From Quirkiest Biz Ideas to Favorite "Creatorpreneurs" - MFM Q&A

24:45And then one day I just told them, I got to know the woman who I was working with at HubSpot. And she was like, look, you don't understand. We're worth$20 billion. This deal is really not a big deal to us. This ain't going to do anything for us. I mean, it'll do a little something. But just so you know, we already got board approval to do it, which means I told my boss and that boss told their boss. And then that boss reported it to 12 people who are billionaires and shit. And so if this deal doesn't go through, that means all 12 of those people have to change something. And then more so, I'm going to look stupid and my boss is going to look stupid and this other boss is going to look stupid.

25:22So because we're a big publicly traded company, if we say we're going to do something, we're going to do it. Not necessarily because it's a logical good deal, but because I don't want to look dumb in front of all my bosses. So we're going to do this. Versus when you sell to a smaller company or like an individual who's got money, I do feel they will always try or not always. A lot of times they will nickel and dime you or they will try to dock you. But I don't necessarily think a lot of times they're trying to ruin something. But I do think they will have ulterior motives, which is like, I'm trying to learn a little bit of information about this company so I can start on my own or do all these other things.

25:54But when you sell to a big publicly traded company, I think nine out of 10 times, it's not in their best interest to screw you. That's a great answer. I'm the same way. I go into every single deal, assuming the deal is not going to go through. Because as Emmett said to me, birds fly, fish swim, and deals fall through. That's what they do. deals fall through it is not a is it not a uh you know outlier or exception or like disaster when that happened oh a deal did what it does deals fall through that's what they do baby like what you're worried about sit your ass down why are you crying that's how that's my that's how i talk to myself when i when i get like emotionally attached to a deal so the emotional detachment is key all right well how do you do that part of it you gotta yet you needed to be having that bulletproof mindset before you get into an M &A transaction.

26:43It's too late when you're in the M &A transaction to be like, all right, guys, I'm going to toughen up this here brain to be able to operate in a very tricky circumstance where I might get life-changing money or it might all fall through. That's hard to do then. You got to train before that. That's the first thing. Second thing is, not only do they fall through, that's also not fatal when they do. In fact, every deal I've done has had a fall through moment, if not two. And so that is my rule of thumb, which is that every deal that does close, there's going to be two walkaways along the way. You're going to walk away or they're going to walk away.

27:21That's going to probably happen twice. You're going to hit a wall twice before this deal actually happens, where it feels like this deal is dead or it's simply not happening, or there's just a very, very low chance that we get over this hurdle. have you announced or have you said have you ever mentioned i'm not sure if it's an nda the other two people you almost sold to but instead of twitch uh i think i said before like we got pretty far down the road with facebook and then we also had a couple others that were facebook we had that we're at we're like out one hour away from accepting the deal and finishing it um and one of the good things that they did tell me was same thing you just said about hubspot uh so twitch is by Amazon and the corp dev guy was like, look, I'm sorry we've been so slow and I'm sorry we're not the like, we can't just give you everything you want in terms of price.

28:07But here's the good news. We will not retrade this deal, which is what it's called when you come back and you try to get that negotiation once everybody's fully emotionally invested and you're like, but actually now I want to change this. But then you think like, oh, you're just a doctor and you tell everyone that their kids are like doing great or like they look cute. Like, you know what I mean? I'm like, you're bullshitting me. I had my deal doula who's helping me get through it. And he confirmed that. He was an investment banker. He'd done 100 plus transactions. He's like, yeah, these guys are, both of them, Facebook and Amazon, if they give you an offer, they're solid on that.

28:41That will be the deal that goes through. There will be, if it doesn't close, it's because you didn't disclose something that you then come out later with or you change your mind. It's not going to be because of them. That's the good news of these big companies. The bad news is deals get hung up or delayed for all kinds of terrible reasons. So, you know, I just sort of expect a deal is always going to go slower than you want. It's most likely going to fall through. And even when a deal happens, it's going to break up twice before it happens. That is the rule of thumb. And so I got some great advice from Bology when I was doing the Milk Road sale.

29:12We had a couple offers and one offer was higher on the money and the other offer was a little lower on the money or like, you know, I would say, what was it like 25 % lower on money or something like that, let's say. and he goes, okay, well, you're saying you're, you know, you want to take the higher deal. That makes sense. But let me ask you one question. And he goes, are both of these deals at the same point? Meaning have they both been, have you been talking to them about the same amount of time? Have they done the same amount of diligence so far? Have you gone back and forth the same amount of times with them?

29:40I said, no, no, no. The lower deal we've gone all the way through and this higher deal where he just came on super, you know, they came on super fast and they were really eager and and we got the deal done fast. I was kind of excited. Like these guys seem really committed because they're moving really quickly here. And he goes, okay, so you need to apply a discount then. He goes, the offer is not 25 % higher. In fact, it's probably half as high. Once you apply the discount of this deal doesn't close or falls through, you're going to turn down an offer that's solid for an offer that might be a slightly higher, but hasn't done the two fall throughs yet.

