The Man Month, Shaan's Feud with Jason Calacanis & Elon vs Zuckerberg Fight

26:19I put a button on your dashboard. It's ugly. It's gray. Nobody else can see it. it just but it's an export it'll email you a csv and then could you just run the run the analytics yourself for now until we build it so he would give me a he would take three hours and just make my life better he would understand he would also ask me a bunch of questions like so what are you trying to really do here and let me just confirm i understand this like a good product person would do he's trying to really understand the needs the second thing he would do is then they would actually ship the feature so he'd say that's two weeks away i remember telling ben many times then be like oh yeah they said they're coming out in two weeks i was like dude are you a rookie like no way startups say anything they don't like no what engineer has ever hit a timeline like this never happens sure enough two weeks later hey they would proactively reach out hey the feature's out test it out i want you uh i think it'll work for you guys now and we would go do it and he just did that three times so over the course of about three or four months i was like change my mind call tyler we need to invest in this thing i was like but what about your concerns about the market, I was like, I don't know, still might be true.

27:19But here's what I do know. This guy's an animal. He's making a product that's really good. And you know what? This might be an example where the market is bigger than you think, which has been the case for many big winners. Like, you know, what's the market for, you know, private black town car on demand or crashing on someone's house as an Airbnb, right? Like these things can become a lot bigger than you sort of initially look at if you sort of squint. I've heard so many people say the same thing about him. And I've noticed because I found him online, I've only talked to him once or twice. I've noticed online of him changing like quickly, moving quickly, changing the product quickly.

27:52And whenever I saw that, I thought, damn, he's going to do it. He's going to, I don't know how big, but something's going to get pulled off here. That's, that's, you could tell that right away. And this is, so two things on this. One, there's a framework that we had in my very first startup. We realized this, we were in the, we were doing a sushi restaurant and in the restaurant industry, There's this weird phenomenon, which is provide what's expected. No points. Mess up their order. Minus 10 points. But fix the mess up plus five points. So it's like, I was like, hold up. If we had just given them the right dish, they don't care.

28:26They just move on as expected. If we mess up their order, they're angry. But if we fast fix and we not just fix their order, but we give them the freebie with it, or we really come back and make sure that they're all good or we take it off their bill. All of a sudden, they had a tremendous experience with us and they'll go tell their friends. And I was like, what's with that? And I came up with this sort of like the fix-it theory of restaurants, which is actually mistakes. They're going to happen anyways. And actually what you need to train instead of a mistake minimization, it's how fast and how thoroughly can you fix it?

29:00Because that actually creates like a higher net promoter score. That's beautiful. This guy's doing this with software, basically. did you make this up yeah i'm sure there's um some name for this i don't know this was like a whatever or you know discovered by the hard way but like i'm sure there's a fancy name for that oh i just called it the fix it theory right like if we fix it it's it's all about how you fix it and the fix it's where you get the like diehards so it's very good i noticed that and so he was doing that i'll give you one other little beehive story which is like i don't know a little dark maybe doesn't want me to share this but like you know at some point his cto passed away so we were biggest jerk of all time.

29:33He says the two week thing, something didn't happen in the two weeks one time. And I was like, dude, come on. You said whatever. Where's that feature? We really need it. Don't you understand how important my newsletter bubble? I'm being like, you know, I didn't say those words, but like, I'm playing it up in a way here. We were, we were just like, Oh God, complaining. Like it's not ready yet. And he's like, I'm so sorry. We're just dealing with something right now. His co-founder or CTO had passed away during the startup and they were, you know that's a very hard thing for any entrepreneur to deal with yeah he handled that like as well as a human being can handle it meaning was totally you know like gracious and empathetic around what was going on but also understood that like you know he's got it he's got to keep moving forward in some way and he's gonna have to figure this out and it's not an easy thing to figure out i mean like all kinds of great you just don't know the passwords to have the things right like it's like all kinds of stuff that you don't even really think about because knock on wood, this never happens.

30:31But just seeing how somebody overcomes adversity and deals with really tough situations is another thing where you sort of see characters revealed in moments of difficulty and adversity. You see how somebody handles something and you think, you know what? I think they're going to figure things out. Fast forward to yesterday. And I think he's really young too, right? He's like 20. He's in his probably 27. Yeah, something like that. He's pretty baby-faced. I don't know. He seems young-ish. I'll tell you two other interesting things. So yesterday, the reason why we're talking about it is yesterday they announced, we probably should have led with this.

