Jack Smith: Selling A Company For $800M At 29, Million Dollar Businesses that Can Be Started Just From Reading a Manual, and More

33:13And I was like, it's not image. I can't do text to image because I can't describe this image. I have an image. I want another one like it. And I want actually 50 variations of it. Can you do that? He's like, oh yeah, we have image to image. Just go over here. And I was like, oh, thank you. I didn't know even which tool to use. I wouldn't have known what it's called. I wouldn't have known how to do it. And then, oh, I did it, but there's one problem. He's like, oh, just change this setting, blah, blah, blah. And then it just fixed it. I was like, wow, that's amazing. It saved me so much time. And you really do have to play with these things.

33:42And most people don't have the time or the patience to go play with these things to figure out how they actually work. As a business leader, you pay your lawyer$1 ,000,$1 ,500 an hour to give you tax advice, right? why would someone not pay that for a mid-journ person if they can answer their question in an hour for a thought leader? Mark Cuban has this great blog. I don't think he updates anymore, but he was writing it for maybe a couple of decades now. It's really old. And I used to go back and read his old post. And a lot of people don't know this, but he actually got his first like two or$3 million of wealth when he was 31 because he started this thing called Micro Solutions.

34:22It was basically, I forget how he described it, but it was basically like a IT agency. So if a big-ish or even a small company was implementing Oracle or something like that, he would help install it on everyone's computer and then teach people how to use it. And he goes, the reason my company was successful wasn't because I necessarily was an expert on this stuff. But he goes, I was the only one, and he used the same acronym. He goes, I was the only one who read the fucking manual. He goes, I would stay up late at night and I would read the fucking manual and I would just learn how does this HP computer work.

34:55And the next day I could go and talk to a business owner and explain how it works and say, yeah, we can install that thing or this thing or that thing. And then I would go and read the manual on those other things. And that's all I did. And it was hard work. And I stayed up all night reading these things. But that's how I became an expert in the stuff. I just read the manual, which no one does. And it's pretty funny because he used the exact... I think he has a blog post actually that has the exact same acronym that you have. Here's what he said exactly. It's a blog post called How to Win at the Sport of Business.

35:22He goes, every night, I would take home a different software manual and I would read it. Of course, the reading was captivating. I'm reading Peachtree Accounting, WordStar, Harvard Graphics, Lotus, Apex. Every night, I would read some after getting home, no matter how late it was. It turns out, not a lot of people ever bother to RTFM, read the freaking manual. So people really started thinking that I knew my stuff, and that's all I was doing. Yeah, it's hilarious. And he talks about that in a ton of different blog posts where he talks about read the freaking manual. It's quite good. And he attributes that to a lot of his early success.

35:57You have a few others that I got to ask you about. Okay, so you wrote on this little cheat sheet, you wrote non-obvious barriers to entry for business. And then you said, hacking the iPhone to record screen. What are you talking about here? Non-obvious barriers to entry for business. Sure. And I mean, as I said, you don't have to be the first mover to market, but to be successful in business. But when an entirely new product comes out, there are opportunities to the product. That's why I was able to hack LinkedIn ads, the hack we've talked about before, because LinkedIn just launched it. So it was not properly bug checked and all that stuff, you know.

36:35Now, the idea I was saying, or it's not necessarily a business idea, but where you could discover opportunities for me And to give an example is that you might have a wedge or like a business, you might have a hack. It's not a business, but maybe it can go somewhere from that initial kind of hack. So to give an example with Fungle, back in like 2010, the business I had before, we were making educational videos, like how to use Adobe Photoshop and stuff like this. So like videos about desktop, like computer applications. And fairly around that time, I think a year before the iPhone app store had launched.

37:21And I was reading this Gartner report, like iPhone apps are going to blow up. And then I was kind of feeling like, wait, so we're doing this for desktop and apps on your computer. Why could we not do the same on your iPhone? Now that nowadays is very easy to record your screen on the iPhone, right? like you just pull down and tap the record screen. At the time, you could not record the iPhone screen. Now, I read a little bit online and I kind of felt like, hey, I think I've looked up these different pieces of hardware. It's like a camcorder mixed with like this cable you plug in with the iPhone, but you have to jailbreak the iPhone, et cetera, et cetera.

37:59I was like, I reckon, or I just have a hunch that if we put these together, I might be able to figure out how to record the iPhone screen. Now, my co-founder, he was like, dude, this is a fucking waste of time. You've got 48 hours to try this out. Otherwise, we need to move on. All right. Now, not that many people know this, but actually the Apple store lets you buy a product and you can return it within 14 days, even if you used it. A MacBook, an iPhone, an iPad, you can return it used. So we had an intern. It was his first day there. And I basically said, our company, we have about a thousand dollars in the bank account.

38:34And I told him like, take this credit bank credit card. And I told him to spend our entire budget at the Apple store. I want you to buy the latest iPhone and latest iPad. And your first task as the intern is jailbreak this. And we have 48 hours to figure out if we can record the screen from this because my co-founder thinks it's a waste of time. I think it's not. And, and we, and then we're going to return it off within 14 days. So we have a time buffer because we don't have a thousand dollars to just throw around. So we're going to play around with this iPhone, max 14 days, then we're going to send it back.

39:09We managed to record the screen. It was a free, it was taking like a camcorder cable, you had to jailbreak the iPhone, et cetera, et cetera. But we managed to get this unique thing where we could record the screen of the iPhone. At that time, we didn't have anything useful to do with it is like okay great we can record the screen in the iphone what can we do this but later on when we built the video ad network um when we came up with the idea about the video ad network that vungo is today um obviously if you're going to run a video ad an app needs to have an advertisement to run right and we were the only um because we had just started with this we actually just had an in-house production studio.

39:55That's how we initially made money by charging$500 to make a video for your app. But$500, that kind of sucks. But what we did is we parlayed that idea. And at some point, we made the best videos of anyone. Like AppLovin or whoever, they couldn't make a video. So what they'd have to do is you'd have to spend thousands of dollars hiring a creative ad agency who probably used a camera to record the iPhone screen, or you had to do loads to work as the app developer and send them all your image assets, we could literally record the screen of the iPhone that others could not. And so what we said is like, hey guys, we're no longer, you can't buy a video from us anymore.

