What It's Like to Be Rich & How to Respond to Growth Plateaus | My First Million #188

It's really effing hard to start a two-sided marketplace. And when you do, the prize is $1 billion, you know, in your pocket.

Yeah. 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, what's up?

I was thinking about the beginning of these because if you watch like Joe Rogan, Joe just sort of rolls into the conversation. It actually starts like mid-sentence of what they're already talking about. And I think that's kind of cool. It's pretty casual. And then you have other people that really try to like brand their, brand their beginning. So I'll give you a couple examples and you tell me which one you think is a good idea. So the All In podcast, which I like, is hosted by Jason Calacanis. And then what he does is they have the, what they call the cold open. Which we do sometimes too, which is you pull the kind of like the most interesting or funny one-liner from the middle of the episode. You put it at the beginning and then you roll into like the intro song where it introduced, he kind of, it's like a custom song that introduces the 4 people. It's like Chamoth the Spat King, you know, David Friedberg, the King, the Queen of Quinoa or whatever. So that's like one version. Then there's, you know, Scott Adams, the guy who started Dilbert or writes the Dilbert comic. He does this thing every time he does a live, and he used to do live streams like every day or something like that. And he would always say, let's start with a ceremonial sip. And he would like hold up his drink to the camera. He would have you do it too, even though you're not even on camera. You're just at home. He's like, everybody, let's do this. And cheers. All right, here we go. And he's like, he talked about it. He's like, he's big on neuro-linguistic programming, NLP. And, um, and so he's like a trained hypnotist or something like that. And so he's like, you want to like associate the same sort of like, he's like, doing this with my tea is brilliant, or your coffee, because it has emotion, it has a taste, it has a smell, and it has an auditory thing I'm saying every single time, the same exact thing. And so I'm basically programming you for a certain feeling or emotion of the live. So he's like really, you know, going hard at it. Our buddy Pomp does the same thing. He's got like his little catchphrase where where he starts, he's like, bang, bang, everybody. He does this little finger thing at the start of every single video. Very specifically does the same thing every single time. So what do you think about that?

I like the Joe Rogan one.

The just roll into it, don't try so hard.

Yeah. Do you agree?

I definitely think the other one's more effective, but who cares? Like, you know, I think if you have to try that hard, I think it's fine. I think it's fun to do if it's whatever, if you think of something. But if nothing comes naturally, I don't think you should force it because it's just more likely like awkward than anything else at that point. And in general, I think that like, I tweeted this out about Twitter bios. I don't know if you saw this tweet I did, but I said, here's the Twitter bio paradox. And I showed two people side by side. One was Dan Gilbert, who's been our Billy of the Week before. So again, an actual billionaire. So I wrote, this guy's a baller. And his bio makes him try to sound like a regular guy because his Twitter bio is like, you know, family man, retired pizza delivery driver, you know, trying to make an impact on as many people as I can. And then it's like, @Cavs, @Quicken Loans, @whatever, like his companies. Like, yeah, he owns an NBA team and like a 10 $30 billion company or whatever. And then I put it, but the other side, it just puts up some random guy. I had to snipe some, some guy that didn't mean nothing personal, but I just searched on Twitter Forbes 30 Under 30 to see who would be putting that in their bio because that's the ultimate tell that you're trying too hard because, you know, we've talked about before, it doesn't mean shit. And I found this guy who was like investor, entrepreneur, innovator, philanthropist, philanthropist. Exactly. Forbes 30 Under 30 finalist. Which people were just making fun of him. Like, dude, you weren't even 4th. You were a finalist. You were like one of the top 30,000 people or something. And then he's like, you know, international speaker, renowned, you know, whatever. I can't stand that. And then he @mentions like 2 companies that he's like, you know, started or whatever. Nobody's ever heard of these companies. And so I said, on one side you have a baller trying to act like, like trying to counter signal that he's a regular guy. And on the other side, you have a regular guy trying to signal that he's a baller. And this is the paradox of Twitter. The harder you try, the more you tell me that you're still trying. And you can see this across the board. A lot of people have no bio, and the no bio is like, my name speaks for itself. You either know who I am or I don't care. I've achieved so much fame that I'm not trying to impress you. So I think that's a pretty interesting tell. And I like the term that somebody pointed out for it, which was signaling and counter signaling. They're actually both signaling. The rich guy's trying to signal, the rich guy's trying to signal, I'm just like you. Don't mind me. Don't hate me. And then the other guy's trying to say, I'm bigger than I am.

Right.

But both are, both are signaling.

Oh, you want to do some questions?

Yeah, let's do it.

All right. Um, I'm going to ask you a question that people asked us. Um, this is a funny question. I don't know if I want to answer this. We'll let you do it. Um, oh, Dan compiled some. All right, Dan, but let me ask one first. What's it like to be rich?

Yeah, it's sweet. It's sweet because you don't have to worry about a bunch of things. And so, yeah, it doesn't take away all your worries, but it takes away all your money worries. So if you've ever like, you know, boom, you get hit with a like, my car was in an accident. It's like, oh shit, I'm gonna have to pay like thousands of dollars to get this repaired. If I didn't have money lying around, that's a, that, that can ruin a day real quick. That can ruin a week real quick. That can ruin a month. And so, yeah, it's sweet to not have to have a certain set of worries, um, or things that just are downers.

Do you have a number? So what's interesting is that, you know, there's this idea of having a number of like, I'm ready to retire. And like a lot of studies have been done and very like interestingly, a lot of people will have a number that they're at. And then if you double it, that's what they like on average people say. So if you have $5 million, like, oh, if I had $10 million, I'd be happy. If only I had $10 million. Yeah. Yeah, or if I have 10, uh, if I had 20, I'd be happy, which is always kind of funny.

It's like 3 inches in height. Everybody wants 3 inches in height, right?

Do you— did you have a number? Do you have a number?

Uh, yeah, I did. And then some people who were way past that were like, dude, that number is not enough.

