This Gas Station Pizza Business Makes $540M/Yr?!

25:17He just worked at the place that made the pieces. I would have respected myself more if I had contacted the place that made the pieces and been like, hey man, I'll give you a thousand bucks if you tell me where Boardwalk is. Instead, we were just like, hey, we're just going to dig through dumpsters and go get the pieces that people throw out and see if we can win. And I ended up making like three grand that year. Wait, did you really? Yeah, we found some, we won something. It was worth probably a couple thousand dollars. But I wasted a semester of extracurricular brainpower doing this. And I thought I was winning.

25:57It's like winning a carnival game. I won the bear. It's like, dude, you spent$90 winning that bear. You could have just bought the bear for$60, right? That's basically how I treated my college career. A bunch of, you know, really dumb, really dumb side hustle ideas that kind of panned out. But if I had just done like something useful with my time, I would have made, you know, 10 times more in the long run. Did you really? I mean, winning$1 ,000 on that thing is kind of like a rush. Have you ever won the lottery or like any type of scratch off? I've won like raffles. I've won like poker tournaments.

26:29I think on scratchers, I've never had a big win. I've played a lot of scratchers. I probably I probably down a couple thousand bucks lifetime on scratchers. is my guess. Wait, do you still buy them? Not anymore because my wife looks down on me for doing it. But there was like a three-year period of my life where like if I saw a scratcher, you know, I'm buying. I have not bought a scratch off thing or a lottery ticket in my entire life. That lines up. You're the same guy who sold his company and then put it all in his CD and never touched it. Congratulations. I have been missing out. So I'm a pretty degenerate gambler.

27:07And I said, I have a lot of, you know, like anyone who's a degenerate about anything, you have stories that are, it sounds like you're rock bottom. And you're like, bro, that's just scratching the surface of what I've done. Like, you know, I've gone on riverboats, and I've, you know, overdrawn my account. And I've, you know, I've done really dumb stuff. When I was in my early 20s gambling. So I love gambling. And if you take me to a casino, I'm a happy, I'm happy as a clam. but I went with my mentor, my investor, who's a billionaire. I went with my mentor, Michael Birch, and we go to Vegas for a conference or for a meeting.

27:39We're going to go meet Rupert Murdoch, actually. And so we're there for this big meeting and we're staying at the Wynn, I think. And we go down to the floor and any degenerate knows there's a certain feeling that comes over your body when you walk the floor of a casino, when you enter the casino. It's like something about the air, the sounds. It physiologically does something in my body. For sure. and so I'm like Michael you want to play I'm like let's find a tape we got a couple hours before this thing let's gamble and I'm just like I want to gamble but I'm also trying to hang out with him and I'm trying to be cool and whatever and you're only like 26 or 27 I'm 25 years old maybe he's 40 or something like that I don't know how old he is and he's like you know a thousand 10 ,000 times wealthier than me and smarter than me he's everything better than me and so that became very apparent because he's like I was like, do you gamble?

28:30And he's like, not really. And I was like, oh, why? Like, you know, you don't like it or whatever. He's like, why would I gamble? Like, you know, the house has an edge, right? And I have these chips in my hand and I just put them back in my pocket and I really haven't gambled since because I was like, oh, so the rich, successful guy I admire just pointed out, he's like, yeah, like, this is a losing game. Why would I play a losing game? And just him saying that, you know, my mom has told me to stop gambling. Like, I've had friends been like, yo, you should, you know, why don't you just not do it?

29:02And then nothing has ever sunk in except for this guy just being like, why would I play? House has an edge. I thought you were going to like, like right when you walk into the casino, you turn your hat backwards and you're like, I'd tuck your shirt and you're like, poca shans here. I have a different dialect. I'm like prison Mike. Yeah. Or date Mike. Yeah. Like date Mike. Nice to meet me. Yeah. I thought you were going to just like change. Like, thanks for holding my money. And I started saying that to people. Speaking of money, we have to get a shout out to one of our sponsors, Beehive. Yeah.

