How To Set Goals For Lazy People | Goal Setting 101

Here is how I set goals so that I can actually hit them. And this is coming from some guy who is, you know, frankly, pretty lazy. And, you know, I don't— I'm not like you. Like, I'm not like, oh, I need to lose weight. I must have a 500-calorie deficit. Therefore, it is done. I will now, like, you know, track this thing. That always felt like too much work to me. But let me tell you what does work for me.

By the way, it's the exact opposite. It's less work to do it that way because then you don't think. You just, like, do. You just do what you're supposed to do.

It's the classic thing that somebody who has discipline and willpower says, like, oh, it's easier to just do it right the first time. Yeah, we know, bro. If we— and we know that that's true. We just don't live life that way. Like, it's okay. You know, I, I speak from the procrastinator's perspective.

All right, you want to tell us about this game or what?

Well, first of all, I think we need to spice up the intro. I think the intro needs to be like, right now we're just casual with it. We just come on like it's just a conversation and people love that. They love the authenticity. But you know what, you know what works? When you become a cheeseball and you just start performing and making a show and you give a proper intro and you do all the things. This is My First Million, the podcast that has two future trillionaires that come at you. Oh, by the way, did you see this? Did you, did you see this guy who went on LinkedIn and then quoted the Manifest Cowboys thing?

Wait, whoa, what happened?

I tagged you in it. Some guy was— he's telling a story. Do you use LinkedIn? Oh, bro, I'm going ham on LinkedIn right now.

Are you really? Why? Like, what do you mean? Like trying to get popular?

I told you I hired that ContentRemixer guy, Brandon. And so Brandon's been amazing. What he does is he just takes my old good tweets and posts them on LinkedIn. And people on LinkedIn, bro, it's a gun to a knife fight. They're like, wow, incredible content. This is— wow, what a conversation. This is stimulating. Because, you know, LinkedIn is like the most boring content farm generically, right? So like, I've been over here fighting on Twitter against like, you know, fucking professional tweeters who are researching 8 hours a day and like creating these like epic threads. And, you know, I just come off the dome, bro. Like, you know, I'm that painting at the top of the Sistine Chapel. I'm just off the top. And now I bring that to LinkedIn and it's a whole new— it's a habanero pepper for them. And so it's a ghost pepper. It's the last wing on Hot Ones and they don't know what to do with it. And so this guy has been posting, so I just get to check the, the notifications and I'll be like, oh shit, he posted that thing from like a year ago that I said, and people on LinkedIn are loving it. But today it's getting popular. Yeah, I think I added like, I don't know, 1,000 followers this week or something like that.

Dude, by the way, I, I knew this woman named Candace. You maybe knew her too. And she was an entrepreneur and she owned a bikini company. And she was like, you know what, I'm just going to start— this was in 2015, '16, '17. She goes, I'm going to start posting like stories about our bikini business and like, you know, how things are going. And so it like, like new product updates, whatever. And it was all like, you know, hot ladies in bikinis, you know, like big boobs.

And it was just like, what the algorithm—

it went crazy. It broke people's brain. And she eventually got banned and she obviously did the right thing of like making a, a public fuss about it. It's like, what? I'm just talking about my business. What's wrong with this? This is professional content. I sell bikinis. I've got, and so it worked awesomely for her. And so I think that if you have a business that is like, uh, related to something like, you know, like that, you could kill it on LinkedIn. But anyway, so you're crushing it on LinkedIn right now.

Yeah. So this guy, yeah, this guy Thomas Angel, I'll give him a shout out. He, uh, he posted, he goes, it says, quote, I don't do business, I manifest. #MFM. And then he goes, uh, Sprouts Farmers Market was number 1 on our vision board when we launched our— the Everything Latte at Altitude Functional Beverages. I guess that's his company, Altitude Functional Beverages. So he goes, after 13 months, we're now in 10 stores, blah blah blah. We're great, we're great, we're great. And he goes, thank you to the OGs, #ManifestCowboys. And then he tagged us in it, and I totally forgot you had said that on the last pod, and I was like, wow. That is incredible. Manifest Cowboys is one of your top 5, uh, little creations. And like, I just feel like we need to go all in on the only podcast featuring 2 trillionaires, the Manifest Cowboys, the men who never age. Haven't seen a wrinkle in my life. Same body fat as your milk, 2%. Like, that's how we need to go. And then we say, hey iTunes, Play that back 15, go back 15 seconds, play that again.

Did you make up that 2% nonsense? That's beautiful.

Again, off the top. I told you I'm good early in the morning. We just, we moved our podcast to an early morning recording and I just have like an extra 10% juice early in the morning where I'm a little crazy.

That's so funny.

I just roll out of bed and these are the thoughts in my head.

Yeah, dude, you're like a rapper right now. You keep rhyming.

I like this. I saw this hilarious clip of, um, it's actually my favorite form of marketing is you take a clip from something else. So you've seen this one where it's a bar and they're— the whole bar is watching something on a big screen. And it's like the original clip was like from the World Cup and like the guy scores a goal and he puts something on there.

Yeah.

You just put whatever on there, right? Like I'll put like the Milk Road. The milk road like shows up in your inbox, like, you know, the email pops up and then the crowd just goes crazy. And so I saw a version of that. Somebody did it with Joe Rogan. It's Joe Rogan talking to somebody and he's like, have you seen this? And then the guy's like, no. He's like, pull that up. And then they just replace it with this TikTok of this young chubby white boy rapping. And he's really horrible, but it's hilarious. And he's like dancing and rapping at the same time. And Joe's like, God, how do they do it? And like they show the reaction, but they've spliced it together. And, uh, I saw one of those. And so that just really you know, made my morning.

I spent so many hours in the morning and at night just scrolling through Instagram and TikTok and just laughing constantly at all these— just young people are so funny now. I don't think when I was younger and like that age doing stuff like this, no one was this funny. Like, the amount of funny people is— it's, it's way higher now.

Me and my sister, we send each other— maybe she sends me like 25 TikToks a day, I send back maybe 10. And like, the caption on each one isn't like It's not like, oh, you gotta watch this. Oh, this is really funny. Or, uh, ah, that's so true. It's every, every like 7 lines she's just like, people are too good.

Like, what?

How would— how are they so talented? Like, because TikTok is the greatest talent show ever created. It's America's Funniest Home Video every hour on the hour, right? It's like, it is this giant talent show. And when you watch it, you're like, I am nothing compared to these people. I am, I am the dirt on their shoe. They scrape me off before they walk into their house. Like, you feel so dumb. Um, and I, I just like, I can't, I don't understand how they come up with these, how they film them, like where the, where the inspiration comes from. It's too good.

It's so good. And the subreddit, The Fighter and the Kid, that you and I like, just like the commenters are so funny. It's like every Every top comic, it's like one of the best jokes done by a comedian that I like. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, that's how high caliber it is. I just— and it's almost like the way that I describe it, it's like, it doesn't matter if you're into the outdoors or not, when you see a big mountain, you're like, oh wow, that's epic. You know, like, you appreciate the epicness. That's how I feel like when I watch TikTok. I'm like, I don't even like this thing that they're talking about, but how on earth did someone come up with this? And it's just that over and over and over again. And I'm in awe. I'm in awe constantly.

Yeah. People talk about how, uh, these things are a waste of time. Uh, I don't know what their TikTok feed is like. My TikTok feed is incredible. It is the most entertainment per second I've ever experienced in my life. It is funny. It is like insightful. I'll learn stuff all the time. Little life hacks, how stuff works. I'm watching a TikTok about like, you know, how a farmer, like, you know, farm squash. I'm like, oh, I didn't know that, right? Like, I'm just learning stuff that I didn't even know I wanted to know because I would never click the YouTube video. But bro, if I go on YouTube now, it's like, you know, you know when you go to a city and they're like, uh, you know, there's like by the tourist destination, they're like, oh, you want to get on this horse carriage? You know, it'll make for a funny picture. And like, you know, it's a romantic date and you gotta like do this old, slow, uncomfortable thing because, uh, might as well, you know, you gotta do something different. Life's too good now. That's how I feel when I go on YouTube. Like I'm getting back on the horse carriage after I've experienced like an F1 car. And I don't know how YouTube's going to survive.

