Billion $ TV Empires, Dating Business Ideas, And More Elon
Their TV show got canceled, but, but Discovery gives them a whole network. Discovery's like, yo, we're going to make the Magnolia Network all around you guys. And you guys are going to create like hundreds of hours of like TV that's fixer-upper content, cooking content, gardening content, like all the like house shit. Right. And now they've built this empire, the kind of the bottom line of the whole, the headline of this story is this couple in a span of about 10 years. Has built a billion-dollar brand around themselves.
So it's that big.
It's that big.
All right.
I hope they keep in what just happened. So before we hit record, it's like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And Sam on 3 takes out a drink out of nowhere at 3 seconds left. And just chugs it, like tilts up. Not only just tilt it up, squeezes the bottle like it's a, it's a Kool-Aid or like a Capri Sun or something. And he's chugging some carbonated drink and then it goes to 1 and then he puts up the 1 symbol, like, hold on. Looks to the side, burps, flexes, re-centers himself and is ready for the podcast. That was elite. That was an elite prep for a podcast.
Dude, I'm on top of it. I drink so many beverages. And, uh, we had this Fast Company article written about, uh, the Hampton lunch and the reporter in like the first paragraph called out how I left the interview to grab a root beer and I came back.
Yeah. He skimmed the foam off the root beer like it was a Guinness and then finished it. Held up the one second sign to my lips. Told me to shush as he, uh, as he drained his root beer during the interview.
You know how men drink like IPAs and crap and then they look at the glass after they take a drink and try to analyze it? That's basically what I do with my Coke Zero.
Dude, you should, you gotta have more weird quirks 'cause like you can't really be a billionaire founder if you're not super weird. So, you know, you gotta start picking up some things like, you know, oh, he only wears, you know, open-toed sandals with socks and like, you know, he wears shorts with, you know, EMF protection on his pockets 'cause he is worried about radiation. And what, what are the other weird things that you can do?
Well, I had a, I had carbonated water on tap for a while. That was pretty awesome. Like I, I like only drink carbonated water. No normal water.
Only sleeps during full moons.
Do you have a, you don't have any eccentricities, do you?
No, that's why I'm broke, dude. I need, I need some of these before, you know, otherwise how can I be How can I be the weird rich billionaire I'm trying to be?
We have, uh, Sean and I have these friends. I won't name who they are, but they're, they're young guys. And the minute that they got like a mild amount of success, like maybe $500,000 in revenue, they clearly had read like Naval's book on like charging by time or something like that. And then they sent all of their clients, it's like client services business, saying, we don't do meetings anymore. And, uh, that they were leading into that eccentricity thing and I wanted to tell them, you guys are doing great, but you're not there yet.
And their biggest customer dropped them immediately. It was like, oh, well, we kind of needed to meet to talk about the— I get, okay, well, I guess we'll just find another vendor.
Yeah. I wanted to tell them like, it's great.
I love the attitude. You know, showing up to meetings with the shirt off. And I was just like, well, that's cool. It's one way. Yeah. It's one way to wear your shirt.
That, that, that's not the way that that particular client was willing to do it. So it's no longer their client, but that is our way. Yeah. That is definitely our way.
They do have a nipple policy, unfortunately. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, we forgot to shout out.
We're doing a live pod April 29th. That's a Saturday. If you live in Austin. Or if you want to fly in, Sean and I, along with MFM guest Andrew Wilkinson, are doing a live pod. So if you go to mfmpod.com, you'll see the details and you'll see tickets. Uh, we're going to do a live pod. We did this in Vancouver a couple months ago. It's sold out. This one's going to sell out as well. So if you're interested in hanging out with Sean, me, Andrew Wilkinson, as well as 500, 600 other guests and fans of MFM, we're going to be there. So check it out, mfmpod.com, and you'll see the banner up top where you can check out tickets. Dude, we have a bunch of stuff. You have Chip and Joanna Gaines on there today. And I went to Waco this weekend where they are from. Oh, no way. And like saw some of their houses.
Yeah. That's crazy. Okay. So you might know more about this than I do.
Okay.
So let me tee it up and then you tell me what you know about these people. So here's my trail of events and I'll put the disclaimer out there right now. If you actually know about them, that this is going to all sound very elementary. This is going to sound very, very beginner because I was a complete beginner about like, who are these people? I'm walking around in Target.
For the listener though, Sean doesn't know, like I, I told him what Coldplay was last week. Like he didn't know. He thought that was like baseball in the wintertime. He didn't know anything about like pop culture. So this is you learning out loud.
Yeah, exactly. Like, uh, I still use a flip phone. So I would, I left my house. I go to Target and inside Target. There's this one section that my wife always goes into, and it's the only section in Target that looks like this, where there's a giant picture of this happy white couple and it's their names. Like, it's like, oh, here's aisle 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Chip and Joanna Gaines, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. It's like, why do they have their own section? So I noticed that first and I thought, hmm, that's interesting. Who are these YouTubers? Why, what, what, what is the, who are these people? Do they, is this the owner of Target? What, what is this? And so I noticed that and filed that away. Then I was talking to Al Doan, who came on the pod, uh, or we talked about it on the pod, who runs Missouri Star Quilt Company, the big quilt company, a huge quilt company. And he did this thing where he started buying up a section of a town. He basically bought a town and started to build it out and he wanted to make it like, you know, quilt heaven. So basically a mecca for where quilters would go. As like a, as a pilgrimage to go and just like really indulge in their hobby. And he told me Disney World for grandmas, Disney World for, yeah, for, for your auntie. So, so he was like, all right, well, he goes, I go, does anybody else do this? And he goes, well, there's, there's Chip and Joanna Gaines thing in Waco. And I go, there they are again. Who are these people? And you know, fool me once, shame on me. And fool me twice, shame on me. Finally, I'll look you up. And I looked 'em up and they got an incredible story. It sounds like you're pretty familiar with them, but. He had told me one thing that kind of caught my attention.
He goes, it shocks me, by the way, you don't know about these people. I mean, like in the Midwest and amongst like moms, like you are so California that you don't know about this. They've been in the game for like 10 years. But I don't know too much about them.
Yeah, it's, you know, it's quaint, but I looked them up. They, the YouTube videos are amazing, by the way, if you watch the YouTube videos. So they own a part of town in Waco. That they've just branded as their own. They bought these two abandoned, I think, silos, like grain silos. And so they call it like whatever, Siloville or whatever. And they have the Silo-bration at the end of the year where it's just like this huge party for themselves. So their brand Magnolia is the, like everywhere in this little area. So they have the Magnolia Market where you go buy your stuff and then they have the Magnolia Table restaurant, which is served by the vegetables from Joanna's garden., and then there's the Magnolia other thing, and then there's a Magnolia other thing, and it's just all them. And they get about 2 million visitors a year just coming and making the pilgrimage to Waco, Texas, which is really the middle of nowhere for Texas. I lived in Texas and I never went to Waco. Like it was not even in my top 10 places to go in Texas. And so they have made Waco a destination. They literally have raised the housing prices in that area by like 24% because they have made it an attraction. And their story is kind of interesting.
