I talk to Ben about creating luck, his barbell method, plus 6 half-baked business ideas

22:47But in a very lightweight way, right? Like it's very light communication. You're not sitting on a 40 minute Zoom call with them. Yeah. And I do say, I do go by the I reply thing. Although since I told you that, and since I think you said on the podcast, every time I don't reply. I feel very guilty because sometimes I just sometimes I forget or sometimes it's just hard when you, you know, when you have a lot of texts and then and then, you know, and then the barbell is just go spend more time in person with people. So I haven't done it as much as I want to, but I I think longer hangs. I think this is also a David Sender idea, which is you do longer hangs.

23:22I think Coogan was the one who told John Coogan from Technology Builder, TBPN. He was the one who told us this idea or he said it out loud, at least to me. And it was like, the middle zone is death. It's death by a thousand zoom calls. So like a 40 minute zoom call or 45 minute zoom call is basically the worst of both worlds. It's like, kind of takes a lot of energy to do it, but you don't really build that much of a bond or relationship in it. You don't even get into much depth. You would rather be like just quick, funny memes and texts or sending tweets to people just to kind of like very lightweight, takes you 10 seconds or go hang out with them for, you know, five hours, just go fly to them and hang out with them for five hours or go drive up there and go, go, go grab lunch, go for a walk and then, you know, have a coffee.

24:08And like, if you do that, you actually get like way more of a, of a connection and a bond and more insight, more, it's a different type of hang. And it's actually, it sounds like it's, you know, it's the equivalent of 10 zoom calls, But no, it's like the equivalent of like 200 Zoom calls when you do it, right? And so you want to spend your time on either end of the barbell, the lightweight side, or like go really in depth. There's a good example of this, by the way. Chris Saka used to do this. I don't know if you know this story, but he was an angel investor and he moved out of San Francisco, which at the time made no sense.

24:40It's like all the angel investors in San Francisco, that's where all the startups were. But he goes, you know what? If I'm in San Francisco, I'm just constantly playing defense. I'm just taking all these random coffee meetings and kind of feels very surface level. It's just, it's not differentiated. So he moves to Truckee, which is near Lake Tahoe. He buys a cabin and he gets a second cabin, like a guest house right next to his cabin. And what he did was he would, if he found somebody who was interesting, he would like make a bigger effort. He would invite them to come to stay for a weekend in his cabin and let's hang out.

25:11And founders are like, oh, that's cool. I'll go to Lake Tahoe. That sounds like fun. And then he would spend like 48 hours with this person. They're in the hot tub together. They're skiing together. They're talking, they're drinking, they're eating, they're cleaning up. They're doing all this different stuff. And by the end of that, like they actually feel like good friends, not like you would get at a coffee meeting. Plus he would really understand their business. And this is how he got into the Uber deal and how he got into the Instagram deal was he invited the founder of Uber and the founder of Instagram to come hang out for the weekend.

25:39And it was in that weekend where they kind of like solidified the bond. He understood the business in depth. He knew really how good this founder was and what they were really made of, which you couldn't get in a 20, 30 minute coffee meeting. And he knew to back up the truck and invest. And I think it's also cool to just go hang out with people and see how they live. I think we've talked about this a lot. It's like, you know, you go see how someone like Monish Pabrai lives when we go to his house and hang out with him. And you can taste their lifestyles and decide whether or not it's actually interesting.

26:07Right. By the way, I'm looking at the luck sheet right now. This is a great example. Your mission was to grow MFM at one point. So you were spending a couple of months trying to grow My First Million. And you were like, dude, you guys don't bring enough guests on. The guest episodes do well. You, but you and Sam are pretty lazy. You don't like to reach out to guests. And so you're just like, you know, it doesn't really happen. So you went back, you looked at the archive and you were like, all right, let me find somebody who was awesome on the pod before, bring them back. And so you found that Jesse Itzler was on a year or two ago.

26:38You tried to get him on. He didn't reply. He didn't reply again. And then you saw that he had like, I don't know, his calendar or his book was coming out. And you basically bought a hundred of them proactively. And you were like, hey, I think your calendar is awesome. I bought a hundred of these and I'm going to give them away on my first million. You know, just keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing what you're doing. This is great. And he replies to that because he's like, oh, dude, somebody just came and bought a hundred of my products because they think it's awesome. Like, thank you. You know, I appreciate that.

27:06And by the way, yeah, like I'm happy to come on again. And then he comes on the podcast and it reignited maybe a relationship that was kind of dormant. And you've done that a bunch where you'll like, somebody comes out with a product, you buy it, you hype it up, you celebrate it. And then that makes them feel good. And that leads to like good things. But all this stuff is like pretty unpredictable when you're doing it, but it works out. Yeah. I think like, you know, it is important to say none of this is transactional. You know, I kind of do this again. Goal is to be useful. I want to help people.

27:33Again, I think we all win together. Like this is not a zero sum game. You know, we help people, they help us, et cetera. That's how it goes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also, you know, for every one thing I'm saying, that led to this. There's 11 other things that didn't lead to anything and we're totally fine with that. It was just fun to do. It was nice to do. So we did it. You know, that's all. There was no expectation of something happening except for you just know like, hey, if I do a bunch of great stuff with great people, like good things are gonna come out of that. So that's the luck thing.

