#31 - The Wild Wild West of Mineral Real Estate

What my mentor said when he hired me on, that 2011 was one of the best times in the history of the oil business to be in the oil business, he was right. I grew up in a small town in Midland, Texas, which is actually the oil and gas capital of the world, and I started a company that buys oil and gas properties the big fish aren't looking at, put them together in a package, and then sell them to the The big fish. The big fish, exactly. Almost every other country in the world that has oil, the government owns the rights and gets paid for the revenues. In the US, private citizens actually own the rights to the land, and they can be divided up over generations, so there might be hundreds of people that own a small piece of the mineral estate in a particular tract. What we do is basically track those people down, make them lump sum offers for the rights to their property in hopes that there might be future drilling in that area. We were making millions of dollars, living a lifestyle that— to ride bikes every day and work out together and go to this office, also a clubhouse, and spend a lot of time with my kids and my family. We had an 8-figure exit, certainly probably could have had a 9-figure exit.

People are going to listen to this and be like, this guy has the best fucking life. $5 million is not enough. $10 million. $15 million. $20 million.

$100 million. Half a billion.

$850 million. One or two people in a bedroom actually the threats to these like giant giant multi-billion dollar companies because you have creativity and you have nothing to lose.

Add another zero to that price, buddy.

Add two more zeros.

My first million.

Every week we sit down with self-made millionaires and ask them, how did you do it? I didn't start a podcast. I started my own personal business school, and the teachers are the successful entrepreneurs behind the biggest brands and businesses that you find today. I wanted to know the real stories with all the details, like How did you get your first 100 customers? What did it feel like when shit hit the fan? Fuck. I ask them, how'd you spend your money now that you're rich? And what would you do if you were starting over from scratch again today? If you're like me and you want to own your own business instead of living a 9-to-5 job, this is the podcast for you. The Hustle presents My First Million. First, hello and welcome. We have Mike Brown here. We met like 3 days ago or something. Right. We just bumped into each other when at Sam's office when we were recording the Million Dollar Brainstorm and hit it off right away. And I was excited to get you on and I was kind of begging you. I was like, hey, how long you in town for? Let's get in the studio because I like that you're— couple things. Not a high-tech business. In fact, I think it's a boring business and it's a beautiful, boring business. Non-traditional background. So you're not like, you know, got my MBA, worked up the corporate ladder and then did this thing. Totally different background. Some other things to look forward to in this is really small company and big revenues., and those are always exciting to me. So those are like 3 of the, the things that I'm like, people gotta hear this. Mike Brown, welcome to the podcast. First, how are you feeling today?

Thanks. Yeah, it's great to be here. I appreciate it.

You spent all morning on a mushroom farm, so I think that's like, if you're not ready for the podcast, I don't know. I don't know what else I could do for you.

Yeah, definitely a nice, uh, relaxing piece of property down south. So happy to be back in the city and, uh, and back to business.

Okay, cool. So we, I gave people the teaser, which is, uh, not a high-tech business, small company, big profits. What is it that you do?

Exactly. Love it. And your background is, like I said, not traditional. So you're not a— you didn't come from the corporate world. You didn't come from sort of the Ivy League? Where did you come from? How did you get into this?

Right. So from a very young age, I knew that I wanted to do two things. I knew that I wanted to be in the Navy and I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

So why do you want to be in the Navy? I've always been afraid of that whole thing. I was like, I got to avoid, you know, being courageous and brave and fighting for my country. So why did you want to be in the Navy? Was that a family thing?

No. So actually in the third grade I read Patriot Games and I basically decided that I was going to be Jack Ryan and Jack Ryan went to the Naval Academy. So that's what I was going to do.

Is that Jack Ryan, the Jack Ryan of this TV show that's like big now. Is that the same idea?

Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan, Naval Academy trained before he went to the CIA and becoming president and all the crazy things that he did. That's what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to go to the Naval Academy and like, and, and be in the military. It was something I was always interested in, but I knew that I was going to get out as soon as I possibly could and start a company.

Um, so why, why is that? Why did you want to get in so bad and why did you want to get out so bad? That sounds counterintuitive to me.

It just seemed like a really great like, like service to our country was very important to me from a young age. And then, but, but like I knew that I didn't want to be a career admiral kind of guy because I had more to do and entrepreneurship always seemed like a natural fit. So I actually, I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 16 and, and Hank Reardon was my hero and I was like, I'm going to start a company. That's, that's what I'm going to do with my life.

Gotcha.

