There’s 98 days until 2027...Do this and you’ll thank yourself on Jan 1st

21:22And you got to be able to do both. You know, somebody who can only do the free play and never edits, never has any kind of like discernment or taste or judgment doesn't work. But if you bring the judgment into the room early on in the brainstorm, you're not going to have a very good brainstorm. And so we created these two hats, literally like Diego got them made for us, which was like, it says Rick mode, which is like Rick Rubin. So it's like Rick mode when it's like, dude, we're just messing around. We're playing. We're just, we trust ourselves. And you're in Rick mode. And then we have prick mode.

21:52And you put on the prick mode hat. It goes the other way. It's a different color. And if we were in prick mode, then it's like, well, that's who I'm supposed to be right now. So let me go ahead and do that. And at first, I felt kind of silly. And then I started noticing there's a lot of examples of great people who do this. So Warren Buffett has an actual thing on his desk called the too hard pile. Because his investing philosophy is that, look, you can't have a great opinion on a hundred straight stocks or investment opportunities. He's like, you should be able to pretty quickly figure out the five that are very interesting, probably like, you know, good, good, no brainer things to do.

22:27The five that are absolutely terrible, duds, stay away, red flags everywhere. But then 90%, it's too hard to judge. It's too close to call. Can't tell. And so he literally creates the too hard pile on his desk so that he can put things in there. Just mentally say, look, I don't have to come to an answer. It's just in the too hard pile. I don't need to worry about it. There was a guy, Zach Dell. So the son of Michael Dell from Dell Computers. And Zach Dell's got this really interesting company called Base Power now. And he was on a podcast and he was saying, he's like, I have two notebooks. So he's like, so I got the, I forgot what it was like, the red notebook and the blue notebook.

23:03And I think you will like this because this is every business, like CEO, business owner has this. He goes, the red notebook is working in the business. So if I have an idea of what we should, you know, what we should do, what we should change this, you know, this customer thing. And then the blue is working on the business, which is, oh, you know, this person's not in the right role or we need to hire somebody for this or, you know, we need to get an office space. We need to rearrange our office space so these two groups are sitting closer to each other so that they're going to have better chemistry.

23:31And so in the business and on the business, and he's like, I have two separate notebooks. so I know which one I'm doing when. And I know if I'm spending too much time in the business, it's like I'm all over the red notebook. Is that it? Do you have the same thing? Two notebooks, baby. Can we just admire the showmanship? Can we just do that again? Instant replay. Sam picks up a notebook, shows it like that where it looks like one thick notebook, turns, fans it out, two notebooks.

23:57Sam Parr:Yeah, I have got two notebooks. I actually have a third. Hang on. But wait, there's more. The ultimate showman. Hey, Zach, suck on this. In the business, on the business, and out of business. Well, one is like, this is like, it's like the five-year journal that I write where it's like, here's how I feel today, like right now. The next one is like content ideas, like just random ideas. And then the next one is like, here's what I actually have to do. And like, I need to like work through the actual problem. Hey, let's take a quick break. Rick, you know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content?

24:39That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze Assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. What's your system for this?

25:02Sam Parr:um so this one i i do almost religiously every day so this is the fire journal so every day i write like here's what i here's what i did today here's something to be grateful for so this is like five ten minutes in the morning what do you do no three minutes so it could be like uh uh today i i read about aristotle and i loved it for these reasons and i need to be reminded to do x like aristotle or it could be like today i went to san francisco it was amazing We brought help with us and it made the trip so much easier. So it could be like, just like, just it just like I'll look back at a year. I'm like, oh, that's a good reminder.

25:39Sam Parr:The next one, this one will be more like, like, you know, like, let's say I'm reading a book and I'll like have like an interesting idea related to that book. So I just need to get it on paper. And then the next one is like, here's what I have to do today. And like, it's mostly checklists, but I'll like kind of brainstorm solutions to the problem. so your boy's got books

26:07Sam Parr:and by the way that's like a consistent thing I've noticed amongst creators that I like is that they I think the easiest way to say it is they write drunk edit sober yeah so I've noticed that consistently but then you have stories like Eminem the famous story where he walked in with Dr. Dre and like Dre plays the first beat and then within five seconds he goes hi my name is like you're like okay So it definitely could just happen. But typically, the people who are systematically great, including Eminem, like people I've seen, I think Anderson Cooper did a thing, a story on Eminem, where they're like, dude, he writes like crazy.