28:03You sent this doc with other stuff on it. I want to, let's talk about some of these other things. I know normally, basically you always do business ideas, but I feel like you and I talk business nonstop. It's just constantly business ideas. So I made a list of things that I wish existed, basically stuff I want to be customer number one of that I want to talk to you about and show you and see what you think. So things that, things that don't exist today, but you kind of wish you low key wish existed. Yeah. And you know, I'm an early adopter. So someone makes these, I'm going to buy them. Ben tries weird stuff.

28:38He'll be like, oh, I'm eating this peanut butter that's made out of caramel only. And I'm like, what? He'll buy any product that's like weird, but there's a chance it's amazing. Most likely sucks, but there's a chance it's amazing. So I'm guessing these ideas are going to be like that. Probably weird, probably suck, but there's a chance it would be amazing. Am I right on that? Yeah. And one out of 10 hits and, you know, hey, I'm glad I tried 10 random peanut butter protein things, you know? All right. So this is Ben's random wishlist. Let's go. So I've got, I've got three ideas. I've got 10 ideas, but the first one I'll give you is courtside seats.

29:13So whenever you, obviously, you know what courtside seats are, whenever you're watching an NBA game, they always show, you know, at the Knicks games, they show Timothy Chalamet every time going nuts with Kylie Jenner. But I just think there's way more to do around courtside seats. let me give you three i have three courtside seat spinoff ideas so one okay i want to make a youtube channel or basically all you do is buy courtside seats and you interview someone courtside every game goal is figure out what do they do how much money do they make how do they make their money uh and all you do all you have to do is buy a courtside seat and you immediately can get someone every single game what do you think okay so the upside is you get to be courtside so worst case scenario, your YouTube channel fails, but you got to go court side at a bunch of games.

29:57It does use that, that thing that seems to work, which is on TikTok. People go and like, stop like a rich person in their car. They're like, Hey, just nice car, man. I just want to ask, you know, what do you do? And then they say something and it creates like, you know, this one minute thing that tends to, tends to go viral or people like that stuff. So you're basically piggybacking off of that. But the investment here is pretty substantial, right? Like how much is, how much are courtside seats anyways like how much would this even cost to do 40 there's 40 what 40 court uh 40 home games a year so what are you spending to do this it probably depends where you're doing i think if you're doing it in orlando you're probably spending 100 grand if you're doing it in new york you're probably spending 400 grand 500 grand which you could probably go get like a fan duel or seat geek or somebody up front to uh to sponsor you for this and be like hey look i'm gonna you know this is the this is the concept i bet you could pitch them enough to be like this is going to be kind of like a a show where you're the main sponsor and i think this will do really well i kind of think you could get it paid for for you don't need that you don't need all of them paid for but like enough to do four or five and then once you get some views then you can kind of go from there it's not a bad idea and then the the tangent i have on is like why are there not courtside seats at the apple demo day yc demo day open ai like why is timothy chalamet not sitting courtside there like they should definitely have timothy chalamet or whoever sitting there needs to be concerts right like you know like pretty much any event it is kind of interesting to know who's who's up front who's there who came uh i'm kind of interested in that you know what i want is not the interview though.

31:34I just want to know literally like, this is my version of LinkedIn. Like whenever I'm watching a Warriors game, I'll basically pause the screen and I'll try to see like, do I recognize anybody or who are these people that are sitting there? Because it's kind of like my first million, like all those people have some interesting success story, right? You don't get to be courtside without an interesting success story. And I want to know who those people are. Like I would pay, I'd be, I'd gladly pay 20 bucks a month. If somebody was just photographing who's courtside at the games and then just telling me what those people who those people are and what they do like it's my version of like paparazzi or tmz that i actually give a shit about it's like this weird mix of like business and basketball very niche but i would do it yeah the other day it was like a highlight of my week i was watching the thunder pacers game and i saw a guy that we know on twitter sitting courtside fist pumping mike beckham from simple modern i was like damn that's cool yeah i saw that that's cool all right what's your next half baked idea all right so the next one i call lunch bounty before we got to buy lunch bounty.com so the idea is basically this you've seen things like um you've seen these social networks where basically you can buy all your tokens are available and to claim them you get a hundred thousand dollars right that was bit cloud right yeah and then we've heard these stories of people where they spend you know thirty thousand dollars a hundred thousand dollars to go get lunch with someone like I believe Warren Buffett or Warren Buffett or I've heard stories where people used to pay$35 ,000 to get dinner with Peter Thiel and it changed their entire life but there's no real marketplace to find those opportunities like maybe you'll occasionally find them on eBay or their Twitter I want to create a marketplace that's basically like okay if there's a hundred thousand dollars sitting here and Bill Ackman all you have to do is hit yes and then your lunch is you know Ben is willing to pay$100 ,000 to get lunch with you.

