What’s truly going on inside DOGE?

24:07I can audit everything from this payment record system. And he's bringing like young hackers in. He's bringing some of his smartest people in. He's doing this. Now, will this be successful? I have no idea. I can't tell you. Is this fascinating? Absolutely. Is this one of our only shots to get out of the death spiral of excess spending? I believe so, and I cannot believe it happened. End of rant. All right, let me give the audience a counterpoint, and I'm going to get flamed for this. You're going devil's avocado on me? I'm going hardcore devil's avocado on you. No, not exactly, because I'm on board with a lot of the stuff he's doing.

24:38But listen to this. Let's just say that you're 45 years old, you got two kids in high school, you got a mortgage, and you're thinking like, you know, life's pretty good. And then all of a sudden you get a message that says, look, we appreciate you, Diane, for working for the government for so long, but you're done. You got to get out. And you're thinking, how the hell am I going to pay my mortgage? How am I going to like provide for my kids? You want to go to college? And then you look online to learn about your situation and you're like, wait, the guy who just decided to fire me changed his Twitter handle to Harry Balls.

25:15And he put in his description that he's offering circumcision for 69 cents. And did he just call a guy a retard on Twitter? Dude, someone yesterday sent me an advanced search. He knew you, Twitter advanced search. It was just like a single link I could click that was just Elon Musk saying the word retard. And bro, you could scroll for days. It was unbelievable. It was an unbelievable link. it's sort of like like a really successful entrepreneur ceo doing layoffs because money's short from his beautiful chalet in aspen with a beautiful view behind him on zoom and for elon i'm like do what you gotta do but can you not be so smug about it and like have some like fucking grace when you're like doing some of these things even if those things are good and i agree with him i just wish that like the maturity level would go up because at the end of the day it's cool for like these tech guys to say like cut them cut them let's uh make the government smaller whatever but it's at the end of the day it is real people's lives and half of these people they're not like hungry power people they're just fucking guys who are working nine to five and they just want to play softball on the weekends you know what i mean and that that that bumps me out i wish that he would show a little grace uh when he's slashing you know what i mean I think you bring up great points.

26:34I think his, it's like I've been told many times, you're not wrong, but your delivery sucks. What do they say in the Big Lebowski? You're not wrong, man. You're just an asshole. Yeah, exactly. That's like what's going on here. So I think you're absolutely right on that. I will say they did offer eight-month severance. I will also say this wasn't like an optional or flimsy thing. It's not like somebody's just messing around. Basically, the bureaucracy and the bloat. When you've changed it to hairy balls. He made it seem like that. You're absolutely right. It certainly seems like he's messing around.

27:11The style is bad. I think the substance is good. The reality is the way that the government works is actually like a financial terror attack on all American citizens. And so as much as Diane, I don't like that Diane is going to possibly lose her job. The reality is she shouldn't have had that job probably in the first place, or this old, maybe not her specifically, but the overall system is spending so much, it is going to tank the entire economy. Like you look at all these crazy stats about how much of job growth is just federal jobs. How much of spending is just going to federal employees? It's like, you know, a wormy, like the game of snake when you start to eat your own tail.

27:50It doesn't even make any sense. I'll give you, I'm going to tell you something. I have a friend who was last year or two years ago, They had an unlucky break. They wanted this promotion or this job. They didn't get it. They didn't really know what to do. It didn't look like they had a great upside. I thought that they deserved a little bit better. So let me see if I can help this person out. And around this time, I had met some people that were some fat cats who were doing well with government contracts. And I'm talking about like, you know, one company, for example, they just, they're a web dev shop.

