, we get to home on a pass ball, but just basically like, you know, the market kind of continues to grow and we benefit from that is how I read into that. So I really liked that. He was, he did not like, people were like, you haven't done any investments recently. Uh, this was back in like 2021. And he was like, I think everything in tech is overvalued. All the unicorns, I think it's going to be really rough for them. He goes, every private tech company in the world right now, if you combine them, is $350 billion. If I could buy that whole asset class, I would, I would do it tomorrow because I'm pretty sure that that will 2 or 3x. But picking any individual company is really hard. Companies that are valued at a billion dollars, they might not go down just 30% on a correction. It'll go down to zero. There will be no bid for these companies, which is kind of what, what exactly played out. In the coming year. And so he stayed away from late-stage tech. So I just really thought this guy was great.

He's done a few other deals that are interesting. So in April of 2020, so 2 months into the pandemic, he invested $1 billion into Airbnb. I don't remember the exact valuation, but my wife worked at, worked there at the time. And at the time we were at home thinking, oh, well Airbnb's going out of business. They, that, that whole company is dead. And they, and when they invested, it was crazy. And I think it was an $18 billion valuation.

Yeah, it was something like that. It was like somewhere between like $10 and $20. And it was also like he structured it intelligently. I think there was like, it was like debt. They had like, you know, like a warrant or something like that. It was like a good structure. I don't know. They didn't release all the details, but the one interesting thing was he got criticized because he had never met Brian Chesky, the CEO. He made the investment sort of sight unseen and injected a bunch of capital into the business when it needed it. People were like, that was a Is that a rash move? People doubted it, but Airbnb has done a fantastic, it's done fantastic since then. Um, you know, he owns, you know, he put, you know, they, they own $500 million of Manchester City soccer club. Like they own a lot of different stuff. Um, which is kind of, you know, I don't know. It's interesting to me. Um, let me tell you one other thing about this guy. So he said something that I found interesting. They talked about the WME deal and he goes, I love Ari Emanuel. He goes, I talk to Ari Emanuel every single day. Which is just crazy. Like, I don't even talk to my own business partner every single day, let alone some investment I made. And he goes, um, and people were like, you talk to Ari every day about what? And he's like, they're like, what are you guys talking about? He goes, well, you know, Ari, Ari averages a 90-second phone call. He's like, so we have a 90-second phone call, but we're texting and calling every day. And it's usually 90 seconds. He goes, sometimes it's a specific ask, like, hey, we need this introduction or we need this. This analysis or whatever. He's like, but I don't like to do formal board meetings every quarter. Too slow. I like the pace that Ari moves, these 90-second phone calls every day. Which takes me to the next all-in individual, Ari Emanuel. So you know Ari Emanuel, and a lot of people know him because the character in Entourage is based off of him. But there was some things about him that I didn't fully know that was kind of interesting. Did you know he's one of 3 brothers and all 3 brothers do really interesting stuff?

So there's a book that I read years ago. It's called, um, what's it called? Something America, the Brothers Emanuel, I believe it's called Brothers Emanuel, a memoir of an American family. And I think it's in that book, Ari Emanuel. So Ari Emanuel is, uh, probably a billionaire. He, uh, he's one of probably the, the shot caller in LA. His brother is Rah Emanuel, who I think was the mayor of Chicago and on Obama's cabinet or something like that, a political power player. And in the book, Ari and Rahm, I think Ron is his name. They go, yeah, they go, a lot of people know us, but they don't know that our third brother, Zeke, Ezekiel, he's the smartest and the more successful brother. And his brother Ezekiel, I believe I'm going to screw up the titles. He was head of what's the head of like health for the government under Obama.

He basically made the Obama, Obamacare, right? Like he was the architect of the Affordable Care Act.

I think he also has done some major things. I don't remember exactly, so don't quote me on this. Don't turn this into a Shorts, but I think he helped pioneer the heart transplant and things like that. Like he invented like things that save lives and he and the two brothers are like, Zeke's the smart one. We're just more like stubborn and bullheaded a little bit.

So that's hilarious. Um, they asked him, they were like, hey, do you watch like Entourage? Like, what do you think of Ari Gold? Is that, is that you? And he's like, well, they got some things right. You know, I am very aggressive. And there he's like, you know, I didn't go into an office with a paintball gun and shoot everybody. So like, you know, I didn't do that, but you know, they got a lot of things right, unfortunately. And he's like, they're like, how have you changed over the years? Are you still as aggressive? He goes, look, here's what I have to say. You need to know when you're on the field, when you're on the field, you're there to compete, you're there to win, and you're there to kill. But he's like, the one thing I have learned is I've learned that I'm not always on the field and sometimes I'm off the field and I need to behave a little bit differently because that's the only change that's happened to me in like 30 years. I thought that was also funny as an aggressive person. We know somebody who worked with them and they told some pretty hilarious stories. Apparently this guy's day is like this. So growing up, he was like dyslexic, I think. So he had to go to like a reading teacher for like 3 hours a day or something like that. And he's like, I hated it. I used to cry all the time. I used to feel So embarrassed by it. He's like, then I just realized, whatever, this is my superpower. I'm going to win a different way. Okay. I can't read these contracts. I can't read this stuff. So I'm going to surround myself with, I'm going to basically work differently and I'm going to surround myself with people who could do those things for me. And I'm going to do other things that only I could do well. And so his day is basically, he's like walking on a treadmill. He's got the earpiece in his ear and his assistant is just called. He just has like a call list. His assistant is just getting people on the phone that he wants to talk to. For like 30 to 90 seconds at a time. And he just immediately hits someone up, calls them, and in 90 seconds makes the point, hangs up, and then he's onto the, and the next call is ready in his ear and he just goes to the next one, which is so weird.

