Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates | My First Million #218

What's the most annoying thing in the world? An unhappy billionaire. And I think he said something like that. And I was like, wow, that's so true, actually. Like, if he came to me about being glum and whatever, it would be hard for me in my initial reaction to be like, dude, you have it all. 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. All right, let's get into it. You ready?

Yeah.

All right. What's going on?

Not too much.

Can I tell you a quick story that I just read?

I love when we start with the story. The last— the last story got rave reviews. Big reaction for the psychedelic story.

Oh, did it?

Yeah.

Great. All right. Let me tell you a quick one. This isn't about me, though. And I'm actually reading the book called Storyworthy because you told me it was a good book. But, and so I haven't read it enough that I'm going to implement what it's— what I've learned. So don't have your high expectations. But I'm reading the biography of the Wright brothers. Do you know who they are?

Of course. Invented the airplane.

Well, you didn't know who Dolly Parton was.

First people to have a flying plane. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah. The Wright brothers, they, they created like insulin, right? So Wilbur Wright was like the smart— was like the smart brother or he was like the lead brother. And when he was in high school, He was very smart. He was going to go to Yale. He was like the— he was going to be a big deal. And he was an athlete. And he was out one night playing hockey in the neighborhood. He lived in Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, where it was really cold in the winter and you could play ice hockey on the lakes. And he was playing and this kid comes from behind him and smacks him in the face with a stick. And he knocks out most of his teeth. He breaks his jaw and he has digestive problems for years. And he's basically— like not in a coma, but he's like, he doesn't, he doesn't leave his house for 4 years. The guy who hit him, his name is like Howard, Howard Hoth or something like that. And he, this guy, this kid who hit him, one of the reasons why it's hypothesized why he hit him is this kid had been suffering from a cold or some type of flu for a really long time. And at the time they gave him this medicine that was cocaine based. And so basically he was like a drug addict at a young age. and he was a bully. He was known to be a bully. He smacked Wilbur Wright in the face really bad. No one knows if it was an accident, if it was on purpose. Turns out years later, this guy who hit him turns out to be one of the first serial killers based out of Ohio, and he's put to death because he kills like 20 people. So he was like a bad guy for, for, from since the beginning, and he hits Wilbur Wright in the face. And so Wilbur Wright was gonna go to Yale that year, and he ends up not going to Yale. He kinda, he was like a good student, but he wasn't like a homebody like he had since now become. And he was like that for 4 or 7 years. And so he basically locked himself in his room because he was having digestive problems. He was embarrassed because his teeth was all fucked up and he just felt horrible for years and years. It's not like there was like, they didn't like do surgery on this and they didn't have like amazing pain pills for you. So he just had to suffer. And in that time he started reading a lot and he actually like read a book on bicycles and he got really interested in bicycles. At the time someone bought him like a toy plane that was kind of like a kite, but it was like a plane. And he started getting really fascinated with mechanics and fascinated with planes. And once he healed, he decided, "This is gonna be my life. This is what I'm gonna do." Instead of going to Yale like I was gonna do and become a doctor, I believe his father was the doctor, he goes, "I'm going to study mechanics and I'm going to create a bicycle shop." And then from a bicycle shop, he says, "I wanna create a glider and then eventually I'm gonna create a plane." And it all started with getting hit in the face And it like, like with a debilitating hit in the face. And he thought that his life was over. And I love stories where you think it's all over. You have so much, uh, uh, adversity in front of you and that totally shifts the outcome. I had that one time when I got fired from a job when I moved out here, I had nothing. I was like, I don't know what's gonna happen. So I ended up starting my first company. But I love that story and I wanted to bring that up because I love when bad things happen and I've gone through it enough times that I'm like, don't worry, this bad thing will likely lead to something.

Gonna make for an epic story. Right.

It might lead to something really amazing. Have you ever had something like that where it led to something where you're like, my life's over?

Well, okay, you know, not Wilbur Wright level. So first I have a few questions about Wilbur Wright. So what's the other brother? So if Wilbur's the smart brother who overcame, you know, this debilitating smack in the mouth, What's the other brother's story?

Well, I'm only halfway through the book, but they get along. They get along quite well. The younger brother's a little bit more gregarious and a little bit more outgoing. And so Wilbur is the calculating one. Orville's the one who says, hey, all right, that's a great idea. Let's go do it. Let's go. So they find out that there's this place. And here's another amazing part of the story. So they just talk to friends, they talk to officials, they go, where is there a place that has a lot of open land that's windy? And it gets— they talk to the— for some reason, I don't know why at the time, but the postmaster knew of a good place. And that postmaster connected them to another postmaster in Kitty Hawk, which was Dayton to Kitty Hawk. I don't know the exact, exact distance, but without a car, it's a massive trek. And the both brothers are like, you know, screw it, let's do it. So they go out there and they knock on doors and they find someone to house them and let them camp on their land for 4 weeks at a time while they test their stuff. And it was so like This is why I love America. The postmaster of Kitty Hawk was like, yeah, you know, this whole flight thing, I don't think it's going to work, but like, I give you my thumbs up, go out and do it. No one will bother you. We got you. If anyone bothers you, bothers you, holler at us. There was so little bureaucracy. I loved it. But Orville was more— a little bit more outgoing and pushed Wilbur, who was the more calculating brother.

And you said from the beginning, because I knew they had a bicycle shop, but that you're saying from the beginning you said, I'm going to do bicycle, then eventually I'm going to make a plane, or That just happened. It's like, you know, Toby from Shopify creates a snowboard shop online for his snowboard company and then creates Shopify, but he didn't think to himself, first I'm going to do this, then I'm going to build a platform that will have millions of stores on it. It just sort of happened that way. So which one was it? Was it a master plan or was it, you know, progressive ambition?

It was progressive ambition. So basically he saw this plane, his toy glider that he had, and he always thought that that was interesting. And but he just kind of let it sit in the back of his brain. And then he got into bicycles. First he started a pressing press, a pressing, a print press where he made his own newspaper. And then he's like, this is kind of cool. But they learned about bicycles and like, this new cycle technology is amazing. We got to get into that. And they get to start getting into that. And he's like, you know what? The key to riding a bike is the, the how you balance. And he started staring at birds and he started looking at this old glider that he had and like, man, that balance is the same thing. Like, that's so important. I bet we can translate that to this, you know, this dream I've always had of, of flying. I bet you it's actually quite similar. And so they just, they, they, they, they kind of carried it over.

And, uh, and I think there was like a bunch of other teams that were way better funded working on this at the same time. And I think they just beat the other teams to, to manned flight by like 4 months or something very, a very thin margin where they go down in history and nobody remembers the second crew that made it. Is that right?

Well, I'm not that far along, but throughout the book now they have guys saying, hey, I'm friends with Andrew Carnegie. I can get you guys some money. Do you want some funding? We can get you— we can get you about $200,000 a year, which is probably like $2 or $3 million now. And they go, no, no, no, our cycle shop is making enough profits. We can— we can afford it. Which they really like— they kind of could afford it, like as in barely. But they would— they would— they would go to Kitty Hawk And they would, um, they'd go to Kitty Hawk and they would find places to crash. And, and, and so it wasn't like they were rich.

Um, by the way, if you like stories like this, we may have something coming down the pipe. Mwahaha. Evil laugh. We'll announce later. Okay.

So I'm excited about that.

So, uh, okay. Have I had stories like this? Um, you know, I probably have and I probably need to go dig it up. That's one thing I've learned, especially from Storyworthy. One of the things in Storyworthy is he does this He's not just telling you how to tell a great story. He does that, right? There's mechanics about what makes a great story. And he talks about what is the beginning supposed to look like? What is the end supposed to look like? How do you raise stakes in a story? That sort of thing. But the other thing, the main point I think the guy's trying to get across in Storyworthy is that we all think that our day-to-day life doesn't have stories, but once you start looking, you'll find stories everywhere. And he gives you these exercises to do to find stories from your past. There's like this exercise called first, last, best, worst. And I do this in my course, but I don't teach the course anymore. But like in my power writing course, I help people come up with ideas of what to write about. And I use this exercise and it's killer. You can take anything. So like, well, let's play the game real quick. We're going to do it with jobs.

Okay.

So topic is jobs or career, right? So give me the first job you ever had.

I worked in a bakery sweeping floors.

Okay, great. Give me the last, meaning most recent job you ever had. And that's probably, you know, The Hustle or maybe this podcast.

I was the CEO and owner of a media company called The Hustle.

Right. Then it's give me worst. So let's go. What was the worst job you ever had?

The worst job I ever had was Um, the worst job I ever had was cold calling people in college to sell SEO services out of the Yellow Pages.

There you go. All right. And then you have best. What was the best job you ever had?

The best job I ever had was co-hosting this podcast.

All right. There you go. And then there's another one called weirdest that I added in. That's not in Storyworthy, but I added weirdest because I found that this gives— this gets a lot of good stories out of it. So what's the weirdest job you ever had? That might be the hot dog stand.

No, I was a skateboard instructor at the YMCA when I was 15.

