4 dumb ideas that made people rich

24:18Oh, this is incredible. What is this? Explain what you see. I mean, I don't even have a word for this. It looks like, you know, like that, what's the painting at the top of the Sistine Chapel where like the naked man's reaching out to like God and their fingers are about to touch? It looks like that guy, but he's got his dukes up, like he's about to fight and he's like a hairless naked man with like half a mullet. And it just says classical music that goes hard. Yeah, or I'll see them where it looks like paintings like that and they're giving you like the shocker sign. And so I just get like so many of these.

24:50and I think it just, there's like this weird underground world. There's that underground world and there's the underground world of the comments. So if you look at MFM's comments, people can't see this, but on the back end, we've tried to ban them where it's like, I can't believe no one has been blessed. Why hasn't anyone blessed me before? Like they've just blessed me after I read this book called like, you know, Millionaires Are Us. Or it'll be like, I totally agree with this video and it's so funny that this video that you guys are making these points because I read about this exact thing in the Millionaires Are Us book by this person who's a total saint.

25:26Dude, this is... Those guys are like the bane of my existence, by the way. Same. It's the worst. I just sit there and like manually try to get rid of them. Have you seen this guy, Yang Mun, on Instagram? It's like an AI monk. And he's got this like healing guide. He's got a million people. I'm so into it. He's got like one to two million followers. And it's a monk who's just doing like talking head. advice videos. And then he sells a healing guide. And again, it's like, you know, it's a guy who's like, you know, it's a kid who's 17 with like the broccoli haircut who had just moved to Miami and he's in a house with seven other guys and they're all creating these accounts that are like, there's one of just elderly.

26:08It's sold on Whoop. You know, what's that thing called? Wop or Whoop where you buy like financial newsletters. If you go to his, if you go to Yang Mun's Linktree, you click off. Because that's what a monk would do, right? He would be on Wop. the ebook time to heal young man and then it's like things you might love and then it's like newsletters that it's like 10x your wealth with this stock tip yeah but they're people are doing this they're doing this with fake grandparents so they have like an account that's like wisdom from like grandparents but they're all ai and it's like what i wish i knew when i was younger like the one thing you know the love that got away and they just post content like that they're just printing views right now dude this stuff gets me every time it sucks I love this stuff.

26:52I fall victim to this worse than a grandparent falls victim to buying the top listing on an Amazon. Every birthday, for every gift-giving experience at my house right now from grandparents, it's like you guys all just typed in kids bike and bought the exact same thing. All right, I got to show you one more. This is the best one. All right, so I'm on YouTube the other day. And you know when the algorithm just like has a commission and five-star experience for you. So this is one. The most intense shoe salesman you'll ever meet. It's a CBS News archive from 1983. There's a shoe store here in Sharon, Pennsylvania is just, you know, a shoe store.

27:34Oh no. That's the playing field of a champion.

27:45Here he comes now. Out of the bullpen, the hottest picture of a retail shoe game today. Big number one, Larry Jolton. 11C, come on up. All right, so this video is of this guy, Larry Jolton, who was the number one shoe salesman in America. And he sold, this was back in 1983, he sold$400 ,000 worth of shoes at this physical shoe store himself by hand. It's in Pennsylvania. It's like Rayers or something like that. It's a famous shoe store. and so he was the number one hustler and this video is amazing because they just play a clip on him i want to see what's that the hook is great i'm in i'm i'm bought it here you go i wouldn't go any bigger than that that's a nice dress you're 20 off like a light better especially in the summertime listen to me you order the two shoes whatever color you want if it comes in it don't fit if you don't like it you're not obligated Big day.

28:41Clean it up. Larry Jolton is the Cy Young of his time, the best of the big league shoe pitchers. There are only 38 ,000 feet in Sharon, Pennsylvania. Last year, Larry Jolton sold$423 ,000 worth of shoes. It's going to be busy today, fellas. I can feel it. I can feel it. It's going to be busy. His stats make him the MVP, the officially recognized champion shoe salesman. It's not bad than one part of it. All right, so watch this. So they show him doing his thing, and there's a couple of amazing parts. All right, so one is he's like, he's like the worst thing in the world is someone who leaves without a shoe.

29:21He's like, that's not going to happen on my watch. So he's serving like four or five customers at once, and he's like, he's basically like selling them on like, it's not about the size, it's about the fit. He's got all these like go-to slogans, and he's like, that's a good looking shoe right there on you. And then he'll like deliver them to their house. He's like, I'll deliver to your house. I'll deliver to your office. I'll find you on the street. I'll give you the shoes. Don't worry. And he's like, if you ever have a problem, you just give right back to me. I'm Larry. And then he, they show like he never takes a lunch break.

