Business Breakdown Duel & The Story of Nike's Sonny Vaccaro

25:31Have you seen this guy that's on TikTok that just chops the tree and it gets like a million views and there's like hundreds of thousands of women commenting like, just like, gasp. Like, I need him. Is he hot? Is he shirtless? No, is he shirtless and hot? He's shirtless and he just chops this tree perfectly. It takes him like 10 strokes to crack down this giant tree. is that like an innuendo for sex or something literally like I'm watching this thing and I'm like I don't even know why I'm watching this this is like just from a purely objective level this is very attractive I'm just gonna say this is very attractive he just wears like suspenders he looks like a lumberjack but he's like GQ'd out so he's like a groomed lumberjack that's super like with a crossfit body that chops down trees instead of going to the gym he's incredible So you're kind of like that.

26:28You're like that, but like, you know. Not. I'm like store brand that. Yeah, you're like in the zip code of that. So that's basically what these guys said. They kind of brute force their way, but why don't you think this is a good business? Well, I think that the, I mean, just the amount of capital it took to get to this business value. So it's worth 1.8 billion on paper. and they've taken 500 million to get here. So like, if you just zoom out, it's like, we three and a half extra money. Like, that's not the most impressive thing. But like when you frame it the other way, which is like, we're going to hit a billion dollars in sales and we've done this in seven years.

27:10And like, you know, we've built the largest telemedicine health company for men and women. And you could frame it one way or you can just kind of look at it the other. It's like, now here's a business where if I have to pay$150 to acquire a customer and it takes two years to pay it back. If that, we'll see how it all projects out. It's super sensitive to... They pour so much money into marketing. And what if Facebook costs change? How's that going to affect them? There's all these factors. I'm not saying it's a bad business. But compared to that FedEx company that does$100 million in sales and dividends out$50 million to the owner, I know which business I would want to own.

27:46The business that didn't need a SPAC to succeed is the business I would want to own. The one that's dividending out like a mega yacht every year to this guy. That's sick. And it has like one one millionth of the notoriety of a brand like it. And what did you say about the... Yeah, tell me the other interesting thing. So other cool things. So there's some notable things for the research. I want to put these on the screen. So I put the images on screen on YouTube. If you listen to the podcast, just pause, go to YouTube because you got to see these. So if you go back through their history, first, take a look at this thing I have on page...

28:19What is this page? like three or something of this, the P &L. Do you see this P &L? This was in their S1 to go public. It's literally, it just says revenue 27, gross profit eight, adjusted EBITDA minus 68. That's the P &L they shared in their investor presentation. I was like, what kind of kindergarten level of detail is this? What kind of crayon P &L are you doing? Like, this is fucking ridiculous. And I was like, this is why SPACs went to shit. Because it's like half the P &L is just projections, which you can't do if you go public the traditional way. But in SPACs, you can do these forward-looking projections.

29:00And that's how all these guys got away with it. It's like, we have a shitty business now, but five years from now, we are crushing. And they were able to tell that story, whereas you can't make forward-looking statements in the traditional way of going public. And then I was like, this is some absolute basic beginner-looking thing. I was just stunned at this. this is like on the SEC website. That's an embarrassment. All right, second thing. You can go to their website and you can find in the web archive their landing page from the beginning. So check this out. This was their first landing page.

29:30This is like the month that they launched. It just said, Guy, against staggering odds, two things happen. One, the universe. Two, you. Let's walk at our full height, honor our forebearers, have a smile, and for God's sakes, floss. Shop now. And it just goes down and it just says, sex. This is simple. You need erections when you want them and not when it's convenient for your penis. There's an eggplant emoji that says shop sex. There was another one for hair. That was the same. It was like, she needs to run her fingers through your hair. Then it just says our best sellers and there's just a very basic bottle that says finasteride.

30:07That's the generic name for Propecia or the hair male pattern baldness drug or whatever. They were just selling it for$28. and then there was they only had two SKUs finasteride and vitamins not even like vitamin C this is hey bud here's some vitamins and so incredible to go see I love love love looking at successful businesses early landing pages just to see like how did they get their business out the door one thing that's interesting is from the beginning they actually had a pretty strong like branding and brand identity so if you go do this with like Snapchat or Uber the first websites are just absolutely fugly like I have this blog post on the internet that's called like, you just search Sean Puri, early startup landing pages, medium.

