My decision-making framework for which ideas to chase

22:33And I made that mistake. I think I made that mistake of compromising because I've now done both. Now, it might be argued that you do the compromise first and that gives you the freedom to take a bunch of shots on goal or gives you the confidence or now you have the skills or whatever. I don't know. But if I could rewind it, I would go back and advise myself to just be like, hey, you should just keep building the things that you find most interesting. Were you not interested at all? I mean, it's so funny. You didn't play. I was interested in them because of their market potential. I was like, oh, napkin math.

23:02This times this times this equals this. That's not wrong. I mean, that's not fun. That's fine. I don't think it is ideal, right? There's not right and wrong. There's like, you know, there's good, better, best, right? There's different grades. Like, for example, I think Mr. Beast is like, I don't, I actually, that's an interesting question. I don't know if he cared. Does he care about making movies or does he care just like, this was the game that was set forth and now I want to win? Well, he is interesting, right? Because it's kind of both. He was clearly, he clearly loved to make content and wanted to be a YouTuber, almost like at an identity level more than anything.

23:34That's why for six years, nobody's watching. And he just keeps making videos year after year, 12 years old, 13 years old, 14 years old, 15 years old, 16 years old, 17 years old, 18 years old. Nobody watched until he was 19. And so, and even then, it's not like it was huge. It was small, even at that stage. But he kept going and he had said up front, like, okay, I'm either going to be a famous YouTuber or I'm going to die making YouTube videos. Like, I'm going to try, I'll die trying. And so, you know, in that way, he was pretty mission driven. And I don't think he was, you know, there was a lot of easier ways to make money if he needed to make money, right?

24:03Over time, he could have given up and gone towards other things. And also, the types of videos he made were videos that he obviously found interesting. At the same time, I think more than being an artist about like, what is the most artistic video I can make? I think he's basically saying, I want to make the best YouTube videos, and best is defined as what people want to watch. I like making things that entertain the masses that people want to watch. That's the version he likes. I think the video he did the other day got like 100 million views in a few hours. And for some reason, Mr. Beast's videos never pop up on my feed.

24:40But this one, it had all celebrities in it. I didn't realize he was doing that. 30 celebrities fight for a million dollars. And it's like Paris Hilton and Kevin Hart and shit like that. Did you see that? Yeah, I watched that one. That's crazy. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20 % of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out four-fifths of the pages. Point is, you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more.

25:15And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit HubSpot.com. Did you have a third or a fourth? Yeah, I got two more quick ones. One is everybody, it doesn't matter how rich you are, everybody's a little kid. So last year, for example, you know, you've got this room full of people who can buy anything that they want. What can't they buy, right? And so we rent out the stadium for the final game of our tournament at the camp. And they walked in and there was jerseys printed with their names. And like everybody was so excited like a little kid. And so it's these little moments in between the big things that actually create the feel of the event.

25:54And so, for example, this year, we're doing this little touch where we play basketball in the morning. We got to tell, wait, Shaq, Cover your ears.

26:04So we play basketball in the morning, and then we go to the house for lunch or whatever. And at the house, you'll already see on the TV screen like photos from that morning's game, like little videos and photos. Were you inspired by Steve Bartlett? I heard he does that, where you record a podcast with him, and then when you're done with the podcast, he hands you a book. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a photo album of the podcast. Yeah, which is a very, very great touch. We stole it from K Academy. Coach K does this, and they have that there. And so we were like, oh, that's a great idea. So little things like after the final game this time, we were like, how do we make it fun?

26:37How do we give you that moment that you can't buy? Like, you know, what's the fun thing that like would bring out the childlike energy in these people? And so we were taking them to the locker room. And you know, like in sports, like when you win a championship, you like have champagne and like ski goggles in the locker room to do. So we have that set up. So it's like the winners are going to get to go do that. Like, I don't know, just like have fun. I think caring about these little details. Last time after the event, we made this custom magazine. It was cool. With like photos of everybody, almost like slam magazine back in the day.

27:07And we sent it to each person. It took me a week to work on that. Like they were just like, what do you, do you have a job? What do you do? You know, like, you know me in life. I'm pretty not a man of the details. That's not where I'm from. But with this event, it's like pick and choose the few areas where you're not going to 80-20 in life. Pick and choose the areas where good enough is not good enough. Like, okay, this is one project where we're like, we're going to try to go all out to a ridiculous degree. And they're going to feel that. They're going to know that we went all out for our own amusement and for our own, like, just to see what we could do if we really create something that's special.

27:43And so I'm excited to do that. Have you been working on this all year? No, this is like the last six weeks, let's say. Wow. That's a lot you get done just in six weeks. Was this what you will focus on the whole time, the whole six weeks? No, I'm not focused on it really at all. I just meet with Ben at the beginning, say, here's some ideas. Here's what I thought was good last time, bad last time. Here's some ideas. Ben goes and does things. And then we brought on some event organizers to help us this time. And then every couple of weeks, we just sort of check in on like, and he's not doing it full-time either, but like, you know, a big chunk of his time.