40:30People loved our videos, the best quality videos, but we're like, even if you offer us$2 ,000, we don't make videos anymore. But if you spend more than$25 ,000 on our advertising network, we'll make you the video for free and our videos are the best so they're going to convert amazingly as well but you can you can use the video on your website and stuff but you cannot use this video on app loving or any other network it's proprietary to us so that was a hack that worked for bungle and what i would say obviously you have to have a credit card that had this limit and check that apple actually allows this but what i would do is if i am 20 years old and i have a credit card because america give them credit cards.

41:14I would go to the Apple store the first day the Apple Vision Pro comes out and I would try and hack it and jailbreak it and play around with it. Look up online how to jail break it. And I would try and find hacks like how to record the screen of the Apple Vision Pro. That's not going to be a feature at day one. No one needs to do that. If you can hack it and do that, you have something proprietary, you could launch a business off the back of that. And I would return it within 14 days and maybe go to another Apple store and buy it and get my friend But that is one opportunity of like, you know, it's a hack.

41:48It's not a business, but that unique hack that no one else has can lead you to have a barrier to entry to be successful and build a billion dollar business in a tangential industry from that. I love that. I love that. You also have a couple on here. You said, why I believe in the law of attraction and practice implications. This is interesting to me because I think there's people who believe in the law of attraction and they also believe in horoscopes and crystals and other stuff too, probably. and then there's people who are, you know, hyper-logical, rational, problem-solver types that typically don't believe in something like the law of attraction.

42:26I would have pegged you as more of the practical, logical, problem-solver type, but you're saying you believe in this. So tell me why you believe in this and what do you mean by practical applications? Yeah, people that are really rational, like my brother-in-law, it's a bit hard to talk about this topic because they're so rational. I'm pretty rational, but I'm also open-minded to stuff. Now, law of attraction, the interpretation many people with the crystals take and i kind of it was kind of funny because i went to somebody that did this alternative kind of uh kind of like massage therapy but like alternative and then she was doing it at her house um but then on the bookshelf was like a book like how to manifest well to be like a billionaire or something but then i'm like um well you're in this like really crappy studio so how's that going for you you know like on the extreme alternative side that you're talking about, Sean, like doing horoscopes or whatever.

43:19I'm somewhere in the middle where I'm like, law of attraction, so popularized by the book called The Secret. If you just do it at the basic level, it's just like, oh, just like think about what you want and it will manifest and appear to you. But actually there's a book that I like called Practical Law of Attraction. And what it's kind of saying, to be honest, it basically, I didn't know about this stuff when I was launching my business, but it kind of actually reaffirmed the stuff that I was already doing in my life, to be honest, which is like clearly feeling and defining what you want and then taking steps to get there.

43:57Now, why I think there's a practical application and why I do believe in it, I don't believe that you just think of it and then nothing happens. I think, now let me just give an example story that reaffirms this. I was living with my roommate and at this time my business was going pretty good but he was trying to launch a business off the ground and he was 35 and he was trying to fundraise, raise a seed round and he could not raise any money at all and his mindset was just stuck about feeling sorry for himself. Like he was just like, oh I read on TechCrunch about 18 year olds getting into Y Combinator but nobody respects me.

44:38like i have way more experience than him but investors they must just they don't value me they they blah blah he's feeling sorry for himself he's having negative energy i mean a prime example of it was like one day he called me and like uh really like anxious and he's like oh my god jack like um a letter from the irs arrived for you and i'm like uh dude i'm sure it's not that big of a deal but he's like dude what the fuck he's freaking out right and uh lo and behold it actually was a refund check they were giving me a refund but he had this negative mindset and i feel that obviously people study by body language and all this stuff but i feel that law of attraction works because there is so many micro signals and body language we're projecting to people all around us that we're not in control of and don't even know and so i feel for me i and my co-founder we were convinced we're going to raise funding and we're the shit.

45:36And I think that investors and stuff can tell, you know, you can tell if someone's bluffing. So he's going into this meeting and he's got a hundred rejections and he's feeling sorry for himself. He's already going in with the idea that these people are not going to invest in me. And so they are just sensing that this guy's a loser, right? Versus me, I'm just like, we're going to raise funding. And so when I say something, like an investor one time asked us, like, how's your fundraising going? We had no investors, but we told him like, oh, it's going amazing. We're just deciding, we've got a bunch of top tier people interested.

46:08We're just deciding who's going to be the best fit for our business. And the guy kind of freaked out and it actually gave us a term sheet because I think he could tell that we believed it. We were not lying because we actually believed it. Now, what was amazing with my friend is at just at some point, I just noticed him adopt a mindset shift, just one day basically. and at some point he basically just said like all right look what i've been doing thus far it hasn't worked and and he also was saying that he looked at me a bit as a bit inspiration because jack just he doesn't not worry about this stuff you know and he's like i realized that i haven't been going all in because i'm scared that if i don't raise funding i'm going to look like a failure to my network.

46:58And so if I try and do a business again, then they'll think like, oh, well, he failed at the last one. I'm not going to do it again. But he's like, from this day forward, I'm adopting a mindset that if I do not raise funding for this business, I'm never going to try and raise funding for a business ever again. This is my one shot and I'm going to go all in. And he looked up all his connections on LinkedIn and he was not embarrassed about rejection or that he would look stupid to them in the future. He's like, I'm going to ask every single person in my network for investor intros. Literally within a month or so, he raised amazing seed round.

47:34Business now has raised over$25 million because he just went all in. And I think that people could tell that he had the conviction. He's telling them now, he's not feeling sorry for himself, like I can't raise funding. He's like, I'm going to raise funding. And this business is going to be fucking huge. And just, it was amazing to see him adopt that mindset shift. And so that is an example for me of law of attraction is like, yes, you're manifesting it and whatever shit, but you're actually believing it and you're projecting it to others. Now think he's adopted that new mindset, right? So if an investor rejects him in his original view, that would have reaffirmed his original view, right?

