#104 - Why You Should Be Studying MLMs

We're back. It's My First Million. I'm Sean, and I'm joined by Sam. On this episode, we talk about a bunch of different topics. We debrief our Tai Lopez experience. We have a bunch of ideas around trade associations, licensing popular brands and using them in funky ways. Sam got a speeding ticket and has an idea around police radar detectors. And then we just have a couple of stories and frameworks around coming up with new ideas, such as a little trick I use with MLMs. It's a good episode, me and Sam, and hope you guys enjoy. Uh-huh.

Yeah.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. We're live. We are live. Before we get into ideas, we gotta recap, right?

Yeah, I think we should debrief.

So on— we recorded it on Thursday, went live on Friday. I got a ton of messages. We had Tai Lopez on, so listen to that last episode. What did you think, Sean?

I think I, I actually felt like my, my, my outlook was similar to, I think, how most— what most people messaged me afterwards, or at least it felt that way, uh, which was I thought it was a semi-interest— I thought it was an interesting episode. I thought it got interesting later. I thought the beginning he was kind of monologuing and doing his thing. He wasn't really saying new stuff necessarily, but I thought it got interesting. I think he's a total character, and I'm fascinated by him. Like, I sent you this tweet he put out yesterday, which is like, he took a selfie in the mirror and he's like, he looks like the— you know, he looks like someone from The Incredibles. He's like super, super jacked, which I couldn't tell when we were doing our recording. I couldn't get that. I didn't get that feeling at all.

I did a little bit. You could see he looked fit.

Yeah, he looked fit, but like, dude, this picture looks crazy. But it was just added to the, like, just how hilarious of a character he is and how over, like, over the top and larger than life in many ways. So anyways, I thought it was interesting. I thought he, you know, was pretty open. I thought, yeah, he does this thing where he kind of like redirects conversations towards what he wants, which is fair. Like most kind of successful persuasive people I've seen have this talent. He uses that talent a lot. But I thought he was fairly open. I thought he was down to answer any questions. He didn't— we've had people come on and are like, I can't talk about that, and you know, blah blah blah. He didn't have any of that in his, in his, in his talk. And then the other thing was the people who hated him before still hated him, uh, the people who loved him before still loved him, and then the people on the fence I think leaned towards, he's a smart dude, he's interesting, I like him, I like him more now than I did before. That's how I read it.

I think that you in particular— I told you this when I was texting you— you did a really good job of pressing him. I didn't really press him so hard. I, um, I think that someone once wrote this review on the podcast that we congratulate ourselves a lot, so I'm always trying to be aware when I do it. But I would say you did a very good job of pressing him. I think that I would have— we probably both would have been even better if it were in person. It was a little bit hard to interrupt him when he was speaking, for sure, because there was one— a few times where we both wanted to say stuff and we accidentally had mute on or something like that. And so I wish we could have done it in person, but it was cool. I got, I got dozens and dozens and dozens of like messages from people who are, um, I was shocked were listeners. And I thought, I was like, oh wow, this is cool. This was good. Did you get a lot of messages?

I did.

Yeah.

I got text messages that were like, oh my God, my bullshit radar is going, is beeping off like crazy. Uh, for, you know, for little things like he wouldn't share his age. And it's like, it's one thing to not share certain numbers, but like when you don't share your age, it like just reinforces this belief that way, are you kind of shady? Which I just found funny. I don't even understand why he wasn't sharing it, but whatever. And then other people were like, like some people did these really insightful recaps where they were like, they wrote blog posts or they tweeted. I retweeted a few of them. But one thing that I thought was cool was people were very like reflective of, okay, I felt this way about it. Like, you know, where do I stand? Uh, and, and what does this mean about me? And like, what parts can I give him credit for? What parts Do I feel, you know, he was kind of overhyping? And I just thought people had like an introspective— some people had like a very introspective response to it, which I thought was kind of, I don't know, interesting. It's not what I expected. We never really had that. I never felt that with any other episode.

I felt pride because I think that like in the world that we live in right now with the election coming up and everything, we live in a very polarizing environment. And I'm really proud of the audience that— and the brand that we're building and the community and the listeners and ourselves because we are all pretty reasonable about listening to different perspectives and different ideas and not being too harsh and understanding that there's two sides to every story. And I felt really proud about that, where there were some people who I'm really good friends with, like Andrew was like, yeah, I'm still— I— he— our friend Andrew was very vocal where he was like, yeah, I disagree with you guys entirely. That's cool. Wonderful. It's okay to have friends that disagree. But in general, even people who disagree were like, I disagree. I understand their opinion though. And I think that made me very prideful. I felt wonderful.

Yeah, I felt good about that. And the other thing, I actually don't think we did a great job pressing him. The reason why is I didn't do a ton of research. Like a lot of people who really don't like this guy, it's because they've looked into a whole bunch of things. They've read all the Reddit forums, they've watched the YouTube teardowns, and like they, they, they know more info. That's not— I really wasn't interested in tearing the guy down or like doing investigative journalism. That really wasn't what was interesting to me. I sort of just assumed going in, this guy's a pretty talented marketer. He took advantage early on the YouTube platform and he did what a lot of people do. He sold, you know, kind of a dream. And he probably, you know, his content was probably good, not completely original, but who cares? He curated good content, gave it to people. If you actually applied that in your life, it would have helped you. If you didn't, it wouldn't have helped you. Probably was kind of aggressive on certain pricing tactics, or like, you know, certain things. I may have crossed the line on certain areas. I'm— I don't really know. I don't— personally, that was less interesting to me. Just like during the convo, I was like, you know, people get all up in arms. Did you rent the Lambo? Did you lease?