And I think it starts at like 6:00 AM. I think I read an article where he is famous for, he would do something like 200 calls a day and it starts at 6:00 AM and he's talking to people all day, just making deals.

Somebody told me, he was like, they're in his office and he just has a bag of almonds. And he's just, whenever he wants his assistant's attention, he was throwing the almonds, bag of almonds at her. He just hit her in the head with an almond and she would turn around. He's like, next call. I need the next call.

What a douche.

Exactly. All these guys, all of them, all of them have the same trait. All 3 people I'm going to talk about. Okay. So he also had the classic story, the same story, but there's something, it's like, there's something about working in the mailroom. So like David Geffen, Barry Diller, Ari Emanuel all have the same story, which is basically started off in the Hollywood mailroom. And use that as their like feeding ground. And I was thinking about this, I was like, what is it about the mailroom? And if you think about it, what is the mailroom? So the mailroom is basically, it's the shit nobody else wants to do. So it's already a filter. It's gonna filter out anybody who doesn't really want it cuz it's so unglamorous. That's interesting thing number one. Interesting thing number two is the way it works is you're basically making copies of scripts and stuff. Then you gotta drive it around town, you give it to clients, you deliver the paperwork, you get the, you go fetch lunches, you hand off the lunches to somebody who's in a meeting. And if you do good at that, then you could become an assistant, then you could become an agent, and then whatever. But you like, you learn the town and you're working 7 days a week. And so the guys who ended up making it, they basically used that as their opportunity to build like an incredible network because the job is kind of networking. And so they use that, like used every rep of that instead of just being like, ah, whatever, I'm going to just mentally check out to actually build their power network. And that's kind of like, you know, part of how all three of those guys, you know, rose to power. Can I tell you the last one now? The last all-in individual?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm into this.

Okay, so you know this person well, but I don't know if you know the full story. I didn't know the full, full story till I researched this, but Dana White. So I want you to tell me kind of like a little bit about what you know, and then I want to fill in some gaps of new things I learned when I was looking at this.

All right, so Dana White, I think he was a boxing instructor, but not like coaching real boxers. Like, it was like a Jazzercise class in Boston. He was in Boston and he moves into this bad neighborhood, and Whitey Bulger, who's a big gangster at the time, he comes to Dana's office at his Jazzercise gym or whatever, and he goes, hey man, you're in my hood, you owe me $1,000 a month or something like that. And Dana White doesn't pay him because he's like, oh, I'm a tough guy, I don't need to pay this guy. And then eventually he realizes that Whitey's the real deal and he owes him $10,000 or $20,000. And Dana's like, dude, I have nothing. So he moves to Vegas to flee. He went to high school with these two rich brothers, the Fertitta brothers, the Fertitta brothers. They come from a wealthy family. So they owned like penny casinos, like where like people, like it was like a low class thing at first where it was like their parents owned this casino and it's almost at a gas station, I think, where like people would put in like penny slots from there. They owned a few other casinos. I think the Station Casino or Golden Nugget. I forget what they're called. And, uh, so they get money, it starts working. And so the two sons, Lorenzo and Fertitta, they, uh, or no, Lorenzo and what's the other one?

Frank.

Frank. They, uh, they, they become kind of guys in Vegas. They actually start a few companies and they buy a few companies. One of them was Gordon Beersch, which was a cider and beer company. They were one of our first advertisers at The Hustle. And they, so they start making deals. Dana comes to them and goes, hey man, this thing called the UFC, it's kind of a sport. I know you guys, you brothers are somewhat into jiu-jitsu. I went to one of these events. They're pretty amazing. The guy's selling the brand. In reality, what we're going to get is a crappy little octagon and just the name UFC. It's $2 million. Let's buy it. They get convinced to do it. Dana gets 4% of the equity. The other guys get the rest, but they fail for 4 or 5 years. So they're in the hole, like $35 million. They come up with this brilliant idea to have a TV show called The Ultimate Fighter in order to promote the events. The events are kind of popular, but like that's not really making money. They create this event called the, uh, this TV show called The Ultimate Fighter. They convince Spike TV to air it. At the time, Spike TV was a pretty big deal, but not that big of a deal. And they do this series and they're like, dude, we're going to run out of money. We can't afford this series anymore. Then Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar have their famous fight. And at the time it was a huge deal. I was a kid. I remember watching this fight. I get a phone call from a friend being like, dude, you got to turn this fight on. This is so amazing. At the end of that fight, the winner is supposed to get a $1,000 contract. At the time it was, or $100,000. They called it a six-figure contract. Back then, that was a big deal to get a 6-figure contract. The fight is so good, even though one guy won, but it was so great. They give both of them 6-figure contracts. From there, the UFC kind of took off. That was like the turning moment. And so Dana and these two brothers, two brothers are kind of the business, like brains behind it. And they're really low-key behind the scenes, but they run this business and eventually it sells for $4 billion to Ari Emanuel's company. And, uh, now it's like the hottest thing going. Is that, do you like that?