48:14Like, oh, all the investors hate me and I'm never going to raise funding because I just got rejected. If with this new mindset, actually, it doesn't necessarily have to change every single outcome in every interaction you have, but it also changes how you view them. If one investor rejects him, now you'll just be like, oh, well, I'm going to raise funding. So I guess this guy was just not fit. I just move on to the next one. You wouldn't see it as reaffirming that you suck. You would just be like, oh, this investor is an idiot. Like I'm still going to raise funding. It doesn't distract you from the part.

48:43So that is what I was thinking about when it comes law of attraction. And we've been friends for a while, but I remember very distinctly, and you might need to fill in some of the details, and I'll try to be vague and you can decide what you want to share. But I remember distinctly, I think we were at my apartment in Soma when you came over, or we could have been at my house in Glen Park. But I remember distinctly hanging out with you. And you had just... Vungle hadn't sold yet, but you had sold some shares to live off of because you were basically cap you didn't have a lot of money you sold some shares and you you got maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars but you lived off that for like three years and it was at the very end of that money and you had you didn't even tell me i i asked like how things are going um do you have enough money to last until you think your the company's gonna sell and you're like yeah i think it's gonna sell for a whole lot of money for hundreds of millions of dollars.

49:41And I'll be fine when that happens. And I was like, but how are you now? And for some reason, I remember I saw your Robinhood account or I saw one of your accounts. And I don't know if you remember this, but I think there was single digit$1 ,000 left because you had made a really dumb trade. Do you remember that? And you were totally calm. And I remember being around you and it was like, you're one of my three best friends. And I remember thinking like, oh, like you're my family now like you have inspired me because you actually were living what you're talking about now do you remember that you remember when that yeah and i mean in line with that basically yeah i got a bit of money like as you said a secondary right and i was living and then the money was running out doesn't last forever i think that i um i saw from the previous episode people like talking about specific numbers right so i think that when i i think yeah i think that when I left Vungle, um, and then tried doing ship and it didn't work out, et cetera, but I didn't have any many savings at Vungle.

50:42I think I got$120 ,000 salary. We paid us after we raised funding, but prior to that, we'd never taken any money. And then just to help me out, because I was like, Hey dude, I don't actually have any money. Um, my co-founder at Vungle helped give me an introduction to, um, some people that bought a secondary of, of, of some on my stock. Now, I think that, I can't remember, I think it was 500 ,000 and I hadn't held the stock for five years. So it was not qualified for this thing called QSBS yet. So I basically had to pay a bunch, you probably have to pay about half of that in tax being in California, right?

51:18So I had like, let's say 250K left. That's not a lot of money in San Francisco to pay your rent, food, if you have no other income. Now I was advising companies and stuff, but they don't give you, they give you equity they're not giving you money and my money was running out and sam like you said i didn't have much money left and people were saying to me like hey dude what are you going to do if you like run out of money uh and i was like oh i guess i'll have to get a job but i'm not really contemplating that right now i don't have a timeline for when business is going to exit but i kind of feel something is telling me that is i'm going to be all right i'm not freaking out about it even worst case scenario or move back in my parents whatever but i was not making a plan b what was the dumb trade i was day trading like options trading and all this shit and kind of funny um you're like 250k is not a lot of money in san francisco for food rent in my day trading business

52:18i and with hindsight is is very stupid but like i was day trading and stuff to try and make some money when i look back in hindsight i actually was spending like a few hours a day because i just got interested in trading so learned options trading and all this spending a few hours a day i actually would have made more money if i had just put it in the vanguard vti if it's s &p 500 as i wasted all this time and yes lost a load of money um yeah so that was just a negative trait of experiment the way you described it uh i've heard described differently so tony Robbins did this, this is a video on YouTube of him talking about this, where he says like, you know you've ever heard of the phrase like a vicious cycle and a vicious cycle is kind of like what you described your friend was initially doing, which is he draws these three circles.

53:05He says, first one's belief second one's action, third is results and he goes, like what do you do when you, like let's say you're supposed to do something but you don't really think it's going to work and it doesn't even matter what it is, like you know you're looking for the salt and you know, your girlfriend says it's in the cabinet, but you already looked there. You don't think it's there. So you go, you don't really rummage around too much because you don't believe it's there. So basically, low belief typically creates low or weak action. And lower weak action almost always creates bad results.

53:35And then the message, the story we tell ourselves is, see, I knew it. I knew it wouldn't work. And then it just reinforces the low belief. And that's the vicious cycle that happens for people. It could be, I don't really believe that I'm going to stick to this diet. And so therefore, I'm not really that hardcore about it. I start to slip and then my results say, nah, you never stick to what you say. And then you reinforce a low belief, right? It can be business, it can be personal, it can be whatever. And then there's the exact opposite, which is the virtuous cycle. The virtuous cycle is massive belief.

54:07This is going to work. What happens when you believe something's really going to work? You wake up before the alarm clock, you get out of bed, you start doing it immediately. You can't wait. and you take massive action. What happens when you take massive action for a while? You start to get good results or massive results. When you get massive results, it reinforces the belief, see, I knew this shit was going to work. And so that's basically the difference between winners and losers is which side of that cycle do you go down? And the core thing is there's some people who just wait for a result to happen to inform their belief.

54:37And what that basically means is I'm going to sort of wait to hope to get lucky and then I'll start to believe. And I think anybody who's in the kind of entrepreneurial bucket, the prereq for any result is the belief. And you have to have that sort of massive conviction or massive belief in yourself and in what you're doing. And that part is the law of attraction part. That's the part where it's faith. It hasn't happened yet. You believe it will happen. And because you believe it will happen, you're right. It's not like the secret where they're just like, close your eyes and you say, there are no weeds in the backyard.

55:08There are no weeds in the backyard. You look, oh, there's still weeds in the backyard. Well, you didn't take any action. You didn't go and get rid of the weeds. The action is a requirement to actually do this. You also mentioned one other thing on that, which you said, you have to feel it versus just say it. Is there a difference there? Because when I talk to people who kind of really believe in this, they overemphasize this feeling, feeling it part versus just saying it or try to believe it in your head. so my wife is totally not into this at all and maybe it just doesn't work for her but she's like dude i can't just feel that i'm gonna i'll just feel it's gonna work it doesn't work for her but for me maybe i'm just delusional or i just have conviction in something but i just sometimes just feel it's gonna work and i guess um one bit that is related to this a bit is like perhaps adopting different mindset personas so i saw this interview with beyonce and they were asking her about like she has um her thing like sasha fierce right her nickname and they're like when does when do you become sasha fierce and when are you just beyonce they're saying it was a joke but she's like i literally become sasha fierce before i'm going to go on the stage because when i'm beyonce i'm nervous i think people are going to hate me or whatever and i just adopt this alternative persona that i am sasha fierce and i'm going to kill this performance people are going to love it it's amazing because they're adopting she's adopting some persona and she's really feeling it i don't necessarily adopt this persona but that is the feeling that i think uh would be insane yeah i do the same thing and i also think that um who do you become i have this persona that i created angry patel like what are you who are you gonna become and uh yeah again this is another one that came out of Tony Robbins, he goes, he goes, we all have a version of our personality.

57:04Raise your hand if you've ever been super kind to others. Yeah, everybody raises their hand. Raise your hand if you've ever made selfish choices and been a selfish asshole. Everybody raises their hand. We all have all these features of our personalities. The question is, who's driving the car right now? And he's like, people think that they come to this weekend workshop and I'm going to, oh, Tony Robbins, you change your life. In fact, when you go home, people sort of mock you. Like, oh, so what happened you're a whole new guy now and he's like you know obviously you don't um you know you don't become a whole new person after 35 years in one weekend um but he's like you know one thing we will do is he's like i'm gonna take the most badass version of you and that's who gets to drive this weekend and if you if it's only for this weekend you decide after this weekend i don't want that person to be the one who's making decisions from now on all right fine fair fair play but for these next two days that's who's in charge we all have a version of ourselves that is the more badass version of ourselves.

57:58The one that does believe it's going to happen. The one that is decisive versus indecisive. All these traits. He's like, what do you call when you... I forgot what he said. He's like, we're going to make that personality our bitch. He's like, what do you do when you train a dog? You give it a name and you train it to come when you call it. And he's like, so you're going to give it a name. You're going to figure out how you're going to be able to adopt that state when you want to be in that state. He's like, that takes practice reps and we're going to get a bunch of reps at it this weekend. And you have to figure out, all right, what is the version of me that does have those traits, that does walk that way, that does make those decisions?

58:35And then can you call it on command or are you only going to do it when you feel good? Are you only going to do it when the weather's nice? No, no, no. You want to be able to have that on demand when you want it. He says the same thing. I think his real name is not Tony Robbins either. His original name was Anthony. He's got some other last name. He's like, people see me now and they see me on stage and all this stuff, they think, oh man, Tony, you're amazing. You're just special. And he's like, no, I was Anthony, blah, blah, blah. I was broke. I was fat. I was all these things. He's like, I created this Tony Robbins motherfucker.

59:07I created him. And I was just like, I like that part of the thing that he was talking about because it's, I think, more empowering. If you feel like, oh, you just are the way you are and that's it. You're a fixed quantity. And it was, it's based on your genetics. It's based on your childhood, things you didn't have control of versus this idea that I actually have multiple versions of my personality. There's some that I would want to be in charge more often than others. And I can craft that. I can create that version of me that I want. That's a different mindset. Some people don't believe it. Some people are really married to their upbringing and their past traumas and their DNA.

59:42That's not how I look at the world, at least. Dude, this is getting me amped. I feel good. I feel like I need to go create my version of Sasha Fierce Jack you inspire me I'm happy I feel thankful we're friends I feel thankful that you came here you're a very inspiring person I just feel I feel you do it's like you're almost not inspiring because you're not this like crazy intimidating person or I guess you're the right type of inspiring because you're not this like crazy intimidating person but you have and you have a very mild manner I'll be with you and other friends and I'd be like Jack, I already know you know all about this topic that they're talking about, but you're just sitting here asking questions.

1:00:27Why aren't you pumping your chest more? Or you are dressed like this bum right now at this thing. All these people think that you're just one of my loser friends, but you're successful, not in terms of just finances, but you've got this awesome marriage. You're my successful friend, dude. Can you help me out here a little bit? Well, I'll be like, you're successful in all attributes. I know you're really insightful. I know that you're successful traditionally. you've got all these like amazing things but you're you don't even like you want me to brag about you that's like i feel like i've got to like sometimes like put you on a pedestal and but but that's one of the things i love about you is like you're just very very meek is a bad word because that almost sounds insulting but you're very humble uh and you're very mild mannered and that's one of the reasons why i love when you come on here and you like explain some of these stories because you never ever brag about yourself and i like hearing you do that every once in a while check yeah well thanks for having me on again i mean uh picking up on that i mean what it is very important for me just to i guess just from my childhood and stuff but i've always tried to be humble and i'm not judging any it doesn't matter i will have an in-depth conversation with like to give you an example i'm here in portugal right and there's a guy i pay a guy to come and pick up on my recycling i'll at my cardboard is taking the cardboard to the trash so the trash man i'll have an in-depth conversation with him about how his life is going and stuff like that.

1:01:51And I think it is good to remember that you can be successful and still be humble and not judge people about where they're at now. Sam, like your father-in-law lives with like a celebrity and he said like the celebrity just fucking, it lives in the same apartment complex and treats everyone like shit and ignores him each day. And they're both rich. And the thing to remember, I think, is where people are in their life now is not where they're going to be in 10 years. And people, if you treat them like shit, they're going to remember. Like I, when I was 19, 20, we pitched a VC in London, a venture capitalist, and we'd been speaking to the associates.

1:02:31We had a few meetings with them. And yes, we had nothing and our idea was terrible. But the associates said like, hey, the partners agreed to have a meeting with you. Just like come by here at like 6 PM to come by the office. And we're like, okay, it's a bit of weird times come by, but sure, whatever. And we had no money, like spent the money. My business partner especially was in a lot of debt. We spent the money, got an underground ticket, went there, et cetera. In within 10 to 15 minutes of the meeting getting started, because the guy was asking his questions is like, you guys don't have a business.

