We hosted a slumber party with 12 billionaires (our minds are blown)

22:06I have a related point, which is I just wrote these two words. I don't know if you can read this. I am. I am. So my trainer has a clothing brand that he creates. It's called Superconscious Co. So one of the shirts he gave me from Superconscious, my favorite shirt, it just on the side, it just says, I am. And then it's after, and underneath it says, the two most important words in the English language for whatever comes after them will define your life. If you think you are destined for greatness, if you think you belong at that table, you will make different decisions along the way. And then it becomes sort of self-fulfilling, right?

22:37You'll work at a different speed. You'll take different risks. You will go for it in a different way. several conversations I had at this event where I realized, damn, a lot of the, a lot of the downstream decisions start with the little voice in your head, the little director of your movie who's deciding like, what kind of movie is this? Is this like an indie budget? Is this a tragedy? Is this a comedy? Are you a joke? Or is this a hero? Is this a Marvel movie? Are you the hero saving the world? Right. And like, I'm not saying one is better than the other, but you get to decide what that little voice in your head is going to tell you.

23:11Cause the director says, you know, what happens in the story, where you stand, what you say, all of those things. And I thought, damn, a lot of what I'm seeing in how people are living their lives and what they're doing differently comes from the little voice in their head just has a different script in mind for that, what their life is all about. The I am statement. Or like, here's a small example. How about Jesse bringing his sauna? Jesse, it's like brought his sauna and he had two guys. And I was like, what do you guys do? He's like, oh, we bring these saunas. Like whenever he wants to go to the sauna hot.

23:39Yeah, he's like, whenever we go, when he wants to go to a conference or something, this sauna is a really cool way to create a bonding experience, which it was, by the way, just chilling in the sauna. It was freaking awesome. And I was like, wait, Jesse, you got these two guys whose job is to trail around this sauna across the country to bring to events. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard of. He's like, yeah, isn't it great? We get to hang in the sauna. I was like, yes. And that's another example of intensity, but on a more relatable scale. Right. All right, I have one. You could take your billions and shove it up your ass.

24:11it's a seneca but yeah put that on a on one of those inspirational posters that you see in your office there is this one guy who was one of the first investors in a variety of elon companies and presumably a billionaire like you know investing in tesla at a 60 million dollar valuation i or 100 million dollar valuation you know i don't know what that is that like is that like a hundred thousand times? So something like that. We don't do public math. Yeah, like a lot. It's now a trillion dollar company. Yeah, so it's a big deal. You know, there was this funny story where this guy was telling a story about working really hard and like he was grinding and his kid was sick and he's like, I had to take a week off to like go and help my kid.

24:58And, you know, that was a big deal because I was working so hard. And then this other guy came and he goes, you know how you guys are all talking about working 16 hours weeks 16 hours a day on your companies. Right now, I'm doing that as well. But my company is my family. And I have retired from business. And I work 16 hours a day as the CEO of my family. And when he said that, I was like, this is awesome. And I imagine he was exaggerating a little bit because I imagine he still does some type of deal making or something like that. But I don't know him well enough to know. But I thought it was so cool when he said that.

25:39And I thought like, you have it figured out. Same with Jesse Itzler. These two guys, I can't say the first guy's name, but Jesse also had the same energy where I was like, this is the way. And this is all personal preference. Jimmy wanted to be Elon, cool, go do that. But when I heard this other way of talking, I was like, you know, after, this is easy to say because everyone was wealthy, but after some number, I don't know what that number is, 10, 20, 30, some millions of numbers. Not a lot of it really matters. And just having a good time with your family is something I really admired. And I thought it was really cool that that guy said that.

26:16And it made me realize that I was getting sucked in this vortex of money, money, money, and achievement, achievement, whatever. But when I saw these guys talk and their energy, I was more drawn to that than anyone else there. Do you agree? Yeah, 100%. I think when I go to events like this, my instinct is to figure out, oh, how do you win? Oh, how do you win? How do you win? What tactics? What techniques? What strategies? What approaches work? And instead, the better question almost every single time is, what game are you even playing? And picking the right game matters way more than figuring out how to win the wrong game.

26:53Dude, there was people there who were like mini Genghis Khan's, where it's like they want to dominate. Like they get joy out of war and domination. They want to build cities. They want to dominate industries. They want to do that. That's one game you can play. And by the way, no judgment. Great. Do whatever game you want to play. I just want to know what the games are so I can pick. And then other people were like, I want to be CEO of my family full time. And I'm like, I've done a four hour stretch with my kids. Like, I think I'm more of a 45 minutes a day, 45 minutes at a time, four times a day.