26:43Sam Parr:Like I've never seen someone write down so much stuff. And another thing that they would say about him and Eminem, when he was younger, came off as this like party guy. Maybe he was, but they're like, he's at the studio at 9am and he goes home at 4. Like it's a workday. and like I noticed that there's way more systematic ways to being creative than there is examples of epiphanies right well the the analogy I would use because I think it's yeah both like I think yeah you have those moments where the song comes on the beat comes on and he starts doing Hi My Name Is or that you hear this a lot where somebody it's like 24 hours they wrote both of the hit songs that define their careers in one day all it took was one day and it's like no all it took was every day for their whole life and then they had that day and the analogy I use is you have a 2 % conversion rate and the conversions just came like a number 98 and 99 back to back yeah well the analogy I use is imagine your brain is this like old mansion old mansion on a hill and you go to you inherited it you find out you inherited this gift from your you know your great grandfather you didn't even know you had it but it was yours and so you go you walk in you're like wow this thing's amazing it's in terrible shape cobwebs everywhere but this thing could be amazing and you decide you go to the restroom you go to the bathroom and you see this like wonderful, this old tub, this amazing tub.

28:00And you're like, man, this is crazy. I've never had a bath like this. I'm going to turn it on. You turn the water on. And of course, right when you turn the water on, it's creaky, takes a second, it sputters. And then out comes brown, muddy water. Like the most disgusting. And you flinch. You're like horrified. You're like, oh, disgusting. You turn it off. This is the first thing you write when you sit down to write. The first thing you say, if I said, hey, freestyle right now, it's what would come out. You'd be horrified at your own disgust. It's your own, like your own output is going to be, it's going to disgust you.

28:32But you, you know, what do you do? So most people just turn the water off and say, Ooh, never again. That bathtub has, it's nasty. Don't go in there. But a few people are like, they leave the water running. And sure enough, it's brown, it's brown, it's brown, it's brown, it's brown. And then eventually it starts to, little spurts of clear come out and eventually the water starts running clear. And I think what happens in that example where Eminem goes in and freestyles is that he's had the water running and he's running clear. And so, you know, when the moment comes, he's able to perform. He's able to come up with an idea.

29:04He's able to have a good idea because that it's warmed up. The whole system is warmed up. The muddy water is gone because he's got putting in the daily reps, you know, along the way. And so I think that's a lot of how this works. And, you know, I feel that way about this podcast. Let's say we didn't do this podcast for three months. one might think that, oh, we're going to have so much saved up material. We're going to be awesome. It's going to be so much better. And as you know, it would be way worse. It would be terrible. This podcast gets better the more often we do it. Obviously, there's some limits to that.

29:38Like if I did it again in two hours, like maybe I'd be out of, I need a little fresh feedstock, a little inspiration, a little fresh air in between. Yeah, but you got to get warmed up. But by and large, the more you keep the water running, the clearer it eventually starts to run. and it's when you stop using it for a while that it's like, there's this flywheel where the more it generates, the better it generates. And the less it generates, the worse it generates.

30:00Sam Parr:There's this story about Tupac Shakur who died when he was only 25. And so he was very prolific for a very short amount of time. And there's a story, he goes to, he went to prison for doing some bad stuff and he's there for like nine months. And someone was like, well, it must've been like, you know, let's find the icing of the cake. Like at least you had like a lot of solitudes. You could like write. He goes, I can't write in here. It's the worst. Like, A, there's like very little inspiration. And B, like, I can't get it out. He would write way better when he was like a machine gun in the studio.

30:28Sam Parr:Like, just go, go, go. All right, we did that one. All right, let's try another one. Can I tell you an interesting story? And this is sort of related to like someone who followed none of the rules that people default to. And I think it's really interesting. And I think it's going to interest you because A, it's an obscure billionaire who I'm sure you've never heard of, but you know their work. And B, it's a family dynasty business, which I think you're tiptoeing into like your interests I'm tantalized. Okay. Have you ever heard of Advance Publishing? No. But you said I know their product. What's the product?