29:49So they show, he's eating a burger. You have to keep up your strength because sometimes the game goes into extra innings. He's just eating a burger in the back. He stores it. Like he just has a burger in the shoe rack where he finds the sizes. He just takes bites as he's running back and forth to get customers the shoe size. This guy's awesome. him he's like and then he's like you know he's he's like his sales philosophy so he's like you don't want to be the nice guy he's like you know you gotta some people just want to be told they want to be told what to what they need and he's like you know they come in they think their shoes a size eight and a half they're they walk around with cramped feet all the time he's like you got to give them a size 10 he's like he tells the story about this guy like didn't know what he wanted he's like the customer doesn't always know what they want you got to help him and he's like Like, yeah, that's the art of shoe sales.

30:34But just his overall energy. And when he's, like, walking around the bullpen, like, he's like, got a big day today, boys. Got a lot of shoes. We got to move today. And, like, all the other shoe salesmen, like, clearly don't care. And, like, this is a very inspiring video about just, like, being the best. Just championship mentality in anything you do. Dude, so he died this year, which is, he died this year. His obituary, it goes in depth about how he was on that show and a bunch of other shows. He said he was the National Shoe Retailers Association, named him Salesman of the Year in 1983, 84, 85.

31:07They say he was a larger-than-life figure. This guy's awesome. He's incredible, right? I love this guy. I love this man. Larry's a salt-of-the-earth type of guy. If you're going to do anything today, you bring that Larry Jolton energy, that championship mindset to whatever you do. You'd sell whatever you sell the way Larry sold shoes today, all right? That's the final word here. Have you ever studied sales? I imagine if I had to guess, you did something, you and I have behaved similarly, which is like, we're pretty charismatic. So we think that's all it takes. But then I've hired salesmen before and saleswomen before.

31:41And I've seen the difference between a winning one and a pretty good one. And it's just like a total... The greats have both the talent and this thing that I'm going to describe. But the second thing that they all have to have is process. Where they know that saying this gets that. It's like such a, um, a mouse in it, finding a cheese type of energy where it's like the really good ones just kind of blindly. Oh, that worked. No ego. I'm just going to do that. Oh, I just threw that thing out there that caught that got a laugh doing that one. Like they follow like, uh, this process. Guys like you and me actually suck at sales.

32:16And the reason we suck at sales is because we want to use charm, charisma, talent, whatever. And they, you know, people, The best people use process. And even the reason we actually suck isn't even because we can't adapt that. Because over time, we're like a problem solver. Like it's a puzzle. Oh, I got to do this. And then that gets me the solution I want. We would get bored doing that. The most impressive thing of this guy isn't that he sold$400 ,000 shoes. It's that he just kept doing it year after year after year. He never got bored of it. I have this phrase I say now because every day when I do my workout, we start with this 10-minute routine where I basically like loosen up my IT band.

32:54It's like I do like a fascia release on my IT band, which is painful. It's boring. It doesn't look cool. You don't feel like you're getting any stronger or more athletic. It's like the opposite of what you want when you go into a workout. But I need it. I need it because like I've had knee injuries and I got to keep doing this. And you can't do it once, twice. You can't do it for two weeks. You basically have to just constantly do this if you want to stay healthy. If you're like, if you're got sort of my leg condition. And now every day when I go in, I said, all right, boys, we're not getting bored of greatness today.

33:26Let's not get bored of greatness today, right? The Larry mentality of like, you can't get bored with doing the thing that leads to great results, even if it's the same thing you've done. You can't get bored. You can't become sort of nonchalant about it. You can't become autopilot with it. You can't like cut the corner or cut it short because you already have done it before. Like you have to do this. And that's when I'm coaching my team. It's the same thing. Like we played a game the other day in the warm-ups, I knew we're going to kick this team's butt because their warm-up was so sloppy. I was like, if they warm up like this, they're not going to be able to play at some high level because this tells me everything I need to know.

34:01I don't need to do a scouting report. It's over. And sure enough, we beat them by almost like 50 points. And it was, yeah, they didn't have a lot of talent, but they were shortcutting the process. And so, and like, I just feel like that, like getting bored of what gets great results is a real problem. It's been a real problem for me in my life. And I know that like for other people, if you're sort of like smart and talented, you get off on solving new problems and new puzzles, it could become an Achilles heel. Dude, I'm always, I'm the biggest victim of these stories where it's like a company does the small things right and it like levers up or levels up to the big thing.