Yeah, that was bullshit. Who cares?

Who cares? I, I personally just don't care about that. And so I think some people who cared about that felt like Dude, you let him off the hook. You guys didn't look into enough. But it's just like, I didn't care about that. That's not what was interesting to me. I would have somebody on here who's a total internet scammer or somebody who's a hacker, somebody who hacked a Bitcoin exchange. That doesn't mean I think they did a good thing, but I'd be fascinated to talk to that person and understand, who are you? Why do you do this? What's cool about this? Are there two sides to this story? What's your point of view? You know, like, I'm just more of an interested person and less, uh, I'm not trying to be the cops. And I think some people wanted us to be the, you know, the cops and sort of waterboard them. And that's just— I wouldn't have done that to anybody. It's not really what I'm interested in.

Yeah, I didn't really care about the whole leasing the cars thing. That didn't matter to me. One, I will say, though, one thing that's fun about that. So whenever I hear of someone interesting, I always type in their name into Google followed by the word house. One way that you can figure out if someone's legit is by their real estate holdings. And if they're a big deal, typically their home purchases come up on Google, which is fun. And I'm, you know, that Grant Cardone guy. What's his name? Grant Cardone. I don't know how I feel about him, but he has this private jet and I noticed that the seats have his name embroidered into the seats and I'm like, oh shit, that's like a legit— I'm like, holy moly, that whatever he's doing, he's got some cash somehow. So that's like a funny time.

We can get Grant on here. He used to use our product a ton. So I've been around. I've talked to him a bunch of times.

Let's do it. I would like to have— I think I either have his number. I definitely have his email.

So I think we can get him on.

My friend Ramit Sethi, who we also have to get on, he was like, dude, he— his name is embroidered on his seats. He's like, that's a legit— he owns that jet. And I thought that was funny. And then last thing was Ty kept saying Silicon Valley, huge pet peeve, but that's okay, whatever. That's not important. But what he— something he kept doing and our friends from Silicon Valley kept doing this where they were like, Ty would say Silicon Valley sucks for this reason. And then our Silicon Valley friends were like, you internet marketers suck for this reason. And I'm like, you guys are all like kind of the same. We're all this. I mean, it's like the same shit. It's like Ty definitely was quirky, like a little Asperger-y. A lot of our friends are kind of Asperger-y. Like they all like say the same, like their strategy is the same thing to charge a lot of money for quality products and to hold companies forever and do this. And it's all the same. They're all the same per— they all agree on a lot of the same stuff.

Yeah, I don't think, I don't think they're exactly the same, but I think they have similar— than they think. The second thing is they're both hypocritical about each other, right? So like, for example, when Reddit got started, the founders said, you know, we went on, we created 30 different accounts, and we would be commenting on all the different posts to make it look like there was activity, right? That was their fake it till they make it strategy. Airbnb sort of famously got exposed for early on they would scrape Craigslist, pull the listings automatically without the permission of the homeowner, post it on Airbnb as an Airbnb listing, and then email under a fake name, Jenny, to different people being like, "Hey, I would love to rent your place, but do you guys use Airbnb? Like, I prefer Airbnb. It's much safer over there." And that's how they grew awareness. It's sort of a black hat technique. There was no Jenny. They did this without permission.. And like these are like some of the— Airbnb has one of the best brands in Silicon Valley, is like kind of an awesome company that people look up to and like, you know, it's admirable. Um, and maybe Tai Lopez, you know, maybe he has his own versions of either faking it till he makes it or, you know, charging in some kind of like, you know, duplicitous way or whatever. I don't know. There's— I have tons of examples on both sides where both sides have a ton of dirty laundry. Internet marketers do, and so do Silicon Valley companies. Um, so I think it's sort of hypocritical to be like really virtuous, which I think was his point, was like there's a lot of virtue signaling in good old Silicon Valley. But yeah, whatever, I don't know, enough about Tai Lopez. I feel like, you know, you're gonna feel— you're gonna feel about it. I feel like we did a decent job of it. I was interested in it, and I don't hate the guy or think he's like, you know, the worst thing ever invented like some people.

I would totally hang out with him. I would absolutely hang out with him. Did he text you, by the way? He asked me for your number. Yeah, I was like, that's kind of cool, you're Texan Thai. He's like some guy that like— he said 7 out of 10 young men in America knew who he was, and I bet I believe that.

Yeah, you know, I think he— I don't know, he's a character. What's there to hate about this guy? But if you hate him, whatever, you have your reasons to hate him. Uh, if you love him, you have your reasons to love him. I don't really care either way on that. Uh, my personal opinion is I think he's talented. I I think he's a character and I think he's an over-the-top character and I find that fascinating. I think he has some tells where he overhypes and he quotes Buffett and he quotes— he's just a quote machine to kind of give himself credibility. Like, I'm doing this thing. Well, oh, here's a quote from Socrates that tells you why I'm doing this thing. And like, there's a talent in that, but it also reveals a little bit of like, well, can your actions and can your logic just stand for itself? You know, there's, That's, that's usually a masking technique that people use to do that. But like, whatever, I don't know, I'm cool with him. I think, I think he's an interesting dude.

Well, we, we've milked it for all it's worth, so good on us. Uh, you want to talk about ideas?

Yeah, let's do it.

Um, I'll bring one up first. Okay, so Ryan Beagleman, our mutual friend, tells me about this all the time, and I have been interested in it a little bit. What do you know about trade associations?