30:56Okay, it's called 10 throwback startup homepages. When did you write that article? I wrote this in 2015. So this was... What month? What month? June. Oh, you beat me. On October 12th, 2015, I wrote an article that said, proof that your favorite startup started out awful. And it's a list of 10 landing pages. Yeah, you copy me. Your favorite startup. I think we knew each other then. So you can go look at Airbnbs. It's like literally plain black and white. And it just says, forget hotels, stay with a local. Uber, it looks like a janky thing. Everyone's private driver, but it looks like an old school car service.

31:33Snapchat, it's got one of these like yellow bubbles. That's like the like, buy now, you know, like, you know, half buy two, get one. And it just says free download inside. And it says introducing Snapchat, real-time picture chatting for iPhone. and it's two girls in their bikinis and it just says seven seconds on the screen and a self-destructing photo. So you can see what early startup landing pages look like. What's interesting that was unique in the HIMSS case is that they actually had their branding from day one, which I think was a smart move by them. And they specifically branded it the opposite colors as every other male wellness product.

32:08So every other male wellness product is essentially blue. And they were like, no, we'll go all neutral color scheme, lowercase font for the brand name and we're going to make it subtle because there's a stigma and a taboo around this. It's not something you want to brag about. We don't want bold. We want to be able to give you this package in a discreet way and you know and I know and that's all who needs to know. And I thought that was a smart thing for them to get right from day one. All their models are like, it's usually like a cool looking black dude or like a racially ambiguous guy. It's like, oh, I can see myself in you.

32:41I'm a young, cool guy. with like, I wear like cool jeans as well. Were your parents all of the Power Rangers? Why are you all telling us? What happened here? It's usually like a pretty racially ambiguous, good looking guy with nice teeth. Yeah, the teeth row is on point. Versus like, Viagra is always like Brett Favre looking guy. And then this was one of their early ads. So it's just, it just says, get hard or get your money back. And it's just a guy holding a tiny pill. and it's and what ethnicity is that guy oh dude his hand is like a gradient in photoshop it's like all all colors are easier so it says eggplant emoji rise to the occasion for less so one thing that they did really well was they figured out how do you advertise on facebook with a taboo product so they would do stuff like they would show a picture of a cactus that was limp and then another and it would be like with him so you don't have this problem so like how do you and so they were very clever clever with their marketing they also did stuff where they would create ad inventory.

33:42So they would go to like stadiums and they'd be like, all right, bunch of guys who are in our demographic are at the stadium. We could either spend like$400 ,000 to get on the Jumbotron and along with like, you know, BMW and a bunch of other big brands. Or they went to the stadium facility manager and they were like, hey, how much for the urinal space? They're like, what? Yeah, we want to put a little ad on the urinal and we'll give you guys like, you know, X price to be in every urinal. And they're like, yeah, dude, we got like 30 seconds of guys focused time while they're touching their thing.

34:17Like, you know, looking at our ad, this is actually kind of perfect. And so they would create new ad inventory that didn't even exist before, just trying to figure out how do we spend a hundred million dollars in a way that's going to be as efficient as possible. So they're, you know, really just like very, they're like a very advanced marketing agency, essentially. And another thing that they did, and I did a big breakdown on this one time was so if you google viagra alternative or cheap viagra or buy viagra online they show up number one and what they did was they actually sponsored a ton of twitch people and somehow that like got their links out there and they like they got tons and tons of backlinks really early on so hymns.com ranked quite high so they were able to get like it was i think if you I think it's Viagra alternative might be like their word.

35:03I forget which it's one of those pages. And that's where they got most of the revenue early on. Oh, wow. That's interesting. You know, there's another cool thing. I'll put this graphic on the screen. It's this graphic from, have you ever read Sakura, by the way? I don't even know if that's how you say it. Yeah. Yeah. The research thing. I like it. Yeah. They're pretty cool. I don't think people know about them, but they put out like really good research. S-A-C-R-A. Yeah. So they had done a thing and they had this great graphic, which is basically they were telemedicine was this trend. There's a lot of opportunity in telemedicine right now, and they just showed this picture of a guy and a girl, and it's a diagram.