33:25It's to have a marketplace where it's just a one-hour lunch, and someone can basically preemptively bid on how much they're willing to pay for lunch with X. I like this. When you first said it, I didn't know where you were going with this, but this is actually kind of an interesting, simple idea. By the way, I think the right lens for this is these are non-serious business ideas. We have a bunch of serious, more boring business ideas, but these are just fun ideas. And the key to this one, by the way, is charity. Like he is like everything as a charity. Yeah, exactly. So you need basically, and are you saying do it permissionlessly?

33:57So like, are you saying you'll go, you'll just put up Bill Ackman lunch, New York. You get it to$50 ,000 of somebody who wants to go have lunch with Bill Ackman. And then you basically are telling Bill Ackman, Hey, by the way, we're auctioning this off. It's at 50 ,000. The proceeds will go to your favorite charity. Would you be, are you willing to honor it? Are you willing to do it? The guy doesn't get charged anything if you don't do it. and you're basically going to like publicly pressure them to do this, to get it off the ground. Yeah, exactly. That's the exact idea. You know, it's sort of a gray area, but how mad are they really going to be?

34:30You're raising a bunch of money for their, you know, charity of choice. I think you could do this. I think you get away with this. I know Andrew Wilkinson did this not, not long ago. I think he did like a$20 ,000 lunch or something like that. We know that Monish Pabrai paid$650 ,000 to go to lunch with Warren Buffett. If you just think about like, if you had, let's just pretend you had two of these a week, right? Maybe you have it as like a successful person and then maybe either an actor, celebrity musician, or like an athlete, something like that, but even two a week. And let's say the average one of these would go for what?

35:02Like you think 25K? 10 to 50, yeah,$25 ,000, good ballpark. So you're going to raise basically two and a half million dollars for charity. If you could even just do two of these every week. yeah I think it's I actually think it's a good idea it is a crazy idea but I think it's a good idea yeah exactly I think if you're trying to do like fun slash social impact this is kind of an interesting idea and by the way you would end up meeting all these people because you created this like whatever this thing is the the lunch program yeah exactly if that's my idea yeah all right what else you got well do this one everyone needs their Birkin bag I'm surprised you even know what a Birkin bag is.

35:42What are you thinking here? I don't know much about Birkin bags other than it sounds cool and I think it's really expensive. So for me, what that was is one of my buddies started this company called StockX and he called me, I don't know, a year ago and he was like, dude, I'm starting a new company. We make these awesome collectibles. And what we do is we basically, the website is I think ghostwrite.com. And what we do is we basically make figurines of fame. We do licensing deals and we make figurines of famous people. Very similar to this thing called KWS. And by figurines, are these like small figurines?

36:20Are they big? What are they? Like they're plastic? I think he makes both. But for this specific one, he calls me out of the blue. Six months. I think they're glass, plastic, a mix of everything. But six months ago, he calls me out of the blue. He goes, dude, I know you're a huge Phoenix Suns fan. I've got something just for you. I was like, what is it? You're calling the right guy. and he goes you know we're doing a special run of six foot tall figurines it's like all right i have no idea where i'd put a six foot figurine uh that's i think made out of glass that's like a nutcracker that you put at the door right like it's like i have no clue but hey you got the word phoenix suns and like honestly you might have sold me already and he goes um so it's we're doing a special run it's only and only a certain number of nba players and we're making a devin booker so a six foot tall Devin Booker figurine.

37:11And, you know, it's like, all right, how much? Like, you know, I guess I've been looking for my Birkin bag. So how much? And, you know, he goes$10 ,000, which, you know, I don't think I've spent$10 ,000 on myself really on anything. You know, outside of like, you know, investing in Bitcoin, I can't think of the last time I've spent$10 ,000 on something. And I don't even think about it. I said yes immediately. And then later, I told my wife and I was like, and by the way, this is like a one of one or there's like going to be a thousand. It's a one of one. So I'm the only guy with the Devin Booker and you know, I don't know what I'm going to do it.

37:49I mean, it's, so I'm the only guy with the Devin Booker and I was like, okay, it's going to be cool. Cause maybe one day he's going to call me. He's gonna be like, dude, I respect that you own the other one of one. Like that's cool. Devin Booker is going to call you. That's the dream. The dream is that Devin Booker is going to call him, FaceTime me one day and be pretty fired. Hey man, I heard you bought that six foot figurine of me. Yeah, exactly. Do you want to be friends? That's what you thought was going to happen? I mean, that's a terrible dream now that I say it, but that's what I was hoping for.

38:15Right. There's a small part of you. And then I told my wife, I was like, yeah. So I got this thing coming in six months. I don't know when it's coming, but like it's from a buddy. But, you know, here's the good news. Here's the good news. It's a six foot tall figurine. And the even better news is that it was a gift. but the, you know, unfortunately, like I left out the fact that it was a$10 ,000 gift. It was a gift. So, you know, it's kind of letting me know my new take, which is that like, you know, everyone needs their Birkin bag. So, you know, the idea is basically like empower everyone to make that crazy purchase.