Dude, speaking of like this type of stuff, speaking of like entertainment and like doing epic shit, I'm reading this book about this woman named Elsbeth Elspeth Beard. That's an interesting name. And in 1979 or 1980, I think she was 22 years old and she's just like, says, fuck it, I'm going to ride my motorcycle around the country. Or sorry, around the world, around the globe. So like you like get on a ship and go to America, right? All across America. Get on a ship on the other side, go to whichever continent is on the other side.

If you do this, is this— I get your pen name, dude.

I did it across America, which is soft. That's soft. Like there's a McDonald's every 50 miles, you know? She did it like in Iran and shit, you know what I mean? Like, like there's levels to this game and she did it in 1979. And so like she was like, we couldn't even get maps. But anyway, I was reading it and I was like, I'm such a pussy. Like, why? Why don't we live more? Do we need to live more epic, adventurous lives? She did this thing at age 22, and now she's like 65. She's still giving talks about it and making money because we are all so weak and we refuse to do like these interesting— it's not that hard nowadays to ride a motorcycle across the world. It's not that hard. You take 6 months, you buy a $20,000 BMW. It ain't going to break. You use your iPhone. It ain't hard. But I just thought it was interesting that she did this thing at age 22. It's kind of like whenever I, like, see people, like, whenever I see, like, the Rolling Stones perform, I'm like, this motherfucker is 80 years old and he's playing a song that he wrote when he was 18. That's longevity. That's good. That's kind of what she's doing. So I'm amazed that you could do one thing at a young age and live off of it forever. And B, we're soft, man. We got to do more epic stuff. Like, we're just sitting in our houses all the time doing this lame stuff all the time. We got to— we got to be more adventurous, right?

What would you do?

I've always wanted to walk across America, so I would do that. I've already ridden my motorcycle across America. I've driven across America a bunch of times. I think I could drive my motorcycle across.

All right. What was genuinely hard? So not like, um, it sounds hard, but what genuinely was hard?

I, um, with, with riding a motorcycle across the country, it was easy, man.

In general, other stuff you've done. Any— anything you've done? What's the actual thing that you've like— that's been really hard?

Doing an Ironman. That was like legitimately hard. Like I felt pain. I think it'd be fun like ride a bicycle or something like that across America, and I think that would be genuinely tough, like physically and emotionally tough. I did an Ironman and that was like legitimately hard. I felt like I was in pain for almost the entire time. It sucked, dude.

So, uh, Ramon and Suli, they, they texted me. Ramon was like, guys, we got to do this Ironman in Hawaii next year. He's an idiot. I'm signing us up. And like, he caught me when I was in that, when I had that trillionaire 2% body fat energy. And I just, two words, all caps, I'm in.

Did you really say that?

He literally was typing.

Do you even know how to ride a bike?

No. He was typing his speech bubbles and I just, I just responded. I go, I go, Ramon, say no more. And then he stopped typing in the iMessage.

Okay.

3 hours passed.

He booked it, didn't it?

3 hours pass. Yeah, he starts sending me like PDF ticket reservations. He starts sending me stuff. I'm like— and I now realize what I have done. And I realize your boy's not as hard as he thinks. He's not as tough as he thinks. He's not as in as he thought he was in.

And do you even know how to swim? Have you ever swam before?

I have a 15-foot pool. And I can swim in it, but I've never— it's like a 1-mile free, like an ocean freestyle swim just to start the race. And so I go— and so then I had to backtrack. So I just came quick. I go, um, hey, I've seen the first one, but can't wait for the second one. They go, what? Iron Man, right? That's what we're talking about, the movie. He goes, no, bro, you're not getting out of this. And I go, no, I am. And then he's— that's— I didn't have a reason. And then he's— so then every day he's been texting me like, hey, here's this cool link to how to train. And I'm like, I'm not opening that link because if I open that link, there's no— if I know what it entails, there's no way I'm going to do this.

So I was guilted into do this by him, and I trained for 6 months and I did pretty good. I did all right. And he got last.

And you're very, very fit and you're saying it's hard. If I trained the hardest for a year, I would not be as fit as you were before you trained for your Ironman. I would be the before photo. And so it doesn't make sense. And so then I just told him, I go, if I don't talk to you anymore, I don't have to do it. And so I just stopped responding to him. And we'll see if this—

just for the listeners so they know how stupid— like, it was like the Three Stooges. We went down there and I trained. I was a Division 1 athlete. I trained, I did fine, I was great. But they— and I hired a coach. I did everything the right way. These freaking idiots who we went with, they bought— they bought the bike the day before when they were down there. And like, then the night before, you set your bike up at the place and they leave it there. And Sully and Ramon were like, hey, so how do we use those pedals that attach to your feet? We bought them. How do we use them? They were like setting it up there. And Sully, this other guy who we went with, he did the swim. He did the entire thing in backstroke. Because he didn't know how to swim with his head underneath the water. And they assigned a kayaker lifeguard to him because they were so afraid that he was going to drown. I swear to God. And but he finished.

He did it.

Of all the 9,000 people there, I'm not exaggerating, they got literally last place. Last. And so like 9,000. Yeah. And they were miserable. And then the next day they're like, this is sick, bro. You want to do it again? Like, it was the craziest shit on earth. These guys are idiots. They also asked me if I wanted to go climb Mount Kilimanjaro with them. And I was like, no, no, I'm out. No, I do not want to do that.

Yeah, the problem is they're like, I don't know, 7 to 10 years older than us. So they're like in a midlife crisis and we're getting dragged into their midlife fighting against Father Time, uh, you know, this thing. And now we are doing these things as well. Yo, so actually this is a topic I wanted to talk about, which is how to set goals. I think you had something on your thing about—

I wrote something about that.

Yeah. So let's talk about this. So I don't know what you wanted to do, but I had this idea of what is your approach to setting and hitting goals? Is that what you were going to say?

Yeah. Well, let me like go on a little rant here. So I've been doing this thing called intro, you know, that intro thing. Like you just like talk to people and it's actually really fun. That's why I do it. I do it from Friday at 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Oh, really? 2 hours.

If they just turned off the money, you'd do it because it's so fun?

No, I am doing it because it's fun and I get paid $2,000 an hour.

Obscene amounts of money.

Yeah. So both. It is. It is. It's fun money, envelope money. And I've been doing this and a question that I ask people constantly and they never rarely have answers to and they act like I'm like profound for asking this. I'm like, dude, this is like table stakes. which is what does success look like in 5 years? Like specifically, like if this is a money thing, like how much money do you want? How much revenue? How many users? Whatever. And what I've learned, and then I've been working with some family members and they're like, want to get their finances in order. And I'm like, all right, well, how much do you spend every month? How much do you want to spend every month? And then let's work back from how much income you think you need. And I think the vast majority of people, they don't write shit down. And so I did this one intro call with this guy and I was like, hey, so here's this app that I used for a long time. It's called My Weekly Budget. You just, every time you spend a cent, just write it down and just do it for 4 weeks and then just look back at how much you spend. And like, oh, I never thought about that. And he messaged me and he goes, I've been writing this down for like 2 weeks. I had no idea I was spending this and that and this. I've been saving thousands of dollars now that I know. And I do the same thing with weight loss. I say I want to weigh this much weight, therefore I have to burn— I can only eat 2,100 calories and I'm just going to write down whatever I eat. Just writing things down, both goals as well as like the things that you're doing. So you kind of like have an idea is the easiest way to get to where you want to go without really changing a significant amount of your behavior. You have, you noticed that?