I don't know if you know their, their backstory. Do you know, do you know? Pretty well?
I don't. So they, uh, the story goes something like this. And, uh, again, I'm a beginner, so I'm doing the thing where you read the press release and you're like, oh, that's how they met. How, how fortunate. Or, you know, like when you hear about somebody saying like, how'd you think of the idea? It's like, well, I saw a single mother struggling and I just decided that that would be my mission. It's like, no, dude, you read a report that said this market was growing and that's why you, you, you know, you started this business. But like, here's the PR version of their story., they live in Waco, Texas. Chip, the guy, goes into this, uh, car repair shop that her dad owns, sees a picture of her on the wall and decides, I'm gonna marry that girl. Suspicious, but okay. Uh, keeps going back to the car repair shop.
That, that, that story, it could, it could go a different route and just totally, it, it, it's like, uh, it's like when you whisper in someone's ear, like, I see you versus like write it on their mirror when they're in the shower. You know what I mean? Like, it, it, context matters here. The ending of the story really makes Makes it, uh, makes it okay, but it could go either way.
She doesn't end up in a freezer. Um, so yeah, so he keeps going back and he eventually bumps into her, asks her out on a date. They go on a date, uh, whatever. They end up getting together. This is back in like 2003-ish. And so he was doing house flipping and she was kind of like, I guess like working with the, doing like commercials for her dad's car, car repair place or whatever. And they get together and they decide, um, they, they don't have anything to their name. But they decide to try to, try to make something of this house flipping thing. She's like, oh, I could use my design sense. You're a contractor. And let's, uh, so they move into this like 800 square foot house and they renovate it while they live there. End up flipping one, flipping two, flipping three, and then they start to, you know, successfully flip some houses in Waco, but still no big deal. Then a TV show from HGTV starts casting and they read about the, this husband and wife house flipper in, uh, in Waco, Texas. And they said, well, Waco, we are kind of hoping for somebody in LA or, you know, New York or maybe Atlanta or something like that. But like, okay, whatever, let's go down to Waco and meet him. And, uh, and he's got this like kind of big personality. He's, he's real outgoing and she's really good looking. And so it like plays well for TV. So they get their show on HGTV called Fixer Upper. And basically the show, like from day one is a hit. And so they go from kind of husband and wife, small-time house flippers, like very small houses that they're flipping in, in Waco. To now on TV. Um, and they, they're doing this and they do 5 or 6 seasons. They become very famous on, on HGTV. Show gets canceled. But what they did was they had built this, uh, this following and they had built, they had this brand in mind that they had called Magnolia. Like they had opened up a retail store back in the day. They closed it because it wasn't really going so well, but they had this idea for this store called Magnolia. So when the show ends, they do 2 things. They reopen Magnolia as a beautiful place in Waco. And then secondly, they go to the, the, just the channel, Discovery Channel, and they go and their TV show got canceled, but, but Discovery gives them a whole network. Discovery's like, yo, we're going to make the Magnolia Network all around you guys. And you guys are going to create like hundreds of hours of like TV that's fixer-upper content, cooking content, gardening content, like all the like house shit. Right. And now they've built this empire, the, the kind of the, the bottom line of the whole, the, the, the headline of this story is this couple in a, in a span of about 10 years has built a billion-dollar brand around themselves.
So it's that big.
It's that big. So there's no real numbers that like have come out. So like if you go look for their net worth or their revenue, super hush-hush, which, you know, just makes those little hairs on my arms start to tingle a little bit. I know.
Yeah.
I know when it's that hush-hush that that means it's a lot bigger than you think, especially because you see it like Target partnered with them to develop that line of goods in their store. So like when Target, it's not even like they got their brand into Target. It's like Target came to them as like, let's make a brand. That's like a big deal.
They have killers move in silence, killers move in silence and you hear, yeah. So if you don't hear about it, if you don't hear about it in TechCrunch, you know, it's doing good.
I thought you were going to hit them with a G's and lasagna type of line type of, no, no. No, not—
well, you know, I, I, I think I've, uh, I've milked that one dry, dude.
It's like my mom when she was on the phone with like a customer service person and you're, you're like, A as in apple, B as in Bob, whatever. She goes, K as in knife. And I just, I just lost it. I was like, I don't think you understand how that works. Yeah.
It's like, it's hilarious.
So K is, they, they operate like K as in knife.
I grew up on this street called Simpson and I would be like, uh, I'd be like, you know, my address is this, this, this Simpson, like OJ Simpson. And, uh, it works.
Um, anyways, their, their app that has their TV show network has like tens of thousands of reviews on it. So that means that that app is doing pretty well. And that's a paid, that's like their own version of Netflix, right? Like, that's like kind of stunning. You never really see an influencer that has their own whole subscription network. And so they have cookbooks, journals, retail stores, brand, uh, paint brand, uh, furniture brand. Uh, they have their TV show network. They got everything. And this idea, and they have their own town, which gets 2 million visitors a year. Like if your website gets 2 million visitors a year, you're doing pretty okay. You're right. You're, you're out there, let alone 2 million people making the pilgrimage to your small town in Waco to come buy shit from your stores. That's kind of impressive. I guarantee you that these people will end up billionaires off of this Magnolia brand. This Magnolia brand has to be worth high hundreds of millions, if not over a billion dollars already.
Have you been to Waco ever? No. Dude, so I went to Waco this weekend because, and I'll tell a quick story and then we'll get back to this, but basically, uh, last year I I randomly came across this guy who had this new Airbnb. It was basically a, a piece of land that he built a lake on and he puts, and he built 7 Airbnbs. I was so curious. I couldn't find him on social media. I call him up. He built a lake. I get him on the phone. Yeah, he built a lake. Like it was like a, like a plot of land and they built, not a huge lake, more, more a pond is a better, is a better word to describe it. But, but it's, it's a lake, I guess. But I call him up and I go, tell me your story. He goes, well, I had a part, I, I was a, an accountant. I had my own small business for accounting. I just built this Airbnb thing. I think it's going to be really successful, but I really describe myself as an artist. I love to paint and play music. And right away, I'm like, I'm in. Do you want to hang out? Start hanging out with him. He's part of this thing. I mentioned it called Homestead Heritage. It's this religion slash community. They, it's like all different parts of Christianity in it. And they believe in like sustainability and, and the weird part is they believe in craftsmanship. So the way that they like find God is by like doing things with their hand and doing, doing it well. So anyway, this weekend I went and celebrated Easter at his church and like they like had a whole singing thing.
I stayed at his Airbnb. Has this been around for a long time or did this, was this like a recently created religion?