30:59Sam Parr:Well, the most popular ones, but not necessarily the most profitable, are Ironman, GQ Magazine, Reddit, Charter Communications, Warner Bros., Discovery. Some smaller ones that you probably like is the, or that you've heard of, American City Business Journals, Turnitin.com. They just bought a mountain biking event. Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue. Reddit. Reddit's a public stock. What do you mean they own Reddit? They owned Reddit before it was public. So I can, I'll tell you. And they still own, I think they own 30 % of it still. But I'll tell you the story. So there's this guy named Sam Newhouse. Sam Newhouse was born, I think, in like 1895.

31:38Sam Parr:He's born in this like Jewish family. He's like five foot two. He's like a little guy. He's tiny. And he, his father gets sick, gets really bad asthma. And so he can't work. And so he's got like four other siblings. And he's like, at the age of 13 and 14, the mom is like, hey, dude, you're the man of the house. You got to drop out of school and help me pay the bills. And so he does like a mail-in order course, basically the equivalent of an online course in bookkeeping. And he convinces this local business person to give him a job. He's like, how do your bookkeeping? So he does his bookkeeping starting at the age of 15.

32:10Sam Parr:By 16, a year later, the business guy owns a very small local newspaper. and he's like, hey, I have this newspaper that I own. It doesn't really make a lot of money. And it made like the equivalent of like$800 ,000 a year in revenue today. He's like, can you just like keep an eye on this? You seem very trustworthy. You know numbers. Figure out how to make this work. Within six or seven months, he turns it around and start making money. And he's at this point 17. And the guy's like, dude, good job. Here, I'll give you a percentage of the profits now. And I'll also give you a little bit of ownership.

32:38Sam Parr:And Sam Newhouse is like, I like this. I think I'm pretty good at it. So he does it for a couple more years. And then after about three years, he convinces a bunch of family members to all pitch in and loan them money. And he buys his first newspaper. It was called Staten Island Advance, which is why the company today is still called Advance Publishing. And so his whole shtick is basically he bought this newspaper and he goes into it with a few things in mind. The first thing he's like, look, we're just here to sell ads. Let's keep it real. The content that we create, we can make it as good as we possibly can within our constraints.

33:13Sam Parr:but like we need to make a profit. And so he's very, very, very good at selling ads. And he's very good at keeping cost controls down. And for the next, I think, 60 years, he buys a new newspaper every three years. And it slowly accumulates roughly 15 to 20 % per year in revenue growth. And he grows and he grows and he grows and he grows. And by the time it's like 1980, he has one of the largest privately owned companies in America. And he's doing like, well, today, Advanced Publishing does like$8 billion a year in revenue. Back then, it was doing like a billion in revenue. But what's interesting is this little guy named Sam Newhouse, he never had an office.

33:55Sam Parr:He worked out of a briefcase. All he had was a briefcase. Most of the deals that he did was handshake agreements. He had zero partners. He had zero executive management team. And by the time the company was doing a billion in revenue, it was literally just him. Like just him making these decisions. and he would hire a publisher, which is basically a GM or like a CEO of a newspaper. And he would go to each one each week and be like, hey, what's going on, man? How's everything going? He was very polite though. He was the headquarters just driving around. And he would drive from thing to thing to thing.

34:26Sam Parr:And he kept doing this and doing this and doing this. And then after a while, when he's like close to 60 and 70 and 80 years old, he starts getting his sons involved. And they've now created this like dynasty. And it was his sons who was like, okay, Our dad bought all these low prestige local newspapers where they pretty much just exist to buy ads. Basically, the way that he thought about it, his whole thing was like, how much profit can I make in 10 years off of this particular newspaper? That's how he would value things. So he was like, okay, I can make$8 million in profit over the next 10 years off this newspaper.

35:01Sam Parr:I have no problem buying it for$4 million, which is like, I think at the time, that he would buy them for six to eight times annual earnings because he was like, I'm looking for 10 years at a time. That's how I measure it. And he kept going. And then eventually his kids were like, okay, dad built a cool company, but it's not well-regarded. We want to do something great. And so they buy the New Yorker, which was at the time a very prominent magazine. They buy this little thing called Condé Nast. And Condé Nast was a series of magazines, including Vanity Fair, Vogue, and all this other stuff like GQ.

35:35Sam Parr:And they were like, we're going to make our family great. And so they come up with this idea of Vanity Fair, which is hard to describe now because it's not as relevant. But they were like, we're going to hire these amazing editors. And that's where they get this woman named Anna Wintour, who if you've seen The Devil Wears Prada, that's her. And their whole shtick was, we're going to hire these amazing editors and we're going to give them, do whatever you want. As long as it makes some profit, do whatever you want. We don't care. And that's what they were famous for. And so they've had a bunch of editors of these really awesome magazines for like three or four decades.

36:10Sam Parr:I think she's been doing it for like 30 years. And then come the dot-com era, they're like, okay, we've got to figure this out. What do we do? And so they buy Reddit for$10 million. And they hold on to it. And it grows and it grows and it grows. And eventually, they spit it out and do its own thing. And so their$10 million investment into Reddit is worth, I think now, like between$2 and$3 billion. Yeah, that's wild. They've done this over and over and over again. They're still a privately held company. I believe his name is Steven Newhouse, who must be the grandson of the founder. He recently bought Iron Man, the triathlon series.

36:48Sam Parr:They just bought a mountain biking event. They own Turnitin.com. I think they recently bought that for over a billion dollars. They own 4 % of Warner Brothers, which owns HBO, CNN, Discovery Channel, all this other stuff. they own 14 % of charter communications. And so it's just this big like playground where they like buy these really cool things and they own them forever. This is fascinating. What's something you're going to, you know, you're like, I can steal from this playbook. So something that he did that I believe Warren Buffett did when you're buying multiple businesses, something that you tell yourself that's cool is to consolidate the back end, the back office.

37:30Sam Parr:It's counterintuitive. That is not the way to do it. Every entity should be its own thing that can run itself and is completely independent. That is the best way to make sure that they can move fast and act on what's good for their local business as opposed to having some HQ that's helping make decisions. Another thing is, I need to be reminded of this all the time, I think everyone does, is how if you know what business you're in, even if it's not sexy, and you're able to stick with it for a long time, and you are what you are and you know what you are, it can really work a lot better than pretending to be something else.

38:07Sam Parr:For example, he was like, guys, ads are first, okay? So if we hire journalists, that's fine that are great journalists, but you have to stick within this playbook. We aren't going to appeal to be sexy. It was his kids who got into that because they wanted to be that. But he was like, no, this is what we're doing. This is the mission and we're going to do it over and over and over and over again. like you and I will like talk about this podcast oftentimes and we're like this is a fake example but we're like should we talk about politics and like one could say like yeah we should it'll get more popular it's like or we just stick to what we know and like enjoy our niche and just be kings of that small niche do you know what I mean yeah so that's a big takeaway very tempting to um and I wouldn't even say tempting I think it is interesting when people don't really understand the business that they're in.

38:57And that can be from a customer point of view. Like, for example, why do people listen to this podcast? Just to use a personal example, right? If you can't really understand why somebody's listening, what are the odds you're going to be fulfilling that at the highest level? That you're going to be delivering to the person the reason they came, the job to be done for why they're here, right? Because on one level, you could say for this podcast, Well, they're listening for business ideas. Because you would say, well, often we talk about different business ideas or opportunities. And certainly it's for somebody who's looking for their next business.

39:32So then we should go market this as a great podcast for somebody who's looking for their next business. And if you did that, it would be a shockingly small number of people and a small percentage of our actual audience. Because what our actual audience likes to do is be entertained by the talk of business. Right? I like to hear about business ideas that I have no plan on ever going and doing. It sounds irrational. Why would you do that? Why waste the mind space there? And it's like, well, because it tickles some part of my brain to hear people brainstorming about an idea or teaching me about an idea that I never am going to do.

40:06Or I hear about a business that's completely different than mine, but I'm fascinated by it. I take inspiration from it. And for some reason, hearing about this dude's old newspaper business and how he was a traveling traveling in his car, checking on each HQ and how he took a simple idea seriously and he stuck with it for 100 years, it made me reinforce what I'm doing over here in the restaurant business, what I'm doing over here in the oil business or whatever other business you're in. And so we have to understand that for us, it's inspiring stories. So stories of people doing badass things to make it so that you go do badass things in your business.

40:44And secondly, people who are just business junkies, They just like to know. They like to hear. They like the fantasy football of the whole thing. They don't have to go plan to actually go do that thing. And once you understand that, you might like run your product or run your business a little bit differently.

40:59Sam Parr:So a lot of times people at the podcast, they'll reach out to me and they're wondering, Hey, Sam and Sean, how do you meet all these amazing entrepreneurs? How do you find all these stories? Well, I have a hack. You see, I actually have a community called Hampton. It's a community for entrepreneurs doing at least 3 million in revenue. although we do on average just something like$25 million a year in revenue. We have the founders of DoorDash, of Figure, of Bluetooth. All these amazing companies are part of Hampton. And what's interesting is because of the environment in Hampton, which frankly is very similar to My First Million, we have a very unique high trust environment.

41:30Sam Parr:When people apply and go through this vetting process, they're put in groups of like eight or nine other entrepreneurs and they get real about everything that's going on in their life and in their business. And sort of like when people listen to MFM, they get inspired to come up with new solutions for business. that's what happens in real life in Hampton. It's life-changing. And so if you're a founder of a startup that does at least 3 million in revenue and you just want to go ahead and pull forward 5 or 10 years worth of success, then check it out. The URL is joinhampton.com. Again, the URL joinhampton.com.

42:01Sam Parr:Yeah, like a good example of what not to do is, do you remember Jaguar had like a rebrand like two years ago? Oh yeah, everyone hated it, right? What were they doing? Yeah, so basically like Jaguar, historically, I think they were like, it's a British company, and it was like a cool guy car. Like James Bond would drive a jet. Yeah, it was like a cool guy, like a man's man kind of thing. And I think they drifted a little bit away from that, but that's like the heart of it. And so they were trying to figure out, they're like, look, we kind of been like this middleman car company for the last 15, 20 years.

42:32Sam Parr:We got to get back to our roots. And they go and do this rebrand. And somehow when they did it, they had like their spokesperson was like, and androgynous woman, which isn't exactly in line with a manly man who loves to smell gasoline. It sort of seemed like a little like, it was like related to the LGBTQ thing, which is like fine, but that's not exactly the Jaguar customer or like the reason why people turn to Jaguar. And when they did that, all the customers were like, what is this? This doesn't speak to us. And so it was like the exact opposite of what you should do. Well, right now, Nike is in the news for the same thing.

43:15Nike stock is down 90, what was it down? 80%, 90%, something like that from its peak. I don't know if you've been following this, but... Yeah, what's the gist of it? I know it's down. Peak was 170 and it's currently at 36. So Nike stock has fallen dramatically. It's now a$53 billion market cap.

43:37Sam Parr:And just to put that in perspective, they do 46 billion in revenue. So they're trading almost at one times their revenue. Like a shitty DTC brand, right? Yeah. And there's lots of reasons people can attribute to this. One of the popular reasons, I don't know if this is the full reason, right? I think there was some business model things they did. But one of the popular kind of complaints or things that people say is like, look, Nike, the brand, the premium you were getting was because you had this incredible brand. And it was worldwide recognized and respected brand. Athletes everywhere wanted to be a part of it.

44:08Nike used to celebrate greatness. Famously, they would never show the shoe. They would talk about the athlete and the athlete being great, the athlete pushing through, the athlete achieving what others said was impossible. And they just so happened to be wearing Nikes. And the implication is, if you want to be great, Nike stood for greatness, stood for excellence. And if you wanted to be great, if you wanted to be truly excellent, then you should wear Nike. And it drifted. And so they started having all these body positives. So it's like, all right, there's a fat person wearing Nike. Great. Like, you know, there's this person who's not great wearing Nike.

44:45Not great at their sport. And it's like, well, nobody wants to buy the brand of non-excellent athletic performance for an athletic shoe. And you could see how a large corporation could drift and could lose that. And now they're going to have their back to their roots moment where they're going to trim the product lines. And they're going to go back to their roots. They're going to overpay some athlete to go back. and they're going to have this new campaign. They're going to fire their ad agency and hire a new ad agency. They're going to get back to their roots. Think about the athletes.

45:14Sam Parr:They're like, I could be Nike's next mistake. I have to get in before they realize how dumb this is. And so, yeah, I shouldn't have a chance at being on the Nike billboard. That should be impossible. Can I wrap up here with a segment that I want to call I Created a Monster Slash How to Turn Shit into Gold. This is brought to you by Jiffy Lube. Yeah. I feel like every segment needs a sponsor, even a fictitious one. Yeah, this is called I Created a Monster Slash How to Turn Shit into Gold. And this is like a positive episode, so this is perfect. So a few months ago, I kind of alluded to it, but I didn't want to say it.

45:59Sam Parr:My sister-in-law got breast cancer recently. and which sucks because she's pregnant. She's due in October and she got cancer. Like the same day Ben called me, she called me. She called my wife and she was like, okay, this is horrible. I'm pregnant and I have cancer. How can I make this awesome? And so she got inspired and I guess got inspired by me because everything, that was taking way too much credit. but uh but it runs in the family i pulled you over for a speeding violation there on that sentence but go ahead citation back on the road i'm the pregnant one with cancer but you are the hero sam but i guess what i'm saying like you know as you know being a creator you get a lot of free stuff and i think everyone's like i want that i want a free mattress and so she started making TikToks about being pregnant and having cancer.

47:02Sam Parr:And she's like doing amazing where like the video I don't like watching is like when she finally shaves her head, it always makes me cry. But then there's like her working out and doing stuff. And like, she's like basically starts off every video. I'm 30 years old, I'm pregnant and I have cancer. And like, here's my workout today. And she now is on TikTok. She's getting like tens of thousands of views on a bunch of videos. I think she's doing like a video a day. But I just thought this was really awesome. I thought this was really, really, really cool and admirable what she's doing because getting cancer and being pregnant that's literally like one of the worst lots that can be drawn ever uh but she and and i like to tease her because i'm like the shitty thing about both of those things your shtick is that ideally they're gonna end you're gonna have a baby and the cancer is gonna go away so you better get everything out of this you know while you can but i think it's pretty cool and i thought you'd get a kick out of this uh what she's doing i do i i am getting a kick out i think this is awesome i'm gonna watch some of these videos after this.

47:58I do have a suggestion. Now that she's taking suggestions. Well, she's in the arena now. Well, kind of like you said, that initial hook is obviously like a shock, right? Like I'm 30 years old, I'm pregnant and I have cancer.

48:15Sam Parr:By the way, let me give her a shout out. It's Sid Glander. Her first name is Sydney. Yeah. First name is Sydney. Last name Glander. G-L-A-N-D-E-R. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, everyone, let's go follow her. I think she should tweak it a little bit. Maybe try it. I'm 30 years old. I'm, you know, I'm an expecting mom and future cancer survivor. Because I think the words matter, the label you put on yourself, the identity, especially as a content creator. There's this weird thing where the more public you are about an identity, the harder it is to ever switch it. And this is one she would want to switch.

48:50Not having it, but surviving it, you know, like conquering it, beating it. And so that's my only suggestion is consider that.

48:58Sam Parr:Yeah, I actually think that's great advice. She's been texting me. She's like, Kettle and Fire reached out to me. They're offering to send me free bone broth. And it's like, I made it. Like every influencer has this moment. It's sort of like making your first dollar. The first time a brand reaches out to you and offers like product, you're like, I did it. And so I think it's really cool that she's done it. I got a huge box of Chomps from Pete from Chomps at my door. and like all the kids on my son's soccer team just thought like, they don't know what a podcast is. They actively don't want to watch this.

49:32But the fact that Chomps sends me free Chomps, they were like, this is unbelievable. Because I don't know if you know this, but kids, kids freaking love Chomps, chopsticks. Dude, Pete from Chomps. DM me, I want some Chomps.

49:43Sam Parr:That's like one of the few things I would gladly accept. It's like a lifetime supply of Chomps that I have at the front door right now. Is it really? Can I tell you a fun, a funny, just like this is the Tales from the House episode. So I don't know about you. Who's this sponsored by? Clorox? No, I need like a home insurance company maybe like Geico or something like that for this one. So it's unrelated to business or anything like that. But I don't know if you guys are like this but does Sarah like panic when guests are coming over? She seems cool as a cucumber if anybody's ever met her. She seems cool as a cucumber.

50:19She's literally cool as a cucumber. Maybe you're the one who would be panicking.

50:22Sam Parr:But my wife... She's pretty stoic, but I do empathize with that when you clean before the cleaning lady comes. Yeah, so this is like the extreme version of that where my wife... We have the Tesla Model X, which is awesome, but she hates the doors. And I was like, oh, why? Look, it's so convenient to get it out. She's like, no, everyone can see in our car at school drop-off. Like, I open up the kimono every time. Everyone sees every goldfish that's on the ground. I'm like, they don't see your care? She's like, no, like, park over there farther away so nobody will see when we open our trunk. So anyways, we're cleaning out the house.

50:53We're getting rid of some toys. And so she doesn't want to waste it. So she posts on her IG like, hey, does anyone want to take these toys? Like pick up these toys. And her friend who's a kindergarten teacher is like, oh, perfect. I'll take them for the classroom. And she's like, oh, great. Okay, great. I'm so glad these are going to a good place. Awesome. She puts it like as like up front, like right by the door. Just come grab them and go. And so five minutes before she picked it up, she's picking up. She's like, hey, we're on our way. and then my wife's like, who's we? Oh no, who's coming? And she's like, yeah, it's me, husband, all the kids.

51:26We're just going to come over real quick. We're just going to do this. And so we're in emergency clean mode. She's cleaning downstairs. She starts going upstairs and I'm like, like nobody's going to go upstairs. Like, don't worry. Like this is like comical. Nobody's going to go. Nobody's going to see that room. Don't even worry about it. Yeah. If you want to pick up some stuff here, that's fine. But like, don't worry about those videos

51:43Sam Parr:where like people get pulled over by the police and they want to prove a point and they barely rolled their window down. And they was like, I don't answer questions. That's like, basically. That's what she was trying to do. She wanted to like crack the thing open and like do like an exchange through the slot, like a prisoner in like a solitary confinement. Anyways, they come over, kids are playing around the house. It's time to go. And they're like, oh. Because they're like calling his name, their kid's name. And they're like, oh, he's doing that thing again. And we're like, what? And they're like, he always does this.

52:15We go to someone's house. and he just goes and finds a random room in their house that just hides there. And we're like, oh, that's funny. He's so silly. And they're like, no, it's not funny because he won't come out. Like he'll go an hour, two hours. Like you won't find him. And then we're like, oh. And then my wife starts to pay. She's like, let me go upstairs and just see real quick. And they're like, no, no, no. You don't know this kid. I know how he thinks. We will go send the search party up and find him. So they go upstairs. Dude, your wife's like, Billy! and by the way exactly by the way the husband is a real estate agent so he's like you know just finally attuned to just paying attention yeah he's scoping the sitch he scopes the joint out and so he he's going room to room and my wife's just following him making excuses in each room like we haven't had a chance yet to clean that up we're actually we're moving that's why this is like this and like i don't know who did that somebody came here did that so she's just making excuses while He's opening up every closet, every drawer, looking under the beds, like everywhere you would never think anyone would go.

53:15Linen closet. What's in there? And so, because he might be anywhere. And finally, in the last room, finds him inside of a closet. And like they're coming down the stairs. And like, you know, I feel like my wife just saw a dead body. And like, I think it might be hers that she saw on the way out. And we didn't talk for like 15 minutes after they left. It was just like silence. She just processed her worst nightmare playing out. But you know the stoic thing where you visualize your worst fear? Yeah. She lived it. And I feel like she came out a better person now that she survived her worst nightmare.

53:49So I thought I'd share that with you. Does she know that you're going to talk about it? No, no, no.

53:53Sam Parr:So she gets to relive it now. Thankfully, she's never listened to an episode of the podcast. So we're safe. This is a safe space here. We used to have this email that would get sent on the hustle. We called it the zombie email. So emails who have never opened the email ever before to re-engage them. And it was like, hey, I'm sending this email because according to our records, you've never opened an email. Which gives me an opportunity right now to explain some of my deepest darkest secrets because no one's reading this. So when I was 12, I open mouth kissed a cousin once. Not only can I not see why George Clooney is attractive to women, I too think he's incredibly attractive and I would.

54:31Sam Parr:we would say all these crazy stuff and it was a huge hit the few people that would actually open it we would totally get it back on the hook just when they thought they were out you want them back dude that's such a good email that's so funny this is your zombie newsletter this was a pod full of laughs full of goodness congratulations we did it and that's it that's the pod

55:02All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about Marketing School. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Su. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real-world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.