And so you go to the Navy, went to the Naval Academy, graduated in 2003, and I actually took the John McCain route through the Naval Academy. So that means I marched a lot of tours with my rifle while my friends were out partying because I managed to get caught for everything that I did. So I didn't have a lot of options available. So I was actually selected to be a, a naval flight officer, which is a backseater. So I went to flight school and was fortunate enough to get selected for the jet program. And so I flew F-18s from about 2005 through 2009. I went to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2007, 2008, and did about 75 combat missions off the USS Truman.

Wow. And so you were in from training and actually being active. How many years was that?

So I went to the Naval Academy in '99. I got out in 2011.

Okay. Wow. And so you, during that time, was your mind still on business or you were fully immersed and, you know, you kind of put that aside?

Yeah. So when I was in the squadron flying missions off the boat, I had a good friend. We were flying together and we realized that we worked really well together. And so we would come back from combat missions and pour a tall glass of whiskey, which is super legal on the boat. And cheers each other and be like, man, we should start a company someday. And fast forward to 2011, uh, I was getting out of the Navy and I was moving back to, to my hometown in, in Texas to, uh, kind of go see what was out there in the world. And he called me up a couple months later and he asked how I was doing. I was like, get here as fast as you can. So he came the next day and got a job at the company I was working at at the time. And then we left and founded our company about a year later.

And so you, you did go work for a company for a period of time. Was that to pay the bills? Was that you wanted to learn something specific? What was the thought process there? Because I like sharing that because a lot of people right now are in a job and it's very easy to like write yourself off. It's like, man, I listen to these interviews, they all just went for it, but I'm at a job. Maybe we're different in some way. So I like when people share the, hey, I went and worked someplace for a little while before I did my business.

Yeah, totally. So, you know, as I was getting out of the Navy, I was looking at a few different options. One kind of in the government contracting realm. And then I had lunch with a mentor of mine growing up and he asked me what my plans were after getting out, and I told him. He said, "No, that's not a great idea. Actually, I'd like you to come work for me. It's the best time in the history of the oil business to be in the oil business." And when a door like that opens, you just walk through it. And, you know, this guy had been very successful and was basically offering me a chance to get the playbook. And so I went to work for him and learned a ton about the industry and the business, and I'm very grateful for that mentorship. And then about a year and a half in, we started to have some differences of opinion with the firm, and they basically basically said, hey, you know, you guys are kind of taking a different tack than we are. Why don't you go do it on your own? Right. So we took that and ran with it.

Like, okay. And so let's explain the mechanics of how this works. So how do you do your job? You said you buy pieces of land that have some value to the oil and gas industry or to what's under the surface. So you buy pieces of land, you aggregate them together, and then you sell them to investment firms once they are sort of proven out to be of value. So walk us through, what does that mean? How does this business work?

Interesting. So you said the US is the only country really, the only major country at least, that has this— the citizens can own the land that has the good stuff underneath the earth and other countries are not doing that. Why is it that the US does it? Is that just the way it was? Is there a strategic reason why that's good? How do you feel about that?

Well, it's created a tremendous amount of wealth in this country and private wealth, right? I mean, it depends on your— stance regarding the way the government spends money, but I'm of the belief that the private sector always is going to do a better job allocating resources than the government. So we look at private mineral ownership as just a tremendous source of wealth creation in the US. And yeah, so to me, it's a big difference in what drives the innovation and ability to negotiate deals. Whereas the government's not really incentivized to let people come in and drill, if you're a private mineral owner, you only own a small piece, you may make a more favorable deal to the oil company looking to explore that property. So it actually drove a lot of the innovation in the early part of last century that made the U.S. a powerhouse in energy.

And so you said you get— there's a piece of land and it might have 100 owners. Is that like typical? Is that the, you know, a lot of people own small pieces of that mineral estate?

Yeah. And the way that works is because, you know, say in the late 1800s, you know, one individual might have been granted that homestead. They started to pass it down through the generations. And so if they had 4 kids, and they had 4 kids, you know, it starts going up exponentially and gets divided up, you know, and they might have sold a piece off but retained another piece. And so it just starts to get pretty complicated, right, over the, you know, decades.

And so you guys go and you do, you know, oh, you know, there's a lot of oil underneath this, or are you just sort of speculating and saying there might be, there might not? We do some— we look at some geological studies. Like, how do you know that the assets are valuable?

And so you guys have been able to do what? Give us a sense of how the business has evolved from where you guys started to where you guys are today. Yeah.

