Work at These Companies, Become a Millionaire in 5 Years.

22:26The city of Mexico. Okay, Dave from Mexico City. Sorry, Dave. Do de Albano, Dave. I speak Spanish too. All right, so by the way, did you have a Misogi in 2025? Did you do that? Yeah, I trained. So the point of a Misogi, so here's the thing people forget about a Misogi is it's supposed to be so hard that you have a high chance of failing. And we don't talk about the failure enough. But yes, I trained for a 50 mile hour run and I just like fucking got hurt and destroyed my Achilles and I couldn't do it. So I did it and I failed. Now, let me recap something. So on two days ago, Sean put out this video of him going to Jesse Itzler's house.

23:07You prefaced it by telling what you did. So basically Jesse Itzler, friend of the pod, amazing guy. you flew to his house in Atlanta and very it seemed planned but it was very spontaneous that you played piano for him and his wife Sarah Blakely a very famous entrepreneur they were in tears you told us about the video and then it finally got released it was awesome but I have a bone to pick everyone's saying how amazing this is and all this stuff and they're like you inspired me because you played this beautiful song and people were literally in tears and earlier this year you said you're going to start playing piano I'm pretty sure you've been playing piano for years and years and years and like you did not just pick this up from scratch.

23:45No, I haven't been playing for years and years and years. I did as a kid. My parents did buy a piano and they probably got us, I don't know, a couple months of lessons when I was maybe eight or something like that. But by the time I'm like 38 now, I'd like forgotten everything. So when I started this year, I started from scratch this year. But yes, technically when I was - But I remember you, I remember us being somewhere and seeing a piano and you sat down and I thought you like played a song. I did know how to play two things on the piano. So I knew how to play the intro to James Bond, GoldenEye, like just like the da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, but like a one-hand song type of thing.

24:25And I think I also knew the beginning of For Release, which is like a kind of a classic piano song through muscle memory. But I couldn't like, didn't know how to read sheet music, didn't know how to do the notes, didn't know like what the, I didn't know what the keys were called type of deal, right? I just had memorized because, you know, at some point, my sister or somebody had showed me like, hey, watch, push these, push white, white, black, black, white, black. And like, that'll sound like James Bond. Like that was the level I was at. Well, it was very good. Okay. And so the question was, what was the question?

24:58What's your misogy going to be this year? What's it going to be this year for each of us? Do you have one? I have one. I'm trying to figure out the exact way to frame it. But I think I told you this. I deleted all my social media apps, all the consumption. So I said, I'm going to go dark in terms of consuming. I basically was like, how do I trade consuming stuff that people put 20 seconds of thought into? Right, like a tweet. People put about 20 seconds of thought into it to doing things that people put like 20 years of thought into, which is books. And so I deleted Reddit. I deleted Twitter. I deleted Instagram.

25:34I deleted Facebook, deleted all those apps. and instead I just, if I open up my phone, I want to kill boredom, I have to open up Kindle. It's like the only thing left to do on my phone is Kindle. And so I basically made a list. I was like, all right, here's the 26 for 2026, right? Like the 26 books I want to read in 2026 and I have kind of a hit list. These are books, honestly, I've probably owned for years, have thought about reading, I've heard really good things about, but hadn't actually read. And so I started that a couple of weeks ago. So that's going good. The only other one that might count here is I have this life bucket list idea of coaching a high school basketball team.

26:11And so like walking away from business, like not focusing on business for a season, which is three months. And so I started that last month and it goes, our season goes till end of February. But basically take, there's like a local high school basketball team and I've become an assistant coach. And it's like, we want to go to the state tournament and win. And that's the goal. I know your first game, you got spanked. I think you said the second game went better. Yeah, we are, what are we now, six and three. So, you know, we're doing all right. We're getting better as a team. And right now it's all about like, just can we improve?

26:45But I'm basically spending, like, I don't know, I'm at this, I'm basically going to practices and games, you know, four days a week, roughly. And it's just me, like I get my coach's whistle and my little whiteboard and I drive to this high school and then it's just, I'm doing it. I'm doing the actual thing. I'm like coaching this high school basketball team. I'm an assistant coach. I'm not the head coach. I have a two-year-old girl and then I have a two-month-old little girl. And I have underestimated leading up to it how difficult it would be. And even though I have grandparents around and people helping out, my wife is helping and, you know, obviously running the show there, I have underestimated how challenging it was.

27:24And so frankly, I kind of feel like I'm holding on right now. My goals are simple. I'm trying to eat 200 grams of protein a day and get out of bed at 6 a.m. So I have pretty small ones because I've always been, ever since I got into fitness, I've always been good at maintaining a fairly fit state. Right now, I'm at the lowest of my fairly fit era. And so I just need to eat my protein. And going to bed early and waking up early, this is so rudimentary, but it just has had the biggest impact on my day's productivity. And so I don't really want to set a big goal right now because I am kind of hanging on.

28:00Yeah, although I do think those are big. I know a lot of people who have that goal and don't do that thing. That is actually quite difficult to do both of those things that you just mentioned. If you actually did those, those are high leverage things. Also, I'll say two things. One, I think it's great to acknowledge the season you're in. I think people want everything to be constant. And there are seasons where you're able to be full out. There's seasons where you're in recovery mode. There's seasons where you're in, you know, nesting mode where you're just like, look, all that matters is protecting the nest because there's these baby eggs here right now.