28:23They made websites. They're a fat cat. We got to bring that back. Yeah, great usage. Yeah, exactly. And what I mean by that is they were making websites, which you can go on Fiverr and get a website for five bucks. You can go on Upwork and get somebody to do it for a couple hundred bucks. You can go on Squarespace and do it yourself. There's a whole bunch of things you could do. They're getting 19,$20 million contracts to build simple websites. It was unbelievable. And there were multi-year contracts to do things that literally I have interns that could do them in three, four days. These aren't like high traffic, not complex apps, not super sensitive data just like a square space informational websites very menu online yeah exactly so um started noticing this so i go to my friend and i say let's get you a government contract and i can't say too much specific stuff we have a we got this friend a government contract to do something that probably takes four hours not even high skilled time you know not anybody could do it my sister could do it my cousin could do it anybody could have got this contract it's been going for two years and now it's a hilarious game of hide and seek because i'm like yo doge is gonna find this contract and when doge finds this contract they're gonna publish this thing and be like we paid for for this and i'm glad that my friend got like you know a great lifestyle yeah however it's the what is that thing called the free rider problem uh in society it's like, I forgot, there's like some social term for this where it's like, you can abuse public parks and public transport because nobody's kind of like on the hook for it.

30:03And like, well, I'll get mine. I'll get mine. And when everybody tries to get theirs, we all get screwed. Where did your head go where your friend doesn't get the promotion? And then the default response is, let's get you a government contract, baby. Let's go to the government contract store, just pick it off the shelf and go check out. There's these side quests that, you know, I'd been through this, but this podcast is great, right? You do this podcast and you meet people and you hear stories. We were talking about, we had done a segment on government contracts, businesses. I think we had done a thing because somebody I know had pivoted.

30:37They used to have, the episode I remember specifically was, they used to be in the business of making vodka bottles with LED lights. So if it was like Sam's bachelor party, it'd be like, Sam, last day of freedom. like rotating around a vodka bottle. That was their business. COVID hit and they pivoted their entire business to selling masks and got an 80 or$90 million contract. Yeah. And this is somebody who lives less than a mile away from me. I have another friend who did that. And I was like, oh my God, can you believe that? We talked about it on the podcast. And I just had some people email me, which is the flywheel of this podcast.

31:09And they were like, yeah, dude, like, have you ever checked this out? Check this out. You can go see what's up for bid right now. Hey, have you heard about this company? Have you heard about this company? So I started getting curious. Now I was never going to do it, right? Because I'm at a phase of my life where I am intentionally trying to not make any decisions for money. So even when I saw something that I was like, oh, wow, you could go make money doing that. I no longer want to be that guy. I was that guy for like 15 years. I don't want to be that guy anymore. If I make a decision, it can't be for money as the number one reason.

31:35But I did take note and I was like, somebody could do that. Maybe somebody who's maybe top priority right now is money. And so this little side quest was, let's go help a friend. I don't want to do this for me. It wouldn't be worth it for me, but it would totally be worth it. to like for the story and to see if I can help my friend out. And it's still going? It's still going. But dude, every month and now that Doge is out, it's literally like a game of hide and seek. And I can hear the footsteps coming. I know it's coming. And it's going to be hilarious when it hits. That's insane. That is pretty funny.

32:06What about the third thing? The opening eye thing? So the reasoning behind it, like he has a reason for doing this, which is that he's trying to... He hates... Explain what it is. Explain what it is, so people don't know. So Elon... So from my understanding, OpenAI is a nonprofit that's trying to convert to a for-profit. In order to do that, Sam Altman, as well as some of the shareholders, have to, quote, buy the company. And what Elon has done is he's put a competing offer to buy the nonprofit of OpenAI in order to make Sam Altman, as well as the other shareholders, to have to pay more. Is that the summary?

32:43Sort of. He's not trying to buy the nonprofit. He's trying to buy the assets. and same thing. So basically OpenAI Today is a non-profit. That's how it started. That's who, you know, has a lot of the IP. Then they created a for-profit where the non-profit owns, I think, 25 % of the for-profit or they're trying to own 25 % of the for-profit. That'll be like the deal. And the for-profit has been raising billions and billions of dollars. They were just trying to raise from Masa and SoftBank. At a$250 billion value. $40 billion valuation. And so that implied that when they do this conversion or they convert the assets, they'd get the assets out of the nonprofit into the for-profit, right?

33:27The IP, the Intel, all the code, all that stuff. The assets were valued, I think, at 40 billion in that transition. And it was going to be like stock, basically. It's like, oh, you're going to have 25 % ownership in the for-profit. And what Elon did was just throw a wrench in that a little bit because he's like, Like, actually, I'll buy the assets for 90, whatever he said, 97 billion. So a couple of possibilities here. Number one, he might actually get it. It's possible that he could do it. And then in that case, he would own the assets of OpenAI, merge it with XAI. And he would go from fourth place to first place overnight.

34:06That's the possibility. I'm uneducated on the topic, but I know a little bit about stories. That just seems too... That won't... I've watched Game of Thrones. They're going to die before they do that. Okay. Yeah, that story won't happen. So he's, so it's possible. Right, do you agree? Possible, not probable. Yes. And it's possible, not probable only because of the egos and personalities involved. Sam Altman would fight to the death to not have that happen. That would be him losing and getting checkmated by Elon. And Elon is doing it because he wants to checkmate Sam because he feels like he got wronged and betrayed because he funded the first 40 something million dollars into opening eye when it was a nonprofit and he owns nothing of the for-profit today.

34:46Would you put money on either of them? Winning this? Or just like in terms of just like the battle of the wits, like a chess match? Or do you think that it's too hard to... You know when we watch those UFC pay-per-views and it's like sometimes you get the ones where it's just like, oh, I just want to see Khabib do his thing. He's going to win, but I just want to watch how. And then there's other times where you're like, I have no idea who's going to win this fight. I have no idea. You got the unstoppable wrestler versus the guy who's amazing at jiu-jitsu and striking. And like, I could totally see it going either way.

35:17I got to pay$90 pay-per-view. I got to watch this. That's how this one is. Because for as many people who say you never bet against Elon, there's an equal number of smart people who say you never bet against Sam Altman, right? And so you don't know which way it's going to fall. Now, and there's also, it's the highest stakes thing. Like AI is the highest stakes game. And this is the crown jewel asset is open AI. And it's going to be a fight to the death. Okay, so the second possibility is he just wants to make it more expensive for OpenAI. Because like I said, the implied valuation they were talking about was about$40 billion for the assets, non-cash contribution.

35:51Or maybe it was a cash contribution, I'm not sure. And this would up the price. So if nothing else, you go to your enemy and they have to pay double for their car. But do you think like... Maybe that's satisfying enough. Maybe that's a win. In the board meeting, can you just imagine all these suits that are like, well, do we look at this offer? And then everyone just like, No, it's just Elon. He's just being a dickhead. Okay. Like, do you just like, do they just like collectively agree that he's just being an asshole? Or are they like, guys, we got to like look into this. They're collectively, because I mean, that would be a very low price for the assets of OpenAI, right?

36:26Like literally on the open market, they're raising at a$240 billion valuation. So to sell the assets at a$97 billion valuation wouldn't really make a lot of sense, right? so at the very least he's upping the price or just slowing it down making life more complicated for his competitors so if we're competing in a race but I know I can distract 15 % of your mind share right it's like a honeypot like you know people used to do this like send in a pretty looking girl and it's like this is just a nice little distraction for my competitor that I can send in like they will do that so there's multiple levels this might be playing at I don't know which one it is this is just like the nerdy Kendrick Lamar versus Drake thing because they're now they're going after their personalities they haven't gone after family yet but i honestly would not be surprised if that happens next yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly so i'm not paying a whole lot of attention to it but it i mean it is interesting to watch like a sort of real life you know rap beef or a game of thrones battle going on i uh does it bot does any of this like wear you out because i feel a little excited at the moment but i wonder when but we're only a month in and I'm like, how much longer can I like last with all these like amazing stories?

37:40Yeah. I know what you mean. There's definitely a part of it where it just feels like I've just watched too many episodes of Jersey Shore and I'm like, I wasted my whole day. You know, like, you know, oh, he said this and he did this and they're going to do this. And let me look up the Delaware law. It's like, for what? Are you getting anything out of this or are you just gossiping? and say, oh, I'm gossiping. Okay, cool. Well, there's only so much of my energy I really want to put towards gossiping. I also just constantly think, and I think a lot of other people think this, is how does one man have so much energy?