35:37And basically, it's like you can look from head to toe, literally from head to toe, and you just go down the body. You're like, okay, hair. There's hymns. There's keeps. There's Roman. Okay, then you go down to eyes, and it's like there's prescription contact. Like Hubble, you know, it was a DTC startup doing prescription contacts through a phone app instead of going to the doctor. Then you go to their bicep. It's like TRT. There's a bunch of TRT companies like Hone Health and others. And then you're like, and then you go to, you know, their abs. It's like weight loss. You go to the crotch. It's like, here's the rectal dysfunction.

36:14Then you go down to the toes. It's like, here's toe fungus. Then he's got a little pet next to him. It's like, hey, here's pop. It's insurance for your pet. So you have like, instead of going to the vet for everything, you can use pop. And so it's like, and then they did the same thing for women. And you could just literally see like, if you've seen those diagrams that were like, there was a big opportunity to unbundle Craigslist and they took Craigslist homepage and they showed out every little section of Craigslist became its own billion dollar startup. They did the same thing to your body. Every part of your body became a billion dollar startup essentially from one DTC wellness this company and uh or multiple in some in some areas so from skin and all of their logos look exactly the same lowercase font pastel colors hymns i think it's oh by the way what one other little observation a lot of these d2c successes came from a certain type of founder not all of them but many from mba found like founders who went to like business schools which is funny because in the startup world, business schools are an easy punching bag because you're punching up at the institution.

37:21It's easy to make fun of them. Bro, you don't learn business in school. You learn business by doing business. And that's how I feel, to be honest with you. So I'm like, that's true. But there is something interesting that a lot of DTC companies, Blue Apron, Birchbox, Stitch Fix, Warby Parker, Rent the Runway, HelloFresh, and then this guy who did HIMS, he went to Wharton as well. So it's like, a lot of these big... I think there was something about the type of person who would do well in business school and the types of things you learn in business school where you do this market landscape and you figure out the opportunities and you're like, okay, good.

37:56I just need to be good at marketing and then good at operations in order to put cash in here and get the thing out. It's not very software-based. You don't have to be the innovator who's the one inventor of something. I think it lended itself to that type of entrepreneur, which I found pretty interesting too. Well, here's what our listeners need to do. They need to either... Probably in the YouTube comments. They need to let us know. I actually want them to know... Who won the duel? I actually want them to know if they think Hibs is a good business. But also, who won the duel? So you'll have to vote by saying our names.

38:34We'll include a Spotify poll as well. So you can just vote in the app. And we'll do a Spotify poll as well. Some guy in the YouTube channel said, who's this blonde host and why is he so annoying? So just for the record, the blonde annoying guy, that's what someone said in the comments. The blonde annoying guy, that was Sam. I went first and Sean is the brown less annoying guy. He went second for him. So let us know who's the winner here of this duel. I'm very eager to hear what people are going to say. I know which one I would rather own but I think they're both quite interesting. For sure. You saw this post by Mark Zuckerberg that he did the Murph?

39:17I tweeted out the picture of it and it got like 5 million views. It kind of took off. And I don't know. So do you know what the Murph is? I had never heard of the Murph until I saw this. And then I was like, I must do the Murph. It's named after Lieutenant Murphy. I believe context clues leads me to believe that he died in the military. and his favorite workout, I believe it's one mile run, 300 squats, 100 push-ups, and 100 pull-ups, and then a one mile run, all while wearing a 20-pound weighted vest. Is that the workout? That's exactly right. Run a mile, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, run another mile while wearing a 20-pound vest.

40:04And Zuck basically takes a bro gym shot I got to use the Blackberry for this. He's got the phone down here, not smiling, got the mouth open, and just snaps it with himself drenched in sweat. And he's like, just did the Murph. He's like, me and my daughters. And he's got a picture of his daughters doing push-ups. And he goes, this year, I got it done in 39 minutes and 58 seconds. And I was like, I read that. And I was like, that sounds really fast. If he had just said, I did 100 pull-ups today, I would have been like, man, what a day. Fantastic. Forget all the rest. I was already impressed by 100 pull-ups.