28:30That's all that really matters. I don't need to distract myself with a random hunt over here. I need to stay at the nest. I think knowing the season and not beating yourself up about that is something that ambitious type A people struggle with. You've got to give yourself some grace when you're so wired towards achievement of random goals. You didn't do a good job of warning me, though. You should have warned me. I didn't realize how challenging this would be. Well, everybody says the same thing. It's like, oh, it's man-to-man defense now. There's two of you and two of them. Dude, I did not understand.

29:05Sometimes it feels like my wife is my roommate, and I barely have gotten to know my little girl, my new baby, because I'm with the eldest, right? So it's my job to take care of her, and you've got to take her out of the house because she's going to grab the pacifier out of the mouth. You know what I mean? It's definitely a second baby blindside for dads because the first baby is the one you think everything's going to change and it's going to be like, oh my God, my life's going to get really crazy. And then it's like, that's all right, I got this. This is not so bad. Life's different, but not crazy.

29:33So you get this false sense of security. And then when the second baby comes, it's like nobody, you had already given up, you'd already stopped worrying about it in a way. And the second one is the blind side, especially for the dad because for the mom who you didn't realize how much she was carrying the team, but now she has to focus on the new baby. and that means existing kid is your kid. And all of their needs and all of their time is like, you know, on your clock. And that is very, that's a big wake-up call. Just getting her socks on. Like that's like, it can be an ordeal. Like just like these small things that I just kind of dismissed.

30:09So I'm frankly, I'm not drowning, but my cup is a bit full. All right, here's another question. So this is, what is it, Gary V? It's the Gary V one. All right, so I like this one. Gary V wants to buy the Jets. Sam, you're working hard to grow Hampton now. Why are you doing all this? Are you trying to buy all the pawn shops in the US, brother? In all seriousness, what is the FU money purchase that you want if this is a home run? This is Tarek from the Bay. I guess that's the Bay Area. So when I moved to New York City, I got this like really big, nice apartment and I love it. And I've gotten so much joy having family come and stay and be comfortable that I have my eyes set on.

30:51I do, in the next couple of years, want to buy a huge, lavish, $15 or$25 million apartment. That is something that I definitely want. But more than anything, I saw this photo. A$15 or$20 million apartment is your goal? Why apartment? $50 or$20 million, shouldn't you be getting a city block? No, brother. It sucks. You'll get one of the brownstones, at least? It's an apartment? I don't want a brownstone. I've rented one before. I don't like them. I like having a doorman. What's the dream building? Is there a dream building in New York that's the cool one to be in? Well, it's different flavors. So there's this thing called Billionaire's Row, and it's right next to Central Park, and that's what a lot of the really rich tycoons, like Bill Ackman, lives there.

31:36And it's$100 million for a fancy apartment there. It's insane. It's just absolutely insane how rich some people are and how much this real estate costs. That's not my flavor. That's opulent. I mean, it's all opulent. if it's$20 million, but that's like, you know, like you're the master of the world type of apartment and it's all clean and cool looking. But what I'm really working to do, I don't like Donald Trump, but I saw this photo of him working at his office and he was like, had just left a meeting with a bunch of his employees and his wife and two kids, the boys, I forget their name, Don Jr.

32:10and the other guy, they came up to him while he was working. And the cool part was that they lived in the same, you know, he owned the building and they lived in the same building where he worked. And the kids could see him working and he was just able to do stuff. And it was like a total life integration, work-life integration. That's my dream. That's really what I'm working towards. I really want to do that. Wow. I never took you, Sam, to be the penthouse kind of guy. I'm not a penthouse type of guy, but I guess I am. I just said I wanted to buy a penthouse. Yeah, I think you just said that's your dream.

32:41Yeah, I think by definition. You're like, I'm not a penthouse type of guy yet. we used to have this funny thing on the pod where it was like you know we're just two entrepreneurs a big dream sean wants to buy the lakers and sam would love to buy a lake i feel like you were so much more likable then now not like manhattan sam you just lost like 30 points of likability with that answer what are you doing here telling the truth over here bro you know what it's rooted in it just so happens that i live in manhattan but really if i lived in like let's say uhst louis missouri i would say i want the fattest house in the cul-de-sac that has like a soccer goal in the back and like a basketball goal and like all the kids play in my yard.

33:21Like that's really what it's worth doing. It just so happens that I live in Manhattan. In order to do that, you have to spend$20 million. By the way, this Gary Vee buying the Jets thing, I've talked about this before. To me, this is like a masterclass in personal brand. So I always say like for a personal brand, you want these five Ds. One of the Ds is what's the dream? And if your dream is I want to make so much money, it's like crazy. I just want to be a billionaire. It just sounds greedy, right? So what Gary did, which is brilliant, is he's like, I want to buy the Jets. Now, there's a lot of brilliance in this.

33:52One, it gives him the air cover to go try to pursue a bunch of money without just seeming greedy. He didn't say, I want to buy the Yankees. He wanted to buy this lovable loser, his childhood team, the New York Jets, that's never done anything and try to turn them around. And so it's like, there's like a nobility to the mission. There's this like likability to the mission where it's like a turnaround project. Everybody likes an underdog type of deal. And it's something a lot of people remember about him, like something he dreams of doing. And so I think that Gary doing that is yet another example of Gary really understanding marketing and personal brand.