28:13Well, the hard part is just the inviting the right people and getting them to say, yeah. What I was doing, so I told you I was trying to write that book. So I was like, I've basically become that family guy meme. I don't know if you've ever seen that episode of Family Guy where Brian's been writing a novel and Stewie's just trolling him. He's like, how's that novel going? Yeah. Got some pages? Got some chapters? Beginning, middle, end? A little juxtaposition? And he's like, Brian's like a classic writer who's like just stuck in the mud, like not making progress on this book. It's like too big of a thing.

28:39It's like intimidating him. And so I've had this idea to write this book. I've done all this research, but I was like slowly, like I would draft chapters, but like I wasn't like writing the book. I was just like drafting chapters. You were pretending. Yeah, I was like pretending. So two weeks ago, I was like, all right. Who am I? Am I the kind of guy who's talking about this book? Am I going to write the book? And so two weeks ago, I decided I will have a prototype of the book. So like not the full book, but like a cover, opening, intro, first chapter, second chapter, printed physical book to show these people in two weeks.

29:13And in the last two weeks, I wrote it. It's getting printed right now. It'll be printed the day. The last day of printing will be the day. Is it any good? I threw myself into it. And it's good because it was such a good forcing function. and there's a lesson I was telling Ben, like Tony Robbins has this phrase, he goes, peers aren't just the people around, like near you, like just the guy you see to your right. A peer is somebody who has leverage over you. And it's like, what do you mean leverage over you? He's like, a peer is somebody who you care about their opinion of you. So they have some leverage over you.

29:43And that can be a good thing or a bad thing. But like the good version of that is if you get the right people around you and you care about their opinion and they value the things that you value, well, you will sort of rise in accordance with wanting to be seen well by your peers. It's very hard to just become a monk and renounce, be like, I don't care what anyone thinks of me. Everybody likes to say that shit, but then you're all on social media posting and trying to get likes. Come on, we all care what people think about us. The trick is to pick who's going to care about you and what those people care about.

30:10And so if you're a mom and you're around other great moms, then you're not going to want to look like a bad mom. And the result is good. It helps you be a better mom. January is like the biggest month of... January 2026 might be the biggest month of your professional career in the last five years. Definitely the most productive. I mean, nobody tries to write a book. I gave myself two weeks, and then I went to the printer, and they were like, hey, yeah, we need seven days. I was like, oh, good. I got seven days to write this. Fantastic. I just pulled all-nighters for seven days and pulled it off.

30:41Can I tell you a cool story about excellence that I think is actually related to this? Yes. and it's probably the only time that the sports that I'm interested are going to overlap with sports in general and that you might be interested in. Let me guess, does a sport not involve a ball or a goal of any kind? No, it's defense. The only sports I'm into are people beating each other up or running away from each other.

31:07It's chasing someone or what you do when you catch them.

31:13So which one is this one? Is this a running or a fighting? It's a running one. More boring, but way more inspirational. So I read this book a few years ago, and I was watching a documentary on the same topic last night, and I really wanted to bring it up with you because I think you maybe heard of it, but I don't know if you knew all the details. So in the 1960s and 1970s, there was this coach. His name was Bill. He was a track and field coach up in Oregon, and he was the man. He had served in the military in World War II, and he was this tough guy and kind of sort of had this scientist way about him where he was all about efficiency.

31:46He loved efficiency. And he was like, what's the most, what's the best way that I can get these kids that I'm teaching or coaching at the University of Oregon, how can I make them run faster? Other than making them train more. And he got really nerdy on shoes. And so he started taking apart different shoes and he started thinking, how can I make these shoes better? And originally, like the lore or the story is that he was like, well, if you're six feet tall, you're gonna take this many steps per mile. And if I can reduce the weight of the shoes by only one ounce, that's going to save you 50 pounds per mile.

32:20That seems like a big deal. And so he's hanging out with his kids one day. And his kids at this point, I think are in their 20s, but they came over for brunch. And the wife, his wife, Bill's wife, is making waffles for him. And he was like, I got it. I know exactly what to do. So he steals the waffle iron from his wife, and he pours liquid rubber into it. And he folds it down, he folds it up, and he's like, this is it. And this was the sole for his new shoe. And so he used that, and they called it the waffle for the shoe. And it kicked ass. And now I think you know who I'm talking about, right?

32:53Yeah, Nike. It must be Nike. Yeah, Bill Bowerman. Bill Bowerman was the co-founder of Nike. The more famous co-founder was Phil Knight. Phil Knight was actually one of his athletes at University of Oregon. And Phil Knight had a class on, an entrepreneurship class. Are they like age-gapped by like 20 years or something? More. I believe, at least based off photos, I think he was probably in his late 50s and Phil Knight was in his mid-20s. He had created the idea of Nike as a college student. But at first, when he started the company in the 60s, he was basically just importing Japanese shoes. And he knew Bill liked to tinker with shoes.