Anything? Just that they exist and that they, they sort of have this like very beautiful business model where they're charging everybody for kind of like pretty simple amount of value.

Mechanical, civil.

Yeah. Yeah. Like all, you know, whatever it is, there's a bunch like that. There are so many trade associations and I actually, there's this one trade, there's this one email list that I used to use to post my job ins when I needed an office management manager. It was called the Org Org. Have you heard of the Org Org?

Yes. This is for office managers, right?

Yeah. This young woman started it. I think she was like really young and it was just like an email list. That's all it was. But it was like super effective. And it, when I, when you hear the Org Org, I'm like, oh, this is like some silly email list. It's not that big of a deal. And then I see this business, the Society for Human Research Management. I'm like, oh my God, this thing could actually probably be huge if you. So anyway, kind of a cool business model. What do you think?

Yeah, and, uh, for anyone interested in this business model, maybe we'll do a deep dive later on But they— trends, we did one on like peer groups and those are not beautiful. Those are a lot harder than they look. But if they work, they're beautiful. But a lot of trade groups are nonprofits. So you can research any type of trade group. And if you Google like for like the name of the trade association, then revenue or name of the trade association and then what's the nonprofit filing number?

—like 513?

Yeah, if you Google that word, that phrase, or if you Google the trade association followed by annual report, they all reveal all their revenue expenses. So you can be like, oh, wow, so this group charges 300,000 people $1,000 a year, and they charge the company. It's like, it gives you the total playbook on how to do it. So pretty cool. So I saw this, and I thought that was interesting. What else could this work for? Frankly, it could probably work for the same thing. You could probably just do another HR one. All right. Today's episode is brought to you by Tempo. Tempo.fit is the website. I actually use this. I've used this for a few months now, and it's this machine that has a touchscreen and this 3D sensor. And what it does is they give you weights like 115 pounds in weights, and it's for strength training. So what it is, is it measures your body and it sees how much weight you're lifting. It sees how many reps you're doing and how much effort you're putting in, what your heart rate is. It's pretty amazing. And then you have a coach on screen walking you through what to lift, how many to lift, what workout to do, whether you want to do a 20-minute, 10-minute, 50-minute workout. It's pretty amazing. But the best part is the leaderboard. The other stuff, all the features that they have, that's cool. But I'm obsessed with the leaderboard because it measures how many reps you're doing and how much volume you're doing. And you can compete with other people who have taken the same class. So it's made me want to work harder, lift more weight. Or have more endurance. It's just pretty frickin' fun. And the whole point of working hard is to have money so you can spend it on stuff that will make you live longer. And this product, Tempo, it checks that box for me. So they're our sponsor today. If you use the code TEMPOHUSTLE, you'll get $100 off. So tempo.fit is the URL and TEMPOHUSTLE, one word, you'll get $100 off. So check it out. I use it. If you look me up on Twitter, you'll see I'm always filming videos where I'm talking to that company saying I'm trying to crush their employees on the leaderboard. Cause I actually love this thing and I, and I use it all the time. So check it out.

How many Uber drivers do you think there are? I have no idea. Over a million, I think.

Yeah, there's a lot. There's— I think there's over a million. I pray you try to find that for us. But, uh, yeah, I think there's over a million.

Wow. Yeah, that's a cool idea. The gig working thing is, uh, yeah, that's neat. That's cool. Um, historically, like, AARP is like one of the greatest trade organ. It's not a trade organ, but like membership groups of all time. And then, uh, uh, it's pretty cool. I guess it's kind of like a union.

And that's pretty interesting. And, you know, you can also do this with other groups that like, let's say, traditionally don't have this. So I would try to find what are the common characteristics of this. Is it you need to have like, let's say, a million plus people in the profession, right? Maybe that's the commonality. Uh, maybe it's that they, they all are looking for certain resources. I, I don't actually know what, what value these guys have. Do you, do you know like what's the If I joined the Society for Human Resource Management or whatever, I know with ARP there's like discounts, but for, for the HR one, what is the core benefit I get?

Yeah, why is this a must join? Let me give you like the, um, their, their, what they say is education, certification, networking, as well as lobbying Congress on issues regarding labor management. That's what they say. Now, they also really— they— where they make a lot of money is conferences. So a lot of like trade shows. So like, I mean, it makes sense if— if I would totally send our HR person to this. I'm like, hey, there's like this thing, it's $4,000, it's a 2-day event. You want to go and learn best practices on how to— like, what's like for right now? Be like, hey, like remote work's a thing. How do you like fire people remotely and get your equipment back? Like maybe that's just like a— maybe that's just like a conference topic. I'm like, yeah, sure, it sounds good. If this— if our HR person wanted to go, I would say, yeah, no problem. And so it's mostly education and they monetize that education with conferences, right? I think this—