30:18And so he's like, you need to apply a discount. He's like, if I'm honest, if I'm discounted this, it's at least 50 % based off of just the normal way that M &A deals work. This deal will not be the exact deal that closes, if it closes at all. And that was very sage advice. And it ended up playing exactly out. We tried to go with the higher offer. And then sure enough, more stuff came out of the woodwork that gave us hesitation. And then we were like, look, this is not as solid as we initially thought. Or like, you know, we can't just take the headline numbers. we have to take into consideration the ability to close and the credibility to close and that changed the calculus and the way you get around that is you say the bad things up front I think as best as you can you say anything that will ruin it as early in the process versus as late in the process this was great advice you gave me you gave me this advice when we're going through the milk road process you go here's what you're going to do because I was going to dinner with them and I said you said here's what you're going to do you're going to go there and you're going to say the following you're going to say awesome sounds like we're all excited now i'm going to tell you every reason you should not buy this company i'm going to show you every skeleton in the closet now to save ourselves some pain later and if anything here scares you i'm happy to either explain it or if it just doesn't work then you know you we can know now and i was like well that's the opposite of how i would have naturally approached it so so tell me more and then i did exactly that and after the deal went so we we did that and then after the deal went through we did a post-mortem like hey that's how you know these buyers are smart.

31:47They're like, what could we have done differently in our buy? And I said, same. What could we have done differently in the sale? And they were like, one of the best things you did was at that dinner when you just told us anything that was bad about the company and you just proactively said, here's all the skeletons in our closet or anything that might look ugly to you. He goes, that built so much trust for us. And he's like, from there, we weren't worried about those things because it builds so much trust and it's a very selfish thing you gotta do it in a non manipulative way you can't actually do that and then leave out the real skeleton that that shit's like the opposite of trust so so that definitely worked and got confirmed on the other side it's a win-win scenario which is you get the deal done hopefully faster than slower and also it makes them trust you which or the third option which is you find out earlier that it's not gonna work and you move on You don't waste three months of time dragging it out when you could have known that up front if Biltz hasn't been more honest.

32:48I agree. All right, Ben, what do you say? All right. Next question is, do you have any updates to Sarah's list or any new additions? So Sarah's list is this list. It's down for my wife because at this point, it's just its own name. But basically, we made a list of companies where you could join and have a safe job, meaning you're hopefully not going to get laid off like you would at a 10-person startup or go out of business. You can still get paid a lot in salary and then still have maternity, paternity leave, and have a lot of these perks and benefits. And also, your stock, I think our requirement is 10x.

33:23Is it 10x? So basically, it's based off your real story. Sarah joined Facebook. She joined Airbnb and she joined them not like super early when they were just still in their, you know, their apartment trying to figure it out. It was like, it was, it was working. This is a business that was already valued at, you know, let's say a billion dollars or more. And, um, so a multi, it was a multi-billion dollar company already. You get the fat salary, you get the oat milk, unlimited oat milk on tap in the, in the break room. You get the maternity leave, you get everything you would want, but also you get a stock package is that even if you're not even like an AI engineer, like let's say you're getting 70K a year of stock, if that thing 5X is, you could become a millionaire without ever having done the startup route, just in a four-year invest cycle.

34:14And that was your wife's story. It was inspiring to me and to you. It's like, I feel like nobody talks about this, but you have to correctly identify the companies that can 4 or 5X in the next four years. And so we have this list. So anyways, they want an update on that list. But there's a YouTube video of the last time we did Sarah's list. I think we've done it twice. And we actually updated that. Hey, a bunch of the companies we said the first time. Sure enough, I think the average multiple was like, you know, in exactly the range that we had talked about. So now I actually think it's the opposite.

34:45I'm calling it Sarah's Exodus. Basically, there's a whole bunch of companies that raised money in 2020, 2021. that were at valuations that worked when the economy was different, the stock market was different, inflation was different, interest rates were different. And now those companies, it'll take years to get back to that same valuation, if that. And so now I think it's Sarah's exodus, which is what are the companies where you just have zombie equity? You are so far underwater on the value of your shares that not only will it not 4 or 5x, it's not even good at 1x. You won't even get what you think it's worth today.

35:20hey, you're going to sit there for four years earning that useless stock. And so I actually think you have to make the opposite list. What companies raise too much at the wrong time, at the wrong valuation, that are basically upside down. And you basically will go to TechCrunch and you put year... When did the bull market start? Let's basically say 2020 and 2021 as the peak, maybe even a little 2019. And go through TechCrunch and do sort by year. Search, quote, unicorn. Yeah, yeah. And anything that became a unicorn in that era, assume that the likelihood is slim. Until proven otherwise. Go to your CEO and say, hey, what is the fair market value?