38:49It makes absolutely no sense. And just, you know, just call it a gift, you know, tell your wife, it's a gift. I'll tell you why it's a gift. It's a gift that I bought for myself. You know, you, I think you might be onto something, right? So collectibles is now a bigger, bigger space, right? One of the investments we missed on, which I think still kind of eats at us a little bit, is whatnot. We had the ability to invest in whatnot pretty early on. We tried to, the guy was like, I don't know, there's not enough room in the round. And we didn't really push it. We're like, okay, well, we hope, you know, we want to, and then we didn't really follow up.

39:26it's now how much is whatnot worth now i think at the time whatnot was like valued at 50 or 60 million i think it's five i think it's five billion dollars now five billion and i think they just said that they've done five billion in sales on their thing if you don't know what whatnot is it's basically you open an app it's a live video of someone basically opening up like a pack of pokemon cards or nba trading cards and they're you basically you buy it so you push a button you Apple pay you could buy the pack and he'll be like oh Sean all right Sean you bought the pack all right man good luck it opens up the pack in front of you shows you what it is and then it mails you the cards after the fact so you kind of like you just shop live and then they open the pack you see it's like a lottery thing you see if you win or not and then they mail you the thing after the fact it's kind of like a crazy idea but it's all collected and they've sold five billion dollars in the last I don't know yet 12 months or something like that of collectibles so like Like people are getting their Birkin bags.

40:22For some people, it's Pokemon cards. For some people, it's NBA trading cards. For you, it's your statue of Devin Booker. For your wife, it might be an actual Birkin bag. I think the question is who doesn't have their Birkin yet? So like basically what niche does it? And we have a buddy that is going pretty hard at tech collectibles. So he's trying to buy like the original Macintosh or like, you know, a piece of the first SpaceX Falcon. Stuff that there's not really a market for now, it just feels like random memorabilia. But I think over time, tech has become so much more important in culture, right?

41:01Like growing up, tech was a side thing, but now it's like you got movies, you know, like the social network and everybody knows who these CEOs are. You know who Zuckerberg is, you know who Elon is. They're like the most followed people on the planet in some cases. is I think that tech collectibles is going to be a big thing. And our friend who's doing this, I'm sort of jealous that they're doing this because I think this is a smart idea. Yeah. I think that's a great idea, but I am curious. What's your working bag? Like what, what have you bought? I have one. that's insane. Um, what is the definition here?

41:35So it's gotta be something that's totally irrational, right? Like it's not about the utility of the product. Like I bought a piano, but like I bought a piano, I play the piano. It's an instrument. Like, yeah, I could have bought a cheaper one, but I bought a more expensive one. I think that doesn't count. I think it's also got to be kind of like status or collection driven. And I don't know if I'm a collector. I'm not a car guy. Not a watch guy. You did buy a Crypto Punk like, you know, three years ago. I did. I did. But I didn't buy it. I mean, we bought that just as like a marketing gag for Milk Road.

42:09We didn't really. It's not like I actually was like, oh, my God. God, I love the art. Yeah. It's never been a thing for me. Yeah. You know what I would do? I would do, if musicians did their version of Birkins. So like, if a musician was like, hey, we have like a, kind of like a one of one collectible, maybe it's a recording or it's a freestyle or it's like a variation of the song and they're only gonna, you know, they sell one of them and you get to collect it as a piece of art that's music. I would be pretty into that. I think that's pretty cool. maybe mfm needs to come up with its own barking bag that we can uh offer the biggest mfm fans i'll be a six-foot statue of you dude all right let's take a quick break because i gotta tell you a story let me tell you about the first time i tried to run payroll for my team i was using a traditional bank and you know the type it's got a janky interface it's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours and i hit send and it froze they flagged the transaction they locked my account they put be on hold for 45 minutes.

43:09And then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column in a and evolve bank and trust members fdic all right what else you got you got any other good ones what's your best one what's your what's your best idea okay i think my best idea i've got a bunch of good ones but i'll give you a great one so i think you know i've been thinking a lot about when you're post-economic which i am not but i hope to be at some point in the future the defined post-economic what does that mean people don't know that you know basically if you've made over$10 million and you don't have to work, what are you going to spend your time doing?

44:11Like, I would say post economic is when you no longer make decisions based on money. That's both spending decisions. Like you decide what you want. The price doesn't really matter. Right. And this happens first at like, you buy guac at Chipotle, you don't care that it's two bucks, then you buy, you can go to any restaurant, buy anything. You go to any store, buy anything. And it just levels up from there. You travel first class. You don't even think about it. You travel private. You don't even think about it, right? Like spending is one side. And then the other side is earning, meaning you decide what to do with your time, not based on how much money it's going to make you.

44:42That's to me, that's post-economic. Yeah. So like once you're there, you could, you basically, you have all these nice things and you just quickly get used to them, right? It's like you move into a nicer house after a week. You totally, you just don't even, you know, for lack of a better word, you don't even care, right? It's like, yeah, I'm used to it. Get a nicer car. So I've been thinking about what are actual experiences that change? People want, and I think when you're there, one, you want to feel pain again. You kind of want to go back to where you were when you were starting something, when everything was hard, and you want to feel pain.