1:03:04This is just like shit. And at like 6.15, he's just like, yo, I've got to go to dinner. So this meeting's over. 10 years, 15, however many years, it's been more than 10 years later. we still remember that meeting and that guy treated us like shit he's still got a vc fund if he asked me for deal flow i'm not gonna give it i'm not gonna pretend that never happened i'm like dude i remember how you treated me when i was shit you you always do weird stuff like this that makes sense but i'm like no why why would you ever do that so um like for example you named your child so jack has a two-year-old now uh you named your child baby yeah for the you told me you're like i'm gonna i'm just gonna name her baby for the first 12 months because i want to get to know her and i was like dude like everything about your life is weird can you just just do do something normal for the kid and you're like no i think i think this actually makes more sense and then i got to know her and i like and then you you you should talk about the naming ceremony but you did this thing where you named her after a year and you're like this name like it fit her more and I had to get to know her a little bit and I was like after a year I was like that actually is makes so much sense but it's so not normal but you're always doing these weird things that actually appear to be well you've done a lot of stupid stuff but you've done a lot of things that actually like are pretty amazing but are not normal at all yeah and and I that's one of my favorite parts about you you know what i mean oh thanks and i mean also because i listened to the pod a lot i noticed that um you guys hadn't talked about sam had made a massive announcement on all his social that now he's going to be having a baby um and so notice you guys hadn't talked about that so i had some of the different wackier things i've done with my baby if you wanted to talk about them and naming ceremony was one of them yeah you know me and sam just we're just like guys we're just like yeah um nice job with the thing all right uh let's move on you know girls are like oh my god congratulations i'm so excited for you wow how oh my god you look you're glowing sam you look amazing and i was like hey dude um good shit about the you know you know all right let's talk about business the the your stuff's working congratulations we um well i wasn't sure i wasn't sure like what i wanted to put on the internet and i haven't actually made my decision what uh oh you made your decision sam posted a shirtless picture of himself to celebrate the baby i was like oh wow that is that is an unbelievable combination there like that's a what an upsell you created in this photo i was like a bump announcement sam with his shirt off flexing and sarah like half in the middle of my stomach she's like half cropped out of the photo it's like oh yeah by the way there's a baby you over there.

1:05:58Hey, that's the only reason why we did the whole thing. Do you put your kid's face on the internet? I don't think you have. Maybe on Facebook, Sean. Have you, Jack? No, I have. But you only do it on Facebook, right? Where it's just like friends? Well, my wife does on her own Instagram. So, you know, that's like, but you know, it's just her friends. So yeah, I'm trying to decide what to do. I think I don't mind, but I don't know. Anyway, I'm still like working through that. Let's go through some of the things you did on the parenting side, Jack. So the naming thing sam talked about it yeah let's do that let's finish that one so how'd you come up with that idea do you think it was a good idea and eventually how did you actually end up naming her besides baby um so basically again coming like basically i think one of my values maybe is i don't like being told what to do and relating to what we were just talking about i also like to question norms so preparing to give birth um or maybe even yeah yeah preparing to give birth what I read online and the midwife, et cetera, was saying is you have to pick a baby's name before you leave the hospital so we can put it on her birth certificate and health stuff.

1:07:02And so, and I was like, uh, why do you have to do that? Like, that's quite a short deadline that you have to pick a name before you leave the hospital. After you go through this traumatic experience. Yeah. I was like, I don't really like being told to do that. Like, does she really need a name or he or she like just being born? Like, do you really need a name you don't really need and so basically i researched and it varies state by state but i found that as long as both parents consent i this was in hawaii where i was as long as both parents consent within the first 12 months you can change a baby's name without having to go to court or anything like that you just fill out a form and as long as both parents consent we just had like a notary come to our house you can change the name pretty easily so i was like okay well um i'll i mean the first conclusion was i don't want to have to pick a name before leaving the hospital that's too much rush for me and it's also telling me what to do so um my wife the last name was more important to my wife because um she's korean and in their culture they have like a book of last names and whatever and so and we kind of made a deal okay the baby can have your last name but i get to take a lead on the first name i wouldn't pick it by myself but i get to take a lead on what is it and so then i was like okay well we'll just have the first name as baby and so um that is what we did at the hospital like uh on the birth certificate etc so submitted it and then i did get a call from the department of health or whatever like a week later and they're like okay we just want to confirm um i understand you've had a recent birth just want to confirm the uh name and i and i was like yes it is um b a b y and they're like okay so just to clarify it's baby the name of your baby and then it kind of surprised me because i was like yeah that's correct and then the guy was like okay that's cool i mean actually i've worked here 10 years and there has been one or two other people who've done this before as well actually and i was pretty surprised about that but anyway and then i also thought like um in southeast asian culture like china korea maybe some other places they have this kind of just for fun they have this uh ritual when the baby is um a year old or so they put it the baby on the floor and on the other end of the room they put down like a stethoscope a law book stuff like this and they just let the baby crawl and whatever it picked is like, oh, it picked a stethoscope.

1:09:44That means you're going to be a doctor. And then it's just fun. Like they do this. Indians do that too, but it's just three stethoscopes. Yeah. Oh, you're supposed to pick up all of them. Exactly. Yeah. Except like 50 years ago, they started adding like little motels that you could pick. You know, they're like, oh, nice. An eco-lage. All right, go on. And for my bit, then I was like, all right what if we actually did that but we just have different names so then she can pick her own name because I also remembered that when I was when when first joining high school like the first day of school they were like all right everyone go around the room and say an interesting fact about yourself and I remember I couldn't really think about an interesting fact about myself and I was like oh if I do this then she's always gonna have an interesting fact about herself right like i picked my own name uh it's pretty interesting so i was like that's pretty cool and this like product obsession you've done this with babies so jack's actually the best gift giver of all time so what he does is uh like for my big my big life event events he'll um like one time when we got married he sent me this maybe like three really big boxes i bet you there was like three or four thousand dollars worth of products in there and he'll send me like a variety of products.