36:01What is the actual fair market value of this company right now? What is the last money we raised? How much total money have we raised? Oh, we've raised$600 million. Okay, so we'd have to sell. The first$600 million if we sold would just go back to the investors. It goes into nothing to employees. and how much secondary did you take and what type of g-wagon do you have what color is your g-wagon yeah yeah you figure out those things did i ever tell you the create so you're talking about like going to these big companies and you can get like all you can eat food and shit like that can i tell you about the craziest thing at airbnb so if you go to their they have like a cafeteria their whole shtick was that every single thing from the ketchup and mayonnaise to the Coca-Cola to the, all the condiments, the trail mix, everything was made in house on premises.

36:52When there was an office, all the food was made right there in the spot. And it was amazing. There was a, that's amazing. I remember the same thing happened at, um, what's it called? Zynga. I went to Zynga. I met the head chef at Zynga and he ran, this chef was a manager of like 40 people. That was the culinary team. The internal culinary team was 40 people at Zynga. You show up at Zynga, first of all, there's like 94 dogs running around. Insane amount of dogs. Their logo's a dog, and there's two dogs for every one employee there. Secondly, 40-person... There's like a dog fighting pit in the middle.

37:26People like... When time's got a little rough. Facebook made the algae change. Yeah, there was a little dog fighting ring that brewed up on the second floor. And I went into the kitchen and I was walking around and he's like, yeah, we do our own butchering and he opens this fridge that was like a 40-foot fridge. There was just cows hanging upside down. I was like, you're going to break that down? He's like, yeah, I break that down every morning. What's this on tap? There's no label. He's like, that's my home-made kombucha. We make our own. We brew our own drinks. We make our own food. The veggies that you see, that mushroom, it grows on the roof here.

38:04Then during the tour, I got a little hungry, reached into the pocket, had some Cheez-Its. I opened up the bag dude they heard the crinkling of a of a packaged good in that kitchen the whole kitchen froze like it was like i said bomb on a plane dude i was like i'm so sorry i don't know how this got here i don't know what this is put this in my pocket and did do they still have anything of course they don't now but oh no they don't even have the building. The whole building got sold. I think the building sold for more than the company was worth at the time. I think if you Google Zynga building, they owned this building in San Francisco and I think they sold it for$250 million at the time when the market cap of the company was$200 million.

38:50Yeah, it was either that or more profit than they'd ever generated. It was one of those two. And yeah, now it's owned by Take-Two who makes Grand Theft Auto and NBA 2K. They own Zynga now. Yeah, I like those chef companies. So like Sarah's list, I think you got to go get yourself. If you're not dating somebody who works at a tech company with all you can eat food. What are you doing? What's the point? No perks, bro. What are the perks? Yeah. What are the attributes of this relationship? You know what I mean? You need to bring some attributes. You better be, you know, the like starving artists, extra hot, or you have a company that has an all you can eat buffet.

39:27You should have seen how many Clif bars. I was like a, like, I was the Pablo Escobar of smuggling cliff bars out of tech companies for like a three year period. I had free prosciutto for a year. I used to like, I used to call it prosciutto. I didn't even know what it was. I was like, find this prosciutto in all the land. Dude, I used to send her to work with Tupperware containers. Make sure you stay till seven because I know there's a dinner there. Why are you home so early? I know that Facebook dinner didn't start until 530. It takes you an hour to get home. Where's my pursuit?

40:02Ben, what do you say? What do we got? Do you have any frameworks for maintaining healthy friendships, especially when you're separated by distance? Mine's simple. I'm in the phase of life right now. I've got one simple phrase when it comes to friends. No new friends. If you're in, you're in. It's a mental model for you. Yeah. Say no to everything.

40:24If you in, you in. If you ain't, you ain't. What's yours? Yeah, I'm the same. I suck at this. I apologize to my friends. I'm a shitty friend to them. They know it. I do feel bad about it. But you can only try to be great at so many things at once. And okay, I got kids, so... But what are you still picking which thing you're going to be great at? Which one's it going to be? Try to be a great dad. Try to make a bunch of money. And then try to get into incredible shape. Those are the things I've prioritized right now. And so, you know, friends had to take a little bit of a hit there. All right, you loser.

40:57What do you say, Ben? What do we got? If you were to start a business based on the quirkiest or most ridiculous idea that you've ever had, what would it be and why? Yours is actually good, Sean. Yeah, did you have an answer for this? No, because I'm not like that quirky of a person. Say yours. The IQ test is actually a good idea. All right. So I met a guy who would sell stars, like literally like a star in the solar system for$25. he would name it after you and i think he would just name it in his own database and then there's then i saw this there's this guy who's just been crushing on tiktok i don't know if you've seen these tiktok ads where you he will they own a small piece of land in like dublin or something or something like that and you will officially be knighted as a sir uh like you'll get an official title as sir and you will own a piece like a plant on this land I got one foot by one foot, you know, like plot of land.

41:56So when I saw things like that, you know, there's really two reactions. There's most people who I roll and say, this is what's wrong with the world. And then there's me who's like, man, what's wrong with me? Why haven't I done this? And that's kind of where I'm at. So I would love to just take time to do some of these stupid things. Like I want to be the pet rock guy or like the million dollar homepage guy. I think that would just be a lot of fun as a challenge. And I have an idea, which is I want to create a new IQ test because like who doesn't want to seem like they have high IQ? So I think you can build like a DTC IQ test that people would pay to see how they score.