I think it's a good to-do for us to go say, go figure out, okay, what is the core? Is there a common core benefit that the trade associations provide? Maybe it's education. Certification I know is one, like personal trainers have to do this where they have to keep their certifications up to date. And it's this giant, like, essentially a scam where you have to— you just have to keep paying $120 a year or whatever just to keep your certification, like, valid. And your certification— nobody cares if you have that certification if they're— if you're their trainer anyways. They, you know, take one look at your body and then they work with you and, like, that's it. And so there's certain things that I think are providing less value than others. But, like, again, if you can find some new niche like Instagram influencers or, like, whatever, online creators, Twitch creators, whatever, right? Like, Why, why is there not an association? If, if you could find one core benefit, I actually think, okay, so here's a riff off this that, uh, I'm gonna sound kind of stupid because I don't really know much about this, but I know enough to know that it's interesting. Let's take a, let's take a profession like, like vlogger or streamer, right? So there are, you know, every given month there's millions of video game streamers, millions of YouTube creators that are, uh, creating. Now obviously they're not all successful, they're not all full-time, they're not all, all making money, Uh, there's like a power law, right, where the top X make it. I think, for example, on Shopify, the, you know, there's I think 100,000 sellers that do over a million dollars a year. There's sort of a similar ratio, uh, when it comes to streamers or vloggers on YouTube. And, uh, they don't have health insurance, for example. And what happens is most of them don't care about it. They don't use it. They're younger, so they, you know, till 25, 26, or whatever, they're covered on their parents' thing, or they just like whatever, risk it, just wing it, right? And so, um, there's these things that churches do called healthcare co-ops.

Have you ever heard about this? Go on.

What I'd be curious about is how do nomadic remote workers, what do they do for health insurance? That's one of these new things. Does every company have this? In October, I don't know if it's just us or if it's every company, but we're doing— We have enrollment. For healthcare soon. And, uh, now that I'm out of state, I don't know. I gotta figure out what to do. And so this is the problem I'm facing. And I'm curious as to how people who live in Bali, like one of the, a woman who works at our company used to do, or how, uh, people who travel all the time. I mean, I don't know what they do for healthcare. I'm very curious about that.

Yeah. I, I don't know either. Again, like I said at the beginning, I'm gonna look like an idiot cuz I don't know enough about it, but I know enough to know this is an interesting problem area to go look at. Anytime lifestyles change, work patterns change, new jobs emerge, opportunity has simultaneously emerged. And so that— I think all these are sort of really, really interesting ones to look at. I've also seen a bunch of things fail in this space. Like, I had a friend who was trying to provide the back office for Uber drivers. He's like, hey, they need to pay taxes and they need health insurance and they need these things. And, you know, company failed. And he was like, yeah, it was just really hard to convince Uber drivers they needed this. Like, I know they need it, they didn't know they needed it. I don't know if that was just his excuse or if that was like legit the actual core fault of the, of the problem, because fundamentally I believe in that, that idea. And so I reached out to find out why it failed, and that's what he told me.

But do you know roughly how many of these are sold or like, do you know roughly what the market size is for this? Yeah.

So the, the, some of the bigger guys are Uniden and I think it's pronounced Escort. Escort owns a couple of brands and exec at GM, was formerly the CEO. It does like $200 or $300 million in sales. Uniden is a Japanese company. It's uni, like university, and then den, D-E-N. Uniden does like $150 million in sales, quite profitable. So it's not like huge, huge, but hundreds of millions in revenue, but probably globally billions in revenue. And I'm shocked at how horrible of a product this is for the $500 that I bought it.

Yeah, that seems awful. And I love this. I love this niche, right? Because who, who the fuck thinks about this on a daily basis? But, but clearly, you know, this is a product that's been around for decades and serves a very clear pain point. And I could totally see how these would be outdated. I'll give you an example of another one that's like this. Pools. So I have a swimming pool now., in my, my new place. And you know, you always, the guy comes every week and like changes the like chemical balance or whatever to make sure the chlorine's good. And, uh, he has to measure it using this thing. So some guy, some founder who listens to the podcast had reached out to, I don't know, be in my mastermind or something like that. And I saw what his product was and it was a—

I know who, that's my friend.

Yeah, and that— I think about that all the time because I thought the Nest thing, I'm like, oh my god, that's one of those things where you're like, well, yeah, it seems obvious now, right?

Um, and, uh, did this with routers, right? So they, they modernized the router and, you know, had a decently— they had a decent exit. I don't know how well it went for them. They raised a lot of money, but they got adoption and that's another example of one of these.

Yeah, routers are up there. I just, I like thinking about that, like what are household products that we all use and we have forgotten about? And I grew up with a radar detector. We would, we would always drive to Florida for 20 hours and we would have one. And I thought it was funny. I'm like, that's kind of funny to like build a company just to detect, just to help you kind of break the law, which I think is awesome. But man, I'm using this freaking radar detector and I'm like, oh, well, there's— and there's actually like a cult following. Like, there's a lot of people like me who are gadget nerds and who are obsessed over this. And it's a pretty cool thing. There's another company that's similar to this that is far more famous. Do you know WeatherTech? No. Have you heard of WeatherTech? No. You've never heard of WeatherTech? Okay. It's like they've almost I would say they have done it. They've built like, you know how Yeti made coolers sexy? Mm-hmm. Listen, you're gonna flip a lid a little. You know what they made sexy? What? Floor mats for a car. Okay. Floor mats for a car. I'm looking them up. So WeatherTech, they bought Super Bowl ads. In the South, they're popular because it's like—

Is it the design or is it just that it's like super high quality or what? Why do people love these?

And how old is this company? Is this like a 20-year-old company? Yes. Okay. Yeah, this is cool. Okay. I like it. This is so like outside of my hobbies, my likes, my business knowledge. I'm like, I would be the worst person to ever start a WeatherTech type company.

Maybe, but you have a nice car, don't you? Do you care about having a clean car? I mean, that's like kind of all it is.

No, you've never been in my car. My car looks like shit all the time. I bought it. I buy a nice car and then my car looks like a closet. It's just awful. Uh, all right, here's another really half-baked idea. I've been thinking a lot about licensing brands. My friend Xavier— Why, since Tai Lopez? No, not Tai Lopez. Uh, my friend Xavier, uh, got me thinking about this. So he was buying a company, uh, and I'm gonna have him on cuz he, he's, he's really great. And he's—

I'm an investor in that fund. Yeah, exactly.

So get, can you hone in on this a little bit further? So you would be the one licensing the— you would pay money for someone else's IP? Yes.

Like, let's say, go through a hypothetical example, right? Yeah. Um, in the tech community, there's this cartoon that's really popular called Rick and Morty. And, um, Rick and Morty is a great brand for the people who know it, but it's not such a big brand that it'd be impossible to strike a deal with them. And so I would go to the creators of Rick and Morty, the IP holders for Rick and Morty, and I would say, hey, I'm gonna do a whole safety training and let's say compliance training a series for big companies, but I want to do it using Rick and Morty characters to explain the concepts. And so I would, on one hand, I would say I'll pay you X for, you know, the royalties or the licensing fee. And then I would take that and then I would go to companies like, you know, the company I work at now, or I'd go to Facebook or whoever, and I'd say, hey, you have this compliance training that you need all your leaders to go do, but it's so dry that they hate doing it, they don't do it, or they turn it on and they walk away from their computer while the video plays., and we make entertaining training videos using characters that everybody knows and loves, and that's why you should buy from us instead of buying from the guys you currently buy from, and that's how I would try to build this business. I would totally stand out from the existing, you know, corporate training and corporate education companies by doing that.

That's interesting, and I actually learned— I didn't know anything about licensing, and I— do you want to explain what— Sully did with his company? Because you guys are the licensees or licensors.

Yeah, we are. What would that be? I think we would be the licensees. I don't know. You are licensing.

You are the nameplate. You are paying the money. You are not the recipient of the money. No, no.

And so I, I just read about this, which is why I, I like talking about this. There's a company called— I'd read about it through on a Substack email newsletter that I'm on. Uh, have you heard of MGA? Of course you haven't. MGA Entertainment.

MGA, is that the guy who makes those dolls?

Okay, you have heard of it. Okay, so I love that guy.

What's his name? That guy's a baller.

Do you remember Bratz? Yeah, Bratz dolls, for those who don't know, is like Barbie. It's like ethnic Barbies. It was like Black Barbies, cool Barbies, street Barbies. Like it was Barbies with like a little bit of an edge rather than the sort of clean-cut image. Is that a good— is that a good—

yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't know. I'm not— we're not on their target demo, but and now their new thing, apparently, which is quite popular, it's LOL Surprise. Again, we're not going to talk about this.

I know my nieces are obsessed with LOL dolls, dude. LOL dolls are— anybody with kids knows that you have to buy LOL dolls.

Is it? It is amazing. Even just the LOL dolls, like we could do a whole episode just on the fucking genius of these LOL dolls. It's like a little surprise what you get inside, sort of like buying a, you know, a deck of Pokémon or a pack of Pokémon cards and you don't know which characters you're gonna get inside. And so you've got, you know, it has the gacha mechanics where you want to keep going back and buying another one. And this guy Isaac Larian is awesome. His story is great.

No, I haven't heard this, but I love this idea. This is the type of idea that I These are the— you know, I said WeatherTech would be like the opposite of the type of company I would start. The candle where 1 out of every 100,000 has a diamond ring inside, that is the exact type of company I would start.

Is it called just— there's a diamondcandles.com. That might be just what it's called. But they like the— I think it's— okay, so there's a $1,000 ring at the bottom of a handful of them. Who knows if they're even actually there.

It's the Willy Wonka golden ticket.

Yeah, and I just Google it. There's like tons of surprise— there's like a jackpot, jackpot candles, and they do the same for bath bombs. You know what a bath bomb is? And I guess there's some type of— it's— so I, I love that. So there's that. What's another surprise one? Like a Willy Wonka company, like a Willy Wonka product.

And there's— yeah, for shopping, there's a bunch of other ones. There's— and a lot of them are scams. This business attracts a lot of scammers. Logan Paul, or one of the Paul brothers, like had a link to one of them. They— this company would sponsor all the YouTubers, and it was called Mystery Box. And you purchase it and maybe you get, I don't know, whatever kids like, Supreme clothing or something. Uh, and it was— I think they got big, but they're definitely full of shit.

Yeah, but I like this idea of the sort of the dream, right? Like, I buy lottery tickets because I think it's fun to play the lottery. Um, I love scratch-offs. I think scratch-offs are amazing. Um, they're just like pure entertainment for me. And, um, I think that there's other spaces where you could potentially apply these mechanics that's non-traditional. The candle is a beautiful example of of that.

So that's, uh, so we've discovered two different frameworks, which is like household items that are boring and forgotten, and you can just make them just a little better. Ugly. And just ugly. Like, uh, and that you could like maybe like—

so three mechanics. We did trade associations for new trades. Um, yeah, we did, um, the household items, the everyday gadgets, uh, that are ugly and hard to set up and hard to use and don't connect to your iPhone. That's like a kind of a core, core mechanic. And then this one is the gotcha mechanics, or, or licensing, either, either one, either one could work here.

Yeah. Oh, we did talk about licensing, but got the gotcha thing is interesting. I like candles. Another one that's not the same, but it does involve candles. Have you ever heard of Hometown Candles or something like that? Yeah, that's, that's a funny one. You know the guy who— so for those of you who don't know, this guy, his name is Ricky Van Ricky Van Nien, I think. His wife is— do you remember what's the white girl from Get Out? Uh, I don't know.