Very good. Very good. Off the cuff. I like it. I want to fill in a couple of little details here that I thought were interesting stuff. I didn't know. So you're right. Dana grows up in Boston, but he, and he goes to college twice, drops out twice in the first semester. He's like, this shit just ain't for me. And so he goes to college twice, drops out twice. He ends up as a bellhop. So he's a, he's a bell, he's a bouncer. He's a bellhop. He's like doing asphalt laying. Like, you know, that's what he's, that's what he's doing with his life. He wants to be a boxer, but he sees a guy come in who he knew as a boxer and he looked up to, and that guy was just totally punch drunk. And he's like, oh shit, I can't do this. So he's like, maybe I should teach boxing classes, like boxer size, instead of actually trying to be a boxer. So that's kind of like the opening. Now he's doing all that, and he describes that he wants to— he's like, I want to maybe get into boxing promotion. And he's like, I'm not sure exactly. Maybe I could be a boxing promoter. But he's a bellhop at the hotel, and he describes the day that he quit. And he's like, I was just sitting there, and he's like, actually, we used to get paid pretty well for being a bellhop. I forgot what it was. It's like $22 an hour or something back then. He's like, it's not that the money was so bad. He's like, and I like the guys that I worked with, but he's like, am I just going to do this shit forever? And he's like, I had the realization that every day that I do this, I'm not doing— it's another day that I'm not doing the thing I want. He's like, because before I used to feel like, you know, I could always someday go do something. And he's like, you know what? Screw it. He goes, he says, uh, so here's, here's what he says about it. He goes, um, he goes, if I had to tell you one thing, and he's giving a talk later, he goes, it would be to take the risk. He's like, because when I quit and I actually went for my thing, guess what? I realized I can always come back and be a bellhop. Like this life I have is always here. Because it's the bottom. It's not where I want to be anyways. What do I have to lose? Worst case scenario, I can just come back and get another job like this. He goes, but I will never get back this window of time I have right now in my 20s that I can go and take a shot at something. And so that was kind of like his mindset and his mentality. So he quits and he's like, I want to start. So he starts trying to, he's doing the boxing thing. He's trying to become a promoter. And then you're right. The mob thing happens. Here's what he said about it. He goes, these guys show up and they're like, hey, you owe us $2,500. And he's like, uh, he's like, in the movies, it's cool when you see like mobsters and mafia. If it's real life and they want you, shit's super scary. He's like, that is not cool. And he's like, so I, he's like, I was like, I have no way of paying this. He's like, so I'm just gonna, he goes, I go home that night, I just go to delta.com and I bought a one-way ticket to Vegas. He goes, I left all my shit there. There's like my TV, my dresser, like I just left her there. I had no— I couldn't do anything. He said, I just ran away basically from these guys. Once I realized that they're pretty serious, I bought a one-way ticket to Vegas.

And the guys who were behind it, it was Whitey Bulger, who's like the real deal. He's from the movie Black Mass with— and he's the character behind The Departed.

Yeah, exactly. When he first— when they first came in, they were like, hey, you owe us $2,500. He's like, I don't owe you that. For what? I don't have it. Like, what do you want me to do? And then Couple weeks go by and then they call him and they're like, you owe this money by tomorrow, 1:00 PM or else. And he was like, oh shit, okay, I got to get out of here. So he left basically that night. A couple other things. I thought he was friends with the Fertittas. They actually didn't know each other. They only knew of each other in high school, but they weren't friends. And what he said was basically they knew of each other and they liked Dana because Dana was kind of like, basically he tells the story. He's like, we had this class that we all hated. And he's like, Dana realized that the teacher was really uptight, and so it kind of sucked to be in that class. But because the teacher was uptight, one little thing could distract the teacher and throw them off. So he's like, Dana would go to the restroom and he would kick this door really hard, and he kicked the door really hard, make this huge sound. The teacher would go become irate, like, who the— what is that? Who's doing that? And it would go try to find the person. Dana would run away, but the class would basically— half of the class would go by with no teacher because teacher would be looking for somebody. So he used to do that like every week. And then one day he did it, but his shoe like flew off and he was like, oh shit, I don't know. Like he's like, he just had to jet. So the teacher found the shoe and realized it was Dana and Dana got in trouble. But the Fertittas always like logged that in their mind. They're like, man, he took a bullet for us basically. So years later they're at a wedding and they meet up and they're like, dude, I haven't talked to you in so long. What do you do? And he like learns what the Fertittas do. He learns what he does. One of the things Dana says, he's like, yeah, I teach this boxer-size class. I'm doing jiu-jitsu. And I think Lorenzo was like, you know what? I'm doing good in business, but I'm not really doing anything fitness-wise. I want to train jiu-jitsu. And Dana's like, all right, sure. I've heard that a million times. Nobody actually shows up. Lorenzo, the next morning, is there ready to do jiu-jitsu. That's how they actually got to know each other. That's how the Fertitta started to fall in love with fighting or MMA. So what happens is while he's doing that, he becomes an agent. Same thing as Ari Emanuel becomes an agent first before he becomes a business owner. He starts representing Ortiz, Tito, and Chuck Liddell. But the UFC is so small back then, even though these guys are the big stars, they're so small. But in doing that, he's negotiating a contract with the owner of the UFC. He's like, you got to pay Tito more. Look at how much money this guy's bringing in. He's the face of this. You got to step up. And the guy's negotiating, negotiating. He's like, finally, he's just like, look, Dana, there's no money. All right? This whole thing's going to fall over. You're not wrong, but I have nothing to give. And Dana's like, in that moment, basically should have been a disadvantage. Like, shit, my main business is going to go down the drain. The owner can't pay him, can't pay my fighters. Like, this is over. But he turned that disadvantage to an advantage. He's like, then that's when he approached the Fertittas to be like, hey, let's buy this thing. And the one funny thing is that owner had mismanaged the business so bad that they didn't even own UFC.com. He had sold it. To just get a little bit of cash to User Friendly Computers. And then Dana had to go buy it back from userfriendlycomputers.com and like get back ufc.com's domain, which I thought was amazing.