42:31Or just go all in on something super woo-woo like horoscopes, crystals, something like that. I actually launched a DTC crystal brand, like an e-commerce brand for a month. and now that I look back, now that I know how e-commerce works, that brand was actually working. I was just too big of a noob to even understand, like, is this good or bad? Why is it good? Because people can't return it? No, no, I just mean like it was working. Like I was acquiring customers at a good rate. Like the, I mean, all e-commerce is basically CAC versus LTV. It's just, what's the lifetime value of a customer? The LTV compared to the CAC, the cost of acquiring that customer.

43:09And actually my LTV to CAC was actually good. I just didn't really understand it enough at the time. I didn't trust it enough at the time. But my first e-com biz before the one I made was a crystal one. Like in my garage right now, I have like 4 ,000 rose quartz coasters still just because I didn't sell. I didn't move that inventory. I shut it down. How much did it cost for you to buy and to sell? Oh, dude, these are very cheap to buy. Like, you know, the gross margins are like 75, 80%. So, you know, you buy it for two bucks, you sell for 10. It's just like round math, right? but like in reality you're selling it for 24 and you're buying it for whatever that math turns out to dude that's wild but like also you don't want to be a fraud which hey if you're selling crystals i mean fraud is in the eye of the believer as i say and uh there are a lot of people who believe that crystals are good and help them uh like the reason i had this idea one of them was i but i'll sell it to i went and i read i opened up a magazine like you know cosmo or one of these magazines i I was like, okay, I'm going to go look outside of my normal box for new ideas.

44:12So I went and opened up Cosmo. And there's this two-page spread about crystals. And it was basically like Adele will not go on stage until she uses her rose quartz crystal thing. Kim Kardashian, after she got mugged for her$4 million diamond ring, I don't know if you remember this, she claims that crystals were one of the only things that kept her anxiety down and soothed her. She keeps one in her bag at all times. Gwyneth Paltrow from Goop I mean obviously huge into crystals do I even need to explain so there was like this huge number of like celebrity female influencers well and there's the Adam Sandler movie with Kevin Garnett where he like buys that you know million dollar black crystal that's right that came out after I'd done that but yeah I basically saw I was like oh if Kardashian, Adele and like whatever Jennifer Aniston or whoever these people are like if they're all into crystals like trust me the perfect e-commerce customer, a woman in the Midwest, is going to buy this stuff.

45:12And it was actually working. Some chick named Kinsey. Kinsey in Idaho. She wants to buy that shit out of your rocks. If you have a sign that says simplify or I love us, you're going to be one of my customers. All right, Ben, what do you say? where are we at all right that one was mostly for sean this one is mostly for sam which is what were the first five big boy moves you made at hampton the first thing i did by the way bed you got to say these guys names for people who ask these questions just joe watkins yeah joe joe watkins he asked uh about hampton um i don't know about the first five but uh i didn't buy a domain name it was just hampton at hampton.squarespace.com and i sent the link to a bunch of friends and And then they sent it to a handful of other friends.

46:05And then I just reached out to tons of people. People would sign up on that page, which was just a type form. And then I called every single person and I interviewed them. And me and Joe, Joe did the back end stuff, but I did the front end stuff of calling all the potential customers. And I must have interviewed 100 to 200 people. And I was the one that sold and got us the first million dollars of sales. And so I called it, I told Joe can tell Sean, my calendar looked like a zebra. It was just like, constant stripes of these 30-minute meetings with the 10-minute break. 30-minute meetings, 10-minute break.

46:38And I did hundreds of them. What did you do in the 10-minute break? That's a good question. Probably just laid on the couch and think, I hate this and I'm so excited when it'll be over one day. It's really hard work. It's very challenging. And then another big thing I did was I hired a CEO because very early on, I thought this thing will exceed my personal capabilities and skill set. very soon, so I should hire a CEO. But getting the first million dollars in sales is what I did for like two months. I would say the other thing you did is you nailed the brand and the name, which is that's art. That's talent.

47:18But I think that a name won't break you, but it can make you. I think Hampton is a perfect name because you borrowed the prestige of the actual Hamptons and you hired an agency to do a nice job with the branding or whatever. So I think that was also... That agency I hired was$15 ,000. And basically what I did was I sent them a whole bunch of really old Rolex ads. And I also said my favorite color is British Racing Green. Because that's like my... I love that color. It's like a lot of old cars. Sam's dating profile also. No, it's British Racing Green. I love... I've had motorcycles in that color.

47:53I have all types of toys in that color. I like that color. I go, make it look like an old Rolex ad and make it and use British Racing Green. And that's kind of how it came to be. And$15 ,000, for you to spend$15 ,000, give people a sense of like, is that just nothing for you? Are you just like... Let's just say this. You sweat that? Last Saturday, I drove 20 minutes to return a spatula to Target for$7.