I have noticed that, yes. And I do that. I think, I think a lot of people think they do that, but let me go into a little more detail on some, some stuff I do that I think is maybe a little bit different. All right. So I'm gonna give you a couple bullet points. Here is how I set goals so that I can actually hit them. And this is coming from some guy who is you know, frankly, pretty lazy. And, um, you know, I don't, um, I'm not like you. Like, I'm not like, oh, I need to lose weight, I must have a 500-calorie deficit, therefore it is done. I will now, like, you know, track this thing. That always felt like too much work to me. But let me tell you what does work for me.

Um, by the way, first thing, the exact opposite. It's less work to do it that way because then you don't think, you just like do. You just do what you're supposed to do.

Classic thing that somebody who has discipline and willpower says, like, oh, it's easier to just do it right the first time. Yeah, we know, bro. If we, and we know that that's true, we just don't live life that way. Like, it's okay. You know, I, I speak from the procrastinator's perspective. All right. So here's some things that I do that do work for me. First is, and you tell me if you do this or not, I set picture goals or movie scene goals, not just written goals. So for example, sometimes it's hard for me to figure out, like, let's say it's a financial goal. Okay, how much money do I want and when? And then I kind of like, I'll pick a number, I'll be like, is that too high? Is that too low? And I got to make it real in some way. So sometimes what I'll do is if it's a number goal, I'll do the math to add it up. I'll be like, okay, here's how I want to live. I want to spend this, this, this, and this. What does that actually come out to? And I'll go bottoms up to create the goal, or I'll just simplify it. I'll be like, I don't know, numbers and logic is a little too hard to understand. I'll go on Zillow. And I'll just find the picture of the house I want. I'll be like, this, this is my goal. And I can just look at that picture of that house and it has a whole feeling and a whole like set of assumptions that if I was living in that house, like life is pretty good. That is my motivating goal. Like I'm more motivated by a picture or a little movie scene in my head than I am by just this like kind of written text that it, that requires my brain to do a bunch of like work to try to like make life out of this, out of these, out of this text. Like a vision board.

Yeah, I do it.

Yeah, I guess I just described a vision board. Okay, cool. So yeah, that's the first thing.

Pinterest. Yeah. Great idea.

All right.

It's like an Uber, but Sam 1, Sam 0.

Okay.

Let's go.

Let's keep going. Second thing I do, floor goals and ceiling goals. So I don't set one goal. I set a range. The floor goal that I'll set for any project is like, all right, at a minimum, this is like the minimum that it would take for it to feel like a win. And so I just will write that down. I'll be like, all right, this is the minimum goal. And beca— and what, what, what was happening was normally I was writing a goal, then I'd be like, kind of beat myself up. Like I'm not ambitious enough, so I need to set a more audacious goal. So I set a bigger goal, bigger goal, bigger goal. And then I would like, you know, inevitably like sort of underdeliver on that. And now I'd have to like, basically I'd either be disappointed cuz I didn't reach my like super ambitious goal, but still clearly a good thing happened. Or I would have my super ambitious goal and secretly in my head I'd have like my backup goal that like I wouldn't tell anybody because it wasn't so cool. But like I knew logically that that was good. So then I just started writing it down. Here's the floor, here's the ceiling. Ceiling is the, the, the F yeah. Like what would make me say F yeah, that really worked out. Um, and so like, uh, I get, I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example after this, but all right. Floor and a ceiling goal. That's the next one. Do you do anything like that? Like a range?

No, but that's a good idea. I just, no, I just like put the, maybe I kind of do. I say, here's what I think will happen. But then I say in the best case scenario, I think this might happen, but I'm not expecting that.

Right. That's how I started this podcast. I was like, the floor goal is if I just invite a bunch of cool guests on, well, I'll probably like, if I do one of these a week, 52 guests, let's say half of them are cool. Let's say half of those cool people become kind of like buddies or friends or, you know, we like each other. Cool. So I'll make like maybe 12, 15 new friends that are like kind of heavy hitters enough where I could invite them on a podcast. I was like, that's a win. That alone is a win. It's enough to like do this, do this podcast for, for, for, you know, once a week. And so that was my floor goal. My ceiling goal was, well, what if people actually listened to this? Wouldn't that be sweet if people would, you know, on their commutes and they, they would listen to this and, and, you know, we'd have this big audience of people who like, listen, and trust us. That would be amazing, right?

Well, I do it with— I use that methodology for risk-taking. So I say, should I quit my job and start this company? Well, the worst-case scenario is that it's going to take me 6 months to find a new job. Therefore, I'll have 6 months of savings lined up. And if I just so happen to build a successful company, that's gravy. That's awesome. But this— but I just basically, I'm taking the risk that I'm going to— I just— I'm assuming that I'm going to find a new job and have 6 months of savings. Great. That's my baseline. I'm fine with that.

So floor and ceiling, that's the second part. Um, okay. Goals and anti-goals. So I stole this from Andrew Wilkinson who stole it from somebody else probably, but, uh, it's really easy to set a goal and not acknowledge some of the common trappings you could get even if you accomplish your goal. Simple example. Um, in college, my buddy dated this girl. Her dad was like a partner at a big consulting firm. And he was a partner. He— guy would make, you know, $1 million, $2 million a year probably. He was— he made it to the top of his, like, top of that ladder. But also he was, you know, oh, every single week he would fly out Monday through Thursday, he would come back Friday, be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, he would leave again Sunday night. And he was just gone for like half of her life growing up. And so that's an example of achieving your goal, but maybe hitting an anti-goal as well, which was He probably didn't plan and set out to say, I don't want to see my family, you know, my kid growing up for the first 18 years of life. I'm only gonna be there half the time. But it just kind of came as a byproduct of trying to hit their goal. So now I set out specific anti-goals like, oh yeah, I want to do this podcast, but I don't want it to feel like a bunch of work every week, right? Like I'm not trying to make this my job. I want this to be a fun hobby, right? And so an anti-goal might be all of a sudden I'm drowning in work trying to edit this thing and upload the thumbnail and write the show notes and do all this stuff. That would be an anti-goal if this, if the after-pod recording took 5 hours a week or, uh, you know, 10 hours a week to go to produce it. And so by identifying the anti-goal up front, you can make a game plan that, that solves it. Do you do that?

I do it a little bit differently. I don't call it an anti-goal. No. I say, here's what, here's the price I'm willing to pay to achieve the thing I want to achieve. So for example, when I was, I said, um, when I'm gonna start this company, The Hustle, I told my wife, I go, when we were dating, I go, just so you know, the business is gonna come first for the next handful of years because then when we get married and have kids, I'll have more time for that. But like right now, business is first and I'm going to give up vacations. I'm going to give up. The price I'm willing to pay is we're just not gonna have that much time together unless if the business gets in the way.

Right, baby. Tell me again. Uh, who's number one on my priority list? The business. That's right, baby. Say it again. Say it again.

Say it again. Say it again. Yeah. Tell me.

It's Valentine's Day. Who's my date? The hustle. That's right. That's right. You got it. You got it. You understand. I have to confirm. You gotta double opt into this shit.

So I always say, here's the thing I'm willing to get. I'm— this is the price I'm paying. You know what I'm saying? You wanna look good, you gotta pay a bump. The price you gotta—

yeah.

You wanna look good in the nude, the price you gotta pay is you gotta eat this crap chicken and like not have fun there. You know, you gotta pay a price.