Okay. Basically the story is, is that one of the, the main guy, which is his wife's grandpa, I believe, uh, her, the wife's, uh, Isaac's, uh, wife's grandfather lived in New York, was atheist, found God somehow and felt like the best way to like show that I love God is to like just be excellent at everything I do and be kind to people, among other things. But that was basically it. For some reason, they moved to Waco, they get 500 acres and they build a whole community on there. And then this guy Isaac now has built this Airbnb a few miles away and he tweeted out his profits and in his first year of business, he did a million in profit. And so I went and I became friends with him and I went and hung out there and I drove through all, all through Waco and basically in Waco, Waco's Sorry, Waco people. It's not nice. It's not, it's not, it's, it's like objectively like a, a fairly rundown place as if maybe it was like an oil town. It feels like there was once something there and then now it's not. And when you drive through that area, you see like not nice house, not nice house, nice house. And I told him that and he goes, oh yeah, that's the Chip and Joanna's house. Like they like started here remodeling homes and you could distinctly tell which one is their brand. And it's, and, and so like, it's like basically like Isaac French who like brings in all these people and Chip and Joanne, like, you know, way above him. But that's like my, my understanding of Waco at the moment.
Yeah. There's these like, uh, these, these like kind of simplicity-based, um, communities or religions or, or, or, uh, cultures where it's like, like I'm on their homepage right now and it says Homestead Heritage is an agrarian craft-based intentional Christian community. Stresses simplicity, sustainability, self-sufficiency, service, and quality craftsmanship. And then there's literally like a video of a cow eating leaves and then like a boy stitching a baseball himself, which I say I never did.
Well, I was like, uh, uh, Isaac showed me around. He goes, here, let me show you the orchard I planted last week, you know? And it's like, got, it has 200 apple trees. He's like, we did this for the community. Anyone can come pick an apple. It'll be ready in like 5 years. And that's what he does instead of watching TV. So if I like, I'll be like, hey, have you seen this movie? He's like, no, I don't really watch movies. I'm planting trees.
Not a whole lot of Buy First Million podcast listeners out there probably.
There were a few. I think there was a few, but you know, they're more fans of like Johnny Appleseed than Sean Perry. Yeah. I don't think, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, uh, there, there are no like Johnny Appleseed posters in their room. Yeah. But, uh, dude, when I, so I've told this story many times. I used to work for Mike Wolfe from American Pickers, and that was where I first learned about like entertainment and business and things like that. But Mike Wolfe was American Pickers at the time was like the second most popular show on TV when I worked there. Number one was Pawn Stars and like number four was David Letterman, like to give you an idea. And, and we, I know for real, that's the, that was the real rankings. And then I would be at the store and some days we would sell $30,000 of t-shirts at the store. And these like were not nice t-shirts. They were just normal, like with the logo on it, we would sell like 10 grand worth of mugs. And so like these shows kill it. And what Mike did was he would film himself. Basically the show is he would drive to barns, find old stuff, tell you the history about it, buy it, and then sell it. And he would, uh, he spent like 4 years driving around with a video camera filming this, trying to pitch it. And then when he finally did pitch it, he got the production rights, or I guess he kind of like what Rob Dyrdek did. And I think that's where the money is. And it sounds like that's what Magnolia did too.
Yeah, exactly. They, they, uh, I mean the, The breadth of this empire is, is kind of stunning to me, right? It's like, uh, whether it's HomeGoods, it's a restaurant, it's coffee books, it's the, it's the, uh, the bakery, it's the TV show network, it's the Target line. It's like, and, and their brand is like, they're this relatable, you know, blue collar, you know, salt of the earth people. It's like, yeah, like they are, but they also have some part of them that's Rupert Murdoch and they're, they're flexing that Rupert Murdoch over the last, like, you know, 10 years. I wonder if they have like a manager or if they're just doing this all themselves.
Like Rupert Murdoch in Wrangler jeans, you know, like it's, we're relatable, but we'll gut your heart out if we had to.
Right. If Succession was in denim.
Yeah. Uh, no, I dig these. I dig these people. The worst thing that would happen to them is a Johnny K+8. You remember Johnny K+8?
Of course.
How can I forget, man? They were, they were some of the first guys to get popular, like in the reality TV world of TLC, and then they get divorced and it ends horribly. Just like Honey Boo Boo, man. Honey Boo Boo. Same thing. It always ends horribly. So hopefully it doesn't end that way. I remember like seeing—
if your shtick is just how many kids you can have, that is not sustainable. It's like sometimes you see these YouTubers and they come out real hot because it's like, I'm buried alive with tarantulas, 10 million clicks. You're like, yo, but where to from here, son? Where are you gonna go with this? Like, this is not a sustainable path for you.
Yeah, I, uh, but I like these people. I mean, they seem like pretty, like, I don't know, wholesome, but we'll see how, how money impacts things.
Well, you have Oprah on here and I think that Chip and Joanna Gaines, uh, and other people like them, like Brené Brown, they're kind of filling this Oprah gap. Like Oprah left some big shoes to fill, I feel. Um, and I, I've been amazed by, by the, do you know, follow, do you follow Brené Brown very much?
Yeah, my wife is reading all her stuff and like she's kind of killing it amongst like the empathy crowd, the vulnerability crowd. Yeah.
Yeah. It's those authents who are all about authenticity.
Yeah. Yeah. The capital E empathy. Uh, well, like if I hear one, one more person say the N-word nuance, uh, then like, that's like, that's, that's the thing, man. It's nuance. It's empathy.
Uh, authenticity. My butt clenched a little there. I didn't know where you were going with, with that, uh, with that joke. I was like, Sam, don't end it here, man. We've had a good run, but don't end it here.
Nuance.
No, no. I, I like her, but that's not my speed.
You, it's a, it's a gotta watch. It's that good. Is that good? So go watch her first Netflix special. It's some, you gotta watch it just 'cause you've never seen anything like it. It's basically Tony Robbins, Oprah, and a standup comedian at the same time. Like she comes out on stage like a standup comedian and she's funny without telling too many like jokes. Like it's not like setup punchline, but she's funny. But then she starts talking about vulnerability and herself, and then people in the crowd are crying and you're just like, what is hap— what kind of event is this? You know, it's like, you know, Twister with my emotions. Like, I don't, I don't know what's going on. I got right leg on sad and I got, you know, left, left hand on empowered. I didn't know what was happening. It's kind of an incredible little live show that she's created. And I could, at first I was like, why would Netflix give a special to this person? I don't even understand what that could be, but it's actually pretty, pretty well done for what it is. And I could see why she's so likable, why she is so like, uh, relatable to people.
You quickly went from like, wow, to wow.
Uh, yeah, exactly.
Uh, no, I'll, I'll watch her. Do you, uh, do you want, can I tell you a little bit about Oprah? So we, we, we were going to talk about Oprah last time. We didn't really know what we were talking about. So I dug in a little bit, I guess.
The, the theme of this episode then is, uh, you know, what are the TV empires or female TV empires, something like that. I don't know. Let's get, let's, let's see where we're going with this.