I learn something new every day about you. All right. So you could do that. So that gives you a bunch of stuff that you're like, oh, if you show that to somebody else, they'd be like, what? Like, what? You know, like skateboard, how did that come about? Or how much money does that make? Or how'd you get the idea? Or what's the hardest part about doing that? Or what's a day in, like, oh, you scooped ice cream at Cold Stone? Dude, like, what do I need to know about Cold Stone ice cream that only you know because you were there every day making it? And so it's this great way to generate a bunch of stories. So that's like one of those exercises. He has another one, which is like you look for a 5-second moment in your day. You just try to jot down at the end of the night, what would've been my story of the day? If today is the last day of my life or whatever, if today was the only day of my life, what would've been the story of the day? And he just looks for a 5-second moment.

I think he called that Everyday Stories. I think he calls it. And so it's a good book.

So I think everybody, myself included, probably has their version of a Wilbur moment. It might not be that you literally got punched in the face. It might be that you, like you said, got fired. Somebody slammed you in a meeting and told you, you know, you're a dumbass and this will never work. Or, you know, whatever, you got rejected in some way. You've tried and spectacularly failed in some way. You publicly failed in some way. And the other thing that came to mind when you were telling me this is my brother-in-law who's come on the show before. He's called Brother Aaron. He's a crazy man. We got to have him back on. He basically just goes down rabbit holes and internet conspiracies and things like that. So he has this story that he tells, and I'm going to half tell the story right now. I'll do the fast-forward version. So he's like, I was in college. I was just having a great time, kind of like 50-year senior type of shit. And I think maybe he was in grad school actually for this. And he doesn't really care about his grades. He's just partying. He's playing basketball all day. He really doesn't care about his grades. And he finds out that— and he's taken out a bunch of loans and he finds out that his GPA his first semester sucks. And there's something happened where he had one semester left and in order to graduate, he needed— and not have to pay a whole bunch of extra money for his loans because he didn't graduate or whatever, he needed to essentially get a 4.0 GPA. So he needed to go from like a 2.1 to like he needed to graduate with a 3-point-something or so. I don't know what the numbers were, but basically his first year GPA was so bad that he needed an absolute perfect GPA in order to graduate and not be like $50,000 in the hole. And for somebody who grew up like on food stamps, stuff like $50,000 was like an insurmountable hole at the time. He didn't want to be in that hole. He wanted to graduate. And he was dating my sister and my sister was like, yo, you can't just be like a broke joke who's like not graduating and in mountains of debt. So he's like, I'm gonna lose my girl. I'm gonna like owe all this money. It's all crashing down. And so he's like, okay, you know what? I'm gonna do this. And so it's like in the story-worthy format, it's like you have a hero who has an intent and obstacle. So he has an intent. He has to do this. If he doesn't do this, what happens? Loses the girl of his dreams, is in a mountain of debt, will never recover, you know, like basically has to drop out and doesn't finish his degree. And if he does that, whatever happens, those are the stakes. And so then he tells the story. And when he's telling the story, he's like, there's all these like additional obstacles that come. It's like he actually like starts to study super hard and he's not like, you know, he's not like the smartest, smartest guy who it just, oh, if you tried a little bit, he'd get an A. He needs to get an A+. And he has to get a 97 to 100. If he doesn't get that, he flunks out of the program and he starts studying and he actually gets his first test, he gets like a 98. And the teacher calls him into the office and is basically like, "You cheated." He's like, "No, I swear." And he's like, "Dude, you are an F student and you want me to believe you have an A+ here? No way. You cheated, you know, whatever." And so he gets obstacle after obstacle. And then they changed the rules or something. So at first he needed an A, which is like a 95 and up. Then they changed the rules on the GPA system and he now needed an A+ in every single subject where it's like he needed a 98, 99, or 100. And he's like, oh my God. And every day, every time he hit one of these obstacles, he just feels like he can't do it. And he just, the way he tells the story, he just keeps repeating and goes, but then I dug deeper and he just keeps going. He's like, I hit rock bottom. But then I dug deeper and he just keeps saying this over and over. And by the first time he says it, you know, it has some effect. Second time he says it, it's losing its effect. Third time you're laughing. By the 17th time, because by the way, he's telling the story not of him telling the story now, it's he went to a job interview with NASA and NASA was like, yo, you're not an engineer. Like, why would we give you this job?

And he told that.

He tells the story. He's like, because I know my limits. "Every other kid you have coming in here is from a good family, has got good grades their whole life. They don't know what they're made of. I tested myself. I know what I'm made of. I dug deeper when I hit rock bottom. When I couldn't do more, I went further." And he just keeps going and he tells this epic story. Did he get the job? He got the job. And when he tells the story, it just makes everybody laugh. And when I heard that story, not only does it make me laugh, it made me think everybody deserves to have a story like this. And if you don't, then when you're in a shitty time, just think to yourself, This is my dig deeper story. Okay, pile on the obstacles because you know what? I need it for this story to be great in the end.

Yeah, he's— I've hung out with him a bit. That guy is crazy. And I enjoy it. I enjoy that story. Can I tell you— can I tell you about something that's going on on Twitter that I find to be incredibly fascinating?

Yeah.

So right now I've singled out 4 people, but there's probably 12 of them or maybe 24 of them. So there's something very weird going on about real estate Twitter. Okay. And I, and I contacted 3 of them and I posted all my notes. You see my notes on there?

Yep, I see them. I know all these.

I just— okay. I'm actually meeting up with one of them tonight. Strip mall. The strip mall guy. So for the listeners, basically, like, Twitter is experiencing some crazy stuff right now. And obviously me and Sean are deep in one particular niche, but I have a feeling that that niche is quite large and that niche is like techy startup people tweeting stuff. And also there's like a big overlap with crypto and NFT stuff, and that's even probably much larger. And then next to that is like Robinhood and stocks and fintech. What do they call it? FinTwit. And that's probably even the biggest. But there's this new subset of people that I'm seeing, and I think it's new.

And by the way, it's nowhere near the biggest. There's like marketing Twitter, there's like like teacher Twitter. There's like every profession has like a—

Oh, I mean like some culture. I mean like some of the— I met some of the bigger, uh, I met the biggest of the ones I had mentioned. Uh, and yeah, yeah. And, and keep in mind that like if we're looking at a piece of the pie, the everything I just mentioned is like maybe like it's like a, it's like a, like a maybe like a 15% of the pie. So it's like not big, but if you're listening to this, you are likely part of that. And so there's a very new and emerging part of that pie. And is these guys who are constantly tweeting about boring real estate stuff. And as, as a whole, the leaders are fucking crushing it. It is some of the most—

not boring as in Sam's judgment, boring as in that's actually their positioning is like, oh, you guys talking about all this fancy shit. I just do boring stuff and I make a bunch of money. That's actually their brand that they want to bring in. So that I think at least I think it's intentional. I don't think they're trying to be boring. I think they're trying to say, hey, boring businesses print money and there's like this counterculture, counterculture appeal to it in the same way that some people are like, oh, VC, it's all just a big waste of money. And, you know, it's a bunch of, you know, it's a fool's race. I actually bootstrap and I make profits. I have profitability. And they use that as their badge of honor.

But the reason why I want to bring this up now is because we are in the early stages or maybe in the middle. We're right in the thick of it. It's not huge, huge yet, but we're seeing something happen here. And I want to call it out because I think it's very fascinating to watch this. And so here's— there's actually 4 guys. I only talked to 3 of them ahead of time, but I'm friends with the 4th one, so I kind of like riff off them a little bit. But there's 4 guys that I went and DM'd. And the first, there's a guy named Strip Mall Guy. His handle is Strip Mall Guy, or— but his name is Trent and people call him Strip Mall Trent. And so we're going to talk about him. The 2nd guy we're going to talk about is a guy named Moses Kagan. Moses Kagan. So Strip Mall Guy buys strip malls and it's hilarious, his Twitter. The second guy is Moses Kagan. He buys multifamily in LA. The third is Keith Wasserman, who is one of your third, fifth, eighth guests on the podcast, and he does multifamily. And then the fourth guy is this guy who we're both great friends with, Nick Huber, who I'm an investor of, and he buys storage units and he's made it so popular that he gets mocked regularly because of it. And so I want to tell you a little bit about each guy. I will go really quick. So Strip Mall Guy, So, facts. So, he has $500 million in assets under management. His Twitter is anonymous. I'm actually about to go meet— go for a— he's actually staying down the street from me. I'm going to go hang out with him right after this. He's 41 years old. He uses none of his own money. So, 99.9% is other people's money. And he has bought roughly $500 million worth of strip malls. And what he does is he finds strip malls that he thinks are undervalued and and he just fixes them up and he either holds them or flips them. And the reason why he thinks this is a huge deal is because there's a huge lack of data in this business. So, the rents people are paying versus what the market rent is, like it's really hard to know if you're charging your tenants market rate. And for some reason, that's incredibly challenging. And he goes, that's where the opportunity is. So, I just work really hard and I knock on doors to find out what everyone's paying in rent. And I come up with a— and then I find a strip mall where they're underpaying and I buy it and I increase rents and I fix it up a little bit. So anyway, that's kind of interesting. And so he told me that he pays himself or he personally cash flows $3 million a year from this. Kind of interesting. And he does it with a team of 4. That's pretty fascinating, isn't it?

Right. Yeah, of course. So is he a syndicator or it's a fund? I think it sounds like a syndicator.

I don't know. I actually— I don't know. I think a fund, but he has like family offices behind him. So I guess if he's a syndicate, that means he just does it deal by deal versus having a fund where he has to deploy. Um, I, I, yeah, I don't actually know. Um, kind of fascinating. The second guy is, um, and he's, and this guy's Strip Mall Trent. I believe he just started. When did he start?