34:25Do you know how, so Sean and I like the UFC and at the UFC, after every fight, Dana White does a press conference and he lists like five or 10 stats. So who got the fight of the night, who got the bonus. And then one stat that he always lists is how much money they made at the gate. and it's supposed to mean like, this is how many fans came to the fight. But the tickets are like two grand. Like I went recently and it was like$800 for bad seats. And it's pretty funny that he is using that as like, look how many people are coming. It's like, dude, no, this is how much, you're just charging so much money for a ticket.

35:00So you're like bragging. It's sort of like when Gary says, like I've noticed in Gary's videos, people will be like, let me help you buy the Jets and achieve your dream. that's so much better than people saying let me put more money in your pocket and become a billionaire let me have you go from 150 million net worth to 450 million in net worth you know what I mean alright let's do another question or do you have one of these Sean? I don't it's got to be authentic right so like I don't actually have one you know to me I'm like I bought back my time that was the first purchase you know first important purchase buy my own time back buy my freedom and then it's like you invest in health so it's like I got a trainer I got a chef I'm doing everything I can for health for me and my family.

35:42And after that, I don't know, I guess it'd be fun experiences. I don't really have this burning desire to go purchase some really expensive thing. Morgan Hounsel wrote this thing in his book that really resonated with me. He goes, there's two ways to use money. Number one is as a tool to improve the quality of your life. And I nod. Yeah, that makes sense, right? That's buying your time. That's buying a nanny. It's about, you know, getting a personal trainer or something like that. And the other is as a measuring stick. And I realized that like all the big money purchases, like the things you would need tons and tons of money for, they tend to be measuring stick things.

36:20Like I've almost run out of like money as a tool to improve my life ideas. You know, I've done a lot of the big ones. And so I guess I don't really want to switch into that gear of money as money as a measuring stick. Yeah. But you enjoy that penthouse, Sam. I'm sure people will think you're very cool. All right, let's go to the next question. Dude, do you remember the kid's house when you were younger where it was like the open door where it was like a campus. Everyone can hang out. Yeah. I've aspired to be that forever. It just so happens that you have to spend a lot of money in Manhattan to do it.

36:57All right, let's do this one. Early on, you guys had a ton of friends on the show as guests. Give us OGs an update on the OGs. Where's Suli? Where's Ramon? Where's Jack Smith? Is there anyone else that I missed? So when Sean started MFM, the first 50 episodes maybe, a lot of people don't realize this, MFM is that like some number between 700 and 800 episodes. I don't remember exactly. The first some number, I don't know, 25 or 50, it was just Sean interviewing people. And all those people were being interviewed. And also you and I, when it was just, when I came on, it was just like 5 ,000 people listening.

37:34we basically just talked about our friends. And so for the OGs, they weren't... Or we had them on and be like, hey, what's up? What are you up to? You know, like that sort of deal. Before we were chasing clout, we were just hanging out with our buds. Once we figured out the YouTube algorithm, things changed. But before that, we invited our friends on the pod a lot. Okay, let's do an update. So Suli, do you want to talk about Suli? Okay, Suli is Suleiman Ali. He's one of our friends. He's one of my best buddies. There's a question later that I think will be a good explanation of who Sully is. But he's an entrepreneur.

38:06He built a company called TinyCo, which was like mobile games. So think like Candy Crush, but he licensed the IP for Family Guy. So he made like the Family Guy mobile game, the Harry Potter mobile game, those types of things. Sold Tiny for a bunch of money, nine figures. He then helped his brother start and sell native deodorant. So the Olly brothers are prolific and they've both been on the podcast. Suli did something that I really respect and admire, which was he was able to understand what matters. So he's like, Suli's in his 40s. He's been super successful. And when you're successful, like winners have options.

38:44You get deals put on your plate every day, things you could go invest in and make a bunch of money. You have people who want to come work for you and start companies with you. You have more knowledge about how to win in the game of business. And it is very tempting to just go and go get more success because success feels really good and you're good at it. And it's very tempting to do that because there might be other areas of your life that you're not so good at where you're not getting that same feedback loop of I'm awesome and this is awesome and my results are awesome. And what Sully did, which I thought was great, was he didn't make the mistake of just chasing more success.

39:18He started to look at those other areas. So first thing he did was he started working out religiously every day. like I started being like hey what are you like what are you working on today he's like I don't know but I scheduled my workout that's the most important thing that I did dude he takes more like workout classes than like a 23 year old Manhattanite woman who works in PR and he takes the same classes that she takes also he introduced me to like rumble boxing and I think my first Berries boot camp Berries so he loves the classes because he started doing that then he was like I want to have kids like that's the next chapter I want to have kids so he just had a kid and he has resisted the AI wave to focus on having a kid for now.

39:55We'll see what he does. I think he wants to take a very big swing in the world of AI and robotics. We'll see what happens, but he's a first-time dad. So that's the Suli update. Ramon is doing a very cool company called Afina. If you've ever looked in your house and looked at the tap and your tap water and you're like, I don't want to drink tap water. I want to drink clean water. I don't want water that has heavy metals in it, chemicals in it. A lot of people don't even know the water supply in most cities is very interlinked with the sewage system. It's a pretty gross thing to drink tap water, but we all bathe in tap water.

40:28We put it all over our naked bodies. And so Ramon has built a company that's around clean water for the home. And so it's started with a filtered showerhead. So how do you shower in water that's going to be clean on your skin and good for your hair? It's called Afina, and he's going into other categories with clean water for the home. And so Ramon's basically gone back to what he knows best, which is how do I sell stuff online? And he's just moved to more noble things. He started with, when he first came on the podcast was he was selling essentially soap opera, daytime soap opera spoilers. So like what's going to happen tomorrow on the young and the restless.