34:35So for example, have you heard of Rakuten? Yeah, I know them well. So Rakuten's a Japanese company. I think they're like the Amazon of Japan, right? Ish? Yeah, it's retail, but then there's also like a big like discounting kind of component to it that I think, like deals component to it that I think that Amazon doesn't really have. Yes, but it's just like a multi-billion dollar, huge, massive thing, whatever. And for some reason, I came along the founder and I started reading about him and they have a book because they're famous for having a culty culture. So the culture is like super into it.

35:08And he released a handbook on what their culture and what their values is. It's one of these things that were supposed to be internal and it was a hit. so now everyone reads it or a lot of people read it and like he has like 30 rules or something of Rakuten and like rule number one is every Tuesday from three to four everyone at every office throughout the world you stop what you're doing and we clean and we refuse to have cleaners hired cleaners and his reasoning was that if we keep our desk clean it's the same thing you can you already know it's gonna I'm gonna say you keep your desk clean and you have a clean desk you're gonna have a clean mind it's gonna keep you disciplined same thing like you know general I forget what the general is, who had the famous speech.

35:46Make your bed. Yeah, it was make your bed. And then there's all these other famous stories of like a coach of Indiana basketball or something like that who turns around the team and he's like, I started by teaching the front desk, kind of answering the phone. Tie the shoelaces, yeah. Yeah, it's like these stories over and over and over again. I love all of them. I'm always into these. I don't know how often they are true, but I buy into it. Have you ever tried one of these things with your, I mean, it sounds like you're doing it with your basketball team, warming up, right? Yeah, we try. I mean, the hard part is to have the courage to actually live by it, right?

36:18You could read the story back. Ah, that's great. And that makes total sense. Then you get into an environment where you got all these people who they're not as bought into it. They don't, you know, they don't really care. And are you going to really force it? And are you really going to enforce it? And how, how much of a standard really is it? And how many exceptions are you going to create? And are you going to let your best player not do it? Or are you going to let a meeting get in the way of it? Right? Like it's all the compromises is where things get interesting. And I have never gone to the extent where I'm like truly hardcore about it because I think it takes like just a different level of leadership and courage that I personally don't possess.

36:53Let me reframe it for you. So in high school, I tweeted this out the other day, but in high school, my freshman year of high school, first practice, I went to an all boys school, first practice for cross country. The coach gets up and he goes, and it was like, I remember the Titans moment. He was like, I'm going to teach you guys something. We're not going to, I'm not here to teach you how to be the best runner. what I'm here to do this year is I'm going to teach all of you boys how to become men. And we're going to do it by learning how to run better. And he goes on to say, like, you know, we're going to like show up earlier than we anticipate.

37:23We're going to like run when we don't feel like it. We're going to like go through the pain no matter what. We're going to stick around until the last person's finished because that's what we do with our teammates. You know, the whole thing. And at the time, I kind of like laughed a little bit about it. But then I started buying into it. And it brought us all together. Our team did. And the cross-country team, my high school slew, you know, It's a nerdy sport, but we won all the time. We always won. And he used to have this idea of being great and how you're going to be a great man just via running.

37:50And we're going to teach you how to do all these little small things. And it totally worked on our team. And it was awesome. And because of that, this coach has a very cult personality. We used to have this phrase. It was tradition doesn't graduate. I still remember it. Tradition doesn't graduate. He was like, I've been doing this since the 80s. Tradition doesn't graduate. You guys are going to graduate, but we've been doing this the same way, and it works. and I just remember all of these like culty lines and we're talking high school cross country. Nothing like significant, but it like meaningfully impacted me and it was awesome.

38:20And so this type of like inspire you to be a better human being by teaching you how to work better or clean your desk better. I love that story. My buddy Jason told me an amazing story like this. So Jason Hitchcock, I think you know Jason. He used to work at Bebo and I was pretty hard on Jason. Or like I would give him feedback all the time. Like, hey, you got to do this. You got to do this. You got to do this. And like, maybe it's because he was one of the non-engineers. So I felt like, you know, There's only a few non-engineers. I'm going to tell you what I think. The engineers, I don't really have as much to say because that's not my domain.

38:48And I noticed he took it really well, always. Like incredible attitude. So I was doing a one-on-one with him. I gave him credit for that. I was like, man, I think that you have just like a 10 out of 10 attitude at life and at work. And I just really respect that. And I know that like I give you a bunch of feedback, but you take it so incredibly well, like, you know, whatever. And he was like, I receive it. I go, what? And he goes, I don't take it. I receive it. And he goes, can I tell you a story? like where that comes from? I said, yeah, sure. He goes, my freshman year, I go to high school. I'm a high schooler and I wanted to play water polo.