40:46To say he got that done in weighted pull-ups, to say he got that done in 39 minutes, I was like, that sounds ridiculously fast. And sure enough, all the comments were like, that's an insane time for the Murph. Have you ever done this workout? I haven't. But the world record holder of the Murph is this guy named Hunter McIntyre, who's DMed me on Twitter and Instagram and I've talked to because I like him a lot or I followed him and I feel like I like him. Is that what fit guys do? They just DM each other? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a club, you know, like once you can see the sixth app, you start following each other.

41:19Yeah, I'm one of us. Good to see you. And he DM me. He listens to the pod. He's the world record holder. And I think his world record is like 34 minutes and Zuck's time was 39 minutes, which means he would have gotten like 10th or 15th place at there's like a Murph games or something like that. I mean, I had so many thoughts rushed through my head when I saw this first. I saw 39 minutes and I thought I've taken shits longer than that. Like that's a, that's a crazy fast time. Then I thought, I don't think I can even do a Murph in an infinite amount of time. I don't think in my life I have done a total of two miles running, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups and 300 air squats like with a 20 found a vest.

42:01I have just never done it, period. So my time is currently 35 years. Then I thought, this guy has... He decided, yo, you know what? I'll just become one of the richest people in the world, one of the most powerful people in the world, and one of the fittest guys in the world. He's basically... And wholesome. Top 0.1 % wealth, top 0.1 % intelligence, top 0.1 % power, And now he's top 1.1 % Chad also. I am blown away. All before the age of 40. Yeah, exactly. And he's got two kids or something like that. I'm like, I mean, David Goggins should go to sleep listening to Mark Zuckerberg videos for motivation.

42:48This guy is incredible. I bought more stock and I bought a plain gray cookie cutter t-shirt in his honor. I was like, I'm going to retire this in the rafters of my office. I'm going to put it on a hang, a gray shirt just to honor this man. He gets so much shit and man, he's really turned his like public persona around. Like, do you remember he was, he was the biggest dork, like not just like, oh, when he was young, like recently he was the biggest dork is that he tried to do something cool. Like he would do when he did that, like hydro foiling thing and he painted his face white, like a geisha and like it's like man this guy's like and hit american fly it was just like oh man like you know what keep all your money i don't want to be you and now he's like you know just got off work did a quick jiu-jitsu tournament came back you know i fucking deleted snapchat off the earth i'm like wow this guy's just this guy's making power moves all day he's incredible he's he's a very inspirational dude he's done it scandal free so zuck is only 37 now you know probably fifth or sixth.

43:55Is he only 37? Something like that. I mean, he's still in his 30s. How old is he? 39. 39. So basically, he's been married to the same woman, been with her since college, has two kids, seems like his family life on paper seems awesome. There was a time when the most scandalous thing that he did was he had a video where he talked about smoking meats. and every year he sets, you remember that? Because every year he sets goals. No, no, that's not the most scandalous thing. That was just like hilarious that he was a robot trying to be like, hello humans, I am doing a barbecue with, I have flesh on a grill with fire.

44:36And it was like, bro, this is the robot. The most scandalous thing he did was when he was in college and his aim messages got leaked. That was like, you know, a real wonderful day in my household as I was like, hey, cancel Netflix. I have my entertainment for the week. I'm reading all of Mark Zuckerberg's A messages for the next week and it wasn't even that big of a deal what he said was pretty on par with an 18 year old 19 year old person like well maybe it was a lot one part was a little bit like is this what we want like this guy's this is the guy running Facebook where he was like he's like yeah he's like he's like yeah just tell me if you want anyone's like you know name do you know date of birth you know address whatever he's like these dumb fucks just trust me, they just put everything in the system.

45:21That sounds like something a 19-year-old kid who invented this stuff would say. Yeah. I would say that was the last time I was relatable with Mark Zuckerberg. Ever since then, he's created a gap. He's outpaced me from there. Every year he sets these goals. One year it was he only wants to eat food that he killed or grew, and I think he did it. And then another year, he was like, I'm going to learn Mandarin because I want Facebook to come to China. And I think his wife is Chinese. And he was like, I'm going to learn Mandarin. And then he goes and he gives a talk. I think he does it, gives a talk to a Chinese university.