Right. I like that. All right, the next one, in your face daily. So now we're on number 4. We painted the picture. That's kind of the mood board, the movie scene, the floor and ceiling method, the goal and anti-goal method. And now in your face daily. This is one where I think a lot of people make a mistake. They write down the goal at the moment they're motivated and inspired and they, they read that book, they watch that video, you know, they got their pen and paper out, they write it down, then they close the book and then they just go back onto autopilot for the next like 17 days and they can't even revisit their, they don't revisit their goal. So my big thing is I need to see it daily, right? The goal is like the barista, you know, if I'm going to get coffee before work every day, I'm gonna see this face. I'm gonna see my goal's face every single day. And so I will set this up in Slack. I will set up, I'll just use the remind, uh, function. I'll say, remind me every day that my goal this week is for Milk Road to add this many subscribers or to go viral with one post on Twitter or to, you know, um, to chase down that investment that I'm really bullish about and make sure we get in this round. And I will set that reminder so that it pops up every single day. And it's only me who sees that. But now I do that with my team at the end of every, uh, you know, either daily or weekly, I will repost the goals that we had for the week. And just be like, you know, here it is. Make sure you keep this top of mind. Or as my next, my next method is the tip of your tongue test, which is tip of your tongue. If you can't say what you want, if it's not at the tip of your tongue, what you're going for, you, you're not clear enough about it. And like you are not giving yourself the best chance to succeed because you can't articulate your goal at the tip of your tongue. Ben, can I, can I pick on you for a second? Ben, are you there? I know he's like at the beach, so he may not have the best, uh, audio video.

I got kicked out of my last spot. I can, I can try. Okay.

Try it. Ben, with your podcast, How to Take Over the World, what is the goal?

The goal is to be a top 100 podcast overall, uh, in the Apple Podcast ratings.

Okay. Sounds good. Sam, critique that real quick. He's missing one critical element. Do you know what it is?

Probably the input.

The input meaning what?

Uh, like you, you, I think for goal setting it's probably a little bit easier to be input oriented. So like what you're willing, like what you're— I'm gonna do X. I'm gonna do X, you know, cuz you can't exactly control the output. So like be more input oriented. I would also probably say if, if for podcast, I would put a download number on it, but I don't know. What do you think? Right.

Oh, or a time box, right? Like by when?

Oh, a time box. Yeah. By when?

Do you have 10 years to do this or 1 year to do this? That's a critical element to a goal is to be— it should be pass/fail. Like it should be easy to figure out, did this happen or not? And if you don't have a time box, you can't, you can't ever judge it. Right.

So Sean, do you have your, do you have your computer open?

Yeah.

Go to my Twitter handle and what's my bio say? I have made this for the past, uh, month or two and it's been working wonderfully and it's exactly what you're talking about.

Oh, perfect. You go, I own The Hustle, sold it to HubSpot. I tweet about this, I do the podcast. And then you said, losing another 5 pounds this month, parentheses August.

Yes, I always— whatever the goal is, I put it up there in Twitter so I see it every day. And the thing that you didn't mention that I love doing is I love shaming myself. I love shame. I think shame and rage are the two best fuel to, like, get something done that people never talk about. I like— I still do things to make Erin Coyne, my eighth grade girlfriend, angry. Like, I'm still in my head. I'm like, what's going to prove her wrong? You know what I mean? Like, how am I going to win and like prove that she was wrong for breaking up with me? So I think rage is awesome, but I think like shaming yourself or like guilting yourself where you put it publicly and you have to do it. The other thing that I do constantly that works wonderfully is you have to like set appointments or put something on the table. So for example, I have these a couple of bad tattoos I want to get fixed and I've been wanting to do. I've been so lazy. You just— you got to make the appointment. You make the appointment. It's like, fuck, I can't bail. I already put down money on this thing. Like, I have to do this. You know what I mean? And I think those things really, really help.

Yeah, like my Ironman competition coming up. But Shame and Rage, that's a pretty good— I mean, My First Million is a good name. Shame and Rage would have been a great name for this podcast.

Dude, shame and rage is such a good fuel. I don't know, like people say like, you don't be angry. I'm like, no, fuck that.

Anger.

I love anger. I love anger. Anger gives me so much goodness. Like, I'm still like What is the phrase? Chips on shoulders put chips in pockets. I love anger. Anger is such a good, uh, a good, uh, emotion to drive you.

I used to do that. I used to, I used to have a thing that I've taken off this list, which was use your own psychology against you. So it'd be like, oh, if I state publicly what I'm going to do, then I feel the pressure to go ahead and do it. Or like, yeah, if I use kind of insecurity or anger, that could be like a fantastic fuel for accomplishing my goals. Uh, but I don't, I personally don't do that anymore because it makes the process of doing the thing kind of unpleasant. Uh, it is effective for hitting the goal, but—

Well, that's because you have this really big problem. You've got a huge problem. You know what your problem is? I'm too happy. You are emotionally stable and happy. Yeah. You've got, that's a really big issue in your life is you're just too emotionally stable. Um, so, you know, like I'm sorry that your parents were wonderful to you, but that's just the price you have to pay. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Sam goes around to his house just like shaving half an inch off every table, just trying to get it to have a little bit of instability in it. He's like, this is better.

I want the plates to slide, baby. Yeah. You know, I had the advantage of, you know, having a problematic childhood. You, you, you, you were disadvantaged by having a perfect little life. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better.

All right, I'm gonna finish my goal thing real quick. I got 3 more. All right, last 3, the most important 3 are I don't move unless I actually believe that it's going to happen.

Yeah.

So a lot of people will say, and I would say, Ben, I, you don't have to come back on, but people will say things like Ben just said. And I would say at least half the time, if they are honest with themselves, I want to be a top 100 podcast in the world by, you know, by, you know, in 12 months. If I said, what do you, what do you think are the odds that that's going to happen? They'll be like, well, it is, you know, hard and it is risky, you know, but, and they'll sort of like, if it comes down to it, their belief that it's actually going to happen is quite low. And I don't let myself move unless I actually believe that it's gonna happen because there's this, like, there's a virtuous and vicious cycle. Belief drives action. If I really believe that some shit's gonna work, if I really believe that this person's gonna say yes and buy my product, I will pick up the phone immediately and call them. It's only when I don't believe they're gonna buy my product that I, some like, well, I'll call them after I finish this PowerPoint deck. I'm gonna actually, you know, Friday's not a good day to call because of this. And hold on, let me just go clean my room real quick. You know, because that's, you know, I, I just wanna get that done. Then I'm gonna be in a better headspace. Like, it's your belief that drives the level of action you're gonna take. Like, massive belief equals massive action. Massive action equals a good result, and a good result reinforces the belief. This is also what happens to people who become— have a lack of confidence. They don't believe, therefore they take timid action. Timid action creates shitty results and that just reinforces to them. They're like, see, I knew it wasn't like— I kind of knew it wasn't going to— I knew it was gonna be too hard. I knew, I knew this wasn't like the odds were against us. And then it just happens again and again. So I don't move until I work myself into a spot where my belief is super high. Um, last two, baby goals or giggle steps. So I've kind of learned that like if you have a big goal, You gotta set a baby goal or a giggle step. A giggle step is a step that is—

Is that a trademark? Giggle step and just a tip are your two—

I met this woman and she, she created this, uh, phrase. She was like, hey, you know that book, uh, Atomic Habits by James Clear? I was like, yeah, yeah. She's like, it's, it's all right. And I was like, oh, you mean like the bestselling book that's like sold like 3 million copies this year? Like one of the greatest self-help books. You know, in the last decade in terms of sales, she's like, yeah, it's okay, but it's missing the most important thing. I was like, what is it? She goes, he's, he got it kind of right that you need to set like a simple first step, but it's even his is way too hard. Like if you want to set a habit to floss your teeth every day, you actually want to start with something so simple it would make you giggle because it's so not a goal that it's achievable and you'll actually do it. And so she's like, so all you would do if you wanted to floss your teeth every day is literally put one piece of floss next to your bathroom and like next to your sink and just floss a single tooth and then put it down and walk away. And it's like, oh, what's that going to do? A single tooth? And it's like, it'll literally make you laugh. It takes away a lot of the fear and the built-up like scariness of going down this endeavor. Who's this?