31:03Yesterday they announced, they raised a Series A, 12, 12 and a half million dollars Series A from Lightspeed. At like a$50 million valuation, I think, is what an article said. Yeah, I think a little more than that. So they raised this money and he posted a graph of their ARR, so their annual recurring revenue. And it's a hockey stick curve. It's 3 million in ARR. And like, I don't know how long. Let me check. I think it's sort of like, yeah, 3 million AR in like 12 to 18 months, maybe something like that. Just really, really, really impressive. And so the run rate's, I think, 4 million. And he said in the thing, we're trying to end the year at 12 million.

31:40Super impressive. And this year, so go from 4 to 12? That's what he's trying to jump. He says currently at a$4 million run rate. They have 3 million of recurring revenue from their subscription product, plus another million of revenue from their like, because they'll help you. let's say you want to sell ads or you want to monetize your newsletter they'll help you monetize your newsletter too so they have like other products now wow and it says yeah i forgot he posted the chart but i think it's like roughly 18 months to two you know maybe 24 months at the max uh that it did that oh you got a call out in the in the tech crunch article it said used by milk road hell yeah that's right i'm in the ballpark baby um so you know you know i think that this is an interesting example i'm curious to see how this plays out i could see this still Honestly, going one of two ways.

32:26I'm an investor, but I could totally see this being a great business that wasn't venture scale. Meaning he might sell this thing for$100 million. He might get to$25 million in revenue and sell for$200 million. I think that's probably the expected outcome, to be honest. Would you be happy with that? Yeah, I'd be happy for them. We would make some money. It wouldn't be the type of return that you would... In a startup portfolio, you're obviously looking for these billion-dollar-plus outcomes. But hey, you know, like that's a win's a win. And I would be really happy for their team. So, you know, I think that would be life changing money for him.

33:00It'd be a great outcome. I think that's like, that's like the, the, the, like, if they do well, if they execute well, I think that's on the table. I think what's the question is, how big does this kind of newsletter media thing get? Can this get to the scale where, okay, if they're, if they're trying to get to 10 million AR this year, they're at four trying to get to 10. And if they get to 100, right? If they 10X from there over the next five years, that's now a billion-dollar company. The question is, can it become that? What would they need to do to do that? I think that's going to be the challenge of the big question for them.

33:35I don't think that's going to happen. If I had to bet, I think that there's a nine-figure exit that's going to happen here that will make them wealthy and be a huge success. I don't think a billion-dollar company is going to happen. I think it's too challenging. I think that I'm an investor of ConvertKit. If you Google ConvertKit and then the word Bear Metrics, you can see all of the revenue and the churn on ConvertKit. ConvertKit has been doing it for eight or nine years, I think. And there are a little bit more focused on small businesses as opposed to Beehive, which is like freelancers turned one-man, two-man companies.

34:11And you can look at their churn of ConvertKit, and I would think it's better than Beehive. And it seems very challenging to get to$100 million in revenue in a venture time frame. Yeah, I think that could be totally the case. So on ConvertKit, their MRR right now says basically$3 million a month. So$36 million a year. Yeah,$36. And look at the churn. I think it's 4 % a month. Yeah, 3.5 % a month. And so does that mean that most people churn out after one year? Is that what that math means? No, I don't know. I don't know. I can't math. I don't do public math. Definitely don't try to do monthly compounding into extrapolating that for 12 months.

34:56That's not easy for me. But I think three and a half percent churn per month is obviously not great, but it's also not like bleeding in SaaS metrics. No, not at all. And I think that I would rather be Nathan Berry and own 90 % of that company. Of course, Nathan probably had money or had some income coming in. So we have the ability to do this. And like you said, everyone's got to get their nut and get it how you can. Yeah. So I think it's going to be a massive success. I just don't know if it's going to be a billion dollar company. But I think that the takeaway here for myself, for you and for the listener is the speed of shipping new stuff and making iterations and more so talking to your customer constantly and hearing what they have to say and asking them why.