45:57He gave me an interview. They go, they fly him out there. They're like, thank you so much, Mark Zuckerberg for coming. We are so happy to have you. And he's like, he's like, you know, well, he just starts speaking Chinese and they're like, blown away. It's like really great, man, where he's basically fluent. And so the guy kills it, man. He does great. And like when he did the E-foil, so he got into E-foiling, which is basically surfboarding without a wave. And he is doing it with an American flag and he has too much sunscreen on his face. That's my guy. A guy whose biggest flaw is that he's goofy.

46:31He's not the kind of my guy. And then now that I... Oh, you're zagging the other way. You're saying, Zuck, bad move, unrelatable, too good, no vulnerability, no relatability now. He's no longer girl next door hot. Now he's just supermodel hot. Zuck's the best, man. He just, you know, our friend Nikita Beer has this joke where he says something like, I would never, I forget why he says this, but he says you never, ever, ever bet against Zuck. How he's just a complete killer and he is wrong sometimes, but not in the grand scheme. And this is for the proof. Well, the funny thing is people will hate this segment because I think it's popular to really hate Mark Zuckerberg.

47:13because they hate Facebook, I think, because they're like, my data, or like the Russians hacked the election. I'm not even sure what the exact reason is for hating Zuckerberg at this point. I just got to say, like, this is, I mean, he is inspiring in that he is excellent. And if you appreciate excellence, that is kind of inspiring. It's kind of like people who hate LeBron. It's like, okay, I get it. You don't have to like the guy, but, I mean, you got to respect. I put some respect on this guy's name. I heard a funny story, by the way. Either, by the way, but he complained sometimes. Yeah, exactly.

47:48Yeah, he switched teams when he was a free agent. My real estate agent told me the story that she was driving. She's like, that's Mark Zuckerberg's house in the in the mission, kind of like near Dolores Park type of area. And I was like, he lives here. And I was like, that's not like I thought he lived in some private gated community. And she was like, well, I mean, he has like many houses, but this is one. This is one. And this is like his main one for a while. And she's like, and he made it private. I was like, what do you mean? I don't see any fence. And she's like, no, he bought the houses next door.

48:17He just bought all the houses in the area so that like, you know, whatever. And so he knocked on someone's door himself. So somebody opened the door and it was Mark Zuckerberg outside. And he's like, hey, you know, I love this house and I would you sell it to me? And they're like, no, I mean, it's not for sale. We love this house. We're so close to the park. You know, my commute's only seven miles. he's like I'll give you$10 million okay here's the keys basically he bought the house for$10 million it was probably a$2 million house and the house next like the house is nearby $2.5 million and he paid $10 million and just got the house right away dude that person who sold their house to him would be the best dinner guest imagine that story we would like to have you on air if that's you we would like to have you come tell that story because obviously I'm reenacting what I was told by a real estate agent I don't know if that's true or that's bullshit so yeah Zuck amazing let's wrap up with this last thing this Nike thing did you watch this movie yeah I did I thought it was awesome it was pretty sweet right not the best movie but like just a solid base hit on a Thursday night a Friday night you just need something that's I don't want to sit here and browse Netflix for the perfect thing alright I'm just going to go on I think it's on Amazon I'm just going to go watch it air and like just watch the story of how Nike signed Michael Jordan.

49:43They made Phil Knight look like a doofus. Yeah, why did they do that? I didn't understand that. Well, he does, appearance-wise, look like a doofus, but they also made him act like a doofus. Yeah, which I don't think he was like that. When I read Shoe Dog, I didn't get that idea. He's more, I think, they made him look like... When he wrote his own memoir, he made himself sound cool? Well, I've read a lot about him. They just kind of made him look like a ditzy person. like an idiot yeah he's not an idiot um but the guy they feature so a couple things so so first uh anything stand out from the movie air but then i have i want to go deep on this guy sonny vaccaro because i think he's actually more interesting who without the main character i don't even remember his name that's the that's the main character so that's matt damon matt damon in the movie but um you know in in nike in the air movie i thought one one interesting thing i didn't know was they're they're talking about just do it which is the just do it's the slogan that you Everybody knows it's the Nike iconic slogan.