And I think when they bought it, Dana was like, what did someone ask Dana? They go, what did you get when you bought it? He goes, well, he had this like octagon, which is basically just like a cage and like mats, which is not very expensive, but it was really just that name. I loved that name UFC so much. We had to have the name.

Exactly. And then he's like, you know, they had put $40 million more into it. He felt so bad. He's losing his friend's money and they were trying to make it work, but it just wasn't working yet. And Lorenzo calls him. He's like, dude, I can't do this anymore. Like, I can't keep bleeding money like this. If you could, like, can you try to sell this thing? And Dana's like, okay, my buddy needs me to sell this. And so he's like, he calls everybody and he calls back Lorenzo the next day. He's like, there's not a lot of appetite for this thing. I think the best we could do is get $6 or $7 million for this. And Lorenzo's like, okay, let me, uh, let me call you tomorrow. Next day he calls him. Who knows what he had for morning that, that morning for breakfast, but he's like, fuck it, let's keep going. Uh, like, you know, let's put in another $10 million, one last chance to turn this business around. And then that's what they used to create The Ultimate Fighter, that last $10 million.

So he's in $50 million, they're $50 million in, they were $50 million in. Well, it was all funded by the family's casino and previous successes, which I think they were really rich, but I think they were not rich enough that 50 was, I mean, 50 was a significant sum.

And when it sold for $4 billion, those guys, the brothers each owned 40% of the business basically at that time. Dana made $360 million on the sale and like had a, you know, 10% kicker. Some other crazy things about Dana. So it takes a pretty rough dude to like build the UFC. And I think this guy's kind of like a no holds barred kind of guy.

Well, have you ever met any of the UFC fighters? I think you and I have been around them because we have a friend that has been around them. They're, they're They're all insane. Because if you think about what it takes, so what's it take to get in your underwear and fight to the death in front of a million people? You have to be an animal.

You don't have all your screws. No.

And so Dana White has talked about it. He goes, I don't think you guys understand. Like someone will say something homophobic or racist and he's like, dude, that's like not even close to as bad as it gets when you're working with these guys. They're insane. And drama happens every single day. You only hear about a small portion of it.

But it, UFC would not be, it would not exist. It would not be what it is if it wasn't Dana's like force of will. Some other ways that he's just all in. So do you know he's like a banned blackjack player from multiple casinos? And which is funny 'cause it's like you can't really have an edge playing blackjack. The only edge he has is that he's willing to bet absurd amounts of money and then he wants to walk away.

There's, well, there, there, there's stories about him like before it was hugely, hugely successful where he is like, I made a million dollars last night at a casino.

Yeah, exactly. Of course, as anybody who's ever gambled knows, you never tell the stories about losing the million dollars. You only tell the ones where you made the million. But his strategy, one thing he'll do, he goes and he bets $75,000 to $100,000 per hand. And if he just wins the first two hands, he'll walk away, which is just like infuriates the casino because they need the law of large numbers to catch up. And he's like, if he makes $200,000, he'll just immediately bounce and like, ha, I got him. But when he starts to get in the hole, that's when they get him. So he's just kind of an impulsive individual. A couple of other things that I thought were kind of interesting. So he's like, growing up, his dad was alcoholic. And here's what he said. He goes, my dad was never around. And if he was around, you didn't want him to be around. He goes, he was not a good guy. He goes, but I wouldn't change anything if I didn't grow up like that. I would not be me, right? The toughness that built in me would not I wouldn't have that if I had just had a nice, safe upbringing. The other thing he says, he's like, I didn't have a car, so he's like, I just biked everywhere I went in Boston. He's like, so I bought a Walkman and I would put on Tony Robbins and I would listen to The Giant Within. He's like, and every day I would just ride around on my bike, kind of like working myself into a frenzy listening to that thing, just getting anywhere I needed to go. And he's like, it was my kind of escape from the shittiness of my life. He's like, and then I started buying those tapes anybody as gifts because it was like so impactful to me, which I thought was interesting.

Dude, isn't that funny though? So Dana, Dana White is, is a tough guy, right? Like, I think that he's the type of guy who you don't want to mess with physically or in business. Like, he's, he's, he's a, he's a legit tough guy. And even he listens to self-help stuff. I always thought it was funny. I was, I used to be ashamed of like listening to a Tony Robbins or something. I was like, I don't want to talk about it. And then you realize that like even the bad, the badasses like consume a lot of this stuff in order to get pumped.

Yeah. The people who have improved themselves seem to have done something to improve themselves. It's insane. One other thing, he had the same thing, like the mailroom thing. So he said, I didn't know this part of the story, but for 3 years that he doesn't really talk too much about, he's like, I worked under a guy. He's like, I basically did an apprenticeship. And he is like, I told myself I'm going to spend 3 years with this guy because I know if I spend 3 years with this guy, I will know everything there is to know about the fight business. He's like, today I'm not the guy who can go be the next Don King or go become the next big promoter of the fight business. I know that's where I want to go, but I got to learn. I got to earn my stripes. And so he did his version of the mailroom. He's like, he worked for this guy. He's like, for 3 years I worked harder. He's like, you know, the, whatever my actual wage was, like per hour must have been just ridiculously low with the number of hours I put in. He's like, but I did every job there is. He's like, I was a cut man. I was a corner man. I was a referee. I managed the talent. I would read all the contracts even though he never even asked me to. He's like, I put in 3 years so I could know the ins and outs of the entire business so that that prepared me to do what I wanted to do. And he's like, I knew that's what I needed.