Who's this lady?

Uh, I hate that I forgot her name now. Um, but yeah, I met her. I think it's Betsy, Betsy something. I got to find her last name. I don't remember her last name.

That sounds made up so far.

And it also might not be her first name and I might be the worst person in the world, but like Gigglesteps is good. Um, see if you can Google that and pull up her, pull up her full name. I've only met her twice. Um, okay. Last one is, uh, last one is you gotta revise up or abort down. So I think what a lot of people do is as things get hard, they start to compromise the goal and they'll start revising it down, down, down, down, down to the point where it's not even motivating anymore. It's like you, you sort of took the edge off the goal and yeah, now you kind of don't fail, but you also don't really succeed. And so my rule is I either revise up, meaning I, oh shoot, I think this could be even bigger, right? This podcast we've revised up, it's now bigger than I thought it could be. And so now I've revised up, okay, it can actually be, you know, X millions of listeners every month. Um, hell, we're already at, you know, 1 point something, 1.3, 1.5, something like that million per month. Why can't this be 5?

By the way, last month, last month we were at 1.7, I think.

Yeah, exactly. So that's bigger than I would've guessed, right? 1, if 1 was my original goal, I'm revising up now, or I'll just abort down. I'll say, you know what, this isn't gonna—

that's a weird word to use to describe this. It's a weird word. Yeah.

Well, you know, eject maybe is the better way to say it. I will just eject out of, you know, the plane if I feel like You know what, now that we have given it every throw and everything we've got at this and we've learned new things, we have new information that tells us that this is, this isn't gonna work. Rather than compromising down and getting stuck on something we're not even really excited about, if we're no longer excited about it, I'll just, I'll change the goal completely or I'll leave the goal aside. I'll just go do something else because, um, the new information has kind of shown me something to, to, uh, it's just a check to say, Don't just continuously dial it down because that's very tempting to do and it's very easy to slip into mediocrity. So kind of by forcing myself with something harsh, which is, all right, would I just quit this? It's like so harsh that it forces me to like, no, stick with the real goal and find a way to make it happen or change, you know, based on what your new understanding of reality, change this completely. Don't just like take it down a notch and another notch and another notch and another notch. And now it's all of a sudden not even that special to begin with. So those are, those are my how to hit goals. Those are, those are things I do to hit goals.

I remember years ago you, when we were just kind of trying to, we were coming up trying to make it happen. You said that you go, I think $6 million is the number I need to feel financially like secure, or I don't remember what word, like stable, or like that I need to never work again. Free. Did that goal change as you got older? Do you, were you right or wrong about that goal?

Um, I think I was right, but I was wrong in one key aspect. And actually, I said it on the podcast early on, and our friend Narendra DM'd me, and he was like, you're wrong. Uh, you're wrong. 6 won't be— like, 6 is not enough for you. And I was like, well, I don't know, like, I do the math. He's like, it's not enough. Like, you know, first of all, uh, maybe your target return of what you think you're gonna make on that 6, you know, as you're— because the idea is if you have a certain amount of money invested What can you— it is gonna earn, you know, it's gonna compound at some rate, 5%, 7% a year, whatever it is. Um, could you live off of that compound interest rather than— and the principal would never go down. You would never have to withdraw lower than the principal. So you, you'd be financially free. You don't need new net income coming in because the money you have is working for your money now and you don't have to go work for your money.

And you thought that was 6?

I thought it was 6 cuz I had done some calculations.

What do you think now? I was like, okay.

Um, now I think the number is like, the real number is probably closer to 10 or 11, and, um, the aspirational number is like 25 and up, because then it's like, oh, it's not even close at that point.

So the reason why I'm bringing that up is the interesting thing about goals is I used to think if I, if I achieve this thing, whether it's financial or body or whatever, that like I'm gonna be changed. And I realized that pretty much across the board, every goal that I achieve, I'm like, oh, this was not as cool as I thought. I'm going to create a harder one. And at first I was bummed, but now I'm like, oh no, that's not like— because it's just the chase. Like, I'm born to hunt, you know what I mean? Like, I have to chase a goal and I have to accept that when I hit my goal, it's not going to change much. It's just going to be a cool benchmark to go to the next one. And so with goal setting lately or the last couple of years, I've been like, oh, but just know that this isn't going to change anything, but it will be exciting to chase after it. And so that's what I— that's an interesting thing that I've learned a little bit with as I've gotten older with goals.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Specifically financial goals, your lifestyle creeps up. So like before when I did the, let's say $6 million number, I was like, all right, $6 million. If I earn 5%, if I'm getting 5%, let's say they— I think the S&P like kind of average, you know, uh, return is 8% or something like that. I was like, okay, let's say I can get 5. Um, What would be, you know, that's $300K a year.

Cool.

At the time I think I was spending under $200K a year in my burn. I was like, ah, that's good. And I have like, you know, 30% buffer. Well, now I spend, I think more than that. And so, 'cause lifestyle creeps up, it's like, you know, I started to pay for more stuff. I started to buy more things. I started to travel a little bit differently, started to do all the things that people do.

And now you didn't travel differently. You don't, you just don't travel.

But when I do, I travel a little bit differently. Yeah. Um, the, the point is lifestyle creeps up. And so, Um, I think that's the thing you have to do if you're, if you're not trying to be really disciplined in your lifestyle, which I'm not. I, I think life is to be enjoyed and I want to enjoy it to the fullest extent I, I know. And so as I learn new things, new ways to enjoy, I want to do those things and not feel limited by money. Um, I think you gotta account for that and you gotta like over-buffer.

Are you looking to buy a house now?

I'm looking at either buying or renting a new house. Yeah.

Dude, renting is so awesome. I've been loving renting, man. Don't buy.

Me too.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's sick.

The only downside with renting is just like sometimes you don't, there's not enough inventory for like, uh, that is a big, what you want when you're in the burbs. But like if you're patient, you could just, you can find it. Um, and right now, uh, the market seems to be, at least where I'm at in California and Bay Area, the market seems to be moving where everything's getting marked down. So everything's down 20, 30%. Um, except for stubborn sellers who haven't realized yet that they need to mark down. And then even those aren't getting offers, and then they're pulling their thing off the market because they're like, okay, it's not selling now, this just looks bad. And they're like switching to, okay, we'll rent this, or we'll just stay in it, or whatever. Like, the market is very quick— quickly turning here, um, to like a buyer's market is what I'm kind of seeing.

Hmm. All right, I have something interesting to, to share with you. Have you heard of this company called Woot, W-O-O-T. Of course.

Yeah. Woot was like a, an internet staple, OG staple. It was one of the cool websites where it was like you'd go and there was a daily deal. It's like buy this TV for like $22 or something.

So Ethan Brooks at The Hustle kind of told me about it, but I had read about it for a bit because the founder interests me. He's this, he's this guy named Matt Rutledge and Woot was like, like you said, one of the original like daily deal sites. and it was acquired by Amazon. And the story is really interesting. I remember reading this a couple of years ago. So Matt Rutledge is this guy from Dallas and he flies up to Seattle to meet with Bezos, like, you know, right when it closes and they get a Sunday breakfast and they're like, Rutledge, he wrote, he's like, Bezos had like a weird energy this whole time, but whatever. I'm sitting in this meal and I finally just say, so, Jeff, why did you buy Woot? And Jeff, like, had just ordered breakfast and they have the meals in front of them. And he looks down at the meal, then he looks at Matt and like 15 seconds passes and Matt's like, should I just like ask him if he wants to, like, move on and we just, like, skip this? And Jeff looks down at his meal again and then looks back up at Rutledge and he goes, you see, you're the octopus that I'm having for breakfast right now. Because Jeff had just ordered, like, eggs and octopus for some reason, like a weird-ass breakfast. And he goes, when I look at the menu, you're the thing that I just don't understand. Basically, he had never ordered octopus for breakfast before, and he's like, this is weird. I'm going to order it. I've never seen it before. I don't get it. I'm going to order it. You are the thing that I've never had and I must have for breakfast, the octopus. And that's why he said he bought this guy's company. And this Rutledge guy was like, dude, you're fucking insane. Like, he didn't think about it. Like, like my takeaway was Rutledge was not like, oh, you're fake.