50:42And they were talking about... At the time, even people internally were like, just do it. They got that from the ad agency Whiten Kennedy. And they're like, I don't know. What does that mean? Do you like it? I was like, I don't know. It's okay, I guess. They weren't like, yes, this is going to be this marketing masterpiece. And they go, what does that even mean? And they go, dude, it's from an inmate on death row who was about to be executed. And they were like, any last words? And he goes, just do it. And so that became the Nike slogan, which is honestly kind of genius. So I want to talk about this guy, Sonny Vaccaro, because he's kind of a gangster that I've seen for many, many years in the basketball scene.

51:22And the movie was about him. And this guy's pretty fascinating. So in the movie, he's famous because he's working at Nike. At the time, Nike is the last player. It's just a running shoe company. And they're the smaller shoe company. Adidas is this global brand that's crushing it. They own most of the sneaker market. I believe it's pronounced Adidas. Yeah, Adidas, which has its own interesting story. Then Reebok is like number two, and Nike is like a distant three, but they were doing like 27 million a year in sales through their running shoe. So good, but not like nowhere near the kind of top tier of shoe companies.

52:01And so Sonny meets Phil Knight, and he's like, hey, I got an idea for a basketball shoe. I want to create like a basketball division. Like you guys are all running shoes. We should create basketball shoes. And he's like, okay, like, come on in. You get this little basketball department. Like, go ahead, try to make it work. And the movie is all about like one breakthrough thing he did, which was they had a tiny budget. And in the 1984 draft, they decided to sponsor Michael Jordan. And Michael Jordan was not interested in Nike. He was going to go with, I think Adidas or somebody like that. and he was known as a hot prospect.

52:37He's like the number three pick and they were like, well, we still want... And Sonny was convinced we need Michael Jordan. And so the movie is about them trying to go get Michael Jordan on board. And what ended up... What the pitch was was basically they put their entire budget on one guy instead of spreading it across multiple players. He relentlessly pursued Jordan and met his mom and just drove out there to North Carolina to meet them and try to build a relationship. And then they sold him. They didn't even show Jordan's face in the movie, which actually was pretty cool. It was basically the whole relationship was how do I impress his mom?

53:07Because I know his mom will have my back. She's making the decisions. And so they were like, well, we're going to pitch him on his own signature shoe from day one and we're going to name it after him. So it'll be the Air Jordan. It'll be a whole product line named after him. And he ended up negotiating a royalty on every pair of Jordans sold. And that's how Michael Jordan became a billionaire, not through basketball, but through his shoes. So that's the movie part. Okay, cool. This guy, Sonny, actually did a bunch of other interesting things that I thought were pretty cool. So as a marketer, I just respect this guy's hustle.

53:36So here's some of the things he did to make Nike win. He created, so he was like, all right, we got to create like a kid strategy. It's like, how do we get them while they're young? And so he created a high school All-American game. So he was like, he called it the Dapper Dan Round Ball Classic. He goes throughout the country. He's like, I'm inviting you to participate. You're going to compete against the 12 best players or whatever, 20 best players in the country. You're invited to come do this thing in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or some shit like that. And it was like, and so he flies them out there and he puts this thing together.

54:14Now he's got the players. So then he goes and tells all the college coaches, hey, if you're scouting, you need to come to this round ball class. You can see all the best high school players at once. And so then college coaches start coming. So now players are like, oh, if I want to get seen by college coaches, I got to get to the high school All-American game. So he just like created through brute force like a conference essentially that would bring together the kind of the core supply and demand. And then he could find at that age the best young players. And so that's how he found Kobe Bryant.

54:42That's how he found LeBron James. They were part of his high school All-American things and his camp. So the second thing he does, he created a summer camp for only the best players called ABCD. And this is when he was with Adidas. So this guy worked for Nike. Then he worked for Adidas. Then he worked for Reebok. So he just, this guy was just a hired assassin that went from company to company and would just try to get them to win in their market using whatever advantages they had. And so when Nike needed something, he was like, all right, you need to get them all they're young. We're going to do this camp.