You haven't actually explained how they're all the same.

They're all just maniac, all-in individuals, right? They're people who basically— Ari is a good example of this. So Ari kind of had already made it. WME was the biggest agency, one of the big, one of the top 2 agencies in Hollywood. Right. And he'd already made it. And I talked to somebody who knew him. I'm like, why did he buy the UFC? Like, and to buy the UFC, he raised, like, he tapped his network, he raised every dollar he could, but then he basically had to like leverage and mortgage WME. So he kind of put everything he had worked for at risk to buy a very high-risk asset at a very high price.

Uh, you know, which Silver Lake was the, to tie it all in, I think Silver Lake was the funder or one of the bigger funders.

Exactly. So. Silver Lake sees what Ari's doing and they're like, if Ari Emanuel's going all in on something, he will not lose. He will not let this fail. Ari Emanuel mortgages everything he's worked for to go all in on this bet. Dana has options to sell the business and actually had an option to sell for almost $1 billion more, he said, but he turned it down because he wanted to work with Ari, because he knew Ari is the guy who's all in and the future upside of this thing is going to be bigger with Ari, even if today's payout is $1 billion less. And so they all shared that trait of why they all wanted to be in business with each other and why they all wanted to back each other. And the Fertitta brothers, no different. Same reason they wanted to back Dana and do this deal was they're also wired like this. So to me, that was the commonality amongst all these people.

And if you watch a big UFC fight, you're going to see Ari Emanuel, you're going to see his girlfriend to his left, and then to his right, you're going to see Egon. And then a few seats down is going to be Dana. They're always, they always sit in the exact same spots. For all the big fights and you see them. And I remember seeing Egon there and I'm like, who's that guy that's always there? And that's how I learned about him.

And Dana said when he sold the UFC, he's like, it kind of fucked with my head. He's like, I spent 2 days. I just had like a bender in my hotel room because I was like, what do I do? I have $300 million in my bank account. My best friends who have been doing this with me are gone now. I'm doing this on my own and we kind of made it, but I'm used to being the guy who fighting to make it. What happens when you make it? He's like, it really screwed my head for 2 days. And then I was like, all right, well, I guess I'll just go back to doing exactly what I know how to do and just go back to doing exact— like, just don't change anything. Just keep operating the same way.

And so what do you know about the Fertittas?

The Fertittas, I didn't look up their history too much, but I wanted to know their personality a little bit. A couple little bullet points I have here. They work out every day together, the brothers, at 7:00 AM. I like that. I just like that as a brotherly thing to do. The second thing, they attend all meetings together. So they're not like delegate, divide and conquer. They're like, no, bro, we're going to all the meetings together. They both sit there, they drink a Diet Dr Pepper, and they attend almost every meeting together as well. And then they like ball out. They got yachts and planes and art, and their cousin Tilman Fertitta also is a baller. And so like, they're just kind of a crazy family that made it in this wild, wild west time of Vegas.

I was going to say, do you know who their cousin is? Their cousin is Tilman. Tilman got famous because he, I think he bought into Landry's, which is a, I think, is it a steak, steak restaurant in Texas? From there he bought many, many other things including like Bubba Gump Shrimp and like a ton of like those not fast casual, but like Applebee's, like not nice, but like kind of nice if you're broke and you want to go out to eat type of situation. And then eventually he bought out the whole company after taking it public. And I believe now it's one of the most profitable privately held companies where he owns 100% of it. So there's a lot of, a lot of privately held companies that are quite huge. His company is 100% owned by him. I think it, I read his biography. I think it does something like $3 million a year in EBITDA and he bought the Houston Rockets as well. So he's like, but he's, he's known as being a real asshole. The other Fertitta guys, all the interviews I've seen with them, they seem shockingly, they're still sharks, but they seem shockingly well mannered. And calm and, and, and they, they, they seem like really easygoing, if that is such a word that could be described, these types of sharks.

Yeah, they, they are incredibly respected. I'll leave you one last little quote I liked from Dana. So he said, he goes, you know, about the risk-taking thing. He's like, you know, he's like, you can always go back to your job, but here's what you can't do. You can't go back and get this opportunity again. You can't rewind time. You can't make, get back your youth to take risks. He's like, I realized that I didn't want to be on my deathbed with a bunch of I shouldas. He goes, not everything I've done has worked. And what I've learned is that even if it turns out shitty, it's not just that you learn how to win. Sometimes the most important learning is I thought I wanted to do this, but it turns out that's not what I want to do. And I thought that was a really wise thing that most people don't say.

What's he referring to? Walking away from the UFC?

It might have been like, it could have been anything. It could have been like when he thought he wanted to be a boxer, then he goes in and he realizes, oh, actually, Only through trying this did I learn that that's not actually the thing I want to do.

Oh, this is Dana.

This is Dana talking. And so I thought that was good because everybody talks about, oh, it's okay if you fail, you'll still learn. But rarely do they explain this, that one of the most important things in general in life is just figuring out what is the thing you actually want to be doing. Most people go their whole life never finding that, and then they're in their 30s or 40s or 50s and they feel like it's too late to even try a new thing. They're so far down one path. They don't want to go back to the bottom of the mountain and try a new path. And so I thought this is so important to know is like early on when you're not that far up the mountain, use that to your advantage because you can go back to the beginning and choose a new path. And that sometimes going down the path, it's not just about becoming a better hiker. It's about learning. This isn't a path I like. And the only way I could have known that was by trying.

My biggest takeaway from these stories is loyalty. So I've heard Dana and the Lorenzo brothers talk about their little trio, their, their 3-person team. They're crazy loyal to one another. And I was always envious that I didn't have like a brother that was about my age who I wanted to partner with or work with. And so I've read about the Lorenzo brothers a lot, and I'm very envious of that relationship that they've had. They seem like they've had a healthy relationship with their parents who were business people. And then when they brought in Dana, they are all crazy loyal to one another and they never disrespect one another publicly. Uh, it's all, it seems like a great partnership. And that's been my biggest takeaway from, from these guys is loyalty. Even Dana, I don't like many of the things that he's done. And I'm actually not a Trump supporter, but he was like, Trump was nice to me in 2008 or something like that.

When nobody else was.

He's like, no one would, no one would help us. Trump helped us. I remembered that. Therefore, I'm going to repay him. Now, I don't think Dana is a straight up guy all the time. Like I said, I think he's done a lot of messed up stuff. But his value of loyalty, his, how he looks at loyalty, I appreciate, at least when it comes to those three, those two brothers.

Yeah, you're kind of like that too, where like loyalty is a, um, deep-rooted value. I feel like if someone's loyal to you or disloyal to you, even in a small way, I feel like that goes really deep in your core. Is that right?

I don't forget. So someone will do something, someone like Do you remember that story that, um, I explained about how I asked a reporter if she wanted to freelance for The Hustle and she said, that's cute. And I like have always held a grudge and I want to destroy her. I went and re reread the email. She didn't say that's cute. She said, that's so sweet. I appreciate you so much, but I'm not interested. But for some reason at the time, I read it and I went and reread it the other day when I was talking to Sarah and I was like, Maybe she actually wasn't being rude, but for the last 10 years, I've been waiting for this woman to make a mistake and I wanted to pounce on it just to get revenge because she dismissed me. I've been wanting to do that so bad, and I'm so thankful that that hasn't happened yet because she actually wasn't rude to me. I reread it, but the point being is if someone's disloyal to me, I want to destroy them. And the people who are loyal to me, yes, I go all in on them because If you don't look, I moved to San Francisco with not knowing anyone. The way that you get ahead is you have to have a group of people who you do everything for and you expect them to do everything in return. And once you find that group of people, it helps you so much, not just in life, but, or not just in business, but for everything else, it helps so much.

And we have a friend who is so incredibly loyal that it like sets a standard.

It's almost annoying.

You know who it is.

It's almost annoying. I don't need to say it. He buys the best gifts and I feel like I've got to go like—

Forget the gifts. It's not even about the gifts. It's like, I know that if I was in trouble, this guy would drop everything. He would drop everything more than my dad would drop everything to come, to come help.

And he would, he would say, send location, send me location.

Exactly.

He'd say, send location. I'm there.

This guy, his loyalty, his level of loyalty is like next level. And I don't even know why. It's not like it's ever even been tested in that way. I've never had to send me location, but why do I feel that way? I have no idea. But the fact that I do, you can't convince me otherwise. Uh, cause he has shown it in a bunch of like small ways that, you know, that the big way would always be there.

And it's paid off wonderfully for him. He was successful on his own, but he's been, he's definitely gotten ahead. But then there's been times I was with him one time and he wanted to ride a skateboard. I go, Ramon, don't ride the skateboard, dude. You're 40 years old. You're about to hit your head. Do not do this. He does it anyway. He gets a concussion. We got to take him to the hospital. We have to, we take care of his kid while he's in the hospital for 2 or 3 days. And so he's been repaid a little bit in his loyalty, but it's paid off. And I, and I, and I've seen, I'm like, I feel like I owe you so much that I will do anything in return to, to get you back. And so it's helped him so much. Uh, and so anyway, I respect that about these guys is that how loyal they are.

I was thinking about, here's a little philosophical thought experiment for you. You know, you know the phrase. FU money, like, oh, he's got FU money. And I think a lot of people aspire to have that. But an interesting question is, what are the other FUs? Like, you know, maybe, um, you know, Sam, you could be like, I have FU health, right? Because if you're, if you're in absolute pristine health, you have physical fitness, you're, you're, you're extremely athletic, you're mobile, you're whatever, right? You can have FU health. Like, what else could you have? And I think Ramon has He has F-you loyalty, right? Where like, it is, he is just full, fully abundant in the loyalty that he has for others and that others will have for him. Because me and you and everyone, I'm sure that he's friends with, we would all go to bat for him completely. And I just, as a thought experiment, it's like, what are the other versions of F-you that actually are more valuable than having F-you money? Have you ever thought about something like this?

That's a great question. So what else? What are the other options besides loyalty?

Like my trainer, uh, my personal trainer, he's got like F you happiness where like the guy's happy no matter what's going on, which is kind of the way that F you money works. It's like, dude, he'll do whatever. Cause he's like, he just doesn't give a shit. He just doesn't care. My trainer's like that with, he just doesn't give a shit. There's traffic. Oh, I'm having a party in my car. Oh, this person cut me off. Well, oh, I'm, you know, whatever. He just makes his own version of, of like, he's always in a good mood no matter what is going on. He's completely unconditional, is completely invincible.

I think you have it. I think you have that.

I aspire to have that.

Well, in my opinion, from my perspective, you have that. I was thinking the other day, I'm like, does Sean ever get rattled? Uh, or does he ever get like stressed and unhappy? And there's been stories and I've seen it firsthand where someone has said something to you rude, or you've had something didn't break your way and it was a tough break. And you're hard to like get down. I mean, I've been with you when you've lost a bunch. I've seen you make a bunch, but I've seen you lose in a variety of bets that you've taken. You don't get rattled. You tweeted out something the other day. You said your pucker butthole. What was it?

I was like, everybody's got a butt clench number. It's an amount of money where it makes your butthole pucker up a little bit. And it's good to know where your pucker number is right now. Just keep note of that. And I was like, because I had just wired a bunch of money and like, it's not even that I was like, it's not even that I was like worried, oh, I'm going to lose it. But I was literally like, let me just double check the routing number. Let me just make sure I got that right. Which I don't usually, like, I don't usually bother to be like, okay, palms are a little sweaty. Let's go ahead and hit the button. Like, if you ever do that with $1,000, I do that with $1,000. Like animation when you're going to send an email, you know, you know the one I'm talking about where it's the monkey's finger about to push the send and it's sweating and it's trembling. Because it's like, you're about to email your whole list. Let's just, are you sure you got all the details right? That's like, that's the pucker number for some people with their email list. And so I think everybody's got to know it.

Your number was high. I, I, I'm like that with 1,000. And so when I think about like, why am I stressed about certain things? I definitely try to think, you know, um, there was, uh, who was it? I think it was JFK. He had a photo of Abe Lincoln on his desk and he goes, I just always try to ask myself, what would Abe do? Sometimes when I get stressed, I think, what would Neville Medhora do? And what would Sean Perry do? Like, how would they handle this? Neville Medhora is another person who has no stress. There was one time when he was trying to, he had never owned a house and he was thinking about buying a house and he had never thought about finances 'cause he's been making a great living for years and years and years and he never thought about money. He could buy whatever he wants and he was thinking about what house he wanted and he was just going to pay cash, like, or something like that where it was like a big investment, his first big investment. And he was talking to my wife and I and he goes, I couldn't go to bed last night. I, because I was thinking about buying this house and I can't buy exactly everything I want and I actually have to like second-guess some of the things. And then he, we were just sitting there, we didn't say a word. And he looked at Sarah and he goes, is that stress? And we were like, yeah, dude, that's what stress is. Like, finally you experienced it at the age of 38 years old. And, uh, you, you, you, he's like, I have a tingling sensation. What is this thing where I stayed up like for an hour last night just thinking about this? And you and Neville have that same thing where you have a very high tolerance.

It's crazy when you see it because people take pride. They're like, man, I don't tolerate no disrespect. And it's like, what are you really saying there? What you're really saying is like, what do you say?

You tolerate it?

You can't disrespect me. If you say something, that says something about you, not me. What do you— well, you can't bother me. Like, you know, there's a great way Tony Robbins said this. He goes, how cheap is your happiness? Meaning if all it takes is somebody doing something really little to take your happiness away, Your happiness is cheap. You, you got the TJ Maxx of happiness, right? You are the low, you are the dollar store of your, of your, your mood is in the dollar store, right? Anybody can go get it for so little. Someone could just take the grocery cart in front of you that you wanted and now you're a little bit piffed, right? Like, don't be cheap with your happiness. Be expensive. Be luxury.

I heard a very funny story about you, and if this violates anything, we'll delete it. So I was with Ben last night for, at Ramon's birthday. We did a little birthday thing for Ramon. Ben told me this funny story about how you were thinking about writing a book and you meet with this amazing author and the author asks you something, or maybe he was like, why do you need my help? And you were like, well, I think I could do it. I think I'm talented enough to do it. I just don't have the time right now. And I just would rather you do it. And you said something that I guess this guy thought that you were being rude. And the guy in the middle of the meeting goes, well, stop the conversation. I'm outta here. This is not a good fit. And instead of being insulted, your takeaway was, wow, I really respect that about you. You did a great job of like standing up for yourself. Uh, where I would've—

that's not what happened. Here's the, here's the story of what happened.

I would've taken that very offensively.

Here's the story of what happened. Um, we meet with this guy, he's a book development guy. So basically there's, there's somebody in between an editor, a publisher, a writer, and a book development guy is just the guy who's gonna help you think through the concept and flesh it out. Right. So I'm like, who's the best in the world at this? Right? A question I will always ask, who's the best in the world at doing this? I want to talk to them. So I meet this guy who's the best in the world at doing this. And what he asked me was not, why do you want to write this? I didn't say I don't have time. What he said was, what do you want to write about? And I go, oh, I go, I think I could write about anything. I was like, I could write a book about storytelling. I could write a book about marketing. I was like, I feel like that's actually the problem. And maybe I'll write multiple books. I don't know. But I want to, I was like, I have so many ideas. I want you to help me think through which of those ideas. And he goes, That's a nightmare. He goes, that's probably the worst answer you could give to somebody like me. He goes, I want somebody who spent 10 years, 20 years of their life only thinking about one thing, and that's the thing that they need to pour into a book. The guy who's like, oh, I could write about anything and everything. Oh God, that's going to be miserable for me to figure out.

And he ended the meeting. He didn't end the meeting.