So, you know, First of all, I mean, I think it bears saying that there is both a sense of luck and expertise applied, right? So I wouldn't be where I am without getting to grow up in this oil-rich town that most other places don't have, having a mentor—

So you were born on a gold mine in a way.

Totally born on a gold mine. And it turned out then what my mentor said when he hired me on, that 2011 was one of the best times in the history of the oil business to be in the oil business. He was right. You know, hindsight being 20/20, we didn't know at the time what was going to happen, but this was really on the precipice of this, this massive discovery that, that was unlocked by horizontal drilling. And so we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. But what we did really well was make good investment decisions and then, uh, find properties that we believed in and double and triple down and leveraged ourselves to the hilt to make sure that we could keep as much as we possibly can. And we built a portfolio over, uh, a lot of years that we just recently exited. And so, um, it worked out, but there was a tremendous amount of risk. There was a tremendous amount of leverage and there was a lot of sleepless nights along the way, you know, not knowing if this thing was gonna work out.

Right. And, and you self-funded this, from the beginning? Was it a lot of debt? How did you guys even get started?

In between flipping it, basically.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And so you were holding a property for how long on average?

I mean, the ideal way to do it is actually to do a simultaneous close where one person funds in the morning and you fund the other person in the afternoon. But, you know, as we started to grow and have a bankroll of our own, we were able to start, you know, building up a portfolio of properties. And so we would hold something anywhere from a couple of months to a couple of years.

Right. And so you guys bootstrapped this whole thing, you and your buddy from the Navy, basically.

Yeah.

You exited recently. So you're out of— are you out of the business? You have no sort of day-to-day involvement? No.

So the company's company still exists and we're still buying and selling properties. But, you know, I basically handed off my duties and I'm focusing on other things now. So I still check in with the team. But yeah, I'm not involved on a day-to-day basis.

Right. And so you built this business into the tens of millions in revenue. And how many employees did this have? When I saw this, this is what blew my mind.

At your peak?

Right.

And how many of those were blood relatives of yours?

Yeah. So I was in this incredible business that was providing an amazing way of life for me and my business partner. And to me, I wanted to share that with my family. So I actually hired two of my brothers on to work with us and get to live this unbelievable lifestyle. And, and kind of, you know, my philosophy is that if I'm gonna have to go to work every day, I want to see my very favorite people on the planet. So bringing my brothers in was a no-brainer.

That's great. And people sort of discourage this. They're like, don't do business with friends and family. And of course things can get messy. That's absolutely true. But there is also an upside that I feel like nobody talks about, which is when you work with people who you really love and get along with and have worked, you know, have a relationship for a decade, you could do some amazing things and enjoy it in a way that you can't with other people necessarily. So I like that you said that.

Absolutely. And it's, it's been one of the, uh, one of decisions of my life to bring them on to my company.

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One, like I said, I get to see my favorite people every day and get to do life with them. And also, you know, yeah, people say don't do business with family, but if you have their best interests in your heart, then it's always going to work out. Like if you put their highest good over, over the highest good of your own personal gain, then, you know, you always stay aligned with the business and with your employees who also happen to be your family. So it's actually a really great incentive to do right by your stakeholders.

Right. And so you, you brought them on and you said something about, you know, we're living this incredible lifestyle. What was this lifestyle like? I think I, you know, I'm here in Silicon Valley. There's a certain, I would say, lifestyle that comes with entrepreneurship here, which is, you know, there's a big hype machine so you can raise a bunch of money from investors and that gets you this sort of fame circuit where you sort of feel like you're successful before you are and you work 100 hours a week and you're programming late into the night and you're, you know, you go down that track. That's what kind of what entrepreneurship means here. And it's what's encouraged by most people. What's the lifestyle been like for you? Describe, describe your business lifestyle.

And so, okay, so we're going to, we're going to talk more about this because I think this is really important. So you said asymmetric risk and reward is essentially what you're trying to balance. You want to take as little risk as you can for as large of an upside as you can possibly get. That sounds obvious, but most people are not working that way or living that way because let's say you go to a job, you have essentially no risk and a capped reward. And the capped reward is not usually— it's not asymmetric in the sense that it's not bigger than, you know, given your your hours or your inputs, and your input is basically time in this case. What you're saying is it doesn't matter what time you put in, it's really just did you find the right deal or not, which may take you 1 hour, it may take you 100 hours, doesn't really matter. The reward does not care about the time input. Is that— oh, it's a little complicated, but that's my sense of what you're saying.