TV, uh, TV empires that everyone knows about that you and I are just discovering 20 years after the fact.
Empires with empathy that the Boys discovered 7 years after they, they, they're off air.
Capitalize both those Es. Uh, all right. I'll tell you a little bit about Oprah. So she started at 17 by, uh, doing beauty pageants. She won Miss Black Tennessee at age 19. She got her first job at CBS station in Nashville. A few years later, she moved to Maryland and then back to Nashville. And eventually she was the first African American news anchor on TV. And that was in Nashville. She basically had an issue where she struggled to show objectivity because she couldn't really report the news because she was showing too much empathy and she was pretty casual. And at the time, like, this was like, hey, Oprah, you gotta like you know, keep it straight. You can't like express remorse or like show too much emotion. She's like, well, let's, uh, let's take this a different way. So she created a show called People Are Talking and that aired originally in 1977 and she would improvise and she was casual, kind of like you and I, one could say.
Yeah.
She was like the MFM of the '70s. Um, and by the end of the decade, so after like 3 or 4 years, she was beating Phil Donahue in the local ratings and Phil Donahue was God. Uh, so he was like the man in charge. So eventually she keeps doing that for a little while longer, but in 1986, so about 10 years after starting that, she gets her own show. It's called The Oprah Winfrey Show, and she, along with a, a couple outside investors, established her own production company called Harpo Productions. Harpo is Oprah spelled backwards. And at 32 years old, she became the first Black woman to have a nationally syndicated show, and she still owns 80% of that production company. And all along the, the way she started like innovating, innovating. So in 1996, she created the, uh, her, uh, her book club, which made $130 million in sales in year one and arguably set the groundwork for this like massive influencer industry that we have. Then in '98, she co-founded the Oxygen, uh, Media Group, which has programming towards all types of, uh, shows, mostly towards women. She launched Oprah Magazine. She had a radio show. Uh, in 2010, The Oprah Show ended after 24 years and she had, you know, all the best guests, uh, leading up until then. 2011, she launched, uh, OWN, Oprah Winfrey Network, and then all along has been doing all types of stuff. So for example, in 2015, she bought 10% stake in Weight Watchers and then the stock 6xed like within a year or two of that happening. In 2008, she sold most of her, uh, stake to, of OWN to Discovery. And she's done a ton of interesting stuff between now and then, but listen to her empire. So she has the Oprah Winfrey Show, which had over 20,000, 28,000 guests, giving away 570 cars, had 5 presidents on. Um, she got 20,000 fan letters. The finale had 16.4 million views. She also owns Harpo still to this day. They've, uh, collectively it's done $2 billion in profits and made a couple movies as well, including The Color Purple. Beloved and Selma. They have 200 employees in Chicago. The OWN, so the, her network, Oprah Winfrey Network, it started with $100 million in funding. Eventually she sold most of the stake, but she's still CEO of that. She has Oprah Magazine, which in the first year did $140 million in revenue just from subscriptions. And then she has Oprah and Friends, which is an XM radio contract or her show where she got $55 million in the first 3 years. She's invested in Weight Watchers, True Food Kitchens, which is basically a restaurant that has 42 locations. She, uh, helped start a food science startup backed by Oprah, Katy Perry, and a few others that has a billion dollar in valuation. And she also is a big investor in Oatly. Then, and this is finally, she has a $45 million estate in California, a $14 million one in Washington. In Colorado, she has 60 acres for $14 million. In Hawaii, she has over 1,000 acres and she has, uh, basically her net worth grew from at age 32, she got her first million. At 41, $340 million. '97, at the age of 43, $550 million. And at the age of 48, she became a billionaire. So that's Oprah's story. Um, super fascinating. I mean, she's been in the game forever, it seems. And I think she's what, 60-something now? And still killing it. I didn't realize she was the CEO and like active in all this. I thought she was more so like a face, but I think she's actually not, you know, not just a face, but, uh, it seems like she's like actually like a, like a mogul, a tycoon.
Right. You know what's, uh, one thing that stands out when we talk about these is that there is this like flywheel that happens once you become a certain level of famous. It's almost like, uh, you know, that, that graph that's like going viral, the, the fuck around and find out. Graph. It's basically like fuck around and find out, but the positive version. It's like you could kind of like if Oprah was like, here's Oprah's maple syrup. Here's Oprah's, um, you know, like new line of spoons. Here's Oprah's, uh, uh, you know, new board game. Like what does it really matter at this point? It'd be like her board game does $50 million in sales. Her syrup is the number one syrup in the world, in the country right now. Like it's kind of at that point you just choose. Because so much trust and distribution has been built up. And I have a friend who this week, I can't say the details, but they went to a very famous person. They went to a very famous person and they said they had a business idea. They said, hey, uh, our friend has a, has a background in a certain industry and said, hey, famous person, you should be doing something in that industry. Let me walk to you, show up at your door, knock at your door and say, Here's a full business plan of exactly how you would dominate in this category. So they go, they fly out, knock on the door. Um, first they don't meet the famous person.
Famous person sends a, a manager to them, sends a, by the way, are they, are they like A-list famous?
They're super famous. Yes. Super, super famous.
Got it. Okay.
A-list famous. And so they go to them and first they get hit with a manager and they say, hey, they're trying to like look over the manager's head and be like, hey, is a famous I just wanted to talk to, just hoping to get a word in with the famous person. Can you get out of the way? And they're like, no, no, no, you have to get through this wall first. They talk to the manager first. They say, hey, look, here's my background. I've been super successful in this industry. I think you guys could crush it in this industry. Um, why don't, can I meet the famous person now and tell them the idea? They said, no, no, no, tell me the idea. I'm in charge of this. I said, okay, here, here's the idea. And then the person says, manager says, that's a good idea. Okay, cool. And, um, then they get the meeting with the, the famous, and the whole time they were told, hey, uh, you fly in on Monday, you'll meet with the famous person sometime this week. Just hang out in the hotel. Just be here, which is a pretty big time move to try to pull on somebody to not give you a time, but say, hey, we'll, we'll hold this walkie-talkie. Would you hear me? Put your pants on, get ready. Wherever the meeting's happening, but I can't tell you when it's going to be.
They've got a special calendar in Google. Everything ends in ish, but it's, you know, Monday-ish, you know, like it's all ish, right?