Uh, so your number was 6.

I used to say 6 million, uh, because I'd done some calculations and I was like, oh, 6, 6 should do it. Where what I was trying to calculate was if I had $6 million that was working for me, $6 million invested, I was saying, okay, with X average annual return, does that cover my life burn? Even if my life burn was twice what it is today. And people were like, yeah, but that rate of return is a little bit too optimistic and your life burn is going to go up more. You just haven't really figured that out yet. The more money you have, the higher your life burn going to go. It's hard to really be disciplined about that.

So do you have a number now?

Yes. And now I think the number is— I don't know, I think 20 is the number where I would now have to like think of different ways that like why money matters. Why more money would matter to me. Like all the obvious things would be more than taken care of at $20 million.

So what's funny is I've talked about this as well. And the people at 20 say the same thing. 40, maybe at 40, maybe at 40. So I don't know when that, when that stops.

Cause I used to think 1 and then I used to think 6. And then once you get there, you're like, okay, you're at 6. Well, 6, this is, I'm not, I can't stop here.

Right.

20, maybe at 20. And then maybe at 20 I'll do the same thing. What do you think it is?

Um, so I think it definitely like, um, yeah, 15 to 20, like. If you have $15, $20 million at a really young age, like, you know, let's say 31, uh, like, it's— you're set.

It's hard to lose.

It's hard. Yeah, I can, I can lose $10 million and still have $10 million. Um, so like, it's hard to lose. Now, you're not flying private, but you're living a really nice life and you're never going to work again. But here's the thing, guys like— I don't know about you, but guys like me, even though I say I'm not going to work Um, and because work is play, so I have someone who could earn $20 million at a young age, I think they're set regardless because they're always going to be able to earn.

That's a very good point. Age, the age definitely matters because it's all about sort of how many years of compounding are you going to get from there. Um, so I think that's—

and I was doing the math basically like at a 7.5% return. So like if you believe that the trailing 100 years is going to repeat itself for the next 100 years, then you can, if you believe that that's, that's to be true, then your money will double around not every 9 years. So $20 at 30 becomes $40 at, uh, 40, which becomes $80 at 50, which becomes $160 at 60, and that becomes a billion by the time you're 90, which is kind of wild how that— now the question is like, well, when we're 90, like, is a billion even going to mean, you know, that much, who knows? But like that, that growth is quite phenomenal and that's really hard to grasp unless you put it in front of you. So getting wealthy-ish at a young age, I think is very significant.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

So that's fine. I don't know. I feel like I gave kind of a generic answer, which was what's it like to be rich? I guess like I didn't, what, what I'm glad I didn't do was say, oh, you know, it's not as, it's not as good as you think. Uh, which a lot of people will say, a lot of rich people will say, you know, I thought it'd be great, but then I realized that what really matters is family. It's like, yeah, dude, I know that family matters, right? I'm asking what the rich part of the experience is like. How's that been for you? And I guess what I would say is rich, whatever rich means to you, the main benefit from my perspective is that there are just certain things you don't have to concern yourself with or worry about anymore. The biggest being, if I don't want to work or I don't want to go to this job, I can just not do that. I can do something else with my time, right? The money has freed up time. Time could be now invested in any activity you want. And that tends to be like, now you're picking stuff you really enjoy or you think really makes an impact rather than something you have to do in order to pay next month's bills.

Andrew asked, outside of business, this is Andrew Wilkinson, what do you research and read about? I'll go first. I read a ton of history. I love American history. History starting in around 1860 going all the way up to about 1950. Uh, I think that's when crony capitalism kind of came to, uh, like kind of went away and all the regulations that came into place in America kind of came to be. And a lot of interesting stuff was going on there. I also love reading and listening about the mafia because I think what the mafia did is like as American as apple pie. Like, it's so fascinating to me. So I read a ton of history And I research a ton, a ton of, uh, or like early American stuff. So I like to go to museums and, and look at old architecture from that era. Wow.

We couldn't be more different. Uh, all right. So outside of business, I would break it into 3 groups. I study or research what the nerds are into right now. So anytime, you know, smart friends who are kind of like technically minded, if they're into something. I, it takes me probably 5 times longer than them just to understand that, that new technology. But I put in that time because I like it. And so like, you know, somebody will mention something that, hey, you know, this AI thing, you know, is now able to predict protein folding. And I'll be like, protein folding? I don't know what the fuck proteins fold for. What's protein folding all about? What have people tried before? How do they even get this to work? What is actually machine learning? How does that work? You know, like, and so I try to I try to basically study what the nerds study. That's one. Two is more of like the unwinding, which is sports. I'm like knee-deep in basketball stuff. So I like to follow all the storylines, stats, that sort of thing. And then the last one that I would say is self-help or some kind of like mindset. So I think that people probably at this point, if you listen to this podcast, you know that more than anything, I'm a believer that if you can master your mind, you've won the game. And I think that that's the hardest, hardest thing to master is your mind. And I want to read all the different ways people do that and try them and self-experiment and then go back and research more. So that's the third thing I do.

How did success influence or change the dynamics of your romantic relationships? That's a good question. But we both have been from Julie, Julie.

De Villa.

Yes, Julie had— that was a good question.

Best question so far.

So I was— I met my wife right when I started my company, and, um, before that I dated a ton. I, I was—

I was okay, big dog.

I was— I'm not saying it was successful. Let me change that. I tried to date a ton. Yeah. Uh, so I tried to— I, I liked women. Um, it didn't always work. But, uh, uh, I prefer being in a relationship. Uh, being successful has been cool with my wife because it feels— because we are— manage our success together.

And like, I think for both of us, our wives were successful before we were.

Yeah, my wife. Yeah. We're at least way more liquid.

They made, they made more money faster than we, than we did.

Dude, I'll say it. I mean, my wife was a self-made liquid millionaire before I was.