38:11It's pretty amazing. It's hard for me to imagine writing a serious email that would require me to make a decision that has long-term impacts because I'm like, oh, I just can't turn my brain on right now to get into that. Imagine never feeling that feeling. I think, Jimmy, Mr. B said something. he said something like he was like oh no i'm focused like every waking hour or he made like he was like i don't get distracted like i don't uh like browse like he said something like that he was like but when i do get in that mood which is uh seldom i go all in for like 24 48 hours and i just need like a two-day recharge and then i'm back in and i don't get distracted now imagine being like an elon and having to like you don't have do you have zone out mode like most people do after seven o 'clock at night.

38:55You know what I mean? I read this story about Bill Gates and it was a story about how Bill Gates was building Microsoft. And people don't know because Bill Gates is now a philanthropist slash like, you know. He's got grandpa energy. He's got grandpa energy. Exactly. He's wearing his sweater. He's like, well, you know, I read books and I, you know, I've got these nets to catch mosquitoes. Like, you know, he just sounds like, you know, sort of harmless. He was ruthless. Puttin' around. Puttin' around Bill. Yeah, he's puttin' around in the mornings. He was ruthless when he was building Microsoft and he was insane energy.

39:26If you don't believe me, play the clip of him jumping over the chair. All right, we're back. So on top of that, they were like, Bill, do you, somebody was like riding in a car with him to do an interview or something like that. And they go, Bill, what happened? And they look at his, in his car, like the tape deck was missing. It was like pulled out. Like it almost got stolen. And they go, did it get stolen? He said, no, I took it out. They go, why'd you take it out. You don't like to listen to music. He goes, if I'm the radio, he goes, if I'm listening to the radio, I'm not thinking about Microsoft.

39:55So I just took it out. I don't want to listen to the radio. I want to think about Microsoft. It's wild, right? That's just a little tiny story. But there's probably like some epic, epic stories. And these are small things. Like, for example, let's say you get like an email saying like, you know, this partnership that we thought about doing or the sale that we're thinking about doing from you. It's not for us. thank you there's people and this is like kind of small but like it's just an example of this behavior who they're like they'll just get on a plane and they'll fly to that person's office that next morning and they'll just make it work and you think about doing that with like your young kids you got a few kids i have one kid and i'm like there's not a chance that i'm getting on that plane unless it's like a pretty amazing thing but just to do these like daily these daily items that show how intense you are, it's really challenging to imagine living that life.

40:46And I think very few people can actually sustain it. And I'm not one of them. So back to your question of how does he do it? This is a legitimate question. How does he do it? So one of the reasons my interest in Doge is top of mind right now is I just had my most viral tweet ever. You did? Yeah. And it was me. All I said was I would pay stupid amounts of money for someone to follow around the Doge team for the next six months Hard Knocks style. Like if you've ever seen Hard Knocks, the show on HBO where they follow like an NFL team through training camp. I would, and it's true, I would pay a ridiculous amount of money for that.

41:22What was the reach on that? I mean, the tweet got like 50 ,000 likes or something crazy. Oh, that's so funny. I didn't see that. It was just like, it went like really viral for some reason. A lot of people felt the same way. Like there's a fascination around this. and part of it is, I would really want to see, like, I want to know, I want to know what it's like, like, I'll give you two things, so one, I want to know what Elon's like, but not because I'm like, oh, Elon, he's the best, I just want to see, I literally want to understand, like, so this guy's running six, like, logistically, logistically, yeah, and then there's shit like, where he's like, he's also tweeting 10 times more than me, so it's not even like, oh, but he just doesn't waste time on social media, like you, it's like, no, actually, he wastes more time on social media, and it's like yeah but he doesn't just waste time playing video games like you you assholes like dude he's bragging about being a top 100 ranked diablo player and it's like something's cap the diablo thing i'm certain is cap like i am certain that dude he's paying how old are you are you allowed to say that i thought it was pretty fluid was that not it was actually so fluid i was like what did he just say i said in the mirror the other day i think that works i think that's i think i can add that to my bag there's another one i can't believe dude you you downplayed having audacity to do trump to have the audacity to say cap is so fluidly like that was really are you gonna say on the internet for way too long um i thought you make cap like a cap to his energy not cap like no cap that was really good dude i'm gonna start saying cap as in a limit that's cap that's the cap that's the maximum cap what i've reached my threshold is what i'm saying what are you saying i didn't say i lied what did i say on mfm like earlier this year you're like let him let him bake let him bake you were like rivet and i was like let him bake i try to be cool they're like wait is it bake or cook or microwave what is the phrase i uh have you met anyone who's worked with them i i haven't Yeah, I have actually.

43:23I talked to that one guy who recently, he said, he goes, I had a meet with Elon, and his assistant gave me the heads up in advance. And he goes, just so you know, Elon's companies are making something like$20 million per hour or something like that, or$20 million per half hour. So if you are going to have a conversation with him, it better be a$20 million conversation. And that$20 million number, by the way, that it's more now. It's more now. if you think of Doge. So it's just like every, can you imagine that? Actually, that's kind of an exhausting way to live because do you ever hear when people say like, well, that's just not worth my time.

44:03And when I would think about that for a long time, I'm like, does that mean I should always be doing something that is like of more value? And I'm like, well, how much am I valuing just laying on this couch? Or how much am I valuing just like mowing my grass because I want to actually mow my grass? And I thought that was kind of an exhausting way to look at life. It totally is. By the way, there's a simple, simple solution to that, which is you only price things that you don't want to do. If you want to do it, you don't put a price on it. If you enjoy, if it's therapeutic to you, or what's it called?

44:32Like, whatever. Like, it feels good just doing nothing. If it feels good to do the dishes or to, like, trim the bushes in your garden or whatever, like, go do it. You know, you have at it. You don't need to be like, oh, this is an inefficient use of my time. You only price the things you don't want to do to say, you know what, am I wasting my time on stuff I don't even enjoy? Well, when we had Rob Dierdick on the pod, he said that he places that number at$1 million per hour. Yeah. Dude, I watched a Cody Sanchez clip and like, I don't mean to knock on Cody. She's always been nice to me, but she was on a panel and they go, she goes, I was talking to my mentor, Bill Perkins, and he always, you know, tells me, you are as low as the low, like something like that.

45:15It's like, you are as low as the lowest tasks you do. and she was like, you know, I was dropping something. I was pumping. Oh, he goes, do you still pump your own gas? And she goes, at first I thought, how pretentious. Of course, I still want to be a person who pumps my own gas. And then he did the math for me about how much money I'm wasting pumping my own gas. And he said, are you still buying this? You should not be buying that. You should not be going to the store to do that. And I just thought like, and this video had like whatever, tens of thousands of likes. and I think that's a totally valid way to think.

45:50She might be right. That might be the right answer for her. It's not the right answer for me. Dude, I went to Whole Foods last night at 9 p.m. just to walk around. Totally, totally, totally. I think underneath a lot of that, like, oh, I gotta be so efficient with every second of my day is just some underlying feeling of lack. What do you think you lack in your life that you have to optimize every minute of every hour of every day and that you are like above doing certain things? And by the way, also, when you stop doing things, you lose touch with reality. So there's a price to that too. And so I just think like there's a, my takeaway was not even about Cody or her idea that if it works for you, more power to you.

46:24I just think, I just thought to myself, you know how much bad advice is out there? Like whether this was bad advice or other, like one of the great skills in life is just playing hopscotch and not stepping on the like landmines of terrible advice that exists on the internet. Our podcast included, by the way, we say some dumb shit. and we say some things that don't make sense. They don't make sense for you. Maybe it makes sense for us, or maybe it just doesn't make sense at all. But there is a skill to, how do you block out the 98 % of awful advice that sounds smart? Hey, quick message here, because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it actually works?

47:05No 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. And 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.

47:39Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N-A, and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC. You want to hear something funny? So I met this guy who's a billionaire, a multi-billionaire. He's probably 65. And I talked to him for like an hour online for something. And at the end of the call, for some reason, he started talking about his family and his kids and how he has like, I forget, five kids and they're each married with children. And he's like, I'm always around the grandkids. I just love this. And he was explaining his life philosophy.

48:12And at the end of the call, I go, hey, we don't know each other. We only know each other for this hour. But do you think I could come over, me and my wife, and stay with you and your family? And I can just watch how you interact with your family because you seem really happy, man. And you're successful. You've won. And he goes, I would love that. And so tomorrow at 7 a.m., I am flying to Park City to go to this guy's house for three days. And he was like, my whole family's going to be there for this weekend. And I was like, great. Can I come? and just hang out with you guys and be part of the family for a weekend just to see how you're interacting with everyone because you are awesome.

48:48And he was like, yeah, I would love that. So I'm going to his house tomorrow till Sunday just to like learn how to be, when I met him, I was like, you are just such a warm person and you're rich and successful, which is like one attribute that's amazing. You seem happy, you seem fit, you have a lovely family and they seem like they love you. I gotta download what you're doing because you are amazing. And so he's letting me come over. Dude, that's great. I've always enjoyed doing that. I have a word for it. Can I throw some jargon at you? Stalking? Is that it? The word for it is in situ. What's that?

49:23Is this a made up word? I'm a biology major. So at one point I did a biotech company. And one of the things you learn when you do any biotech company is there's a huge difference between the lab environment, which is a sterile controlled environment. and you see this data come out and it says, wow, this thing really works. We produced this many milliliters of this or this many grams of this substance or whatever, right? It had this much energy, this many kilowatts generated, whatever the thing you're doing in lab. And then you're like, oh my God, this is amazing. We're about to change the world.

49:55And I was like trying to high five and nobody else was excited. I was like, why aren't you guys excited? They're like, well, like it's the lab. I'm like, oh, does the lab mess up? They go, no, the lab's great. So what do you mean? What's the problem? Lab, it's a test. It's a scientific test. How much more proof do you want? They go, oh, everything changes in situ. I go, in what? And like in situ basically was like, you take the thing, in our case, we were working on these microbes. We had this company where microbes would eat coal and basically fart out natural gas. So you could get natural gas without burning coal.

50:27Kind of amazing. Natural microbes, real microbes that just exist on the planet, right? And so they were working amazing in the lab. They were producing so much natural gas. It was amazing. We're going to change the energy industry. What's that word? Is like in a situation? Yeah, I don't know exactly what it is. I don't know what the technical definition, but yeah, it's kind of like in the situation or in ground. And so what we did was you take the bugs, then you have to actually go to the field where the coal is buried 200 meters underground or whatever. And you're going to pump the microbes in and you got to pump them in with some water and you got to like see what happens.

51:00And then there's cracks in the ground. It's not perfect. And then the blah, blah, blah, the weather, everything, everything is different. The temperature is different. The other microbes that are there, they're interfere, right? Et cetera. And always the in situ was, you know, not only worse, but like just dramatically different to the point where it was like, why are we even doing these lab tests? And they were like, well, look, if it fails in the lab, it's for sure going to fail in situ. Right. But just because it succeeds in the lab doesn't mean it works in situ. And so it was a really long-winded way of saying, I have this little word I tell myself, which is like, go in situ.

51:30So for example, it's like, you might have a theory, but go test it. You might have an idea, go test it. You might think your Donald Trump impression is good. You got to say that shit on the mic and see what happens. Another version of it is this person might look like they've got it all together. They're happy. They're successful. God, they're saying all the right things on this podcast. Go in situ, go to their house. And you'll know within like 15 minutes, you said three days, three days, massive overkill. You'll know within like 90 minutes for sure. Everything you need to know about this guy.

51:59And you'll pick up all these nuances just about like the family dynamics and the house and their schedule, their level of overall like busyness and rushing through their day versus like, wow, this person really seems at peace or like, you know what? They just seem like their baseline mood is really high or, you know, their, how their kids relate to them shows me that they have a great bond, an underlying bond, you know, versus what they say. And so you pick up so much. And this is why people are like, oh, what happened to you and Sam aren't doing this interview together. And it's like, yeah, cause I actually wanted to go to that dude's house and he lives near me or he lived where I was traveling and Sam was traveling somewhere else at the time or whatever.

52:35But I pick up so much more, not from the interview, but the like hours we spend before the interview, just hanging out at their house. I pick up so much more in terms of lifestyle. And I've talked about this before, but like we went to Austin. Who's one person who you hung? Sorry, well, go ahead. I'll give you the example. So we go to Austin and we had four interviews scheduled. It was Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire who started more billion dollar companies than anyone else in America. And like a hard-hitting, get-after-alpha type of dude. Exactly. I go to, and so there was him, there was Monish Pabrai, an investor.