27:24That's my ideal. So, okay, I'm not going to be CEO of my family because I would actually be miserable if I was a full-time stay-at-home dad personally. But, okay, that's a game I could play. Then I talked to Jesse, and I was like, Jesse, what do you do? Like, what do you do every day now? I'm training for races, and I'm coaching my kids sports things. I do public speaking because I feel like it keeps me sharp, and I get excited to get up on stage and say some shit that lights people up. He's like, I'm selling calendars. He's like, I'm not making a fortune. Like, these guys, you know, they'll do that in a day or a week.

27:55Well, we'll do in a year, but I don't know. I like doing it. I'm doing what I want to be doing. And he was very at ease with that. He's at peace with that. And I think obviously some of that comes from maturity, but a lot of it comes from, it's easy to be at peace when you're actually doing the thing that puts you at peace, when you're doing the thing you like. And if you're kind of, I don't know, like masquerading around trying to just do what you think you should be doing, I think that becomes very exhausting. And so I'm with you that figuring out what game to play seems like the much more important question at every phase of your life.

28:25And the game I wanted to play in my 20s is different than the one I'm playing currently in my 30s. It's probably going to be different than what I play in my 40s and 50s. And I just got to kind of reinvent myself. Dude, there was one guy there who said he worked with Elon. And apparently, he had to do a meeting or something with Elon. And like the secretary told him like, all right, you're going to do this meeting. But I need you to know that Elon makes his companies make$20 million every one hour. So this better be a$20 million meeting. I heard a similar thing from a guy who worked with him that he was like, Elon would have a meeting, but there would be like 40 or 50 people in the meeting.

29:06And the reason why was not because that makes for a more effective meeting, but because it was like, if the person who we need to talk to is not in this room, it's such a colossal waste of his time that we'll just fly everybody here and we're going to have this 45-minute block. And that way, everybody's here because all of your time collectively is not worth as much as his hour. Which is like such an upset. It's hard to fathom this. Let me tell you a really quick one, which is hard work amongst this group, not universal. So there was one guy, you weren't there. Sean busted his knee in the second hour or something like that and had to stay at home for this one whole session.

29:49And there was this guy there who was explaining how hard he grinds. And then there was this other guy who was one of the more successful guys there. He was like, I work like 20 hours a week. He's like, once my companies got to be like some type of like predictable, stable, like, all right, if we just keep doing this for 10 years, we're going to grow 50 % a year, hopefully, like it's going to whatever. He was like, I started working 20 hours a week. And he's like, I wouldn't work Fridays. And it was really interesting to see that not everyone worked hard. Did you get that sense from people? The thing I pulled from it was some people were basically operating like monopolies and other people were not.

30:31Meaning there were some people playing a game where the competition is so vicious. An easy example is YouTube. If you stop uploading, the music stops. There's literally a million other businesses in that same exact space doing the same exact thing who are ready to eat lunch. And every idea you put out there in a video, somebody else is going to copy. And a lot of people do copy the exact videos that he does and the exact script. It's all public information. It's all super competitive. There's no gatekeeping. And then there's other people who were like, yeah, all we had to do was get to this. Like, we just had to get this shelf space.

31:05Like, there was one guy who was showing us a shelf at Target. and he was like, basically seven years of the company was just like hard work dedicated to getting on the shelf. But once you're on the shelf, it's almost impossible for anybody else to get on the shelf. All we have to do now is stay on the shelf. By the way, this shelf right here, like this little rack you're looking at, this is$300 million a year. And you're just looking at it. You're like, oh damn, like, wow, one shelf in Walmart, one shelf in Target is like the entire revenue streams of like these online only companies, but you're extremely defensible compared to other businesses where the moment you take a break, you have the entire internet competing with you on that same thing.

31:48You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. That was an interesting thing. Do you have - I have a quick one. Health is wealth. In a room full of very wealthy people, how many fancy clothes did you see? How many fancy watches did you see? How many fancy cars did you hear people bragging about? everyone but Joe Gebbia looks schleppy Joe Gebbia looked great even in even in workout gear he was wearing some nice shit he looks like he should be in like a Taylor Sheridan show like if he made an appearance on Landman I wouldn't even blink everyone besides him dude do you know he's on the board of Tesla I didn't know that either he does a lot of interesting stuff everyone besides him looked like we were at a slumber party we were also Yeah, but during the day.

32:36Yeah, that should be the title of Slumber Party with Billionaires.

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33:31so the but the health is well thing was very real there was a lot of flexing on stuff you're doing for your health what you're eating and not eating how much who's your doctor who's your what's your protocol no one was like that jacked or ripped or anything were they other than joe uh yeah i thought people were in pretty good shape if you go to other industries non kind of like tech internet, not our bubble, right? But like go to like a conference with the wealthiest people in finance or oil or whatever, like pick any industry. Their body shape looks a lot different. No, everyone, they looked like a healthy 55 year old.

34:08Dude, after basically our day was go play basketball for three hours, like an intense basketball game, come home, go into a 250 degree sauna. Then when you're tired of the sauna, go into this pond that was like freezing cold in North Carolina and go plunge for three minutes. So then go back into the sauna, then go back into the plunge. Then there's like a masseuse doing body work and myofascial release for you. Then you're eating and everybody's eating clean. Every single person's eating clean while we're there, right? Like, it's like, dude, that was the norm. That is not normal. You know, if you were drinking something out of a plastic bottle, it's like basically doing heroin at this event.

34:42Dude, me and Nick Huber got Taco Bell at midnight. It's secrecy. Yeah, like we didn't want to tell anyone. secrecy dude i took like a feastable bar in my like i like hid it in my hoodie and it crutched over to my bedroom and ate it like in shame over there because what am i gonna do sit here and eat a chocolate bar in front of these men he's just 52 years old and ripped yeah i was like wow this guy is you know on the forbes you know self-made billionaires list and also also just ripped for fun as a side quest dude yeah yeah i mean he looked great uh and then jesse's 56 and runs 100 mile races.

35:19How many 50 year olds are ripped and run 100 mile races? Nobody does that shit, especially successful guys. Jimmy wanted to do like a taste test. He had everyone like gather around to do a taste test of like Hershey's versus his stuff. And like, I like pretended like, oh, wow, Jimmy, your stuff is great. I've never had this before. But like at every Airbnb in the kitchen, did you see this? At every Airbnb, it was like literally 100 candy bars. And I literally had 2 ,000 calories per night of his candy. I ate so much of it. I could tell you about all of it. Like I could, I could, I did, I didn't need a taste test.

35:57I could tell, I'm already an expert on, I could tell you about all the flavors, the peanut butter ones, the dark chocolate ones. You don't have to lick the wrapper for the taste test. It's like, no, no, no, this is just how, I'm thorough. Like I've already, I'm like, Jimmy, like I already know. Like I've eaten all of them and I had M &M's and Hershey bars on the plane on the way here. Like I can tell you about all of them. The hilarious thing is when he's like hanging out with like the upper echelon of the group, he's just like, just try a piece of this one. You don't have to eat the whole thing, but like, you know, it's more for younger people, but like whatever.

36:26That's what he's going. He goes, it's for kids. It's for kids. And he's like, he'll give you like the dark chocolate flavor. Yeah. And I'm sitting there with like cookies and cream all over my face. And I'm like, I like it. I like the cookies and cream one. It's like my daughter just learned. This one's my favorite, Jimmy. You have more of this one? Yeah, my daughter just learned how to say more. but I feel like this more, more. More, more, more, more this one. I was doing this all the time. More, more, more. Can I give you some of the negative ones? How about the guy who goes, at that point, I was broke.

37:01I think I only had like$20 million. Yeah, he's telling some story. Well, there was a hilarious conversation about prenups, which is, you know, nothing more can be said except for there was an incredible conversation about prenups. I was about to go outside, Me and someone else were going to go outside of the sauna. And someone said, hey, can I ask you guys about pre-dub? And we were like, let's just sit right here. I just want to listen. Let's just listen. That next three hours was one of the most entertaining three hours of my life. I don't think I've laughed that hard in five, ten years. I was literally belly laugh crying.

37:33Some shocking set setups. Billionaires are not like you and me. If you're listening to this, billionaires exist and they're not like you. they're not like you i would say is the midwit meme was in full effect i'll give you one example so the way we played our basketball tournament was three teams uh and we played and then it was supposed to be the you know the top two teams play for the finals but ever but all the teams finished the same record one like we all had one win one loss after everybody played each other so i was like okay well which two teams advanced to the finals and so i but everybody's getting tired so i had to make something up so i was like all right we're gonna do a like a penalty kick shootout so what's the most exciting you know like thing in sports is in hockey or soccer where they do the shootout um and it's not going to take up a bunch of energy because like we're old guys and people are getting hurt we gotta like we can't play an extra game to figure out who's gonna go so we said all right everybody step up to pick every each team pick five guys they're gonna shoot a free throw and then the team that makes the least like pressure's on everybody's watching you so it was interesting one team my team was like this is a dictatorship like y 'all are the five best to the other guys they're they're better than you these five are shooting who was the dictator what i was a dictator i didn't even think there was another way i was like of course we're just gonna pick our five best and do this like honestly i didn't even consider another method and i was the coach of my team because i had gotten injured i'm on crutches so i was like doing that the second guy uh the second team did it merit-based and the third was like kind of like a volunteer voting system or whatever and in the merit-based thing a funny thing that happened was one of the guys was probably less good at basketball overall made it in the practice shot and one of the guys who was one of their better players on the team just happened to miss so i was like damn are y 'all really gonna not have one of your best players shoot and have this other guy shoot i was just watching i'm like i just want to see what happens here i want to see what happens with the egos i just need to know i need to see this the guy was like you sure you want to do it he's like no no you should do it you made it if you want to i'll do it and then the guy's like no i mean i don't know i think i'm gonna do it he's like okay go ahead and do it so so the guy steps up and he shoots and he makes it the guy who's probably like you know the weaker basketball players makes it clutched it up and has this awesome moment and his team advances to the finals and i feel so happy for this guy and i'm like that was amazing i'm like i'm i'm glad that they kind of real rudy moment he had his rudy moment he honored it he made it good for him that was awesome under pressure i love i wanted everybody to have like golden moments during the during the event but then after the final and this their team goes on wins the finals happy they're holding the trophy it's all good afterwards we're all like packing up to leave and he's like he goes up to that guy the other guy who sat out he's like hey i want can you and me go shoot free throws i want to know if that was the correct like ev decision statistically and the guy's like oh man you already made it like you already made it we already won like you're good dude you did it he's like no no i need to know i need to know and he's like no like it's like honestly it's done you i'm glad you did it you made it he's like i need to know and he's like all right so they go and they shoot and of course the guy who's played basketball his whole life makes more of the free throws in like the with the larger sample size and then the other guy was like kind of head down for like he's kind of bummed out about it for a second and i was like what a what an intelligently stupid thing to do right like he wanted to know like was this a positive ev decision was statistically the correct move what does ev mean expected value it's like if you're playing poker you can you bet your chips and even if you lose you're still happy because you made the right decision even if the result didn't pan out so funny there's chances and so i was like way to snatch like way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and there was so many of these little moments where like there's this guy there who's like he's a total catch he's like smart.

41:20He's good looking. He's ripped. He's successful, all these things. And he, I just thought a guy like this could walk into a coffee shop and like the cute barista would want him to talk to her. I've always wanted to be that guy. You know, like this guy could have been that guy. It could be so easy for him to just meet someone amazing. And instead, do you want to describe? So, all right. I think what he did was, did he scrape? He built a program that scraped LinkedIn. Starts with the desired result. He's like, I want a beautiful, intelligent, successful woman or something like that. I wasn't there for the whole thing.

41:54Someone who fit his like heritage. So he was like, cool. So he built an AI bot to crawl LinkedIn to then scrape all the like successful, beautiful women, like trained on images of women that he thought were beautiful. Like every woman who was like of a certain like look in New York who was between, you know, whatever, 22 and 30 or whatever. He had like a database. He had binders of women. Yeah, binders of women. It was hilarious. And then he had this whole system for how we could reach out to them. It was amazing. I don't want to go into all the details. He had a dedicated iPhone there. He goes, this is my iPhone.

42:30And he goes, I have two full-time engineers who have built this program that auto-DM's them, this particular DM on Instagram. Let me send her a voice note. I go, you send her voice notes? He goes, I have found that voice notes convert better. and like he like showed me the voice as he told this whole system it's like what's that thing called the rorschach test or whatever where you see the blot and it's like you either see like you know a killer or an angel or whatever his it was like some people were like this is the most impressive thing i've ever seen and then some people like the married guys who are like you know 50 40s and 50s were like brother you're you're it's too much you're doing too much here you gotta just like just see a cute girl and go talk to her it's okay let it let it roll organically baby.

43:12It's going to work better that way. And I just thought it was hilarious. I'm really late. I got to go. I'm supposed to be speaking at something right now. I got to jet. I just realized I'm way over. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

43:36All 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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44:28For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.