1:11:06And then he sends you a list of a paper that's like three pages long. And it's a detailed description that says like, this is blank. The reason why it's the best and he like explains it. And it's like, sometimes it's really random. For example, he was like, these are the best bath towels because they have a little bit of copper in them, which prevents molding. Or he even like my wife uses lotion all the time. He's like, this is the best lotion. It's the best because it uses this vitamin or whatever. And it was like crazy. Or it was even like, these are the best gummy bears because they're low in sugar, but they still taste sweet, but they only use Stevia.

1:11:42And you did it with like maybe 50 items. And then when I told you we were pregnant, you sent me this box, but it was all baby stuff. And you're like, this baby formula, it's meant for babies that are three months old, but I actually think it's best for newborns because it's the same thing as the newborn one, but like there's this small, I forget exactly everything, but it's like this massive list and you're doing now are you doing that now with all the baby stuff where you're just like literally analyzing every product um yeah i test out quite a bit i mean the reason i gave it to you as a gift is because you and sarah had told me like oh you should create a business like jack jack's box of like your favorite stuff i didn't actually want to do it in the business because i don't think it would make that much money and quite a bit of effort but i wanted to do for you guys because you kind of come up with the idea um i research different products now do you publish your your research well um not for baby products yet i was actually thinking maybe to make like a b a baby book or ebook um just with different recommendations you've seen um on my as my pinned tweet on twitter i have my favorite products um just random products so i have whatever favorite i don't know what i've got on there but i've got like 20 products i shared as my favorites on Twitter.

1:12:58And you're underscore Jack Smith. That's your thing. Let's talk about some of the other crazy things you're doing. So you have a guy watching your baby on baby camera in Pakistan or something like that. What's going on? So what are you doing with this baby sleep monitor thing? Yeah, I mean, I kind of feel bad because, you know, when speaking to new parents or if someone says, are you having a baby? People say, oh, prepare to never sleep again. You're never going to be able to sleep. I kind of don't say anything, but inside I'm like, dude, I'm sleeping better now than I was before having a baby.

1:13:32And that's due to setting up various things. But one of those is that, I mean, you have to have a house big enough for this. But basically we put my daughter a few doors down. And so initially if she would wake up and cry in the night, we found that, you know, she would wake up, cry for like five minutes, then often go back to sleep. so she only really needed help if she's crying like longer than that and i actually got the idea from um jonathan swanson who's the founder of thumbtack and he called it like digital night nanny i called it like deep sentinel for babies um i know sam invested in deep sentinel um and basically what it's doing is having a virtual assistant uh i have in india and basically he just watches my baby cam uh all night and he basically has specific instructions like okay if the baby wakes up and starts crying you start a timer and if she just cries for like three minutes and goes back to sleep don't do anything but if she cries for like more than seven minutes then um call me and wake me up and we have like you know i have a special phone for that and we have a backup phone in case that one broke or something so um basically we only get woken up if our daughter is crying longer than seven minutes.

1:14:50And then so now I would say only have to tend to her. She's two and three months, two years, three months. She now only wakes up maybe once every two months we have to go to her. Otherwise we don't have to do anything. So that was one Jonathan Swanson came up with. It had been really good for me. What does that assistant say, that Indian person say, like when you're like, yeah, here's the job. I mean, that's a pretty odd request, yeah? um well one of the guys actually it was um i'd been working with this guy as a virtual assistant and then he's he's like oh my brother's in india he speaks a little bit of english but not perfect english he's looking for a job do you have any tasks that i can give him and then so i was just like all right just do this so i think for him pretty awesome job because he can be multi-target he can be doing whatever else um i mean the downside is that i don't know how they're working but he actually doesn't take off a single day in the year.

1:15:50He's working 365 days a year now. So I guess he's having like Thanksgiving and Christmas and the baby monitors on loudspeak with his family. I don't know. So he doesn't take any time off. Yeah, he's just not there, Jack. He hasn't looked at the camera in months. He's like, this baby's two years old. He's going to, and your baby's going to have some horrible separation anxiety. I feel like I've been crying for like 15, 30 minutes. and like nothing ever happens. Yeah, your baby's like his Twitch stream. So what about some of these other things? So you said, I don't think that universities will exist in 20 years and don't plan to send my daughter to school, let alone college.

1:16:28Okay, a bunch there. Say more. So I'd read this book. Somebody on Twitter had recommended it and it's called like, Don't Tell Me I Can't. And it's written by this guy, a kid who was like 14. and he is this trend at the moment it's trending now but he he's talking from his perspective that he was doing this since three years old or something how he was brought up that he was not homeschooled like homeschooling has been around a long time right he was what they're calling unschooled and this is actually a trend at the moment and he described how it worked for him but see how it worked for him is like his family was super poor and also his dad was an army veteran like injured in the army and so was in a wheelchair and stuff and so he was always kind of having to help out his dad and be self-sufficient and so um and the local school was like the worst in the country or something and they didn't want to send him there so initially they were like all right we'll just try homeschooling you and so he was homeschooled for like six to twelve months but it didn't go that that well and one day his dad um he said normally they were more encouraging but for whatever reason, one day he just asked his dad, like, hey, dad, how do people get rich?

1:17:45And his parents were really poor, so maybe he also touched on an insecurity. His dad is just like, oh, why don't you just figure it out yourself? Why don't you just watch some videos of Warren Buffett? Because I don't know, we're not rich. And then he did that. He went and listened to loads of Warren Buffett stuff. And it actually spiraled from there. So underschooling is the concept that homeschooling is trying to replicate the school curriculum, right? Like math, science, and you still have to do the tests and all that. Unschooling is there is no curriculum. The kid just learns whatever they want to learn and whatever is useful.

1:18:24So he was saying from around an age of like five to seven years old, he was repairing their car and doing things like this. and he'd grown up in a poor family, but he actually started his own business. And by the time he was 13, he like parlayed it. Like, so initially he bought a tiny piece of land and got some animals on it and like sell the produce in his local town and stuff. Then he got, he built, he bought a super rundown house that was falling apart. And the seller, they'd built the house themselves. And so they didn't want to sell it just for money. but he's like, hey, look, I'll buy your shack that's falling down and I'm a kid and I'm going to dedicate all my time to repairing it.