35:37Not what do you want, but why and I'll come up with the solution I think that's the takeaway here I think the fix it menu thing is the fix it framework is really really really good is that what you call it? I'll give you two other little frameworks around this so one is from Paul Graham, Paul Graham wrote this essay once where he goes a thing I've noticed in successful entrepreneurs, Paul Graham created YC so he saw thousand plus entrepreneurs try to come through there and picked very well he goes one of the things I would say is most commonly linked with success he goes can you describe this person as an animal.

36:10And what that means is not, oh, he's like a giraffe. He's got a long neck. No, it means, could you just be like, dude, that guy's an animal, right? She's an animal. It's basically just, just, just, just describes the sort of tenacity, intensity, and speed with which somebody moves and just figures things out and gets through obstacles and breaks through plateaus. And that one piece of like, kind of like investing advice has really stuck with me and like served me well. Cause it's really easy to get analytical about the market, about the product, about the industry, about the competitors. And you should, that's, that's good.

36:46Look at it from all angles. But whenever I'm like, this person's an animal, I'd make a bet for better or worse. I'm just like, I'm just going to err on the side of betting on people when I think, when I can describe them as an animal, because that type of person could figure things out. And I think on balance, it's just a higher predictor of like outside success. And also the opposite is true. I've had, I've made some mistakes in investing when I'm like, Oh, love this market, love this product. And I'm sort of projecting if somebody was just a beast and took this on, they would just crush it. And I kind of overlooked the fact that the person going after it is sort of soft and timid and seems to lack aggression.

37:26It doesn't seem to know their shit. They don't really know their numbers about, well, when I ask about the customers, they don't post on LinkedIn a lot. Yeah, they keep wondering about stuff. And when I ask them what's going on three weeks later, they don't really have clarity on what's changed, what's better, what they're focused on. When they hit, they get overwhelmed easily. And it's like, I've also talked myself into market investments. And I guess for me, early stage investing, I think that is the person an animal is just a very important test. That's one. I got an update from a company I invested in and they were talking about their new LinkedIn content series.

38:04And that was the main thing. And this is a software company. And I was like, okay, but how about revenue, profit, and how fast? You know what I mean? I was like, I don't care. Also, I don't care about the new hires, frankly. 100%. I'm going to shit on my own portfolio this way. I said this the other day. I said to my investment partner, Romain, I go, Romain, man, like, I feel like maybe 15, best case 20 % of our portfolio writes good updates. I said, that makes me worried. Because I was like, really, there's two buckets. There's people who just don't write updates at all or they're inconsistent.

38:41They pop up when things are good or they need something and then they disappear for nine months when things are going tough. And Paul Graham also has written about that, which is when you stop talking is when things go bad. the people who survive are the ones who continue being in communication, even when things are tough. And when you omit information, when it's like, hey, so why didn't you just put, you told me how much your burn was and your lot. Why didn't you put your cash balance in there? Exactly. Like, you know, I can do the math. We invested in one company early on that's a pretty famous company in Silicon Valley.

39:11It was really hot for a period of time. And now it's like people have gone sour on it. And they said, they like would write, first when it was really hot, they would write these very surface level updates like, oh, we hired this VP and this person and this person and we brought on this new investor. It's like, cool, but what about the business? How's the business going? And you're almost like, it's almost like, don't ask about the business. It's like, what's going on? Why is that the feeling? And then sure enough, 18 months later, oh, bad news coming out. We had to do layoffs and there's bad press article and all this stuff.

39:42And we're just, you know, we need to raise money, but it's not looking good. It's like, what's your burn rate? Oh, we burned 3 million a month. I was like, dude, what? And why haven't you been saying this, right? Like it's an unbelievable. And then if you ask them like, okay, what's the problem right now? It's like, oh, the problem is the funding market right now and this and that. No, the problem was you were burning$3 million a month for a long period of time without the corresponding reward for that burn. You weren't growing in proportion to that burn and you were reckless with money, right?

40:14Like that's the reality. That's the honest lesson out of it. you might be telling yourself some other story. Similarly with our portfolio, I would say about 20 % are writing good updates. And a good update is here's the anatomy of a good update. I might actually just release a template for all on this, but it's basically, Hey guys, as a reminder, we are Hampton. What we do is this, right? Like first, just like say what you do. Not that like your investors forget, but in general, you're not top of mind for people. and you should have a real clear, punchy thing that you're drilling in this association.