Story. That is a fake story. You either just made that up or—

No, I read it in an article. Those are quotes.

That is—

Those are direct quotes.

Hilarious to be. That is too hilarious to be real.

The exact words here. This is— this is— I'm going to read it verbatim from the article. And this is Matt Rutledge saying, telling the reporter, you're the octopus that I'm having for breakfast. When I look at the menu, you're the thing that I just don't understand, the thing I've never had. I must have breakfast octopus. And he just— and that was like, like a 20-second pause for him to say that, like, just like this fucking weirdo, like, you know, like Star Trek type of guy. And as you would expect, as one would expect from— what?

There have been many great stories on this podcast. Many great stories. Thousands of great stories, I might say. This was the greatest story I've ever heard on this podcast. First of all, you told it great. I didn't know where you were going with this. The breakfast, the looking down, the looking up, the 15 seconds. And then that line is all-time weirdo. That is so weird of a thing.

But dude, what do you expect? What do you expect? I was actually— I did a podcast the other day with someone and they asked me about my successful friends and like, what do they all have in common? I was like, well, they all like work hard, they all like are smart, but they're all fucking weird. They're all weird. And like everyone I know who's successful is pretty Fucking weird.

So do you know that would say that line, by the way?

Not that line. No one. No one. But that guy's like— Bezos is like the weirdest of the weird. Maybe.

Maybe the only guy.

Yeah. Like, I've heard him say like, yeah, like, your business is one Google away from me destroying you. Like, he says stuff like that. But this guy says, I must have the breakfast octopus. But this company, Woo, it's really interesting because it's basically just a daily deal site, whatever. And like, Matt is like— he said Amazon ruined it, as you'd expect. And like, but they did all this funny stuff. Like, they would sell a daily deal, and the deals that they didn't sell, they would create this feature called the Bag of Crap, which is a thing that like users would just buy blindly. And in the FAQs it says like, well, if you don't like it, just list it on eBay, but we don't take refunds. And anyway, he leaves and he starts another thing and he calls it the Mediocre Corporation. That's originally what it's called. And the And the underlying premise is that we're building a store that you don't need to buy anything to have fun. So like their copy is really, really good. And he basically said in an article, he was like, I want everyone's expectations to be incredibly low with this business. So that's why we called it a mediocre corporation. And it's pretty hilarious. And I was reading their copy. And so now a mediocre corporation, they basically own like 8 different websites. So and they're all like daily deal sites and all of them have like $350 to $2 million 2 million visits a month. So I bet you it's actually a pretty substantial business. And if you read the copy, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. It's wonderful copy. And I was thinking about this, the, the basically as I've sold my company to a big company, I've realized that basically for the longest time I thought basically the only thing that a startup has that's better than a big company and why a startup can win is like focus. We could focus harder on stuff and we can move faster so we can move fast and have more focus. And then I started reading about this guy and I started thinking about like the hustle and like what made it interesting. And the second and the third thing that I've added is that basically because there's less bureaucracy, you can have more soul, you can do more funny, interesting stuff. And the reason you can is basically the founder comes up with something, says like, we're just going to do it. Whereas at a big company there's like middle management and they're like, I don't want to lose my job, so I'm not taking this risk. I'm not going to pitch the bag of crap like feature, even though that's hilarious and users love it. I ain't pitching it. I'm not going to do it. And I'll give you a good example. So I love AppSumo. AppSumo was started by my friend Noah Kagan, and Neville Medoro is my good— my best friend, and he like helped run it. And it was a daily deal site as well. Listen to this copy. So they ran a deal one time where you could purchase like fonts. I don't know how you buy fonts, but that was the thing. Listen to the opening paragraph from the daily email that he sent out. Neville wrote this. If the names Lucida Sans Unicode or Courier New don't mean anything to you, go ahead and close this message. You see, my friend, today we're reaching out to the community of people known as font whores. You know who you are. If your knees go weak when I whisper Garamond, you might be one. You might be one of them. And I read this. I remember years ago before I met Neville, and I was like, This is, this is beauty. This is beautiful. This turns off the people who you want to be turned off and it gets, you know, the people who you want it. And I was just like, in my head, I'm like, dude, you're writing about having sex with this font. That is so funny. That is awesome. You are making the most boring topic really cool. And you cannot do that at a big company. It's incredibly hard. And it's not hard because the company's bad or good. It's just, that's the rules of the game. And it's just like, you're, playing, you know, the game on hard mode if you're trying to like make a big company cute. And I would just say this is just this company, Woo. It's just such a perfect example. You should go to some of their websites. They're, they're the mediocre corporation. They own Casemates, Mediocrity. That's one of their things. They own the site called Meh.com, Side Deal, Morning Save, and it's just deals. And I thought it was interesting and the copy is hilarious. And this is— and I've been thinking about businesses that you can build, which you are building. And I did, where it's just like 1 or 2 people can kind of be the tastemakers and that can scale and be leveraged really nicely, kind of like a daily email, you know what I mean? But as you get bigger, you can't be able to do it all. It's going to get worse and worse. And I think that's just what's going to happen.

Yeah, totally. By the way, their domain is mediocre.com, which is an amazing domain to have. This is such a cool story. I love that. And I love that, that email by Neville. That's amazing copy. The, um, I think it's so true. Personality, personalities. You said soul. I would say personality because it's not a personality to act with. It is such a differentiator in life, in all aspects of life, but it also works in business. People go into business assuming you have to play some role. You have to like put on this suit and tie and be some character, and all you're doing is simply blending in with every other suit and tie that exists out there. And so they'll like, I see this all the time. Founders will try to play the same game as the companies they admire, the big companies, the successful companies. They assume because they're successful that I need to act like them if I too want to be successful. What they forget was that before they were successful early on, the way they got successful was through having personality, having a point of view, having some edges to them. And those edges, they keep some people away cuz it's too rough for them. It's not what they wanted. And for other people, they're like, wow, this is the handle I need to grab onto because I love this. And so, you know, before Apple was Apple, they were, you know, the homebrew, they were at the Homebrew Computer Club, right? They were basically, they had the two advantages you talked about. You said focus. I call it freakishly obsessive. And I use that word specifically because they are obsessed with that some topic, whatever it is. It could be Raspberry Pis, it could be blockchains, it could be whatever. They're usually obsessed with something that's not mainstream. Um, cuz it's not that fun to be obsessed with something that's already totally mainstream.

Mm-hmm.

There's not, there's not much joy in that for this person. And the second is that they're freakishly obsessed, which is not only just an extreme form of obsession, but they're, they're willing to go to a length that other people wouldn't and they're willing to, like, the topic is usually niche and weird. Um, so, you know, fonts is a good example of one, of one, um, of things like that. Then the other part that you mentioned, which is personality, it just gets squashed out of a big company. Because imagine if at the beginning when you're 1 or 2 people, the personality of the company is basically the personality of the founder or founders.

And it's typically like a room of people and they're like one-upping each other. It's like, haha, that's funny. You're like, all right, but check this out. What if we even went even harder? Like, you know, like you can have that like vibe because you're incentivized to do that. You want to grow, you want to do interesting stuff.

Totally.

You're not incentivized once the company gets bigger. Imagine a room.