39:17My brother was the like captain of the water polo team, my older brother. And I was, I thought I was like as good as him or going to be better than him. So I feel, I'm feeling myself a little bit. I'm like a hot shot. And he's like, we get in the pool and I guess like for water polo, like you're basically treading water while you're playing the sport, right? So it's kind of a hard sport. So during the warmup, you're probably not going as hard. So he's being a little sloppy in the warmup where he's treading, but he's like, when he's throwing the ball, his arm is skimming. It's in the water still.

39:44It's not out of the water like you would want it to be if you were really playing in a game. And so the coach, the varsity coach walks by, and he goes, Jason, get your arm out of the water. Keep your arm out of the water. And Jason's like, yeah, yeah, thanks, coach. Keeps going. A couple minutes later, he's like, you know, being a little lazy again, does it again. Jason, keep your arm out of the water. And he's like, yeah, coach, sorry, I will. I'm just getting warmed up. He has something to say back to the coach. Coach blows the whistle. Everybody comes over. He goes, hey, everybody. I'm coach.

40:13I just want to introduce you to Jason. Jason is a freshman. Jason is too good for feedback. Jason takes the gift of feedback and he does not care. He doesn't want your feedback, all right? And he basically pulled him aside. He like embarrassed him in front of everybody. Like Jason is too good for feedback. And he's like, look, Jason, feedback is a gift. If I'm going to give you that gift, you got to receive the gift, right? Don't just throw the gift away when I give you that gift. He goes, think about what it takes to give somebody feedback. You have to be kind of vulnerable. You're risking conflict.

40:46You have to care about making that person better. These are what it takes to give that gift. And so he was like, feedback is a gift. And so like at the whole company, that became like, you know, a mantra for us, which is like feedback is a gift, which is really important because otherwise you can create a kind of defensive mentality or people shy away from saying something to somebody else. They'll only do it as a last resort. and that's not good. And so the feedback is a gift thing like changed us. And it was a lesson from his high school water polo coach. But the story with the lesson is what we needed for like people to get it.

41:19I love stories like this. They always like get me going. I distinctly remember we did a podcast a year ago where we were talking about, I think I was actually like motivating you. I think like you had said something like, I haven't done anything like world changing, but I've been doing this thing. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why are you saying that? Like, who cares? Like, if it's world changing, like, you know, just just creating a small game that makes someone just a little bit happier is worth it. Like, you know, like that's not it's not necessarily less meaningful than anything else. And I sort of have grown to believe that to like work where high school sports are very insignificant.

41:54And yet it's like such a world changing experience for many kids. And I think that we need to take that same energy to work, which is like, you know, we're making a podcast. That's fine. but like let's even go something way less glamorous for making like b2b software like it's not that special but like you can you can you can learn how to be excellent here you can learn how to follow through here like you can learn how to like say you're going to do what you say and whatever you can learn how to have this unearned pride where you make these tough decisions when no one is looking and so i think that like that has carried over to like employees and how i've been working with my team that's cool i like it sam's in his leadership arc that's the uh that's definitely the season you're in.

42:33You gotta like start going by like Samuel or something. I feel like we need to upgrade the name. Everything. I think you need to reinvent yourself here actually. Father. Just father.

42:46So everyone calls you father. At home they call me Sam. Just the same way the stargazing thing exists. There's this thing called universalministries.com where you can sign up and get ordained as a minister and I've had to do that. in order to like, I've had to do that to like, because I've officiated a couple of weddings before and it's all obviously a crack of bullshit, but I am a minister. So we could go by minister. I am a legal witness.

43:16All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send. And it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes. And then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury.

43:42And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money. I can pay invoices. I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to Mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust, members FDIC. All right, Sean, I want to show you someone who's in the aviation business, in the grocery store business, and actually had a pretty important character in a movie, Marty Supreme, which recently just came out.

44:19Okay, I haven't seen the movie yet. Okay, well, you know what it is, right? It's like the biggest movie going on right now? So, Timothee Chalamet and ping pong? I don't really, that's literally the only two words I know. That's it, or as Adam Sandler says, Timothee Chalamet. Like, he like, you see that when he does that so good. Okay, so Google John Kat Miodandis. All right, John the Big Cat, here we go. Who am I looking at? American, okay, here's just the quick description. American billionaire businessman and radio talk show host. He's the owner, president, chairman, and CEO of grocery chains, Gristeeds, I've never heard of that.