53:07So he was a value investor from the school of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. There's Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss, a guy I've admired for many years, author, experimenter, investor, et cetera. And then the fourth one was somebody else. I'm forgetting. This was like a year ago. So we go and we do the four. Now for each of the four, I hung out with them. Tim less, but the others like Joe Lonsdale, I went to his house at eight in the morning. I did a morning workout with him. We had breakfast together. We did a cold plunge together. We talked and then we did the podcast. I saw his family, met his wife, you know, et cetera.

53:39Toured his house. You know, where does he work? Where does he play? He's got this land center, like literally like a gaming land center for him and his cousins to just come play video games, like six computers. Oh, L-A-N. Okay. Yeah. He's got like a basketball court. He's got old, like artillery gun at the top of his thing right right when we were leaving 10 senators were coming over for lunch and elon musk showed up while we were leaving the house it's like whoa okay that's what your day looks like got it you know he had like a it was amazing he was so hospitable by the way he's got like he was so nice and generous with his time did he had monish provide go over to his house he's like yeah come over whenever my day is clear i go to his house he doesn't have a staff that answers that he opens the door he's wearing basketball shorts and he's barefoot he's like yeah what do you want to let's just sit let's have some tea you want tea and we have tea he's got no clock no assistant telling him you got to move the next thing he shows me his nap room he's like i nap every day it's great napping is great my whole job is thinking you know i have to make great decisions so napping is keeps me fresh it's like having a second day so you know i was like whoa and then he's got all these books in his library but it's also kind of alone i was like you don't have a team he's like no like best investors make their decisions not as a committee investors make their decisions you know as an independent thinker and so no i don't have a huge team i got like a researcher or two but like you know they don't they don't come over every day so he has how many billions in his fund two i think something like that and it was really just him and a researcher he was the only guy there uh he didn't he didn't have like a but like ish a five-person staff generously generously yeah i feel like i could be wrong right like yeah don't don't don't quote me on these but that's what it but small i'm 90 sure tim ferris i was like uh And he shows up and I was like, so like, what you been up to?

55:18And he was like, oh, I just came back from Europe. I was like, oh, cool. Like vacation, ski, what are you doing? He goes, no, I spent three days with the guy who's the best in the world at making board games. And I wanted to understand, I want to learn about board games. So you pick up like lifestyle flexibility, ability to indulge in your hobbies. How lonely are you? You know, do you have a team? Are you doing, you know, somebody tweeted this out the other day. they go, the thing that socialists are Karl Marx got wrong was how much fun it is to make money with your boys. I was like, I feel that, dude.

55:48Like me, Ben, Diego, it's so much fun to just do what we do. It would be way less fun if it was just me doing it. Even if I had owned 100%, I got more equity and all that. I would never take that trade. Dude, I completely agree, by the way. That's why I have co-founders. And I moved Diego out here. I was like, dude, I'll pay you more. Just move out here. Move within 10 minutes of me. And now we hang out every day. And I'm like, my life just got better, right? Like little things. And so, you know, my kids interrupt me in the middle of the day. I have a piano right next to my desk because in between working, I'll just play piano.

56:17It's for fun, right? Like if somebody was here in situ with me, they would see that I don't have a perfect life, but I've built a life that I love and they will know for themselves if that's kind of what they want. And so I think this is massively underrated is a very long winded way of saying, I think more people should do this. I think you pick up way more when you go to somebody's house and see their, you know, just kind of hang with them for a day or even a couple hours. I think we need like a like a tobacco pipe or something. Today is like philosopher hour on our rocking chairs just like riffing on what makes a good life and what doesn't.

56:49Yeah, we started at limestones. We should go, by the way, check them out. It sounds sick. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would love to go see it. I think it'd be pretty boring but it would be mind-blowing at the same time. You know what I mean? I think it would be. Nothing would be thrilling but the whole thing would be mind-blowing that that's what it is. We almost need to do like MFM field trips because the timing was horrible when you were doing the Monish Pabrai one because I was moving that day and we couldn't make it work because I had like a six-month-old and it was like a huge whatever. But I am so envious.