That's exactly what I'm saying, is that, you know, hustling harder wouldn't have necessarily made us more money, especially in the beginning. You know, it was actually, you know, Finding the metrics that we cared about, applying those across the board, being consistent and disciplined as investors, and finding the very best deals. And like you said, they may come across your desk once a week or once a month. It doesn't really matter timing-wise. It's finding the best ones.

Give me an example of your best and worst deals.

Obviously, it's life-changing because you were running out of cash, but like, what made it— how did it come across your desk? What was great about it? What was the deal?

So, you know, the thing is that's funny about this, like, even though we were running out of money, it was never panic button, oh my God, we made a bad decision. It was like, hey, we know that we've got a good thesis, we know that we're going to find a deal, and we've just got to keep going. And this is, you know, where there was some actual hard work involved, right?

Like, we weren't taking off. You weren't snowboarding back then.

Yeah, exactly right. So, so yeah, as your resources are dwindling, it's like, oh man, uh, you know, so we're really, uh, you know, basically burning up the phones trying to, to find, find leads. And, uh, a deal that we had been working for, uh, like a couple years, it was kind of like, man, if this one ever comes through, this is really going to put us on the map. Uh, right at that time, uh, the universe kind of, uh—

so what does that mean? Because you were saying earlier you basically contact the the rights holders, you contact the people who own it today. Yeah. You try to convince them to sell it to you at a price and you need to get some critical mass. You need to own some percentage of it, I'm sure.

Right.

For it to be viable. So what's actually happening when you're burning up the phones? You're calling people saying, hey, I hear, you know, I see you're the owner of this. Have you ever considered selling? Is that what it sounds like?

Looking for a little cash.

Looking for a little cash. And it was time for them to sell. And, and then we just got really lucky that they, they sold that property to us and immediately 6 new wells got drilled on it. And so we were able to extract a lot of value from that particular deal in a very short amount of time.

Excellent. All right. So that was the best deal. What was the worst deal?

Well, so, well, when I go back to asymmetric returns, you know, generally what we look at for an asymmetric return is, is the worst case scenario here, I can get my money back over time. Best-case scenario being like a 5x or up, right? I mean, that's kind of the thing that I'm looking at, right, you know, over time. So we actually try not to lose money. It's more opportunity cost. But the worst thing that actually ever happened to us was we bought a million-dollar deal and sent the deed to the county where the deal was located in order to record the deed, which is actually— you actually change ownership. And we didn't receive it back for a couple weeks, and we started to get nervous. So we called the county courthouse, and they essentially told us that they'd never seen it.

So You lost the deed.

Right.

And we would have had to go to court.

And what happened? It literally got lost in the mail? Someone stole it? What do you think happened to this deed?

Yeah, well, um, you know, governments aren't often the most efficient operators. And so, uh, it was showed that it was delivered to the courthouse and then somehow nobody knew what happened to it after that. So, uh, who knows? We'll leave that up to the imagination. But, uh, fortunately, uh, the client that we were working with at that time was, was very, uh, good to us. And, uh, after going back and forth with his attorneys and making sure that we weren't doing anything shady, finally did sign that deed and we we, we didn't lose our money. But I would be lying if I said there weren't, uh, more than one pretty sleepless night, uh, during that time. So, uh, we learned to then put in a new procedure, as I mentioned earlier, and require signatures for everything that we were delivering to the courthouse from that day forward.

That policy was written in blood as well. Exactly. So in a given month, how many deals were you guys doing when you're at your, let's say, average— not at the very beginning, not at the very end, but sort of midway through— what is Is it 1, 10, 0 a month?

What's the average? Yeah, I mean, during our peak would have probably been 2015, and I think we probably did about 45 to 50 deals that year. So, you know, 3 or 4 a month is probably about our average.

Right. And so, and so you're doing those deals and how do you, how do you reconcile, right? Because if I'm arguing against you, I say, you know, you know what, you're right that you make your money on the good deals and you have to get the good deals to make it work. But by hustling harder, by looking for more deals, by researching it more, I can actually get a better return. How do you kind kind of, how do you square that circle?