45:19So my big idea is Survivor. So we all, obviously, you know what Survivor is, basically a month-long TV show where you go in the middle of nowhere and you have to compete. But imagine a world where we basically created an island where you have to pay$100 ,000 to go compete in a real-life survivor. So you get dropped in the middle of nowhere for a whole month. You pay$100 ,000 to be there. And the winner wins money, but the whole idea is basically an actual survivor that you pay to be there. All your friends and family can watch. It's live-streamed. And it's purely for when those people are post-economic.

45:54And they're sick and tired of flying all over the world. They're sick and tired of just staying at random hotels. Like, you know, it's just not that interesting. Like go back to square one and go beyond Survivor. You know, I think when you first said it, I was like, this sounds kind of dumb. But actually, you know, we have so many friends that basically sell their company and immediately start training for Ironman, right? Or triathlons. and actually if you want to get in great shape like or like an ultra race right where you're going to run 100 miles or 50 miles 50 miles or something like that and you know like marathoners and ultra racers like they're in good shape in one dimension but it's not actually like good for your body like they end up just kind of shin splints and just sort of destroying their body a little bit they don't get in like very good aesthetic shape to do it right you don't like put on muscle, you kind of like skinny yourself out, but they do it because they want to do something hard.

46:51And you're right. You kind of feel alive and you feel tough and you got a story to tell and you challenge yourself. And like, you do this like voluntary hardship, cold plunge, same thing, voluntary hardship that you get to show. And so I actually think that you're probably right that there's a number of people who would sign up for like a combination of it's a digital detox, right? Because you're not going to have your phone, internet, you're going to be totally disconnected. It's hard. And so you're going to get that like hardship experience without having to like train to run a long race. And I think it's like transformative rite of passage type of thing, which it seems like people need more and more now that like, the whole world is so easy, push a button and someone will like literally deliver a platter of nachos to your door from DoorDash, right?

47:37Like the life has never been easier in one sense, which creates a craving for hard. But if hard is not natural, then you have to sort of create an artificial hard. And I think that's what this is. It's an artificial hard. And I think that's why people like this, David Goggins, Jocko Willink. Like, I think that's why people gravitate towards that type of stuff, because there's some itch they're trying to scratch. And it seems like you're saying, here's a version of that pay 50 or a hundred grand. And you're going to go for, what did you say 30 days yeah 30 days that's all it takes 30 days and you have to survive just with your own bare necessities on an island yeah you know this works you take it to other franchises too right it's like love island it's like don't go on match don't use matchmaking this is actually just like branded as part of the game as part of the show is what you're saying i'm just saying you take all these all these popular reality tv shows and people just go pay to have their own versions of them.

48:32Uh, cause it's better than, you know, dude, love is blind. I swear. I can't believe there's not just like a love is blind tour going around city to city where people who are single and see love is blind. They're like, all right, I want to do it. I want to go on the pods. I'm going to meet somebody that way. And I'll spend, you know, basically three or four days doing this and then come out and then I date that person, trim the like marriage part. Cause that's the drama for TV. That doesn't make any sense. It's like, Oh, we propose and we have to get married in 20 days. like you could take that part out but just the like the pods experience if i was single i would want to do that and that's kind of an insane thing i can't believe that's not on tour i mean i for real life survivor i'd pay a hundred grand right now to go there and you know basically like it was just like you don't pay a hundred grand i could just drop you off somewhere dude and i'll pick you up for 30 days yeah i i think that i think like reality tv uh done well for people that want to pay for that is a great idea.

49:27Yeah. It creates the desire and the curiosity of like, could I do it? How would I do it? Right. Like, and so if you just made that accessible to people, yeah, for sure. For sure. People would want to do that. And by the way, is this like, are you saying this is a business or what are you, what are you saying here? I'm saying it's a fun, fun, maybe it's a business, you know, maybe it could be like the new Tough Mudder. It's like, you know, back in the day when Tough Mudder was pretty big. Maybe it could be the new Tough Mudder. It's just a five, 10 day experience. You know, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think you got to bring the price down.

49:59I mean, a hundred thousand is really, it's very high. I think you really, I think if you did this for$10 ,000, this might work not to, not to cheapen your idea, but I feel like you could get some scale with this thing. Cause what does it cost you to run it? It's like, you just need like a medic and then there could be like 20 people doing this together. They could live as a tribe. In fact, it's probably better as a tribe and not you on your own, right? Yeah, it's probably way better, like your five friends as a tribe. Are you doing the whole thing? Are you voting people off or no? It's just 30 days of survival.

50:31No, you're voting people off. I think you got to do the whole thing. Oh, it's the whole thing. Okay, gotcha. I think it's the whole thing. All right. You got some more on here. So let's do Cool Carpal Tunnel Brand. Oh, I know what this is. Yeah. Ben, put your hands up right now. If you're on YouTube, so Ben right now, I've never seen Ben's right hand because every time I get on a call with Ben, he's wearing this Michael Jackson glove. This absolute OJ Strangler glove on his right hand at all times. And it's because you had like a carpal tunnel issue. And so he just wears that all day. Honestly, I don't even know if I have carpal tunnel anymore.