55:10But also what we're going to do is we need to get college players wearing our stuff. They all wear Adidas. And because it's the most popular brand, so that's just what they choose by default or they choose Converse. And so he's like, you know, why don't we, you can't pay college athletes, but nobody said anything about coaches. And so he just started, he would go to the coaches and he'd be like, hey, I'm going to give you 10 grand and here's 26 pairs of shoes. Give them out. Oh, they happen to be the sizes of like most of your guys. They don't have to wear them. You get the 10 grand either way, but we sure do hope you would, you know, you would go ahead and, you know, encourage them to wear these shoes.

55:46And so he went to Jim Bayhive and he went to like, you know, all the top college coaches and he basically bribed them. And it was like in this gray area where it was allowed. And in one year, he just traveled, like he would just fly city to city and he would go to the campus. he would make the coach an offer and at the time they were buying this equipment for their program they're like our kids need equipment so we got to buy this the stuff so he turned a cost into revenue for them and gave them free stuff and sure enough all of them started wearing nikes for free so all of a sudden now nike is being worn by all the best college players and it's on tv and in one year he just did a land grab across the country before the other companies could react he got all of them and i thought this was just like a genius uh genius strategy he started doing it isn't it Isn't it amazing how far you can go with brute force?

56:31This was a sledgehammer. This was a sledgehammer. And you can get pretty far with a sledgehammer. Then he did another thing. He sued the NCAA. So he went to this guy Ed O 'Bannon and he was like, hey, we should sue the NCAA. They're using your name, your face, your likeness to market the tournament and all this stuff. And you're getting nothing from it. And now college players can get paid through this NIL rule, this name and likeness thing. and it's because he won the case with that lawsuit against the NCAA. That was like, you know, it happened. The lawsuit happened in the last, I don't know, five years or so and then the rule came into effect like a year ago or something.

57:08And so I thought that was awesome. There were some great quotes about him. Some guy goes when Sonny dies he's going to sneak his way into heaven and when he gets there the first thing he's going to do is he's going to look for a 6 '9 kid to make a deal with. he's like and the other thing they said is there's only one man on earth who could tell you who the best 6th grade basketball player in the country is and it's Sonny Vaccaro and I just love that this guy just like owned his niche and just absolutely like went balls to the wall and really built like I don't know tens of billions of value at least inside of Nike plus Adidas plus Reebok with these athletes and he would have also gotten so he signed Jordan he signed he got he poached Kobe away from Adidas and then he would have got LeBron too when he was at Adidas and LeBron was ready to sign.

57:59He goes, we need to offer him 10 million a year for 10 years, a hundred million dollar contract to this 18 year old kid and LeBron's ready to sign and then Adidas gave him the 10 million but they changed the structure last minute. They got a little cold feet and they're like, well, we don't know if this kid's going to work out. Why don't we make it part of an incentive base? And so they offered him 7 million guaranteed and 3 million a year of incentives and LeBron turned it down, ends up going with Nike, never looked back and like just a huge blunder. Like basically this guy's whole life, He was fighting bureaucracy inside companies and then doing like black market and gray hat shit in the streets.

58:33And every NBA player is like, no Sonny. Their parents know Sonny because this guy was just working the streets. And there are certain companies that have had this. Tinder kind of had this with, what's her name? Whitney Wolf who started Bumble. She was kind of doing this from college campus to college campus, like going into the sorority houses and the frat houses. and just brute force onboarding all the guys and girls in one campus so that Tinder was useful. And then throwing parties and doing stuff like that. And you need these people. These are game-changing people for your company. I remember when Coinbase went public, Brian Armstrong did this long thread.

59:10He did something you never see somebody do, which was company goes public. They usually just say generic stuff. He actually talked about what led Coinbase to be successful. And he called out one guy by name that wasn't his co-founder, wasn't his main investor. It was just an employee and this guy Dan Romero. And he's like, and you know, basically special thanks to Dan Romero who like, just kind of like brute force built our relationships with banks and he basically got them their relationships with banking partners and like, I think maybe some stuff overseas. And it was just kind of like one of those things like, dude, I don't know how we're going to do this.