You're given a window and you better be prepared during that window to strike. Okay. So end up getting a meeting with the, with the famous person. Famous person comes in, explain the whole idea. Famous person, uh, likes the idea, but also has a bunch of their own ideas, of course, as famous people do. And so I asked my friend later, I said, uh, so what happened?. And, uh, the response was this. They go, well, I'm pretty sure we convinced famous person that they should do this and do this with us. And I'm pretty sure they convinced me that I should not do this with them. And I thought that was just a hilarious takeaway. And I was, I was like, okay, well, why? They said, well, you know, they have all their own ideas. They go, honestly, everything they're trying to do in this space probably won't work. Like, I think they're going about it the whole wrong way, but they'll probably end up being successful anyways. That's the crazy thing about this. Like, uh, their margin for error is so large and they can kind of do anything and still have it work because their brand, their celebrity, their distribution, their trust and loyalty in their audience is so large that you can kind of mess up 8 out of 10 things and still get it, get it to work eventually. Um, whereas most startups, most businesses don't have that margin for error. And so I don't know what the big takeaway is. It's kind of a no duh, but it's, uh, if you're mega, mega famous, it's not hard at that point to do the empire thing because, uh, it's like, uh, what was his name? The guy, uh, Moyes from Native, how he, when he was selling his company and they're like, you sell just deodorant, you know, you're asking for this big valuation. He goes, yeah, because, uh, do you know how to write the word Native on a bottle of shampoo? Do you know how to write the word Native on a, on a bottle of toothpaste? Cool. That's your expansion plan. Like I left a lot of room for this to grow. If you could still write the word native on something, it will work. And that's, that's how I feel about these mega celebrity brands, which is like, if you, if you put my face on something, it's going to work.
So let's just, let's put this in, in a very realistic context. So you and I have that minus or no divided by 100. So we're Oprah divided by 1,000, whatever it is, but we have a very small taste of it. And we also have friends, you know, like the Tim Ferrisses of the world and whoever else who have it, you know, times 10 or 20 for us and are in this like potentially billion dollar space. There's been 3 things I think that I've narrowed it down to that make this empire strategy, um, that hold, hold me back. And, and I imagine someone like Tim who's a perfectionist or someone like that holds them back. Number 1 is reputational risk. So putting your name on crap products and then how on earth can you actually like track it all to make sure that you're not, you're not putting your name on bad, on bad products that you actually stand by. And so because of that, it's almost like you have to pick and choose, but then there's other people like Richard Branson that put, you know, Virgin on everything and it kind of has seemed like it worked out. Uh, so that's like the big thing. Number 2 is finding people who you can trust. When you have 5 or 10 or 30 different things going on, you need really trustworthy people. And even if it's your family, even if it's your brother and your cousin, people can screw you. And like, you have to really stay on top of it and you have to find a partner who's good enough to like really have your back. Like even my accountant, or I imagine if like your lawyer or your accountant, and every once in a while you're like, is this person actually thinking of me or how are they incentivized here and who's actually making the right decision? That's actually exhausting. And I think in, in, in quite hard. And then the final thing is like, do they want the headache of that? So like a Joe Rogan, uh, he just like, no, F this. Like I'm on my island here. I have what I need. I don't want to put my name on anything. Uh, screw that. I'm, I don't need anything and I want to keep things small and tight. And so those are kind of the 3 things I think prevent like empires from being built like this.
Yeah, I think that's true. Um, so say, say that, say the, the first one again, what was the first one? Do you remember?
Reputational risk, having people that you can trust, and then just like not wanting more headache.
And here's the counter to each. Okay. Reputational risk, putting your, your name on crap products. Do you, uh, have you drank Prime?
Uh, once I tried it. It's fine.
It's fine. It's also the fastest growing drink in the country right now. And it's fine. And I think that that's the, the counter to that is yes, you can't put it on a crap product or do something that would, you know, hurt people or do something like that. Like, you know, something, nothing, nothing on the sort of terrible end of the register, but there's a lot of leeway between the best product in the market and it's fine. And you just got to fall somewhere there, right? It's like a, it's like you're playing golf and the fairway is so wide. You really got to screw it up if you hit to hit it out of bounds. And that's how I feel with these products. Like, is Kylie's lip product the best product on the market? I have no idea. Is, um, you know, for most of these products, I can't tell you that Conor McGregor's whiskey or The Rock's tequila is, uh, is anything better than fine. They might just be—
you're saying there's got to be a threshold.
There's a threshold and the threshold's pretty goddamn low. So I think the reputational risk is, is a little bit less than, than what I, what I think a lot of people would worry about. Uh, the rest is true. It can become a headache and you do have to find competent people to run them. The good thing is when you have that brand, it's like Prime. The Prime didn't start by Logan Paul and KSI. Saying, let's create a drink. Let's go to the flavor house and create a formulation. There were some entrepreneurs who approached them that said, we do this. We've done this at, you know, medium scale with you guys. We could go super scaled. Uh, we will take care of everything. You guys take the cut. You guys help us with the promotion, but like, look, we come with this track record. And I think that's what happens for most of these celebrities is they're approached by people with track records. Like even the example I was just giving. Somebody with a track record came and said, I know this industry. I've done this before with your brand and your distribution. We could do this again in a big way. Um, and I think those opportunities just come knocking at your door. So it's not even like, where do I go find somebody great? It's like, can I filter? Can I just like recognize great when it shows up at my door is really the, uh, the question for most of these people.
Do you think you would enjoy that type of fame? Like Chip and Joanna?
No. Um, not only would I not enjoy it from a like, oh, I don't want to get bothered when I'm out and about with my kids and stuff like that. But also I, more than that is I don't enjoy what it takes to get there. And that's actually what goes like, that's actually the most important question of business. I was talking to Ben Levy about this the other day.
We were talking about business ideas earlier. Earlier I asked you this a while ago and you go, there's a price to pay. I ain't willing to pay it.
Yeah, exactly. Know the price and then decide if you're, if you're going to pay it. Um, when we were talking about business ideas, it was like, oh, do we like this idea or this idea? And the easy thing to do, I think everybody gets this wrong, is like, I love basketball, so I want to do a basketball-based idea. Or I love, I'm really passionate about like helping people, so I'm going to do this healthcare startup, whatever it may be. And they think that their enjoyment of the of the thing is going to be based on the product or category that they're in. But in reality, most of the time you spend when you're an entrepreneur is trying to grow or sell. It's trying to get more customers and grow, grow the actual business. And so you're not playing basketball. Your day-to-day experience is actually about selling and trying to grow. And what ends up happening is that some ways are more enjoyable or suit you better than others. So for some people, they love Facebook ads or they love SEO, and for some people they love phone calls, and for some people they love high-level business deals, enterprise sales, uh, where you're nurturing a long relationship for a long period of time. And the big mistake people make is they think, oh, I'm creating a basketball-related startup. What they don't realize is that the only way for that business to grow is through enterprise sales, and they hate enterprise sales, or they're unwilling to go and sell to these facility managers of NBA stadiums, or they're unwilling to sell to blah, blah, blah. And they think they're in the basketball business, but they're in the enterprise sales business because 90% of their day-to-day work and their, their, the challenge that they're faced with and the, the, the stuff they have to do, the, whether they're selling basketballs or ping pong balls or, uh, books, it doesn't matter. It's the, the sales channel. The sales process is where you're going to spend most of your time. So you got to figure out which sales process do I like the most, or at least tolerate the best, and then find a business that uses that sales process. I think that is like a, uh, I wish somebody had told me that earlier because I got tripped up with this for many, many years. And then when I look back, I'm like, oh, I just really like growing things through Facebook ads. It's like, to me, it's way better than these other ones. And so like, so I have a list. I'm like, my favorite sales channel is Just mention it on the podcast. It couldn't be anything easier than that. Like, if I could just tell people what I think about this product and then they go buy it because they already trust me and they like me and we have enough listeners to this product, uh, to this podcast, that is the number one easiest sales channel, most pleasurable. So if I can think of a business that works in that, fantastic. Number two for me is Facebook ads. Why? Because I got, I don't have to talk to anybody. I sit behind the computer. I set up the budget and when it works, I just scale it up with the push of a button. I don't have to hire more salespeople. I don't have to like go do something new. You can take one image that works or one video, one 10-second video that works in Facebook ads and put millions of dollars of spend behind it and make multiple millions more off that ad. I love that. I love that model. I like that I can look at the dashboard, see a number and know what to do. I, yes, that's like my number 2. And my number 3 is cold emails because I'm good at cold emailing and it's kind of a pain in the ass, but I've done it before. I can train people to do that of how to cold email in order to generate customers. Those are my 3 favorites. Everything else I don't like as much. And so when I think of an idea, it's gotta fall in that top 3.