Uh, like his account's like less than a year old and I DM'd him and I was like, uh, oh, by the way, he told me actually I had asked him, he said deal by deal basis. Um, and I think he's now gonna, now gonna raise a fund. He's like, it's insane how many people are DMing me about investing in my deals and stuff like that. He's like, My Twitter account is an anonymous, I'm an anonymous cartoon character. I might, you know, I could be anything. He's like, you know, I am the real deal, but like, they don't know that. That's crazy that how much opportunity there is on Twitter for somebody who's vocal in their space. And then, and he was asking, he's like, should I, you know, tell my friends about who I am, like my account or whatever? And I told him, I said, keep it super tight to the vest. It will get out if you Even if you— everybody you tell, you trust them, they trust 3 people, they trust 3 people, and like by the, by, you know, 3 hops later, the word is out. And so, uh, so I told him, I said, don't tell me who you are, just, just, uh, stay anonymous, keep doing what you're doing, it's gonna get really big.

And I agree, and it's one of the reasons why it's interesting. There's another— there's a guy, uh, who does—

by the way, he's at 22,000 followers now. I bet you he's at 100 in less than 6 months.

This guy's going to be big. And there's another guy who runs this newsletter called Petition where he talks about companies that are going bankrupt and who can buy them. And he runs that all anonymously. And one time he called me and asked for advice and I sent him a Zoom link and he screwed up and he put his name in the thing and I go, bro, I just saw it, turn it off. And I like deleted it from my brain. So I don't actually remember his name, but I talked to him on the phone. On a regular basis, but I'm like, just, you know, I still don't remember your name. So, okay. So you just said that this guy Trent was able to raise money or is being offered. Let's go to the second guy. His name is Moses Kagan. He currently has $200 million through AU under management and he's deployed $30 million of— sorry, he's had $40 million come from Twitter. So this guy started tweeting about his deals. He got 40 million of his Twitter followers they came up with $40 million to invest in his fund. He said one guy gave him $20 million and he found it through Twitter. Is that nuts?

We have a friend who put a couple million bucks into his thing.

Yeah, I know. I talked about him. And did he say that he's happy with it?

Uh, I think it's early, so I think it's probably too early to say, but he recommended it to me. He's like, I think you should do one of these guys' deals. So that means he kicked the tires and was like, yeah, I think it's worth, you know, like this guy seems to be smart, uh, seems to know what he's doing. So So I think that was, you know, trusted enough.

I flew down and I met up with him. I thought he was great. And then the third one is Keith Wasserman. So Keith currently has close to $2 billion in assets under management for his real estate deal. And he said that he's got 1,000 investors, he said, and Twitter 5x'd his fund. So that's pretty nuts. And then the last one, Nick Huber, who's a good friend of both of ours. I became friends with him through Twitter. Basically, I was doing a live video and he popped in and I just became friends with him. And now we're like, I'm gonna go visit him in his house and hang out with him. And I invested $100,000.

You guys both have that redneck energy to you. You guys both, you know, you just wanna be out in the sun all day, get sunburned while you're like hunting, fishing, golfing, and shooting something at the same time. Like, if I could just put those 4 objects, one on each limb, you'd be a happy person. Put a rifle on the head, a fishing pole on your toes. That's what you guys want, both of you. You're like, I love that. He texts us, he's smoking a cigar. It's Tuesday at 1 PM. He's like, kids are running around his giant, like, I don't know, farm or wherever he— wherever the hell he lives. He's got a bunch of acreage and he's just like, yeah, life is good. We're going— we're going to go whitewater rafting in like, you know, my backyard right now.

He's awesome. I invested in it and the returns have been pretty good. And anyway, I thought it was crazy fascinating. And so I'm gonna give everyone a takeaway. Here's my opinion. Here's an easy one where this can be made. So there's a guy already who's doing this with vending machines. We talked about him. His name was Quinn Miller. I think he's doing pretty good. But there's another one that I think that this could be done. So click the link. You see where it says carwashadvisory.com?

Yes.

Okay, so I found this website. And basically what they do is if you go to carwashadvisory.com and then you click buying and then you could see car washes for sale, you can look at how much car washes are selling for. And I'm honestly shocked at how expensive these are. You can see what their EBITDA is. You can see what their profit— or what their profit, what their revenue. You can see all types of stuff. And it's pretty fascinating. I think because this is so interesting, I think that there's a world where someone could get into this business and start tweeting about it constantly and just tweet publicly.

Our YouTube people, put the— put the website— put this like— put the website, go to buy and put that on the— on the screen right now. Like, this is how you know this is a great website because all the listings that are sold, it goes— it just has this huge stamp that says sold. And then there's balloon— like these clipart balloons all over the listing thumbnail. That's how I know that this thing is amazing. It's like, you know, when you see somebody who's like, you know, driving a fancy car and they get out and they have like total like dad wardrobe, it's like, yeah, this person's, it's the opposite of the person who's really slick getting out and you're like, ah, did they lease this thing? And is this a rental? Like, you know, they're doing it for the image versus when the image is so bad but the money is so high, it's like, oh yeah, that's where there's dumb money. It's great.

Yes. And I think that you could do this. So Nick's got a thing on— this guy's doing strip malls. Moses and Keith are doing multifamily. Nick's got storage. There could be— there's this guy Quinn's got vending. There's room for car wash, I think. I think that's the play.

I was thinking you were going somewhere else. I think, and maybe this is just me, probably you too right now, which is like, once you get a little bit of money, it's like you go get your PhD in tax avoidance. And I think it's crazy that nobody has just taken the throne here of saying, I'm going to talk all day about these little financial hack strategies for high net worth people around, um, you know, just either examples or strategies or loopholes, or little did you know about, you can go into an opportunity zone and then you can roll that through a 1031 over here. And then you could backdoor the backdoor IRA, and then you can do a super Roth. It's like, You know, like whatever, I'm just making up terms, but there's—

I think everything you said made sense.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure it didn't. But there's somebody who should be owning that. Like there's one guy, his name's Mitchell something, Mitchell Aldridge. I don't know how you like— it's one of those names I've never said out loud. I just see him on Twitter all the time. He kind of does this. It's basically a CPA.

Wait, is he— does he look like a really, really white dude? Like a grown-up Dennis the Menace?

Yes, exactly. Mitchell Baldridge. Yeah.

Yes. I like that.

He's got 21,000 followers. I did a call with him cuz I was thinking about, you know, should I use him for my stuff? And it's like, yeah, he's a Texas CPA focused on family and helping high net worth, $30 to $500 million investors and business owners preserve and grow their wealth. And then it's like, this is not financial advice, but basically I just think that there is such a lack of information. Last night I was like, I do this thing because my daughter's bedtime schedule is all screwed up. It takes forever to put her to bed now. And there's probably some way to shorten that, But my hack is always like, how do I just have more fun doing this rather than try to make it more efficient? And so my hack to have it more fun is headphones in while I'm like putting her to bed and I learn something. So like, you know, either audiobook or listen to a really good talk. Or right now my shtick is like, this week is crypto week. But besides that, I've been doing tax learning. So, you know, like what are the different things that people do in order to generate a lot of income and pay minimal tax. And it's so hard to find somebody who's good at this on YouTube. Like there's definitely stuff out there, but it's like, I don't know how to describe it. It's like dollar store shit. It's like, yeah, it's kind of cheap. It's kind of tacky. It's like way too surface level. And it's like too, it's like, you know, it'll be like, did you know there's a 401k? It's like, okay, I need more than that. But, you know, like still delivered to me in a way that's like simple and understandable and like walks me through cases like, yeah, I have a client who's, you know, made a bunch of money through selling a company. And so then we started buying real estate and here's the type of real estate we bought and here's how we managed it and here's what we did with the depreciation to offset these things, right? Like I want more. And so I feel like tax is one of those boring topics.

That's a great one.

Get super big with like this. Now the incentive is kind of not there in that it's a service-based business more so than, you know, these real estate guys because they just want a bunch of investors to pile in so they can go buy bigger and bigger deals. Yeah. But look, like who doesn't I want more customers. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Or better and better customers. So to wrap this up, the moral of the story is there's some amazing people out here, particularly in this real estate niche, but I think that you could do this for many things. There's loads of services, loads of like real estate-esque things. I mean, we're talking about vending machines, car washes, taxes, and these guys are making, and like, I guess like in order to be good at that, I'm going to disrespect these folks a little bit, but like, it doesn't seem like you have to be that good to be good at it. You know what I mean? Like if you just do, if you're just, pretty good and you're consistently at least pretty good and you do it for 30 years, you can be a fucking winner. And what they're doing is they're making it really hard to lose by getting this massive audience and creating this incredibly interesting content around typically boring stuff. And so everyone who has money is like, "Oh, can I give you some more? Can I give you some money, please?" So anyway, I think that's interesting and it's happening right now. And so that's why I wanted to call this out. This is not something that we're— I didn't want to look back. I want to say, "Look, this is happening." It's kind of neat.

Yeah. Basically the fewer the people, the less common it is for people in your industry to be blogging or tweeting or podcasting, the more of an opportunity there is for you to go do it. There is an insatiable appetite for this stuff. And if your industry is sort of backwards, slow, it's private behind closed doors, bigger opportunity for you than it is for guys like us. Cause in our industry, everybody's doing it. So it's less, it's less cool. It's less opportunities for just to be the, 30,000th tech person to tweet their tech views, you know.