44:53D 'Agostino Supermarkets, and Manhattan. Okay, go ahead. Five billion dollar net worth. Yeah, you've never heard of this guy, have you? No. Is this guy the famous actor? Why does this guy look so familiar? He's a familiar face. He's one of these guys, he's sort of like the character in The Dark Knight who plays the police chief, where you're like, I've seen this actor everywhere, what's his name? He sort of has that type of energy. So here's his story. So I think he's 80 now. So he was born, I guess that would mean sometime in the 40s. And he immigrated as a baby from Greece. He came to New York.

45:28I believe he moved to Harlem. And then he was an okay student, went to Brooklyn Tech, which I think New York is a pretty good school, but eventually actually got into West Point. So he's clearly smart, but didn't go, decided not to go to school. And instead, he bought a small grocery store. So at the age of like 20, he convinced a failing grocery store to sell to him at like an owner financing type of setup where he didn't have to come up with a lot of money. But do you know anything about grocery stores? They're like the hardest business to run. It's like no margin business, right? Yeah, it's a commodity.

45:59There's like, there are no margins. So if you look at like the biggest grocery stores or at least some of the midsize grocery stores, like the regional giants, they do like 3 % margins. It's incredibly challenging. You have food that's going to spoil. And particularly back in the 70s when he was doing it, you don't have the most like the best systems to like make sure your food's not going to spoil. Very hard. but he's a he's a dog he's got that immigrant hustle and he's able to grow this business i think it's something like seven years so by the time he's only 32 he has this uh cool quote that i found in newspapers.com in this old article where he grew the business to the point where he was making something like 40 million a year in revenue had like 12 or 15 locations and he goes i'm now paying myself at the age of and this actually he said this at the age of like 28 he was like i'm paying myself a million dollars a year so through like just hustle and grind like He kind of makes it work.

46:46And he does a lot of stuff that we take for granted now. His grocery stores, they were called Red Apple. They did free cash checking. They did free delivery. It was a discount store. A lot of stuff that isn't particularly groundbreaking now. But he just provided a pretty simple service. But he did it really well. Now Red Apple, which is... I think they have like 100 locations in the city. They own Gristides. Have you heard of Gristides? No. Is that like a New York thing? Yeah, these are all local things. But here's where it gets weird. So he does two interesting moves. So at the age of 32, I think it is, he was like, well, I was going to get into West Point.

47:21My dream was to be a pilot. I've never been able to do that. Gets his pilot license as an activity just for being for fun. And he does this move that I've actually heard Richard Branson do as well. He buys a jet and it's like kind of interesting and kind of fun. But then he's like, I got to turn this into a business. I got to do something. And so he buys one plane, like a relatively small plane. He has a biography and it was just a Cessna, like nothing fancy. and he starts allowing customers to charter his plane from New York City to Atlantic City. And this is like in the 70s and the 80s. So like the airlines are still a little bit nascent, but it's still like pretty complicated, but he pulls it off and he's able to, so now officially he's in the aviation business and like one thing leads to another and it grows for like eight years and eventually becomes like a fleet of like 40 planes and jets, which eventually he sells to Warren Buffett or yeah, Warren Buffett.

48:10And that is like one of the beginnings of NetJets, which is one of Berkshire Hathaway's like crown jewels, I believe. And so he was doing it as private charters, not like an airline like Branson. No, private charters. But he tried to get into the actual airline business and I don't think it worked out. Now, while all of this is going on, he's still only like 33, 34, 35 years old. He does another crazy thing. He hears about an oil refinery going out of business in Pennsylvania. And the grocery store business, it's a commodity. lots of unions, very low margins, 24-hour, like you have to be working 24 hours to make it work.

48:46And somehow, which I never would have thought this would have been a thing, he made the leap that they are comparable, and he gets into the oil business. And he finds an oil refining company, which do you know what that means? I mean, not really. They are a middleman in the oil process between drilling for the oil and selling it to the end customer, is my guess. Not exactly. These are all very vague terms. So I had to figure out what exactly is oil refining. Basically, if I had to dumb it down, they do two things. One, they have a massive pool or tank in the ground that can store tons and tons and tons of oil.

49:22So you drill the oil, it goes to this thing, and it's not particularly useful. You can't use it. And so there's this process where you have to refine it, and you could take parts of that crude oil and turn it into oil that you could use in cars. oil that you can burn as kerosene. You know, oil can turn into multiple products along the way. And that's what he did was he bought a business that did that, which is actually kind of ridiculous. Like you never would have thought that that would have been a thing, but it works. And by the way, when you're reading about this or watching whatever you watched for this, is he just like a gunslinger?