41:07And he sold that company for like nine or$10 million. It was a blog. Basically a soap opera blog. and he was only two years old. He sold for$10 million. When we talked about it, this was like such a viral story. And he's like a Dutch kickboxer. He's never seen a soap opera in his life, but he just loves to sell stuff online. He loves to figure out how to get traffic from one place to another and how to sell. And now he's selling things that actually, you know, improve people's lives a little bit more than the soap opera spoiler. So that's Ramon right now. You guys should go listen to his episode early on.

41:35So basically, yeah, he started a soap opera business that he sold for$9 or$10 million. Then he started a dog ramp company. so like if you're it was called Sausage Dog Central so sausage dogs can like use a ramp to get up in an SUV and saying grew to 18 million now he's doing a FINA and he's a single dad and his son's about to go to college or gearing up to go to college and he his kid is like the most well-mannered well-behaved kid so that's probably the best thing he's ever done is imagine he's been a single parent since his boy was two years old and now his kid has been but is still thriving Jack Smith so Jack Smith is our buddy Jack Smith so on paper he basically sold his company at the age of 29 or 28 for$850 million it was called Vungle now the intangibles or if you meet Jack Smith very quiet you'll have to you'll have to pull anything out of him he won't tell you anything if you ask what he does for work he'll say oh I like to play on computers like he won't tell you he's the in terms of what you said Sean about people wanting to flex he is the most non-flexing person I've ever met in my life.

42:40He's very special. One of my best friends, he now lives in Portugal and he's building, he just bought 50 acres of land on the coast of Portugal and he's building a meditation center. That's what he's doing. It's like digital detox meditation, right? Yeah. So he bought 50 acres of land and check this out. He has like a mobile home that he mostly lives in. And this little, like he, I think he has a house that he, now I think they've rented a house nearby, but for a little while, they were living in like a tiny home, him and his kid and his wife. And him and his wife are both tycoons. They're both incredibly successful people and they live very, very modest lives.

43:19And they're dedicating everything right now to building a retreat so people can like get into, I don't know, whatever you do when you meditate, self-awareness, calmness, Yeah, whatever those folks are. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes and then they told me I got to visit my local branch.

43:57And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team, all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. 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.

44:25All right, I got one that's tactical, practical, practical business question. So this is from Ben's brother. Ben's my business partner. This is from his brother, Sam. He says, I've been a realtor for the past decade. I've had good success. I made$300 ,000 a year for about a decade, but I hate how it just doesn't seem to be compounding. So I've decided it's time to make a change. Everything is on the table, buying a business, buying a franchise, flipping houses, getting a job. I'm not looking for specific prescriptive advice on what I should specifically do, but I'm looking for you guys to tell me how you would think about deciding the type of thing you'd look for next and how you would attack it.

45:03Have you read the, I think it's called The War, is it War on Art by Steven Pressfield? War of Art. War of Art, sorry. And he talks about this idea of the difference between like an amateur and a professional. And like an amateur maybe says that they have writer's block or that their creativity just hasn't come to them. Whereas a professional, they sit down at the same day and they get to work and they just write regardless of how they feel. You know, their emotion that day doesn't impact how they feel. They're a professional. You go to work. The things that I've noticed that have held a lot of people back is when they think about making money, or in Ben's case, or sorry, Sam's case, of what to do next, I think that they don't think of themselves as a company builder.

45:44I think that when you're thinking about what to do next, you have to think, how do I get enough traction to hire people to create a team and to create a proper company with a culture that solves a problem and has recurring customers. And I've noticed this like with a lot of real estate agents in particular, because they're one-off people. You know, it's like a one-person business oftentimes with just like an assistant. And I have a bone to pick a lot of times with these one-person companies that we talk about online all the time. They're incredibly interesting. But in general, in order to build a lot of value for yourself, you have to create, in my opinion, a company.

46:19And that's sort of this like vague term. But in my head, what that means is like employees who are all working together on a mission and who are creating an asset that has a lot of value, not just creating something that pays your salary. And so are you suggesting he take his current job where he's like, I put in hours and I get a commission out of it, selling at home and start to think about like, well, why don't I turn this into more of a brokerage? Or why don't I create a real estate team? And we're not going to sell. I sell 20 homes a year, but we could sell. Why couldn't we sell 300 if I was able to hire other people like me, maybe even better than me at selling homes, and organize us all under one brand as a company rather than me as a broker.

46:58John Rockefeller, who's I think the best businessman ever, famously said, I'd rather have 1 % effort from 100 people than 100 % effort from me. And I think that to be true, where the name of the game to creating a lot of value and something sustainable is to create something that involves getting other people organized and them doing a lot of the work. And that sounds very simplistic, but I don't think that's how a lot of people think about it. Yeah, so my answer would be, it's kind of like eating late at night. It's like, are you hungry or are you just bored? And a lot of what people think is hunger is actually just boredom.

47:36And so similarly, I think Sam wants to do something different. He's basically saying like, I've been a successful realtor for a long time, but I'm ready to buy a franchise, flip houses, like go do something completely different. Whereas I think you first would want to question the initial assumption, which was, he basically said, I'm making$300 ,000 a year for about a decade, but it just doesn't seem to be compounding. Well, why not? I've seen many brokers make way more money. If the goal is to make way more money or to work way less, I know many brokers that have done what you said, which is productize themselves or make a company out of what they're doing, make a team out of what they're doing and scale it.

48:13And so I think that would be the first instinct. But I guess my general advice for anybody who's trying to figure out what to do next is go talk to 20 people because the goal is to work backwards from a specific idea, not forwards from uncertainty. And what I mean by that is you go talk to 20 people who you think are having success in one way or one flavor or another. Now, what does that mean? That means you go talk to friends or your friends of friends. You go talk to local businesses. Once you realize that everything around you is a product made by a business, then you can go find the owner of that business and you can just chat with them or you can study what they do from afar.

48:46You want to find people who have similar backgrounds to you, like other realtors who then pivoted and did something bigger and better out of it. What did they do? And you're just searching for a blueprint that you can copy paste for yourself. And then you're going to, of course, you're going to tweak it as you go, but you're going to sort of steal like an artist. You're going to find something that already works and work backwards from that. So I think that's the first thing is like, have you, okay, he's talking about buying a franchise. Go talk to 20 franchisees. and see, is that like, do I want the life that they have?

49:14Does it seem like, do I want the inputs of the life, not just the output, right? Because yeah, everybody wants success, but do you want to do the things that they have to do in order to get the success? Does that sound like fun to you? Does it seem like things you're naturally good at? Is that the type of work you want to sign up to do 3000 times? Those are questions you got to ask yourself. And so I would go and try to look for blueprints. I look for first the people like me, what did they do? And then, you know, maybe go a little bit further out on the weirdness scale and find other things. And then once you go look at those blueprints, something will scream out at you of like some combination of that looks fun to try.

49:49I think I could do that. I like the lifestyle that comes with doing that. And that will give you more direction on where to go. And so I think people don't really think about business as blueprints. They think they need to be original. And instead, I think you should largely look for existing blueprints that many people have done and say, which one of those do I want to do? Do you know this guy, Sam? Yeah, I've talked to him a bunch. This is Ben's brother. Well, I guess we're going to follow up with him. Oh, there's one other thing. This is specific to Ben's brother that is a challenge for him.

50:21He doesn't make time to search. So every time I talk to him, I'm like, great, what are you thinking about now? And he's made so little progress in the time. And the reason why is because he's got his job. Then he also bought into a restaurant. He owns a piece of a restaurant. He spends a bunch of time trying to make sure that restaurant doesn't fail because he doesn't want that restaurant to fail. And I'm like, so how much time are you dedicating to this? He's like, oh, like, you know, whenever I have free time. It's like, how much free time you got? Not a lot. And so I think you, if you want to actually make a change, you need to first clear your plate a little bit and create some space to actually work on the thing and work on the thing and like dedicated religious time.

51:00That's like as sacred as your work, as sacred as going to the gym, as sacred as other things you make time for. And so I think for him, he's got to find, you know, two, three hours a day that he's going to spend doing this and specifically mark it off on his calendar and be like, I might sell less homes this year and I'm okay with that trade because I'm working on building the next thing. I think people don't really make specific concrete time. They try to hope that like in the extra time I have and you don't have extra time. That's a great, great answer. Can I pick the last one? Yeah, go for it.

51:30This is hilarious. This is a great one. So this is from Peter J. One of my favorite American traditions is that when you get arrested, you get one phone call. That has to be one of the highest stakes calls ever. I almost want to get arrested just to feel the rush of that one phone call rule when they place the phone call, when they place that phone in your hands. Anyway, what's your one phone call when it comes to business? When you need advice or you're in a tough spot, who's that one call you're going to make and why? That's a good question. And that is a great question, Peter Jay. Yes, I definitely have one.

52:05Do you? I have one. You go first. Do you know who Barry Diller is? Barry Diller is the founder of IAC. You know, he's like a deal maker, whatever that phrase is supposed to mean. He's your phone call? Isn't he like 85? He's not my phone call. But he's like a guy who like kind of knows everyone. And he is just like, he owns this huge conglomerate. And he's just a little bit of a business savant when it comes to like numbers. A little bit like Ari Emanuel, where he just kind of like knows deals. And he just knows numbers and he spots value and he organizes people around it. Austin Reef is one of those two guys, but at the age of 30.

52:40Austin Reef is one of my best friends. Austin Reef started as a company called Morning Brew. I had a company called The Hustle, both daily business newsletters. They were a little bit more finance. We were more entrepreneurial and tech. But when we were both getting going, I hated him. I wanted to kill him. Not because of him, just because we were competitors. We both sold our company. And we both were in the same core group of Hampton. One of the reasons I moved to where I live is because I'm down the street from him. He's one of my best friends. I love him like family. and he is probably the smartest business person I've ever met because A, I do think he is like genius level.

53:10I'm pretty sure he got like a perfect school in the SATs. But B, he approaches things with the perfect balance of something must have soul and you must love it and you must be passionate. But then for any problem that I have, he's very, very good at taking away the passion and the energy and the emotion away from the actual logistics. And he's very pragmatic. He's the best person I've ever experienced when it comes to asking advice on a certain issue. It sounds like very similar, honestly, to Suli. Yeah, that's a great one. My answer is Suli, no secret here. My rule for the person you would call, right?

53:43If you think about the jail phone call, you would want three things. One, they have to care. I want this to be like the dad from Taken when his daughter is taken and he's like, oh, okay, it's on now, right? You want the person when you come to them with your personal life problem, that it becomes their personal life problem. And Suli is like that. He had a friend from high school who was a dentist. I don't think he talked to him in several years. And he was like, hey, I know you're in the business world. We've gone our separate ways since high school, but I'm trying to sell my practice. Any tips for me?