Have you, so we had, I guess technically the hustle kind of was enterprise sales. I mean, we had 6, maybe once or twice we had 7-figure deals and that's like a long process. I wasn't allowed to go to those meetings because like, I remember like I had to go and buy like brown shoes and like tight jeans and like tuck my shirt in and like a certain way. And I was like, dude, like, I'm Todd. Hi, nice to meet you. Uh, like it wasn't for me.
You got all the details wrong. Just a tank top tucked into some khakis, which are tucked into some brown shoes.
Yeah.
Just a giant tunnel you created with tucking everything in.
Right before the meeting, they're like, psst, Sam, the buttons are supposed to be in the front.
Like, ah, thought it was a breakaway.
Yeah. So I was like, was learning as I, as I went, but. As the owner of a company that had enterprise sales, it is awesome because what I didn't realize, there's this amazing thing that I learned, which is that sales teams can create demand. So even if your product, our product was great, but even if your product is okay, if you have a good sales team, you can truly create demand. And I didn't understand that until like year 2 or 3 of like having a team like this. I'm like, oh my God, this is how the world works because most Big companies, they just have a certain amount of budget. They have to spend it on something. And if you just get in with them and you wine and dine them and you, they like you, half the time the product doesn't even matter. They just have to spend it. Otherwise next year they won't have the same budget. If they don't have the same budget, they don't have a job. So, and you can like that or you can not like it. Frankly, I don't love that, that that's like the truth, but if you can make it work, it's pretty amazing. And I like learned that the hard way while running a company like this.
And if you don't know which one you like, your best bet is to go get exposure to a bunch of them. So go, go try your hand and do like a 6-month rotation where you're basically like, okay, how do I do this enterprise sales thing? How do I do cold calling? How do I do Google Ads? How do I do these different things and figure out which one of these appeals to you? Because once you do that, then, then you could kind of pick and choose. I know most, most people, and I think you, you would find this to be true. Most successful people we know, they don't really hop around sales channels that much.
It's like, no, if they're good at— find one thing and you, and you kill it. Yeah.
They, oh, you're good at SEO. They just do SEO 4 different times and 4 different flavors. Oh, you're good at Facebook ads. You do Facebook ads for one business, then another business, then another business. If you're good at, uh, enterprise sales, you just figure out, you know, which businesses to plug into that over time. And they kind of make a career out of really understanding one growth process because Being a master at any growth thing is, uh, is super, super valuable.
Um, do you want to talk about HustleGPT-3 or do you want to go to another topic?
Um, which, uh, let's do some quicker ones. Cause I feel like we did a long, long-winded thing. So I have, I have a couple quick ones.
Tell me.
Okay. So I'm going to give you my two, uh, bad dating ideas. And by the way, I'd like to, to put another Drunk Ideas on the books to, uh, to just put that out there. This would have been in my Drunk Ideas thing, but We, we don't have it scheduled, so I'm just gonna do it sober. So, um, 2 bad dating ideas. Um, number 1, do you watch the TV show Love Is Blind?
Sarah does, so it's on my TV all the time.
Okay, good. So you know the premise.
You and my wife have like the exact same TV stuff. Like for the listener, Sean and Sarah are texting about Bachelor or Bachelorette, whatever it's called. Yeah. Or no, what do you guys talk about? The Challenge.
The Challenge. The Challenge, but also these other shows. So. Um, so Love is Blind is this like sensation show on Netflix, which is basically like you get a bunch of single people together, they're in these rooms, they can't see each other. So you kind of speed date, you date, you date other people, but you never get to see 'em. So you only, you're supposed to, you know, fall in love with their personality. And then after you choose who you like the best per on their personality, then you get to see 'em and you get to see what happens. Okay.
So, and don't you like get married at the end?
Yeah. Well, of course, to, to like any great story, you need stakes. And so they raise the stakes by saying, you don't just get to pick, say, oh, I like Sam the best. I mean, I wanna see him. Now it's like, in order to see him, you must get engaged blind and get married 4 weeks later. So they like, you know, that's how they make it a TV show.
But some people walk, walk on the altar.
Yeah.
You have to decide at the altar.
Well, a lot of people when they see the other person, they're like, oh, hey, it's so good to see you. Like, they're just like, oh man, like I imagined something different and now I'm stuck with you. Yeah, it goes wrong. And now I look like an asshole because I fell in love with your personality and I fell out of love with your face. Uh, but they can't say that, so they have to find some other excuse.
One guy on the show was like trying to get an idea of how, uh, how they looked. And they go, so I'm pretty— the guy was like, I only weigh 150 pounds.
Yeah. Could I give you a piggyback ride? He goes, it was so smooth the way he did it. And by smooth, I mean terrible. He goes, I love to go to music festivals. She's like, me too. He goes, at music festivals, you know, I, uh, I usually put my girlfriend up on my shoulders. Um, do you think I'd be able to do that with you? He's like, did she catch it? Yeah, she was like, uh, like, no, that's my worst nightmare is a guy like struggling to lift my body weight. Oh, so she was just like, what the hell?
But, uh, what size rowboat do we need?