Imagine a room of, of 1 person. Okay. It's just that per— whatever that person thinks is normal to them. You get 2 people, 2 co-founders, maybe they're both a little bit weird. And so they riff off each other. It gets going. Now you add the third wheel. Even if that third wheel was totally vanilla, they're a total normal person, they're now outnumbered. So they join the thing and they're like, all right, I guess that's how we get down here, right? You had a phrase, you go, you need to let your freak flag fly if you're going to work here. And so you, whoever came in, you indoctrinated them into your weird culture to do weird shit and do cool shit. That was normal there. So the third person comes in, even if they're vanilla, all of a sudden they become flavored too. The fourth person comes in, same thing. But at some point the next, like, I don't know where it is, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 people, somewhere in that range, I would say between 15 and 50 people, the person who gets hired typically will spend most of their time and not with the founders anymore. And so now they're, now one vanilla person is spending time with a bunch of other vanilla people and they're hiring other people who have a greater and greater percentage of vanilla, right? It starts with, they need to be 25, 30% because, hey, we need to be serious and get stuff done around here. Then you start hiring 50% vanilla. And by the time, you know, you get to 50 or 100 people, you're hiring 100% vanilla people. And those people now, when they, someone says a weird idea, it's crickets in the room. It's risks come first. There's reasons why not rather than why we would. It's, oh yeah, that has this one extreme strength, but it might have some other extreme weaknesses. So don't take the risk.

That's going to offend certain people or that's going to canibalize this thing or that thing, or yeah, it's just like bullshit excuses, right?

What will they say? What will they think? And so what will they say?

But really what it comes down to, it comes down to I've got a good gig, I don't want to fuck it up. Let's not, let's not rattle this, you know, I don't want to shake this up.

Yeah, exactly. And I'm not comfortable shaking it up because I don't know that that's what we do here because a lot of time has passed. I don't hang out with the people who that are like totally high conviction of being weird. And, and yeah, like I have, I have more to lose than I have to gain by doing this because when I say this idea, I don't get respect in the room. I get sort of like strange glances and nervous laughter. And then, you know, somebody tells me why my idea is a bad idea. So I learn to just keep that shit piped down. My freak flag is now, you know, buried at the bottom of my trunk and it, you know, it's folded up and it's in its case. And so that's what happens at the, at the end of these companies. Now, some companies fight that off. So for example, This is why I think a lot of people like founder-led companies, cuz they keep that soul. They have one person in the company who has the gravitas. So like, I, I think, I think this ha happened at, at, uh, Tesla and happened at, at, at Elon's companies. He is so publicly weird and big thinking and out there and willing to just go with it that he kind of sets the tone. Even if you don't on a day-to-day ever have meetings with Elon or work with him, or you don't get the culture from him inside the company. You get it from seeing what he does on Twitter. So he kind of—

did you see his new butthole feature?

Yeah, exactly. And so now if you're at Tesla, you're like, okay, the, the boss's boss's boss's boss likes that weird shit, and it gets a bunch of play on Twitter, and we've seen 5 things pay off by going overboard. Like, does a Cybertruck window really need to be bulletproof? No, but Elon would think that's fucking cool, so we're gonna do it. And I know Elon thinks it's gonna be cool because he lets the flag fly on Twitter. And so I see it even though I don't interact with them day to day. So that's one way to scale that personality is to have such a strong personality and do it on blast. Another version, I remember when I was at Twitch—

but he's got to put up with so much shit for that. And it's actually, to be in his position, I've been in this position and I've like weakened out a bunch of times where I'm like, oh fine, I'll let you guys get your way this time. Like, you know, like you're gonna quit if I don't give into this, fine, I'll let you have it this time. And in my head I'm like, this is the wrong decision, but I'm only make— I'm only agreeing to go with this even though I don't like it because like, I don't want them to quit and like, I just don't want this headache right now. Whereas he's the type of guy because he's like, you know, like on the spectrum, he's like, no, I don't like pick up on this social cue. Like, we are not doing it. Like, this is fine. I'm okay being uncomfortable here. You know what I'm saying? And that's, that's how I'm inspired by him a little bit.

The belief in himself and also just the lack of self-awareness. Uh, is, is important there, right? You can't be like us. You can't be a self-aware wolf and just have too much self-awareness. Like, you have to have a little bit of like, you know, you know, you don't give a fuck in your system in order to do this well. At Twitch, one thing happened. I remember that I was like super, super proud to like be there working there at the time. I was like, because I gave it a lot of shit, you know, I just do the sort of like the the stereotypical startup guy thing where you're like, startup cool, big company dumb, big company slow, big company boring, big company no risk, big company no innovation, right? Like it's the startup caveman who's just like, you know, like, oh, you know, small startup good. Even though small startup is like failing and has no money and like no users, no, no impact, no nothing. It's like still in our head, there's like something to be really proud of there. But sometimes at these companies, some really cool shit happens. And one, I remember one was, They released this campaign for Prime Day. So Twitch gets bought by Amazon. Amazon wants all of the Amazon companies to really push Prime Day. It's the, like, it's basically its own Black Friday that they created where it's like, yo, here's an excuse to go spend a bunch of money that you otherwise weren't gonna spend. And Prime Day's huge for, for Amazon. So they, you know, the memo comes down, Twitch, you need to support Prime Day. And then everyone's at Twitch like, shit, what do we do? And Twitch has a user base that is so easily offended. It's like anything Twitch does, any policy it creates, it's like, hey, we're increasing, you know, the safety for women. It's like, why? Because women can't defend themselves. It's like, dude, like, we're just trying to help. Like, we're not trying to offend anybody every step of the way, but you could sort of do no right. And so, so people were just like, dude, what are we going to do? How are we going to promote this? Like Amazon Prime, go buy shit stuff. Like, people are going to think we're just total sellouts. Like, this is not going to be cool. What are they not gonna be— go over well? So I don't know who the genius is in this company, but somebody was like, like, imagine like a TV show where they're like, God, like, everything's— think we're just sellout. Everything is just a sellout. And you cue the dream music, like, sellout, sellout. I got it. Twitch sells out. And they made it— yeah, they like turned it on its head and they went self-aware, you know, like in It's Always Sunny, it's like the gang, you know, the gang goes to a Trump rally or whatever. It's like The event was, come watch how hard Twitch will sell out today. And they basically leaned into it completely instead of trying to do it and then sort of like set themselves up to catch a bunch of arrows from fans, from the users who were like, God, stop trying to promote Prime Day. This is annoying. This is why it was— this is why I didn't want Amazon to buy Twitch. Like, I knew it was just going to sell out to this corporation.

I call that the 8 Mile strategy. Have you seen 8 Mile?

Yes, exactly.

Like, there's this one, like the last scene, Eminem's like, Yeah, I am white. Yeah, I am poor. Yeah, this did it. This guy did have sex with my mom. Yeah, this all happened. And then it like, he makes it entertaining. And then the other guys are like, well, fuck, I can't make fun of him about that. Yeah, like, I can't, I can't mock that. You just took it away from me. You know what I mean? I'm powerless here. It's the 8 Mile strategy and I love it.

That's exactly what it is. And so, yeah, they went full Slim Shady. They basically, what they did was they created a QVC style set, right? Like the cheesiest, salesiest set. And then they invited the big streamers and it was like, they created this, like this neon '80s logo that was like, Twitch sells out. And then the people would jog onto the stage. They'd be like, today I'm going to sell you this shitty blender. And they like, and people found it so entertaining and it was funny and it was self-aware and they, they just like, and it sold like crazy. Like it was so successful. And I don't know who this was. It was somebody in like the creative marketing department. Um, I think I met them at one point, but I was like, Hey, you don't know this, but like, that was the number one thing I respected, you know, that we did. Of all the features we shipped, of all the projects we tried, that was my favorite. It was my number one. I thought that was so well done. Whoever came up with that, you had guts, you had creativity, and you like turned a disadvantage into an advantage, which is like, for me, that's the highest form of respect. When I see somebody who can take a disadvantage and flip it to an advantage, it's like, that's— you're my person. You are You are everything that's right about business in my book.

I love that. I'm gonna look that up. I wanna see, uh, I wanna, I like, I wanna see the content. I bet it's hilarious.

It's good. It was really well done.

We need to come up with a better way to end the show. If we're gonna come up with a way to start it, we gotta come up with a, yeah. Hey, just sort of before you guys end, Sean, you, you never talked about the basketball game. Oh yeah. You gotta talk about that. Do you wanna talk about that?

Uh, yeah, let's do it. I, I, I gotta be a little vague about it, but yeah, let's do it. You guys saw, So I sent you guys the guest list for this thing. Um, I guess I should explain what it is. So I went to a conference.

That'd be smart.

Yeah. I went to a conference and it was fun. It was a lot of fun. Um, but I don't know about you, but I have this like feeling before I go to a conference, which is like, there's like a 48-hour period before where I'm like, what are the reasons I could not go to do this?

Yeah.

What are the reasons I could get out of this? I don't know why that urge comes over me. I think just the idea in my head of what a conference entails is this stuffy ballroom, awkward handshake conversations with people who nobody knows each other. And it's just like the worst first day of college all over again every day in my professional life now. And so I was like, yeah, I just hate that feeling and I hate conferences. But there is some magic at conferences that happens. I do like meeting new people. I do like learning new things. Um, and I do like some of the like little side events that happen in a conference that are like not the speaker on the stage and not the like networking mixer where I have to like go barge in and be like, what are you guys talking about? Oh, you guys known each other for 10 years?

Cool.

Well, uh, I'm, uh, I'm Sean. I have a— you guys like podcasts? It's like, you know, oh, you don't recognize me? Okay. Yeah. No, I was just asking if you guys knew where the bathroom was. I was just waiting this whole time to barge in and ask that. I'm gonna go now. See ya.

So dude, by the way, the best, the best way to approach that I've learned is just saying, hey, I don't know anyone here. Can I join your conversation? I've noticed that to be just the best. It's the upfront method.

Yeah, exactly. So, so I dislike conferences for that reason, and I was like, all right, and, and at the same time I'm like, dude, I miss doing some stuff that was really fun that I just don't make a lot of time for nowadays. I was like, I miss just playing basketball. Just like, dude, I used to play 3 hours a day, just pick up. Was just, it was so fun. That was like the best time. Just me and my friends and just playing. And you know, we used to meet a bunch of cool people doing that. And so I was talking to Ben and I was like, not producer Ben, but business partner Ben. I was like, I was like, dude, what if, could we get like the magic of a conference to combine with the magic of Just going and playing pickup. Is there a way to do this? And he's like, yeah, I got an idea. And so we came up with this idea, which was we have a friend who trains some of the biggest NBA stars and he's been training them for years. And these are all-star, Hall of Fame level players. And he's their personal trainer. He'll go to their house and work with them every day in the summer and things like that. And we've become friendly with him because he's an entrepreneur and we got to know him that way and kind of helping each other out with our businesses. And so we were like, yo, his name's Alex Bazile. We're like, Alex, you train Kyrie Irving, you train Trae Young, you train Carmelo Anthony, you train these guys. Dude, what if I just got a bunch of business dorks together who all love basketball and would you just train us like you train them? Like a fantasy camp? Can we just pretend for a weekend like we are those guys? And he's like, yeah, I'm down. Just pick a weekend. As long as I'm free, we'll do it. And I was like, okay. And then I was like, once I had one side of it and I was like, all right, so let's, what if we just got like 10, 12 people who were—

you need your anchor though. You need your whale.

And we needed our whale. And I was like, how do I get people to come to this? I was like, first of all, I don't even know who plays basketball, who doesn't. I was like, who would I want to, who's like number one, a great hang. Number two, loves basketball. And number three, like successful enough in business where if I go invite the next person, the pull is that these other people are coming, right? That's the key to any great event is these other people are gonna be there. The people are the event. That way I don't have to be like great with the food and bev and like the environment. I have all these logistics I'm not good at. Like the people are the event as long as the people are there to work. And so, uh, um, I won't say who, but we landed one big whale, famous person X, and then the dominoes started falling.

World famous, world famous, mainstream famous type of person.

Exactly. So mainstream famous type person. And then I was like, okay, cool. And I started to get a couple of friends in and then I sent you the guest list cuz you're coming. Yeah. And producer Ben is coming and, or like I told you guys to come. I don't know if you guys are or not coming, but you should come. It'll be fun.

When's the date? Did you say the date?

It's next month or it's in 20 days. So it's 20 days from now. Um, but you saw that guest list, dude, it's coming together. There's some pretty awesome people going now and now it's way bigger than like 10 people.

Like we got 20 people and this is like, How many, how big do you want to be?

Their dad owns this NBA team and this person, they just sold their company for all this money. And then this person, they're the CEO of this publicly traded company. It's like, I didn't even know that guy likes to play. You know, like there's a whole bunch of really interesting people. I think this is going to be dope. And I think this is a way better way. I think this is a hack where I don't have to go attend conferences. I get to host a conference.

Dude, you should invite, uh, Laurie, uh, Jet.com.

I should invite him. Yeah. I haven't invited him yet. That's a good one. If he plays, he don't—

I mean, he owns a basketball team. Yeah, yeah, he's awesome.

I will invite him. Um, but yeah, what do you think about this?

This is awesome. It's gonna be the best. I think it's gonna be really fun. I think you should invite even bigger, more famous people than just like internet dorks. Like Mark would be cool, or, uh, I don't know who else. Uh, that's actually the hard part is to think about who to invite. But yeah, it's gonna be awesome. I think it's gonna be really fun. I think it's a great idea. I think making yourself the center of these types of things is badass. It's a net win. There's no downside. Are you out of pocket any money?

I don't know. I haven't even thought about cost yet, but like, yeah, like it'll cost money to do this, but it's not going to be super crazy. And I think everyone would pitch in. Everyone would pitch in. Just nobody's— we're not trying to make a profit off this thing. We're just trying to like, you know, cover all the costs and make it dope.

No, I think it's a great idea. The goal and it would be it's going to look sick on social like it's work-related. Let's, uh, let's tell, uh, Daddy HubSpot to pay for it.

Hey fellas, um, quick break between, between games here. Just want to quickly talk to you guys about your CRM needs.

They'll be into it. I think they're trying to gather around.

I have a quick PowerPoint that I'd love to just run you through.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think they would, but no, make them pay for it if we can record. Yeah.

Oh, that's—

we only need to record one or two things.

We should record each day. We could probably record two or three, like, things. We could even have, like, two people on at a time, so it's not like—

dude, and we should get couches and have people playing in the background.

Yeah, the game is just running in the background. The audio sucks. It's just so much like screaming from basketball.

The Full Send guys did a, uh, the Full Send guys, they had a wedding. I think it was like Post Malone's manager or some, some like famous person was doing a wedding and they set up a studio off to the side of the reception area and they were in there recording a podcast for an hour and like Logan Paul popped in for like 10 minutes and this other person popped in for like 5 minutes and it was really cool. It was a great pod. We should do something. And they're like, all right, you guys want to go back? Like, I think dessert's at our table. And they went back. It was pretty awesome.

Great idea.

Yeah, it was a really good— it was like, if you explained it to me, I was like, oh, this isn't cool. But I saw them pull it off and I was like, oh, this is actually really neat. We should totally do that and ask HubSpot to front the bill.

All right, great. All right, done, done.

All right, well, good idea. That's the pod. That was a good one.