49:57Like why is he going into all these different spaces? He can't help himself. Does he have some aspiration? Is he just, you know, he's just wired that way? What did you get as a sense of why is this guy doing all, why is he bouncing from totally different hard thing to totally different hard thing? This is why I wanted to bring him up. And so I think you and I will get a kick out of people like him. But let me just add that the last thing, he does two things now. I think he's close to 80 now. In his 60s, he does two other wild things. One, he starts an AM radio station political weekly radio show, which he still is the host of.

50:35You can't find it on YouTube and you can't find it on Spotify. You literally only get this on AM radio. And he records every single Sunday. And I've like listened to it. And like his co-host is this like Long Island guy who's like, Hey, John, what do you think about this Mondani guy? Like, it's hilarious. Like he's a very unrefined billionaire, I would say. And I mean that in a cool way. And the second thing that he did was he ran for mayor in 2012, I think. And he almost won. And he was like, I'm going to be a mayor for the people in Harlem and the people on Wall Street. So he's this very sort of salt of the earth, immigrant energy type of billionaire guy.

51:18But the reason why he's interesting is, A, what's that word that you have been obsessed with? Generative? Yeah. He's very generative. But he does this in a way, you know, like the charm that when Donald Trump is being like a nice guy, you know, like the charm that he has where he's like, ah, screw it. Let's just do it. You know, what's money amongst friends? This like old timey, like, right. Like what's a little like, you know, I'll take a little. You take a little. We all win like this type of energy. My word is my bond. My word is my word is stronger than oak. This guy is actually that he he has that energy with him, but it's not like he doesn't he's not hateful at all.

51:53So he's a Republican, but he talks very fondly of Obama and Hillary. Like he's not a hater at all. And he's got this very folksy types of vibe. And when you hear him talk, he's got this thick New York accent. But it's very much like spit on my hand, shake your hand type of energy. And I have found him very fascinating because that and also now his company, it's called Red Apple Holding Company, I think. They have like 8 ,000 or 9 ,000 employees. His family runs it. And I believe him and his kids, they own a building in New York City. They all live in the same building. They run this company together.

52:28And he's still like incredibly active, even at the age of 80. And he's just constantly doing stuff. He's very interesting to me. And also, he looks very funny. And then he was just an actor? He just had a cameo? Was he playing himself? Dude, listen to this. So, Marty Supreme, which is the hottest thing going. I went and saw it the other day. By the way, how is it? Like, must watch? Okay. Where are we at? Did you see Uncut Gems? loved uncut gems loved then you'll like this so if uncut gems is a nine out of ten on the stress scale marty supreme is an eight out of ten and for people like me if you're in my if you're in my boat you'll hate it i hated uncut gems and i hate marty supreme too much yeah all the characters are pretty evil and there's no like redeeming qualities of any of them but but he this guy john has like a pretty like interesting like not minor character in marty supreme and so i was like this guy is everywhere.

53:20He's a man about town. He's just always doing stuff. And he just seems like sort of in that Jesse Itzler category of people who have fun while winning and doing well. And he's just a really fascinating guy to me. Dude, I'm reading this guy's Wikipedia and I'm like, wow, that's really amazing. Oh, that's really amazing. And then it's like, he gave a speech at the Stern School of Business expressing his unease about his daughter's graduating class. he said, 480 of the 580 kids are Asian, including Indian. And that's scary when you think about it. We're going to deport most of these kids. So then I was like, oh, well, that may not be so amazing for, you know.

53:55It might kick me right off this podcast. Did he really say that? I mean, I don't know. It's on the Wikipedia page. I didn't see that one, but I did see other things where I'm like, I couldn't tell if you were trying to be funny and it reads stupid or what. Right, right. Yeah, it does. He does seem like he's an 80-year-old New Yorker who has a little bit of a big mouth. But my vibe, my read on him was that he was an all right guy. But maybe I could be wrong. Well, we're slowly assembling this list of what you call capital men. And I feel like he would be one of the capital men where he just takes money, goes into these sort of mavericks into new spaces, creates new investments, new entities, and whole new industries.

54:40And wins more often than not. doesn't win every time that you actually can't be a capital man. If you have a perfect record, it kind of means you did not, uh, you know, you weren't playing as, as, as rough as you should have, but, uh, but wins more often than, than not. I feel like this guy's in that bucket. Yeah. I was reading his book and it's, there seems like a common theme. A lot of these guys, there's one point in their life where they're just, what was the phrase we used? They're, they're leveraged up to the tits. Like they're just like crazy amounts of debt. What's the scientific? Derek from More Plates, More Dates, he always says, this guy's juiced to the gills.