54:15And Suli flew out there and made it his mission to help his friend sell his dental practice business and had this incredible outcome. When was this? This was a couple years ago, two years ago, maybe. That's incredible. And so second, they need to be wiser than me. So I want you to have seen 10 times more data points and be better at putting together those data points so that when I come to you with noise and panic, you just see the signal. You know what to ignore and what to focus on. And then lastly, I want that person to basically live rent-free in my head afterwards, which is what I have now.

54:47I don't even need to call him anymore. It's just, oh, what would Sully say? Oh, he'd say this. Okay, I'm just going to do that thing, right? That's as simple as it's become. I spend enough time with him to know what he would say in 90 % of these situations. Can I give you two fun facts about calling people from jail? I used to be a problematic person and I had to experience this a couple of times. The first thing that I've realized, people learn this the second time they go to jail. You have to write down the phone number of the person you want to call on your hand because you don't remember any...

55:17Yeah, you don't know anyone's phone number. You don't know anyone. So the second time I did this when I was getting arrested, I looked at my buddy, I go, I go, hey, can you run and grab the Sharpie and write your number on my hand for me, please. That's what you have to do because cell phones don't show up in yellow or white pages. The second thing, here's the bad part. It might be different now. Thank God I've not had to experience this in over a decade. Most cell phones don't accept collect calls. So you hit a dead end right away? Dead end, dead end. So you have to figure out how to make it work.

55:48You got to call someone with a landline who happens to be at home. I just Googled it. I think Verizon accepts it, but most do not. That's ridiculous. Maybe it has changed. Also, I know a lot. Most of my friends, the real problem with this is most of my friends don't even pick up phone calls. So it needs to be like a text from jail. It usually says it. It'll say like Bay Area or Sacramento County Correctional or something like that. Do you know what's crazy? I think one in five American men have been arrested at least once. Do you have any friends besides me who have been arrested? Yeah, of course.

56:27Good. You have friends in dark places.

56:34I'm going to give you two times that Sully was this call, what I asked and what he said. The first time, I was trying to figure out if we should sell the milk road. We had gotten an offer to sell the business, and we were debating, should we take it, should we not? and we were spinning in circles, basically writing these pros and cons lists of like why we would sell, blah, blah, blah. And then like why we shouldn't sell or like we should sell, but only at this price or that price. Is this enough? Is that enough, right? It was like so confusing. We were just tied up in a knot. So we call Sui and he just listens to us for five minutes and he goes, all right, how about we put away the pros and cons list?

57:15Because listen, you're selling your company. Do you want to sell your company or not? You should have a visceral gut reaction when I say you're selling your company. And either that gut reaction is yes or it's no. And if you don't know, don't do anything. You don't need to make any decisions here. And just simplifying it to, you need a visceral gut reaction. What is that visceral gut reaction when I say this sentence? It became very clear to me what I want to do. I wanted to sell the business. So that was the first time that was like a lot of clarity in a very short amount of time. The second one was my e-commerce business.

57:45I was like, hey, you know a ton about e-com. mom, your brother built native deodorant, you helped him with that, you yourself have done e-commerce. I want you to help me with strategy. Can we do a call where I ask you questions, pick your brain on strategy, and we figure out, I want to come up with a good growth strategy. And so here I am, and I show up to that meeting. I'm ready to have a strategy talk. And five minutes before the meeting, it just says, Celia shared a Google Doc with you. And the Google Doc is a list of 40 shitty things about our website, our email pop-ups, our welcome email flow our SMS sequence our Facebook ad copy like he just went looked at our funnel and just wrote 40 things that we're doing that probably could be done better and he was like we get on the call and I'm like oh so like like should we talk strategy he's like this is the strategy the strategy is you look at your product you figure out everything that sucks you fix it and then we do this again in two weeks and we do that again and again and again until there's like not that many things that suck anymore and like that's the strategy and that really just like shook me and I was like oh that's how winners operate got it I thought this guy's so smart he's going to say something brilliant no he just drilled in and looked at the details and was like why are we doing this this took three seconds to load make that faster this is this is the wrong photo for this we should put that photo up here this copy is weak let's find better copy you know like that sort of thing dude the smart people I've noticed or the people I admire they tend to be like I don't know if he would fall in this category but he it wouldn't surprise me if he's like in the traditional sense of genius level IQ like a perfect score on the standardized test type of but they're also really good at just kind of being a caveman it's the midwit meme where they like are incredibly brilliant so I've seen him talk about like some financial instruments and stuff in a very sophisticated way that I didn't understand entirely where it was as if he had to like read a book on it, like a textbook on it, particularly when you're talking about tax structures and things like that.

59:46It's as if he literally has read the tax code. But then he's also given me advice. He's like, why aren't you doing this? And I'll say some answer just like you did. I'm like, well, do you want to sell? I think yes. Okay, sell. He's done that with me many times. Just these rudimentary, very like child, honestly, it's like a child. Right. It's like, you should do this because you want to do this. There's a meeting I had with the now CEO of Twitch. When I was at Twitch, we got acquired. This guy became my boss for a period of time. His name is Dan Clancy. And I go into Dan's office and he asked me some questions.