So, all right, I'm gonna let you lead because you actually have a ton of good stuff and I kind of dominated a lot of the time.

Okay, so I want to talk about this thing I've been doing that this week, um, called Crypto Week. So, okay, what—

dude, I almost got— I almost got so mad at you when I saw that tweet because you go, I told Ben, kids— I was like, Sean, we only have one meeting this week, it's only 10 minutes, please. I hope you don't—

I showed up, I showed up, but I did tell— I did tell Ben and I told— I said, hey, no meetings this week. So I did one with you for our YouTube channel because that's 10 minutes. It was 10 minutes. It was great. Shout out to Essie. And then it was, and then this podcast. There's the only two commitments I have on the calendar this week.

Good. All right. Thank you.

So besides that, I cleared everything off and I didn't just clear the calendar of meetings. I just said, I'm not working on my other shit. E-commerce business, not doing it this week. And ironically, it's like having its best week ever. But like, basically just told our ad guy, I said, hey, I'm on vacation now. Am I actually on vacation? No, I'm sitting in my garage 18 hours a day, neck deep in crypto. And why is this?

So basically, are you just sitting with your phone right now?

No.

Is that what you're doing? Because like, I met— whenever I do these weeks, which I do them as well, I imagine I'm just like surrounded by books reading. But you really just leaned over on your chair with your phone in front of you and you're just like drinking milk?

My laptop, drinking milk. Exactly. I'm on that Edison diet right now. I'm just drinking milk and I'm inventing the future. So what I think is, this is kind of amazing. So I had read that Bill Gates does this like once a week out of the year. He calls it his think week or his reading week or something like that, where he's just like throughout the year he gets interested in certain topics, but he's so busy that he doesn't get to go as deep on that topic as he would otherwise want to. Like he's got more curiosity than he has time in the moment. And so what he does is he carves out this one week a year and then let's say that he's all about CRISPR, right? Let's say that that's what he was really interested in. And by the way, for all the people who are like, oh, Bill Gates, he's trying to like fucking poison everybody. It's like, okay, step aside, please. Basically, he takes all his books on CRISPR and he goes to a cabin. He doesn't take his wife and he doesn't take his kids and he locks himself in the cabin and he just reads. He just immerses himself in that thing and he comes out the other side with a greater understanding of this topic that he was curious about. So I wanted to do this for crypto. Now, I'm like, I'm not like a noob at crypto, right? Like, you know, we've been talking about it on this podcast. I've been buying and owning assets since, I don't know, 2014 or something like that. And so, like, it's not like this is like a completely new subject, but it was, wow, this space is evolving so fast. And there are so many toys that I haven't got to play with. I'm going to do this. And so, and I can't tell you how fun this has been. I want to tell you why, but like, that's just the highlight, the intro. Where do you want me to go with this?

Well, so I don't want to talk too much about this concept of doing a crypto or book reading week because it's so— I'm totally on board with it. Everyone should do it. So I don't even want to talk.

Have you ever done something like this?

Not lately, not in the past couple years, but I have before. So I've done it with like copywriting. I'm like, I'm gonna learn everything. Yeah, it's very— you can, you can learn so much. What you have to shut down Slack, Facebook, Twitter, and just not look at anything.

And so I'm gonna give you a few things that I've observed during this. So first, about doing one of these weeks, it fits my— fits the like framework of how I see the world, which is that work like a lion, not like a cow, and that this is a sprint week. And it's a sprint week around learning, but it's a sprint week nonetheless. It's like a lion when they find their prey and they want to go sprint at it. It's like a mini vacation or a mini retirement in a way. It's like, what would I do if I really wasn't working actively on anything? Well, I would just be kind of learning and I'd be interested in all these things because I had all this free time. Well, I gave myself a mini shot of that for a week. It reduces FOMO like crazy because there was always this itch, this this aching feeling like I'm missing out on all this opportunity because I'm busy with my good projects that I like, but I just don't have time to even know what I don't know. And so this reduces FOMO. And last thing is learning by immersion. So I'm not just the only one doing it. My team, which is Ben and André, I cleared off their whole calendar too. And I said, don't do any of your normal things.

You're doing this with me. Who's André?

André is a new guy. He took my power writing course. Dude, Andre's story is fucking nuts. Can I tell you this? I didn't tell you about this guy. He created this website. Let me actually find— go to supsean.com. So sup and then my name, sean.com. And just read this for a second.

Hi Sean, I'm Andre. Okay.

So this guy made this website. He sent it to me and he go, it's called supsean.com. So I'm curious. And he says, hey Sean, I'm Andre. I'm a future student in your power adding course. I built the biggest student startup conference in Canada, blah, blah, blah. Oh, by the way, I just recovered from being wheelchair/bedbound for 2 years. Check out my blog post for stories about why I made this site for you. I'm not looking to grab a coffee or chat.

I love that.

If you like the hustle of this website, I just have one quick question I want your help with. And then he has like, he stole like the design off my website and he just put a bunch of fake quotes of people being like, you're a legend. Wow. Like quote, wow, Sean, when seeing this website. And then he's talked about what he's working on now. And then he has a question and he's like, "If you were me, you've just been strapped to your bed for a couple years and you're now starting your career, how would you change your approach to life and work? Some context, I had this thingamajig for 5 years and I've just got over it and I feel like I've been given a second life." By the way, the fact that he didn't go into a sob story and explain his condition, just calling it a thingamajig just told me, yo, I'm on your level of I'm not looking for your sympathy, but this is true and I'm just explaining to you this situation I'm in. So mad respect for the way he did that. He goes, I just want to maximize every year, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so anyways, he got me to reply and then he took my course. He was great. Then he sent me this video after my course, like, yo, here's 3 things you should be doing better in your next cohort. Like really loved it. Here's 3 ways where I would make this better. I just hired him. I was like, come do that. And then he came and he did that for me. And now I'm like, he's brought such good energy where like literally every day he's like just, he's on one, dude. He's never in a bad mood. He's always in a good mood. And it's amazing how far enthusiasm and having like positive vibes goes as far as like my books at least.

And so, uh, so he's just working, but I brought him on and he's working on your course.

So he did my course, but now I like, the course was like a smash success last month and I was like, I'm kind of bored of this. Let's go do some other shit. So like, he's not doing that right now, but he's helping me with other shit. So this crypto week thing, anyways, we're all doing it. So a couple of things that I've learned. So I'm a big believer in learning by doing. And so my attitude for this week was, what are— I thought of it like Disney World. I was like, okay, there's all the— and if you go to Disney World, it's like you can go to the Magic Kingdom, you can go to like whatever, the Harry Potter land, you can go over here to this other area. So I started mapping out the different worlds. There's like the NFT world, there's like DeFi world, there's like kind of like security world. I need to learn how to— I got kind of like a good amount of this stuff. Like, I want to— what are the best practices for securing this that I've been putting off? Okay. You know, what's better than what I'm currently doing? And so I just mapped out all these different areas I'm curious about. And then we started diving in one day on each, just going as deep as we can with each one. Wait, are you—

but are you— Are you like messaging your team throughout the day? Like, let's everyone, let's sit for 3 hours and read this and we'll come back and talk basically.

So it's like we're just sharing stuff in Slack and then we do these, like Slack has that huddle feature now, which is like really dope. It's like a quick little Discord chat basically. So we'll huddle up and we'll be like, um, we, we kind of set out at the beginning, which was, dude, what would I want? What I would want is when I wanted to spend a week going deep into crypto and get a real understanding, I wish somebody just had this had a product like this where I could just— it's not a course, it's not like a vlog. It's like the best way I've learned about crypto has been Furkan, my smart friend, basically, who knows this shit inside and out. He just sits me down on a Zoom call and he screen shares. He's like, all right, so like, do you have MetaMask? And I'm like, uh, do I? Maybe. I feel like I might have made one once. He's like, okay, well, like, here's what that is. It's this wallet. It lives in your browser. It's how you do shit in the crypto world. So like, let's get you set up. And like, by the way, don't fall for these scams. Like, here's the smart way to do it. And so then I click it, click it, and I'm like, hey, this says this. He's like, yeah, that's normal. Go ahead. And he just holds my hand and sort of teaches me. Like, he's like, okay, have you ever taken out a DeFi loan? I'm like, no, why would I do that? He's like, well, you know, let's say you wanted to not sell your crypto, but you want to go buy some shit in the real world and the banks don't recognize it. So let's go take out a loan for like super low percent rate and let me show you how you do that. You're going to go to compound.finance and then you're going to put your ETH in using that wallet we just made, and now you're going to take a loan and let's take that loan. Let's go do something with it. And so he's walked me through step by step. And so I'm like, I want to do that with all the new areas of crypto. And then secondly, when I was talking to the guys yesterday, I was like, dude, the way we are learning this by having our hand held where we like have trust and confidence that we're doing the right things, we should just make this the next course, which is like, it's not really like a course. It's like a Zoom call you join and it takes you on a tour through Disneyland. It's like here's all the attractions. And like, I'm not going to tell you about them. Like, actually, like, who's leading you?

Who's leading you right now?