40:47Whenever you think of this word, think of us. Whenever somebody has this problem, think of us. And so like first start with that. Then say, last month was, and your answer, a great month, good or bad. Answer that question and then write the KPIs. The KPIs got to be revenue, active users or active usage, active customers in some way. the negative of that. So some churn or, you know, cost number associated with that net burn, maybe cash balance, you know, how much cash do we have on hand? And then you want to write the number for, we have to write the number for what it is in parentheses. You want to write, how much is that up month over month?

41:28And what is your goal? How are you doing against your own goals? Because our annual goal is to get to 10 million in revenue or get to a hundred million in revenue. And to do that, we need to be doing X and we're actually either above that, below that are on track. That's the honest way to start an update. Below that, you can write whatever the hell you want, to be honest. You got to write that part first. The next part you should write is why that happened. So revenue is down because blank. Revenue is up because we tried this affiliate thing and it's actually working pretty good. We're going to double down on it.

41:57Revenue is down because blah, blah, blah. The users is flat because we didn't do XYZ or we are doing XYZ and it's just maintaining. We're going to figure out how to get to the next level. So you have your sort of two sentence commentary on the metrics. Then after that, you could put your ask, like, here's what I need from you. And below that, you can put in whatever the hell updates you want. Honestly, I don't. But the fluffy stuff. What you don't want to do is what a lot of people do. Hey, we have this article. Can you share? That's the start of the update. Just a quick update on our end. Good month for us.

42:30We made these four hires. I want to welcome Steve. It's like, why are we talking about Steve? your VP of marketing, you know, they just go on, you know, Steve used to work at Visa, but now he's over here and that's really great. Oh, on the product side, we released these new updates. It's like, dude, this is not where you put patch notes. Like your investors care about something and you don't want to go over here and wave your hands about all this other shit. That's not actually like the core relevant information. And I think it's just wild to me that people don't get that. I refuse to like, I'll die on that hill.

43:02That's how investor updates should be written. And it's crazy to me that people don't just do that consistently. Yeah. When I see that, I just think you're lying about something. This goes back to what I said about the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. If you're not honest, if you're not honest about it, I think that you're lying about other stuff. And I just, and so I think it's really important to do these things really in the right way. I used to do this all the time at the hustle. I felt, I think you used to get mine, right? You used to send me your updates and they were phenomenal.

43:28They were perfect. It was exactly in this format. And you were like, you know, you're just the university of common sense. It's not like you were getting mentorship or advising or your fifth startup. It was just like, all right, what are people going to care about? Obviously the key metrics, how it's going, what I think about those key metrics and what we're going to do next. That's basically what your update was. I think what I understood is that people basically want to get rich, they want to get laid, and they want to have power. Most of my things in life are rooted in knowing those three things.

44:00And the problem with a lot of Silicon Valley companies is they think that the answer of, but I learned a lot, is good enough. When it's like, no, man, I give you my hard-earned money. I expect a return. And you need to be... What are they... Scott Belsing told me this. He goes, you need to be a steward of capital. And I heard that. And I was like, oh, man, you make it sound so official. I sound like a knight. I'm just deploying money. I'm like a knight in shining armor to do this. And so there's that. And it's basically like, I'm a small business owner trying to make money and my business is investing in your company.

44:33You just took money out of my family's mouths and food off our table. That's how I feel. And so if a person isn't doing everything in their effort to give me a return on my investment, I get fucking pissed. If they do really hard, if they work really hard and they fail, or if they make errors, I'm cool with that because I knew that I'm playing the lottery here. But if they do this soft shit and they aren't honest about it, it kills me. So you're saying honest in the sense of lying. I actually think that's the minority case. I don't think people are actively lying. I think if they're lying to anyone, they're lying to themselves.

45:04I think what actually happens is... It's lying through omission. It's lying through omission is what it is. So I think there's three scenarios. Either you know the situation and you don't want to say it. Bad. Or you just don't even know the situation. You're not on top of these things. Really bad. It's usually the first. Or you know it, you don't want to say it, and you're intentionally withholding the information in order to mislead or misrepresent or whatever. The worst. And so it's really bad, bad, or badder, right? Like, you know, bad, badder, or baddest. It's like there's really not a good explanation.