55:16And when I was reading about old Johnny Katz, I was like, this guy's leveraged to the tits. He's leveraged to the gills. And so, yeah, you have to pay the price to do a lot of this stuff. But I love these young guys who have this gunslinging energy. So he is your Billy of the Week? Yeah. So the whole anti-Indian thing, I didn't know about that when I got into this. So this is a little... It's hard to throw you. So I should have done a little capital J journalism. Otherwise, I was going to say we should have invited him onto the pod. But I think that probably won't be happening. Hey, we can still invite him.

55:53Let's see what happens. You should ask him about that quote. We'll just make sure we do it remote. I don't disclose my location. Yeah. I didn't realize he said that. So did he say... What other dumb stuff did he say? He said a few dumb things. There's something about Hitler. I don't know. Oh, man. Classic blunder. He compared raising taxes on the wealthy to how Hitler punished the Jews, which is... Yeah, that's probably not the best place to go to. A trap we've all fallen into. Yeah, I did read that line, and I was like, oh, dude. We have seen time and time again that type of comparison. People have tried to make it.

56:32Literally not once has it ever worked. Dude, I might end up being the richest man in California. Have you heard about this billionaire tax? Yeah, so is the gist of it that net worths will be taxed at 5 %? Yes. One-time tax of 5 % for billionaires. So all the billionaires are leaving, which will mean they'll just be like, okay, we'll move to the next class of people. Soon enough, I'll be the last man standing in California. Yeah, I think that's a pretty stupid law. But at the same time, I'm like, Isn't it crazy how little power a billionaire has if they have to leave their home?

57:09Ro Khanna can bully you? Yeah, do you really have that much power? It's like another Dark Knight reference. Have you seen when Bane is talking to the guy doing construction and the little guy's like, I'm in control. And Bane puts his hand on his shoulder. He goes, do you feel in control? Because Bane is about to snap his neck. That's sort of like... That's the 850 ,000 votes it takes to put this on the bill. That's sort of the energy that I'm feeling right now, which is like these billionaires being like, you know, we're the big shots. It's like, you don't look like the big shot if you have to flee your home.

57:42That said, it is kind of a stupid rule because so like the analogy that I always use is, let's say that you buy a Picasso painting for$5 at a garage sale. And turns out you didn't realize it, but you bought like, you know, a one-of-one rare piece of art. Now your net worth is hundreds of millions of dollars or whatever the painting is worth. how are you supposed to pay taxes on that assessed value? Yeah, it's complicated. I mean, you don't even have to go as far as the finding a Picasso at a garage sale example, which is, you know, that's more of an edge case. But like, you're a founder of a startup in San Francisco.

58:17Your on-paper net worth is$200 million. But that's just because you just got a, you have an AI company that was hot and you raised around. That doesn't mean you have that money. That doesn't mean that that money is anywhere close to guaranteed for you, but you would be on the hook for the taxes the following year, which is pretty wild. I mean, all it'll do is just obviously going to drive the wealthiest people out, obviously drive the startup founders who want to get wealthy out, because why would you start here? And literally like, you know, strangle the golden goose of California. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, what did you achieve?

58:53What did you accomplish with that? I read that it said like 20 or 30 families have left, like prominent families. You should make like a public announcement. Oh, I'm leaving? The 31st. Yeah. Oh, what a great idea. That's hilarious. That's like that one time that I tweeted that I was buying Bitcoin. And then it somehow got picked up by all the Bitcoin magazines and newspapers. And they were like, executive Sean Puri says he's moving 20 % of his net worth into Bitcoin. and I'm like, I don't think y 'all know how small that net worth is. That's not magazine worthy. This has escalated far too quickly for me.

59:33I saw some guy online announce that he was leaving and everyone was making fun of him. And they're like, you're not important enough for us to care. Yeah, you own two duplexes. You didn't qualify for the bill. Is that what it is, by the way, a billion? Well, there was a proposal for$50 million. That didn't make it. Then they went to the billionaire tax because it's like, who's going to not vote for that? And so that's the one that's currently proposed. But people have done the math. Like even if you tax the billionaires, even if you took all the billionaires' money, it doesn't like plug the hole of the California spending.

1:00:10It's like basically it's setting precedent for – it's kind of like income tax, right? Income tax I think was supposed to be this one-time – what was the first one? Like 3 %? It's like, there's a one-time only 3 % tax on income. Like, don't worry, guys. It's okay. And now like everybody pays income tax, you know, 20, 30, 40%, 50 % of your income every year now. And so the idea would be once they set the precedent that they could just tax you on your property that you have not realized any gains on, then that's a problem. And if they could set the bar at a billion, then they could easily change it or add.