48:21So yeah, I'm a tight one. There's the kind of guy that licks his finger before he gives out a one to the...

48:31make sure there's not a second one stuck on there that's hilarious um all right what do we got all right next up is uh this is from josh red who wants to know what are the three most common small boy boobs that you see all right so we have this phrase no no small boy stuff okay what what is small boy stuff all right the first rule obviously is if you think it might be small stuff it is but besides that i would say there's the the three big ones the three big buckets are the three w's waiting worrying and wanting anytime you find yourself waiting to do something that you actually want to do that's a small boy move that's a small boy mentality you're focused on the wrong things uh worrying same way worrying hasn't done anyone a lot a lot of good you got to know how to do worry i think sam's worry time is a fantastic framework for that.

49:22So go look up Sam Worry Time. And wanting. Wanting meaning like wanting what other people have. And really like people are their happiest when they're grateful, meaning they want what they have versus wanting what they don't have. And so I think that if you find yourself in a state of mind you don't want to be in in that small boy state of mind, it's because you're probably waiting to do the thing you actually want to do. you're worrying about something that might happen that might be bad, or you're wanting something that you don't have that other people have you're being bitter, you're being jealous or so on and so forth.

49:58So to me the three W's kind of capture most of the things that are small boy activities Have you ever heard this phrase? This is, we're gonna get a little Sigmund Freud on your ass external locust of control. Do you know what that means? I've heard this phrase many times and I never have any idea what this means locus is a bug that's where i started and uh you tell me where to go from there yeah you're totally wrong um but uh so an internal locus of control means that uh well let's say an external locus of control meaning is means the way that you feel and the position that you are in your life it's because of everyone else so if you have an external locus of control you think i am in a bad mood because the traffic is bad and it's their fault or I am I'm poor because the government won't help me or everyone's out to get me internal is the opposite which is I control how I feel and what I do and where I am in life and so I think that there's a direct correlation between like like what I consider like a small boy thing of that internal versus external locus of control So anything that is, when you say I am the way I am because I choose to be, or I put myself in this position, I think oftentimes that's when you're more on that spectrum, I think it's better than when you're focused on external.

51:20So anything where it's like, I have to wait until this is ready or I have to please these types of people or whatever, that's typically, I think, a loser mentality. yeah 100 i i was actually telling somebody this yesterday and uh i was like where where do you think the power lives in this scenario let's say there's a plant that's not growing um where where where's the problem and you know what do you suspect the problem is they're like well i mean it could be the soil all right so soil so it's the environment that's the reason that uh that the plants are growing no no maybe it was just a bad seed oh so it was kind of like the genetics of the seed that you would blame for the outcome.

52:04No, no, no. It's just not getting enough sunlight because there's other plants blocking it. Oh, so it's others. It's competitors that are taking the finite resource that you can't have. What is it? Where is the problem? And the answer is really, there is no problem. You are the plant. Just fucking grow. Don't blame anything. Don't feel lack in any one of those areas. because you want to be, ultimately, you want to be the plant that can grow in any one of those, under any conditions, from any seed, in any soil, with any sunlight, in any competition. And so what I find is that I get along least with people who really over-index on, they always blame the soil.

52:45It's always the city's fault. It's always the school's fault. It's always the environment's fault. Or people who, oh, it's genetics. I'm fixed. It is the way it is. or oh, it's the competition. They're always taking my things. Those are the people that get along with the least. And even in myself, when I find myself thinking that way, I get along with myself the least. I hate myself the most when I think that way. See, you didn't know what it meant, but you came to the same conclusion that hundreds of years worth of psychologists, it took them to figure it out. It's supposed to be all the time.

53:17Thousands of years of wisdom, I just sort of on an afternoon just come up with a better version of myself. And then I find the words to describe it. and used a better analogy. All right, Ben, what do you say? Where are we at? All right, we got an emotional one. Ladies and gentlemen, grab your tissues. Sam, what is, in your opinion, the greatest quality that Sean has? And Sean, same question. What is the greatest quality that Sam has? It's a question from Griffin Humphrey. Griffin, good question. Sean's greatest quality is, I feel like I don't want to look you in the eye when I'm talking to you right now.

53:53Sam just closed his eyes. Should I close my eyes too? It's like, it's like, there's a ton of ways that I can take this analogy. I'm not, I'm not even going to touch it. This is like when you're sitting at a table and somebody puts their palms out like this and then you're supposed to put your hands in there. Yeah. Yeah. That's weird. You don't look people in the eye when you're doing that. Just like complimenting each other and going to the bathroom. Eye contact, it doesn't exist. Yeah. We need to stand side by side not facing one another. Here we go. Yeah. the conversation when you go to the bathroom even if you're walking to the bathroom together as soon as the fly goes down the conversation stops the fly in your zippers like the off button and then you shake and you go back and the fly goes up yeah you're just right back to the conversation that's what this is like Sean's best attribute is that his attitude is always positive.

54:55So I don't think I've ever been able to, not that I've done it on purpose, but I've never gotten him rattled. And he's very, very, very pleasant. I think almost 100 % of the time, I've never seen him get upset about stuff. And that is actually frustrating about him, is that he doesn't get frustrated sometimes. But at the same time, I would rather have that because I'm fairly emotional and I get frustrated easily. He never gets frustrated. and so I would say that's his best characteristic. Internal locus of control baby. Yeah you control your mindset. Yeah the locus is inside of you all the time it never goes outside of you it's in you so I would say that's easily your best attribute is the ability to stay calm and happy no matter what?

55:45Mine for you would be intensity. I think you do a great job cranking the knob up whenever you are into something. I admire that. And when I look at all the things that I admire about you, like the way you're self-actualized in terms of fitness or the way you built the hustle or the way you're building Hampton right now, the common denominator is the level of intensity you bring to it. So I don't think there's really anything else. It's not like I'm like, oh, you know, the reason again, it's like internal locus of control. It's not like I'm like, Sam got lucky because of this, or he's got people helping him and that's why he's winning, or he's just born with some talents that others don't have.

56:27It's like, I think you just have a better job at cranking the intensity to 12 when it's time to. If you're like, I'm going to get in shape, you're like, great. Inject my butt with TRT, build a home gym, hire a personal trainer, hire a coach, buy the best equipment, wake up every day, do the program. When I'm doing the workout, I'm pushing myself to my actual max. And then I'm doing this. I'm measuring everything. I'm posting publicly. So I'm ashamed if I don't do it. You go the full way. And it's like the same thing with Hampton. I told you this. I had a very similar idea for a peer group thing years ago.

56:59I kind of dabbled with it, tried it, created one. It was actually going pretty well. Then I was like, I signed the object over here, got kind of bored, decided, didn't really think it was the right thing didn't really see the big picture to see you take that same idea and do it at level 12 intensity is such a gift for me because it's like i get to see a without intensity approach to the same idea and a with intensity approach to the same idea and it just shows what the difference is and like that is the difference and so to me that and i also wrote sam's got a code and he lives by it i think you're a lot more uh honorable uh than than most and definitely than me.

57:37And so I kind of admire that too. What code? I don't view myself as having a code necessarily. Do you feel like when you give someone your word that it's done? Yeah, it's for life. Do you feel like that if someone's your friend, they should fight for you and die for you and any small slight is a loyal stab to the heart? I feel like if we're in public and you get in a fight with someone and you throw a punch, even though it's your fault. we got the fight yeah the the the person's it is over and then afterwards i'll be like you're an idiot that was really inappropriate but yeah yeah i feel i i disagree privately publicly like we we die together yeah showing up on time like i feel you have a code i don't even agree with your whole code i think you're crazy with something when you go chase down people that broke in because you're like no you broke in now we fight we duel i'm like that's stupid sam you should not do that or you're like, this guy's trying to charge me an extra hundred dollars because of whatever.

58:36No, we're taking him to petty court. And I'm like, Sam, it's not worth it, man. Let it go. So I disagree with your code, but I love that you have a code because I don't think I really have a code to live by. All right. What do we got? All right. Really quick. Let me just tell you guys the last questions and you say what you want to do, what you don't. So we got create entrepreneurs you're paying attention to. We got pros and cons of building in public. let's do a creative one really quick yeah who are the creative creatorpreneurs that's kind of a weird one creatorpreneurs you are paying attention to and why i like isaac french because he's got an awesome name creatorpreneur someone who's like creating content but they're also an entrepreneur they're building a business around their podcast or their youtube or their twitter whatever that's what it is i like isaac french i hung out with him and i was like why are you so purposeful with everything you do he goes that's just part of our religion we feel that like we just have to be excellent and that's how we show that god's great and i was like oh okay so like you're i'm not gonna bet against that yeah yeah um i like jasmine star there's just she's a woman who has a uh she's got a software company i've met her through hampton and i've whenever i hang out with her i feel like uh i'm gonna cry like she's so intense um and she's like she describes herself as like a latino woman from like i think east la and she's like so like i'm gonna like crush all these tech nerds and i love that attitude um and i like jason yanowitz and austin reef jason yanowitz runs blockworks a crypto company that just raised some money i would never bet against them and then austin reef as i've gotten to know austin reef the founder of morning brew do you agree with me that guy's a straight stone cold killer i would never bet against austin he's i would never really impressive and actually my opinion of morning brew because i I was friends with you.

1:00:20So same, you know, the loyalty test. I was friends with you. Therefore, your enemies are my enemies. And when you were doing the hustle, I was like, okay, so who are the other newsletters? Those are my enemies. Someone go look up their founders and they're on my shit list. And now Austin is a friend. And I actually really think that guy's awesome. And he's super clever. And there's a bunch of people that are like successful, but stupid. He's not one of them. He's smart. He is not. He's he's he's real. so you know I give him my and he's young I always forget this I think he's only 27 still I think he'll have north of a hundred million dollars before he's 30 years old is my guess and he's got a mean hook shot all right so my creatorpreneurs I'm looking at so I try to look at people that are in different bubbles because I think if I just look at other business content creator entrepreneur people I will become the the lame the lame Twitter thread boy copycat wannabe bitch boy that's you know what i tell myself in my head so where do i go look instead uh i look at creators in other categories so i'll give you a quick example we had um danny austin on the pod recently and actually a bunch of people who were listening to it uh i saw a bunch of like feedback that was like oh this episode wasn't for me instagram influencer who cares and i was like you guys are missing the point like um yeah she's way more sophisticated yeah i was like uh the goal there was a good there was golden nuggets there so at First, I subscribed to her content because when you look at what mommy influencers on Instagram do, it's a whole different style of content that you can kind of steal ideas from and get inspiration from.

1:01:55That's the first thing. The second thing was every other mom influencer created like, oh, my fashion brand is here. Buy my dresses for the summer. Buy my swimsuits. But whatever. Same, same, same, same, same merch and fashion apparel. She picked an incredible business, which is this scalp care thing that was perfectly aligned with her story of why she's famous in the first place and why people connect with her. It's this high margin thing with only a couple of skews. It doesn't have any of the headaches of fashion. It's a beautiful business and it's crushing. It does$40 million last year in revenue without even pretty significant, without even a lot of ad spend.

1:02:30And so to me, there was a nugget of gold, which is what happens when you align the perfect project selection. That's an example of perfect project selection paired with awesome content creator. What could that business sell for? That should be a multi-hundred million dollar business. That should be a$250 million business if they just carry on. It's perfect project selection. I couldn't admire it more. Perfectly aligned with her, and it's a beautiful business on its own. All right. Others that are more in our niche. So Pomp. I'm inspired by his level of output. The guy's a machine. I'm super weak and inconsistent with output, and he is super regimented.

1:03:09I think he's ex-military too. So he is super regimented with output. And I'm also interested in how he's redefining himself. He's rebranding himself outside of Bitcoin right now. And that's something cool to watch. So I want to see what he does and what works and what doesn't there. Tim Ferriss, also very different than me. He's ultra thoughtful about his brand, which is the opposite of me. He's measured. He's thoughtful. He cites his sources. He does not say yes to a lot of things. He's very picky and choosy. He's the opposite of me in every way. so I like to see what he does because I want to like you know I want to learn through learn from people who have different play styles and then Steve Bartlett same thing he's high style so everything Steve Bartlett does is cool I buy a hat he buys a hat mine looks shitty his looks awesome well he's also like a 6 '1 like pretty ripped looking black guy I mean of course he looks awesome everything he does is the way he talks is in style the way his podcast trailers are done in style his live podcast show.

1:04:09He's got a gospel choir singing as he's talking or some shit like that. I don't even know. I don't even understand it. But I just know that what this guy does, he does in style. I think there's very few people, just like I think there's very few people in business who are funny. I think there's very few people in business that have style. And so I kind of am looking and watching what they're doing and picking little pieces from their game. Dude, I always look at Steve McQueen. You know who Steve McQueen is? He's like this actor that he's dead now, but he called him like the king of cool. And I like look at clothes that he wore.

1:04:37And then everyone wants to dress like him and then you see like on reddit someone's like oh i tried i bought the steve mcqueen outfit and you look at them and you're like oh you look like you look like store brand steve mcqueen like you know like that ain't good sometimes people just look like i'll look at brad pitt and i'll look at his clothes and then i like see people try to dress like him i'm like dude you just don't got it you know what i mean like no matter what i do i will never you're just better looking than me you just you got you got the bod that's sometimes that's how i still feel about some of these guys.

1:05:05And I guess we'll put Steve in the category. When you got that bod and you got that face and you're that tall, you're going to look good no matter what. Fair enough. Here's a really quick one. Someone said, they asked a different question, but I'm going to phrase it. They asked one question, I'm going to phrase it differently, which is, who do you want to live with? Gary Vaynerchuk, Elon Musk, and Mr. Beast. And I wanted to say something. I think they all would be horrible to live with. All three of those guys would be the worst roommates. Totally. Only Elon, because he'll just never be there.

1:05:33Actually, that's the best roommate. The guy who's just got the empty room and you actually got a, you're, you're, you're living in a double, but it's all yours. Like that's, that's actually a pretty good, good deal. I've lived with a handful of highly successful people and I've like hung out with them. I hate going to their house. Their homes are usually a wreck. I hate it. I would not live with any of these guys. If I turned the camera around in this office right now, like people would unsubscribe. The gentleman agreement would be over. People would be like, I never want to hear from this guy again.

1:06:01If somebody lives like this. Like think of your worst episode of hoarders. That's currently what my office looks like. It's an absolute mess. That's disgusting to me. How do you live that way? I just do, bro. I just do. I don't know. I don't know how I live with myself like this. This is crazy. I don't want to be my own room. Your room's like a mullet, man. It looks great like from this angle, but you got all this party nonsense in the back. Well, after I record this, I just leave this room. And so I never come back and clean it. I can't stand that. That's a filth to me. I would not, I could not be around that.

1:06:32is that it? Are we done, Ben? I want to ask one more. I want to ask one more. All right. Because why not? Kevin Newman asked, who are the three folks, he doesn't be three, but who are the people that are having the most fun? I love this question. I think about it all the time because you could ask like, who's the most successful? Who's the smartest? Who's the most popular? I'm interested in having a lot of fun with my life. I only have so much time on this little planet. I want to have fun with it. I want to enjoy it. And so I think this is a great question to ask. I got a couple answers, but I would be really curious to hear yours, because I think yours would be very different than mine.

1:07:07Does anybody come to mind off the top of your head? Rob Dyrdek. And say a few more words about that. Rob Dyrdek, when I think of what I want my life to be, it's basically to have a fantasy factory. So Rob Dyrdek, by the way, he talked a lot about his wife. Not only does she seem awesome, former Playmate model. Not only does she seem awesome, she looks awesome. Yeah. No, Rob Dyrdek, I think he has a ton of fun. And I think he views... I like people who view business a little bit like an art instead of like a McKinsey spreadsheet dork. And I think that this is his art. This is how he expresses himself.

1:07:45And I think he has a shitload of fun. And the way that he's broke all... He had an episode on Fantasy Factory where he broke nine world records or something like that just because... I love people who do just dumb stuff just because it seems fun. So I think Rob Dyrdek is up there. You have Joe Rogan. He seems like he's living. in his life by his own terms. If you take Joe Rogan, you're like, all right, what are the five things you most enjoy doing? He's like, well, I love comedy. I love UFC. I love talking to smart people and learning new shit. I love hunting. And then he's just like, cool. That's my life.

1:08:16He built, he integrated his career, his life, and his friends to be the same thing. Like his friends are other comedians. And then he's like, and people in the UFC, his career, he's like, oh, well, I'll just be the top broadcaster in the UFC. the top podcaster and then I'll be one of the top touring comedians like that sounds great like I'll make a bunch of money and I'll get to do my art like that sounds fun and then any a drew boundaries he's like yeah I love the UFC but I'm not traveling to like Senegal for this pay-per-view like I only do the one we're not going to do that like within a two-hour flight of me or that's it like that's my rule and I'm just going to do that and I'm okay with not doing the rest and I love that you said he's not divorced it seems like he's got his head on straight like I really think he's having a lot of fun.

1:09:03I admire that. Bill Simmons is kind of the same way. He's basically that for sports. And then my Uncle Vinny. I got an Uncle Vinny who's literally his nickname that was given to him was Smiley. So he signs all his signatures. Vinny, quote, Smiley. And he's just, or he'll just sign it Smiley. And like this was people he just met. And the bank's like, sir, I don't think you could do that. He's, I don't know, 70 something years old. And if you hear him, he's like, I'm getting younger every day. he's like, I'm so excited. He wakes up at four in the morning with no alarm because he's so excited about the day.

1:09:35And like, even though the things he would, he's doing, like, he's like, I'm so excited. I'm doing this webinar about multifamily real estate right now. It's like, it's not what I would enjoy doing. And it's not even something that to the outside sounds super glamorous, but the point is he, he is excited about it. He is having the most fun in his life. Like he, he wears what he wants. He dresses the way he wants. He talks the way he wants. he does what he wants with his time, he travels the way he wants and I just feel like that guy his joy meter is like permanently stuck on Max and so I kind of admire that because with Joe Rogan it's easy to say man, yeah if I also had the best podcast and the UFC and all these hobbies and great friends, yeah I would be having a lot of fun too and my Uncle Vinny is a great example because he doesn't have anything that like is the, he doesn't have a lifestyle that's like some celebrity or something like that And he's having all the fun now.

1:10:29And I think that's great because he's not waiting to achieve all this shit to have fun. He's having it now. What type of Indian guy has the name of Vinny? Is that a... Well, his real name is Vinno. Is it like Vinyasa? His real name is Vinno. And then he went Vinny to make it more acceptable in America when he moved here. And then they just were like, bro, this guy never stopped smiling. So his whole company just called him Smiley. And then that was the whole thing. we we named one time in austin we had this really bad office that had rats and we nick and we had them and we nicknamed vinnie and vinnie was an italian guy like and they would come in at night like oh hey the fat guy left us some cheese and that was the name of our office rat was vinnie and he vinnie vinnie from new york and uh that's what i think if you haven't named an office rat or mouse.

1:11:20You have it grinded. Have you lived? You're not on that grind. All right. Q &A. This is the easiest stuff ever to talk about. So maybe we should just do this every time. Now I know why Gary Vaynerchuk did that. The whole show was Ask Gary Vee. All you have to do is just answer dumb questions. Yeah, this was fun. We should do more. All right. That's the pod.

1:11:46I 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.

1:12:02Hey, 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.

1:12:32If 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 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.