Furkan's leading me. So I do it. Oh, so he's— he's— when I get stuck, yeah, when I get stuck, I say, hey, Furkan, can you show us like, like liquidity pools? I heard you saying you make money in this. I don't really understand what's the point of this liquidity pool. And like, how do I actually do this? And like, what do I do to do this in a way— like, tell me the pros and cons and the risks so I can make a smart decision on whether I want to do this in the future. But like, let's do my first liquidity pool trade together. And then like, I have my dashboard of how much I'm making off this, right? Or like, oh yeah, you, um, you know, you, you have this NFT, great. Like, I want to display that. How do I do that? How do I secure this? How do I store this safely? Great. How do I mint one? You know, like all the different like questions that I have. If I can't figure it out myself by doing, I call him in and he kind of like shows me, he screen shares and shows me what to do step by step.

So what are the learnings that So Crypto Week, what are the top 1 to 5 learnings that you have so far?

So one big learning is like, dude, this is evolving so fast. It's like if you know when you go by a club and you kind of hear the music faintly from the outside, you hear this little, like, little— you hear the bass from the outside, but it's not that loud. You walk by, you go on to your cafe or your bus stop, wherever you're going, you leave. It's like I swung open the door and there's a full underground rave going on and everybody's having, you know, this crazy time. And, and now that I'm in it, I'm like, wow, the energy has really picked up. Last time I was here, it was like, you know, a year ago and I was kind of on the outside. Now I'm on the inside. I'm seeing what's really going on, how crazy this energy is. What does that translate to? Well, there's a whole bunch of like developer tools because anytime I see something cool that I'm using, I'm like, can I invest in this company? And so like the way that during, during the internet explosion, you had companies like Twilio or PagerDuty or, you know, like all these just like basic infrastructure, Stripe, it's like, oh yeah, people need to take payments. People need to be able to send notifications, send SMSs. Every, every product that's on the internet that's going to build at the internet is going to eventually want to do these things. They're going to want to have cloud hosting. And so I'm finding the equivalent of cloud hosting and Twilio and all that stuff. These dev tools that are in what's called Web3 or the crypto world. And I'm like, dude, I need to be investing in these because if crypto is going to be a thing, then these infrastructure companies, just like they did great in the internet age, they're going to do great in the crypto age.

So that's the first. What else have you learned?

So then it's like, okay, how do you actually— NFTs, it's kind of this thing that I thought it was interesting. I owned a couple, but it also seemed a little bit nuts and why are people doing this? Are they all just like trying to make a quick buck and they're just doing some crazy shit? Or is this actually the new art and I'm missing it? Today I'm laughing at it and then 3 years from now I'm going to be the one pimping it out because now I aha, get it the same way I was with Bitcoin early on where I was like, oh, that's kind of weird, don't really get it, move on. And 3 years later I'm like, oh, this is the Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And so what I've learned is I've been actually using the tools So like, check this out, go to, go to a site called rarity.tools.

Rarety.

So I've been using this as I've been looking at which NFTs I wanted to collect and buy. I gave myself a quarter million dollar budget for this week to, to go play in crypto world. And some of that's used, some of that's used on buying NFTs and I haven't used them with most of it yet. I've only bought a couple of things. Um, but, but basically that's my like learning budget. If I want to do something, I can do up to that amount. And look at the similar web traffic on rarity.tools.

Holy shit. Holy shit. That's like that. It's like a waterslide.

Yeah, exactly. April, it's like at zero, essentially. You know, it's like a vert ramp. It's like under, under half a million uniques. And then, you know, July, just under a million. August, it's now at 3.5 million. It's just hockey sticking up. And what is this? This is just like what we talk about. Like, this is a picks and shovels business. So anytime there's a gold rush, you can either go try to find the gold, meaning go find the best NFT and, oh, you bought a CryptoPunk and now it's worth $7 million. Okay, that's one way you found a nugget of gold. Or this is a great picks and shovels business, which is like, hey, a bunch of people are interested in NFTs. Cool. We will make a site that helps you figure out the rarity of different NFTs. It helps you find underpriced assets that are, you know, the price is good given the rarity. And so I think this is a great example of a picks and shovels website for the crypto world. So I found a bunch of these types of tools as well and then met a bunch of the people behind it. And so one guy who's behind one of these tools is like, dude, I'm a big fan of the show. My story's nuts. At 15 or 16, I entered an online Scrabble tournament that was like a million-dollar tournament. And I just wrote a bot for me back then that nobody else— they didn't know how to outlaw this. So I won the tournament. I won the million-dollar Scrabble tournament using a bot. At age 15, and then at age 17, I did this, and at age 21, I did this, and then now I have this Discord with 90,000 people in it called Rarity Sniper, and it's all about finding like NFTs that are undervalued, and I have like 90,000 people in this Discord server. And I'm like, you're finding all these people. And the biggest lesson I've seen is it's a whole different demographic. Like these are new rich people, the winners and the builders, like the people who are going to be the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Larry Pages and the Brian Cheskys, like it's not the, it's not the people we all know that are like Twitter famous that are making it big in the crypto world. It's a whole new set of people. And most of them are like anonymous, just icon accounts. And then I'm talking to them and I'm like, dude, you're fascinating. You're also like a madman. But like, wow, this is crazy.

What— okay, so right now, where, where do you stand? And you're okay. So I would place you I think on the correct side of reasonable, but not exactly. So like parts of you are reasonable, like normal person reasonable. Other parts of you, you're, you are a crazy person. So I kind of trust your opinion on this, but not always. So try to, try to be, try to keep that in mind.

You want the reasonable person? Is that who you want to talk about? Reasonable Sean? Or you want to talk to Irrational Sean?

Where do you think, do you think, okay, so what's your take right now on the NFT world? Are you as bullish as some of these our friends and what's your current stance on it?

So I was in this like 1-hour conversation with some random-ass NFT anonymous guy on Twitter and DMs, and I was talking to him.

But by the way, just, just these 90,000-person discords and talking to random people, that alone is— this is— that's a phenomenon, right?

The way that all these people are like, this thing got minted, it was called Rookie NFT, and I like bought a couple. It was real cheap. It's like it's just come out like 45 minutes before that. Something's like, hey, check this out. You're into sports, you'll probably like this. And I did like it. It was actually a really smart concept. So I bought a bunch of them right away. And again, these are lottery tickets you buy. You most likely just scratch it, you throw it away, and you got nothing. And sometimes you hit big. And so one of mine that I bought has gone up 5x in value already of one of these NFT bets that I made in the last 2 days. And the others are just flat, like cost of doing business, basically. And so I was talking to him and I said, look, early on I wrote off Bitcoin because I was like, I don't get it. It has no intrinsic value. It's imaginary money that was made up by an anonymous person and it's going up. And what happens when the music stops? Meaning what happens? It's going up. People are buying it because they think it's going to keep going up. And that seems like a Ponzi scheme. That seems like a pyramid scheme. That was my initial— this is 2014, 2015, me thinking. I didn't really understand. 2013, maybe, actually. And over time, as I got to understand, that was just my lack of understanding. Over time, I started to understand that actually all the things we call money, they all operate the same way. Why is this piece of paper valuable? Why is this lump of gold valuable? Why is this diamond on a tiny diamond valuable? Because there's a social agreement. There's a social agreement. And the social agreement happens because we justify it through rarity. Gold is somewhat rare, diamonds are somewhat rare. So scarcity basically is there. And then there's like, you know, some intrinsic pull or whatever, but really it's a social agreement. And a lot of the meaning we place on it comes later. And so I was like, I get, I didn't get that at the time when it came to cryptocurrencies money. I didn't realize that actually it's not just a Ponzi scheme, that actually the more people who buy in actually is what makes it valuable. So, it's not a bubble that's going to pop. It's that the more believers that you have, that's the stronger the social agreement is. And therefore, that actually gives it real value. And this appeals to certain people. And so, it's going to grow in this. That social agreement is going to grow. And I think there's some crazy charts, by the way, that show Bitcoin adoption is, I think, one of the fastest, if not the fastest adopted technology ever. I don't want to say the word ever of all technologies, but maybe like, I don't know, the printing press or the telephone was a little bit faster. From what I heard, I haven't gone and verified this, but from what I heard, it was faster than all those. But if you just look at the internet, for sure it happened. Mobile phones and the internet were probably the two most recent technologies that took over the world. If you look at mobile phone adoption and internet adoption, Bitcoin is on a faster pace than both of those. So the social agreement is what gives cryptocurrency value. And so I was like, but this art thing, like, dude, I remember CryptoKitties in 2017, right? Furkan was sitting next to me at the office and he had two kitties and he was breeding them and he gave me a kitty he bred and I was like, what the fuck is this? And he's like, it's an NFT. And he was explaining to me for the first time back in 2017. I was like, oh, that's cool. But like, and there was this hype. I remember one day CryptoKitties overwhelmed the Ethereum network. It was like 80% of all activity on Ethereum was just CryptoKitties. And Andreessen Horowitz put all this money into CryptoKitties. And then like a year later, CryptoKitties were dead and it was like the Beanie Babies fad, but even faster. And by the way, that same team who built CryptoKitties, they're the ones who built NBA Top Shot as well. And so, so anyways, I was just like, who's to say that today you guys are spending millions of dollars on CryptoPunks and millions of dollars on this Bored Ape Yacht Club Who's to say 2 years from now, this is not CryptoKitties all over again? And then a bunch of those believers kind of gave me a bunch of reasons. And what I realized was it's the same thing. It's the same idea, which is that art has value because of a social agreement, a social construct. So why is the Mona Lisa more valuable than the next painting of a chick looking sideways? Well, because we as a society have over time decided more and more that the Mona Lisa is valuable and it's not doesn't matter what type of paint was used, what size of canvas, doesn't matter what year it was made. Like, art can have value based on the social agreement.

How many CryptoPunks are there?

10,000.

Okay, so my argument is like, well, maybe there was like a few, then yeah, could it be valuable in 100 years? Yeah, maybe. But there's like, ah, Mona Lisa.

Yeah, but you know, you say how many, you know, Monets are there? How many, uh, How many, how many paintings did this artist do? It's like in their lifetime, they maybe made a few hundred or whatever it was. And so, you know, you can go find any Picasso painting and it's valuable. And that's the idea is that these are like, these are the Picassos, right? It's like the OG. I think it's the first NFT project ever was CryptoPunks. And that's what has its kind of like story value. And now the people who believe it, it's like Bitcoin. So there was this great quote that came out that was like, again, I don't know if this is true or this folklore, but recently some of the big finance guys started buying a bunch of Bitcoin. And I think it was Stanley Druckenmiller who was on the podcast with Trung. He said, you know, the thing that turned me around on it was I thought, oh, this thing gets pumped up, then it crashes down. It's too volatile. He's like, and then Paul Tudor Jones, who's this billionaire hedge fund trader, one of the most famous guys from Wall Street, He called Junker Miller. He goes, "Hey, did you know this, that when Bitcoin crashed from its all-time high, which was like $17,000, $18,000 down to $3,000, that 86% of the people who held it never sold a single coin?" And he's like, "Wow, that's amazing. The people who own this thing, they're like religious zealots about it." And he said, "Well, if people are that religious about it, meaning if the social agreement, the social contract is that strong, the belief is that strong that it can withstand an 80% crash." and they don't liquidate, this thing is going to go up and this thing is going to be like, have long-term value. And that's the thing that I see, right? So that's probably the only area I've changed my mind is that I wasn't going to buy CryptoPunks or Bored Ape. I thought it was just another CryptoKitty that's probably going to go away. And now I'm starting to realize is that the people who own Punks, like if you go to OpenSea right now, you go try to buy CryptoPunks, you can't. There's none for sale. It's like these people don't want to sell them. They're like the Bitcoin people who are like, Bitcoin's going to be worth $1 million a coin someday. The CryptoPunk holders, they have infected each other with this story that says this is the original NFT. This is like the most valuable art that will ever be created in crypto world. These are going to be worth $10 million each. And they've convinced themselves that that's true and that because of that, there's like no supply on the market. And supply demand will sort of tell you how.

So you're okay. So NFTs, got it. And now, now after you're halfway through your week of learning, your current stance on crypto as a whole?

Oh, I mean, I was super bullish before, I'm super bullish now. It really wasn't I'm trying to judge whether this is good or bad. That's not really what this was. It isn't even really I'm trying to understand it better, although that does come. It was just, dude, I haven't had time to actually go use all the different stuff that's been built. Like, I already own the cryptocurrencies, I already own the assets. What I didn't do was, you know, there's a lot of things built of what you can do with your Ethereum. You can stake it, you can trade it, you can lend, you can borrow, you can buy NFTs, you can fractionalize those NFTs, you can create a DAO, which is like this organization. It's like this group, but it's got a wallet. There's all these different things you can do, and I knew of them, but I haven't done them. And there's like a lot of value in actually going and taking the time to go use the apps, right? It's like, go use the products. And then form your own opinions on how you feel about them. But for me, it really isn't even about the opinions. It's like, it takes time to actually learn how to actually go do all this stuff. And if I was 20 today and I'm just, you know, my time is worth jack shit and I have nothing else to do, this is all I'd be doing. And this is how I would become valuable. What I noticed was that like, it's kind of like the people who didn't really figure out the internet because they were successful in real estate or doctors or whatever. It's like, I don't want my success to inhibit my own ability to go play and learn. And so that's what this week was for, for me.

This is— I'm like chewing on all this. I gotta think about all this. This is nutty to me. I— you're— it's like the way that maybe like, maybe, maybe like some fitness stuff, the way that it comes to me and I just like, I grab it easily and I enjoy it and I am obsessed with it. That's how you are with this. It's so hard for someone who's not predisposed to this type of stuff. Like when I hear you talking, I'm like—

Fitness stuff is a great example because you're athletic. So if I say there's a track nearby, you go there and you fucking run on this track in circles. And I'm like, oh man, that sounds like a lot of work. I don't really want to do that. Or if I'm like, yeah, there's this Knees Over Toes guy, you go buy the program and then you spend the next 6 weeks trying to do pistol squats on one knee. And then like, you're like, oh, boxing, cool. Then you go join a boxing gym and you go sign up for an amateur fight. Like, I'm doing that in the way that I'm athletic, which is like, yeah.

Like when I go to, when I go to a Discord, I'm like, I, it's like, I'm like, I'm like a little autistic going into an IKEA. I'm like, I just, I'm overwhelmed. I don't know what to do. I want to clam up. I'm freaking out.

There's too much.

All right. You want to do a, you want to run through a few of these things? Or are we gonna wrap up?

I have two interesting things I wanted to show you. Okay, let's do this. This is related. There's this great Twitter thread I thought I wanted to get your opinion on. It's about levels of wealth and something we've talked about on here before, but I thought this guy's take was interesting. So, okay, this, the account is @problems6529.

And I read it, but I like your, I like yours. He didn't do a very good job of writing it.

Uh, did he not? Okay, maybe he didn't.

Okay, so his writing wasn't as clear as yours.

Okay, I thought it was pretty good. Maybe I'm wrong. But anyways, I thought the material was good. So this is one of those anonymous Twitter accounts that's like, this guy's clearly wealthy, he owns some CryptoPunks, and he's like kind of smart. I would say like he's a little Navalny for like the crypto world. He's like pseudonymous, a little bit of Navalny. All right, so, so he has this, he has this thread. He goes, uh, here's how I think about, um, about making it or like wealth basically. He goes, "Level 1, crushed by circumstances." These are like refugees in Syria, you're born in a civil war in the Congo. Unfortunately, billions of our comrades in life don't even have the faintest opportunity to make it because they were born in circumstances outside their control. They were born into very, very tough situations. He goes, "For me," he goes, This makes me feel funny inside. I'm paraphrasing for him, but it makes me feel funny inside, right? Thousands of little kids will die today and I'm on the internet buying JPEGs for thousands of dollars and they don't have access to a 50-cent pill that could end their agony and give them some peace. And their dreams are being cut short because they don't have access to basic water, sanitation, and medicine. He goes, level 1 is not a niceness problem, it's a coordination problem. He goes, literally everybody on earth would skip having a soda today and they would just have a glass of water instead if they knew it would save that kid's life. If that $3 could go to that kid's life instead for that coffee or that soda that you would skip. But the systems are not placed in order for us to be able to just push that button easily and have that outcome happen. He goes, for now, society hasn't fixed this. This tweet alone I thought was like one of the most insightful. And maybe I'm just a fucking sucker for this shit, but like when he said this, it rang so true to me that yes, we all in the like privileged world would happily skip over a cup of coffee or more. Just, I skip that, that money goes into this thing and it actually saves this person. But like we need the coordination, we need the certainty, we need, we need a lot of people to do it. For that effect to happen. And then we need the money to actually go to the right place. And then we need to see the result in order for us to actually fix these problems at scale. So I thought, wow, if you want to go work on a startup idea, solve that. Make it so that lots of people can very easily skip this thing and that money actually gets the result done. And then everybody sees the result of it. And it would bring so much gratification that we would all want to do it again. Okay, so that's one tweet. Then he goes, all right, If you're at level 1, meaning crushed by circumstances, you're not reading these tweets. I have no solutions to level 1. I hope humans progress and we can solve level 1. We can reduce level 1 problems every year. Key point, if you're reading this tweet, you already made it past level 1. Keep going. All right. Level 2 is the struggle is real. This is where day to day you have financial problems. Finance is like a stress for you. You might have a job or 2. You don't have much in terms of savings. You worry about if you had an emergency, where would you find the money to pay for it? If a car breaks down, it can cause a cascading set of crises and problems just because you didn't have enough money buffer. If you're in Level 2 and you're in good health, do everything possible to get out of Level 2. Work overtime, take another job, push harder right now because just getting out of Level 2 to Level 3, the life change is massive. When money problems are like front and center in your life or that stress lingers in your head all day, it is a tax on your happiness and your productivity. And unlike Level 1, There's a lot of people in level 2 that I know and have been there in life and have gotten out. And if you can escape, do everything possible to do so. He goes, here's my practical advice. If you're in level 2 and you might own something like an NFT that if you sold it, it would move you into level 3, just absolutely sell it right now and get out of level 2. The life benefits versus level 2 and level 3 are huge. And he goes, level 3, middle class. In the US, everybody thinks they're middle class. I think this is so true. That's true. If you're making $50,000 a year in Ohio, you think you're middle class. If you're making $500,000 in San Francisco, you think you're middle class. So despite the fact that there is a definable middle class, and at least for simplicity, let's just call it this. You got a house, you have a car, you have some savings, but you don't have enough where you have like fuck you money. You can't just buy whatever you want, and you don't really know how you're gonna pay for big things down the road, bigger house, college, et cetera. I spent most of— this guy's talking, he goes, "I spent most of my life in middle class. It's a great happy place to be. If you're there, don't keep looking up at the people who have more. First, be appreciative that you're not in level 2 or level 1 where you're crushed by circumstances. You have a great life. You are in the top 1% of anybody who has ever lived on Earth." That is very true. He goes, "Level 4, I call this we like nice things." He's like, this is where, he goes, this is anything from like the up, the top end of middle class to like the uber rich. And it's a state of mind, it's not a specific income level. Your basic life issues are sorted and now you just buy things you enjoy. This might be like a trip, a vacation, a second house, or it might be a private jet. There's an endless playground of shit to buy and however much you earn, you can spend it. There's enough things to go buy. Congratulations once again, you've made it. You're now in the 0.01%. Or 0.001% of people who have ever lived on planet Earth. And then he starts talking about like, but level 4 is tricky. You think it brings you a lot more happiness. It doesn't really. In fact, sometimes it brings more stress or this anxiety that you got it all and you're still not happy. And he goes, so actually level 3 kind of only had upsides compared to level 2, but level 4 actually has some traps. If you've made it to level 4, congrats. Here's my take. You really want to get to level— First, he says, be honest with yourself. Or no, he goes, first, do all the things. Go to Paris, rent a boat, upgrade your flight to business class, check out how level 4 lives. He goes, then ask yourself, are you happier? Did this bring you joy? Which of those things brought you joy? Is it the stuff? Is it the experiences? What felt great? What doesn't? Ask yourself those questions. And he goes, level 5 is when you're post-consumption, where you no longer care about the shit you can buy. You're just caring about sort of like how you choose to spend your time. You wanna spend your time in ways that bring you like peace and happiness. For some people, that's a small house and a truck on a farm in Wyoming. For other people, that's, you know, living large, you know, in New York and being a power player on CNBC every week. Don't make any judgments. It is what it is. Just, you know, figure out how you wanna spend your time. Are you playing golf or are you working on something with a higher purpose for you? The happiest people seem to be the people that are, satisfied through level 5 by working on things that intrinsically motivate them, intrinsic happiness, not external goods, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's the sweet spot. So I was just curious, what's your take on this?

That's awesome. That's awesome.

Is there any part of this— by the way, he goes, question I get, what level is username 6529, which is his username. He goes, I bounce between level 4 and 5 based on how much I enjoy, how much I worry about the world and nice things I see on Instagram any given day. I spent most of my life in level 3 middle class. Loved it. My family had brief moments in level 1, level 2, but I was too young to notice. I feel blessed.

That's good. This is a good-ass thread. This could be a book. Um, he did a good job. I guess you're right. He, uh, his writing was pretty good. If that's, if you read it exactly, I was skimming it and I was like, it's confusing, but that's amazing.

I think that hook sucked. It was way too much jargon, but the actual content was solid. The one thing I told him, I DM'd him, I go, this is a great thread, it resonates. I go, the one thing you're missing is that there's a moment somewhere at the top of L3, right before L4, maybe this is just L4, which is that you decouple time and money where before in your life you were always trading your time to earn money and now you start trading your money to get more time back. And I said, actually, I think that's what level 4 really is, not just being able to buy all the stuff you want. The freedom of time and recognize that and like get to that point as fast as you can.

I think it's, this is an interesting conversation for us cuz both of us probably have very recently gone from 3 to 4 and yeah, very likely are not entirely far from 4 to 5. And so, but we kind of experience all that very, we experience both of the, all those jumps like in a, in like incredibly short amount of time.

Can I do my wannabe Naval thing for a second?

Yeah.

So you're right, we were level 3 when we first met, you know, last 7, 8 years of our life. And then probably in the last 2 years when I sold my company and you sold yours is when we jumped into level 4. And if we— the Naval thing is basically we got financial freedom, which meant we don't have to like worry about money anymore. But then we need freedom from finance, which is level 5, which is when you stop making decisions based on money. And I think that's what the truly wealthy people do, is they choose how to spend their time, not because of the financial outcome at all.

But look, bro, listen, listen, though.

Let's— let's no longer pull at them.

Let's be real here, though. We just— first of all, we're getting paid stupid money to just sit here and shoot the shit. Second of all, we just shot the shit. About you taking the week off to learn. So like, we're not— are like, maybe that is 5 or is that 4?

I forget. Well, it is 5, but at the same time, why am I doing this e-commerce business? Is it because it lights my soul on fire every day? No, it's because there was an opportunity and I'm trying to capitalize on it and it's working. And now I don't want to give it up because I think it's going to be super successful. And I like, I like feeling like I'm successful. I like winning. I like when a project works and I like the money that comes with it. And so like there are still, and I like the way he said he bounces between them. It's not like when you're at a level, well then 100% of your decisions and 100% of your life, you're acting that way. It's no, you like fluctuate between these things. And I personally have not been able to like let go of, like I haven't been able to remove money from my kind of like core decision-making criteria of why to do something or not do something. It's still there. That means I'm not actually free from it. Because it's still part of the contract, part of the thing I'm optimizing for. Whereas I know some people who don't do that.

Who?

Like Michael Birch, right? He was my main investor. I got to work with him, sit next to him every day. He does something, he invests, he does things that will make money. He thinks it's, he gets excited when an investment or a business starts to work and makes money. But when we were deciding what to do in any really, any given case, I feel like money was like, I don't know, 12th on the list of things he would think about.

Is he a billionaire, you think? Or he's probably, he may not be, but it doesn't matter.

He goes, most people that you think are billionaires are not, not quite there, but it doesn't matter.

It's probably not that, you know, what's the difference between 500 and a billion, right? Yeah. And so, um, do you think he, so the, the weird thing that I've noticed is when you, when money, is now no longer part of the equation, it's kind of depressing because you're like, fuck, this has been like the goal the whole time. And now like my decision-making process has totally changed. It's kind of a weird spot. And so is he depressed, do you think, because of that? Because like he's the same motivating factor isn't there anymore and he's like, oh man, now I'm like changed.

No, he's happy. He's really happy. But he did tell me, he goes, actually, he didn't tell me this. Okay. The reason the billionaire conversation came up is because the BBC did a documentary called How to Be a Billionaire. By the way, your boy has a cameo in it for a minute or two. I don't know where this thing plays. It's like on airplanes. So sometimes I'll get a picture somebody sends me of their headrest as they're watching this documentary and then I popped into it. And so like, you know, because it's about Michael, it's not about me, but like they follow 4 people that are billionaires. I think he told me 3 of the 4, he goes, I don't think are actually billionaires, himself included. And he goes, He says something in there, he goes, "Yeah, when we sold Bebo and we had all of a sudden all this wealth," he goes, "it's obviously great, but kind of anticlimactic. I had more fun building it than I did selling it." And he goes, "The weird thing was that anytime I felt not so good, if I felt sad or whatever, nobody wants to hear it. What's the most annoying thing in the world? An unhappy billionaire." And I think he said something like that. And I was like, "Wow, that's so true actually." If he came to me about being glum and whatever, It would be hard for me in my initial reaction to be like, "Dude, you have it all." And it's like, that's what a person in the third world would say to me. And that's what a crippled person would say to that person in the third world. Like, there's a never-ending chain of looking at somebody and saying, "You're unhappy? You have it all." And so he did say there was times for those people where they were kind of like, "Well, what do we do now?" And that was a little bit weird. And you can be unhappy for other parts of your life that money doesn't solve those problems. And whether it's relationships or other stuff, that can happen too. But since I've known him, which was a few years after he sold it, he is extremely happy and at peace. He doesn't have FOMO or this itchiness to go prove himself and all this stuff. I didn't see it at least. And then he worked on projects that gave him joy. So he loves buying real estate, buying buildings, and designing a space, then having people use that space. So that's why our office was so pimped out. Because he just loved the idea of building a dream office and coming to work in it every day and having, you know, this is the perfect playground to go work in. He did that with the Battery, bought a 60,000-square-foot old candy factory, retrofitted it, and then put, you know, turned into Willy Wonka's factory. He made all the rooms unique and fun to be in. And that project was never going to make money. In fact, everybody told him, dude, you're burning so much money doing this. It's such a bad financial move. He's like, well, that's okay. It's not a financial move.

Like, how did that end?

You know, like, was it He got— well, he built a dope space. It's like the who's who are members. Like, through it, he's made all the— he made all these different connections. Like, you know, when Justin Bieber comes down and Beyoncé, they stay there and, you know, Elon Musk hangs out there.

Like, dude, I'm pretty sure I was— I'm pretty sure I was there one time and I saw a monk and Snoop Dogg sitting at a booth together.

Yeah, dude, it's crazy. You can bump into a lot of people there. You know, I saw Leonardo DiCaprio walk in. I was like, oh, Leo. But, you know, it's not just that the fame, like, obviously, like, I think that, I think that side still pulls to him. I think the social side, obviously he does a lot of things to like maximize the social game, but it's not financial. So he had told me once, he's like, he's like, yeah, this thing cost a lot of money to build and we blew our budget on like trying to make it a dope space. He's like, but my thing was my rule was like, okay, once it's operational, I don't mind if I never get my CapEx back as long as the OpEx doesn't continually bleed more and more money every year. And that's what it got to where the OpEx, basically the membership and the fees of the fee, the membership dues plus the restaurant bar and all that cover the cost of running it. So while he may never get a positive return on— actually almost certainly will never get a positive return on the— I don't know, maybe, maybe $100 million he put into like the building and the buildout. I don't know what it was, but like, I wouldn't be shocked if it was $50 to $100 million. I don't think he'll ever get that back, but it doesn't bleed money now. And so he's like happy with that. So yeah, anyways, I don't know, long story short, he's super happy. He goes on trips to Africa all the time where he doesn't just give money to Charity: Water. He goes there, he visits the villages, he stays there in a tent and he experiences it. He brings his whole family with them. And that's their favorite time of the year is when they get to go to rural Africa, sleep in a tent and live in this village and then help bring better life conditions to the people there.