33:28But it wasn't until about five or six years in did Nike actually start saying, Bill, let's actually just make the shoes that you are already making. But they were partners. Okay, so they were in parallel. Phil Knight is trying to start a shoe company. Yeah. And this is like, what is it called? Blue Ribbon or what's it called? Yeah, they were basically importing Japanese shoes and he called it Blue Ribbon. So he's importing other people's shoes. And then Bill separately, his coach, is experimenting, tinkering with shoes. And then they come together. What's the come together story? Do you know? Is there a story there?

33:58Well, Phil Knight was his athlete. And so Phil Knight wore some of Bill's prototypes. Prototypes. But they were really rough. Like people used to complain that they were kind of rough, but they did work. but I think they would only work for like two races. It's the shape of a circle from the waffle. Yeah, it was weird, but it was really effective. And then so they teamed up and he was like, let's import these shoes. And then Bill, you give them to the Nike guys or to the Oregon team. And we're going to go track me to track me. And it wasn't, it was a company, but it's almost like, it was almost like if I started a honey company and I started going to like farmer's markets, like, and somehow that turns into burpees, but it, you know, it doesn't happen overnight.

34:38Okay, so that's not the story that I want to actually bring up. What I really want to talk about was Steve Prefontaine. Do you know who Steve Prefontaine was? So he was a runner also. Was he like the first athlete? He broke some record. He's wearing Nikes. Is that his story? Sort of, kind of. You're in the ballpark. He lost a leg or that's the Canadian guy? That's Terry Fox, who I made fun of once in Canada and they booed me on stage. We'll tell that story. You swing and miss with some of these jokes, all right? Yeah. Basically, Terry Fox was this guy who ran across Canada with one leg that he lost to cancer.

35:09And I saw a sign or a statue for him all over Canada. And Sean and I did a live podcast. I was like, who the hell is this Terry Fox guy? He's everywhere. It did not land. The definition of punching down. Yeah. So Google Steve Prefontaine. We were talking about punk rock and not compromising. This guy's a hunk. He's a hunk, right? Is this guy the hunkiest of hunks? So Steve Prefontaine... I think, by the way, hunk, pretty underutilized. I think we should own that word here. Is that what you want to be known for? Amongst a few things, I'd put that top five. Steve Prefontaine, he was born in a small fishing town called Coos Bay, and he was badass.

35:49He was badass in high school where he just crushed everyone. And at the time, this was in the late 1960s, Bill Bowerman actually basically pioneered the word jogging in America. So running was not even a thing. Bill Bowerman was like, everyone, you should run. It's good for your health. and that is when like housewives started running because previously people would see someone running in the streets. This blows my mind, by the way. This is not that long ago. What did you say? It was like in the 60s or something, wasn't it? The jogging revolution was in the 60s and that's when Steve, and then, yeah.

36:18That's crazy. That's like, you know, my dad is like a teenager or something. That's, jogging seems like it's just been around since prehistoric times. No, it wasn't a thing. To me, that's an incredible marketing story how they got like America to jog. Do you know what I know? What inspired Bill was he was in World War II. And they were surrounded by Germans at one point. And Bill was an outdoorsman. He was into physical fitness and hiking. And he noticed that the more fit soldiers who he was around, they were able to survive longer. And he eventually overcame this German. They were surrounded by Germans.

36:50And somehow he conquered them and made them surrender. But it was at that time where he's like, I realized how important fitness was. And jogging is a really good example of how to get fit. And so he popularized jogging. He wrote a book called Jogging. And it went viral. It was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the 60s. That's how jogging it is. I've seen a newspaper article that was like, this strange phenomenon taking place in the suburbs of America. People are going outside and running. Something's come over these people, like an alien invasion has happened, and people are doing this strange behavior now.

37:24That was Bill. So Bill popularized this, and that's one of the many reasons why when Steve Prefontaine was in high school, running, obviously, not very popular now, Now, unless occasionally you get like a freak like Usain Bolt and you're like, that's really cool. Well, Bill Bowerman was sort of that guy in the 60s and 70s where people like this guy invented jogging. How cool. He's kind of neat. But then it wasn't like a cool thing, but it was like a neat thing. But then this kid named Steve Prefontaine, and he was the exact opposite of Bill. And I'll explain in a minute. But he just crushed all these kids in high school.

37:55And then he got recruited to the University of Oregon to run for Bill. Now, Bill is a very methodical, scientific guy. And what that means is that he hated front running. His whole idea was, it's your goal to win the race. Your goal is not to look cool. It's not to lead the whole time. It's to do the least amount of work to get the desired result, which is to win. That is not what Steve Frivantain was about. He said, he has this famous quote. He goes, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it with style. And his whole shtick was that he would run the race from beginning to end as hard as you could.

38:26He was short and he used to say that he wasn't gifted. He was very gifted, but he would kind of joke that he wasn't gifted and he would say, to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. And he also, he had this other quote where he said, a lot of people run a race to see who's fastest. I want a race to see who has the most guts. And that's what he was famous for, was running all out as hard as he could. Hunk. Hunk, right? Like in the book. Hunk like attitude. Dude, it gets even hunkier. In the book that I've read about him, they used to talk about his gaze. I don't know, if you could Google like Steve Prefontaine.