Right. Uh, yeah, I think the same, I think same, same is true for me. So, so that was, uh, That's the first part. Like, you know, how, it's really, you know, how was success for them? Was the real question. How was it like to be working with this, marrying this broke, you know, broke entrepreneur who keeps trying to say he's, he's living the big dream, but you know, where's the, where's the success for like, you know, it's 5 years. That, that's, that's the first question.

So yeah, when I dated Sarah, her mom was like, so does he, and her parents are entrepreneurs, so they kind of got it. But like, does he have a job? Like, well, no, he's trying to start this conference thing. Well, where does he work? Well, he can— he works on his laptop, he can work anywhere. And they didn't get it. And so my first year I made like $20 grand and then like $50 grand.

He's a wedding planner, I think.

Yeah, like, so anyway, like, my wife had a full-time job and she was probably making six figures straight out of college. She went to an Ivy League school and went to Facebook. Anyway, how, how has it changed the dynamics? It's made it, my opinion, way better. I do— you got— we do all of our finances together. We meet once a week and we go everything.

Do you do the same? When I started, when I started dating my wife she, she had just bought her first house. She was driving a BMW M3 Sport. I was living under my parents' house in a like, they had like an unpermitted in-law unit that I lived in with my, my best friend from high school lived in there with me. And, you know, that's where, that's where I was. Didn't have a car, didn't have a house. I had a job. I had a good job, I guess. But Yeah, that's how we were when we met. And then, you know, great. What does he do? He's the CEO of a startup. Okay. So, you know, he's virtually unemployed, you know, like on the brink of unemployment essentially was the situation.

Do you wish—

I'll say one thing, which is as, you know, as good things started to happen, so got promoted from like a product manager to CEO of like the company and then from CEO to like investing and then selling the company and all that stuff. There was definitely a period where I got a little cocky, where not intentionally, but I look back now and I'm like, I was kind of being a dick. I sort of thought all these people I hang out with that are like, you know, super successful, I felt like they didn't have to deal with any of the bullshit at home that I was dealing with. It's like, okay, yeah, I got to take out the trash. You know, does my investor take out the trash? I don't know. Maybe he's got somebody takes out the trash for him, right? Like, Oh, I have to wake up at like right now, I wake up in the morning at 7 o'clock. And from 7 to 10 AM, I'm on daddy duty taking care of the baby. And I was sort of like, don't we supposed to have like nannies for this? I was like very spoiled in that sense. And I thought, well, no, I'm the like successful working guy, right? So like, I don't have to do these like normal things. And so that was my like entitlement to myself. And then I realized two things. One is, Yeah, those guys do that too. That's, you know, a lot of the people that I was talking about that I admire, they did all that too. They just didn't complain about it like a little bitch. And then the second thing was that they, they're like, who cares? Like, do whatever, do whatever works for you and your family and like, stop being, stop holding your time as more valuable than my wife's time or that my kids' time or my dog's time or anybody else. I used to kind of—

your dog's time.

I used to think my time was the most precious and now I don't. Now I'm sort of like, You know, it's our time, we got to use it how we want.

Do you— I think it's cool we're both married. I think it's cool to have this like team mentality, you know, when my wife and I— so I, I, we're both Catholic, and even though we don't practice or anything, I was like, we have to get married in a Catholic church. It was important to me. And what that means is you gotta go meet with the priest, and he was like, so why are you getting married? And we were like, well, we have similar values in life, we have the same goals, we just, we both want to take over everything. We want to have children and raise them in a particular type of way. We want to share our assets and pool together. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What about love? You guys love each other? And we're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that too. And so like for us, it was definitely— we definitely love each other. But also there was like no partnership. Yeah, it's like it's very— this is a very practical way to like live, go through life. Like it's very— it's easier for one another when you have someone that whose family you can count on them no matter what. They're going to have your back. So anyway, I've enjoyed, uh, having a little bit of success while being, uh, married. If you're single, I guess the pros could be like you could just like fool around with people way out of your league, but I do think that it would be exhausting and actually probably not as fulfilling, but maybe more fun.

Man, I look back now when I, I was single, you know, I was 25 years old, single, didn't own a possession in the world, and I was managing a bunch of people who were 10, 20 years older than me, had kids, had families, had mortgages, had all this stuff. And I thought at the time I was being super understanding about it. And now when I look back, I'm like, oh my God, I was such an idiot. Like, I just didn't understand how, how hard it is for these people to give this much to a startup when they have all these responsibilities and obligations at home. And I was, you know, just a free bird, 25 years old. And, you know, I could piss my time away, didn't matter. And like, for these people, that extra 1 hour they were at work was now threw off the whole dinnertime bedtime schedule for them, their kids, their wife, you know, like all this stuff. And so I just look back now, and I, you know, I apologize to anybody I worked with then, because I didn't truly understand. I thought, you know, this hustle culture was the right answer then and now. And I didn't realize how much they were already giving. And I always wanted more.

What, um, yeah, let's do 2 more. Um, what pandemic behavior do you want to maintain?

Um, yeah, basically the last year was, you know, it sounds insensitive, so whatever, maybe that's, that's the case, but last year was the best year of my life. Um, same, you know, I had a blast and a whole bunch of life events happened, right? I had a kid, I became a dad and you know, but I just— everything. I grew out my hair, I built a home gym, I started working out regularly. I, you know, you know, I'm working from home. So I just had way more time with my family, with my wife, than when I was commuting every day and was at the office all day. You know, this podcast has been a lot of fun. There's been like 10 amazing things that happened this year that made this year literally the best year of my life. So in terms of pandemic behavior, I would say I definitely don't like getting close to people and shaking their hands anyway. So, you know, good. I'm just going to keep not doing that. But I would say like the home gym daily workout at 1 PM is definitely the behavior I need to like keep going with.

I agree. I've gotten in wonderful shape throughout this and that's the one I'm going to maintain.

Yeah.

All right. Last one, maybe.

I'm curious about this favorite purchase one.

All right.

Okay, let's do, let's do 3 of these. Let's do, if you were 21 again, what would you be doing?

I can't stand that question, but I'll answer it.

Yeah, what is it?

If I was 21 now in 2021, I don't, I don't know what would, let me think, what would you be? What would you do?

I think I would go on tour with, in the most like interesting spaces with the most interesting people. So I think what I would do is I would say, hey, I'm a hired gun. You pay me whatever, pay me $5K a month, $10K a month, something like that. Flat fee. I'm going to come work my ass off for you for 3 months. If I love it, I'll stay on. But by default, you're going to get just like somebody unbelievable, just right-hand man to deal with any headaches or problems you have. And you'll never see somebody work harder and smarter at figuring shit out than me. And I would pick basically like 4 or 5 people that I thought were amazing, that were doing things in interesting fields, doing interesting projects. And I would pitch that to them. And I would, if they said no, I would find the next 5 people and I would just, I would go on tour. So I would, I would treat 20, I would treat work like I would treat, I would treat like marriage in the sense that I would focus on dating, figuring, having fun, figuring out what I love, what I like, figuring out what likes me. And I would be in no rush to like, find the project or start the company or like pick a career. I would say, cool, I'm gonna go on, I'm gonna have these, these little 3-month relationships with badass people in badass spaces. And, you know, just, I commit to doing that for 2 years, and then I'll figure it out after that, like, that'll be my Mormon mission.

I would probably, my goal at 21 would be how to become a liquid millionaire by 25. And then after 25, I could dedicate to a little bit more time to like a big purpose? Or how do I create cash flow? And so I think I would want to start a blog or something like that and try to sell it in the next 2 or 3 years.

I would, I would not try to do that. Because I think that, you know, if we're measuring the score on like a, I don't know, 10-year period or 20-year period, then I think I would get more value by being at the cutting edge of certain spaces, certain industries, and being— seeing what like, like A++ players are like when I work with them and earning their trust. I think that's a lot more valuable.

All right, last question. Best purchase over $2,000 and under $100? Over $2,000 for me, it's got to be this rowing machine that I bought for about $2,000. It's called Ergatta. I'm obsessed with it. Or I bought a pretty nice Mercedes that's really fast. I go on drives every morning and in the afternoon, and it just makes me happy. For under $100? Uh, under— I don't know. I have to think. What about you?

I would say this camera that I'm using right now. Because when the whole world went remote, everything's done over video. And Yeah, I used to just use like a Mac Air. Mac Air laptop makes you look like, you know, an actual like prisoner of war in Uganda when you go on a video call. And so this, having a dope camera is great for the pod, but it's great for every single meeting. I feel like, I feel like I'm putting my best forward and I look great. I feel great. I think the other person, you know, treats you differently depending on how you show up. And so I think this one camera is like the equivalent of buying, you know, a closet full of $10,000 suits, you know, and without any of the headache of like wearing a suit. So that was it.

My under $100 is an AeroPress. I love my AeroPress.

What is that?

Love it.

That's a coffee thing.

Coffee. Coffee thing. It's like it makes individual cups of coffee. Is badass. I use it all the time.

Under $100. Okay. I got this for free from Jack Smith. Jack gave me his Theragun and I fucking love the Theragun.

Um, yeah, he gave it to you.

Yeah, he had like an old one or something like that. He, he, he got a new one or I don't know what, I don't know why.

I had to go buy a knockoff on Amazon.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna do. And actually then he messaged me, was like, hey, I have one, I'll send it to you. And I was like, oh, I'll buy it. And he's like, no, no, just what's your address? I'll send it to you. And I was like, Jack, good guy. And now I told, I sent him a message. I was like, dude, I use this thing every night. I think of you every night because I'm like, I love this gun. I love Jack for giving me this gun. This thing is amazing.

Do you want— do you want an update on some numbers?

Yeah.

So this month, May— May is over now, but in May we're doing a podcast push. So we got about 630,000 listens. So that was the number we were—

to put that in perspective, that's plus, I think, 39% month over month.

And so that's 40%. Month from April to May, and then the month before April, March, March to April was a 30%, and then the month before was also a 30%. Right.

So basically since you started saying, I'm going to focus on growth, this thing started growing between 30% and 40% month over month. We've doubled in the time that you said it. I remember we were at 300-something thousand then. Now we're at 600-something thousand downloads per month.

Now, I don't think— I think June might be stable. The reason why is because I don't think people are gonna be listening as much. I saw a distinct drop, uh, on Monday. Like Mondays, we normally have 35,000 listeners. This Monday was 18,000.

Right.

So I think, I think we might hit a little trough of sorrow, but that's okay. We gotta know to expect that, but we're gonna keep grinding. But I think that we're gonna hit a million soon. And here's some more stats. Our top rating, we are number 8 in iTunes and in Spotify in the business category, which is pretty good.

Number 8.

Number 8.

Wow.

Uh, we are in number 8 still right now on Spotify, and for some reason we were number 1 in Britain in the investing category. I have no idea why. Uh, but that's the updated numbers. I'm pretty proud. I think you should be proud too. Um, a few things that people loved— Trung's thing was amazing, people loved his. Your short ones, people loved.

Um, you did one today on—

but that was June. But yeah, people liked it so far, I think. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm posting that on YouTube, but I'm, because it's like my story, I'm gonna put that on my YouTube. I think I deserve that. I think that that's gonna go viral. But the numbers were good. We grew a lot. It's working.

I think the best thing you said was to, there will be a plateau, whether it's this month or the next month, there's always a plateau. And I've talked about this before, which was one of the biggest lessons learned as somebody trying to build shit is that these plateaus happen. You should, you know, I used to think, oh, plateau means the, you know, the world is, the sky is falling. This isn't working. You know, change everything.

No. Blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, no, you know, the dabbler quits and goes and does a different thing. The stressor gets freaked out by the plateau, thinks that they did something wrong and takes it personally. And the master says, oh, there you are. I thought, I thought you'd be here soon. Hello. Uh, and then sort of dances with the plateaus and figures out how to get to the next level again. So I think we're gonna probably plateau somewhere here in the $600,000 to $700,000 per month before we shoot through the million per month.

And I was working with my wife yesterday. She wants to launch a course. You're, you've inspired her, Sean. And she was all excited to start this thing and she's been talking for months. It's a great idea. And yesterday she was like, halfway through recording the content and everything. And she was like, I feel horrible. I'm like, ah, you're there, right?

Right.

You're there. I'm like, the 40% mark.

Yes.

Yes. And I like, I talked to her and I was teasing with her, but I was like, Sarah, do you know why I'm good at what I do? It's because I know that that is normal and I keep going. And do you know why most people are not, uh, what, who they want to be is that's where they stop. Right. But so what you have to know is that point where you, you start high and then you get to the low when you're a little bit into it. You have to A, recognize that's very normal, that is incredibly normal. And then you keep going. Just like if you're exercising, you're like, oh, I'm starting to sweat. I'm starting to sweat. It's like, oh, okay. That's normal. That's part of it. Now you gotta keep going. Keep going.

Right, right, right. Exactly. If you, if you put down the, the, the, you know, the, the dumbbell every time your muscle started to burn, you would never, never, you'd never grow, right? Because the burn is right where it starts, you know, the growth starts. And so. I think for pre-launch, there's 3 points everybody hits that the first time you hit them, you react pretty poorly. Typically, the first is the overthinking phase. That's before you get started. The second is the fuck, this is the despair. This is never going to work. This sucks. The thing I was so excited about now that I'm doing it and it's harder than I thought. Is this ever going to be good? That's where your wife's at right now. And then there's the last bit when you're at the 90% mark and the perfectionist comes out and says, no, it's not good enough yet. People aren't going to like this. It's not going to work. And you're actually at the 90-95% mark and the perfectionist wants to pull you back to 50% and say, no, we need to do all this other stuff before we go out there. So I think those 3 points, overthinking, then the point of despair, and then the perfectionist point, they happen pre-launch of every project.

Yes. So it's very normal. So let's talk about a couple ideas, which I think you're going to— you've got some stuff.

Yeah.

By the way, also the live shows are happening. I guess by the time this gets released, they'll have already happened. So, you know, whatever. But after this, like, literally, I might have to cut this 10 minutes short because I got to pack my bag. I'm coming to your house in Austin and then we're going to Miami. It's going to be awesome.

Can I just say that I think this is going to be a game changer for us? I think that we're going to see— it's going to be fun to see these excited people. You know, what's crazy is Sean and I, like, planned to do this like 2 weeks ago, or we had been talking about it. And then one day he texted me, he goes, do you want to go to Miami for this time? And we were going to go to crash someone's event. I don't even know, but we just said, fuck it. Yeah, and done. It's settled. Like we did over text and then we got everyone rallied around it. And I think 100 people-ish are going to come to the Austin one. And then I think we're at 500 for Miami. And it wasn't until today that I thought, and we're speaking tomorrow, so recording this on a Wednesday, but you're hearing it on Friday. We're, it wasn't until just now when I, right before the podcast, I told Dan what to do, but I was like, oh, I guess we have to figure out what we're gonna say.

Right.

What are we even gonna talk about? And so I, I told Dan, I go, Dan, send out a Google form to all the attendees and just have 3 things. What look, what city you're in, uh, what question you want answered and what your first name is. And then we'll just like see the trends of questions and then maybe we can just rattle those. I think you told me that idea. And we'll just rattle that off. But yeah, it's cool, man. You know, like, what if this— this sounds so lame because it's just internet nerds like you and me, but what if like me— oh, and Jack Butcher's coming now. What if like me, you and Jack and Andrew and all these like, like these losers online—

nerds on tour.

Yeah. If we had like a nerds on tour, I'm pretty sure we could get like 10,000 people to come to each one.

Yeah. Yeah. I think nerds on tour is a cool idea. I think we should just do it. Maybe, you know, early next year we go Nerds on Tour.

That's actually a great idea. It's— isn't it funny how all these—

the name is great too. Dan, let's grab that domain, Nerds on Tour. Let's see if that's available.

I'm checking right now. All right, you want to, uh, what do you got? What do you got?

Okay, so let's do some ideas. Um, okay, so neighborhood 7-Elevens. So what is—

I love neighborhood 7-Elevens, by the way.

So I don't know what kind of neighborhood you live in. I'll find out when I go to your house tonight. But, uh, My neighborhood is kind of like, I'm in the suburbs. And so I don't know, in this neighborhood there might be 100 homes and there's like a gate at the front. It's sort of like one of those neighborhoods where it takes you 7 minutes to just get from your house to the front of the neighborhood because you want to go to the grocery store. The grocery store is only 2 miles away, but takes you 7 minutes to get out of your neighborhood and then another 10 minutes to get there. It's 17 minutes round trip. And there's just like 100 of these neighborhoods or 1,000 of these neighborhoods in the suburbs. Everywhere I go in the suburbs of California, it's like this. And so I started thinking about two ideas that came together as one in my head. So the first was there's a startup we had talked about called Fridge No More.

And yeah, we talked— when we talked about that, it was like just starting. I'm pretty sure it's a huge thing already.

Well, they just raised, yeah, $15, $20 million or something like that. Love those guys. And, you know, was considering investing. I just thought the value is a little high. But, but yeah, anyways, I think it's really cool concept. And their concept is It's called Fridge No More because like, look, in the future, you won't even need a fridge. Why? Because when you want something, you'll just push a button. You want like, you know, 2 ice creams. Great. They'll show up at your door in like under 15 minutes. How do we do that? Well, we have these like super small kind of like cloud corner stores that are just like, we'll have like 100 in every city. And these cloud corner stores will be able to dispatch an order to you in a very small amount of time with a very low, like, delivery fee. And, and GoPuff does this on college campuses. That's like a multibillion-dollar company, I think. And so I started thinking about in the suburbs, the challenge is a little bit different. And I thought, why don't neighborhoods just have a neighborhood corner store? Okay, well, how would that work? So you told me about the vending machines thing last podcast. So it got me thinking, okay, That was a good one, right? That was a good one. As I was driving through my neighborhood, I was like, look at all these garages. Like, would somebody not want $500 a month to turn their garage or part of their garage into basically just like fridges and freezers? And then it could just get, you know, basically you just deliver to the, you deliver to the neighborhood garage. That's the neighborhood corner store. All the bulk wholesale goods, you know, your water, all your drinks, your sodas, your snacks, and your like ice creams or whatever. And then in the neighborhood, you would just have it where you just order and either you go pick it up out of that garage or, you know, some kid in the neighborhood can just pick up the order, make $5 for just taking it from one part of the neighborhood to the other to bring it to you. And the key would be the convenience of the speed of this, that you could get it in like you know, under 10 minutes to get something delivered to you. So basically the idea is take the idea of 7-Eleven but use the sharing economy. So put, put a mini 7-Eleven inside of garages, inside of all these suburban neighborhoods. What do you think of this idea?

I've got strong feelings. So for or against? Well, just let me, let me, let me get to it. The sharing economy. So kind of really got popular with Airbnb, Uber. I remember 2013 in the same way that all the older school magazines are all talking about crypto. It was like the sharing economy. So there was a sharing economy for everything back in 2013, 2014, and it was all we talked about. And I've looked at the data and I've like tried to figure all this out. I am almost positive that the sharing economy only works for like 2 or 3 things: Uber and driving, um, Airbnb home rentals, and maybe that's it. I've seen sharing economy stuff. Have you ever seen— I just got pitched on this the other day and I just can never get— I never am on board with it— sharing economy for like util— like tools in your—

yeah, this idea has been around and recycled like a trillion times. Like, hey, why do I have to buy a drill? My neighbor has a drill, you know. I just want to use it once. Why don't I just rent the drill on demand locally?

And that idea never works, or at least it hasn't ever. And it's— and there's probably a reason why it hasn't. Um, there's a bunch of these sharing economy things. Like, one was like you go to someone's home and you cook dinner with them, or they— like, it's a private— like, it's a cooking lesson, you know?

Right.

Even Airbnb Experiences doesn't really work that well as a business. It works as a nice little add-on thing for them, but that's not like where their value is. Um, and I've always thought that sharing economy for most things is a horrible idea. I used to share an office when I first started my company. It was me, Sieva, and one other company, I think they were called Brewster or something, and they were trying to get people to make— it was like storage. So they were like wanting people to rent storage in other people's garage. And I would hear these guys on their phone trying to call constantly, trying to get— and they had zero users. And I heard them trying to get user one, user two. I heard all the whole thing. They would walk around on the phone. It was so hard to convince anyone. And when they did convince someone, it never worked. And so in terms of sharing economy stuff and like, like this idea, I'm almost always default to, I don't know, that seems really difficult. Do you agree?

I don't agree with— okay, I do agree that it's difficult, but like on the storage one, so for people who don't know, there was a batch of startups all trying to do this, which was, hey, Airbnb lets you rent out the excess space in your bedrooms, your house. Why don't we rent, let you rent out excess space in your garage? And so Omni started this way. They ended up shutting down after raising a bunch of money. Clutter tried to do the same thing. Clutter changed. I believe they've made it, but maybe they pivoted.

I don't know what it's now, just a normal ass, like, we come pick up your stuff and store it in a warehouse.

They store it in warehouses. Okay. So yeah, so I don't know what the, what, what went wrong there. But that was one that I would believe could work, right? Because if I have extra space, blah, blah, blah, and these things you don't get, they don't get used very much. So they sort of just stay in storage for the most part.

There's one reason why, I mean, and I, and I've thought about this convenience, it's all about convenience. So it's the convenience that has to pay for itself. So having someone stay in my house is relatively inconvenient, but I can make like $3,000 a month pretty consistently. Money, right?

Okay. Yeah. So it's not about convenience there. It's about money.

Well, no, it's about— it's, it's like, it's my convenience at a price. Now, having someone store shit in my garage for $80 a month, which is how much it costs to store stuff at a normal, uh, right, storage unit, that's just fucking not worth it. I don't— I don't— it's not worth it to me. It's a pain in the ass and it's not worth it. It's way too inconvenient.

Right. Yeah. So I think there is, you know, this trade-off. I would also say, I think a lot of people merge these ideas together. So For example, sharing economy. What does sharing economy mean? It means taking excess resources that are unutilized and getting them to be utilized, right? Airbnb, excess space, get them to be utilized. Then there's like gig economy. Gig economy is like more like Uber, right? Like push a button and like push a button, the guy's going to come pick you up. And it's not so much excess resources because that guy, it's not like that guy was just happened to be driving by anyways. It's like, no, he just made this his job. And gig economy. So then people started trying to do that with, like, masseuses, right? Like, push a button, a masseuse will come to your house, you know, like pedicures at your house or whatever, whatever, every random thing. And then there's sort of like creator economy, which is like a totally different thing altogether. And so people started just like using these words pretty interchangeably. And I think that doesn't work. And in general, almost all these are two-sided marketplaces, which are just like effing hard to do. It's really effing hard to start a two-sided marketplace. And when you do, The prize is $1 billion in your pocket. And so it really shouldn't be that easy. But I agree. So I agree with you that this probably, A, wouldn't work, or B, would be like a real pain in the ass to do.

But good idea, Sean.

Yeah, but interesting idea in the sense that I think it would be pretty game-changing in terms of convenience because it would be essentially like a cold vending machine inside of neighborhoods, right? Like a supervending machine inside of neighborhoods. And if you could get it to work, you now have every sort of suburban neighborhood to go spread into, where a lot of stuff is done in cities, partly because the people who build startups tend to live in cities, not in the burbs. And so a lot of stuff works in the cities because that's where they live, that's what they know. And then people are really densely packed into one area. And so it's hard to get things to work at a neighborhood level.

You ever been to a truck stop where they have like just a slab of concrete with benches and like 10 different vending machines all right there with just like an awning? And you could— we'll just do that. Let's just do that in the burbs. We're just going to put that slab and just put all those vending machines right in there.

Well, that's the thing. Like, the question is, what would you sacrifice one home for?

Right?

Because you need the space. So either it's got to go inside of a home. Right in the garage, in the backyard and inside the house. Or it has to be so valuable that you could justify just buying one of the homes and converting it into some like commerce basically for the neighborhood and getting the permits to do it, which is, you know, once we start talking permits, it's time to change ideas. Okay, I got another, I got another suburban idea for you. So the new golf. So my buddy Ben got invited to go play in this pickup game, this pickup basketball game. And, uh, it's— he didn't want to turn it down because it was like, like ballers. Yeah, it's a bunch of ballers that were like gonna go play there.

It was like, this is baller, not real ballers.

Well, half, half were actual, like, you know, like good ballers, and they, you know, people who were like, you know, this guy's gonna get drafted this year, this guy trains the NBA players.

What the fuck? Isn't Ben like a little guy?

Yeah, but we met the guy who's the trainer for the NBA players, this guy Alex. And I forgot his company name last time, so I'll shout it out this time. Through the Lens. He's the one building the masterclass for athletes. So Through the Lens. So anyways, Alex was organizing this game and he was like, hey, you want to come play in this? You're, I know you're in New York also, so come by. And if you're an NBA fan, you always see on Instagram all the NBA players in the summer go play in this one gym that's like, it's like in an apartment building.

So it's like a private gym. My friend used to live in that building.

Like Sky or something. I don't know what it's called, but it's like Yeah, it's in New York. Yeah, it's like this exclusive thing and it would be like LeBron and Carmelo and Kevin Durant all playing in this like little gym, whatever. So the guy was like, hey, we're going to go play tomorrow in that gym. You want to come? He's like, fuck yeah. Like, all right, who's there? And it's like a bunch of like, you know, I don't know, billionaires' children and like, you know, want to be NBA players or whatever. So they went and played and I was like, how was it? He's like, oh, it was good. But like, you know, A, I suck and B, you know, I'm just trying not to get hurt, right? Like, he's like, once, you know, you're 30, you got like, he's like, I just had a kid, like, I just can't afford to get hurt. And I'm not playing regularly. So I'm, you know, I just kind of like played it easy, I guess, which is kind of lame. But that was the truth. I said, well, you know, same here. I basically played basketball as like my favorite thing to do until I was like 27. And then like, since then, I've just been like, well, the odds of me spraining an ankle or spraining a knee is just too high. I can't like, actually play the sport anymore properly. And so I kind of opted out. So I started thinking about like, at every age, there's a different sport that's like right for you. So, you know, maybe in your 20s and 30s, it could be something like basketball or soccer. Then your 40s, you really— there's not many 45-year-old like pickup basketball players that are going out there. There's always, you know, maybe the one old dude who's like barely, barely moving. But for the most part, you need to graduate to another sport that matches your life athleticism. So it might be tennis and a little bit older, it might be golf and then a little bit older. I think that the sort of end sport is basically just playing poker. You can just do that in a wheelchair and it's like the last thing you can do as some kind of form of sport or competition. And so anyways, it got me thinking like, okay, if I'm about to shift into the tennis phase, okay, cool, fine.

Pickleball, bro.

That's the new one. So then I started thinking about pickleball because I was like, What is pickleball? Pickleball is mini tennis that is like kind of the best of tennis, but it's also easier on the body, right? Am I right about pickleball? I haven't played, but that's what I see. It's like you don't have to run.

No, I would say it's as hard on the body, but it requires close to no skill.

Right. So, okay, the skill cap might be different, but I also think there's less running around and jumping. Sure.

But like anyone can do it.

Right. So it's more accessible. That's kind of the point. And then I was thinking about golf because I think once you hit, I don't know, 50 plus, it seems like golf is the major sport for that age. And golf is like the least fucking accessible thing, right? It's super expensive. It takes the whole day. It's hard as shit to like even be decent at golf. So I'm like, how is it? It's amazing to me this even worked, right? Like, it's kind of like mind-blowing golf even, even has any popularity.

So what's the point? What's the new one?

What is the new golf?

So can I tell you what I've been using?

Yeah. What have you been doing?

When I have friends in town, or, uh, you and I won't have enough time, maybe we will tomorrow, but, uh, like, I had a friend named Brennan come over. Whenever people visit, uh, I go, um, 5, 5 PM Thursday or whatever, come to my house and wear tennis shoes. And I've bought tons and tons of wraps. And so they get there, I throw them hand wraps, and I go, we're gonna box today. And I throw them their thing, and we wrap up our hands up. I go, all right, we're gonna warm up with some mitts, I'll show you how to punch. We do that, and then I go, all right, here's the put your mouth guard, we're sparring. And I lead him and we don't hit hard. But like if they want, every once in a while I won't hit them hard in the face, but I'll get up in there and then I'll pop them really hard in the stomach just so they could feel alive.

Yeah, feel what it's like to be alive.

And then I'll let them punch me. I had a guy chip my tooth the other day and it's been the greatest bonding experience. I've done it with men, women, everyone. With the women, like, well, so pop me real hard and I'll hit her in the stomach. Like, it's awesome, man. It is awesome. I have loved doing this with boxing. It brings you together. It makes you feel alive. And it's a fun sport because we could do it in my garage. And you normally don't box because it's embarrassing to try that in front of a bunch of people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I know we're not going to— like, and they'll see me. I go, put— I go, put your hands up. Watch. And I move so slow. I'll just kind of tap them. I'm like, look, that's all we're doing. We're just going to barely touch each other.