On this, on this season, there's one guy, she, they fell in love and then they meet and he's just He's not, he's not bad looking or whatever, but he does really intense eye contact. Like the guy doesn't blink. She's like, you could have never known this from behind the wall. And so she's like, haha, like, how come you're not looking away? And he's like, what? What do you mean? I am blinking. And she's like, no, like, please look away. It's like so uncomfortable to watch. So anyways, great show. I think somebody should take this show on the road. Literally, I think somebody should do a, I think the show, but if not the show, then somebody should spin this off. Do a Love is Blind tour where you go city to city and people pay to be a part of the experiment. So people pay to actually like do the show themselves. I also think you should do a podcast version of Love is Blind because podcast is audio only. So it's already no visual. So you could have two people talking and you could sort of edit and cut this together. And make a, a pod version of Love is Blind. So I think people could take this concept of this dating show, or it could be other dating shows too, but make a, make a tour out of it, make a show out of it where it's going from city to city and people get to participate almost like American Ninja Warrior. Some people get to participate and other people get to watch the, the show going down. And, uh, I think that these things could generate a lot of money ticket-wise because Netflix has done the hard work of educating the market., and so once you get that education in the market, now somebody should go to them and get the license.
Like we talked about this with, uh, kids cartoons, like, or they can just call it like, uh, love with poor eyesight or fuzzy love. Yeah. Forgot my glasses love.
So, so like people did this with the cartoons, right?
That was a, that was a 3 out of 10.
Yeah, it's okay. I gave you a laugh to try to like, you know, smooth it over. Um, but like kids cartoons like Blippi or Cocomelon, there's these companies that go and they license the rights to create the Cocomelon live tour or the Blippi live tour. And I've gone to these and these, I did a segment on the pod about these. These things make millions of dollars a year. Yeah. Well, the, every parent loves it. It's like, where can you, can't really, there's not many places you could take a tiny kid. That's like kid-friendly, but this is perfect because they already love these cartoons on YouTube. And so. I'm willing to pay $50 a ticket times 4. So I pay $200, then I buy the merch, then I buy the snacks. Cause of course my kids want snacks and, you know, we go there and we've dropped $400, $500 by the, by the end of it, or, you know, something like that. And so these, these shows can make a lot of money. And so I think somebody could do this with other television shows, including the dating shows.
That's not a bad idea at all. Well, that's, that's a great idea.
You should have seen an average person try to explain that idea. You would have laughed them out of the room. Okay. Here's my second.
Love is Blind on tour. Ah, even that sounds all right.
So my second, uh, bad dating idea. Okay, so you've heard about this like dating app Raya. You know about this app?
It's basically a dating app originally for famous people, but now it's like dating apps for people with like verified on Instagram or something.
Yeah, I don't even really understand it. I think somebody needs to come over the top on Raya and make the even more elite dating app. So I'm calling it Daddy. Here's what Daddy is. So Daddy, Daddy or Zaddy, you know, we're, we're, we're debating it internally. So Daddy is an app where for a guy to be on Daddy, actually, let me first start with the girl side.
Okay.
For a woman to be on Daddy, she's gotta basically audition or apply. And we're only accepting the top 1% of eligible women. So this is, you Beautiful, but not just beautiful. Smart, but not just smart. You got to be living in a, in a, in a town, a big city so that, you know, you're available to be, to be, to be, uh, you know, reached to be dated. So beautiful, smart, top 1%, maybe even top 0.1% of applicants get in. More, more elite than Harvard. And then on the guy side, you got to pay $25,000 a year to be on the app. So that's the app idea. 5,000 men. If you can get 5,000 men who have the money to drop 25 G's on their dating app, they get access to this elite pool of women who want access to this rich group of men. And it is what it is. That's our slogan. It is what it is. Is it right? Nah, but it is what it is. Okay. So it is what it is. It's rich guys. With beautiful smart women. And the business model is if we can get 5,000 guys to pay us this amount, that's $100 million a year business. Does that sound like something you might be interested in?
So when I was studying, like, for Hampton, to launch Hampton, I was, like, curious about communities. And there's a bunch of, a lot of people are like, you should charge, like, $100 grand a year. And the reason being is there's a bunch of communities out there where the whole thing of making it elite and community is just, can you pay the money? And I was thinking about that and I'm like, first, like the audacity and second, if you can get, my first question is how dare you are? Who are you? Uh, but if you can get past that, how amazing is that where your whole business is just, uh, if you could pay it, you're probably good. So we'll just, uh, we'll, we'll be, we'll, we're happy to be that middleman and check it out. And so there's this app called The League. Do you know what The League is? It's a dating app. It started when we were in San Francisco by this woman named Amanda Bradford, who, uh, I'm friends with here in Austin. She sold it recently to what's the big, the big company, IAC, who owns like Match and Bumble and, or not Bumble, Tinder. And when Amanda was getting started, she was, or the, the, the League kind of took off. And so I don't, you probably don't know this.
It was like Ivy League was the premise, right? It was like only Ivy League.
But then she, one day she was like, how hard can I push this? And so right now the league costs, I believe it's either $499 or $999. So it's either $499 or $999. It's one of those two. And the reason being is that's the highest price per month that you can charge on Apple's, uh, on the Apple Store.
It's $399 per month. Uh, sorry. Yeah. $399 per month.
So yeah, it's, it's the highest that you could possibly charge. And she goes, screw it. That's what it's going to cost to get premium features. And people like at her, I think her team was like, this is crazy. We can't do this. No one will do this. And it crushed it. And IAC came to her and they're like, we want to buy you because how on earth are you able to charge this? And I imagine in her head, she was like, well, it was actually pretty easy. I just, uh, added an extra 9 at the end of 9.99.
The highest tier is called Investor. Member $299, owner $399, investor $999.99. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like, uh, it's like, uh, there's like an episode in South Park where they come up with this like new MBA and they're like, look, I don't make up the rules. I just think them up and write them down. You can't argue with me. I didn't make up the rules. And it's like, well, how'd you increase pricing so much? Well, I just clicked that button 9 and, uh, we added, we made it instead of $999, we made it $900 or instead of $99, $0.99, it was $999. So anyway, it's killed it. And so I actually think that there are a lot of interesting opportunities in the market where you can just charge way more. And it feels very weird. That's the business model.
And actually, now that I think about it, $25,000 a year, that was complete small boy stuff. And I apologize to the entire audience. This needs to be $100 grand a year. This has to be $100 grand a year. And guess what? We only need 1,000 members now. We'll need 1,000 guys who are willing to drop $100 grand in order to get access to the most— and in fact, you know what we're going to do? We're going to take a portion of that money and we're going to pay some women to be on this app. We're going to say, look, you are so great, you were casted onto this, and you are going to be paid to be a part of this network because, um, we want to blur the lines between prostitution and legal dating. Oh my God. It is what it is, as we say.
God bless you. Maybe this will work, but yeah, good luck.
But I think there's, there needs to be more apps that do this, that go over the top with it. Like, I agree, basically find the theoretical max of what the market will bear or what people actually want to do, right? Like what is the actual behavior people want and what are they willing to do? And it's usually more than you think or more than, you know, sounds reasonable. Like what, What if you just took an unreasonable approach to the same thing? What would you do differently? Is a question you can ask about really any business. Like there's these guys, they created this thing called the Unreasonable Institute back in the day. And I loved it.
Is that real?
Yeah, it was a great, it was a great idea called the Unreasonable Institute. And it was for, I just love the name because I love the entire premise, which was what good has become from just taking a reasonable approach to something. If you're trying to make any big shit happen, you're trying to do anything, change the way anything works, you know, like create a new system or improve something or innovate, you know, in a way, by definition, you're going to do something slightly unreasonable.
And so is this called the Unreasonable Group?
Yeah, it was called the Unreasonable Institute. Then they had the Unreasonable, like, tour where they, like, they, like, got a cruise ship and went into international waters. And then they did a bunch of other things. Now it's probably called— this is like 10-plus years ago.
So yeah, that's so funny. It's probably changed. Well, there's this thing called Unreasonable Group and it's The Unreasonable Collective is an international community of sophisticated investors. We pool, we pool capital as a community and co-invest in world-class. But then there's the Unreasonable Institute, which is a fast-track program to give altruistic entrepreneurs skills and funding to affect large-scale change. Yeah, I think that's the one. The first one sounds maybe a little, yeah, the first one maybe sounds cooler though, but, uh, uh, that's cool. I like that name. Um, speaking of Unreasonable, you want to wrap this up by talking one thing Elon Musk. Okay. Did you see what he did? Uh, so you see the Twitter thing?
Yeah. That's where he blurred out the W. Oh yeah. Oh, okay. This is news.
No, no, I saw this. I saw this. This is, explain this.
This is dumb. There's this, there, there's this thing in the UFC called, if you win, so basically the UFC and all butt fighting, it has weight divisions. And every once in a while someone like Conor McGregor or someone else comes along and they achieve greatness and they earn what's called the champ champ status, meaning they have a champ, uh, they're the champion in one weight division. And then while having that belt, they also gain a few pounds and go up and win another belt. It's unheard of. In my opinion, Elon is the champ champ. He has amazing products. He's one of the best entrepreneurs out there. He's the champion. He's also the most cringiest. He's the champ champ right now. Uh, he does whatever the fuck he wants. That's what champ champs do. And recently, like last night, he tweeted out that there was a dispute with the landlord saying you can't like alter the sign or something like that. So he took like a piece of white sheet or paper or something and he blurred out the W. So now Twitter, the sign, it's a huge sign when you live in San Francisco. I lived a block away from it. It says Titter. And it's the most cringe thing I've ever seen. Why on earth would he do that? I love a good troll, but that's not like funny. It just makes like people like, look, I like trolling. I love punching up. Uh, but this is like, uh, this is punching yourself in the face. I like making people uncomfortable. This is the bad type of uncomfortable.
Go to his Twitter, uh, right now. Do you see what his name is on Twitter right now? Because you thought that was the cringiest thing he's done in the last 48 hours. Well, he's one-upped himself.
Oh my God. What an idiot.
His name right now is Harry Bolz. He spells balls B-O-L-Z, but it's Harry Bolz. That is his name on Twitter right now.
Oh, Elon, you're so, you're so irreverent. Yeah, dude, these billionaires' senses of humor, like, they're just like us. I would love to see what Elon thinks the, like, other people's reaction is. He must type these in and just sit back and just smirk, just have a smug look on his face, just imagine, oh man, the internet's gonna love this. I'm super rich, but I don't take myself too seriously. Look at this.
Yeah. Next week it's going to be like, uh, like Elon Baller 69. Like, it's just like, this is the lamest thing ever, man. I don't know how, I mean, I guess like, look, when it, with extreme personalities comes extreme success, but they don't tell you there's another end of that bell curve. And that's extreme. That's extreme cringe. And we're experiencing that a little bit right now. I know a lot of billionaires, not a lot. I know a couple billionaires and I know a lot of wildly successful people, and they do every once in a while, like, you're like, oh, hey man, you don't know how to hold a conversation appropriately. Let me help you out here. This is kind of what's happening with him. It just so happens that it's in front of 125 million followers.
He has like the cringe version of Tourette's. Like, dude, just stop. He can't, he can't stop just blurting out these cringy things.
Yeah, it's, it's ridiculous. Um, he's, he, I, I actually think that he's kind of ruining his legacy for sure here. Um, like 10, maybe 5 years ago, he was the man. Um, and he still is the man, frankly, like his accomplishments are amazing, but he's a little less of the man at this point.
There was a funny, just a little funny back and forth. He, uh, somebody tweeted out a, um, a graph of all the billion dollar or chart of all the billion dollar companies and what industries they're in.
Yeah, I saw that.
And, uh, Paul Graham retweeted it and he says, oh, you know what's interesting here is like we're clearly like over-indexed on like software and like, you know, real world things like hardware or manufacturing. You know, there's only like a few companies in that bucket.
But don't let that hold you back. Don't let it.
You should still do it. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And Elon replied and was like, yeah, like a complete waste. You know, it says something like it was like a big waste of resources or brainpower or talent. That that was the case.
And then, um, and the, the, the response was the biggest own I've seen in a week. It was, it was a really good reply.
Paul Graham goes, yeah, can you think of anybody right now who's really talented and, uh, and, and could be doing those things but is wasting their time on a software project? And it's so good because obviously he's talking about Elon. Um, and, uh, yeah, it's just like a perfect self, self-own really by Elon.
Yeah, it was pretty good.
Too good.
It was good. That was good. I'm a big fan of him, of Paul Graham. I'm still an Elon guy. I think I might get myself a Tesla, but I don't like this. It makes it hard to want to wear like a Tesla t-shirt, that's for sure. Not that he cares, but it makes it challenging to like root for him publicly when he makes these stupid comments.
People in our comments hate when I make fun of Elon or diss Elon or Chamath or these guys because they're like fans of them, which is totally fair. You can be fans of whoever you want. Want. Uh, but I just want to, for the record, I'm out on Elon early. Because guess what? More and more you're going to be out on this guy over time. And I just want to plant the flag. I'm out on him early because his cringe will eventually wash away all these people or he's going to get canceled for something. I'm telling you, it's, it's going to happen. And I would like the record to show that I was out early.
Dude, these, these people in our comments are crazy to me because why can't someone do a lot of really good stuff and also some bad stuff? Like, why can't like someone kick ass at a, at a ton of different things and make a huge amount of mistakes? Totally. Uh, cause whenever we talk about this, we say, yeah, he's, he's the best at a bunch of different things.
He's the greatest entrepreneur of, of, I don't know, the last 30 years, 50 years. That is true. Also true. He's pretty cringe and, uh, corny and disingenuous about some, some things, right? That's also true.
Like, yeah, it's like I can love Michael Jackson's music and also not love what he did, you know? Like, both, like, both can exist. I can like Chick-fil-A chicken and also not stand by what they, what they stand for, you know? Both can be true. And I, and I can't stand that with the, with the commenters on our, on our stuff. But let's, we're gonna get a reaction on this. I'm eager to see what it is. But, uh, Anyway, that's an action-packed pod, I think.