38:57I was giving a little too much now. Well, hold on. Google Steve. This is important. It's actually about branding. Google Steve Prefontaine posters. And he's famous for this like gaze. He would like stare really hard at things. And that poster is one of the most famous posters. If you are like a nerdy high school kid who cares about running, like you have this poster. This guy was the boss. And turns out in the 1972 Olympics in Munich, he did his front running thing where with like three or four laps to go, which there's still a lot left to go. He takes hold and he leads the Olympic race for the 5 ,000 meters.

39:26And it doesn't work out. and at the very end, the other guys outkick him and he gets fourth. And tragically, he dies like a year and a half later in a car crash. He was drinking and driving. But he was Nike's first sponsored athlete. And what Phil Knight says is, even though that Jordan kind of made Nike most famous, that's how people know Nike now, they say that Steve Prefontaine was the soul of Nike. This idea of like fierce independence, of competitiveness. He goes, Phil was like, I didn't really have that. That was Steve. Everything Steve was about, I took it from him and I made it into a brand called Nike.

40:02That's sick. It's like if the man was a brand and then they basically built Nike in that image, right? Like that attitude. It's badass. Yeah. So before Nike was Nike, it was called Blue Ribbon Sports. Then they changed it to Nike and they were like, Steve is the brand that we're trying to be like. And the reason I think this interests me is I love like these punk rock, like Maverick Renegade guys. But I also am interested in stealing from the past, so finding good ideas. And so I was thinking about Bill Bowerman, and he has this famous book called The Men of Oregon, and Steve Prevante. And I was like, what can I steal about his branding?

40:35He has a bunch of really cool branding. So for example, when he was at his peak, he was kicking everyone's ass. Someone made a shirt that said, Go Steve, Go. Or sorry, it said, Go Pre. And he made a different shirt that said, Stop Pre. Yeah, I'm looking at that right now. And he put it on a stop sign. and these t-shirts got really popular. Stop pre. Wait, why did he make the opposite? Because the first one's supporting him, but he just was like, no. It was a joke, but it was just kind of like, I'm so good that people have to stop me. And it's pretty cool. And so that actually, that t-shirt is really cool.

41:08I love that t-shirt. And then if you look at these quotes, look at this quote. No matter how hard you train, somebody will train harder. No matter how hard you run, somebody will run harder. No matter how hard you want it, somebody will want it more. I am somebody. How good is that? So he's got so many of these quotes. When you get this combo like athlete-poet, and you get Ali, or you get McGregor, or you get Steve Prefontaine, it's the best. And I think that you can have... And so a lot of times, people don't realize this, but there exists certain personality types and attributes that supersede a sport or a genre or a niche.

41:45Totally. I love this guy. I don't even care about running. You don't care about running. But I would buy this guy's shirt. Yeah, or like Lance Armstrong was another one. Like Lance Armstrong, you're telling me this guy's going to be the most famous athlete on earth for a couple of years, for a handful of years via cycling? Are you kidding me? And even frankly, I don't remember exactly, but when I was a kid, golf was a loser sport until Tiger Woods. Like it wasn't like that big of a deal. Same with Serena Williams and Venus Williams. It was like kind of interesting. But then like that movie, Marty Supreme came out and it's about table tennis.

42:17And I remember watching that table tennis sport. like I'm like oh my god this guy's punk rock I love table tennis now yeah it's so good uh I love when people like you said transcend the sport like uh I've told the story before but I've always I always remember it we used to at our company we used to always like take breaks and just play FIFA or like any kind of video game really but like a lot of it was FIFA and I told you that Steve Bartlett used to used to work for us and he used to always play my CTO for a con like in FIFA all night like we used to play for an hour as a break they would play for an hour as a break you'd go back to work and then starting at like nine or ten they would start playing fifa again and they would play till two or three in the morning every night and um steve i think was getting the better of uh for con a lot and he used to talk so much trash and the biggest like trash talk was he would say he's like even when i leave even when i go back to the uk you're gonna remember me because i'm not a man i'm a concept i'm a concept i'm just a concept and he just kept saying i'm just a concept.

43:15And I remember just laughing because I had no idea what he was even talking about. It has nothing to do with FIFA. But I've always remembered that. Actually, that is the highest thing is when you're a concept. You're not even in your physical form anymore. To me, I'm like, I see Prefontaine. I'm like, Prefontaine is a concept. And it's also, it's kind of messed up, but it's kind of, for the story, it's better that he, I think he was 26 or 25 when he died. And there's a bunch of these guys who die at a very young age. And I'm like, because they died so young, it makes them significantly more, the mysteriousness of it makes it way more compelling.

43:49And so Steve Prefontaine, I don't know if we have, we have a Billy of the Week. I guess that would be Bill Bowerman. But Steve would be in that category. Legend of the Week. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours and I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes and then they told me I got to visit my local branch.

44:21And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team, all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to Mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.

