Joe Rogan Offers $100,000 To Vaccine Expert For A Debate, MJ Sells NC Hornets For Billions & More

30:24And so everybody signed up, Triple World takes off, does amazing. And so I think the same thing happened to Google where Google had to, because of the privacy reasons, be like, all right, you know what? Yeah, they're just going to ballpark it. Yeah, because of the ads business, we got to just lick a finger and guess roughly you got about this much traffic, conversion, et cetera. And so not great. So they're upgrading to this thing called GA4. It's called Google Analytics Lackadaisical. that's like the new update yeah they're like that's the update google analytics after six beers and it needs a nap um yeah and every marketer i know hates this thing and also nobody knows how to migrate from google analytics to ga4 it's like a there's like every time you log into google analytics there's literally like a ticking countdown like it's you know season four of 24 it's like your analytics are about to explode you need to go learn this new tool that by the way, sucks.

31:21And you need to migrate everything over because in 14 days, there's no more Google Analytics for you. And so me and a bunch of other people are like, how do you do this? And we tried to migrate over. We're like, is this working? I don't know if this is working out of the box. And I think right now there's a very simple business opportunity for somebody to go be the GA4 expert, put out a ton of free content and be like, I will handle your migration for you. And you just cold email every business owner that you can think of it, maybe in the e-commerce space, that's where I would start. But if not e-commerce, SaaS businesses, whatever, and be like, hey, do you want to help migrating over to GA4?

31:54I'll do the whole thing for you. It's done for you. Turnkey. Just pay me$1 ,500 and I'll do it. I think you could I think somebody can make a million dollars in the next six months just migrating people over to GA4 and auditing their GA4 to be like, hey, is this set up correctly? Just as a one-person service business or a two-person service business. I agree. I need it. I need it. We've been trying to like figure this out. I don't even know how to set up reports. I was out of the game for about a year and a half. And then I came back and everything done changed. I don't know how to do it. Did you you know what else has changed?

32:28Pronouns and Google Analytics. What the hell just happened? I take two years off and business doesn't work the same way anymore. There's no office. Dude, everything has changed. Another thing that's changed is newsletters. Like people are asking me, like, what do we do for this newsletter? And I'm like, dude, I don't know. It's been two years. and in that amount of time, everything has changed. When we started The Hustle, it was us, Morning Brewing, The Skim. And I don't like saying it this way because it sounds like it's a bigger deal than it is because it's not. But we kind of pioneered this very small industry.

33:00And now people take it seriously and there's all these agencies around it and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm like, I don't get any of that. I don't understand how any of this works. Things have changed very quickly. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say something, but I decided to... take the high road on something. I was going to call someone out on Twitter, but I just decided not to do it. I think you'll know who it is, but I'll avoid it. Okay, I got another thing for you. What? How would you like to hear about a business deal that involves one of the goats, that involves billions of dollars, that involves a messy divorce?

33:40Let me tell you the story about Michael Jordan selling his team right now, the Charlotte Hornets. That was related to a divorce? In a roundabout way. So the story actually, so a lot of people are looking at the story right now and they're like, Michael Jordan bought this team for I think$275 million and it's about to sell for$2 billion. The whole thing? Did he sell the whole thing? The majority owner. I don't think anybody, I don't think any of the NBA owners own 100%, but I think he's the majority owner. So he, the valuation of the team at the time was$275 million and he bought it. And now it's going to sell for$2 billion.

34:16MJ strikes again. The goat strikes again. The guy's going to make more money doing this than he ever made playing. And more money on this probably than he made through his Nike deal as well. So, you know, found a new way to like, you know, double his wealth. But what's interesting is actually who owned the Hornets before MJ did. So I don't know if you know. Do you know the story? Do you know who the owner was? This guy, Bob Johnson. Does that sound familiar? Most generic name I raised. I know eight Bob Johnsons. Well, do you know the one that was the richest black man in America at a given time?