1:00:47Well, also, if you're over$100 million, then you pay this. And also, if you're over$40 million, you're going to pay this. And, you know, they could sort of just continue on from there. I've always found it interesting how people come up with round numbers to make as the threshold. Like, so if I remember correctly, like, I think, like, in the 1910 or 1920s, this idea of a millionaire kind of came to be where, like, people were using the phrase millionaire. Like, you're a millionaire. You've made it. And it's kind of funny that 100 years later, we still use that as, like, a threshold. because a millionaire in 1920 would be something like 20 million today.

1:01:21I think it was 18 or 20x or something like that. And then people are like, billionaires shouldn't exist. And I'm like, okay, but why 1 billion? Why not 800 million? I've always found that to be interesting how we have settled on this perfectly round number. Dude, so yesterday, I took my whole basketball team, the team I'm coaching, to the Warriors game. And I wanted to make a special thing. So like after they won their last game in the locker room, you know, normally we're just sort of like saying like, you know, you did this well, you did this poorly. And then I was like, want to do something for you guys.

1:01:54It's your birthday coming up. You guys want to go to a Warriors game? And then we went as a group and they got to go courtside and see Steph Curry. Like it was cool. And you just ruined all of their eligibility for going to NCAA. I accidentally violated like HIPAA. Wait, how did you get courtside? You just knew a guy who knew a guy? I don't know if he wants me to say, so I won't say his name. But yeah, no guy who's with the team, X player. And so he was like, he just literally like waved his hand. He's like, I'll let them come down. And the security guard's like, I guess if he's waving his hand, you can go.

1:02:26And I was like, yeah, me and these other 18 guys. And so we all went. But anyways, it's part of a story of saying, I had one extra ticket. So I took my son, who's four and a half years old. And, you know, taking a kid to a game like this, his first basketball game, you know, we have to leave after the, you know, second quarter because it's like bedtime and I got to drive him back home. But on the drive back, so I'm hoping I'm going to have this amazing father-son time bonding. And like, I'm like wanting him to love him. Like, watch, that's the greatest shooter ever. Steph Curry, like that's the closest we've ever been to God right here, this five feet away.

1:02:59And he's like trying to care, but he doesn't really care. He's like, can we get his candy now? And I'm like, okay. I got him some M &Ms. And I'm like, every time the Warriors make a shot, you get an M &M. Now he's like locked into the game. And so then finally we leave. And of course the drive home was this like amazing moment. And basically, I put Tesla in like self-driving. I just talked to my son for like an hour. And it's like a one-on-one because I have three kids. So normally it's not one-on-one, but I get to talk to him. So he told me, he goes, you know what I want to be when I grow up?

1:03:24I want to be a builder. And I was like, amazing. Builder of like what? And he's like, do I have to pick? And I was like, no, I guess not. And so I'm telling him about builders. Somebody built this bridge. Somebody built this building. Somebody built this car. And somehow I start explaining to him who Elon Musk is. And I'm basically doing a podcast episode for him. And I'm like, you know, rockets? this guy builds rockets that land themselves. And he's like, what did they do before they landed themselves? And I was like, honestly, I don't know. Maybe that's actually hype. Cause like people went to the moon and came back.

1:03:55So I don't know. They like, you know, they come back. They do come back. Anyways, don't ask too many questions. So I'm telling him about Tesla. And he's like, did he start it? And I'm like, no, I'm not technically, but let's not get into those details. So I'm telling him about Elon Musk. And I tell him he's the richest man in the world. He's got, you know, money. He's got the most money in the whole world. And he's like, how much money does he have? I was like, he's got like$300 billion,$400 billion or something like that. He goes, he's like quiet for like 30 seconds. And then I'm like, did you hear how much money he had?

1:04:24Like, are you still there? Did you fall asleep? What happened? He goes, can it even fit in his wallet? And I was like, no. He goes, so we used to use a grocery cart? I was like, no. And I'm like, explaining the concept of banks. And so anyways, I had this long conversation with him about money and about like, you know, these sort of the builders and the prolific people that sort of make all this happen. And it just reminded me like, I don't know. By the way, did your son have a take on the simulation? We didn't get there. That'll be the next time. He does have a lot of questions similar to that.

1:04:56Like, you know, like where did the earth come from? And then I'm like, yo, honestly, like we're very much past the edge of my understanding of like, I don't know, to be honest. and like who's older the earth the sun there's a lot of questions that are pretty tough but the good thing is in the car they have like ai built in so you just like if i don't know we just turn on ai and ask ai the ai tells us anyways so that's that all right that's the pod 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 my friends i have a new podcast for you guys to check out.

1:05:33It's called Content is Profit, and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcast.