How To Get the Most Out of Every Event and the World Premier of Southern Sam’s Sticky Icky

Like, yeah, if you want to, if you want to pre-buy Southern Sam's Sticky Icky, you need to just, uh, I don't know, DM me on Twitter. My Twitter is SeanVP. DM me and say, I'm in on Southern Sam's Sticky Icky. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back. All right, before we get in the episode, we gotta say something really quick. Sean, I sent you that thing to share. So if you go to Sean and Ori's Twitter profile, you'll see it. Or you go to ratethispodcast.com/mfm. It stands for My First Million. ratethispodcast.com/mfm. If you leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts, we're going to select one person. Are we selecting one person? Oh no, we're selecting 6 people and we're going to give a grand to 6 different people and we'll announce that winner in a couple of weeks. We're doing this Because if we get more reviews in a very particular amount of time and you get more momentum, you go up the charts. And if you go up the charts, you get more listeners, or at least that's the hypothesis. So we're incentivizing listeners.

We get more excited. We, our egos grow, and I know that's what everybody wants, so let's do it.

Uh, yeah, I just went to a conference today, um, Cody Sanchez's conference to talk. And, uh, dude, everyone listens. It's pretty fun.

How was, uh, how was the conference? So she has, uh, her brand is like Contrarian, Contrarian Capital, I think it is. Um, And so this was the, the Contrarian Conference or something like that.

Yeah. And I love her and I love the conference, but I, it's, it was kind of silly. Like in my head I was making a joke because they had contrarian, um, merch and they had like hundreds of the same ones. And I was like, well, if we all bought this, like that's, you know, it doesn't really work that, you know what I mean? Like, uh, uh, so anyway, it was great though. No, she was cool. I asked, I think there was probably 300 people I asked who listened. I feel like everyone All their hands went up. People, uh, were talking about us. They always confuse our voices, but we get that all the time.

All right, I love it. And I was supposed to go to that. I didn't go. You went, uh, there's like a bunch of different motivations people have for going to these things. What was your motivation? Because some people would say, oh, going to these conferences is kind of a waste of time. And other people say, no, I love it. I'm network. I learn things.

I just went because she's, she's my friend and it's near my house.

And then in general, but you've gone to some of the, some other ones like this, like the podcast one you went to recently or stuff in New York. What, uh, I guess give, give people how you think about this stuff. Uh, because I think it's good to have like a frame of like, okay, this is why I go to these, this is how I go to them. And this is what, what's come out of it for me.

Um, I like meeting people who I know on the internet and that makes me feel good. And I also like going, uh, you know, I've paid money to go to some events. I've paid $5,000, $10,000 to go to some events. Um, because I can meet one person and become a lifelong friend run with them and that pays for itself, but makes me happy. So yeah, I don't mind going.

Yeah, I do the same thing. I kind of have in my head, um, I'm here to learn one thing. Like I want to have one great idea, like a truly great idea. Maybe it's a tactic, a marketing idea, a realization of something I need to change, or a new business idea, a new whatever. So one great idea is my like bar, and then one great person. If I do that, it's worth it. That's like such a low bar, but, um, yeah. But what's better, what, like the, the good part about that is then you go hunting. You, you are saying, oh, I'm here to make meet one great person. Who's a great person? And if you're talking to somebody who's not that great, you're like, all right, peace out. I'm gonna go bump around and see who else is here. Right? And same thing with one great idea. You can listen to a talk and you might otherwise kind of zone out or say, oh, this doesn't apply to me. But if you're just on the hunt for that golden nugget, the one great idea, and it's like, dude, in the 8 hours of this event, there's gonna be at least one great idea, um, it changes the way— for me at least, it changes the way I, I attend these things.

Yeah, I agree. I'm the same way. And speaking of great ideas, we— I want to talk to me about— let's go to these 3 news stories that you want to go over, because I actually— I think you selected all 3, and they're awesome. They're awesome. All 3 are pretty good.

So, um, all right, so I have 3, you have 1. Let's start with yours. You have one that's about Elon tweeting about the, uh— Elon tweeted something about giving away $6 billion to world hunger. What I heard was, you tell me if this is correct, my wife told me this story. She goes, do you hear, you know, somebody tweeted out, or there's a news story that said, you know, these billionaires, the Elon's the richest man in the world now, if he, you know, with $6 billion he could end world hunger. And then he replied to it, he was like, if you could show me that $6 billion would end world hunger, I'll write the check now. Like, I'll, I will happily do it, just show me that that's the case. And, um, So that's all I know about this. What did you—

Oh, you don't know what happened after that? Okay. So someone, I forget who, maybe CNN said if the billionaires would donate $6 billion, we'd cure or end world hunger. Elon, like you said, replied and goes— and his language was great. He goes, show me how that will happen and I will sell Tesla stock right now to pay for $6 billion of this stuff. And I forget the exact title, but something like the head of United— was it World Hunger or United Nations? Some like official international body, the head said, you know, better yet, you know, Elon, just come and we'll show you our processes and how we work. And Elon said, no, sunshine is great. Tell me in tweet form how this is going to help and where the money will go, and I will send you the money right now. And he goes, you know, this is just too complicated to say over Twitter. And I think— and I'm not like the biggest Elon nut hugger. I think that this totally made Elon look great. These types of things should be done in a very simple way where you can explain what's happening. You don't have to say like, you know, exactly, but you could say like, you know, 30% of the budget is going to go to hire around 10,000 people who we think can give out this much, you know, whatever. That is a good enough answer. And the guy didn't do it. Total miss. And when we were talking to BitCloud guy Nader a few days ago, he was explaining what he does. And then you go, no, no, no, no, no, this is what you do. And you explained it so much better. And he goes, oh, that's how I should always explain it. Everyone should have that skill that you have, and you could actually develop that skill. It is a skill. It's not just a talent. And anyway, this guy blew it, and I thought it was an awesome tweet thread.

You know, uh, so two things. One is on that skill, uh, so how do you develop that? I'll give you two kind of unorthodox ways that you develop it. The first is you gotta have bullshit callers around you. So like, you know, the way I was like, no, no, no, dude, that's way too complicated. Uh, most people just won't say that to somebody. And, uh, there's this great clip— I know you like, uh, you watch some Joe Rogan as well as I do— and there's this great clip of Brian Callen, who's one of the kind of friends in the crew of Joe Rogan, and they're, they're doing their Fight Companion podcast, which is where they just watch the fight and they're just shooting the shit, uh, drinking and eating cheese and, you know, drinking wine, eating cheese, and they watch the fight. And like, I don't know, 100,000 or more people will tune in to like hang out with them while they watch the fight, even though the fight's not visible on the screen. That's just how fun it is for them to hang out. And during this thing, Brian Callen, who's a lifelong, you know, like comedian, he's kind of like a scrawny guy, and Joe's kind of like a former martial artist, he's sort of like a meathead, and the other guy on there is an ex-pro fighter. So it's a bunch of kind of like bros. And, um, Brian is saying something, he goes— Brian's like, oh man, if somebody ever tried that on me, bro, you know I would— you know what I would do. And they were like— and they just kind of moved on for a second. And then he's like— and the guy said it again, like nobody really addressed it. And he's like— he's like— he's like, I would never let somebody— it would be, it would be on. And then Joe's like, Brian, what are you talking about? He's like, why are you saying shit like this? He's like, you know, you don't— you're not gonna do anything, first of all. And he's like, he's like, the problem, Brian, is that you hang out with people that will let you say shit like this. And he's like, you need to stop hanging out with whoever, whatever type of people let you, let you get away with just saying things like this and just, you know, letting it fly. And I, after that, I just thought that was hilarious. And then I started noticing, oh, there's some people in my life and I call 'em, you know, the people who will tell you there's food in your teeth. It's like, there's two types of people. There's people who will see it and not say anything. And then, you know, 4 hours later you get home and you're like, bro, what the hell? I had spinach in my teeth the whole time. Why didn't someone tell me? And then there's the person who will cut you off and be like, yo, yo, yo, you got a little something in your teeth here. And you're like, oh shit, I'm embarrassed. But like the embarrassment was localized to the moment and then you like saved yourself from there. And that's a true friend. And so you want people around you that will tell you when you're saying something that just makes no sense or is confusing or is like delusional or whatever. And they're just like, what are you talking about? Why are you saying that? You say stuff like this all the time. This doesn't make any sense. Or you say stuff like this and honestly, I think you think that's really awesome, but nope. When other people hear that, they don't hear really awesome.

Like we asked Abreu, you wanna have people like that. Abreu, who used to work for us and we love, he was explaining to Sean and I what his new business does and he wrote this long paragraph and I think Sean goes, I don't know what any of those words you just said mean. And then he was like, I buy con— I buy land, but before paying for it, I hurry up and resell it to someone else and make a profit. It's like, okay, great. Yeah, now I understand what that means, right?

Yeah. And then, well, actually, the first thing he said was, bro, I just wrote you two paragraphs. And I didn't even have to address it because he knows if you wrote two paragraphs and I don't know what you're— what— I don't know what you do still. That's on you. That's not on me. And so, uh, you know, the, the boat, the burden's on the owner. So one thing is having people like that around you. The other thing is hanging out with somebody who's good at it. And maybe, you know, hopefully for some people listening to this podcast helps them because I think we both do a good job of explaining stuff without too much jargon. We try at least. And so the more you hang out with people like that, you'll just naturally through osmosis, like, you know, this, it'll just pick up, you'll be like a sponge. It'll just come right into you. You'll just start getting better at it cuz you've heard our voices in your head all the time. And so hang out with people who do it. Like I have a buddy, uh, Sully, who's great at this. You're really great at this. Ramon's really great at this. So like our best friends all are really good at just saying things for what they are in a way that's simple and easy to and fun to understand. And like, so then you by na— you know, you'll naturally get good at it.

Speaking of friends, what, uh, what did— so I was out to dinner with Moise the other day and he made this comment about Casper. He ends up tweeting it. Pretty brilliant. You want to talk about that?

I do. Can I say one thing about the Elon?

Yeah.

So, so the guy from World Hunger who's like, oh, it's not that simple, I can't really break it down. All right, so that's obviously a loss on their end, but there is a great example of a charity who does this well. So, um, have you seen what Charity: Water does for their like accountability? Because, uh, what Elon said was the whole thing, I'll donate the money, my only thing is it has to be kind of like open source and transparently accountable where the money is going and what's the effect of it.

Jack Dorsey did that as as well. And he just— Jack Dorsey did it with a fucking Google spreadsheet, right?

Yeah. Yeah. He said, here's the, here's all the money. Here's where it's going. Here's the schedule. And here's, it's a Google Doc. It's a Google Doc that anybody can go view. Uh, you can't edit it, but you can go view it at any given time and see how the money things are.

Amazing.

So, so the founder of Cherrywater, he, uh, his story's amazing, but like, I'll give you kind of the, the fast-forwarded version of it. So fast-forwarded version of his story is a guy named Scott Harrison. He, um, he grows up and when he's a kid, his mom got this like, um, terrible illness. She basically, she was a stay-at-home mom. So the dad goes to work, kids go to school. She stayed home and the new house they had moved into, it had like a gas leak or something like that. And so it like silently killed her autoimmune system. So she got so, uh, her immune system was so compromised that she could not like go outside. She could not like touch objects that had not been sanitized. She couldn't do the laundry cuz like the the cleaner, the bleach, had chemicals in it and it would just like kill her if, you know, they had to like do everything by hand using baking soda 6 times. Or like if she wanted to read a book, Scott would go put it in the oven first and they would have to sort of like kill all the bacteria like by sanitizing it with heat and then hand it to her and she'd wear gloves and they would like slowly turn pages and stuff like that. Like it was insane. And so he, um, and then, but even that whole time they didn't sue the company that had— that was responsible for the leak because they were like a very religious family and they were like, you know, this is God's plan. And so Scott, who like grows up with this really unusual childhood, he's having to like in many ways be the caretaker of the household because his mom wasn't able to do it. He sees his mom suffering. He's like, dude, you know, eff this religion shit. I'm, uh, I'm gonna go live now. So he gets— he turns 18 and he like goes to college, but I think, I think he might have dropped out. Not 100% sure, but he, he starts partying like crazy. He moves to New York and he becomes like a guy in the party scene. And Scott, if you've ever seen him, he's a good-looking guy. He's sort of like a George Clooney-looking motherfucker. Like, he's like very— like, it's like the guy gets gray hair and he looks even more handsome than he did before. And so, um, real Rico Suave type of guy, very suave, super great storyteller, really funny. Just, he's a great hang. Like, uh, I've hung out with him and you're just like charmed, you know, the whole time. And so anyways, he hits the party scene and he eventually— he's like, all right, I gotta make some money. So it becomes a party like promoter. So his job was— and he says this like My job was to convince rich guys that they needed to pay me like $5,000, $6,000 to get to go buy this $100 bottle of alcohol. And he is like, they knew what they were doing and I knew what I was doing and it worked anyways. And so he starts making a killing as a party promoter and he's got the fancy watch, he's got the model girlfriends, he's got the nice penthouse in New York and he's getting paid, you know, whatever. Some vodka company will pay him $2,500 a night just to be drinking their liquor instead of somebody else's liquor. And somebody will pay him to wear this watch instead of somebody else's watch. And so he's kind of the man in this city. Seen. But a few years go by and he's like— starts to feel, you know, as you do when you kind of get in this party lifestyle, he starts to feel a little empty inside. Like the highs no longer doing it for you anymore. And I think he was— the story is he was on this guy's boat. This guy, um, his name is— what is the name? Guy, the guy who created Cirque du Soleil. Like Guy Liberti Canadian guy. Yeah, yeah, some, some name like that.

I can't remember off top my head billionaire Canadian. Yeah.

He's on his yacht or boat or whatever, party boat. And Scott's just in, in the boat, like in the room where he was in, there's a Bible and he kind of sees it. And he grew up in a super religious household and then has, you know, become basically like a sinner. Um, and he just sort of picks up the book and, you know, he's hungover one day and he starts reading it. He's reading the Bible and he starts to like, kind of like get emotional and he sort of has this literal like come to Jesus moment where he is like, what am I doing with my life? Like, you know, like I'm, I'm not a good person. I'm not doing good for anyone in the world. And like, you know, I'm just like partying and drinking. It's all a very shallow lifestyle. It's like, you know, uh, these, these hot girls and then these rich guys and this like lifestyle that's not great and drugs, alcohol, that sort of thing. So he's like, okay. And I think also he literally woke up that day and he was like numb in his hand. He's like, this is like a metaphor. I'm not just numb in my arm. Like I'm numb in life right now. So he's like, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take the next 6 months. I'm just gonna take a 6-month break from this lifestyle and I'm just gonna What's like the most servant, like servant thing I can go do? How can I just serve people? You know, how can I go do a very Christian thing here? And, um, and so he applies to all these nonprofits and they reject him. They're like, you're a party promoter. Like, we don't— he's like, dude, I'll work for free. And they're like, no, we don't need your, your kind here. He's like, are you sure? Like, I'm good with people. I'm good with like events. I'm good with all this stuff. And they're like, no, no, no. Like where you come from, that's not, that's not what we're looking for here. So he gets rejected after one after another. And finally he gets this one group to agree to let him work there if he pays. So he had to pay to go work there. Uh, so he basically made a large contribution to, um, Mercy Ships, I think is what it's called. It's basically a thing where, uh, hotshot doctors in the US, like, for one week out of the year, they go on this boat and it goes to Africa, and then they, they spend all week there doing, like, uh, pro bono surgeries on people who need surgeries, and then they come back. And he's like, he kind of— his background was photography, so he's like, oh dude, I'll I'll take photos of this trip. Uh, that'll be my contribution. And so he goes there and he's got the photos still. He'll show it to you. And when he gives his talk, he shows them. It's like what they were doing was there was kids with like, uh, massive like tumor growth. So like, you know, they would have like a huge lump on the side of their head, like the size of a volleyball or like in their jaw, their jaw would be protruding out like 6 inches because they had this growth. And like all they needed was just for it to be removed. Like, is it, they're having trouble eating, breathing. It's like not even a cancerous thing. It's just a benign tumor, but they just needed it removed. And he's like, dude, the line was like a mile long. And he's like, the saddest part is we, um, you know, we couldn't do all the sur— the one week was up and there's still people in the end of the line that didn't get their surgeries or whatever. So he's like, okay, um, I'm not just gonna do this. I, I'm just gonna like, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna dedicate my life to like, you know, uh, helping people because I can't believe what I've been doing. And this was so meaningful to me and whatever. So he's like, for, he does two things. He goes to on the ground in Africa and he says, what is the like root cause? What are some of the root causes of this problem? So he does kind of what Elon calls first principles thinking, which is why does this person have this crazy tumor in the first place? It's like, well, they might have this tumor because, um, you know, they are, are, they don't have clean drinking water and sanitation. And so there's like highly infested things. So you found that on all these different axes, like He's like, why are these women, why, why are women, you know, falling so far behind in society and not getting high-paying jobs? Well, because they actually have to spend 5 hours a day just walking to the nearest waterhole and walking back carrying this 40-pound, 50-pound jug of water. And that takes 5 hours in a day. And then, then they have to use that water quickly and like do all the laundry, cooking, washing of their kids. And then like they don't work. And then because of that, they're like, you know, stuck and economically stuck. So anyways, he's like, he identifies water's the root cause. He's like, okay. And he asked himself a very important question. He goes, Why have I not been giving to charity? Like, I kind of knew there's suffering all around the world. Kids in Africa are starving and need water and all this. Why didn't I give? And it's a— this is the connection to the Elon thing. He's like, because I always kind of felt and heard like, you never know where the money goes, or if you gave— if you gave— even if you do give money, um, you have this worry, like, I don't know if this is even making an impact. And they never closed the loop, so you never knew where the money went and you never saw the impact of your dollars. It was just like, thank you, goodbye. Here's your tax, here's your tax deduction. Goodbye. And so he's like, all right, I'm gonna do it differently. He's like, he's like, I, he didn't know anything about the nonprofit space, but he's like, all right, like, let's just do the basics. He's like, what if 100% of the money went to the cause? And he's like, that would like clear up that question mark. He's like, and then he's like, also, I'm a photographer. Like, why don't we just take photos of the place where we do the project and send it to the person who gave us the money? Like, if you contributed, we know where the project is. Why don't we just send you a photo when we do the project and say, hey, here's what you, what you did. And so he's like, I'm gonna use GPS trackers and photos to make people feel the effect of their giving.

And that's what he does now.

That's what he does now. So he goes back to New York, he throws a party because he's like, uh, that's kind of the only thing I know how to do. If he's like, I'm gonna throw a party, it's my birth— 30th, 30th birthday or something like that. He's like, throw a birthday party, but instead of giving me a gift at the door charge, um, I just want you to give $30 to the cause. I'm 30 years old, give $30 to the cause. And so people come, they have this party cuz he's got a great social network in New York. And, uh, you know, they forget about it. 3 months later, he sent them all photos of the project that they contributed to. He's like, hey, that, that all added up. We drilled these 2 water wells. They used to have to walk this far. Now here's how far they walk. Look at the map. And, um, you know, we turned a 4-hour walk into a, you know, into a 10-minute walk. And then he's like, um, here's what the women have to say. There's videos of them thanking you. And here's like the kids, you know, here's the water, like fresh, clean. This is the water they used to drink.

It's dirty.

Here's the clean, clear water. That's what you did. And people were blown away. And that became—

and they've raised, they've raised a ton of money, like $400, $500 million.

Yeah. Well, the story gets a little crazier. So he, he, he's like, I'm gonna stick to this 100% model. 100% of money goes to the cause. And people were like, well, bro, there's a reason people don't do that. Like, how are you gonna pay for your own salary or the salary of anybody working on the charity? He's like, we'll do a separate bank account, literally two bank accounts. One that's public donations that go to the cause. And one that'll be private donations for people that wanna fund our charity to do this. And he's like, and of course people were pretty interested in doing the 100% thing. Less people were interested in the private thing. And that's where like kind of full circle, uh, uh, I guess like, I don't know how, how long I wanna go on this, but I'll give you the kind of the cool, the cool last bit. So he's basically running outta money, um, for the private side, for the actual, for himself. And he's just sleeping on couches and he's like, you know, I got a backpack to my name and like, I'm the only employee, so it's fine. And, but even still, he starts running outta money. His friends are kind of kicking him off couches. He's running outta friends' houses to go sleep in. And he's like, all right. Um, he's like, let me just do what, like, this whole thing may end, but I wanna do as much good as I can in the meantime. So he's like, you know, this birthday idea of giving up your birthday, like, we're all pretty privileged. We don't need birthday gifts. I gave up my birthday. That's how I started this charity. Like, instead of giving to me, give to them. Um, he's like, dude, there's these social networks now, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, that they all have like millions of people and they all have this birthday feature and people go write on each other's wall. He's like, so he wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, to like Tom from MySpace and to Michael Birch from Bebo. And he wrote a letter to all of them. He said, hey, you have millions and millions of members on your platforms. They all have birthdays logged, registered in the platform and people looking for a way to wish each other. Um, it would be amazing if you added a charity button, a way for you to give up your birthday and let people donate for your birthday to the cause. Um, he gets no reply from Facebook. He gets no reply from MySpace and he gets no reply from Bebo. So he's like, ah, whatever, didn't work. Now a month later, Michael Birch from Bebo says, hey Scott, sorry I missed this. Uh, we actually just sold the company. So he had just sold the company for $850 million. And he said, uh, you know, so I can't really implement this here, but you know what, I'm in New York. Uh, let's just meet up for an hour. And so he goes and he meets with him. Scott gives him the full pitch. Michael's like a British guy. He's pretty reserved, you know, in person. He's, he's, you know, British people have like a dry sense of humor too, so they're not the most like emotive when you're talking to them. And so Scott basically said, feels like, oh, I told this guy what we're doing, he basically didn't flinch and he moved on, like whatever. And, um, he had 6 weeks of runway left in the bank. He's like, ah, that was my last— that was my Hail Mary. I have 6 months, 6 weeks of runway left and then this whole thing ends. But you know what, we did some good work. And then Michael wrote him an email right after the meeting, like the next day, and he just said, hey Scott, loved our chat. send me your wire instructions. I'll send you a million dollars. Use it however you wish. Keep rocking. And, uh, the million dollars kept them going for one more year. And then since then, they've now raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the charity. They're like one of the biggest privately backed charities because they have this 100% model. And Michael got them in with other kind of wealthy tech people, and they all liked this idea of like accountability, transparency, and closing the loop on, on giving and feeling the impact. Act like that just feels right to the kind of the new, new wave of rich people. And so it's like taken off since then. That's the crazy story of Charity: Water.

That, you just gave them a 30-minute infomercial.

Yeah. Uh, I don't feel bad. I've been with them to Africa and literally it's like, uh, it, it's not only like changing lives, but when, when he goes there, people literally, and he's the most humble dude, but I went to the village and people literally feel like he's Jesus. A, cuz it's like a white man who comes to this village. He's like the only white person ever, like in the village. And B, because he like, whatever he's doing when he leaves here somehow results in fresh water being given to our village. And they're like, thank you. Whatever you're doing out there is, you know, God's work.

That's badass. I should, I should give to him. I have not. But after that pitch, I will. Um, can I, let me tell you about someone interesting. Have you heard of a guy named AJ Patel? I bet you haven't.

Never heard of him. What is it?

All right. You have not heard of him and you're going to be surprised that you've not heard of him. So this guy's way low key. And I got interested in the space because I've been really interested in low-sugar products. Uh, whenever, like, whenever I'm in New York, or particularly New York because I go to like corner stores all the time, you see like moms with their kids and they buy like Hawaiian Punch or like fucking Gatorade. Like, it's a sugar factory.

A corner store and a grocery store are sugar factories.

It's sad and I feel horrible.

Dispensaries maybe.

Yeah, it's horrible. And it's because And I guess maybe that's just more convenient, but, and people just, I don't think know better. So I've been doing research and I found this guy named AJ Patel. So listen to what this guy's done. So he started a, this, he, he's only 32. So he started this thing called Smooth Viking, which was a men's grooming business that he sold. Then he started Insta Naturals, which is a nat, nat, natural-based skincare, uh, business. It did $55 million in 2018. Um, been, I mean, it crushes it. And then he started Zenwise, which was plant-powered vitamins and supplements, and it was doing okay, like $5 to $8 million in revenue. But then he was like, the thing about vitamins, like, people are a lot, a lot of people are asking me for vitamins for my pet, for their dogs, for their cats. And he was like, that's cool. And it's even cooler because you have no idea if it works, right? That's the funny thing about pet stuff. And I give my pet vitamins and I'm like, It doesn't work. I have no fucking idea. Right. But I'm doing it. And so he starts this thing called Zesty Paws, and Zesty Paws is kind of amazing. And so he kind of creates a strategy where he does two things. The first thing that he does is he spends a lot of money up front on making the brand really good. You know, a lot of guys, a lot of times guys like you or me will just kind of throw something up there.

Yeah. Like an MVP, right? The minimum viable product kind of looks shitty and crappy at the beginning.

Yeah. So he hires an agency or a branding agency and they help him make Zesty Paws like look really great. And then he his whole goal is to first dominate Amazon, then go to retail. And I was doing some research and I used, uh, Jungle Scout and I also watched a bunch of videos. So Zesty Paws recently sold for $610 million. It's estimated on Amazon they're doing around $800— sorry, $8 million a month on Amazon only. And then probably another $7 million, uh, through their retail outlets. It costs around $8 to wholesale and it sells for $26. $6. So it, they could have been doing around $40 million in profit when they sold and they sold for $610 million. Now the reason I'm bringing this up, his new thing, it's called HighKey Cookie. It's, and I've noticed that when you look up HighKey co-founder, they'll want, they don't mention his name. He's trying to hide it for some reason. I don't know why he's trying to hide. I don't know what his deal is. Uh, he just prefers being low key. Um, but he doesn't talk about it too much. I think he just prefers being low key. But, uh, HighKey is basically low sugar cookies and he's doing the exact same thing where he's getting on Amazon and he's ranking and he's got 60,000 reviews and it's a pretty new product already. It's pretty amazing what this guy's doing. He's doing the same strategy over and over and over again. Um, are you looking at, uh, HighKey Cookies on—

I'm on his, uh, his LinkedIn right now. So he's listed as the co-CEO and, uh, he looks like he's in Florida. How did you hear about this person?

Um, I, two different ways. I was researching, um, low-carb cookies because I'm fascinated by that. I'm right now, some current obsessions are low-sugar cookies and low-sugar ketchup and other sauces. Right. Um, and I was researching and I saw HiKey and I remember a friend, our mutual friend told me about this guy who had this thing called Zesty Paws and his whole strategy was to dominate Amazon and then go to retail.

Wow, very impressive. Uh, very few people have done what this person has done.

So I think he's 32 years old or 31.

Yeah, that's pretty impressive. Um, have you tried Fat Snacks?

It's like, um, so I'm— I have a list of lists here of companies that are interesting, and I did try Fat Snacks. I thought that they were fine. I thought they were okay, but the problem that I have— so I eat Quest all the time. Are you familiar with Quest bars?

Yeah, I, I like the Quest chips because I'm a chip guy. I don't have a sweet tooth, but the Quest, they basically have like a version of Doritos. And honestly, they're like the only keto snack that I actually like. I'm like, it like actually replaces the craving, you know?

Yeah, so I eat a ton of Quest now, but there's like a big background here. So, uh, how do you say his last name? Tom Bilyeu. He spoke at our event, HustleCon. He's a pretty cool guy. This was actually one of the first D2C kind of home runs. So basically they bootstrapped this company and within 5 years sold it for $1 billion. And they were making it— I think Tom's mom or someone in his family was really overweight and he wanted to create a low glycogen food, you know, lower carb food for his overweight family member. And he's like, I just need it to taste good so we can replace candy. And so he creates this thing and revenue is doubling like every month and eventually they sell it for $1 billion when they get to $100 million in revenue. But there's a— it's quite controversial. So I eat them, but a lot of people don't like it because it has sucralose. Or is that how you pronounce it? Sucralose?

Yeah, that's right.

And it's basically like a sugar alcohol. And they also put a lot of fiber in it. And so their protein, a lot of people don't like it because it's like not the best protein. It also has palm oil. A lot of people don't like palm oil. So a lot of like health nuts, including Justin Maris, who I talked to about this, this. They, they don't like it because it, it just kind of got some shit in there. But frankly, I love it. But, um, the reason why Quest Bars are amazing is because they are in every fucking store. If you go to a 7-Eleven or a gas station, they're going to have Quest Bars, right? Whereas a lot of the other stuff, the reason why I don't consume as much is they're not— they're just not convenient, right? And so anyway, I'm getting incredibly fascinated with these low-sugar products that are in every store.

Well, I like the idea of the low-sugar sauces. I think low-sugar ketchup is a great one to go after. Who's doing that? Is that a— is that a business that's like saturated?

Or no, it's not.

So that's a great idea.

I think it's fantastic. And the reason why it's fantastic is when you're trying to eat lower carb and eat healthy, mustard has no calories and no sugar in it. Barbecue sauce is shit. Ketchup, very high sugar. You know, if Heinz— Heinz has a $45 billion market cap. They make something like $7 billion a year just in sauces and condiments. Most of it is basically ketchup, and ketchup is crazy high sugar. Their ketchup, the reason why it's that bright red is there's a ton of, a ton of sugar in it. And there was a company called Primal Kitchen, which sold for $300 million in 2018. It was started by this guy who kind of looks like an old version of me. His name is Mark. What's his name? Mark Sisson, I think his name. You'll have to look up Mark Sisson. S-I-S-S-O-N. I believe that's his name. Um, and he had a whole line.

Dude, he does look like an older version of you. That's hilarious.

Yeah, he looks like it.

I mean, he is ripped, this guy. I don't know how old he is. He looks like he's like 70s, 60s. Yeah. And he is like absolutely shredded, which is impressive.

Well, I meant his face. We kind of have like similar faces, but older.

Dude, this guy is— this is you, man. This is gonna be amazing. Wow. You're gonna look like this.

So he's 68 years old.

Wow.

Crazy. And so he had this, this business where he had a blog. He's been a blogger forever, a health blogger. And he created Primal Kitchen, which is a— they make dressings. Dude, the dressings and ketchup are the worst. Dressings have so much— like an Italian dressing, so much fucking sugar.

Oh, I'm eating a salad. It's like, how's the salad like 1,200 calories? Because the dressing.

So I've been like super curious about this and tell me what you think about this. The problem with a lot of D2C companies is that the cost to acquire a customer is stupidly high. High right now. It's— I think it's the highest it's ever been, uh, ever.

At least the highest it's ever been.

Yeah, correct. But particularly with the Facebook change and competition, it's just getting high. So our friend Andrew created this thing where basically he— he— this was illegal what he did, but like, whatever, it happened. He, he created a menu and put it on Uber Eats and was just like making low glycemic muffins. So I guess like almond flour muffins at home and putting it on Uber Eats and he just like made the branding really cute.

Yeah.

Could you just create like one of these high key or these low carb cookies or something like that and just put it on the local Uber Eats, start getting customers, put like a coupon code in there? I mean, I feel like that's an interesting way to kind of hack customer acquisition for a lot of these D2C things.

Yeah, I think that is kind of interesting, although I don't know how many people are going to like order just like even a bakery, it's like, okay, yeah, you're getting like, you know, a dozen muffins or cookies or whatever. Like, I don't know if people would just go order, um, like a sauce or something, right? Like, that's not gonna work.

No, I don't think they'll do— yeah, I don't think they would do cookies. But have you heard of Insomnia Cookies?

By the way, it's only illegal because he just didn't have a commercial cook— a commercial kitchen and a license, right? But like, you could easily do that, right? You could do the same exact thing if you're just— if you're not doing it out of, you know, like a home kitchen or whatever. You just need a permit, right? That's the only problem with Yes, correct.

Have you heard of Insomnia Cookies?

Yeah, they're insane.

Yeah, they're insane. They're amazing. I'm just thinking like, I think you could do that from a cloud kitchen and then start selling them online.

I totally think you do that. Crumble is also like growing like crazy right now. I think it's one of the fastest growing franchises is Crumble Cookies. Um, but I, let's get back to this ketchup idea. How do I convince you to start this company? Cuz you would crush it. Uh, it's in your area of expertise. It's a beautiful market because huge, like huge demand. Um, and it's a consumable, so you run out and you have to keep re, re, rebuying, replenishing. Um, and people use a lot of sauce and you could turn this into a whole, you could extend into other sauces. But if you'd start with, you know, ranch or you start with ketchup, you'd get like a huge number of people, barbecue sauce, like just 2, 3 SKUs. You could do this. And then with your marketing prowess, like you could build, you could literally build like a $500 million company for this in like 4 years.

I think it's amazing. Are you not doing this to me? I should. The other day I went to the store and I bought ketchup. The other day I went to the store and I bought ketchup and it was, it was like a howl. I didn't realize it was near Halloween and they called it blood tomato. And I thought that meant like, oh, like it's like it's a weird category where it's only the tomatoes and no sugar. And I bought it and it was just normal Heinz. And I've been eating this shit all week because I don't want to throw it away. And it's horrible. The sugar in Heinz is, is it makes it taste good. But it's dog shit.

So Sam's Sauce, what do we call it? What do we call them? The brand here.

Ah, fuck. Southern Sam's Sticky Icky.

Yes, yeah, there we go, dude. Yes, there we go. Oh my God, dude, Southern Sam is such a good— I'm not joking. Like, okay, I'm just going to use you as the face of this. I'll build the brand, I'll do all the work, maybe, and actually we'll launch this thing, dude. This is an incredible idea.

You like Southern Sam's Sticky Icky?

Like Yeah, if you want to, if you want to pre-buy Southern Sam's Sticky Icky, you need to just, uh, I don't know, DM me on Twitter. My Twitter is @SeanVP. DM me and say, I'm in on Southern Sam's Sticky Icky, which is his first sauce that's coming out. And it's going to be a— I mean, you're a fitness influencer, so you got to have that balance. You're going to have the health aspect. We know that. We've seen the body. We've seen the videos. What we need now is that flavor. But Southern Sam, he's been— this is what you needed back when you had your hot dog stand. You just needed the condiments. It's a full circle. Oh my God, I love it.

Have you heard of Sir Kensington Ketchup?

Yes, my buddy, our buddy invested in it.

Who? Um, oh, okay, great. It sold for $140 million.

Yeah.

And, uh, and I think it undersold.

It sold pretty, you know, it sold early on. Yeah. But I think at that time also, like, I think selling helped them get into retail in a big way. And, uh, you know, that's one of the good things about selling these companies is like, if you can do the branding, you can do the cult online following, you can do the D2C online marketing side, you actually almost want to leave some dry powder for the acquirer. You want to go to the acquirer and say, yeah, we're doing amazing. We have, we don't even know how to do retail. You guys know that, right? You guys know, you got, you got a buddy you play golf with who does Target, who does, uh, I guess Safeways nationwide on the, you know, you, you have the, the guy in the Rocky Mountain region for Whole Foods. He's, he's your ex-frat buddy. Oh, fantastic. Like you should just buy this and then boom, you already have your growth story baked in of how you're gonna improve this. And so that actually helps you sell the companies to have that dry powder of sure. What can the acquirer do? They don't want to see a lemon that's just been squeezed all the way, all the juices out, because then it's all priced in.

Dude, maybe I'll go to the store like right after this, just go buy a bunch of organic and low sugar ketchups and see what's out there. Like, I'll be the first to admit the sugar in there makes it taste so good. I mean, I'll just eat ketchup with a spoon. That's just so good.

This is the idea. Okay, okay, okay. I got full circle. Last episode it was like, what can we do with this marketing budget? That will, like, make for a good story beyond just, you know, direct response ads. This is what we should do with the marketing budget. We should be la— showing it. We do case studies, basically do a fully open business. Basically, we should show how we would build this business from scratch. And Southern Sam's, Southern Sam's Secret Sauce is gonna be the first place that we start. We just, we take, we take $10 grand, we take $10, $15 grand, and we put that instead of going and saying, hey, listen to our podcast, We actually just tell the story of how we're building this on the podcast and that will make people want to tune in. They'll see the growth and they'll see the success story, which is ultimately what this podcast is about, brainstorming great ideas and then talking about how you bring— how you would bring them to life.

It's definitely interesting. I think it'd be fun. I got to go to the store though and buy a bunch of them and see what they're about and see if they taste good. But this Primal Kitchen one seems incredibly interesting. I— and I would imagine that these— I bet the multiples for selling these I would imagine they'd be all right, right? They'd be pretty good because the repeat purchase rate on ketchup is crazy high. I'd have to imagine.

Yeah, I think you can safely sell for, you know, somewhere between 2 and 4x revenue depending on what your story is, so how fast you're growing, how big that market is, you know, etc., etc. But I think 2, even up to 5 times, uh, revenue is possible for a brand like this. But yeah, well then I'm only going off a couple of data points. Maybe those were outliers that I know about. I'm not sure.

Yeah, I got— I'll go do some research. I'm gonna figure out— I'm gonna I'm going after the big ketchup.

Yeah, exactly. We're going after Big Red and we're going after— we're going after big sugar. I also think, uh, maybe, maybe a gum line. How about gum? You like gum?

Most gum is sugar-free. You know what's like the best sugar-free gum?

It's better than sugar-free. We have to go to the next level. We have to be like xylitol-free or—

Trident. You remember Trident? Remember how You remember how Trident is like dentist recommended? That's been sugar-free.

Yeah, well, we are all recommended. We're Southern recommended.

Choose gum. If anything, you're gonna do gum with caffeine in it. There's this guy named— now there's this guy named Nick Simmons. He's got this business called Run Gum, and it's gum with caffeine in it.

Um, how's that company Lucy doing? Isn't that what that is?

Yeah, so I invested in a nicotine, uh, gum company. I think it's only doing okay.

Gotcha.

I love nicotine, though. I, I, I— here, let me show you what I have in my pocket right now. Can you see this?

Uh, I see it's a little fuzzy, but I see like a vial of some kind. What is that?

It's nicotine lozenges.

And it's just like a cough drop.

You just put it in your lip and you just kind of suck on it. I love nicotine, man.

Is that the same thing as a pouch? Is it long?

No, there's no tobacco. There's no tobacco. It's just, it's literally just like a mint. It's like a mint that has nicotine.

That does what? Why do you do that? To stop, to quit smoking or to give you a buzz?

Yeah. So like, I like cigars and so if I could, I would smoke cigars all day. And so now I can go like 2, 3 weeks without a cigar and I just like sucking on these things. I feel like nicotine does have a lot of interesting advantages and I don't, I don't know if nicotine is inherently bad for you in itself. I know that the tobacco is.

So I bumped into this guy on Twitter, and go to, um, go to It's Oklahoma, or just, just Google Oklahoma Smokes. Have you heard of this brand?

No, but I love it.

So Oklahoma Smokes, almost like a sister brand to Southern Sam's Sticky Icky, but, uh, Oklahoma. So this guy was like, oh yeah, I have this, uh, like agency, and we were doing kind of like branding for other products, and then we launched our own product, uh, Oklahoma Smokes, and it's basically, it's an alternative alternative, uh, thing you could smoke. It's like an alternative cigarette and it's got no nicotine and no tobacco, but it's got the form factor of a cigarette. So you light it up, you smoke it, you puff it out, whatever. And, um, and it's doing really well. So he's got like a good amount of traction. And I was like, wow, uh, that's great. Like, you know, what's, uh, and so I looked him up in the kind of like ad library and I was like, dude, I don't see any ads. He goes, oh yeah, you can't advertise for this on, uh, Facebook or like pretty much any ad network cuz they don't want you advertising cigarettes even though this is like a Well, it's nicotine-free, tobacco-free. And, um, he's like, so it's all just organic. Like TikTok, basically people just post about it on TikTok and it goes like kind of viral on TikTok. And that's where all the growth comes from is just people organically talking about it on TikTok.

And I was like, do they have a slick website?

The website is very nice. The branding is great. Um, the whole thing is really well done. Um, and I, I like it a lot. So, you know, maybe Oklahoma Smokes, maybe we're, we work with their agency for our, uh, for our brand. All right. We got who they use.

It's all coming together. They are the agency.

Agency. That's what they were doing.

Are they based in Oklahoma?

No, I think it's just a brand. Like, the dude was like, just like some Indian dude. Uh, although I'm an Indian dude, I was born in Oklahoma, so I guess, I guess maybe they do have some Oklahoma roots. I'm not sure, but I think it's a lot more like—

where do they live?

Isn't this just like— isn't that an amazing brand name?

Oklahoma? This is amazing. Oklahoma Smokes. It sounds like a band. I want to wear an Oklahoma shirt.

Everything I want to be a part of.

Yes. Oklahoma Smokes. Oh, that's phenomenal. That's a brilliant name.

Right? Like if that was my nickname, you know, I'd be a happy man.

So, and they're doing— here's the— look at this company. They're doing No Nic November. So no nicotine November. Uh, and they're giving you discounts.

Um, no sauce September, baby.

No sauce. This is good. I like these guys. Where do they live? Do you know?

Uh, I have no idea. I don't even know if he wanted me to shout it out. I mean, he probably is happy with it, but, uh, I've never tried it. I don't smoke, so it's like not a product I would use. I just thought the branding was extremely well done. And so I kind of added it to my swipe file of like, oh, this is, this is a great name and a great brand here. And, uh, really cool product idea and challenging, you know, it's, it's doing well, but it's not huge because very hard to grow, very hard to market something like this, um, through traditional channels. So I don't know what they're gonna do. Uh, you know, hopefully this gives them a little spike or whatever, but, uh, you know, I think that's the hard part about a business like that.

You want to do one more?

Um, yeah, let's do one more. Do you have one or you want me to, to pick one here?

You—

we didn't do our news thing. I kind of hijacked the long-ass Chris Harrison.

Pick one of the two.

Uh, let's do the Zillow thing. So, so the funny story about this Zillow thing— so Zillow came out and they said, hey, we are shutting down our iBuyer business, which is basically where they would just, uh, you wanna sell your home? Boom, we'll give you an instant offer. Our algorithm will do a calculation and spit out a price. You don't have to go through a broker. You don't have to stage your house. You don't have to do like 3 months of showings. Like, we'll just give you an offer today. You can sell your home today. And the idea was, this was, you know, sort of an idea they stole from Opendoor. So Opendoor was a startup that was built to do just exactly this instantaneous, uh, like instant sales of houses. And, um, Zillow saw Opendoor growing and value, and now Opendoor's public, and they created a couple years ago their own in, in-house like competitor. They, they copied that feature, but it didn't work. So they got stuck. They just came out and announced, hey, we lost $500 million this quarter. Oops. Uh, we're gonna lay off 25% of our staff and we have 7,000 homes that we need to unload because we're getting out of this business. And they're getting $2.8 billion.

They're getting out of it because they also are getting criticized constantly because Zillow is what everyone uses to get comps for homes. And if the person also buys them, you could easily manipulate the price of things. So if you— they can buy a home in one neighborhood knowing that it's going to increase the, the, a lot of different things.

So, and it's competitive with their core business. So they're— which I give them credit for because Most companies, they wouldn't do it for all these reasons we're mentioning right now. They would just stay out and they would get disrupted. Zillow tried to not get disrupted, to try to, to add this feature, but like their core business is basically selling to agents, right? For consumers, they give you price information and you're supposed to be a trusted source. So that's one challenge. The other conflict was the main business is agents buying leads from, from Zillow. And if Zillow's the buyer, then they don't need the agents. They are their own agent. And so, uh, they were comp competing with themselves in many ways. So anyways, they're getting out of this business, uh, you know, big kind of, uh, uh, what do you call it, like a scar from, like, you know, a bruise from, from going after this. Their stock price is just in the shitter, which is ironic because we're in this group chat where for months, like the last year basically, these guys have been— our friends have been like pimping out, oh dude, Zillow, Zillow's, Zillow's a great buy.

Yeah. And I went and bought $25,000 worth.

Exactly same. I bought it like, I don't know, like 50 or $100,000 worth of it, and I'm down big. Everybody, everybody in the group is down big or something. Yeah, we're all down like somewhere between 30 and 40% or something on this.

And I agreed with it. I thought Zillow— I think Zillow is the greatest thing ever because to me, like, what do you do when you're in a fancy neighborhood even if you're not buying a home? You just go on Zillow, you know, it's a category owner, they own it, right?

Yeah. So, so, you know, Zillow, it— the stock is down big right now. Uh, the funny thing is Opendoor stock also took a beating, so they're down like 12% just on the news that Zillow failed at this, people are like, maybe Opendoor is also going to fail at this. And then they came out with this god-awful— did you see this tweet that they did that Opendoor did?

It's the worst. It's the absolute tone-deaf idiot.

Just, you know what the best thing to do is to make fun of them.

So listen, you know what? Do you remember what Biden did when he was running for president?

Which part? Forgetting.

He shut the fuck up because when you have a guy in the basement. Yeah. When you have a guy like Trump who does all the talking and like is his own worst enemy, you shut up, you hide, and you don't say a word. That's what Open Door should have done. They should have locked themselves in the basement and said, everyone is forgetting to mention us even though we do this exact same thing. You just shut up. Um, and that's what they should have done.

Yeah, or they should have come out cocky. They should have come out and posted a chart of how much ass they were kicking and just be like, uh, you know, this is, you know, this does— this is a hard business, or it's not for everybody, and then just post their chart of themselves kicking ass at the same time Zillow is dying on, on the same business. But instead, I'm gonna read this word for word. You tell me if you understand 1% of this. OpenDoor just randomly tweets yesterday, we are in the midst— first of all, don't say midst. We're in the midst of a generational shift towards a fully digital experience, comma, with large, comma, unmet need for seamless experience in real estate, period.

What a circle jerk sentence.

Nothing. Then they reply to their own tweet, with our track record of executional excellence and many years of investment in consumer experience, technology, pricing, They're just, they're just saying words, comma, technology, comma, pricing, comma, and operations, comma. We are well positioned to meet consumer demand with a best-in-class product and service. Opendoor is open for business. We have demonstrated strong growth, unit economics. We are energized to help homeowners nationwide with simplicity, certainty, and speed. I saw this and I was like, what the fuck? The funny part, the ironic part is this is done by somebody who's like, I, their comms, their job is comms, corporate comms. They're a communication professional. This is their their actual job.

You want to know, they forgot the number one most important rule about copywriting. You know what that number one rule is? No one cares about you. They only care about themselves.

Exactly.

That's the number one rule. If you remember that, you're going to be, you're going to be 90% of the way there. No one cares about you. They only care about themselves. It's like when you go to a website and they go, we've been in business since 1994. Our pure— our passion is to serve you, our dear customers. We've been serving customers for a long time and we know that we're gonna have a lot of high integrity when we handle you. It's like, I don't care. No one cares. No one cares. Yeah, exactly.

They violated all the rules. What's another rule?

Don't use words like that.

Yeah, exactly.

You talk like you speak, right?

Talk like you speak, right? So write like you speak and then use like, you know, 8th grade reading level. Yeah, this is like, you know, 20th grade reading level. And so none of None of it makes sense to the average person. Uh, they also didn't say anything of interest. Like, what did this mean? This— all this meant was, please don't sell our stock. Please don't sell our stock. Please, please, please, please don't sell our stock. We, we didn't make the mistake, they did. And there were so many better ways to do this. So that was—

I thought so. I think there's this idea. So like, when I, um, was running the show basically at The Hustle, um, my staff would be like, we need to change the landing page. We need to change the footer. And I'm like, well, why? And they go, well, because it's been the same forever. And my analogy was always, yeah, but you're thinking about it this kind of poorly. For example, our office was on a corner and there was a billboard right there. And I would say, how many people do you think are gonna see that billboard for many, many times in a row? And they would say, well, most people are probably just passing by. And I go, yeah, I would agree with that.

Yeah.

Now, of course, you and I, we've been sitting here for a month now and we see that same billboard every single day. So we're kind of sick of it. But 9 out of 10 people are just passing by and they're seeing it for the first time every time. What you need to remember is that most people are not just sitting there. They're just a parade, you know, walking by. And that's what like Open Door kind of like realized. They're like, oh, well, yeah, most people like— so they're probably in the thick of this and they're seeing Zillow flip out and they're like, everyone Everyone's talking about this. Everyone's thinking about us. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, you are. But most people don't give a shit. Just shut up. Just be quiet. Hide. Now's the time to hide.

Yeah.

So yeah, I saw that. And our friend did something pretty funny.

Yeah. So Moise, uh, Moise Ali, he, um, he tweeted out— I love this tweet, by the way. This is just—

he's very— he's a very good writer.

A great cocky tweet. So he goes, Dear Zillow and Rich Barton, the CEO of Zillow, who by the way is badass, I'm sure today is a tough day. I'd like to purchase all the homes you have on your balance sheet in one transaction. Is that something you'd consider? I will pay cash and close in 30 days. No contingencies or financing delays. Best, M. Signing off with the initial is the power move, by the way. I will never ever write my full name again. Because the initial is so good. And, uh, this is great. Obviously he's not gonna buy $2.8 billion, uh, worth of stuff himself, but, but maybe, maybe, uh, maybe he's, maybe he's got some strategy here. Maybe he's got some money he could tap into. I'm not sure. Um, but yeah, it also just like hilarious tweet and a way to kind of be out there on Twitter and ride the, ride the wave of something happening.

Yeah, I thought this tweet was brilliant. He's a troll and I love when he trolls cuz he trolls in a very smart way.

Yeah, um, he's a cocky troll. And you know, the, the weird thing is, how did they lose money doing this? So like, the— from what I can tell, the like single-family homes, which is what they were buying, single-family home market is like at an all-time high. Like people from COVID are, you know, there was the great reassessment, which is what happened during COVID Everybody reassessed their job, their, you know, can I work from home? Oh wow, I didn't need to travel for business, I could just do a Zoom meeting and actually it works. Do I need a gym membership? I could work out at home. I could Do I like this job? Or actually, maybe now that I have this break, I can, I can think about what I really wanna do. And I pick up this hobby and, you know, maybe when I'm at home and this marriage, this marriage sucks, you know, maybe I should reassess that. There was the great reassessment. And during that, a lot of people moved. They moved for different reasons. If your job is remote, you could leave high-priced places like California or New York. You could relocate to other places. Um, if you're at home all the time, maybe you need more space and you wanna get buy, you know, wanna buy a bigger, bigger place with a bigger yard and bigger office space or whatever. So people were buying more than ever and they were buying single-family homes. So people were leaving the cities. And, uh, so condos were down in inside San Francisco and New York, um, like 15% and single-family homes were up 15, 20%. So I don't fully understand, and I'm sure there's a totally logical explanation, but you know, it's like, how did you, how'd you lose money doing the one thing that everybody wanted? You were buying and selling single-family homes. Like, and I think what they said was, you know, the price was too unpredictable. So we, you know, we weren't able to do this well. And the other thing they said was there's a labor shortage. They couldn't get people to come flip the home. So like do the repairs you needed to, to flip the homes. So yeah, I'm sure like that's really hard, but that's crazy. They weren't able to do it in like a bull market. Yeah.

I think it's nuts. It doesn't make me like them anymore. And I, and I, I'm a shareholder. I'm bummed. I guess, I guess they should have just stuck to what they did.

You're going to hold your stock or you're going to sell?

I don't sell, so yeah, I'm gonna hold.

Okay, cool. Me too. Um, all right, anything else you wanted to do or we can wrap it up here?

We'll wrap it up here. Um, don't forget to go to— what was the URL?

Uh, ratethispodcast.com/mfm, as in My First Million. So rate this podcast, go leave us a review if you get enjoyment out of the show. That's kind of all we ask. Helps us move up the charts, helps us get more downloads.

And then we're gonna And we're— I think we're gonna do one more thing. I believe what we're gonna do, I'll kind of like, I'll say briefly, um, I think we want to do something where you get— we're gonna have a budget of like up to $20 grand a month, and the people who create clips for us, Sean, and get the most views, we'll give them a little bit of money.

Ah, okay, I like it.

Yeah, I think Banner Jonathan came up with that.

Okay, I like it. Yeah, paid to listen, so it's a good deal.

Well, you get paid to chop up clips and, and they end up being creative, so kind of a good idea. Awesome.

All right.

All right. That's the pod.