34:49Well, okay. We're narrowing it down. No, but maybe. He's the guy who started BET. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I listened to his wife. His wife was also the head honcho, I think, right? Him and his wife kind of ran it. Maybe. I'm not sure about that. So he starts BET with like a, he has$15 ,000 of his own money. He puts that in. he gets$500 ,000 from a guy named John Malone. And he's like, look, there's no cable network. There's no channel that's caters towards black Americans. And he's like, you know, we can do this. We can build this up. And so they had music, obviously. So it's basically like the black MTV.

35:29They had music, they had award shows, culture, whatever. BET is a winner and BET wins. He sells B.T. to Viacom for$3 billion, which is just an incredible outcome. Did he own the whole thing? I don't know what John Malone got. I don't know if it was a loan or equity, but he owned the majority of it. So after everything settles, Bob Johnson is reportedly worth about$1.3 billion to$1.5 billion. And he diversifies. He puts a bunch of money into real estate. He owns hotels. He owns hotel chains. he owns a bunch of different assets basically. But they're all kind of like cash heavy assets. So building hotels, that was a lot.

36:15He had like I think a casino type thing or like some gambling thing or whatever. He needed money for that. So he's put out a lot of cash. Then he gets divorced. He gets divorced and his wife gets 400 million out of the 1.3 billion awarded to her in the judgment. so that judge made a you know gave her a very nice settlement or a very nice ruling guess who she marries a few months later the judge no way I don't know if it was a few months later I shouldn't say that marries the judge which is just an incredible wow that's an incredible I honestly wasn't going to tell the story until I heard that I was like oh I gotta tell the story just because that is that's how thankful That is amazing.

37:03But didn't they freak out afterwards and appeal it? Or is that a thing? I don't think so. I don't know. I think it was done. So this happens. He buys an NBA team. So he buys the Bobcats at the time for$300 million. And I think they were like the expansion franchise, basically. But they're burning money. So he's losing$20 to$25 million a year. He loses another$200. So he buys it for$300. then he loses 200 million operating the thing and just operating expenses, which is crazy because there's this famous phrase when it comes to NBA teams that nobody's ever lost money running an NBA team and all the owners claim they're losing money, but it's really just like a negotiation thing against the players.

37:44They don't want anybody to know how much money they're actually making or they'll run it at like a slight loss, but the franchise value is appreciating like crazy. So they're like, oh, poor us. How could we ever afford to pay for our stadium? It's like, dude, you bought this for 300 million. It's now worth 3 billion. Like, I think you can afford it. so he's losing money he's got all his money tied up in investments he's got a ton of debt he's using a ton of debt to build this thing he's like alright look I need to turn this team around he hires Michael Jordan so he's like Mike come work for the Bobcats you're from Charlotte and come work for the local team you run the team so Michael's running the team but Bob is getting stretched for cash and basically he's got too much debt and his shit's all about to come due And so he's about to lose his entire empire because he can't come up with enough money to pay off his note.

38:34And they're about to take all the collateral. So he's about to lose all his hotels and his team. Do you think that in those situations, which has happened a lot, they go to the ex-wife and they're like,

38:47hey, do you remember that time that I tried to make sure you got nothing, but you still got something? Can we talk? You know what I mean? Like, I wonder if there's any, I wonder if I've never been close to a divorce like that. This is where we had our first date. You know why I brought you here? I just wanted to see if you had any of those feelings left for me because I'm about to lose it all. So he's about to lose it all. And he's like, okay, I need to sell the team or something. But the team is losing money and they're the worst team. They're the sorriest team. So he wants to sell it for like$350 million or something like that.

39:19Can't find a buyer. MJ comes to him and says, all right, I'll buy it. I'm going to buy it for I'll put down$25 million in cash just$25 million and I want it at a $275 million valuation so he gets like a 25-30 % discount on the team because Bob's under pressure and has no other choice basically he's like but here's what I'll do I'll assume all the debts of the team so I'll get you off this debt which will relieve the pressure on you so MJ buys this team for only$25 million down and now is going to sell this thing for$2 billion, which is like a 100x cash on cash return for him buying this team, which is just an incredible move.

39:59And yet another reason MJ is one of the goats. Just a shark. Is that story popular? I've never heard that. No, that's not popular. That's an MFM original, an MFM classic, soon to be copycatted by all of our little fanboys everywhere who will take this and turn this into a thread, a newsletter, a TikTok, and an IG reel for themselves. and so you know it'll be everywhere soon the one thing that another interesting twist it's going to be here's what it's going to be called it's going to be called like michael jordan made money he became a billionaire in ways that you didn't even realize were possible and has nothing to do with him playing and has nothing to do with nike here's the story of how michael j michael jordan turned 25 million dollars there's a hook for you too um there's there is more to the story potentially so the team has sucked ever since jordan bought them and like basically he actually underperformed like the team sucked the franchise values are down uh his franchise value should be up more than it is uh he so he didn't actually maximize the value on it uh but it just shows when you when you buy right it's hard to you know hard to lose money at that point um the other rumor is that mj is only selling the team because he himself owes a bunch of money that's the other rumor i don't know if this is true or not but well there's always these crazy conspiracy theories that he's like a degenerate gambler and like there's always there was a i listened to a podcast called conspiracy theories and it was how the mob um made him retire from the nba or something like that and they there was even theories that they killed his right yeah that's that's the conspiracy is that they killed his father because he owed money and that the commissioner told him you need to take a couple years off because we could suspend you but that's a bad look for you and us of this gambling problem.

41:45So you just disappear. So that's the conspiracy theory. Who knows if that's true? The other version of this is the guy who bought the team now, this guy Gabe Plotkin, he's the guy that ran Melvin Capital, which is the hedge fund that the Redditors, the Wall Street bets guys, blew up in the GameStop thing. And so Gabe lost like$500 million and that, his fund was about to go under and then he gets bailed out by, what's his name, Ken Griffin. the rumor is that Michael had given Melvin Capital a lot of money hundreds of millions of dollars to invest on his behalf and that they had lost it and so he needed cash and so that's why he sold it and now he sold it to that guy, he sold it to Gabe which is pretty crazy This is juicy man This is a juicy grape This is a grape of a story I love this, this is a big bag grape A lot of what I just said is stitching together pieces because people don't come out and say everything, but they do say pieces.

42:43And then you kind of have to assume things in between the gaps. And he's protected. Jordan's protected pretty hard. Like I remember, you remember that rapper Chameleon Air? Yeah. He told the story. He like, because you know, rappers love Jordan because of, well, he's like a good, like, you know, a black man succeeding and they love his brand. And Chameleon Air was like, nah, man, Jordan's the worst. One time I tried to get an autograph from him and Jordan goes, nah, I don't give autographs or take pictures with N-words. And there's this store. Chameleon Air was like, huh? And he's like, at the time, he was like, I was famous.

43:19Not famous enough that I thought Jordan would bow down to me, but famous enough that I thought maybe I would get a, oh, nice to see you type of thing. And he's like, I got nothing. I got nothing from Jordan, and he's an asshole. And I don't remember how he explained it, but basically I was like, oh, Jordan, not a nice guy. Not nice at all. I would have thought that it was like a story of like, everyone knows that he's a jerk on the court, but I would have thought like, oh, maybe that just like ends once you retire. But it sounds like maybe that's not the case. Yeah, I don't know why that would end when he retires.

43:50Okay, yeah. So that's the Jordan story. Where do you want to go next? All right, I have got one interesting thing. So everyone wants to say, Sean, what's your e-com store? Tell me all about it. And you give out little nibbles and you kind of tell people, you know, things are going well. we want to know what the problem with e-com and also a lot of other businesses that we talk about the things that are somewhat easy to start the valuations are shit like a a decent e-com business right now what do you think it sells for five times profit yeah one times revenue which is usually which is the same thing as five times profit for most of these so the thing is about is like a lot of these businesses that we talk about and what people initially start particularly like the really crap ones like a drop shipping or things like that or an agency, they don't really sell for a lot of money.