29:34What's not a gamble? Starting a newsletter on Beehive. You know what's not a gamble? Putting your content out there for the world to love. And you know who's making money instead of pissing it away? Tyler Denk, the CEO of Beehive, who just raised a crazy amount of money. $33 million announced yesterday. And then he opened up some community round. He's like, oh, by the way, if you want to invest in Beehive and you missed out on the fund. And he just posted in two hours, they crossed a million dollars of community money raised. This guy's created an amazing PR halo. He's creating a cult of believers.

30:07It's pretty impressive to see what he's doing. And I think I'm one of the believers. I had the opportunity to invest in this when they first started. And I passed. I don't remember what the valuation was. What was it? 10? It was under 10. I think we both passed under 10. I realized my sins and I came and I said, Father, forgive me. Let me invest. I started using the product and then I was like, I was like, I'll use the product. I still really wasn't fully convinced because I don't know how big this market is, how big is newsletters, is this too niche? And then they kept shipping updates so fast and building features so well.

30:37I was like, okay, I've learned enough times in my career. Just don't bet on a workhorse founder and a team that ships this fast for a product you love and you use. If those boxes are checked, just invest. It's okay. You might be surprised on the upside with the market, which it seems like I guess is the case here because they've really taken off. But I normally do not sell. I have a policy, actually. I think there should be an official MFM policy, which is we do not celebrate fundraising news. Fundraising is not to be celebrated. I mean, think about what you're saying when you celebrate fundraising.

31:08It's either a combination of congratulations, now the game is starting. You don't get cheered for to start the game. You get cheered when you win. The second thing is it's congratulations, you gave up a piece of your company. You shouldn't really celebrate fundraising too much. I thought this was an ad for them where we're supposed to make them look cool. But here's why I like it. Because he said something. He had a great quote. And if I'm a sucker for one thing, it's a great quote. And he said, like, you know, in his Slack to his team, he's like, all right, guys, money's in the bank, but the rent still do.

31:40That's so good. I don't even know fully what that means. But that sounds like some mafia shit. And I dig it. Which is some version of like, cool, we got all the funding. But like, we still got like, this doesn't mean anything. We still got to pay the rent. We got to put in the work and actually deliver. And so I like that line. That is the only reason I'm willing to talk about the fundraising because he said, the rents still do. And I think the rents still do is just like a great, great slogan. He also had in the TechCrunch article, he goes, look, we're only two years into this and we have a billion emails going out.

32:11And like that line does in itself isn't a lot. But the fact that this guy is this, I don't like using the word cocky because that's negative, but he's so confident. I love, I love what he has. and I don't know what the valuation was for this. Maybe it was probably north of$100 million. So he's right. I'm wrong. I lost on that one. So kudos to Beehive. And if you want to start a newsletter, Beehive with two I's. They still need to change their name though. Beehive.com. All right. Okay. So what else? What else you got? Let's talk about Nick Gray. So Nick Gray is the hottest thing going on the internet right now.

32:46So Nick Gray is a good friend of mine, good friend of yours. I've known Nick for a little bit now. He's the weirdest person I've ever met. so one time sarah and i are new york he dms me on twitter i've never met him he goes hey i want to take you to washington washington square park and give you a tour we go there and we just start hanging out and he pulls out a blanket that he goes i keep a picnic blanket in my bag at all times and he like lays it out i'm like all right cool and then he goes hey do you want to throw the frisbee i always keep a frisbee on me and he has a frisbee and then i was like i guess and he goes and we get done with that and he goes hey do you want to fly a kite i always have a kite on me And so he pulls out a kite.

33:20Hey, you want to kiss? I got lips. Yeah. That's the next one. And I'm like, this is the weirdest guy I've ever met. And then I get to know him over the years. And I realized it's totally genuine. You're just a weird guy. And this is an act. So fast forward a few years later, Nick has written a book called The Two Hour Cocktail Party. By the way, none of this is an ad. We just we admire this guy's weirdness. He lets his freak flag fly. We dig that. And he just did something interesting, which is what we're about to get to. Yeah. And so he starts getting a little popular on the internet and he tweets something out last week.

33:50Here's the tweet. I'll read it verbatim. He goes, I want to go on a blind date and I want to go to Tokyo next weekend. Here's the qualifications. If you're a woman with a passport who likes sushi and Japanese food, and you could ride a bike in a big city, let's go and I'll pay for everything. But in return, you have to film stupid videos of me for my socials. And then he puts out an application where you could sign up on like a Google Doc. So I called him. Do you know how many applications he got to this? 400 women applied to go with him. And he sorts through all the listings and he sends me his top five and his top ten.

34:27And he does calls with them to figure out if it's what he says a culture fit. He's like, I want to see. It's basically a job interview. He's like, I want to see if this is a culture fit. And so this post that he writes about or writes on Twitter, it gets something like 2 million views. The original tweet. and people are so bought in. Now, fast forward a few days ago, he's on the date. He picks the girl. Up until recently, he never showed the woman, but he is tweeting out and documenting the whole thing saying, I just picked up flowers for her. I'm about to go pick her up at the airport. I've scheduled a ramen dinner for us.

35:05And then we're going to do this, this, and this. I'm nervous. And he's explaining his inner dialogue publicly. Each tweet is getting hundreds of thousands or millions of views. And he's saying exactly what's going on. Eventually, he shares her face, and they look like they're having a blast. And I talked to him, and people are reaching out to him from all over Japan. And he shares, he goes, we just got this amazing dinner reservation because this man owns this restaurant who's hosting us. Or we're going to host a meetup with all the people who are following along. And the date goes so well, they've extended the date.

35:38So right now, it's Wednesday. I believe they're still there. It was only supposed to be a couple of days. They're five or six days in. He has Netflix and Amazon reaching out to him about a show for this. It's just like one of the most viral things that I've seen about such a weird topic. And people are so bought in. I've got so many people messaging me saying, are you following what Nick just did? Nick just shared that the date's going well. I'm so invested into this. That's exactly it. I'm so invested into this. I love this on so many levels. The main thing is just, I love that Nick's just being himself.

36:11and I love that he, like there's many ways to be rich. We've talked about this before. You can be rich with money. You can be rich with time. You can be rich with friends. Nick's life is rich with fun and adventure and I think that that is something that, that's why this is resonating because I think there's a deep part of a lot of us that is like, am I making the most of my time on this little blueberry, right? Like, you know, am I making the most out of my time in life? And I think what Nick has done with this Tokyo day, to me it's not about dating it's not about anything it's this guy is like living he's having an adventure he's having fun and we want to go along for the ride and so I think we should actually go tweet by tweet with this thing dive deep for anybody who's not following this so tweet tweet one we'll put this on the screen on YouTube so you can see it all and you can see pictures of her and so go to the YouTube channel where it's my first million you'll see it so alright so tweet one is he goes I want to do a blind date in Tokyo next weekend you read that out.

37:09He puts a Google Doc. Let's read the Google Doc. You open up the Google Doc and it says Nick Gray's Tokyo blind date. Do you like sushi? Do you like exploring new cities? Do you like blonde guys with glasses? If so, come to Tokyo for a blind date next weekend. It'll be fun. Possible itinerary. You arrive April 25th. You leave April 28th. It's now May 1st. They're still going. It's like, you know, we play Spin the Bottle and they got, you know, seven minutes in heaven. It's been 11 minutes. What is going on in the closet over there? I must know. So he says, if you've never been to Tokyo, we're going to do some touristy stuff, blah, blah, blah.

37:43We're going to go to Shinjuku at night, go to some hot springs, team lab, tea tastings, this park. Each day we'll try two or three restaurants, maybe four. We'll talk, we'll walk a lot, shop, eat and explore. Why I'm doing this. I went to Tokyo last summer and it was excellent. But after a few days, I wish that I had a fun, cute friend traveling with me. Just to say that out loud. I mean, I'm not even saying that. And even a part of me, you know, clenched up when I had to read that, those words. Okay. I just wish I had a fun, cute friend traveling with me. All right. So I wanted to talk and share stories with and also film me for my dumb Instagram reels.

38:17Logistics. I'll get you a flight. I'll get you a hotel room. Is this crazy? I guess. But it also sounds fun. Yes, exactly. That's the sweet spot of life. Feel free to reference check me here. He had to apply, blah, blah, blah. And so you had to email him to apply. So you said he had how much 400 women apply? 400. Which, let's just take a moment to admire that. Yeah. So you can go on a dating app as a guy, and normally it's you send 400 messages to get one back. He sent one message out and got 400 women coming inbound. Yeah. Work smarter, not harder, my friend. All right. So that's sweet one. He also tweeted out the conversion rate between the Japanese yen and the US dollar.

38:57And he was like, all of you people thought I was going to be spending a lot. Turns out it just turned in my favor. And he's like, it's like tweeting out like the universe is conspiring to help Nick Gray with this date. So he's giving updates kind of play by play. So he's like, I'm flying out. Here's what I'm going to do. He's like, here's the agenda. He's like, she's, you know, I'm on my way to the airport. She's on her way to the airport. I'm going to pick her up. I'm going to get flowers. He does a poll on Twitter. Should I bring flowers? Yes. Bring the flowers. No chill vibes. Guess which one won the poll?

39:28Which one? 55 % bring flowers. 45 % too hot to try hardy dude 45 % of Twitter's are losers that's an easy he's promoting his blog he's like by the way I'm traveling here's my travel pack of must-haves he's got refreshed tears he's got his eye mask he's got like some I don't know some tape I don't know why he's bringing tape uh things are getting a little crazy here he's got a toothbrush okay so he's going step by step as to how he's gonna do this okay so now he picks her up and he never shows her face. He only shows her face, which is brilliant. Like her hands accepting the flowers or the back of her head as she's taking a picture in awe of the Tokyo skyline.

40:04So let's just read. He's at the airport. He goes, he's like, my blind date update. So he goes, waiting for someone at the airport is humbling. You're scanning hundreds of people's faces trying to find the one person who you've never met before. Each passing person says, no, not her, not her, no, not her, until I see her come out. I pump my fist in the air and call her name. She's runs over and we sort of half hug. We look at each other square up and full smile. I think we're both thinking the same thing. Wow, you are real. She might have been thinking something else, but I think that's hilarious.

40:35At least I have a feeling deep in my stomach that is, yes, she is real. That's a relief. I knew she'd be real, but you never know. What are people on the internet saying about us, she asked me. I say, it's 90 % hype and 10 % worry that you're going to cut out my kidneys. I like those odds, she says. Damn! full rom-com we're going full rom-com this is great um i send her on a side quest while i handled the train tickets to get us back to downtown tokyo we board the train and start talking conversation comes easily our ramen tour starts in two hours the comments blow up people are fully in fully in subscriptions on notifications on i got to do this so then he talks about i booked a ramen tour for two reasons if it was awkward for us to talk then somebody else would be leading the conversation as the tour guide.

41:21And it would keep her awake till 9pm through the jet lag. So we meet, we do this, we do that. We tell our tour guide that we're on a blind date. He believes he misunderstood us or we must have misdated us. He said, but you said you just flew in. How did you meet? I explain what's going on with the date. The guide is confused, but he likes it and he likes us. She and I share a glance and smile. The ramen is good and I like her. End of chapter. Dude, he's doing great writing this. Fifty shades of Nick Gray is actually the name of this date, dude. This is incredible. So he's going, and I love that there was one that he was talking about.

41:58He was just like, honestly, I'm exhausted. I kind of overplant. My nervous energy around this made me schedule too many things. I'm feeling exhausted. I just said goodnight. And honestly, I'm just totally pooped out. Tomorrow, I'm going to act a little bit differently. I'm just going to settle in a little bit. And every day, step by step, has just been thrilling. he did a meetup so he's like i'm hosting a tokyo meetup for us anybody who's following the blind date and then he posts a picture in the park and there's like 20 people there he's holding his book it's his date him and 20 random people in tokyo who are like fully invested in this date that came for a meetup dude so listen to this so uh on one of the two hours ago he posted it's late i'm always late we are running through the side streets of tokyo's most upscale neighborhood to make our dinner reservation she's wearing eyeliner and i have on my least wrinkled shirt.

42:49It will be our last big meal together and I want to make it special. In two hours, we'll cry over a plate of Kobe beef. I get a message. I'd like to treat you and your date to a fancy dinner in Tokyo. I love the stories you share and I'll pay for everything. Please enjoy. But what's the catch? The foreign man, I don't know, has a travel company that does reservations. Nice reservations are hard to find in Tokyo. The catch is that we'll like it and we'll share. I grab her hand and I risk a jaywalk to sprint us towards the skyscraper. You have the royal option is the only thing the waiter says before a train or a train of lobster, shrimp and beef is sent our way.

43:22We eat and joke about how ridiculous the amount of food is. And we have a sense of excitement and dread about how this meal will play out. And it's a picture of this massive amount of food overlooking Tokyo. And he's just writing these almost poetic posts the entire time as he goes. This is just great. This is great. And I texted him and I'm not going to blow his story but uh i think they like each other uh and he said that he said that he'll come on the pod he said he goes i don't know if i want to and i go okay no pressure and then he replies back he goes actually you guys promoted me for a long time i'll come on and we'll talk about it and so he's going to come on but uh it seems they like each other i'm so in uh i'm so in my first marriage let's go uh i've been waiting for an opportunity to turn our whole podcast into a dating show and I think the time has finally come.

44:10Nick, you're the man. This is a reminder to everybody. Step up your adventure, do something fun, do something a little bit out of the box and good things happen in your life. I really do believe that. He created a situation to get lucky that cool things would happen that, that, you know, whether this date works out or not is sort of irrelevant. He's going to have a great adventure, a great story to tell. And he, he opened up the door to where maybe, maybe Lady Luck can walk in. What if he marries this woman? I don't know. I don't know if my little heart can take it. I only got two ventricles, brother.

44:39That would fill it up too much. I had a person come to my house one time, and they were bringing their new girlfriend. And I find out that they're staying at my house for five nights. I found out on the third night that this is a blind date and the first time that they met. And they got married a few weeks ago. That's great. hey this episode is brought to you by mercury they're the fintech of choice for over 200 000 companies i myself use it for eight different companies the reason why we all choose it is because it does everything you need under one roof so like my e-commerce company it's super important for us to be able to easily wire transfer pay all our different vendors and suppliers all around the world and the old way with our you know more traditional bank uh that shall now be named i try it online it would say no it would freeze my account then i'd have to go in book an appointment, speak to a specialist who would try to upsell me on something I didn't need.

45:34And then finally, after 30 minutes there, then they charged me 50 bucks for the pleasure of that terrible interaction. And now with Mercury, I just go online, push two buttons, and I'm done. It's such a seamless experience. It's very intuitive. Everything's under one place. They basically took all the things any company would need for their financial tech, and they made it super easy to use and put it into one platform. So highly, highly recommend it. If you're not using Mercury, I question your judgment. So that's it. You've Put it on My First Million. For more information, check out mercury.com.

46:01Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. All right. Do we have anything else? I got a little bit of a, I have one sort of life advice type thing I liked. Let me hear. So this is not new. Actually, we were, we did a podcast with Scott Galloway, which maybe it's come out by the time this comes out. I don't know exactly. And Scott said a bunch of things. He talked about his business. He talks about his money, but he said one thing in the middle that has stuck with me days later. I honestly can't really remember a bunch of the stuff he said about money, but this one little phrase stuck with me, and I kind of want to give it some extra shine.

46:36We talked about don't bury the lead. To me, this was actually the lead. We had talked to him about when he was younger, and he's pretty open about going through tough times. He talks about when he went through a divorce. He talks about when he hadn't made it yet. He talks about his insecurities. He said something, which was like, he goes, you got to keep your sales up. And I was like, kept your sales up? What did you mean by that? Keep your sales up. He's like, even when things were going poorly, I didn't let things go poorly. Even if I felt down, I didn't take actions that were down. He's like, so even when things weren't going my way, I got down, but I didn't stay down.

47:18He goes, I kept my sales up so that he's like, I started eating right. I cleaned up my room. I would make sure every day I would go out and I would talk to people. And he's like, I just did little things. I would try to be kind and try to be generous to somebody that day. Even though I was feeling kind of low and I felt like things weren't going the right way, I started taking actions. I kept my sails up so that when the next gust of wind came, I would be ready. And that's what happened. The wind came and I was ready because I had my sails up. And I just thought that was a beautiful life metaphor and just a a great philosophy to have, which is like, you got to keep your sales up because the things that happen that are good in your life are not fully, you know, your, your doing, they're not your creation.

48:00There was tons of market conditions and luck and, um, you know, contributions from other people that help you out that come your way. That's the wind and you can't control the wind, but the thing you can control is having your sales up so that when the wind comes, you actually get a benefit from it. Like if you're in such a lull or you're in such a low point or you're in such a funk that even when the wind comes, you weren't ready for it, it passed you by. Now that's on you. And so I just love that metaphor, that philosophy of life. And I wanted to kind of bring some attention to it. What do you think about that?

48:31It was good to hear from him about it because he had a lot of, first of all, he was a late bloomer in terms of traditional success. So he told the story about how he had a bunch of companies that actually were doing good, but he lost them. He got fired from them. He told the story about how he didn't have a relationship with his father and his single mother. It was a hard upbringing. He got divorced. And he had his first kid, I think when he was 40 or something like that, a little bit later in life. And he was like, I have to make money to provide for this kid. I can't just be jerking off. I've been messing around a little bit too much.

49:01And it was good to hear that advice from him because I admire him. And he was sort of a late bloomer. And so I know that he experienced hardship and he actually is living this life of keeping your sales up. And so that's why it was particularly special. It was better to hear that from him versus some 28-year-old. You know what I mean? Yeah. If you see a 24-year-old on TikTok talking about this, you have the right idea. You just don't have the scars to prove it. And I thought Scott has the scars to prove it. And I just love the phrasing. Even when I was down, I didn't stay down. That's so powerful, dude.

49:34You're allowed to go down, but you're not allowed to stay down. And also, like, a lot of these little things, I never had the words to explain it, but it resonated with me because, like, you know, I'll do things where, you know, if I'm feeling a certain way, I'll be like, alright, I'm making my bed this morning. Or, fuck it, I'm going for a run. I don't even like running. I suck at running, but I'm going for a run. I'm going to run until I cramp. And it's like, alright, I'm going to run until I cramp. It's like, why do those things? On the surface, making your bed seems like a nothing action. And it's like, dude, making your bed's not going to help you, you know, go get that girl or not going to help you, you know, recover from this breakup or go get the job or go get whatever, help turn your business around.

50:10But like anybody who's actually done it knows that actually those things are linked. You don't know how they're linked. And this phrase to me is a great way to link them. It's like, I'm not just making my bed. I'm getting my sales up today. And all of these little actions I'm taking, I'm getting my sales up. And now I kind of like, at the end, I can connect the dots of like, what were all those actions and little habits that like instinctively in my gut, I knew were the right thing to do, but I couldn't have logicked and told you why that matters. Now I know why it matters. It's because that's getting your sales up so that now that when the wind comes, you're ready.

50:43There's this awesome video that's not very popular, but it's so good. It's the guy from SNL. I think his name is Tom Bennett. He made this. No, dude, it's an essay. It was an essay. It was a blog first. And then they turned it into, actually, they turned it into a movie. Wait, really? A blog post became a full-on movie. Oh, you know about this. Oh, dude, it's one of the best blog posts ever. It's one of the, the video is so good. Okay, so this guy, Aaron is the guy who wrote it. It's called How to Lose Weight in Four Easy Steps. And it goes, I spent the last past year losing 80 pounds and getting in shape.

51:11A lot of people ask me how I did it, specifics on my diet, how many times I worked out. So I thought I'd just answer all my questions here. It's just four easy steps. Ready? Here we go. Number one, no beer. There's probably one you've heard of before, but every time you drink a beer, it's like eating seven slices of bread. That's a lot of bread. Number two, portion control. This is especially true when you go to restaurants and your meal comes, cut it in half and ask the waiter right away for a takeout container so you can save the second half for later. Number three, have your heart broken. And not just broken, shattered.

51:39Into itsy-bitsy, tiny little pieces by a girl who never loved you and never will. And then the rest of the post is basically about the heartbreak. And I was like, wow. I remember reading that intro and I fucking cleared my calendar. I was like, I am going to sink into this blog post. Whoever wrote this, this is genius level writing. And I loved it. And the whole step three is like, get your heart broken. And then it's like, start going for walks to feel better. And so you start going to the gym and you previously thought that gym rats were a bunch of bros. And now you realize that they're your family and you start making puddles and you start eating chicken and more chicken and you make more puddles and you repeat every day.

52:14And then suddenly... Let's read some of the... This is beautiful. Let's just read some of it. So by a girl who'll never loved you and never will, join the gym at your work. Start going to the gym regularly, even though you don't know much about exercise and you're way too weak to do anything except for live five pound weights and do the elliptical machines with the old people. Do it until your sweat makes a puddle on the floor. Then go home, go to bed early and do it again the next day. And again and again. Listen to stories of your ex-girlfriend fucking around with gross and terrible people. Stories from your friends who think they're doing you a favor.

52:38Go to the gym and make more puddles of sweat. Buy books. Learn about muscle groups and how they work together. Start eating healthy. Start planning meals. Try to forget her. More puddles. And then it just keeps going and keeps going. And then it's like, you know, it talks about the, I'm going to see if I can find one more at the end here. And then eventually, yeah, he meets a girl or something like that at the gym. Yeah, you make puddle after puddle and eat single chicken breast and work and sleep and the weather gets warm and the weather gets cold and all you know is Taylor Swift songs by heart.

53:07And the only thing that exists in the entire universe is you and the gym. And there's a different sort of happiness. It comes at night when you're the last person in the gym and it's you and the girl who does weird leg exercises. You end up walking out at the same time. Her name is Melissa. She works at the building next to you. She's worked there for two years. She asked you for dinner on Friday, promising it'll be healthy. The leg exercises she's doing, by the way, are called pivoting crazy lunges. And then it goes into the love story. And then it ends with step four, no sugar. Yeah, no fruit juice.

53:35Too much sugar. One of the best posts I've watched that. I remember when I first watched, you get teary-eyed. Because I guess it was a blog post first. I didn't know that. And then it was a YouTube video. And then I guess a whole movie. The YouTube video, it gets me teary-eyed. And it gets me so motivated whenever I watch this. So that's a little bit similar to Scott Galloway's Keep Your Sales Up. This was just like the most positive episode we've ever done. Yeah, positivity, baby. That's it. That's the bod. All right. We have a big announcement, possibly the biggest announcement of the year from us.

54:09So pay attention. Turn the headphones up. We are doing a challenge called My First Muscle. Instead of My First Million, this is My First Muscle. It is a fitness challenge that we're doing. We want everybody to get involved with it. Sam, tell them how it works and why we're doing it. All right. So here's what it is. Summer's coming up. We got this thing called the Pod Pod. We've been sitting here. I think we're on 650 episodes or so. We want to get fit. So it's a challenge. It's a race, actually. It's 100 pushups, 100 squats, 100 burpees. 100 times 100 times 100. That's your first million. And it's hopefully going to be your first million muscle.

54:44So here's what you're going to do. You can do any order. You can start with burpees. You can start with squats. It doesn't matter. But when you do a burpee, you got to go nips to the floor. Your chest has to touch the floor. And then you hop up. And when you jump up to the top of the burpee, your feet need to leave the ground. And you should film yourself doing it. And when you You film yourself doing it. You have to time yourself too. And then you have to share the video with us at My First Mill Pod on Twitter. Exactly. Or you tag me and Sam directly. Either way. So just to summarize, turn a timer on.

55:12Best case scenario, you film it too, but at least turn the timer on and do it. You have as much time as you need to complete 100 pushups, 100 air squats, so no weight, and then 100 burpees. And you can mix it up and you can do them in whatever sets of five or 10 or however you want to mix it up. You just got to get it done. That's the challenge. You've heard of 75 hard. You've heard of the Murph. Well, this is our version of that. My first muscle. Me and Sam are going to be doing it. We're going to film it. We're going to post our videos of us doing it. Sam, what do you think your prediction, your time is going to be?

55:41You're a super fit guy. I'm going to break 20 minutes. That's my goal. And I think I'll be in the 90th percentile. 20 minutes, I think, is 90th percentile. I think the winner will be 15 minutes. I predict that I will be far above 20 minutes. I think I'm going to be closer to 35 to 40 minutes. I did a little test run. I did a little test run. I went 80%, 70%. and it took me like 42 minutes. And so I got a, that was just V1. That's okay. I was a nibble. It was a Costco sample of it. I just need to now iterate and get better. There's two things here. The first is just doing it. So I think doing it, I have a feeling you're going to see thousands of people doing it.

56:15I think it's going to be cool to see that you're going to do it. Well, let's talk about the doing it first. You brought this idea from Jesse Itzler about the Misogi, a hard physical challenge that you do, something that makes you a little bit scared, that pushes you past your limits. It's good to do these. and instead of having everybody come up with a Masogi, we want to give the community one that we can all kind of share, all do together. And if you're out of shape, don't let that be the reason you don't do this. If you can do push-ups on your knees, do push-ups on your knees. You might not win the prize, but get it done.

56:43You'll be proud of yourself when you get it done. And I think there's an amazing feeling on the other side of doing this and that's who you want to be. Now let's talk about the prizes. So if you want to be eligible for the prizes, you got to do it legit and you got to have a video camera when you're doing it. Otherwise, we don't know if you're, you know, So this is not the gentleman's agreement. You got to actually show some proof if you actually do this thing. We've seen some amazing videos come in. So a couple of people heard about the announcement early and started doing them. Did you see these girls who did them in their peanut butter and jelly costume?

57:11That was awesome. There's a guy who's doing it out in a field in just a set of overalls. That's hilarious. It's amazing. All right. And so here's the prizes. So we got the company Plunge.com. We got them to give us two cold plunges. I think these are like six or seven grand a piece. So they're going to give them away. We're going to give one to the fastest male, one to the fastest female. And then we got Nike strength to give away a bunch of bumper plates and a whole bunch of workout equipment. That's going to go to three other people. Who are the three other people? Well, it's our discretion.

57:39We're the judges. And we're looking for three things. We want, we're looking for creativity. So best dressed is one area I'm looking at. Another one is creativity on the video. And the last one is just inspiration. This is the Rudy Award. So for whoever really like we watch the video and we are rooting for you, you will win a prize as well. But we're all winners if you do the thing, because I don't know, you had the option not to could have easily chickened out, could have easily said it's too hard, could have easily said you're too busy, but you didn't take any of those excuses. You're the real winner.

58:06And to make sure there's no excuses, we have a timeline on this. It's going to end on May 12th, which is this Sunday. So you don't actually have a lot of time to get this done. So if you're listening to this, you might go do it like in the next 30 minutes and just get it out the way. Exactly. All right. I'm excited. My first muscle. Let's go. We got to get rid of PodBot. PodBot is a plague. It's getting so many people. they'll be caught up in pod pod. And we have to say one last thing. In order to get any of the prizes, you have to subscribe to our YouTube channel and to our podcast on Spotify and on iTunes.

58:36You have to subscribe. That part is the gentleman's agreement. We're giving away all these prizes and we're trying to make everyone get a little bit healthier. All we ask for in exchange, it's just a subscribe. It costs you nothing and it means a lot to us. So that's all you have to do. Check it out. My first muscle challenge. Do it. Post it. Tag me and Sam on Twitter. I'm at Sean VP. He's at the Sampar. Send us your videos. We can't wait to see him. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

59:11All right. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of. And then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

59:39It's an entrepreneur. You could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and annoyances and decided to actually fix it himself. And really any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency. Well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers, and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury is great. Highly recommend you check it out. And thank you for sponsoring the show.

1:00:04For more information, check out Mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.