44:49So why does Phil Knight get all the props? Is it because Bill Bowman's not around anymore or he took it over or what's the deal? Bill was never particularly active. He was sort of like the Steve Wozniak of Apple. How much did he own of Nike? Did Did he get to keep a chunk of it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're multi-billionaires. But he was much older. So look at when he died. Did he die in the 80s, I think? 99. Oh, he made it that long. Okay, I didn't even know he died in 99. No, but he was out of the picture starting in the 80s, I believe. At his passing, his stake was worth$390 million. He sold most of his shares during the 1980s, but stayed involved.

45:31He was like the genius. who Phil, and Phil was the commercialization guy. What's the genius of Phil Knight? And what's more of his story? I haven't read Shoe Dog, by the way, which I know is supposed to be mandatory. I started it and I was like, eh. So I've only read Shoe Dog and I've read Bill Bauman's book. So I've never read too much about Phil Knight other than that one Shoe Dog. No, I think Phil Knight was a dog. I think he was just kept at it. I think he was relentless. Nike, the book Shoe Dog, it only goes for the first 10 years of Nike. And the first 10 years of Nike was from like 1968 to like 1978.

46:08The Jordan shit didn't happen until the 90s. I believe Jordan was picking between Converse and Reebok. And those were the Nikes of the era. And so my guess from reading about him, Phil Knight was pretty good at operating. He was very scrappy. He was good at hiring people and letting them do their thing. Have you seen Air, the movie about the Jordan signing? Yeah. Yeah, and in that movie, they made Phil Knight kind of look stupid, which I think was very unfair. I don't know if they've sensationalized, like, I don't know how accurate that movie is to reality. But yeah, they made it seem like he wasn't, you know, particularly involved or particularly helpful in, from what I remember, in the Jordan signing.

46:45I think that also, like, to think of, like, a lot of people don't realize this because of, like, Air Force Ones and shit like that. Nike was explicitly a running company. Like, it started in the not popular or cool niche. which, I mean, I guess basketball wasn't particularly popular in the 70s either, but it was a running company. And so I guess it took Phil Knight to say, I guess, let's go after basketball. But I don't particularly think he was the most creative guy ever. Who have you seen that does the Nike playbook? So what made Nike such a powerful brand? And then who's applied that in another space?

47:18What comes to mind? What would you say the Nike playbook is? Is sponsoring baller athletes? Yeah, so I think they did. obviously it takes a thousand things and you sort of over, over estimate the credit to a, to a small number of things, but okay. What, what seemed to be the big levers? Okay. So they fundamentally have like, you know, a simple brand that can be, you know, international. So the check mark, small name, like that's the, the, you know, the foundation of the brand puzzle is your actual brand identity. Okay. Then what comes next? So then they basically went down the athlete route where they were like, let's get the greatest athletes.

47:54The athlete is aspirational. And if the best athletes wear Nikes, that will sort of trickle down. And then suddenly you have, you know, the dad bods walking around the neighborhood wearing Nikes. Like that's where you make your money. You don't make your money off of the top prep athletes buying Nikes. You make your money off of everybody buying Nikes. And so how do you get them to do that? And, you know, what they did brilliantly was they don't talk about the shoes, right? So it's like counterintuitive, right? The ads are never about the product. They don't tell you how many, whatever, squishes are in the air bubble and how many ounces are on the toe and how many millimeters wide the heel is.

48:31They don't do any of that. And so they focus on the feeling, the emotion, the storytelling, and the simple fact that Nike celebrates greatness. The great athletes use Nike. And if you consider yourself who's trying to be great, Nike will become a default for you. And so who's applied that in other areas? It's kind of interesting, right? Like Apple, I think famously tried to do this with the Think Different campaign. It worked. Right. And it worked. And he was like, you know, there's that great Steve Jobs speech where he's talking at some university or maybe it's an Apple brand meeting or something.

49:04And basically he's unveiling the campaign. I think Apple was sort of on a bit of a downswing and Steve comes back and he simplifies the product line, but then he also launches this brand campaign, which was like the Think Different campaign where it's like Einstein and Gandhi and all these kind of rebellious, mischievous world changers, the people who changed the world. And he's like, they didn't have computers, but if they did, they would use Apple. And it was like, oh, okay, yeah, I get it. Which is pretty funny, right? That's like the greatest influencer campaign ever. I'm just going to find people who are dead who can't say no.

49:41Yeah, exactly. Make them a deal they literally can't refuse. Yeah, and it's not even a deal. I'm just going to say. And so, you know, I think Apple obviously did a great job, but those are sort of cliche. You know, I'm seeing this a little bit in like the health space. You know, I think like I invest in this company, Superpower, and I think Superpower is going to try to do this. I think, you know, other companies probably in like protein space have tried to do this where it's like, how do you create like a Gymshark athlete, right? Where you basically sponsor all these Instagram famous people because maybe that's where the attention is now.