44:38And so I like to research businesses that A, can last a really long time. A lot of e-com businesses, well, a lot of businesses in general don't last long, particularly ones built off of Facebook and things like that. Or it's a struggle at least. And also B, they sell for shit. One type of business that I've brought up consistently is trade shows. And the reason why is I've noticed a trend where a trade show business can last many, many, many decades. Sometimes there's many examples of them lasting 100 plus years. And these businesses that are okay, they're not that fast growing, but they're good.

45:14Man, they're consistently selling for 10, sometimes 15 times profit, which is pretty good. That can be three times revenue. Whereas a media property like The Hustle, if it's only okay, that will sell for five times profit sometimes, six times profit. It depends how fast it's growing. but I was reading Flash and Flames. It's this tiny, tiny, tiny trade publication that I read. They were telling this story about this guy named Tony Robinson. He started this company in 1991. He started this company called UKI. I believe it's UKI Media and... His SEO is screwed. You don't want to be Tony Robinson.

45:53Yeah. He's screwed for a bunch of reasons but he never gives interviews. He's a pretty low-key guy but it's called UKI media and events and you could go to the website if you click it it's like it looks old it doesn't look special and most of the people in the pictures look like they're above 60 years old um so it's like not like particularly new looking you know they're not at least trying to like be cool um and but here's what's interesting so they own 17 b2b uh trade shows and they own a couple magazines but almost all the revenue comes from these trade shows and their biggest one is a 24 year old thing called the automotive testing exposition or expo.

46:33And it's basically, this is like a niche among niches. It's not a car show. It's a trade show and a core exhibition that has, it's where the people making the machines that help you test if your car works. So if you're building a Tesla or a Ford or whatever, you're constantly testing your new self-driving system or you're testing, I guess, different new components in the LCD screen, things like that. There's people who are building machines to test that. This is a trade show for those people. And I was doing more research about this. And he was saying, he goes, I chose to specialize in transportation and avoid developing products and...

47:13What's he say? Whatever. Actually, I was going to quote something. It's not that interesting of a quote. But here's... Listen to the revenue. 2019, they did$32 million with 30 % margin. So they made$10 million in profit. Let's skip 2020 and 2021. They only did$8 million in revenue. How they still did$8 million in revenue during those periods, I don't know. 2022, post-COVID, revenue of$26 million, same margin of around$26 million. So they did$6.7 million in profit. 2023, the expectation is$30 million in revenue,$9 million in profit. And there's a rumor that they're about to sell for around 12 times profit.

47:54So this$30 million a year trade show business is about to sell for somewhere between$100 and$120 million in revenue. And he's done this multiple times. So he had one for Aircraft Interiors Expo. So people building aircraft interiors. He sold that for 10 times profit. He also had a magazine company that he sold for only times profit, but he's done this multiple times. And there's this guy in Hampton, his name's Jonathan Wiener. He's done the same thing. He did Money 2020. He did Shop Talk. And I think he did one more. He sold each of them for around$100 to$150 million. And it was like 13 times profit.

48:31I'm going to ask him to come on the pod. But it's just crazy that these trade shows are consistently selling for 10 or 13 times profit. it. Now here's the opportunity. If I'm listening to this pod and I'm trying to start a business, what I would do, there's a whole lot of niche Twitter handles. There's the strip mall guy. There's the used car salesperson guy. There's the used watch guy. I don't know this for sure, but I bet it's not just you and I, a pop culture type of person who's just paying attention because it's fun and we're outside. But I bet there's people like the strip mall guy. And I bet there's dozens and dozens of other people like that who are in these really niche in which the actual industry insiders follow them and they get a kick out of them.

49:21It could be like the motor home guy, or it could be the... I don't know, whatever it is. I think you could partner with some of these people and build these trade shows. Because the way these particular... This guy, Tony Robinson, And the way that his thing works is I think access to the events are free. But what they do is they hire salespeople and they pay their salespeople a lot. You give them... I think he even says in the article, it's like 80 grand a year base, but they can earn$300 ,000 a year. But what they do is they sell spots or booths at the trade show. And they create a map where you can see it all.

49:56It's just like real estate, different locations, you get higher prices. And it's basically like... It's not like a conference like what I used to do, HustleCon or TED Talk, where you're going to watch content. The content is not important. You might have speakers, but that's just to attract the right type of people. It's really to do business. And so this small... I bet you there's a lot of$10,$30,$40 million a year businesses that sell components that sell to Toyota. It's like just your door handle. I don't know, something. And they do business there. And they say, All right, great. I got 5 leads.

50:27Those 5 leads I can probably get. a few million dollars if I can close one of those leads. So it's worth it for me to pay$50 ,000. I think someone could do some of these trade shows with a lot of these industry insiders on Twitter. And I think that's an interesting opportunity. And I think it's significantly better than many of the other opportunities, including agencies that a lot of people are starting online. It's harder. If there's bad weather, you're screwed. Or if there's a pandemic, you're screwed. But these things can sell for way more money. And they can actually last for dozens and dozens and dozens of years.

50:59So that's my pitch on trade shows and a small opportunity. Yeah, I love it. I think that's great. Nobody talks about trade shows more than you in my life. And I was stunned when I heard about that guy who did Shop Talk, Money 2020. And I think they did the healthcare one. I forgot what that one was called.

51:19Those are, it's really, really remarkable. I don't fully understand it. Meaning... What don't you understand? like let's kind of walk through it so basically um what's the draw to get the attendees to attend how do you tell the what is the value prop for the attendees is it meet others in your industry is it see these vendors up close and personal is it listen to these famous people three famous people talk what is the core draw well i think it's all the above but let's go through each one first one you didn't mention is i think sometimes it's like oh sick i could justify a free trip to Florida.

51:55I'm going to go hang out with people. And also, oh, hey, Bob, who is not really our competitor, but he's in our industry, he might be there. So maybe I can go and shoot the shit with Bob and hang out with him. But I could bring eight of my teammates and we can justify this trip. I think that's definitely a thing. The second way that you get the... So it's all about... This is a marketplace. So you need the attendees to be there. The second way you get there is you need interesting speakers. So it could even be someone who's not even related. But it's like, oh, wow, this one person, like Gary Vaynerchuk, that's not really in our industry, but whatever.

52:27I've always wanted to see what he had to say. All right, cool. I can get that person. And then the third one is, let's just see the latest and greatest technology. And so we can spend one day getting to know what's going on in our industry. But I really think a lot of times it's rooted in, I want to get out of the office and I can justify this$3 ,000 ticket and I can get five of my coworkers to go. And it's an easy justification. But in this one, they're giving away the passes for free. Is that correct? This UK, I think. When I went to their website, they advertised free passes. So that's the extent of my research.

52:58Okay. And then in money, 2020, they charge people. Right. And so how do they sell those tickets? How do they, how do they build the brand from scratch? Is it content first free content, then they lead up to it or are they just cold emailing? What do you, what do you know about how that guy, Jonathan Wiener or whatever his name was, how they did it. Well, so that's why it helps to have some type of audience. And so what you'll notice is a lot of these companies, they're trade show and media businesses. So oftentimes, they'll create a blog or magazine in order to get some type of audience. And then they'll use that to use their authority to sell tickets.

53:36But other times, I think what you can do is you can just cold email a bunch of people, to be honest. I think that in order to get... Look, the first year that I did HustleCon, I charged$300. And I was a nobody. So I didn't have an email list. I had nothing. I got the right speakers. And I was able to get 400 people to come. And that was only in six weeks time. I think it's actually significantly easier than you think if you go into a niche to just tell a handful of people. And those handful of people tell a handful of people. Because a really successful show in a particular in a small-ish niche, you can do a lot of damage with a thousand or 2000 people, but then you really start making revenue after a year, four or five and six.

54:16What trade show would we do off MFM? Let's say we could magically get somebody to organize this whole thing because we don't want to do it. What could we use our distribution for that would be awesome? Well, I would never want to do this because I think this because the value here is low, but podcasting. So you could do a podcasting one. You know, we have 30 friends who are big ish name podcasters. You could do a podcasting trade show where you have like, what are we using now? Riverside? Riverside would be a booth and like, fuck, I don't know, like all this shit that we use. It's just like the podcast, the business side of podcasting is just so small.

54:54Oh man. But small is good. Small is good. The problem is, is that the contract value is low. That's the issue. You need something where people spend millions of dollars. So the podcasting would, but like, but would you ever want to go? You don't leave your house. So, but hypothetically, a person like you, would you want to go and shoot the shit with some other guy who's a little bit ahead of you and just hear best practices? Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so podcasting is one. What else? I don't know, dude. What are you interested in? What I'm interested in. What type of niche do you think would work?

55:25So for example, these guys are doing auto parts and the automotive industry because it's B2B and a bunch of people are selling high-priced things. We've seen that Money 2020 was like, hey, fintech is going to be a thing. Let's just make the number one. I don't even know if those are trade shows as much as they were conferences, but let's make the fintech conference. Let's make the e-commerce conference. That's kind of what they tried to do with those to ride an upstart wave. We could probably do something either involving investing or high net worth people. So where your booths are a different type of...

56:04A question that you and I and our friends constantly ask each other is like, does anyone have an accountant who they trust? Or I am having this tax issue. What are some lawyers that I can trust? I think you could do something in that vein. I would have to narrow in on what it would be. I think you could do something like that, where one customer for a particular law firm can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lifetime of fees or a net worth or a financial advisor could. I think you could do something in that vein. By the way, we've been to a couple of these. FarmCon, I think, is exactly this.

56:36So that's for the agriculture industry. We went to that. Another one is back when I was doing the sushi restaurant, I remember we somehow were at the QSR. I don't even remember what it's called. It's the QSR event. And I just remember that the CEO, the guy who created it, his last name was Hamburger. And I was like, I forgot what's the name of that effect where people end up living up to their name like there's like some there's like a whole subreddit about this Reddit people was he just a big juicy guy? I mean what was he like? Just basically the idea of somebody who's named John Hamburger ends up creating the quick the fast food trade show like you know Usain Bolt is the fastest man on earth like this is just It's too good to be true.

57:24If you're that Wolf of Franchise guy who we like on Twitter, you definitely could pull off something like this. Logistically, this isn't easy. There are some challenges, but it's a problem that's been solved tons and tons of times. We're not inventing anything new. We're selling t-shirts. It still revolves logistical issues, but you're not inventing anything. Yeah, that's cool. So, all right, I think that's good. I'm going to save my other topics for the next episode. Did that not tickle your fancy? It does. It seems like... You know it's good when I'm slacking in the background because I'm just like, oh, here's a half-baked idea.

58:03Here's a half-baked idea of what could happen. I think the trade show stuff is actually pretty fascinating. And I like, you know, I think there's two ways to approach a business. One is like, what do I love to do? And let me just follow my curiosity, follow my natural, like scratching my own itch type of thing. and then the other is like the cold calculating like all right let me work backwards from businesses that sell with high multiples and i'm just gonna go fishing over there because i don't know i don't know what my passion is so might as well just go calculate the best opportunity i've actually done both in my life both can work you can win both ways i think it is better to win when you follow your passion but like um but i but if you're not gonna do that this is a fun way to to reverse engineer what business you should be in.

58:46And I don't want to say this is like an absolute thing, but it appears as though there's lots of buyers for these businesses. Because the way that there's a handful of publicly traded companies, as well as some really heavy, heavy, heavy backed PE companies, where what they do is they just buy like eight of them, and they put them together, and they do synergistic stuff to reduce costs and whatever. And it seems as though it's a very, very high buyer market. Whereas like e-com, for example, I don't know if agencies are like this. I don't know. They might be, they may not be. But some of the things that people start, they seem a little bit more difficult to sell, whereas these things aren't as difficult to sell.

59:28That's right. Good stuff. All right. That was a good episode. I like that one. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

59:49Hey, 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 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:00:19If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.