1:19:10So it's restoring your legacy. So they really liked that and they sold it to him for cheap. He repaired it and then flipped the house. By the time he was 13, he had something like hundreds of acres of land he was managing. And he said one time when he was about 12, he went out with some friends and they were complaining about what they were learning at school they're like oh we had to learn the names of the planets in alphabetical order when the hell are we going to learn that you wouldn't need to use that in life you know they ask him they're like hey cole what were you learning at the moment and it's like oh yeah well i've just been looking into recently found it kind of interesting how rich people generally have like a pass through llc and then a c corp and then they can deduct this from their taxes on this and the other kids are like what the fuck he's talking about do you know but he got so not like crazy rich but he got he was only 100 a second as that he actually was like loaning money to his parents he's like they never asked me for money and i never asked them for stuff but like in tough times like i loaned money to my parents i bought our car from them just to help them out you know stuff like that and then for me i was thinking back in school like i learned piano in school I had some piano lessons and then at some point had to do like gray you had to do you know playing chords and I had an exam and then it was just so shitty you know it was not fun like I don't want to learn how to play these chords and music theory and stuff to pass an exam and I'm like this sucks and then I'm just looking now especially nowadays kids learning piano they'll do it by just seeing what's their favorite song and they'll just learn to play the song and that's just really fun and I think that exams and stuff just ruin the fun and curiosity of learning skills and so for me my daughter I'm just like how can I ensure that she's just having fun for as long as possible and um and like this kid said that was unschooled he said like he didn't learn traditional math math but just whenever it seemed that he had a need to learn a school a skill obviously he would then learn it like he's doing his taxes so he has to learn math to do his taxes but it's not because they're like oh learn the pythagoras theorem and you have no idea when you're going to use it he identified himself i need to do my taxes so i need to figure out how to do math and i think that's just a philosophy that i subscribe to a lot i mean it's wacky obviously but when you look like Elon Musk, he created his own school for his kids.

1:21:45Jeff Bezos created his own school for his kids. I think he only has like seven kids. I think that you don't have to be billionaire to take this approach. Billionaires seem to be thinking the school system is kind of fucked up. You don't have to be a billionaire. You could make the life poor. What are you going to do then? So fast forward, she's six or eight years old. What are you going to do? Well, at the moment, she goes to this thing. It's called, is that another trend? it's called forest school it's actually nothing to do with school basically they just go to a forest bunch of kids and you're just playing all day like you have a fake mud kitchen and you are like picking oranges and turning to orange juice and you shear sheep and shit i'm planning to just create my own thing like that but going to a bigger age i'm just like let's just bring a bunch of kids anyone in the local school thing can come around and also i feel like instead of teaching them like how to write and studying whatever i'm like wouldn't it just be awesome like whatever topic they they can pick the topic if i can suggest some wouldn't it be awesome if i just ping my buddy and be like hey sam could you just teach the class a lesson on copywriting or i kind of feel if they just ping someone on twitter if someone ping if someone if a 10 year old kid pinged me like hey um i i'm a school myself and i've decided i want to learn business would you mind doing a lecture to my class and um we'll have my parents will bring us to you i would totally do it um yeah so i'm kind of thinking stuff like that so i love this um my sister actually runs a school like this called nature kids if they said they're just outside all they just walk around they go on trails if they find something they like learn about it and if they want to go climb trees, they climb trees, whatever.

1:23:37And it basically has two things. One, so she has a traditional school and she has this nature school. And the nature school, the kids are like by the end of the day, the traditional school kids are like dead. They have like no energy. They're like ready to go home and they kind of like want to just watch YouTube and whatever. And the nature kids, even though they've been out walking around all day outside, they have like way more energy, which is like kind of counterintuitive. That's the first thing I noticed. The second thing is yeah, like they know a bunch of things that are interesting to them versus like in school, it's sort of like, you know, you're forced to learn something that's not that interesting to you.

1:24:12And you sort of begin to associate learning with boredom, learning with sort of like, you know, being forced to do things versus on the other side, you know, with self-driven. It's great. And exams, right? Yeah, the pressure of that. Now, the, and I love the story you told about that guy, but my question would be, I think, I think unschooling or sort of self-driven learning is awesome when you're driven. So what happens if your kid is not trying to flip a house and learn about pastoralists? I guess the fear I would have, and I think most people would have, is your kid doesn't really have any interest.

1:24:48They kind of just want to sit around and do nothing. And so now you're unschooled, but you're not really having this kind of awesome, self-driven curiosity. Are you worried about that? Or do you think like, no, I can create that or this situation will mold a person to be more that way? And also on the other side, what if she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer where you need... You need to learn how to write? Credentials. Yeah. And you need credentials. Yeah. I mean, great questions. I mean, the first side, I definitely agree with you, Sean. And it's one bit my wife has said. Like, you know, some kids are not like you, Jack, wanting to...

1:25:28I was trying to make money when I was really little and stuff and might not take that approach. I think you just have to see how it goes as we go along. One other bit that was interesting is I visited a local Montessori school. And so Montessori, studying it a bit, we're learning these different things, just my wife and I just out of interest. But one bit they had, which is awesome is exactly as you said, Sean, school finished. And we went there at the end of the day. so whenever school finishes 4 p.m or something actually there was a bunch of kids still there and they have a farm outside and the head teacher was giving us a tour just because my wife made friends with them with her and she was walking around speaking to the kids about what's going on in the farm but she was not telling them anything to do the kids were just giving her an update so she's like oh i see the rabbit cage is broken like what's going on with that and the kid was giving her like a detailed plan like oh yeah we've seen this broken and we've come up with a new roofing method that we're going to implement etc the kids run the farm and i was like that's awesome what if you just have that but just scrap the school part and this school was also quite religious so we're like what if you just scrap the religion part as homage um sam about a bit if she wants to be a doctor um i mean yeah i guess one approach is that could just like go yeah shit out of luck or take the total opposite approach and just hire loads of tutors and be like all right if that's the approach you want to take then okay i guess we're gonna have to get you up to speed faster than other kids um and i don't know how much you actually learn when you're five in school anyway so maybe just like all right you've got if you want to do that you're gonna have to be super smart and skip a bunch of grades then i will help you do it but uh i don't know i just i love hear your stories.