Well, that's badass. Do we wanna, um, do we wanna end there or what do you wanna do?

Yeah, we can end there cuz, uh, somehow we went pretty long. They told us to keep these under 45 minutes for YouTube, but, uh, I have a feeling it's gonna be hard for us to do that.

That's all right. This one was maybe extraordinary.

I, oh, I was, I wanna ask you one thing. Yeah. Well, all right. This is an idea. You said something about, let's, let's do one more. Uh, panic attacks. You said you've had panic attacks and you started, you asked Twitter for panic attack help. This gave me an idea. But first, tell me your panic attack thing, and then I'll tell you my idea.

So I've had panic attacks since the 7th grade. I remember the exact day. It was the 3rd day of school at 8:55 PM. I had this weird thought where I thought, like, what's outside of the world? And like, if you— if you like, you go into space, you just like keep going and like there's nothing out there. And we're just— meaning— and I remember I— if I flipped out and I got panicky, I went to the doc. I went to the Downs, to the nurse. I was like, My heart, I'm having a heart attack. I can't breathe. Like, I don't— and so ever since then, I've had— I've been very panicky. And I get a panic attack, I have very, very distinct triggers. And I take daily medication and like a Xanax for that I keep with me just in case. So like anything that involves tight spaces that I can't get out of, or, uh, like being really deep in the wilderness and I can't get out of, I flip out and I hate it. So I get crazy panic attacks because of it. So like when we fly, I'm very medicated. I just— I can't stand— very claustrophobic. I don't go in elevators or I try not to. I don't like rooms without windows and I don't take the subway. Okay.

And when you get a panic attack, what do you do?

I keep medication on me at all times and I'll take one pill. If I didn't take that pill, it feels like I'm dying. Like, I feel like I want to kill myself. Like, I'm like, my heart is— is going so hard. I feel like, I feel like I'm dying. I feel like I'm about to die. I literally think the world's gonna end and I like, I'm flipping out.

Okay, that's crazy. I've never experienced something like that. My buddy had one in college while we were sitting next to us, we're playing Halo, and then like he was doing something else and he had a panic attack and like we called an ambulance and it was the first time I'd ever heard this. And at the time I was like, bro, just relax.

Like, yeah, it's hard. It's like, it's like telling it, it's like telling a drug addict like Dude, just don't do heroin.

Right?

I know, I know.

That's all. Like, I didn't understand it. And it was my first time experiencing it. Yeah, it sounded like a heart attack. Like, all his symptoms were like heart attack symptoms. And so one thing I wanted to share with you, somebody had tweeted this, and I saw that Emmett, who was my manager at the time, but he's the CEO of Twitch, he had tweeted this back.

Somebody said, wait, Emmett tweeted to me?

No, no. Somebody had tweeted this out. They go, any advice on how to help someone experiencing anxiety, potentially panic attacks, relax and ground themselves? I don't have experience with this. And then Emmett randomly replied—

but sorry, sorry, I want to get context. They retweeted my tweet.

No, no, this was a tweet I saw 2 years ago that your tweet reminded me of. Okay, I saw him reply to this and he goes, this may sound weird, but the mammalian diving reflex is triggered by— triggered by submerging your face in cold water and cuts the panic attack loop. Can be very, very effective, but obviously hard to do in public. Have you ever heard of this?

No, but I would love— I would be interested in it.

So Then he linked it and I, you know, so I went to it. So like, here, you can, I'll give you the link.

So Emmett had panic attacks. I think a lot of high-functioning people get it because like, I think in order to be like high functioning—

I have to assume so, or why would you go to his site?

Because in order to be, in order to be like high functioning and successful, oftentimes you're motivated, you're like, you're neurotic, right? You're motivated by some anxiety-driven thing. And I imagine there's a huge correlation between the two. So I'm looking at it now.

So, so basically my understanding, I, so I look, I remember reading this 2 years ago when you tweeted this, it reminded me of it. So, um, I remember looking into it and basically there's, uh, you just need to, to change state. So there's a state that triggers the panic attack. And so if you want to undo the, if you wanna stop the panic attack, you need to change state. And it's hard to change state when you're in a panic attack. And so the, when you feel it coming on, this is the thing to do. You go into a very cold a very cold ice water, you have to get really cold water and plunge your face for 10 to 20 seconds. And what that does is it automatically triggers your heart rate to slow down and your blood gets sort of like centered around your core. And that will short circuit the panic attack loop. And so for you or anybody else who has this.

That's good.

I don't know how you would try this, but try it.

Well, it's not that bad. It looks like there's like an example of a guy in his kitchen with just a bowl of ice water. Like, I get them in the middle of night. Sometimes I'll wake up and I'm like, what's going on?

Where am I?

And I start flipping out.

And he shows his heartbeat, right, going from 103 beats per minute to 47 beats per minute after just 20 seconds with his face in the thing.

So this guy gets— so, okay, so by the way, 103 beats per minute just from a panic attack. That's pretty wild. That's, that's a high, that's a high heart rate. It's hard. Like, I can't make my heart rate go that high just sitting still.

Right. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Isn't like resting heart rate like 70 to 90 or something like that?

It should be less than 70. Yeah.

Okay. So, so that was the first thing that came to mind. The second thing was patients like me. So the thing you did where you were like, I have this thing and like people have kind of like an aversion to going to the doctor in general, right? Some people don't go because of cost. Some people don't go because of convenience. Some people don't go cuz they don't like the doctor. Some people don't go because they just want to feel— they are worried they're going to get diagnosed with something and they'd rather be in blissful ignorance. And Patients Like Me has always been this thing that fascinated me. Are you familiar with Patients Like Me?

No, I'm looking it up.

It's this community. It's where you find other people that have the same medical condition that you do. So let's say you have some rare form of leukemia. You will find a group of other people who have the same form of leukemia and then you could go there and like maybe in your real life you can't find anybody who can empathize with you or share ideas or share suffering or share, you know, in this there's a bunch of other people going through the same thing as you, which is one of the most bonding experiences there is, is going through suffering, going through a unique suffering that other people have gone through. And so I think these groups are probably incredibly valuable to the person and also sticky as a product. Now they've raised $150 million, which tells me that this is a real like business opportunity. But PatientsLikeMe has been around for a long time. I bet that there's an opportunity to like reboot the sort of like PatientsLikeMe idea and just do it simpler, more mobile-friendly. And I think you'd be doing a lot of good in the world, plus be building a very valuable app around community where, and maybe you could start this with Facebook groups. You know, there are lots of Facebook groups for people who have certain conditions. And I think there's probably a way to bootstrap this, but I think this is a really valuable company to build both in terms of the value to society.

How's this make money?

Value as a business? I don't know how PatientsLikeMe makes money. I don't know if they, you know, have like sort of like, you know, pharmaceutical company sponsors certain things or I don't know what they, I don't know what they do as far as that goes. Maybe it's paid membership. I don't know. I'm assuming people would pay once they find some value in the community for like maybe premium education or inner, like a members lounge or something like that. I'm not sure how they make money, but I do think that these are probably very, very valuable. And the thing you did where you just kind of go ask if you want other people who have had similar, who have a similar—

the response is crazy, right? I've gotten 100 DMs.

Exactly. Because if you, if you've experienced something like the way I felt the urge to share with you this solution, like, this is what happens, whether it's like "Hey, my pet won't eat. I have a Maltipoo and she's a picky eater. I've tried everything. Any help?" And it's like, people will fucking come to the rescue on Facebook and be like, "Here is like a 10-part guide I just created for you because I went through that too and I found something that actually works." And so there's this very strong psychology around that. So I think that there's an opportunity to reboot PatientsLikeMe. I would use Google AdWords because I think people go to Google when they have a problem.

Dude, this is interesting.

How to stop panic attacks. And I would just use AdWords to, to grow this thing and try to get like, you know, each niche thing to have like, you know, tens of thousands of members inside.

We'll call it like the Crazy Crew, Crazy Crew. This is awesome. I've never seen this. I got to research this. Maybe that's a good idea. I mean, you had—

I got so many Lyme disease thing, right? Dude, when you had your Lyme disease problem, who saved you? You put it out there in public like, I got this fucking thing. And then somebody was like, yo, I got this lady. She's— yeah, I got you. And then she gave you like the miracle cure and then you're like, fine now, right? Like you literally kind of got your life saved through doing something.

Yeah. Yeah. The lady— I told the story— lady who I don't even know bought me a $25,000 treatment and I— she didn't even know who I was. It was wild.

I'm going to have to research this. Yeah.

All right. Well, good suggestion. I'm going to research this. I'd never heard of this. I've never heard of so many of these things. Mental agility. And patients like me. What a crazy business. I have to research it. All right. I think that's the episode. We'll see if this is going to be good. This is our longest episode ever, I think.

Yeah, this one went a while. All right, we're out of here.