1:00:27He's like, I'm the new chief product officer at the time. Now he's CEO, but he's chief product officer then. I want to tell you a little bit about how I work, how I operate. first 100 days, I'm just going to ask a lot of questions. I want to go meet people at the front lines, not talk to managers. Some standards, kind of first 100 days stuff. And then he goes, and then from there, you'll see me work like this. And he took a marker and he drew on the whiteboard. He goes, do you know what a square line curve looks like? And I was like, sure don't. And he goes, you know what a sine wave is? I was like, yeah, it's kind of like an up and down, the music-y, heartbeat-y looking thing, right?

1:01:03And he's like, yeah, yes, that's a sine curve. and he's like, it's this like smooth round thing. A square curve looks like this. And he basically drew like a straight flat line. He goes, I'll spend a lot of time at the 10 ,000 foot level. Basically figuring out like big picture priorities, what matters, you know, what are the three things we need to do to win? Like, where are the key levers? What do we have to get right? What makes this whole thing work? And so he's like, I'll spend a bunch of time here. And then as soon as I find some problem, I go like this, straight down all the way to a level of depth that you will find confusing and amusing.

1:01:38Like, wait, why does he care about the pixels and the color and the copy and the this and the that? Like the details of this area. He's like, and I stay there for a little bit. And then I go back up. And he's like, this is how I work. I will be at the 10 ,000 foot. I'll drop down to 10 centimeters. I'll stay there. I'll go back to 10 ,000 feet. I'll stay there. And he's like, that is how I work. And ever since I saw that, I realized, oh, this is what Paul Graham and those people meant when they said founder mode. This is what founder mode is. Founder mode is being able to simultaneously hold in your head the big idea, the North Star, the vision, the direction we need to go, and then being able to dive down into the absolute most simple details of those areas that are problematic and roll up your sleeves, solve the problem side by side with the team, and then go back up for air.

1:02:23Would this guy want to come on MFM? Yeah, we should have Dan on. That'd be fun, actually. Because you guys who are listening, you got to Google this guy. First of all, he does not look like the CEO of Twitch. You would think. I would think it'd be like a Red Bull looking bro. This guy looks like he's 61. And he's got... He looks like he's got all the t-shirts from the Grateful Dead tours. Yeah. He looks wise just because he looks older than the average Twitch user. But he's got long white hair, a goatee. he looks like he should be studying philosophy or like giving a lecture on like man's search for meaning.

1:03:04But he's a Twitch guy. This is so fascinating to me. This guy looks awesome. I would love to hang out with this guy. He's very wise. I talked to him, like I remember once he was like, so what do you want to do? Like it was like a one-on-one, like a career talk. And I go in and, you know, I just got acquired into the company. My career plan at Twitch was like, earn this vest check and get the hell out of here, right? Like that was just like the general mindset. I wasn't trying to think about my 10-year career at Twitch. That was like, that would be losing. So I walk in, I'm like, what am I going to say?

1:03:33Do I need to like fake the funk here and tell this guy like, I really want to get this promotion. And in 10 years, I see myself here as a senior VP, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that wasn't true. So am I going to lie? Or do I tell him the truth? But then like, is he going to be like, F this kid and like, you know, check out on me, right? Because I'm checked out on the long, long term with Twitch. Short term, I was going to try. But like long term, I wasn't going to be there. So I told him the truth. that was like, yeah, long-term, I'm not here. He goes, okay, great. So we don't need to worry about this pile of stuff.

1:04:01So tell me, what is it that you do want to do? And I started telling him this thing that I had told many people before about how I wanted to start a university someday and like blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah. And I had this very logical, in order to do that, first I need to do this and get the capital and the network and the skills. And then those three things are the core components that you need to be able to pull this off. And he just looked at me and goes, yeah, I don't buy any of that. I was like, oh shit, okay, what? And, you know, somebody who could call bullshit is generally like somebody you want as a friend.

1:04:32And he was like, I don't believe in the deferred life plan. Like, I don't believe you need to do all these prerequisites to go do the thing you want to do. I think more often you're better served just going and doing the thing you really want to do if you really want to go do it. And if you don't really want to go do it, just say you don't want to do it. Figure out what you do want to do and go do that instead. And, you know, just immediately cutting through the BS. I had like 10 interactions like this with him where I go into his office and I come out with some nugget of wisdom that really shifted the way I think because this guy's just been around, done a lot of things.

1:05:03He worked early at Google. He worked directly with Larry. Sundar, who's now the CEO, was a peer of his at the time. He was in that circle of 15 up-and-comers that were one of them might be the CEO of Google one day. That's who this guy is. I just think it's funny to imagine this guy having a meeting on iShowSpeed. well he's like gone on his stream there's like videos of him like going and hanging out with him and going on their streams and stuff and it's it is a fish out of water for sure but you know but props to him for doing it because it would be pretty easy to just retreat to the ivory tower and like try to be like this kind of corporate person behind the scenes and instead he's like no i'm gonna do this dan if you if this makes it to you we would love to have you on i know i'm personally trying to learn how to like be a proper ceo and like it sounds like you're amazing at all the things I aspire to learn.

1:05:51This would be awesome if you came on. This guy seems badass. I also want to know what he thought of you, Sean. I also want to know that. There's one more I want to do. One more I want to do. So this question comes from Brian from Austin. He says, my guess is that there's been over a thousand business ideas shared on the podcast. Don't need a list, just gut reaction. What is an idea you wish somebody ran with that has been said before on the podcast? You got five, four, three, two, one, go. And so I have one for this. I don't know if any ideas come to you initially for this. You're going to laugh at mine.