51:11I'm just used to wearing the glove and I like to fit. So I'm like, oh, you know, people make cool batting gloves for baseball. It's just my thing now. Now we just need cool gloves for working. Like, where's the cool carpal tunnel brand? Okay, so I guess I can explain this. You started having pain. You Googled how to fix it, and then this came up? I mean, I think it's like one of those WebMD things, though, where it's like, oh, one day I was like, oh, my hand feels kind of weird when I'm typing. Maybe I've got bad form, and then you just go down this whole thing and you start watching YouTube videos about, oh, maybe I have carpal tunnel.

51:44And then I went to Amazon and I probably bought, spent$500 on 50 pairs of these gloves that I now wear every day. We were talking about Touchland the other day with Harley from Shopify. And the thing about Touchland is they took a very boring, sterile category, hand sanitizer, literally sterile. And the founder rebranded it, remade it into something that was kind of sexy, kind of cool, smelled good. And then they started collabing, made the designs look good. They started collaborating with Disney and others and licensing the IP. And I think about like actually all kind of like braces, like, you know, basically like you're talking about your wrist brace, your wrist glove.

52:27I have like a knee thing. There's like arm sleeves. There's like, you know, a lot of people wear these because they have pain and they have plantar fasciitis. They have knee pain. They have elbow pain. They have wrist pain. They have frozen shoulder, whatever it is. And actually all of those are very ugly and very sterile looking. similar to hand sanitizer. And you're, you're probably right that somebody could just make a cooler brand in that space, charge more for it. But like, if you want to, it's, it is fashion. It doesn't have to be ugly. It is a thing you're wearing. Why not make it look better and see what comes out of that?

53:01Yeah, I mean, I think it's a no, I think it's a no brainer. Again, I kind of want to hide this glove when I wear it, but you know, Hey, I think it's a no brainer. Yeah. But although I don't know what glove would look cool on you. Like what would I do to that glove to make it not look like you're wearing the Michael Jackson glove? I don't really know. If it was a different color, would that really change anything? It's hard to say. I think it needs Johnny Ive. Like, you know, if we had, if we had$5 billion, we could get Johnny Ive on it. All right. What else should we talk about? I've got one more that I think we should hit, which is, see at the top of this episode, we were talking about how I went to K Academy.

53:37You know, basically went and spent a week at Duke basketball, competed really hard. And the cool thing about it is Coach K was there the whole time. He's sitting there. He doesn't talk much. He doesn't talk much, but he does give like two or three speeches. And, you know, he said one thing in his speech that I wrote down that I thought was really good. Or he said two things. One of them is part of the half-baked idea. The other one is just interesting. He said, you know, at Duke we pursue moments, which I wrote down because I think it's really, you know, basically he's like, everything's a moment.

54:06I want to hold these moments that are awesome. So, you know, when I kind of took that and said, all right, I want to pursue moments. I think that's a cool mantra. What does that mean? That sounds cool. What do you really mean about, like, what's an example of that? What do you mean by pursue moments? I think it's basically just, like, be present. And, like, you're looking for, like, enjoy very specific things and remember those things. But also, I was just like, oh, that sounds cool. It's, like, a cool thing to tell my mom that I experienced. Yeah, I do like that with pursue moments. I think that like, I think about like, whether it's with my kids or it's like, you know, yeah, you're going to do a business for five years.

54:40That's a long time. And like, if you just, if I probably just told myself that like, all right, I'm just trying to pursue this moment. What's the moment I'm trying to pursue? Or like, if I'm in the moment, really pursue it, really go, really go for it, lean into it. I think I kind of like that. All right. I mean, I buy that. Go ahead. And then the second part was like, you know, he was talking about how he worked with Kobe and he was basically telling this story about how he made Kobe cry before they played in this USA gold medal game, I think in 2008 when they beat Spain. And he was talking about how he motivated him.

55:14So I went around and at this K Academy, everyone there is like an ex-Duke player. So there's 50 ex-Duke guys just kind of walking around that you can talk to. So I went and asked five of them, what was Coach K so good at? like what was the A++ at? And everyone just says motivation. And I know you're like a motivation guy. I know you're a Tony Robbins disciple. And everyone talks about how he just made these incredible custom videos. So I'd be like, all right, before this game, he's going to bring me in and he's going to have this custom thing that he built just for me, just to focus on my hustle or my intensity.

55:55So I kind of had this idea, which is like Coach K in a Box, which is with AI, could you essentially make something that does custom motivational videos based on all these inputs that exactly you need today? So it's like, okay, if I wore this device and it knew everything about me, I just want a custom motivational video right now for this workout I'm about to do or for the sales call I'm about to take. So that's the idea, like Coach K in a Box. And I know you have a bunch of thoughts. Let me hear them. well when I was at Duke my roommate Trevor was trying to walk onto the basketball team and he ended up being the last guy cut so he didn't end up getting on the team but he was a manager for the team for a few years so he would tell me all the time about coach K like yeah what is he doing all that and I had the same question like you right like this guy's the I think he's the all-time winningest college basketball coach he was the men's he's the Olympic basketball coach for, for a long time.