1:27:19I mean, we could do this all day. I don't know. What do you think, Sean? How do you feel? I've had a few times with Jack where I just call Jack randomly and I just ask him about something and I think you are kind of more of a one of one, at least in my life, of people who are very independent-minded is kind of like the best way I would put it. I think you choose to lead your life how you want. I think that's inspiring. I also think that you are extremely like Sam said, sort of curious and I think you're a great competitor when you need to compete in something, but you're not constantly trying to compete when unasked for.

1:27:53And that's a very Silicon Valley trait. People are trying to compete in times that are... What are you competing on? Why are you trying to show that you're the smartest, you're the richest, you're the most whatever? It's an annoying trait, and I think it's great that you don't have that. So it's good to talk to you as always. Do you leave us with either a book or product recommendation, one of Jack's finds that you think people should check out, that you're passionate about, something you think is awesome? um well the book that i mentioned i guess the book that i talked about unschooling is like don't tell me that i can't um and to uh i guess like uh um spoiler alert like the kid it really sucks because this kid was building something amazing he actually drowned and died right after he wrote the book kind of sucks but it's a really short book you probably should I should have told him not to go in the water on that one.

1:28:43Yes. Sick way to end it. Good job to end the pod, you moron.

1:28:51What's the name of it? Don't Tell Me I Can't. And then it's just a short book. You can read it in two, three hours. And challenges a lot of assumptions you might have about education and stuff. And so for me, it was really inspiring seeing this book. I'm looking at your products on your Twitter thing, by the way. Wait, Sean, did you just say... You should have listened to the lifeguard. Yeah, yeah. The lifeguard was telling him, don't go in. He's like, have you read my book? I'm going in. You're an asshole. Jack, I'm looking at your Twitter list of products, and you have this buckwheat pillow.

1:29:23I think I bought one of these. Are these hard as a rock? Aren't they just super, super dense? You can adjust how much buckwheat is in it, and I also have a pillowcase that divides it into three sections, so you can adjust it a bit. Why do people love these so much? You need to get used to it a little bit, but actually it cured my neck pain and I can't sleep on another pillow. And I think Sam, you said as well, some of your friends even ship the pillow to the hotel before they arrive. Nick Gray does. Nick Gray is, have you heard of this? Nick Gray, our buddy, Nick Gray, literally every time he goes to a hotel, he has his assistant send this pillow to the hotel and then he just leaves it there when he's done every single time.

1:30:05And sometimes if he's going to stay at a place for more than i think like four days he ships them a mattress i swear to god you could if you google stay home gray i have a message from the hotel google nick gray pillow and he'll tell you the story and i have been to like whenever you if i'm in a city and he's visiting i go to his hotel room and he always has that pillow he gets it ship there every time how would you get rid of the mattress yeah well i don't but i don't know what he does about the mattress but if you google it i think he has a blog post on it but i but it's not just talk i've like i'll whenever he's staying somewhere i'll go to his hotel just hang out with him and uh the pillow's there every time this is so funny wow so so basically it's the best for neck pain a pillow normally is like you know it's a rectangle and then but ideally you actually want your head to have less support than your neck because otherwise you put your head at a weird angle you know so with this you can pull the buckwheat to one end and so it's giving a lot more support to your neck whereas your head is a bit lower and so it allows you to kind of be laying completely flat and so you're not kind of crinking your neck and waking up with like neck pain the next day i was listening to this podcast of derek sivers on tim ferris and derek was really interesting guy they were like oh you do this one he has this one business i think it's like web hosting or something like that.

1:31:29And he was describing it. And Tim was like, why did you decide to do this? He goes, sometimes I'll pick a project. I'm paraphrasing here. He's like, sometimes I'll pick a project because I think about who's my customer and are those my kind of people? And he goes, this is a business that lets you host your own personal website. And I just realized that people who have their own personal website for no reason, like just their own name.com, those are my kind of people. And I was like, oh, that's really great to figure out your filter for like, what's a simple heuristic where like, not everybody you like does this, but everybody who does this, you kind of like.

1:32:03And I think this like, try every product to try to find the best quality of life levers. I think this might be one of those things because everybody who I've met that does this, I like that person. And you do this, Nick Gray does this and it's kind of amazing. Do you still have a sheet? Are you still tracking everything? I'm not really a spreadsheet. No. I mean, for example, with the bait, baby box i sent you i just looked around my house at like like i just kind of anecdotally buy a bunch of stuff try them all out and then send back ones i don't like and just keep the best so i wrote it down for you so i don't have a fixed sheet as i said maybe i might turn it into a baby book um but haven't yet he had this closet at one of his houses that i used to go to and it was like again a walk-in closet and it literally had i bet you it had thirty thousand dollars worth of supplements in there like it looked like a it looked like a pharmacy it was like um any bottle you could imagine and i was like does any of this do anything he was like no not really you can't really feel he goes except this one thing and he had like a ziploc bag and it had like tar in it it looked like it was like i was like is this like heroin what the hell is this he was like yeah it works yeah it was like he's like this is like himalayan something and if you just take a little dab of this it gives you so what was that it's called shilly jack um haven't consistently found it repeatably amazing but yeah himalayan uh shimmy jacks it's like an extract from a volcano or some crap dude it was like i swear to god it looked like a pharmacy it consistently impresses anybody that you tell about it that's what it does he had like scales and it had like white powders on it i mean it looks like a drug dealer and i was like does any of us do anything i don't know how much money you spend on all that it was tens of thousands and you're like this one thing is the only thing that like is amazing and it was like a ziploc bag of just this like tar amazing all right jack we gotta wrap it up this is fun uh thanks for coming on we should do this again thanks so much for having me love the podcast listen to it and i don't listen to any other podcast to be honest i just listen to it in the car so thanks again so much thank you i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to I put my all in it like no days off On the road, less travel, never looking back Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you.

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