Yeah, you know, I've seen the movie, but I, I don't know who I was. I was looking at the Black guy, not the white girl. I don't, I don't know who she was.

Yeah, my friend John, uh, started something called Birthdate Candles. Uh, so he's the creator of Gravity Blanket, uh, he's the creator of the MoonPod, and then his third kind of like invention that kind of worked is, um, Birthdate Candle. So like, Sam, when's your birthday? June 15th. So there's a candle for June 15th. It says June 15th birthday can— birthdate candle, and it has a specific smell and aura and story around June 15th. And so you would buy this for somebody else. You'd buy a candle essentially that's like their specific birthdate candle.

And he started— and he started Gravity Blankets too. Yeah. I mean, that's like one of the biggest things ever. Like one of the most virally—

that's like one of the most viral things.

Yeah. Yeah. That's like, like the, the blanket where you wear in the front. What's that called?

Dude, that is a great idea. Like, I love all these frameworks and ways to get ideas. Looking at what are the most popular MLMs. Yeah, that is a great—

What's the most interesting one, and why are they all in Utah?

Uh, they're all in Utah because it's sort of like Silicon Valley, where the talent pool of people who know how to build these is all there. But, uh, but yeah, there's a whole bunch of interesting ones, and they range from like kind of legit to like pretty fucking scammy. Um, and you know, there's like keto product ones, there's candles, there's skincare, you know, like health and wellness is the biggest one, the absolute biggest one. Um, I'm not sure why. I think there's sort of a— you can't prove the— you can't prove that the thing works or doesn't work, uh, when it comes to those things. Um, when like kind of like hippie dippy wellness products. And that's also what an MLM mom seller, you know, tends to like, I guess. But there's interesting ones. There's like a wine club that's an MLM. There's LuluRoe or whatever. That's a clothing one. There's a shit ton of MLMs, dude. They're crazy.

Well, that's a good framework. I like that. And I want to give a shout out. Apparently, Sean told me that the founder of OnlyFans is a listener. And listens to every episode. So what's up to that guy?

Owner, owner of it. I don't even know his name.

Yeah, founder, owner, whatever it is, the, the man in charge. So what's up to him? If he ever wants to come on, tell him to come on.

All right, sounds good. Um, cool. All right, Sam, uh, where are you headed to next? Where's the next, uh, travel destination for you?

Either DC, because I want to be there for the election. I think it'd be fun. Or Asheville, North Carolina. Which one? Where should I go? I don't know.

I think Asheville is gonna be more interesting.

I think so. I'm just a little nervous that it's too lonely, like too small, right?

You should go to— you should go to Durham. I went to college there. There's a very— it's a very interesting place. Is it great? Yeah, it's kind of great. Like, I think you'll really like that town. They totally like invested in it, and there's all kinds of cool stuff. Like, there's— there's two universities, right? So there's Duke and That's in Durham. There's North Carolina University of North Carolina, that's not far away in Chapel Hill. Uh, and then there's what they call Research Triangle Park, which, uh, anytime there's like these hubs— so that's a hub for biotech companies. Um, anytime there's these hubs, the town gets built out with restaurants and cool shit everywhere because there's a bunch of like well-paid people. Um, but also it just has like its own little vibe. It's its own little mini Silicon Valley or Hollywood, but it's like for researchers of biotech. And so there's just like a different, different vibe, just like Utah will have it for MLMs.

All right, I'm going to Durham then.

Cool. Um, also, I was just curious, um, how's the— like, we're now in month 6 of this quarantine. Um, are you going crazy or what? What's happening?

Uh, yeah, a little bit. I feel horrible. Do you?

I would say I feel horrible. I feel pretty good, but I tend to feel good in general. I'm not really easily— I don't know.

I'm definitely impacted, like, emotionally and mentally. I am like— you got any good stories? I feel like I'm in fight-or-flight mode. And when I— what I've noticed is, like, I've said this before, but a lot of people who live in— a lot of people who are in elite cities will be like, oh, the South is all rednecks. And it's like, in reality, all cities are the same, all suburbs are the and all countries the same. And so when I'm in like rural California and I— and people are in the gas station not wearing masks, I find myself in fight or flight mode. And I've definitely gotten into yelling matches with these people. And it's stupid because it's not going to solve anything. Like, no one's going to— I'm not going to change my opinion and they're not going to change their opinion. But I have found myself in fight or flight mode and like getting into— getting into it with people who aren't wearing masks in the gas stations.

That's pretty funny. I mean, you said all countries are the same. That can't be right, right? Like, have you— No, like, like way different.

No, not countries like USA and India, like rural areas. I see. Like, like rural northern rural California is fairly similar as rural, rural Alabama. Like it's not like a north or south thing. It's like a rural suburb city thing.

And so what are you doing to keep yourself from going crazy?

Exercising is the only thing that I can do. I mean, I don't have a home anymore. I'm just traveling. I guess that, that's all I'm doing. What are you doing? I mean, I feel like I just work and exercise. I don't do anything else.

Yeah, I pretty much do those two things and play with my daughter and, uh, try to help take care of her. But, um, I got this trainer who is— he's my personal trainer for fitness. He comes to the house every day and we work out in the backyard. It's awesome. Um, but he's also like kind of like a mindset coach, uh, and a life coach. And so He's great because he, um, I, I, I usually in relationships, I'm the one who kind of is bringing different mindset things, positivity, uh, different frameworks, different lenses to, to kind of see life through. That's what I usually bring to all my relationships. And he does that to me. He's like even higher level of understanding and drinks more of that Kool-Aid than I do. And so he's given me these little, these little tactics, these little things that help. So I'll give you an example. Um, he was telling me the story yesterday. Uh, he goes, uh, he goes, yeah, I went to the, uh, he's like, he's like, I normally I wake up great, uh, feeling great, but I woke up feeling super anxious today. And I was like, oh shit, what, why, what happened? And he goes, um, he goes, you know, I knew I had to drive over here. And he's like, I actually have had an expired license for 2 years. And so he was like, I'm always anxious that I'm going to get pulled over. And he's like, the only thing that makes me more anxious about that is having to go to the DMV. Like, fuck, the DMV is like the worst, right? Everyone kind of universally agrees the DMV is the worst. And so he's like, so I just avoided it. And so he's like, so I woke up today, I recognize that I'm feeling anxious about it. And he's like, I got a playbook for anxiety, right? Like, okay, feeling anxious, therefore I do XYZ. And he's like, I don't have to— like, I don't get lost in the feeling. Like, I have a recipe for every feeling. And so he was like, all right, so I'm going to address this head on and I'm going to turn my anxiety into joy. Okay, how do I do that? And so he was telling me this story. He's like, I went to the DMV. He's like, before, he's like, on my way there, he's like, I was like, am I the only one who feels this way about the DMV? So he goes to Yelp and he saw that the DMV locally had like a 2.3-star review or whatever, right? Like, you know, DMV's hated by most. And so he sets in his mind, he goes, okay, it's rated 2.3 stars. I'm gonna give it, I'm gonna have a 5-star experience here. He goes, okay, how do I have a 5-star experience? He goes, I'm gonna be a 5-star customer at the DMV. He's like, I'm going to go in, I'm going to be laughing, I'm going to be smiling, I'm going to be patient, I'm going to be flirting with the staff there. And he's like, I'm going to find the most hospitable person here, right? 5-star comes from hospitality. I'm going to find hospitality at the DMV. He's like, I went in, I started talking, I met this lady Wendy at the front, and she's this, you know, she's this big black lady who I could tell she was ready to have a good time. And he's like, I started flirting with her a little bit, started talking to her, and she was like, you know what, like, come this way real quick. And she kind of shuffled him to the front of the line. He goes through, he doesn't He has his expired license. They're laughing at him for having a 2-year expired license. And he was telling them how anxious he was about coming to the DMV. And they're like, look, no problem. He didn't even have to take his test. They just give him a new license straight away. They're like, you normally have to set up an appointment, but here, sign this sheet. Boom, you're done. Get out of here. And he walked out and he was like, holy shit. He's like, if I can make the DMV a 5-star experience for me, then Whatever. Not what can rock me if I can own the DMV like this. And so he told me this little story and you know, the thing I took from it was like, I have all these things that I let piss me off or make me mad throughout the day. Like I'm normally very good, but then I'll dip on these like stressful situations or like a task that I think is gonna be a pain in the ass. That's actually what gets me the most. It's not usually stress. It's usually like tasks that are pain in the ass. And he took the most pain in the ass task, going to the DMV, and he turned it into a story and he turned it into a good time. And so that became my challenge. That's this little mini game I'm playing in my head that nobody knows I'm playing, which is I'm looking out for these pain in the ass burden type of moments and I'm gonna try to DMV it like he did. So that's something that's been keeping me entertained lately.

That is a great, that's a great story.

Thank you. I loved it. When he told me that story, I was like, this is a great fucking story. I'm just hearing it in my backyard alone. I got to tell people about this. And so I didn't know how I was going to tell people, but it turns out it came out on the podcast.

That is a great one. And to wrap this up, you have a trainer who you see every day?

Uh, 4 days a week. Yeah. Who?

Wait, what? And what, what does that— should I get that? That sounds amazing. What does this cost?

Uh, he's amazing. Yeah, he's great. Uh, in fact, it costs— he's like a, uh, kind of like an alien. Like, most trainers are like most kind of people who are paid by the hour. They're very time conscious, right? Like they show up on time and then they, you know, hour on the dot they leave because they gotta get to their next client and they're like zipping from place to place and you know, they're very time conscious. And that always doesn't work for me cuz you, you know, you, you hate this about me. I'm late often, right? And, um, and he's the exact opposite. He is like not worried about time ever. Um, and I ask him about this. I'm like, dude, you, we're hanging out like an hour after the workout. We're just chatting. We're, you know, we're just, we're just shooting the shit about stuff. He'll be asking me about business, whatever. And, um, I'm like, don't you feel like you never— you never seem like you're in a hurry? And he goes, oh, he's like, I— he's like, I pride myself on being a hacker of time. I said, what do you mean? He goes, he goes, everybody is so stressed all the time. And the reason— one of the roots of most people's stress is they feel like they don't have enough time. Like, when they feel like they didn't get enough done in a day, that just means they didn't feel like they had enough time to get stuff done. Or if they're stressed about their relationship and they're stressed about having kids, it's like because they feel like they're running out of time and they're you know, their biological clock is ticking or whatever, right? People have this, like, a lot of stress is based in time. He goes, I felt that way in my life and I decided to change that. So now I focus on timing. Anytime I find myself worried about time, I think to myself the opposite. What is this great— what is, what is the great timing in my life right now? What if I just felt like it was perfect timing going for me? I was like, what do you mean? He's like, so like, for example, you know, whenever I'm in a situation like, you know, you asked me to drive out here to your house to train you. Most people don't do that. Most people come to my gym gym, but instead of worrying about how much time that was going to take, I thought about, hmm, how is this perfect timing for me? He's like, and then I drove into your neighborhood. He goes, I love this neighborhood. I decided I'm going to live in this neighborhood. Like, I fell in love with this neighborhood when I came here. That's how timing works for me. I met you. Normally, I would have never worked with you because you were trying to get me to come to your house, but I thought, hmm, maybe there's some timing that brought this guy into my life. What is he going to teach me? What's he going to show me that I wouldn't otherwise have had? What is this great opportunity. And so he's really focused on, let's say, timing. And so he's like this personal trainer who also has like all these life philosophies, and he just operates with such good energy and such a good vibe that like by the end of the hour or hour and a half that I work with him, like I'm buzzing, dude. It's like, this is, uh, it's like a drug. It's like being around him is like a drug because he's always in such a great, great, uh, state of mind.

Well, I, I want to do this.

Can I give you one more example? Are we too far? Yeah. Okay. So here's an example of how he changed my life. It's a metaphor that I'm using now all the time. So I don't know about you, but like, no matter how successful I get, whenever I start a new project, I get stressed again. And I get stressed ultimately because I'm afraid it's going to fail, right? Like, if I knew it was going to succeed, I wouldn't be fucking stressed. I'd be I'd just be excited. Oh great, I'm gonna win. I already know I have the winning lottery ticket. Uh, but the reality is like with any new project, I'm trying to get more ambitious and then that brings in the possibility of failure. And, um, and what he taught me was he's— when we were talking about fitness, it was sort of the same thing. I've many, many times tried to get fit and struggled with either diet or working out consistently or whatever. And, um, he's like, you know, what gets you off track, blah, blah, blah. And what we found was it was the same root cause. It's the same fear of failure. What if I can't stick to the program? What if the diet's too hard to maintain? And then I'll find evidence of that as I go, right? When it's like, it's really hard, I'll be like, fuck, it's happening again. I'm, you know, I might fail, I might fall off track. And so he was like, look, not only are we going to get the results you want, not only are we going to win, but we're going to get there with enjoyment. We're not going to stress about it. And so he's— I was like, all right, well, how do you do that? He's like, let's say today you're at a 4 in your fitness level. He's like, and you could be at a 4 in anything in your life, personal finances, whatever. So let's say you're at a 4 in fitness and you want to get to your 10, right? Let's get real clear about the 10. Cool. Here's what your 10 is. And I described it in detail and he made me awkwardly describe how I want my body to be and my life to be as a 10. He's like, all right, that's a 10. You're at a 4 now. He goes, we're not just going to do what most people do. Most people, when they're at a 4, they think about the 10 they want and then they just feel shitty that they're not at the 10. And they try to use that as fuel, as motivation of like, fuck, I hate where I'm at. I want to get to where I want to be. And they just, they just continue hating the 4 and wishing they had the 10. He goes, that's cool. You might get there, but you'll feel shitty the whole time. And that's not a win. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to love the 4. Okay. You're at a 4 right now. Fantastic. And all we're going to focus on is not the 10. We're going to focus on a 5. 5 comes next. And we're going to get really excited every time we sense that we're going from 4 to 5. And sure, 5 is still not nowhere near what our 10 is going to be., but we're going to really get excited about every time we see that signs of that 5 coming. And so he just kind of broke it down into much smaller chunks. And the last thing he said was, if I— what if I told you again that the 10 was inevitable? You were absolutely going to get there. He's like, imagine you go outside your house and there's a corner store. And at that corner store is, you know, the ice cream you want, right? He goes, you know, when you, when you're walking to your corner store, you're not worried, am I going to get there? You don't fear failure. You know you're gonna get there. You also know you're not there yet, right? So you know you're far away today, but you're cool with that. No problem. You know you need to do some work to get there. You need to walk to get to the corner store. No problem. I don't mind doing the work because you're absolutely certain that you're gonna get to the corner store. There's no doubt in your mind that you're gonna fail and fail to walk there. He goes, that's how we're gonna think about success for our body. It's just this corner store that we're inevitably gonna get to. We just gotta take a bunch of steps and we're gonna go step by step all the way there, but there's no fear of failure because it is It is as— we are as certain that we're going to get to our destination as we're certain that we could just get to that corner store. And we're not going to feel bad that we're far away right now. Like, duh, we just left our house. Of course we still got a way to go, but we're going to enjoy the walk there. And that metaphor, I don't know why, but that just clicked for me and I just got really, really fucking certain that it's going to happen. And now I'm enjoying the process on the way there. So I don't know, that maybe it was too long of a spiel. Maybe we should edit this out. But you—

that has changed my life. Oh, well, well, I think that this trainer is your soulmate.

He might be.

You guys are like, you guys are like the same person, I think. Uh, you, yeah, you, I think you gotta marry that, your trainer.

I, you know, I actually, when I saw him and I was like, wait, you used to train my wife? And he's a good looking dude. And I was like, and he's real smooth too. So I was like, oh, this, if I knew that you are who you are, I would have never let my wife train with you, dude. Like, you're Mr. Steal Your Girl. And I was like, but now my wife should be worried that I'm just gonna fall in love with you because we are the same brain.

What's the price per session?

Uh, I think he charges me, uh, what is it, like $85 a session or something like that? And it's $85, $90 a session. Trainer?

What's that? I think I need to get a trainer.

Yeah, you should work out with this guy, but you got to be back in kind of the area.

Um, well, this is a good episode. Uh, appreciate everyone listening. Leave a review, we read all of them. And, uh, maybe we'll be back next week with some more trainer stories from Sean Perry.

All right, see ya.