No, but he goes, I don't want to do that. That's not a fit for me. So he didn't end the meeting, but he was like, I'm going to be honest with you. And I go, I was like, all you did was make me want you more. I was like, that's exactly what I want out of my development guy. Push back. Because the speech I had given about what are the things I could write about and why, it was a good speech. It was an A+ speech. It was only 60 seconds long, but I was like, I made a strong point there. And whenever somebody can say the truth in the face of my persuasion, I have an extreme amount of respect for them. It's not about generic pushback. It's about truth. The guy said the true thing, which was, that's not what you want when you're writing a book. What you want is, my whole life has been building up to this one book in this one moment and this one thing that I can't wait to pour out of me because I've refined it in my head for 10 years. And I was like, that's actually right. And I want to work with you even more now, but I also agree with you and that you're completely right. Thank you. And I was like, I thanked him profusely for that. The same thing happened the other day on a tax call.

Well, by the way, my, my point being is I think that's a really healthy way that you approached it.

Let me tell you about a more offensive thing, uh, that happened that was, uh, also not offensive to me. I have been looking for a tax person and I was like, um, so I created this whole like tax data room and I sent it to a couple of people. I was like, hey, I heard you're good. Take a look at my situation and tell me what you think. And most of them, they're like, hey, took a look at this. I did 3 calls. First call, door number 1, guy goes, um, hey, took a look at everything, looks really good. I have 2 suggestions of maybe if you did this instead, you could save some money. So, okay, thank you for your suggestion. Person number 2 says, hey, this looks, uh, this looks great. You know, congratulations on all your success. Um, you know, I definitely think we can handle this for you. We have other clients that are similar and I feel really confident about it. I said, okay, thank you for that. Uh, Cool. Not quite what I'm looking for, but, but okay. Thank you. Third, third door. I get on the call. This guy goes, all right, I took a look at everything and, um, I'll be honest with you, you have way too much complexity for how much money you make. And I was like, thank you. I feel the same way. But a part of me, my ego was like, uh, uh, did you look at the numbers? They, they, they're going up. That's actually 2022. 2023 is better. Better. And 2024 is gonna be great. Like my ego wanted to be like, Are you saying I'm a broke little bitch? Because that's what I heard. The way you heard that lady, that writer say, that's cute, and she didn't actually say that. In my head, what I heard was, you're too poor for me. Thank you. I don't really want to do this. And I felt that for like 15 seconds, but then more than that, and I let myself have the feeling for 15 seconds of my ego being deflated, like a pin pricking my balloon there. But I was like, what do I actually want? Let me remember what I actually want. And I hired the third guy, of course. I was like, I totally agree. Can you help me fix this up? And he's like, and then as we were talking, he's like, actually, now that you've told me more, a lot of this does make sense because of the trajectory, but like, you know, I still think we need to simplify. And I still think that like, you know, you really gotta ask yourself, do I really want to optimize all this for taxes or would I rather just spend my time making, you know, actually growing the business and making more money? And I'm like, You, sir, are exactly what I've been looking for. And even though that first punch hit me right in the gut and I wanted to get defensive, I have learned that that gets me no, absolutely nowhere. And I just let that feeling go in 15 seconds. And that's actually the tip, by the way. Everybody has the same feelings. It's just that some people hold that for like 10 years. Some people get mad for 3 days. And then the goal is like, can you just have the feeling for 30 seconds and move on?

And like, I don't think that should be the goal, dude. Rage is an amazing motivator. I have achieved a whole lot remembering being dumped by a high school girlfriend.

You've had great accomplishments, but you should probably remember that like you want all those accomplishments because you think they're going to make you feel better. And feeling rage is not the better you seek. So using rage—

we can deal with that. We can deal with that.

Using rage is not really the way, right? Just remember, you never want the thing. You want the feeling you think the thing is going to give you. And using rage to get there is not the way.

Abs aren't built in the kitchen. They're built by an 8th grade girlfriend telling you that you're not good enough. Just remember that.

Abs are built by a crumbled up Valentine card. Yeah, yeah, bro. Can I tell you a funny story? I was in 7th, 6th or 7th grade, and I really liked this girl Rachel. And I was like, uh, I wrote this like poem, Valentine-y thing, like basically like folded it up, I cut it out, I write this thing and I show it to her and she— I show it. I don't know what I did, but like, I basically gave it to her. I think I was so nervous that I didn't even say anything. I just like handed her a note and I'm standing there and she opens it up and she reads it and she's like, oh my God, Sean, this is so sweet. And I'm like, it worked. And she's like, this is amazing. Who's this for? And I was like, God. And I'm like, And in my head, I was like, I could just be courageous and be like, this is for you. I love you. Actually, turns out that I, 7th grade, love you. And instead I was like, it's for Chelsea. I just made up a name. And she's like, who's Chelsea? I was like, she doesn't go here. She's like, who? And I was like, she's like, what? And I'm like, yeah, you know that improv? She was at that. I met her. She goes to another school. She's like, Dude, she just made the most elaborate lie. And for 3 months I kept up this charade that there's some girl that I met that likes me and I like her. And that note I showed you, that was for her. That's what— that's where I was. That's where I was. I don't know how I don't have abs by now. That was pretty devastating, dude. Beatdown. Somehow that didn't even work for me.

See, you got to use that rage to get those abs. Although she doesn't know.

I hope she listens to this. Rachel, I hope you're listening to this. There was no Chelsea. There was— you were Chelsea. There was no Chelsea. Now she knows.

That's awesome. Um, that's it. That's the episode. That's the pod.