50:15and they don't have to tell you why that sweatpants is the best or whatever, but you just know they are a, it's not like, hey, buy these pants. It's I am a Gymshark athlete. I am a whatever, right? It's like identity-based. Have you seen Nick Bear? Do you remember Nick Bear? Yeah, of course. I don't remember if you were on the times that we talked to him. I was, yeah, yeah. That was years ago, I think pandemic time. And there's a joke in his fitness world, which is like this thing called the hybrid athlete which is basically like a big ripped yoked meathead looking guy who also is really good at running and he sort of in a lot of people's minds kind of invented that and there's like this joke on Instagram like don't forget your hybrid athlete kit and it's like they're all wearing the same hat you know like the same shorts and they're whatever he's he appears to have done that quite well with this hybrid athlete thing and Nick owns a company called BPN that sells protein and very rarely is he like promoting the protein or electrolytes, but always promoting the lifestyle of lifting weights and running far.

51:16Yeah, being a hybrid athlete and maybe even more like, you know, sort of the grind culture of workouts where they're like, you know, I didn't want to wake up today, but I do it. You know, that sort of thing where it's like, you know, I got it in today under these circumstances. Raining doesn't matter. Cold doesn't matter. You know, I wasn't feeling good. Doesn't matter. That sort of attitude, right? So you can kind of elevate not just, hey, we're athletes, but like, well, what kind athletes. It's like, well, we're more in that David Goggins sort of like no excuses athletes. And you could take something like that, right?

51:47Like what Prefontaine did, and you could do it in other spaces. I'm surprised this doesn't happen more. I think it's hard to pull off. Like, for example, like the people who you, but not just hard. I mean, it's hard emotionally. So for example, you told the story where you're like with my company, with your e-commerce company, my business partner or my friend, Suli, told me don't do anything except for spend this much money on Facebook ads. He didn't tell you to do cool shit, like sponsor cool people. He said, just do this because the ROI is instantaneous and you know within 12 hours what's working and what's not and you're going to make small incremental changes.

52:24And you are willing to do that because you have bills to pay and it will pay the bills. But then just turning that off and doing stuff that doesn't make sense on paper but feels right potentially, but also feels like a huge bet, that's a scary thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. I think it's hard and scary, but it's the big prize. Brand is always the big prize, right? Because brand is you living in the person's head rent-free rather than you paying for every impression that you get on Facebook or a billboard or a display ad or anywhere else, right? So I think Seth Godin has this great thing where he talks about, if I told you that Hilton Hotels was making a shoe, could you even imagine what that would look like?

53:05But if I told you Nike made a hotel, you could probably actually imagine what that might look like. He goes, that's brand. And I thought that was always a great differentiator, which is they own a piece of real estate. They own a meaning in your head, whether it's of quality, it's of design, it's of greatness, it's of excellence, it's of health, it's of wellness, it's of recovery, whatever it is. Different brands can be about different things. But a simple test about the strength of the brand could be, well, what if they went into an adjacent space? Could you imagine what they would do? And would you be excited about what they did with it?

53:36That's actually really hard to think about and how to actually pull that off. All right, so if you think about how to pull that off, well, you have tons of employees. Like, for example, my company, let's say we have 25 employees. Like, how do I get everyone to be consistent with the marketing? It's actually really hard versus just following what's profitable. So like, for example, at your company, at my company, if we're buying ads, you meet once a week or every day and you'd be like, let's change this image to this other image because the click-through rate will be higher because we know this other company is running a very similar image.

54:06and you just are iterating yourself there to wherever it is you're trying to go. But at no point do you say, but wouldn't it be cool if we did this other thing that is just cool? Well, that's kind of what I'm saying. Remember the thing at the beginning of the opposites, right? So it's like, on one hand, you have this extremely data-driven, measurable, scientific, small iterations, let the data decide approach to marketing, to acquiring customers. And on the other hand, you have the exact opposite. it. It's emotional, not data-driven. There's no scorecard immediately. There's no immediate payoffs.

54:41There's only long-term payoffs. And yet, there's obviously examples of people who have been able to do one or the other or both. The best companies obviously have been able to do both. But you know what's cool is you were just, so you're using Nike and we were using some other upscale brands. You know, it's funny is speaking of Shaq, Shaq does general insurance. Is that what it's called? 1-800, you know what I'm talking about? I don't know. So Shaq is a spokesperson for an insurance company called, the spokesperson is a general. It's a little general. You know the jingle? It's like a... It's called the general.

55:15Is it the general? That's what I thought. Yeah. Okay, so if I, I'm almost... He's standing next to this like mustached general. Okay. And so that little general, that company, I think it's like a low cost provider. And we've only been using fancy stuff, but actually Shaq is a great brand because Shaq actually, he's famous for I think he is a Walmart spokesperson it's like for like Icy Hot yeah like people who don't have a lot of money that want to like acquire certain things like Shaq's like the guy like and that's pretty cool that he's able to pull that off so I guess it's not just examples of Nike or Ferrari or whatever that's who I was thinking of but Shaq does a good job here's another one Airbnb I think did a great job of this so Airbnb spends you know or spent at least in the past I don't know what they're doing now but they spent a lot of money on Google ads and things that you would need to do if you're in the travel space right?

56:02Like somebody wants to go on a trip, you need to be showing up as like a place to stay. Fantastic. You're competing against booking and Expedia and all those other things. But booking and Expedia and those other kayak, you know, I feel nothing. Feel nothing. Numb. I recognize the name. So it's not like they've done nothing. They've built a brand, right? I could tell you those names off the top of my head. Could I tell you what's different between Expedia and booking and kayak? No chance. Could I tell you anything about them? Anything about their story, but what they represent about if I told somebody else that I use kayak, Does that somehow accrue status or value to me?

56:34No, right? Airbnb did an interesting thing, which was Airbnb could have been couch surfing. They could have been, here's the cheap way to get a place to stay, sleep on someone's couch, their bed, their air mattress. Literally, it started Airbnb as air mattress, bed and breakfast type of thing. And over the years, they actually built the brand around traveling like a local. And they made a hotel, which is nicer, provides more service, is usually in a better location, right? If you just look at a hotel, right? Like they have somebody who comes and cleans your room and tucks the sheets in so tight that you're gonna have to like kick them out.

57:11And they do that for free every day. And, you know, it's in a better location. It's safer. It's a more known quantity. It's standardized. There's a commitment to a certain quality that you're gonna get. And somehow Airbnb made them seem like the generic choice. Like the sort of like, well, you could, you know, just choose to go stay in a box. Or you could authentically travel, live like a local, right? And they lean into like, in the way that food does this too. It's like, you can eat from a chain. Yeah, yeah, fast food chain. Or you can eat from this like local, you know, this local joint. And Airbnb did a great job of basically like leaning into not the low cost sleep on a couch thing, but traveling and living like a local when you travel and actually experiencing the city versus just being in the city.

58:00and I thought that that was like a kind of a genius emotional thing because travel is escape and you know either it's to a place where everything is handed to you or it's to a place of authenticity right to actually experiencing the place you're going to it's like clean your own shit pay an extra fee you don't know what you're gonna get there's like all these downsides but they make that seem like the upside like I talked to a guy who who ran events and he goes dude the best thing burning man ever did was something called radical what is it called radical self-reliance. He goes, you know how smart that is from an event point of view?

58:33It means we're going to do nothing for you. Oh, you got lost? Radical self-reliance, baby. It's not our fault. We don't have lighting over here? Radical self-reliance. Oh, we don't have water fountains? You got to figure out how to get it from the community. Come on. This is what it's all about. This is the experience you paid for to get nothing. Dude, I'm going to steal that for Hampton. At the office, bro. Radical self-reliance. Dude, we're doing this thing. So we're moving into this new office, I think February 20th or something. And I'm implementing a new rule every Tuesday at 3 o 'clock, between 3 o 'clock and 3.20.

59:09We're cleaning. I saw you posted this. Who was it? The Japanese company? The Rakuten. Yeah, Rakuten did it. And I wanted to do it. And I did it in my last company. People freaked and it just did not stick. But now we're moving into a new office because I hate clutter. I hate clutter so much. It makes me anxious when there's shit all over. and particularly in an open office plan. And so I'm going to like hold myself accountable to like stick to this hardcore. Dude, nobody is giving more thought to like their office and their culture than you right now. I feel like you are really planting some seeds.

59:42I'm very curious, either in two years from now, you're going to be like, I over-indexed on that. You know, some of it was helpful. A lot of it was wasted energy. I should have been focused on this. Or you're going to be like, it was the best thing for me. I wasn't sure, but I felt it in my gut. I trusted it. Because I refused to become... And the climate made no sense. And in two years, you're going to be like, that was the best thing we ever did. It's going to be one of those two. I just don't want to make the same mistakes that I've done before where I created my own prison. Do you know what I mean?

1:00:08I don't want to do that. And so culture is just an example or just a... Yeah, but you're not being specific. What was the prison? What was bad? Like, what are you going to change this time? For example, I had a team, someone who worked for me, and they wanted to lay off someone who worked for them, but they only wanted to give like two... week severance or something for this person that worked with us for a long time. And they were like, well, that's like normal. Like, that's like a fine. That's fine. Like, that's just, it was expected. And I was like, but this person has worked here for two years.

1:00:38And like, they're a good guy. They're just not getting results. And this doesn't feel right to me. And I went along with it. I did the two weeks. And I remember that feeling and I hated it. And so we got this value called build with pride, which basically the idea is like, if I'm going to lay someone off and I do it actually for two reasons. One, so I don't feel guilty. and two, if you just have this halo effect of you treat people well, and I'm just going to shower you with significantly more severance than I think is actually the industry standard. And so that's one example. Okay, all right, I like it.

1:01:08Yeah, I'm very curious to see how... I think it will definitely be good. It's just a question maybe of two things. Which bets have the biggest payoff? I think you're going to come out with a bunch of learnings on that. Maybe it'll be the small things. Maybe it'll be the 10 minutes of cleaning a day. Maybe it'll be, you know, this offsite you do every year. Whatever. I don't know. I don't know which bets are going to have the biggest return, but they're not all going to be even. So I think you're going to get a good learning from that. And then the other thing is proportion. So like Seinfeld has this great quote where he says, they're like, why didn't you do that one last season?

1:01:43Because he holds the record for most money turned down. Yeah, like the eighth season or seventh season. I think, yeah, whatever the last season was going to be is$110 million. He turned it down. and they're like, Jerry, one more season. Why didn't you do it? He's like, because in art, it's all about proportion. He goes, too much of anything, too much cake, too much jokes, too much anything. Too much of anything is a bad thing. And he's like, the secret to making anything great is proportion. And it's so true. Ever since I read that, I now see it everywhere. Because I was more simplistic, just black and white.

1:02:18This is good and that is bad. But too much affection is clinginess. is smothering, right? Like in a relationship, too much space is distant, is cold. So it's not a question of is affection good or bad? It's how much. And you can use that in anything. You cook in a dish, it's the proportion that matters. And so I think I'm interested to see, did you get the proportion right of how much time and energy you're spending on the leadership and the culture and the environment that you're putting together here? There also is a world where you think I'm spending more time than I really am on it just because I'm vocal about it.

1:02:54But you could be right. Yeah, I mean, we'll be interesting to see. You know what would be funny is to see all these companies who we think have crazy cultures, like the big guys, we should go talk to, I've always been curious, go talk to the middle management or the new staff. It's like, are you drinking the Kool-Aid? What's the deal? You know, like Patagonia or something like that. Right. I had the same idea yesterday. I was in a restaurant and I was walking out and I saw the value, I saw the values. I had like a not so great experience at the restaurant and I was walking out and it was like, don't just serve, delight was on the wall.

1:03:28And I was like, I just had the opposite of delight in this restaurant. Like, you know, ordered something gluten-free for somebody who's allergic to gluten. They mess it up. And then they were like refusing to like, just give us the gluten-free version. You know, wanted us to like pay again for that one. I was like, what? What's going on? You almost killed somebody just now. Like, what are you talking about? And I was thinking, I was like, It would be so funny to just go to 100 companies. I guarantee you go to 100 companies. And at every company, you just stand outside the office. And you take a random sample.

1:04:00The first 50 people that come out of the building or walk into the building in the morning. And you just say, hey, we're doing a little game, a little test. I'll give you$50 for every one of the values of the company you can name. But you got to get word for word what the actual phrase is. and I was like, I'm just curious how many people will know any of the values. And I think it's going to be this histogram or this chart that's like, most people know zero or one, almost nobody knows two, and nobody knows three or more. And I just want to have that for like a hundred different companies because I just think values are probably the most overrated exercise that companies do because if it's not in the people's heads, what do you, like, then what was the point?

1:04:45They're not doing it. You want to know what's funny is, have you seen, you know how Netflix is famous for values? I've heard, yeah, I've seen their culture deck, yeah. I was looking up, but I was like, what actually are the values? You should look up. It's like. I know one is like, we're a team, not a family, right? That's not even like, no, like, I mean, like, they literally have written out the values and it's like 18 of them. And it's like kindness. It's like everything. Curiosity, courage, candor, selflessness, judgment. it. Creativity, inclusion, resilience. It's pretty funny. It's just a list of stuff.

1:05:17I was like, oh, that's... Could they just slip in like a derogatory term in there and just see if anyone ever notices? Nobody would know. He's just slipping the F word in between courage and inclusion and see what happens. Reed Hastings seems like a pretty big baller. He, the CEO of Netflix or former CEO of Netflix, and he was talking about their culture. And I was listening to this podcast with Patrick or Shaughnessy about him. And he was just, you know, he was saying the coolest shit ever. And then I go, I was like, well, he's talking all about values. Let's go see what they are. And I go to the website and I see like this.

1:05:50And I was like, huh? Like, do you want it? Like that's way less intense than he sounded. Yeah, exactly. It's only about actions, right? Not words. So the question really is, what actions do you take that are any different than anybody else? What actions do you take that are any different than what my default behavior would have been if I switched over from an adjacent company to yours? Right? So your severance example is a good one, for example. If your value is treat people like family or treat people well, whatever it is, and you're like, cool, here's an action. Here's default actions. Our default actions are different than the other default actions.

1:06:24So maybe these companies do have great default actions. I don't know. Part of me thinks it's impossible to do that when you get past a certain point. We should actually ask Dharmesh about this. Dharmesh wrote the culture code. They all have to drink the Kool-Aid. Nobody can be honest about this when they're in their company. Who's going to get out here and say, that's all shit? Nobody knows. It's just a bunch of bodies to me. We come in and we look at revenue and we try to figure out what's happening. That's what we do. Nobody's going to ever be honest about that sort of thing until they're out and then they're disillusioned.

1:06:55And then they're seen as crazy. They went crazy if they were to talk about it. Well, what do we go from here? Is that it? Is that the pod? Yeah. Our value is the Irish goodbye. And we talk. We laugh. and then we suddenly decide, I think I've said enough today. All right, that's it. That's a pop. 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. All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Louise and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue.

1:07:43In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.