Yeah, so I think in the, I think 30s, maybe even 40s, boxing works. I think beyond that, uh, boxing also doesn't work because, you know, for obvious reasons. Um, so, so I think you're, you're doing the thing where you basically, as you shift in age, you like shift in sport. Um, and I've seen like, I think I talked about this once before, but like people have taken like, so, so I was talking to my friend Sahil, uh, this guy Sahil Bloom, people might've seen him on Twitter. He's got a big Twitter now. And we were eating and he was talking about he used to be a baseball player at Stanford. He was a pitcher. And he's like, you know, I got hurt. You know, that kind of ended my pro aspirations. And then it was sort of like, well, this thing, this sport I've dedicated myself to forever is pretty much useless to me at this point, right? Like, I will never play pickup baseball. Like, what am I going to do? Go find 9 friends on one side, 9 on the other side that all like baseball.

Pain in the ass.

All have 4 hours to kill. And we have the right skills where we can pitch and catch. Most people can't even sit in the catcher's squat. You're never going to play baseball again. And it's true. Baseball is sort of the worst access sport at an early age. I think golf is the worst one at a later age. And so I think that if somebody could take the characteristics that make golf work and create their version of pickleball, I think you'd own a pretty valuable asset. And I'm on the lookout. To see what is this next one. Because I have several friends that didn't invent pickleball, but when pickleball started to get popular, they built pickleball businesses. Some, you know, I can't say their name. They actually, they've like literally asked me not to, but one of them is they did equipment. So like they just built like, you know, like an Amazon FBA business selling pickleball stuff and they were able to rank at the top because at the time pickleball wasn't that competitive, but it got more and more popular over time. And then other people have started leagues and there's other people that are— Barstool's, I think, doing something on the media side. I don't know. There's a bunch of different ways you can ride these waves of new sports. And so what makes golf work is that it's— I think it's outdoors. I think that it's, you know, it's a chill sport. So it doesn't require like running, jumping, squatting, like stuff like that. Like it's, you know, old guys can swing the club too. And then all the bad parts you would have to change. So you'd have to find a way to make it a 60-minute or 90-minute experience. You would need, you know, golf's cool because you can do it by yourself. You can do it with one other person or do it with 4 people. So that's good. I'd keep that. You would not want to have it be where you need like thousands of dollars of equipment just to get started or like, you know, pay to go do this thing. And then you'd also want it to be where a beginner can like feel some sort of success and not just like, like I went to a golf course once.

What about Spikeball?

Too athletic, dude. You think you're still thinking like you, you have athleticism still. You got to think about you 30 years from now. You got a bum hip. The testosterone that you've been taking for 30 years has now wiped you out. You're, you know, you're going to be in a different phase. You're going to need a different sport at that time. I think it's got to feel like—

I just go for walks.

Yeah, but the walks don't have the thing that the boxing is giving to you where you get to scratch the competitive itch and you get to do like kind of like you get to feel alive. You can still feel like you're doing something. Walking is sort of like the most basic. I think you got to take like shuffleboard, shuffleboard level of like movement and make it a like outdoor activity. I don't know. What's that one sport that old people play that's like bocce?

Bocce.

I don't know what bocce ball is. Maybe this is bocce ball that I'm describing, but I feel like maybe something like bocce ball is what's going to pick up.

So we need to go to questions, I think.

You're not a fan of the new golf.

I'm not a fan of the new golf, dude.

I'm telling you, it's going to happen. You're going to see the sport rise in popularity amongst older people. And you'll be like, fuck, Sean was right. There was an appetite for a sport for older people that's not called golf.

Maybe. But like, I can't— it's just like such an impossible thing to predict. I mean, like, I would be— it'd be better predicting which companies would be a billion-dollar company than which sport is going to be. Who would— like, who would have thought a sport named pickleball was going to be sick?

Yeah, I don't know. I would have put my money on slam ball, but you know, just to show what I know. Dan, do we, um, do we have, uh, what's it called, did we get the merch? So we have stickers, we have shirts for the tour.

Yep, we got stickers, we got shirts, we got hoodies, and then my first business in college was making buttons, so I got some buttons for you guys too.

Do you have the shirts with you?

I don't, they got shipped out yesterday, they are arriving, uh, tomorrow into Miami.

Okay, great. So Austin, Austin, no shirts. Miami shirts.

Everything's going to Miami.

Yep. Okay.

And what about, um, and what, who's the guy who, uh, designed the shirts? Let's give that guy a shout out too.

Yeah.

Let me, uh, pull it up. Dustin is his first name.

And he's like, he's like a creative agency or like a kind of a design company or something.

Yeah.

He's got a creative agency in Las Vegas.

I've tweeted out, you know, hey, give us some, you know, somebody give some designs. We'll, we'll hook you up. And his were by far the most kind of like favorited or liked by people who said like, you know, pick this one. These are the winners.

Yeah, Dustin Iannotti. He's got an agency out in Las Vegas called Artisans on Fire.

Artisans on Fire. Okay, sweet. Yeah, Artisans on Fire. Go check that out. And he made the Post Economic shirt that's gonna fly off the shelves. Are we giving these away? Are we charging for them? I didn't hear the end result.

I got Square set up, so you guys tell me.

All right, we'll just head over down there.

All right, can I share one funny observation?

Yeah, yeah.

So I've been listening to you guys for like a year now, always on 1.5x, so one of the weirdest things is having to listen to you guys in real time.

I've heard that before.

Yeah, Sean sounds like he's a couple drinks in.

I can't believe that, uh, but I talk faster than Sam, right? I feel like I'm— I think we both have nervous energy.

Well, you talk really fast at 1.5x.

Yeah, that's fair. I can't believe people listen to this on speed. It doesn't make sense to me.

All right, I got to go. I'll talk to you soon. Uh-huh.

Yeah. I feel like I can 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.