Music to my ears. This is why I knew I liked you right when I met you. I could sense that this is kind of the way you think about things because what you're saying is the end objective is quality of life. Uh, even if you get more money, people want, why do you want money? You want money so you can enable a better lifestyle. You, you can enjoy your life more, you can feel better. But if the things that make you happiest is, you know, riding your bike or working out or seeing your brothers or, you know, spending time with kids, whatever it is, then that's what you need. Time, not more money. And, uh, and if you're throwing away time to get more money, you're You're not getting to that end state, which is having an amazing quality of life. In fact, my brother-in-law, he lives in San Francisco here, and my sister and my brother-in-law, they live here and they are some of the most successful entrepreneurs in tech, but they're in this tech world and they do nothing with tech. They own two preschools and they basically, you know, it's not like their revenues are super, super crazy impressive. It's obviously very good, but it's not like, you know, you walk around here in San Francisco, you could bump into a billionaire on the street. But what I love is the quality of life. You know, they wake up every day, they walk their kids to their school. You know, their youngest is in their own school, so they get to see her all day and really help her. You know, they built a product for their own kids, essentially. They, you know, they get to employ a small number of people. They don't have headaches of a staff of thousands of people. In the middle of the day, they go work out. My brother-in-law loves doing jiu-jitsu, and he goes and does that every single day. He gets to do jiu-jitsu. And so we call it qualin' outta control. It's like instead of balling, instead of balling out, it's qualin' out, which is, you know, your quality of life. And so I love the way you kind of, you walked the walk in this regard, it sounds like. Like an average day looked like what? Like what time would you wake up? What would you do with your day?

Yeah, so when I was still working in the business primarily and we were growing, average day would be to A, wake up and play with my kid and have breakfast with them and take them to school, head into the office, fire up an espresso, and then basically what I would generally do is have an hour or two of just strategic planning with my business partner Jay. We would sit in what we call our battle chairs and we would just think through all the various things going on in the business. And to me, this is one of the strategies that really made us successful was just taking this time to brainstorm, to plan, to strategize. And one of the things we would really like to do is go deep down the rabbit hole thinking about deals. Like, how can this go wrong? What are the questions these guys are going to ask? You know, and go to the second and third level of analysis on everything that we were doing so that we were very intentional. You know, we never just threw things to the wall and would, you know, basically leave it up to chance. It would be like, okay, if we're going to make this decision let's go down every variable of what could possibly happen and go wrong and try and plan for it. That doesn't mean you can always find that, which kind of comes to a military phrase we have, which is don't fall in love with the plan. You can spend a whole day planning and then, you know, something might pop up that you didn't anticipate. Now you've got to start over. But the more you can go down and kind of look at all of the different contingencies and have a plan for those things, that allows you to not have to make decisions in real time because you basically had the chance to think about it before it happened.

And so you said, you know, phrase from the military. Have you been able to apply, you know, lessons that, you know, like principles, philosophies to business? Like, what are some of the top things you guys were able to translate over?

The military is incredible as a teacher and as a lifestyle. And we learned as much what to do as what not to do. You know what I mean? So being in an elite unit like a fighter squadron, there are some really interesting things we learned about human performance. One of the things is what we call intense positive peer pressure. So when you go into the Navy—

Intense positive peer pressure?

Yeah, yeah.

So basically, a fighter squadron in the Navy is about 36 people, officers that are, that are pilots and, and WSOs, weapon systems officers. And they create this environment where you get in as a new guy and and your only job is to learn how to operate that aircraft as a weapon of war. So you're studying and the older guys in the squadron are essentially in charge of mentoring. And, you know, it's a very encouraging place, but there's this underlying expectation of like, hey, you're here to perform. And the ultimate sin is not embarrassing yourself, it's actually embarrassing the squadron. So if you were to go to, you know, a joint exercise and show up for a brief unprepared, that would be embarrassing to the squadron. That's the worst possible thing you could do. So, so it's everyone's kind of, again, it's not, it's not negativity based. It's very positive. Like we're all trying to lift each other up, but you're going to go check on your buddy and make sure he knows his stuff because if he embarrasses the squadron, that's on you.

Right. It's a, yeah, it really sort of the whole team is accountable for the whole team.

Totally. And so we really try to bring that into our business of like, hey, you know, attention to detail. Like we don't, we don't send correspondence out with errors, you know, and it became actually a game for us to try and get, get something past my business partner, Jay. Without him circling anything. Right. And, you know, that's the kind of accountability standard that we had is basically, hey, if we're going to present ourselves to the outside world, perfection is the standard. And we're not going to eviscerate someone if they make a mistake. We're going to find a way to positively reinforce each other so that they're incentivized not to.

So what's an example of that? How do you hold that standard without beating people up when they make the mistake?

Okay. So they understand the why, but mistakes happen.

Right. Okay, fair enough. And so what were the things you said, you know, sometimes you learn what to do and you've gave a couple examples And then the not-to-do. What are some of the not-to-dos? What are some of the things that you're like, we're not going to run our business that way? We didn't find that— that doesn't translate, or we didn't find it effective even when we were in the military, right?

So the biggest thing is rewarding performance. In the Navy, you know, basically because it's a massive bureaucracy, you can only advance based on time and rank, right? And this super complicated ranking structure within your squadron, it's all based on timing. So, you know, everyone is intrinsically motivated, but the guys who are the top performers are rewarded rewarded with basically more work. So there was a specific time where I was in a unit that the guy next to me was basically just incompetent, and my boss would come over every day and be like, hey, I'm gonna need you to take care of this. It's really his responsibility, but he doesn't know how to do it.

I trust you.

But I trust you. Well, thanks for choosing me. So I'm watching him check Facebook while I'm literally doing his work. And so, you know, in our organization, we made sure that we had kind of a Hunter Skinner approach where, I mean, the hunters, you eat what you kill. If you're producing revenue, if you're making money for the company, you're gonna get rewarded, which is kind of the antithesis of the military.

Right, yeah, just yesterday I was, so we got acquired by Twitch, and so I work at Twitch now, and we're working on this project that is a pretty important project for the company. Everyone's excited about it. I'm excited about it. So I went and asked for a raise and a promotion, as you do.

You deserve it.

Exactly, I was like, I deserve this, you know, years ago, even though I haven't even been there for years, but I was like, I deserve this. And it was my first time doing that because I've just been running my own company. So I've only ever been on the other side where people come ask me and I've never gotten to go ask. So I was quite excited, which is to say, hey, I think I deserve this. And I asked a question at the beginning. I said, is this a company where you're rewarded for tenure? So basically time, time is how you move up or performance. And like, I just like to understand that and let's start there. And then so, and it's like, well, and he actually had a good answer, which was it's performance as like the leading thing, but you have to demonstrate the performance over some amount of time. Fair enough. But I think that, you know, if military or academia is on one end where it's pretty much all just time to drive your rank up, you know, we want to be on the other side with our businesses, which is merit-based, performance-based. You reward people for doing the right thing. And what you were saying was great, which is that not only do they not reward you with higher rank, they reward you with more work for doing a good job. And that actually happens. I see that all the time at our company too. Like, I see that happening and that's a damn shame.

Yeah, totally. I mean, in this kind kind of goes into the broader culture, which is, you know, who do you want to keep around? Do you want to keep your high performers or do you want to keep people that follow the rules and, you know, make sure they get their TPS reports in on time? You know, unfortunately, in most situations, companies are rewarding mediocre performers and the high performers leave and go start their own companies because they can't handle the rules.

Right. And so you live in Denver now.

Yeah, we— Or near Denver. Yeah, once we got the company to a point where it was self-sustaining and we didn't feel like we had to be, you know, in Midland in the mix all the time, we kind of looked at where else we might want to spend our days. And being kind of an avid outdoorsman, Denver seemed like the place to go. San Diego, Austin, and Denver were on the shortlist, and Denver won out. So we've been in Golden, Colorado for 3 years now.

And your lifestyle was outdoors even when you were running the company and doing really well. It's very easy to get stuck at a desk all day. But what I liked— I was reading about this, or I don't know if you just mentioned it— but you guys would stop and you'd go ride a bike for an hour in the middle of the day. Is that a productivity thing? Is that just, it makes me happy? You know, tell me about that lifestyle.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it kind of goes back to that quality of life thing that we were discussing before. You know, I mean, with entrepreneurship especially and in our particular business, the work doesn't come in in this steady 8 to 5 Monday through Friday kind of workflow. You know, there may be 3 days of sheer panic where, yeah, we're staying up late and we miss a few bike rides. And then there may be a few days where we're not actually doing that much, right? I mean, it's kind of crazy to think that your work always gonna be perfectly balanced out throughout the day, right?

But that's what people expect. That's the way they organize their life.

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I would kind of add in there is taking the time to celebrate wins. You know, one of the— one of the things that the Lions do—

that, because if a Lion doesn't do it, I'm not doing it.

Yeah, I don't know what their celebration protocol looks like, but I'm sure when they get the antelope, they're pretty stoked, right? But you know, one thing that we really prioritize with this, this kind of, you know, this hustle porn type attitude— and no offense to Sam and the Hustle, but you this, this kind of, you know, get up early and destroy your enemies because they're out there training harder. You know, I'm kind of the anti-Jocko when it comes to that, right, that attitude. You know, we don't take the time to actually appreciate what we've done. And I think that gratitude and taking that pause is a really huge part of then being able to go into the next thing recharged and intentionally and having a good understanding of why we do what we do. And, you know, there kind kind of this idea that your life has to be like a stock chart. It has to, you know, you have to report quarterly earnings, and if you weren't doing more, doing better, growing your revenues better than you were last quarter, then you're some kind of failure. And, uh, you know, that leads to this just, just voracious growth, uh, for growth's sake, like, which is something I mentioned earlier that, uh, I think we need to be more intentional and go, hey, actually, I don't need to grow anything right now. I've created something that's really awesome, and I've had these massive to end. I don't need anything else in my life, so why don't I stop here and just appreciate what's happened up to this point?

Yeah, very wise. I like that. The other thing I like that you do, and I don't know if this is something you do a lot of or a little of, but I kind of got the sense of it, which was you're here for an event right now. That's why you're in the Bay Area.

It's called TransTech.

TransTech. But there's some other thing, Baby Bathwater or something like that?

Yeah, I'm a member of an entrepreneur's organization called Baby Bathwater Institute, which is founded by my two great friends, Hollis and Michael Lovitch, who basically have a very interesting philosophy, which is we want to curate a group of amazing entrepreneurs and then we want to do life and work together. So we build companies together, we help each other out, and are actually looking at other ways to monetize that and actually invest with each other and create this entrepreneurial tribe that collectively elevates everyone.

One. And, and you met Sam, because we met through Sam, you met Sam at a different event, uh, like a similar sort of curated group of people. I think it's called 212 or something like that.

Correct.

Um, is this something you intentionally do? Did you just happen to do these two, or do you do more of these? Because I like this, I, I think it's interesting, right? It sounds like to me like you're investing in both yourself and your, your friends, your friend group, and your, your brain as well. Like, um, these are sort of a substitute for business school. I'm sure every time you go to one of these you learn a lot. Uh, talk about how you decide to do if that's paid off for you. I'm just curious because I don't do any of that, and I like— I like— I'd like to know.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's—

it's something that's been tremendously additive to my life as an entrepreneur for a couple reasons. One, there's kind of the, the tactical reasons of like, hey, it's great to get to go have time with other entrepreneurs who are growing businesses and may have, you know, ideas or hiring practices or, you know, very practical things that you can apply And a lot of people go to these communities for that, but really the benefit is actually finding your tribe and finding like-minded people who think the way you do. Entrepreneurship can be incredibly lonely because we think a different way than most of the population, right? And when you kind of think differently than most people, it can actually be, you know, you can find yourself ostracized or not really connecting with other people, but just because your brain works a different way. And so when you go to an entrepreneurial organization with a whole bunch of other people who have broken the rules and started their own thing and not played by the traditional, you know, playbook that they were given, it's actually incredibly cathartic to find your people and go, oh, all right, you know, now let's go create under this new paradigm and think about the things we want to do and how we want to show up in the world. And then you start building this network of experts in every possibly possible different business area that you can think of. So, you know, I am really good at investing and, you know, finding good deals. Some people are really good at marketing. Some people are really good at hiring and growth. And now I have this tribe where I can call somebody anytime I need help in one particular area, and it just accelerates my path of success.

Right. It's like no questions asked with these people. Totally. And so you, uh, and some of these are expensive. Some of these are like you pay $20 grand to go to some of these things. Do you ever look at that and you're like, no, that's, you know, because upfront that's a, that's a big price tag for, for a lot of people. Even if you're successful, that's just a big, you know, there's not many things you spend that much on in a given month. So, uh, how do you think about that? Yeah.

So for me, um, A, I have a different relationship relationship to money than most people. You know, I look at— which is what? I look at money as a tool that should add value to my life, which means I have kind of a very easy come, easy go attitude with money.

And how do most people look at it? If they don't look at it as a tool to improve life, what do you think is— if you were looking at observing how other people have a relationship with money, what would you say?

Yeah, I mean, you know, we're taught that that money is scarce and that we have to hustle for it and grind for it, and then we have to save it and make sure that it's never going to run out for a rainy day. But, you know, once you kind of have jumped into the entrepreneurial pool and found some success, you know, you start to realize that, hey, I know how to do this now. And so, you know, even if I do run out of money, yeah, it may be painful for a little while and I may not be able to have all the creature comforts I'm used to, but I know that I can use my brain and my skills to create more.

And so you kind of start to divorce the scarce mindset and go, okay, if I'm coming from a place of abundance and I know how to create wealth, now what am I going to do with that? And that becomes looking at how am I going to use my time, which is the only non-renewable resource. So when I look at the price tag on some of these entrepreneur groups, which is your original question, it's not what return am I going to get on my dollars. You know, if I put $1 in, am I going to get $3 back? I don't really give a shit. What I'm looking at is how does this increase the overall quality of my life? And in the case of an organization like Baby Bathwater, you know, I've essentially oriented my entire life around around this group. All my friends are in this group. I'm building companies with people in this group. I'm attending events, you know, a couple times a month with my friends from this group. And that's given so much to my life that I can't put a price on what that's worth to me. So stroking a check for membership dues is like, absolutely, right? Thank you for not charging me more.

I love it. That is, uh, that is excellent. And so what's next for you? What are you excited about doing? Doing? What's the next chapter look like?

Yeah, so currently I am embracing unemployment. And again, this kind of gets back to the celebrate wins.

People are going to listen to this and be like, this guy has the best fucking life. They're like, this guy enjoys himself. He had success. He is— he's celebrating. He's grateful. This guy's got the best life. In fact, that might be the title of the podcast. Mike Brown, This Guy Has the Best Life.

Perfect. That's That sounds pretty good to me because I do feel like I have the most incredible life and I realize the incredible privilege that I had to be able to have the opportunities to create what I've created. But I also am grateful for, you know, the decisions I made and the massive risks that I took that got me here. And, you know, really this kind of unemployment phase came with a conversation with my 21-year-old self, which is if I told 21-year-old Mike Brown, hey—

Here's where you are.

At age 39, you've exited a company company and you're thinking about what to do next, what should you do? 21-year-old Mike Brown is going to be like, "Dude, take a year off and go snowboarding. What are you thinking? You have the opportunity to not do anything for a while and all you're going to think about is what you're going to create next." I like that because you're not—

So, when most people say, "I had a conversation with my 21-year-old self," it's always, "What advice would you give to yourself when you're 21?" You're asking the opposite. It's like, "Hey, 21-year-old me, give me 39-year-old Mike some advice, which is amazing. I never heard that before.

Yeah. I mean, basically, I do get to live at the pinnacle of human flourishing and I have the opportunity to not have to wake up and go grind it out every day and be stressed out. I am incredibly grateful for that opportunity. The other thing that that allows me to do is think deeply about how I can create that same outcome for more people. So that is what I'm working on now is, okay, how can How can I take what I've built and leverage that to create better outcomes for more people? And so that's kind of what I'm working on is putting together an investment strategy that focuses on companies with mission-driven and purpose-driven outcomes.

Love it. That's great. And so how do people get in touch with you? If people listen to this, they're like, hey, that guy, that guy, yes, he's got the best life. He enjoys his life thoroughly. What's a way to follow you, get more of your thoughts, get in touch with you? You have a panicked face right now. You're like, oh shit, I didn't think anybody would want to do that. For sure they're gonna wanna do that.

Yeah. Uh, try and, try and keep a low profile, social media blackout. Uh, you can find me on—

it's part of why you enjoy life.

Yeah, exactly. Uh, you could find me on—

so you don't do any social, you don't do Twitter, you don't do, uh, Instagram really?

I have, I have those accounts. Um, uh, but probably, you know, in this context, LinkedIn is a good place to look. Uh, there's a lot of Mike Browns on LinkedIn. I got a hoodie on. That's how you know that I don't care that much about LinkedIn.

Um, yeah, that's true. Finding Mike Brown on LinkedIn is like, just, you know, welcome to 4,000 search results.

Yeah. So, uh, the other way people can get in touch, uh, you know, if, if they want to talk to me about something is via email, which is mike@ripplestudios.io.

All right. Gave it out in the end. He gave you a way to get in touch with them, which I love because it sounds like you're, uh, you, you live off the grid a little bit in terms of, uh, of being connected on the internet.

So I like that. Yep. Yeah. Hit me up.

Okay. Awesome. All right, Mike, we are out of time. This has been great, dude. I really appreciate you doing this. And I'm excited for people to listen to this because I literally started taking notes in the middle of the podcast. I was like, oh, that's a good little phrase to remember. That's a good philosophy to live by. So thank you very much for coming on, man.

Perfect, man. I appreciate it. I need a dollar, dollar, dollar. That's what I need. Hey, hey! Well, I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey! Said I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me?