1:06:23What's yours? So I like hardware just as a fan. I like gadgets. I don't know anything about them. But people thought I was joking about making a really good washer and dryer. That's one. But I have seen the Matic. Have you seen Matic? It's like a new Roomba. New Roomba, yeah. It's a$1 ,000 Roomba that I absolutely love. we have seen like figure you know with robots that's like kind of like fits the stereotype of like these big things but we've seen nest i've seen all these like really cool gadget companies like gadgets yeah yeah like the dyson they've done a good job oven it's like a fancy convection oven and not all of them like like june hasn't haven't totally hit i think but like i don't know what i think it failed yeah but there are a handful that seem silly like a nest or like a um a ring camera uh but they actually were so cool and they did revolutionize an industry and i always thought that could be one of them.

1:07:16And so I'm shocked no one has pounced on that. What about yours? Mine is not the biggest idea, but it's one that I wish existed and I think would totally win if somebody had the right amount of hustle. It's the youth sports combine. So professional sports have combines where you go, you get measured, your height, your weight, your wingspan, your vertical leap, your strength, your speed, all of that. Well, as I've had kids and as I've met most of my friends have had kids, I have seen the absolute money hurricane that is youth sports. And so the idea here was to create a city to city traveling tour similar to Tough Mudder.

1:07:53But your goal is you go into a city and you say, hey, if you're a youth athlete, if you're, you know, whatever, it could be as young as whatever, five years old, all the way up to 18 years old, come get tested, get your 40 yard dash, your vertical leap, your height, your weight, your body fat, all the attributes that go into becoming an athlete. Every city you go to, I think you get somewhere between 1 ,000 and 2 ,000 kids to show up easily. I think you could charge$120 a pop. I think you could charge a little bit extra for either a printed photo or for storing your data for the long term. If you just do the math on that, so 1 ,500 kids, let's say, 2 ,000 kids, something like that, you're basically making 200 grand a weekend in every city you go to.

1:08:36You do that 50 weeks out of the year. you have a$10 million a year business that is going to dominate one angle. And I think you can upsell training and camps and the data. And there's a bunch of other things you could do on top of that. But to me, I can't believe this doesn't exist. With the amount of money I see poured into youth sports, I cannot believe there's not somebody that's doing the fitness testing, the standardized testing, the SATs for athleticism. That I cannot believe that nobody's built. I really want to be a part of this if somebody wants to do it. I don't want the hustle to do it.

1:09:06but if somebody else has the time and hustle, I really want to be a part of that. What sports do you want your kids to be good at? Every parent has this, by the way. This is a great question. So there's two factors here. One is what are the sports that I love? So basketball. And the second is what are the sports that I strategically would choose? So for example, baseball, out. I'm out. My son, I don't want him to know what a baseball glove looks like. I don't even want him to see it. Why? Because he's going to stand around for three hours. I'm going to sit around for three hours. Nothing's going to happen.

1:09:38That is like the worst sport for a kid to be in like that. I just took my kids skiing. Great time. Not going to double down in skiing. Skiing is like this weather dependent, location dependent, equipment dependent, like injury prone. Dude, it's so dangerous too. Expensive, dangerous, impossible to access sport. I went skiing recently and I saw old people going down these hills and they go so fast. Yeah. It's crazy to me. I get it. It's so dangerous. Families have fun together. It's fine as a hobby. It's fine as a family vacation. I don't want my kids to be doing it as a sport. Soccer. My kids love soccer right now, and I hate it.

1:10:14I want to get them out of it, but I can't do it yet. They love it too much. But the idea of soccer, we're like, dude, nobody scores in soccer. You can be amazing, and you're just not going to score. There's so little reward in soccer. It's crazy. I had a friend once whose parents sat him down when he was in seventh grade, and they're like, look, the big four, we're not doing it. You guys don't have the raw athleticism to succeed at the higher levels of this. You want to play varsity, you want to go to college, it's not going to happen. Am I interested in water polo? Am I interested in these niche sports where you're not going to compete against the best athletes?

1:10:47So I think there's a strategic part to it too. But of course, whatever my kids like, great. But I'm going to try to expose them to sports like tennis, which I think is a great sport for the mind and body. Tennis is the one that we're definitely going for. Basketball is another because I just know it so well. I had such a good experience that I can't say no to that one. Tennis is ours. It's one of the only sports where the men and women appear equal in terms of status. And you could play it forever. You could play forever. The best athletes don't go into it. It's not as super athleticism dependent.

1:11:23So hard work takes you a long way there. It's an individual sport or it could be a team sport depending on how you want to do it. there's a huge mental component to it, like controlling your own psyche and being both competitive, but there's feedback loop every single point that you have to recover from. So I think there's a lot of good things that you get out of tennis. Also, martial arts would be the other one that I think is pretty cool for kids to be in for a period of time. Yeah, if I could wave a magic wand, my kids would be very interested in tennis. And then I want to do some type of individual fitness sport.

1:11:53So that could be wrestling, martial arts, track and field, cross country, swimming, something where you have to like, It's just you versus a clock, and it's just totally objective, and you've just got to grit through it and dedicate a lot of time and just put in the hours. Did you play team sports growing up? Any? As a kid, yeah, and I was all right at it. I was never terribly—I mean, you've seen me play sports. I'm not terribly coordinated, but I always had attributes where I could always jump and run, and I was strong. But I was never good enough where I could catch a ball and learn how to—the skill part never— It was always very hard for me.

1:12:30You know, I always looked like a giraffe. I was always like a dancing giraffe. I wasn't very coordinated. All right, 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. All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit, and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue.

1:13:06In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.