59:44I don't know. Dan, that's your mission. Send them on a mission to go do that. And Dan basically joined Coinbase as an employee, ended up making like $100 million plus class through this process. And I knew this guy. I met him in college. He was in my class. Didn't you used to make fun of him and call him a dweeb? I didn't make fun of him, but in my head, I did. We took a class called Computers. Again, I was going through campus looking for the easiest sounding classes. I took Getting Rich, I was one class. I took another class called Computers. And in Computers, they were talking about like a small person class.

1:00:16It's Computers? And they were just talking about the internet. I remember they were talking about net neutrality a ton. I was like, I don't know what the hell these guys are talking about. Like, I couldn't give less of a shit about this. And there was one guy that every class had like strong opinions, was super informed. I was like, man, who is this like teacher's pet? That's just like, is he trying to impress him? I was like, no, I don't even think he's trying to impress him. I think he actually is just nerdy about this stuff. He just listened. Motherfucker just loves the internet. This guy like wants to make out with the internet.

1:00:45I was over sitting in the back of class. Like I was like, thank you for talking so much, Dan Romero, because I don't have to say a word in this class. And it's sort of like, you know, revenge of the nerds in a way. It's like jokes on you. Like, this guy's passion and enthusiasm about the internet and technology is what led him early into crypto, which led him to pick Coinbase and ended up, you know, like his passion for that led him to be a key person there. This guy made hundreds of millions of dollars probably, is retired and got to do what he loved the whole time. And so, like, you know, I used to make fun of people who were, like, you know, overly enthusiastic and now I preach that you need like enthusiasm is massively underrated and more people dude and he's got a super handsome headshot now on LinkedIn Dan Romero does it's good you can afford a whole you know glow up if you if you get that Coinbase IPO and early Bitcoin money he's got great hair this guy definitely takes hymns he's a good looking guy power hymns user and he just bought 13 million dollars worth a 13 million dollar property in Venice and another one in Park City Dan won Yeah, Dan won.

1:01:50For sure. And you can tell that he's ripped, too. This guy definitely has abs. Dan won. Good job, Dan. I'm just like, you just Google him and see his face. You know this guy is fit.

1:02:07I should DM him. Yeah, you should. Let me add you to the group chat. Say no more. I've seen enough to pick. Yeah, you can tell by his jawline. this guy's got one of those like v's that goes down as there's like junk no no nfts uh just lift up your shirt six inches i'll tell you

1:02:30so um dude this guy's sunny it sounds awesome i i did see the movie and they made him look like a guy who could just put up with a whole lot of pain that's what they made him look like um they made him look like a guy who like he would just get shit on constantly and he always pulled through That's what they made him look like. And they also made him look exhausted and terribly unhealthy, which is the price to pay. And that's kind of true, yeah. They made him look horrible. And if you look at photos of him, granted, he's like, looks like he was born in 1938, I think. So like, you know, you are what you are at that point.

1:03:06But like, he definitely looks like he smoked a lot of cigarettes. 1938? That sounds very old, is that right? I looked him up on Wikipedia. I think it's 38. He's old. wow yeah he's 83 wow sunny yeah so he you know he he's alive and and so by the way the guy's name is actually john paul vincent vaccaro quote changes sunny god damn i like you have to have a nickname that everybody in your town knows you buy that's like to me that's like one of the great honors of life it's like yeah his name name's sean but everybody called him sunny whole life everybody called him sunny it's like that's just like such a cool i wish i had a calling card like that that's an italian thing that's like i feel like all the there's always a sunny in the mafia movies that i watch yeah he operates like a monster for sure i like this this is a good find i saw that movie and i thought i don't want that guy's job it sounded like an exhausting exhausted existence.

1:04:10It sounded very challenging. But I did like the movie. They made Phil Knight look a little goofy, which I'm a big Phil Knight fan, so it kind of hurt my feelings. But no, I thought it was a good movie and this is a good find. All right, that's it. That's the pod. Let us know who won the duel, the annoying blonde-haired guy who went first or the less annoying brown guy who went second. That's the pod.

1:04:38I 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, less travel, never looking back.

1:04:58Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter, they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:05:28If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC.