We found the weirdest ways to make $1M, $1B, and $5B

26:44And so they're optimizing for speed. So it's just a hookup app, basically. I was reading a funny article. Have you ever seen those articles where it was like, it costs$1 ,800 a month to be a woman. We got to get our hair done. We got to get nails. A guy did that. He was like, it costs$1 ,200 to be a gay dude in Manhattan. You got to do this thing and then this thing. And then you need your$40 a month subscription to Grindr. It's like become like a cost of doing business to be a gay guy to have this app. Like it's table stakes. And they've dominated the niche. I'm on Rick's LinkedIn right now. So he's a four-time founder, 25 years of operating experience.

27:22The guy's a Harvard Business School graduate, blah, blah, blah. He built Tickle.com. They sold it for$100 million. And then it says he's the managing partner of Catapult Capital. It's a private equity firm that focuses on consumer tech. And then it says in May 2020, they partnered with those guys that you talked about. and they bought Grindr for$600 million. He became the COO. They rebuilt the team and every single system and process grew revenue and EBITDA by 80%, improved the app rating to 4.6 stars, blah, blah, blah. And after two and a half years of hard work, it went public with a market cap of more than 2 billion.

27:53So in two and a half years, they turned 600 million into two and a half billion. It's wild, right? And this is something that interests you. I know in a lot of our guests, which is like buying companies, like we've talked about that a bunch and I know it intrigues you. It definitely intrigues me too. But for some reason, you don't hear about this in Silicon Valley a lot. Dude, we got to have Rick on. Rick is kind of a legend. We need to have him on the podcast. Rick is a legend. He's real low-key. I've hung out with him only a handful of times. He's got a lot of style. You know what I mean? Dude, he looks like Patrick Dempsey.

28:22He looks like Patrick Dempsey from Grey Anatomy. I was about to say, he looks like McDreary. Is that the guy's name? Is that what his real name is? Yes, he looks just like him. I'm friends with Rick on Facebook, and he just recently posted a photo of him and Patrick meeting, and he said finally we meet uh because everyone says that to him he looks very much like him uh that's he's he's cool this guy's cool and this someone was joking and they're like one of the reasons why this stock uh confuses a lot of people is because financial and uh bankers and stock analysts it's all straight dudes uh like they are like this isn't like well it's not it's not something that they're like potentially using in their life on a daily basis and so it's kind of like been a little bit under the radar oh yeah dude bumble is only 500 million right so yeah so 10 times bigger it's 10 times bigger because there's a bunch of reasons one being like gay guys earn like twice as much as uh uh straight men uh straight men dude all of match group is 7.8 billion grinder alone was 4.5 and they have way less and they're working with the population that's like 10 % of America.

29:30You know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, everything about this, it's sort of like bumblebees aren't supposed to fly. Yeah, sort of an underdog story. I'm kind of inspired right now. Yeah, man. They've killed it. One of my greatest inspirations, Grindr stock. It's wild, right? That's what I'm saying. You don't hear about these turnarounds at all with like a lot of Silicon Valley and internet companies and they've nailed it. Yeah, that's wild. Okay, I have one more. It's not really a good one to end on, but I'll do it anyways. Well, first of all, I'll do two quick ones dude wipes oh my god great idea it's insane right you're gonna say I think I touched a nerve of something you need to say this so here's an example so one time we had this guy messaging Sean and I and he had a company called Hostage Hostage Tape and it was where you put tape on your mouth and you go to bed at night and it's supposed to make you breathe better sleep better whatever And I think Sean, I think you and I had said, you know, he messaged me a ton of times.

30:30They both said, you're an idiot, you're an idiot. And then he texted us like updates. And it was like eventually scaled like 20 million in revenue in like two years. And it was like the initial gut reaction we had was like, wow, this guy is so stupid. And then he texts us. He's like, hit a million in revenue. And it was like, oh, my God, people are so stupid. And then it hits the 20 million in revenue. And you and I go, we are so stupid. That is exactly how I felt when I saw the Dude Wipes number, their revenue number. Can you say what it is? So 2024, they did$220 million in revenue. Insane. Insane.

31:05Who would have thought? And look at this. Actually, I got to show you this. This is hilarious. As you're saying this, I'm on an article. And this must have been made by the team itself. But it's literally a chart of their growth. So check this out. it says dude wipes now over 200 million. And there's a slide. It says 2020, 40 million. It says there's a call out when the experts said our growth was done. It might as well just said when Sam power said, this is stupid. No, I even, yeah. I mean, I would have said it was stupid the whole time. Yeah. Pretty amazing. Right. Back when we started the podcast, I don't know if they sent you, they sent me a giant package of dude wipes that has, it's now 2025.

31:46We started this podcast like in 2020 or 2019 or something like that. It's been like five or six years. I'm still living off those like a prepper, you know, rationing out dude wipes. Dude, these things have – they've sent so many. It's lasted for so long. And so everyone knows it's just a – it's what you wipe with and it's wet. It's like a baby wipe, right? Yeah, it's like a wet wipe. I don't actually know. I don't know. Maybe that's why they've lasted so long. I don't really use them. I actually use them only on my baby. But it's flushable, right? I think that's the key difference is that a normal wet wipe is not flushable.

32:17You're not supposed to – it'll mess up your toilet. I think dude wipes you can. It's basically like an alternative to the bidet, right? You don't need a bidet if you use this, I think is the idea. Oh, man, this is a great story idea. We definitely should have focused on this one. I cannot believe how they grew so fast. Where did they – did they grow through retail or online? I mean, I think these things become an everything story. I don't know their exact story. I just know they did a lot of, like, guerrilla marketing. They're sort of, like, manscaped in that they use the disadvantage of their brand being kind of seen as a joke, as an advantage to be able to do sort of like shocking or, you know, like interesting marketing in order to like, you know, basically like bro marketing, right?

32:58It's like, how do you do bro marketing to grow? Like Liquid Death did this, Manscaped did this, and I think these guys are another one. Dollar Shave Club was another one that did this. So pretty impressive. So they're impressive. Tushy, which is the actual bidet company, is like also a nine-figure, you know, over$100 million a year business. It's basically like an attachment. You can turn any toilet into sort of like the Japanese kind of like fancy toilets by attaching this thing. So Tushy is one, but there's also another interesting one. This is less, less fun to talk about, but I guess like I found it pretty interesting.

33:27Can you go to gastromaryland.com? My buddy Diego, his wife used to work at this place and he was like, dude, these like, it's like a clinic that's just for doing like colonoscopies and gut cleanses, colon cleanses, this sort of thing. And it's a kind of like a standalone practice that's just focused on colon health and he's like dude they're booked up like you know they're booked out like you know months in advance and he's like i think and we were talking about like this is actually like a really good like franchise concept because everywhere you see locations of these is one in san francisco not not the same brand but i i looked up one in san francisco also like very popular and i just thought oh wow this is interesting in the same way that these like med spas have become a big deal and med spas have become a big business, which is like these kind of like places you go for all these different aesthetic procedures.

34:21I think you're going to have the same thing. I think you're going to have basically gut spas. And I think more and more people are going to go here and they're going to look for help with their, all their, you know, GI issues and their digestion issues and their health. That's wild. And are you, you're a year older than me. Have you gotten your first colonoscopy? Have you done any of that yet? No. Am I supposed to? What age do you get that? I don't know. I haven't done it yet either. I think we're 40, so we're a few years away. We have a few years. Not looking forward to it. You want to do it together?

34:51Should we look at date? Hold hands. Do you guys allow doubles? There's like a couples colonoscopy that we could do. Like a put us out, like kissing. This is really fascinating. There's another one that's in this. So I was like, oh, this is interesting. As a franchise, there's a private equity play. Of course, too late. Like their private equity guys are always on top of these trends. So if you look up this company, Exact Sciences, they do something called the Cologuard tests and they just crush it. And so they do colon cancer screening. They have like a non-invasive way to do the test. 2.76 billion in revenue last year.

35:24What? From this private equity-backed play. Have you seen the guy on Instagram that just asked, like he's like the most challenging person to talk to at a party. And he's like, oh, that's nice. Are you guys PE-backed? I've worked at a PE firm. no but that's hilarious he just everything is are you pe backed oh yeah i just because i'm a partner at a pe firm who owns you um this is insane so this is billions of dollars in sales yeah oh my god this is wild i mean just in this episode we've basically talked about like 10 billion dollars worth of guts and butts businesses which just really shows like you can if you if you can't figure out a way to make it, it's on you.

36:10The opportunity is literally everywhere. There's products like dude wipes and stuff that seems like jokes. There's things like BBL cushions for after BBL surgeries, right? Like where you just had to spot a growing trend and say, okay, what what's the next product that they would need, right? The Warren Buffett question, then what? What happens after the BBL? You know, that that was a question that you could have asked, you know, the grinder turnaround, these guys who made this huge play. Isn't it like, doesn't it kind of blow your mind when you when you realize like oh man there is like an infinite set of possibilities that i could go into if i wanted to you know build a successful business there's really like no excuse my in-laws live in this really uh nice building in new york city and they're really successful you know they my mother-in-law's a haitian immigrant my father-in-law is a high school dropout who started moving company that boomed and it killed it and allowed him to acquire this really fancy apartment and i'm sitting in their lobby and i'm like how many units are in this apartment?

37:06He's like, 200. And then I'm like, well, there's like 10 ,000 buildings around here. There's so many buildings. And it's just amazing. I'll be in the lobby and I'll just start having conversations with random people. And every person you're talking to, you're like, well, you must have had many millions of dollars to buy this apartment, meaning you're very successful. And you hear about what they're doing for work. And there's just a million ways to make a living. And there's so many of them. I remember thinking like, well, my in-laws, they're one in a million right they're they're the they're the american dream the success story but everyone around me is one in a million and it's just absolutely astounding to hear like all these stories of these people who just kill it in the most random ways that you never would have guessed it yeah yeah it's like those you know those like tiktok channels where it's like hey man i just want to ask you what do you do for a living as they get into like a nice car and it's like really really shallow but the general idea of actually what that person is doing is correct which is you could basically go reverse engineer what people do.

38:03You can ask them. People are generally pretty open about what they do, how they made it. Generally, they had help along the way and they're willing to help somebody else who wants to be helped. And success leaves clues. You can actually go and start to see patterns or see opportunities and say, oh, okay. Just like the way I saw that after the Ozempic trend, people built these auxiliary side businesses. Now I see the same thing on the BBL side, right? Then when the next procedure, the next health trend or you know, health and wellness trend happens, you could do the same thing, right? Because you've seen it two or three times before.

38:33So you're ready to act when that moment arises. And that's kind of what I hope that like, you know, if people listen to this podcast, just listen for the laughs, I'm flattered. But if they listen and sort of start to see the trends and start to see like, you know, dots, they can actually go and do the things like, you know, be that listener, that's probably only one out of 1000 that actually, I mean, like, what do you think, actually, how many, if 1000 people listen to podcasts, how many do you think go from not having their first million to making their first million during their like tenure listening to this podcast?

39:01Well, we've had dozens or maybe even hundreds of people messaging us say we inspire them to do X, Y, and Z. Sometimes I think a large percentage of them were already doing something amazing and they're just using that as an excuse to like, but I would say that I would say there's at least 50 people of the, I don't know how many people have listened, tens of millions, millions. I think there's got to be at least a hundred people that have made a million dollars from what they've learned from this podcast. What do you think? 50 to a hundred at least? I mean, that number is shockingly low, right?

39:27Let's just say on just the full episodes, I think we did somewhere between 25 million, roughly 25 million views and downloads last year, maybe 30 million. I don't know how many, obviously there's a bunch of repeats. So let's just even take the low end. Let's just pretend for just math that it was just a million people. It was a million individual humans who listened. Take out the people who were already successful. Maybe that's the top 10 % that were already very successful. So now you have 900 ,000 people left. Of those 900 ,000, how many do you think actually end up making it? Achieving what they wanted to achieve.

40:06Okay. Out of 900 ,000, achieving, for example, being worth$50 ,000 and now they're worth$1 million. Yeah, get to a couple million bucks. Life-changing money. So from nothing to$2 million in the course of four years, I think the threshold, probably$200 ,000 or$300 ,000 maybe. What do you think? Is that too low? Yeah, I think it's a little low. I would say maybe a thousand, but maybe a couple thousand, but you're right. A lot of them would have got there anyways. We're just a little bit of wind in their sails. We're not the tide that's actually pulling them there. So I think it's higher, but I think it's because the type of person who would listen to this probably was already going to be, they're probably seeking knowledge and inspiration and trying to make shit happen.

40:49And so they were going to make it happen either way. So it's got to be high. I think it's actually probably a much higher number. Hey, quick message here, because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it actually works? No friction? Well, I've used Mercury for years now, and let me tell you, it just works. And that's why I use it for not one, not two, but eight of my companies. From credit cards to invoices, I have everything in one place. There's no janky dashboard. I'm never told, please visit a local bank branch. None of that tomfoolery. And a few months ago, I landed a big client.

41:17And the first thing I did, I sent them a clean, branded invoice. Boom, deal closed, cash in the door. That's the kind of banking experience I want. And that's why I use Mercury. So if you're running a startup and you want banking that feels like it's built in this century, well, go to Mercury.com and get started in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bankless services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column A, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. Sometimes there's people who message me and they will, like, I don't know if they're saying this just to, like, win favor, but they'll be like, you guys inspired me to do this and that.

41:50And they have made more money than I have off this podcast.

41:56and i'm like shit i should have just done that uh but there's been like two or three or four examples have you ever had one of those yeah well dude the other day there's a a guy who listens to the podcast he's probably worth i don't know 50 to 100 million bucks and i find out his new startup is an idea i said on the podcast not long ago and i was like dude let me invest and he's like, I don't know. I was like, I gave you the idea. That idea is my idea, actually. I should be letting you run this company. I know that there are, so for example, Mixergy, Andrew Warner, a buddy of mine, I attribute a lot of my success to, he used to interview people and I learned about newsletters via Mixergy and Andrew Warner and there was like eight interviews that he did on that topic that I literally used to like plan the business model.

42:46And so I have done that with other people for sure. Of course. I did it with Mixergy and I, you know, what I do it with now is Founders, David Sendra's podcast, Founders. I use that like a crazy amount for inspiration and also education. Who do you listen to now? Actually? I don't listen to Founders regularly. Like once in a while, I'll put it on. I like what he does, but I don't play that game. James Curry had this great phrase. He goes, some people are, you know, you got to decide what game you're playing and I forgot the couple of options he said, but one of them was like the, you know, the great life.

43:21It's like, you're trying to build a great life for yourself. And the other is the global, global greatness game. And it's like, you're actually trying to compete at like a sort of global level to do things that impact the world. And he called it global greatness. And that's like what Elon and, and that's what the people on founders played. Whereas I'm actually playing the great life game. It's like, how do I create a great life for myself and my family? Like that, that's the number one objective, not proving myself or, you know, like becoming this like extreme outlier of success just objectively only in the career space.

43:52So who do you listen to to help fuel that? Because even like, I've always wondered like, you know, there's a lot of people who look up to us. And then I grew up and I still look up to like way more people who are way above us. And I've always wondered, I wonder what they listen to or where they get this motivation from. Because even like the biggest of big shots have some type of like rah-rah listen. Yeah. So I think everybody does. It's a lot harder to find somebody in the great life bucket. because usually part of the great life bucket is you're not going around and you're not you're not as famous and you're not because because it's not that famous to be like yeah and he's a great dad he actually like you know every day at four takes some time goes places you know tennis i put jesse isler in there though jesse is it's content that's exactly what i was going to say so but it's not from his content because his content really is more about like kind of how to make it in life but i can't hang out with him all the time so you know i gotta like but you don't have to hang out all the time like so for for example me and ben we made a list we said who are the five people that we think we kind of really respect, we admire, we love to hang with them.

44:53And we want to, we want our world to look a little bit like to be inspired by their world that they've created for themselves. Jesse was one of those guys. And I said, let's make an excuse to go hang out with them. So, Hey, let's just wake up and do whatever you were going to do. Let's hang out. Let's talk. I want to meet your kids. Like, you know, that sort of thing. And he did. And Jesse was like, cool. Yeah. Anytime. And, uh, and Ben did. And then he kind of like shared his impression of, And he was like, and we pick up a lot from that. You pick up a lot from going to someone's house. So what did you pick up?

45:21Ton of energy. So like a huge part of it is how much energy the guy has. And like, it's like, what do you want out of life? So it's not just the things you achieve. It's like the type of person you are and what it's like to be around you. Jesse is that person, super high energy, laughs a ton, like very funny guy. And always like, you know, doesn't take himself or life too seriously. He's got his hands at a lot of pots, but in an interesting way. So for example, he has this one business because I have this tension all the time. I have more business ideas than I have time. So like, how does somebody like Jesse do this?

45:51And I really liked that his career was really varied. So he, you know, he had his jingle company. He was like a rapper for a while. Then he did Zico Coconut Water. Then he did his private jets startup. That was like his big intense one. Was it linear like this, then that, then this, or is it blended? Love your pronunciation of that. It was like saying like finance. Yeah, like Bob Lanier. okay it was it was linear so yeah he did them one at a time not not all in parallel and then over time now like you know he's got more things in parallel so he's got his calendar business his speaking business he's got his 20 what is it 20 29 or something 29 0 29 yeah so that's like his kind of like his fun races where it's like people get to run or they get to do the equivalent of hiking Everest uh but you don't have to go to Mount Everest to do it you could do it in all these different cities all around the country and so we looked at that we were like okay so what is he actually doing there you sort of reverse engineer he's like dude i he's like i take the things that i already want to do for free right like my passions like his one of his passions is like out being outdoors running doing these races he does that anyways for free use his business savvy to wrap a really interesting brand around it so instead of just being like it's just another race naming it the height of everest and letting anybody have that sort of bucket list the semi bucket list item of hiking everest like that little branding thing that positioning was genius And with that, he had the way he started that business.

47:12I guess it was like his buddy who was like, oh, I really want to do a business with you. And he goes, all right, we'll do a business, but here's the rules. I'll help you with it. But the operations of this business, I want to work one day a year and I need to make a million dollars. So that's the constraint. We're going to work backwards about business that has to satisfy that constraint. And I don't know if literally it's one day a year and it's a million dollars. I don't know if that's the literal definition for Jesse's involvement or his like level of how much he has to work on the business.

47:40But even just hearing how he approaches that changed the way I'm approaching some of my businesses. Because I have also people who want to do things with me. And I have a bunch of ideas that I used to think it's all or nothing. It's like, no, there's some other ways to do this. You know, like Zico, the coconut water brand, he was not the operator. There were other operators. He was just a certain type of energy and hustle that opened certain doors that changed the trajectory of that business. And so I have a business right now that's like that. I have operators that run it. And I just did a certain set of activities, these door opening activities that changed the trajectory of that business.

48:11So I'm trying to learn from him how you have it all. How do you have the, he's got, you know, he's got four kids, I think. And he's very involved as a dad. He has his own fitness thing. He's got the good marriage. He's got the fun life. He does these adventures with his friends and he has the businesses and he does interesting investments. It's like, okay, I want to go hang out with him, download his blueprint. And I can't get that out of a YouTube video or a podcast right now the way they can with him? That was such a long answer and it was so good. I want to keep asking. I'm sorry and you're welcome.

48:39I asked you what podcast you listen to. You could have said like, you know, like how stuff works or like cereal. But there is no podcast for that. In fact, I would hope that this is the podcast that's closest to that, right? Because it's the thing I'm trying to achieve. So if I'm just talking about stuff that's relevant to me along the way, the great life, you know, by your own definition, then this should be it. But like, I don't know, where would I go? Who has a podcast like that? Yeah, I don't know. You know, like I like, I don't watch a lot of Modern Wisdom, but I watch clips from Modern Wisdom, Chris Williamson's podcast.

49:13Chris Williamson's podcast. Because I think he pulls wisdom out of people. And I think wisdom is what's lacking, not knowledge for me. And so like, I'm trying to avoid knowledge-based things and look for wisdom on how to live like a life well-lived. And so actually, the real answer to your question is it's not podcast. I read a lot of books now. And I really wasn't reading books at all like two years ago. Dude, two years ago, I distinctly remember us doing a podcast and I asked you, you were telling me about this book that you read and I asked you a question about it. You're like, well, I don't know.

49:43I'm actually only 10 pages into it. You did a whole spiel on this podcast or on this book and how amazing it was. And I was 10 pages in. Correct. It's a great book. And so now you read books? Now I read books. That's great. So put some respect on my name. And I've noticed what you tweet is what you're interested in. And I noticed that you have been saying you want to spend time with dead people and dogs or something like that. And then you also tweeted, you said, why do people like history? It was like something where you read something historical and you're like, wait, I kind of like this. But do I like this?

50:24Why do I like this? What are we doing? And then someone had a great answer that you put in your newsletter. You said it's knowledge wrapped around a story or something like that. And I was like, oh, finally, Sean is clearly starting to read historical stuff, right? Is that right? Whatever you're doing, I tend to do about seven years later. So I'm going to probably be getting a fecal transplant or whatever in seven years. I should just book that in now. Wait, are you reading history now? I'm reading anything that's interesting. So like right now, one of the books I'm reading is the Warren Buffett biography, but that's for a specific reason.

50:57Which one, Snowball or the other one? I'm reading Snowball right now. Snowball's good. It's really long. It's a thousand pages. In order to read a thousand pages, you got to like really love the person. Yeah. Yeah. That's like three months. That's cool. I'm happy you're reading now. I'm happy you like books. Can we tell you some other books I'm reading? Yeah, I would love that. I'll give you one more. That's good. Let's see. Have you ever read Seneca's Letters? I think it's called like 50 letters of a Roman Stoic. That's pretty good. I like that. So you're reading Stoicism. That's pretty cool.

51:28So Meditations and Marcus Aurelius and all that stuff. Just the book I mentioned. That's just the one right now. I read this book called Kill the Cat. And it's about how to write a screenplay. And I found that pretty fascinating of like how people write movies. Have you ever read Five Dysfunctions of a Team? Yeah, by Patrick L. Yeah. I think that's kind of an underrated book. It's pretty good. And I was like, dude, this book really describes an experience that I've had in like, you know, in corporate life and sort of management life. And like, I think Charlie Munger, he stole this idea. Charlie Munger gave a famous speech that he stole from someone else, which is like, I don't know how to live a happy life necessarily, but I'm gonna tell you how to live an unhappy life.

52:10Right. Step one, have envy. And like, he like explains like all these like attributes you should have to be unhappy and just avoid that. And that's what that book is cool. He tells a story about the five things that losing teams have. It's pretty good. Yeah, exactly. Anyways, yeah, I'm reading books now. That inspires me to reread that book. So I don't remember the five dysfunctions. Especially you're operating a company now. I think it's very useful when you're operating a company because you'll be like, oh, yeah, we're doing that. Oh, yeah, I did that. So what I do right now is whenever I read a book, I go and I download it and I convert it from Kindle to text, So a text file.

52:47And then I upload it to ChatGPT and I can reference it. And so I'll like, for example, with this five dysfunctions of a team, I'll type out like an interaction I had with my company. Or I will screenshot an email interaction that I've had and be like, what would Patrick say about this? Can I show you something amazing? Yeah. So I told you that I was like, dude, I convinced Diego, my buddy Diego. To live there. We hired on my team. I was convinced him to move out here. And I didn't know what would come of it. But I just knew working in person could obviously be more fun. And I don't want to have like, I'm not trying to have like an office.

53:19Like I still work from home, but he like comes over and we don't have a big team. It's our team is very small. Me, Diego, Ben and my assistant. And so how do we actually like work? This is something amazing he started doing. So he just drops off like once a week, these binders. So it just says scratch the itch. And in this, he just pulls a bunch of like super interesting, either blogs or articles that he knows that I'm going to like that. Maybe we even have a channel where we put stuff like, oh, I'm going to read this later, but he prints it out for me. He marks it up. And so I'm going through, it's basically like our own book club, but for blog posts.

53:54And so it'll be like, oh, it's a, you know, an annual letter from 1999 Bezos when the market crashed or 2000 when the market crashed. and then it'll be like uh here's like it actually like a really interesting uh a very interestingly explained uh technical explainer but not too technical about how like chat gpt actually works and so i have these which are not books but it's just amazing brain food i have two years ago i almost launched a business that would sell that what i thought about doing was instead of doing a newsletter like in your email i thought about doing a physical newsletter and it was literally going to be a binder and things that I read and my notes on them and why they interested me.

54:34And I think that that that tactile experience of doing what you're doing right now is wonderful. It's a total game changer. Plus, it's curate. I mean, this is lucky, right? Like he curates it. He marks them up for me. He organizes it. He delivers them to me like, you know, like this is this is like my version of luxury. Like what's a Gucci bag to me? This is a Gucci bag. It's like this is like right up my alley. Thank you so much. I can't even believe he does that once a week. He doesn't just like at random. There's not even like a schedule. It's like once roughly once a week or every two weeks, he'll drop one of these off.

55:03That's amazing. That's actually pretty cool. Hold it up. I actually like how he makes it look. Scratch the itch. And what does he say at the bottom? Then it says, this is a Charlie Munger quote. It says, go to bed smarter than when you woke up at the bottom. And then... That's amazing. It's amazing, right? And the bright colors, he makes it look like an eighth grade, like an eighth grade binder. That's awesome. You want to see something else he's doing? Hold on one second. Show you this too. So you might see just like this box of little truffles, little chocolate truffles here so we call like uh what we were trying to just we did we were trying to describe what we like to do it's like what do we what do you really do what are what are you really good at it's like what's the common thread across all the shit you do and one thing we were like uh somebody had this analogy of a truffle pig they're like you're like a truffle pig you're like you go and you just sniff out these little like these little like truffles these like high value like things and so he delivered this i thought it was chocolate but actually it's this little thing you unwrap it and inside he's printed out like a just like a a golden nugget just like something is diego your co-worker or does he run the daycare because dude he's my arts and crafts we're big into like as the world goes ai we're just super like tactile everything it's like no no we're gonna do everything like very analog we're either gonna be extremely ai and digital or extremely analog and ideally we take the things from the digital but we pull them out make them analog.

56:26Like if you could see on my wall right now, we have like things that are printed out that are like of this month's kind of like different things that we're learning and we're diving into. What are the biggest, you know, what are the biggest things we want to not just read it, nod and say, oh yeah, like, okay, that's, gee, that's cool and move on. In fact, can I just tell you this real quick? That's the number one takeaway I have so far from the Buffett biography is that when he was eight or nine years old, he read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence people. And he knew he was like socially pretty awkward, right?

56:54The guy's like buying stocks at age seven. He bought a farm when he was 14 years old. Like he wasn't a normal kid. And so he wanted to be better socially. He didn't know how. He reads this book and there's this line in the book, which basically says, unlike most people who would read this book, nod along and say, gee, that makes sense. And then put the book away and then forget about it. Like never do anything. Warren made it like his like religion to study this book. So he would read the book. He would go immediately try to apply the principles. He would regularly come back and reread the same sections again, because it was like really important to him to actually like get the wisdom out of the book and not just the information.

57:30He even taught a class on it. Exactly. And I thought if there's one predictor of success, it would be that. And I think if there was one superpower to have over the batch of other smart people who are also listening to podcasts, also reading books, also on Twitter, et cetera, it's, I think most people do exactly what he said. Most people just read something, they nod, they say, yeah, that makes sense. And then they just move on with their life. They don't actually like internalize it or do anything with the thing that made sense. And, or if something's like kind of obviously true, they're like, yeah, I get that.

58:01I know that. Versus like, yeah, you know that, but do you do that? No, you don't. So you don't actually know it. And I find that that one trait about Buffett is so important. And that's like one thing I'm trying to do is, is I'm, whether I'm reading or learning anything is like, can I develop the skill of noticing the big idea and then not just moving past it like taking that big idea and being like I'm gonna work on this idea until it's like playing a piano piece it's like until I could play this you know fluidly from memory then I then I actually know the song and there's not uh they didn't act on everything but they did a good job of final they had like a like a bank of stuff they had like their spank bank for uh for investing and so basically like Like there's a story about how Munger had a Barron subscription.

58:45And this guy who worked for Munger was like, yeah, he read this freaking newspaper every week for 15 years. And he told me that he got an idea from it. He goes, this is the one idea I've ever gotten from Barron's. He goes, I've been reading this constantly looking for this one idea. And I just found it and it took me 15 years. They did a really good job. Am I not supposed to call it? Can we not say Ideas Bank Bank? No, that's beautiful. I loved it. I saw Ari roll her eyes. That's what it is. If I just said a bank of ideas, everyone's going to be thinking that. Dude, did you watch the actual, the second Monish episode that I did?

59:21Yeah. Because in it, he pulls out the Moody's manual. He's like, when people say Buffett read this, this is the thing he was reading. He showed me. It's like size four font. And he reads page by page. It's like not even a, it's not a book. It's not something you're supposed to read page by page. And he did. And he was showing, then he's like, oh, then he read the Japan company handbook. It's like the version of Moody's for Japan because he wanted to look for companies in Japan. And then the bet that he made was insane. So he reads that Japanese book and he notices. He's like, huh. So there's these exchanges in Japan, like the stock market exchanges.

59:52And they basically have a monopoly. Like nobody really builds new stock markets and you can't really get a new stock market off the ground. And he's like, there are these incredible businesses that are kind of undervalued. and then he went and he borrowed like five billion dollars in japanese yen and bought all of the exchanges i bought like a chunk of all the exchanges at like a zero percent interest rate it's just like this unbelievable asymmetric upside trade that has just paid off in spades and i feel like people don't even talk about that like if you talk about buffett's bets it's all just like geico coca-cola sees candy like that japanese trade is unbelievable maybe i should read Snowball as well.

1:00:31I've read the shorter one. I don't even think that's in Snowball because that was more recent. But I should read Snowball and we could have a book club talk about it. He interests me. He doesn't even interest me always. I don't want to trade stocks, but I just love his... I think that just how you described Jesse, that's not quite how I would describe Warren because his personal life was a little wacky, but there are so many philosophical things that you can learn from him. Totally. Totally. By the way, last night, I was watching UFC on Saturday night on the East Coast. It's like freaking midnight.

1:01:05And I opened up my living room door to let some air come in because it was kind of hot or whatever. I just wanted fresh air to watch UFC, you know, as one does. And I was sitting there and I saw, I thought I saw a moth like flying around. I'm like, damn, get that moth out of here. And I kind of like swatted it. And then I saw it again and I didn't really pay attention. And then it took me about 45 minutes and I was like oh my god there's a bat flying over my head in my living room right now and I jumped up and I flipped out because that's that's a weird phobia like bats just are one of the scariest things to me and I run out of the room and I wake up my wife I go Sarah that's a freaking bat in the room I have no idea what to do and I um I put like a hoodie on and like all these gloves and I run in there and I open up the door again to see if I can like get this bat to go outside and the next day i had to go get a rabies shot so last night i was in the er getting a freaking rabies shot me my wife and my little girl had to get it and it's insane but it didn't even touch you right why did you have to get the rabies shot rabies has a 100 fatal rate so if you get rabies you die okay and do you know how many rabies deaths there are in america a year no idea three three i was gonna try to lowball it with a hundred three there's there's about as many shark attacks uh that end up at a killing uh that end up with you dying there's like none and every doctor i called they're like you have to go get this rabies shot you have to go get this rabies shot and i was doing the math and i was like well let's say that there's like first of all like the odds are that it bit you and you don't know about it is like super low right like like so it had to have bit you and i had to not realize it and i'm like okay but then again you thought a moth was a bat and they're very different sizes so you know yeah but imagine sitting in your living room and seeing something in your peripheral you're like oh i think a moth just flew in uh and then i was like oh my god it's a rat with uh arms uh it was just it's freaky and so i had to go get the stupid shot and i was thinking of the odds and i was asking chad chabutti and they're like there's probably like a 0.001 percent that you have rabies right now but i had to go get the shot and it's incredibly painful and you have to go four times so i've Got to go back in the next three days for the next four increments of it.

1:03:18Did your baby get it two, four times? Dude, it's ridiculous that my kid, no, she's got to get it twice. It's a very painful, and like my kid wasn't even in the room. It's just ridiculous. And I just realized I gave in to so much fear mongering because like 60 ,000 people a year or something like that die from driving cars, right? And I'm like, I'm not afraid to do that. And there's three people die a year from rabies. And I went and got this freaking rabies shot, and my arm is killing me. It was such a painful shot. And it costs$25 ,000 if you don't have insurance. These shots are 25 grams. So it was, what's that?

1:03:50$75 ,000 worth of shots that I had to get last night for freaking rabies. Is that ridiculous? You know, I don't know if you've ever seen those like memes where it's like they have like a silhouette, like a ghost of a person's face that like make it transparent. Like we just need RFK's face just shaking his head at you for what you just did. But like it's such a like there's so many cognitive like uh there's so many like biases or whatever like flaws that i've made like thinking flaws like regarding whether i should go and get this or not but just the idea of like me foaming at the mouth because they say that when you the thing about rabies is when you have show symptoms that means you're you're going to die it's too late it's too late yeah so maybe maybe it was not a bad decision maybe you know you avoided potential ruin for a pain in the arm that's okay have you You've already gotten that?

1:04:39No, no, no. That's never happened to me. He said this super absurd scenario. Is that happened to you? No. People get rabies shot all the time. First of all, I'm not from like the 1910s. I don't like open up the doors to create like a breeze. I just turn the air conditioning on if I need a little breeze. Here's the truth. I didn't want to tell my wife. I wanted to pee in the yard.

1:05:03Dude, they need rabies to get away from you. You live with this feral man Frankly I deserve this

1:05:15Butts and guts That's it That's the pod I feel like I can rule the world I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off On the road less travel Never looking back

1:05:34All 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.

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