57:26I'm like, fuck, I just wanted to like see. I just wanted to like get a field. I wanted to do a field trip of just sitting in his living room and watching him interact. Totally. I get so much joy doing that exact same thing. You know what I would want to do? So there's like your boy Brett who's doing robotics. I want to go see that shit. I want to go see the humanoid robots and the factory and just be inspired by that. There's another one that I think would be really cool. Have you ever been to a Cisco Foods? Like Cisco is the company that like makes the food that goes to all the restaurants. Like they make sauces and shit.

58:00Yeah. What? No, I've not been. What is that? it's i went once because we had a restaurant and it's the most wild like huge scale operation you don't realize it you're like oh i guess yeah the company that supplies all of the materials to all of the restaurants and grocery stores i guess they got to be pretty big right the bigger than anything you've ever seen and and it was like a tour of that facility and then you see the automation like there's these little like hockey pucks look you know those like scooters are like like the little butt scooters where you just like sit down on this thing, like an old PE thing where you sit down on this little four-wheel flat thing and it rolls around.

58:36That's like little robots like that that fly around this warehouse picking up pallets and moving them places. And so it's this incredibly sophisticated operation to move like cans of tuna. I'm looking at their factories. It looks so large that you could like see the earth curve. You know what I mean? It's huge. Another one would be like, probably not allowed, but like Anduril or like one of these companies just making like lasers and like, you know, like war machines. Also just like the crypto house and just go see all these like degenerate 19 year olds. That's actually a good idea. It's like you don't know it until you see it, until you feel it, right?

59:11Like it just leaves an imprint on you in a different way. Going to hacker houses in San Francisco was amazing and seeing like their kitchen and I'm like, who cooks what? How do you guys know? It's like you've seen the barstool like one bite pizza reviews. We just do the one sniff hacker house reviews, the owner. And they're all, In San Francisco, they're all in these warehouses, so they all got Walmart feet. So everyone's walking around barefooted with dirty ass bottom of their feet. It's disgusting. And I had so much fun doing it. I remember I felt that same way walking around Facebook. Have you walked around Facebook's campus?

59:41Yeah, Facebook's one of those. I remember walking around. I'm like, why does a webpage need so many employees? What are all these fucking people doing? There's so many people walking around. And you're like, I can't. I would make fun of Facebook constantly because I thought it was a soulless job. But you walk around and you're like, oh my God. This is like a beehive. You know what we should do? Do you remember TechCrunch Cribs? Did you ever see this show? Yeah, it was awesome. It was awesome. And they discontinued it, just like they discontinued Cribs. But I think that needs to come back. And, okay, realistically, we're like, we should do this.

1:00:13And then both of us are going to, like, look at our kids and then, like, just not travel. Sorry, I'm going to go to a Cisco factory. Yeah, I really want to go see the... I'm going to go learn how hot fries are made. Yeah, exactly. So, realistically, let's be honest, absolutely not going to do this idea. but we need a field correspondent. Every great show has got a field correspondent, right? So I'm going to throw down the gauntlet right now. 100K a year, be the MFM field trip correspondent. We're going to send you to different awesome places. You got to film it like the old TechCrunch Cribs or MTV Cribs episodes.

1:00:47And you just got to go to like funny, epic places, you know, interesting companies where they got a crazy like office life, crazy factories and shit like this. And that could be your job. travel around, film content. We'll put them up on MFM as episodes. I want to see these, like, there's, dude, these AI, we got to talk about this next week, but these AI companies that have like 20 employees, but 100 million in revenue, I just want to see what they're doing all day. You know what I mean? Absolutely. To audition, email me, sean at seanperu.com and just email a audition tape. So do an episode of any business near you.

1:01:21Go to your coffee shop and just film it just so that we a sense of how you are on camera. That's the best. Nice pod. I actually enjoyed these. Nice pod. You never said that to me. That was very nice. Thank you. I enjoy these because I just enjoy hanging out. Those are my favorite podcasts. All right. That's it. Great pod. Wonderful pod. See you out there.

1:01:56Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:02:26If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.