45:43The only good explanation that I will accept is that there are some companies that are doing so phenomenally well, and they know that investors are actually kind of a leaky bucket and they don't want, they want to get ahead. They want their rumor mill to go ahead. Now, let me tell you, the number of times it's that out of 100 is one out of 100. I had that happen to me. Did I tell you? Have I told you about this? So, all right. So the hustle was supposed to sell. The deal was supposed to close on February, let's say 5th. February 5th was their earnings call was also supposed to be on February 5th.

46:19And that's a big deal for a variety of reasons. But there's legal implications here. The SEC is involved. So it could be... It's as simple as if I told someone that we were about to sell, our deal wasn't big enough to do this. It did happen, but it wasn't because of us. But where the stock price can change significantly at the announcement. And if I told someone and they make a big trade, which has happened multiple times, not with us, but multiple times, there's insider trading. That's against the law. You go to jail. So there's that implication there. And there's also other implications around it's just not cool.

46:53It's not like it makes you look bad. Well, anyway, we were supposed to close on, let's say, February 5th. Someone told Axios on February 4th. I get an email from Sarah Fisher, I think her name is. Someone leaked it to her. I had only told... I told a small amount of people who are helping me. I think I told you who are guiding me. And I also had to get some people to sign some paperwork. And I explicitly said, don't tell anyone. This is a big deal. I think I told them this will ruin the deal if you tell people, which isn't true. But I told them that it could have. And February 4th, the day before I was supposed to announce it, I get this email from Sarah.

47:27And she goes, I have a source saying that you guys are selling. And she told me a bunch of facts about the deal that I was like, how on earth do you know this? And it did in fact get leaked. And we're not a big company. We weren't big enough that this is like... I don't know why this should be gossip. But it happened. And it freaked me out big time. And so I understand that perspective of not telling people certain things. With my company now, with Hanton, things are going well. I'm not going to talk about it too much. When things are going well, shut up. I think that you should shut up. Yeah, shut up and push the gas.

47:57Yeah, so I understand that perspective. But it happened to us, and it drove me crazy. And I suspect it was one of three people. To this day, I hold a grudge against them. With all three, just as preventative measures? Just preventative. and I just stare at what they do. And I'm like, I'm plotting. I'm plotting to A, to find out Intel that they did it. And B, I already have my revenge plan and I'm just waiting. And I check up on them constantly. And those people probably know who they are because they see me looking at their LinkedIn all the time. I want them to know that I see them. They're like, oh, I love how Sam, he always keeps tabs on me.

48:35What a good guy. Oh, I'm looking. I'm looking a lot. And so I have a feeling who it was. But can you tell me about this Black Rifle story? Because I have a little bit of information about them too. Yeah, this is kind of a fun moment. So a few episodes ago, we did this. What's Black Rifle? Say what Black Rifle Coffee is. Black Rifle Coffee, it's a coffee brand. So it's a coffee brand that I would describe as like, it's kind of patriotic. It has an American vibe to it. The customers are mostly Middle-ish America or Southern. And they are probably right of center. Red State coffee brand. It's kind of like just to put it in a box, which I'm sure they don't love, but whatever, just for simplicity's sake.

49:19Started by veterans, I think. So it has like that slant to it. Three of the four guys or four of the five guys were former military, Marines, whatever, something like that. And they're Hampton members, by the way. Oh, there you go. So they start this thing, and there's a kind of interesting origin story to this. It becomes a really popular brand. In fact, not only do they sell a lot of coffee, They sold enough product that they basically, they've gone public. So let me see their stock as of today. I think it's$3 or$4 billion market cap still. I think it's a little less now. Maybe the whole market's gone down.

49:54So current market cap is$1.1 billion. So they built a billion dollar DTC brand, basically consumer package. And do you know how they started? One of the owners had a bunch of Facebook pages. I think he had like 30 Facebook pages ranging like it was like shit for moms to like veterans. And he started selling a ton of stuff. He was like, look at all the stuff they were selling. And they were like, damn, we should make our own thing. And that's how the coffee business, I believe that's how it started. So I did a call with him. One of the one of the guys. Which one? Richard. And so I think he might be in Hampton, too.

50:30So he he had said something slightly different. He didn't talk about Facebook pages. He talked about YouTube. So he was like, I was like, what's your story? He's like, well, I was like, you know, he's like wanted to be an actor. It goes to Hollywood. It's like, whatever. It's not really working out. Exactly. Great. He's been in a couple of things, but he teaches himself to code. He starts making iPhone apps really early on in the iPhone app store. Does pretty good with that. Ends up getting hired by Verizon or something like that to do like something on the marketing side for them. And along the way, he starts doing YouTube fairly early on.

50:58And so he's doing YouTube videos and for the brand, but also for himself, like personally doing YouTube videos. and he starts building a pretty big YouTube following. And then him and his buddies start trying out different products and they're trying out this and that. And oh, should we do it? I don't know what the examples were, but it's like, let's just pretend a t-shirt brand and a shoe brand and this thing, that thing, hats. And then coffee was one of them and the coffee one took off. And that's kind of like how they rallied around Black Rifle Coffee. To this day, I think they do like tens of millions in merch sales, not the coffee, but just like people love the brand so much they'll buy the t-shirts and so tens of millions of merch that there's t-shirt companies fashion companies that do tens of millions and that's their whole business this is like their their spinoff business that's like how strong the the brand is in fact when i'm on the zoom call with him his background i'll i'll put a picture up on the youtube channel but it's just like a great example of like how to like this kind of like the subtle branding that exists today when you're on a zoom call it's like your background your clothes, like says everything about you.

52:02Cause that's how we meet now. Right. So you can actually bring a full story in about your home and everything. And he's got like, you know, on the wall, he's got his, his camo thing. He's got his gun. He's got his, like, he's got all the stuff. That's kind of like that same vibe that, you know, like kind of, you know, the American tough guy, military veteran, you know, like that sort of vibe. So we're talking, he's telling me this great story. And the reason why we're talking is because he's like, dude, I was listening to the pod and I heard you talk about the total man thing. And he's like, something just hit me.

52:34He's like, I just love that. I love the total man thing. I went on, I saw that somebody had the domain and I bought it. And I was like, oh, cool. Like I didn't, I was like, I swear I looked at the domain wasn't available. He goes, oh no, no, I bought it off somebody. Like I think he bought it for like 15 grand. And he's like, he's like, I just want to gift it to you. And like, if you want to do something with it, great. That'd be awesome. Um, that's a baller. I hope I can write this off or something, but you know, I just wanted to do this. I was like, A, baller move. It's like when Darmesh, I think has done that for you, like on your birthday, he bought you your domain.

53:03He bought me a$20 ,000 domain. It could have been more, but it was copythat.com. He bought it for me. And so baller move. And I was like, what resonated about the total man thing? He's like, I don't know, man. He's like, I just felt like the way you talked about, the way you and Sam talked about just like, look, it's important to me that I stand for something. I live by a code. I care about fitness. I care about these things. I care about being a man. And that's important to me. And you're right that society has really pushed this thing that if you're trying to be a man, it's like toxic masculinity.

53:41And it doesn't have to be. You don't have to be a jerk or rude in any way. But why is it bad to want to be manly? And I think it just resonated with them. And so we bought this thing. And we got a lot of shit for that. What's that? You see, some people were angry about that. And that's shocking. Well, I think there was an understandable reason that they were angry, which is we gave it. And when we were talking about it, we were like, you know, I think you're seeing the craving for this type of content and this movement embodied in people who take an extreme version of that, like Andrew Tate or stuff like that.

54:13And people just immediately, they hate Andrew Tate so much, they get blinded by rage. And they're like, you guys are saying Andrew Tate's awesome. And this total man thing is about Andrew Tate. It's like, no, no, no. I'm just saying like, when you look at objectively that this guy's extremely popular, he's the number one most Googled man in America right now. It's all under an umbrella. And we're saying, what is the appeal? I think part of the appeal, not the whole thing, but part of the appeal is that this guy preaches that you need to live like a fucking man. And he's like, you know, be hard.

54:41Don't be soft. Like mentally be hard, be tough. Physically be hard, be fit. You know, in your relations with people, don't, you know, be a softy. Don't get pushed over. don't keep apologizing and groveling, like, you know, carry yourself like a man. And I was like, and I was like, you know, what we had said was that I think the pendulum has swung too far in one direction where a lot of people are preaching like a sort of like, I don't know what you would call it, almost like a softer sort of like a genderless like identity thing where it's, you know, it's not cool to be a man. And I think that's building up a craving for people to want to be a man.

55:15And so I don't know, whatever, something resonated with that. He bought the domain. And I was like, yeah, we should do something. We should try to just make it an open source movement. And when I mapped it out, I did a little five minute brainstorm the other day with Ben. And I was like, yeah, what does the total man mean? I was like, this is a good little branding lesson. At first I went down the path of like, what matters to me? What matters to me is I like to have, I care about freedom, like financial freedom. I care about fitness. I'm trying to get more and more fit. I want to be somebody who is free to move their body in certain ways and is a very fit individual, but I also care about family and whatever.

55:53And I was like, oh, I think I just described something generic. I said, what's the real appeal of this Total Man thing? It's not this well, well-rounded appeals to actually nobody. And I said, Sam said something once on the podcast that made me laugh, but I kind of like, I wanted to make fun of him. And I also kind of liked it. I was like jealous and I wanted to make fun of him at the same time what was it you you said this thing it's gonna sound so simple it's gonna sound dumb you you said it's important to me to be a fucking man and i was like what what are you what are you even saying isn't that obvious what you said that and you go yeah it's just important to me like to be a man and like to be like you know i don't even know how you explain it maybe you didn't even explain it that would maybe it was the beauty i don't i don't remember exactly but i I say it to Sarah all the time.

56:43I go, I take care of business. I go, we take care of our business. You know, like all, that doesn't mean money. That means, you know, look, I'm going to provide emotionally, financially, spiritually. I got you. Like I take care of business. Whatever you need, I got you. I'm here for you. And it's like, I'm not going to, I'm going to try my hardest not to get too emotional. If you're emotional, I'll be a rock. I'll treat you with respect. I'm going to take care. I'm going to handle business. That's what we do. Exactly. And I was like, I think it's more that that it's basically, I was like, I don't think it's about this well-rounded blah, blah, blah, because it dilutes the message.

57:18Well here, and I also said, and then I'll let you go. I said, when I like to exercise, I want to be able to outrun or what did I say? I said, I want to either kill and eat everyone in the room or outrun them. I saw that from Galloway, from Scott Galloway. And you told me, you go, don't you feel that way? And I was like, hell no, I don't feel that way. What are you talking about? It's a ridiculous thought. You took your most ridiculous thought and then said, don't you feel that way sometimes? No, I've never once in my life looked around a room of men and been like, I could eat and kill all these people or outrun them.

57:49Not once, but when you said it, it stuck in my head. It was provocative. I wanted to make fun of you, but I was also like, there is a nugget of truth in this madness. And that is where a real brand is built. And so that was my little branding revelation to myself when I was doing this exercise around what should we do with this Total Man domain? I was like, honestly, it's real simple. It's about being a man. It's about men who want to be a man. What does that mean? We don't need to explain it. It's somebody who handles their business. You can come up with all the examples you want. It's not a checklist.

58:25That's not the total man attitude. It's having some predefined criteria checklist. No. In all situations, be a man about it. And that's what I was like. Take care of business. That's the brand, baby. Be a man about it. No matter what the situation, be a man about it. And I was like, that's the total man philosophy. You could apply that to whatever situation you're going through in life. But what are you going to do with it? So is this going to be, I know Jesse Isler, who we're going to have on soon. I've been emailing with him. He's got this really cool thing where it's like you run up this mountain a bunch of times and that's like climbing Everest.

58:59That's kind of cool. I mean, an event is the obvious one, but you can go a bunch of ways. Here's the idea. Fresh off the dome. you just said what do you want to do with it you asked a great question my brain came up with an answer it's inspired by 75 hard which is also a very total man exactly and it's great total men don't know it's great join movements sometimes we create them so we're going to create our own version of this and it's going to be the man month and what is the man month it's basically 30 days where you commit to to working towards being the total man in these like you know couple ways and It's like for 30 days, we're doing cold shower.

59:38We're doing 50 pushups right when we wake up or 100 pushups right when we wake up. First thing. It doesn't matter. Oh, you're late? All right. You're 10 minutes more late. Go. Right. Oh, you can't do 100 pushups? I'm waiting. Keep going. We'll stay here until you're done. All right. So pushups and cold. Pushups and cold, I think, is two. We just need a third. And it's going to be you do these three things. You're just going to do them for 30 days straight. And we're just going to harden you up. Just going to harden you up a little bit. And so what's the third? What's the third in this thing? Well, is this too soft?

1:00:13You got to tell the woman in your life how you feel. Or the man. Or the man in your life. You got to be kind. You got to tell someone how you feel. It could be kind. It could be, oh, you've been avoiding confrontation. It's time to say. Or you got to have a tough conversation. You might have to have a tough conversation. oh you really appreciate somebody you better show it right and so you're going to send a message voice memo text message to your mom to your co-worker to whoever and we're gonna do that every day you gotta have a tough combo do that every day for 30 days a tough conversation a tough shower a tough morning that's how we're doing it all right well you got to call it total right a total conversation total yeah a total one and so i think it's good i i my feedback you need to add two more things.

1:01:01You need about five or six things. My critique of my own thing there, it's a little too easy. I think it needs to be a little bit harder, potentially. It has to be so hard that you're like, ugh, I can't believe I'm doing it. Like the 75 hard thing, it's pretty hard. And people have to look at you and be like, are you nuts? Yeah, the cold thing, the cold thing, you're onto something with the cold thing. That is quite challenging. But you got to have about, you got to have a few more hard things. 50 pushups. If you're fit, I could do 50 pushups in one sitting. Yeah. I think it's got to be a lot more.

1:01:30The original thing I was thinking about, because I was like, what would it mean? Because a lot of this also inspired when Zuck did the Murph thing. And I was like, whoa, Zuck's kind of been a man right now. Like, what's going on? That's pretty cool. Could I do that? I don't think I could do this. I can't do 100 pull-ups. Like, that's just something I can't do. All right. All right. So I started working towards it. So the next morning, I woke up and I did my little quarter Murph. I ran the... Oh, he runs a mile hard. I'm going to run the quarter mile. I'm going to do a quarter of the pushups, quarter of the pull-ups, quarter of the squats.

1:02:03It's hard, right? Quarter of the run again. It's hard. And I'll do it again until that's easy. When that's easy, I'm going to make it harder, right? I'm just going to keep inching it forward until I can do the full thing. And I was like, yeah, that's the way to go. It's progress, right? Like it's about progress. And so I think you're right. I think we kind of need to workshop the actual difficulty level because I think to hit the brand right, it's got to be something that other people think you're crazy for doing. Yeah, I think that's great. It can't be reasonable. You could also be a little self-serving and make it like a post on social media.

1:02:32So you get that little hashtag going around. By the way, no money. You got to share the results. When I charge money, this isn't a program you buy. It's just a movement. You're either in or you're out. That's it. That's it. You're in. And if you're in, you got to do it. If you're out, stay out. So I've known you for close to 10 years now. Did you ever think that 10 years ago, you'd be about this life? Never. Never. it feels good though right it feels good to be a man yes it feels good i agree i think it feels great i when i remember when i moved to san francisco i felt really like nervous i was like people would call me a redneck because i moved from tennessee i remember when i when i first got like in san francisco when you move there you'd have to interview for an apartment because they had so many applications i remember going to like one of these interviews and people being like this was in 2012 right i guess right after obama was there an election in 2012 people were like who'd you vote for they asked me who i voted for in order to like get this apartment and like so i was like i gotta hide like which i think we voted for obama but i had to like hide a bunch of shit about myself not anymore things have changed my friend this stuff is actually a lot more popular if you go to san francisco things are a lot different muscles are are not quite in but they're more in than before and fitness is more than before and hard conversations are more than before so i think it's good that you're kind of capitalizing on this we're not chasing trends here this is timeless people have been trying to be people have been trying to be hard for their whole like you know since the beginning of time in fact the only thing that turns me off is if this is a trend all right total man all right you're you're sounding harder already do you have to wrap up now i see you're looking at your phone by the way i'm gonna do my elizabeth holmes and start talking with a deeper voice on purpose dude people make fun of me on our youtube they say i'm got a high voice.

1:04:17Yeah. So now I'm like thinking in my head, I got to talk lower too. Dude, I think that's why Mike Tyson became Mike Tyson. I think he had to overcompensate for his voice and just turn into an absolute savage. Oh, so you're agreeing. I have a high pitch voice. It's not low. Oh my God. That's ridiculous. That is ridiculous. That is ridiculous. All right. 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

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