56:52So, okay. He's a goat. Okay. So, you know, I think you asked the right question. Like what makes this guy so great? Because I want to learn from that. I want to learn from the goats. And Trevor told me, he's like, dude, he would do this stuff in the locker room. So what he would do is I thought when a coach gives a motivational talk, it's, they walk in, they say, all right, everybody listen up. Like we got a big game. We want to get out there, give it your all. Are you going to give it your all? Yeah. No, let me hear you say it. Yeah, I thought that's what it is. No, no, no, no. Here's how it worked.

57:21He was like, before Coach K enters the room, they dim the lights, they would turn on the big screen that they had in their locker room. And it would be edited video, like kind of like what a 16-year-old kid on TikTok would make. And it's basically a spliced video that was like, let's say it was them playing the last time they played this team. But then inter splice was like footage from Braveheart. it'd be like the speech at Braveheart the war scene spliced in with the game and you're like oh it's kind of cheesy but they're like no no no trust me in the moment that shit hit hard it's like the music the splicing the speech the footage of you and then at the end literally Coach K came out face painted like Braveheart rolled a ball onto the ground and Coach K's old like he was like in his 70s he had like double hip replacement and he would dive on the ball and like Basically, like, you know, like the ultimate sign of hustle in basketball is diving for a loose ball.

58:19And he would run into the locker room, face banded, dive onto the ball, screaming and be like, let's fucking go kill these guys right now. And people would be like, whoa, like it was total shock value for the team. And he would really light into them and get into them on that. And so he would do the motivational up videos. And then last time we did or two years ago, we did our basketball camp that me and you do. We call it Hoop Group, where we basically take 25 or 30 of the most ambitious founders we know. Like there's like, I don't know, half the people there are billionaires, but they love to play basketball.

58:51And we went to go visit Duke campus and we played in Duke Stadium, Cameron Indoor Stadium. And when we were there, we were asking one of the ex-players who's now a coach. We were like, can you tell us a great Coach K story? And he did. He goes, I was on the team. I was a captain and I had a bad game. and after that bad game, the next day at practice, I thought maybe Coach K would kind of like rip into me a little bit or tell me I needed to play better. That's kind of what I expected. And you know, if you do what people expect, you don't really get much of a response, right? They're ready for it.

59:21It's like somebody who's, they're tensed up. You can't really like, you know, push them over. They're ready for it. And so he's like, he doesn't say anything during the practice to me. Doesn't talk to me. And we're practicing. I'm kind of like, huh, he didn't say anything. And then he calls me over to this room and they have this film room where they normally like review game footage. And he's like, that room has like six TV screens or eight TV screens in the room. And I walk in and it's, my face is on every single one of the screens. And it's just me and him in there. And it was basically a slideshow of his facial expressions from the last game.

59:59And it was just his face kind of whining. I didn't get a call, being, I missed that shot, kind of being bummed about it. I got taken out of the game. I had bad body language there. Then in the second half started, I was having a bad game. So I was just kind of, you know, I was checked out when we were doing the team huddle. And then again, I fouled this guy and I disagree with the call and I'm pouting. I'm doing this with my hands being like, oh, come on, man. And they froze it on that screen. And he goes, Coach K looked at me and he goes, if I ever see the palms of your hands again, you will never play for this team again.

1:00:32He's like, I don't ever. He goes, you're a captain. You're a man. You're a leader. Leaders don't look like this. They don't beg and whine and pout for something. You need to carry yourself like a leader. He goes, I don't care what you do. I don't care if the ball goes in or not, but you will not act like this again. And he goes, dude, that burned into my skull. He's like, I would never do that again. And I thought that was an incredible story. I was like, dude, this is a, whenever I talk to people about like, oh, what's it like to work with Elon or Steve Jobs? I'm looking for a story like this.

1:01:07What do they actually do that's different? That's something I would never do, that I would never think to do. But it makes sense when they do it that like, holy shit, yeah, that would actually like shift the way that somebody operates and somebody works. I couldn't believe that story. Do you remember that one? Yeah, it's insane. And that's like, that's what I want. I'm like, okay, he's a good motivator, but like, tell me the stories that he, like, I want to, like, I'm like, oh, we should just go write a book where you go get 25 Coach K stories that are just about how he motivates because it's insane.

1:01:36Yeah, exactly. And also just kind of makes you think like, damn, I wouldn't even think to do that. Like how much, you know, there's no rule against something like that. But like what a, it just feels against the norms. But I guess like as you build up your own credibility, it's almost like lean into that power and basically use your credibility. Like he could kind of say anything. He could do anything kind of crazy and get away with it because he's Coach K, I guess. there's a method to the madness. I wonder, like, I wonder if he was doing that stuff early on. And I wonder if he got more bold about it as he went along, but I'm with you, dude.

1:02:12If I had a coach K in my life, I'd be good. I don't know if I could do the motivational speech. Cause like, I think part of it is you need like the B roll needs to be me. Like playing sport, like the B roll of me, just like typing emails, like writing a document. Like, I don't, I don't think there's any you you could play fort minor on that track it's not going to do anything for me it might it might i don't know yeah and also there was this one story like you know a few years ago the heat had that miraculous run of the finals and i specifically remember this moment where this guy bam out of bios like up there at the end talk yeah they're like interviewing him because he's the eastern conference finals mvp and he's just he gets on the mic and he goes dude you donis Haslam had this insane video for us that changed how we approached game seven when they beat the Celtics.

1:03:01And I spent the past two years like trying to figure out what that video was. So at this camp, the last thing about K Academy is I went up to Justice Winslow, who played for the Heat. I was like, dude, what are the Heat do to motivate? Like what was in that video? He's like, I wasn't on the team then, but I could text some guys. He's like, but I'll tell you now, it is exactly like the thing you heard from coach K it is going to be something so custom it's going to be Braveheart it's going to be Fort Minor it's going to be like they're pulling out all the stops and uh you know it's like in that setting and ever since then I'm like dude I just want to like next hoop group I just want to experience that for like 10 minutes that's my only ask you know oh that's too good um I love that story yeah I really love that story that's like that's in my like hall of fame hall of fame of like, you know, motivational stories.

1:03:55What else you got? Do you want to do anything else or are we going to wrap up? Let's see. I think we should wrap on one final thing, which is, you know, earlier you were talking about Club LTV, which was awesome. You know, I think we had 150, 200 people in it back in the day meeting, I think once every other week to talk business, meet each other. You know, I think we should bring that thing back in some way. What do you think? What would we do? So we don't, I don't think we need to do the e-comm version of it anymore. So here's my thesis. Thesis is a very fancy word for what I'm about to say.

1:04:28So let me bring that expectation down. MFM has roughly a million people who listen to it. Maybe not all regularly, but that's like kind of our reach is a million people who are all entrepreneurially. They're all what I call like entrepreneurs with a sense of humor, who I think we attract. People who are entrepreneurial and they have a sense of humor. And so my thinking is, I'm never gonna meet all those people. Honestly, I don't really wanna meet a million people. That's not really my goal. However, the top 1 % of our audience is like a fascinating group of people, right? They're very interesting.

1:05:07It's gonna be like people who are like CEOs of public companies. It's some dude in Wichita who's got a$40 million like chemicals plant that he runs. There's a guy who's got this like tutoring business, the side hustle thing that's whatever there's a bunch of interesting people in that top one percent i think what would be dope is if we did club ltv again which was like your thing you would curate it was a curated group i think that's key because you want everybody else in there to be somebody you're happy to have met right like that's the goal um take the top one percent of mfm listeners and then basically do like what like a happy hour kind of like a speed dating thing that's that's kind of the way we did it before, which was like you meet once a month roughly.

1:05:47And Ben kind of puts people in groups and then you go, you talk with a specific prompt and then he switches it. He shuffles the groups. And so you meet in an hour, you're going to meet a bunch of cool people and you're going to learn one or two things. And I think that would be awesome. We should bring that back. Yeah, we should do that. By the way, people don't know Club LTV stands in e-com LTV means lifetime value. It's like the key metric there. So we made it Club LTV, which is basically the name, the gimmick of the thing. But the funny thing was Ben would always do these like, he would pursue those moments.

1:06:19He would make these little things that would make it fun. So like you would send everybody like custom Zoom backgrounds or like the start of every club LTV, because it was, we called it a club. It was like a nightclub. He would have like, DJ Khaled would record a cameo and you would play it for the whole group at the beginning. It was awesome. It was a lot of fun. I think you should keep doing those things because that, I still remember that. I think we had a Redman. That set the right vibe. I think we had Method Man and Redman too, I think. Every time there was like some washed up rapper who would hype the shit out of us for like the first 30 seconds of the thing.

1:06:55Ben's just burning like$500 cameos to make that happen. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's like, you know, it's like when you meet someone that also likes MFM, even for me and you too, it's like, oh, I like this guy or I like this woman. I like this girl. I mean, actually, you meet, you like that person. uh now i know what you mean we're not for everybody so if you like it the odds of you getting along with somebody else who really likes the podcast are pretty high so it's kind of like one of those things where if two people were wearing the hat you would do the nod and be like okay we i'm sure we would have a pretty fun hangout if we hung out and that's kind of the idea here yeah and it's not hampton it's not a group it's just like very lightweight meet some other cool people uh you know get to know the other people and it's free by the way it's not like a paid thing.

1:07:40Um, so what do you want? How do you want people to like apply? Cause you're going to curate the group. So what do you want people to do to how should people do it? Let's see. Should we put a link at the, just put a link in the description. All right. If you want to do it, if you think you you're in that top 1 % of interesting, fun MFM listeners, uh, put yourself down there and tell us, tell us who you are. And then Ben will kind of curate a good group every, uh, every month for us. All right. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, Ben M Levy, I don't tweet much, but, uh, you know i will dm why would someone follow you when was your last tweet dude it was like in 2018 it's been a long time it's been a long time so that's uh that's ben thanks for coming on dude uh i'm gonna talk to you probably right after this because that's what we do i call you after every podcast so i'll see you in a second all right thanks guys i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i put my all in it like my days off on the road let's travel never looking back.

1:08:44Hey, 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 you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the nineties, you're operating like you're in the nineties. 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.

1:09:14If 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, and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC.