Joe Rogan Offers $100,000 To Vaccine Expert For A Debate, MJ Sells NC Hornets For Billions & More

You want to know what I am, Pro? A freak show. I love a good freak show. Like when people start fighting in the middle of the street or there's a car wreck, you know, I'm stopping. I'm going to ask them to pull that wreck a little closer so I could see, like, hey, police, can you fill me in on the backstory? What's going on? Like, I love this.

What's going on, fellas? What do we got here?

I feel like I could rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's go. We're live. What's going on? How are you? What do you think? Uh, I guess this is the first time we've talked since Deer Dick.

Since, uh, since you moved into a small woman's bedroom or something. What do you— what is this? Where are you?

I'm visiting family for a month in Brooklyn, and I've had to rent a place. It's impossible finding monthly rent, like, like a, like a 3-month rental, very hard to find. So we used Airbnb, and it's the best I can do. All right, how's it look? Does it look like Victorian or something?

Yeah, it looks like, um, I feel like my sister had this little princess bed growing up, so it reminds me of that. Um, what, uh, what you got today? You gotta— I could see you're eager for something. What do you have?

I'm eager for something. And let me preface this by saying I'm not a political guy. I'm not really conservative. I'm not really liberal. I'm not pro-vaccine. I'm not anti-vaccine.

Like, I'm not— I'm not liberal. I'm not conservative. I'm best described as aggressive.

I'm really— I, I like Not only do I, I just don't care is the thing, but you want to know what I am pro? A freak show. I love a good freak show. Like when people start fighting in the middle of the street or there's a car wreck, you know, I'm stopping. I'm going to ask him to pull that wreck a little closer so I could see like, hey police, can you fill me in on the backstory? What's going on? Like, I love this.

What's going on, fellas? What do we got here?

When I, yeah, when I flew here, I flew here. I, you know, and I download TV on my YouTube app. It was 3 episodes of Cops. That's the kind of guy I am.

So what's caught your eye? What's the freak show that's caught your eye?

So now there's a good point. Jason Calacanis coming in with a hard $10K, tried to slip that in and say, I, I'm with you. Put me down for a— put me down for a buck.

Yeah, well, here's the thing. I was like thinking about this. I'm like, should I hop in on this and just like say some number?

Like, who's gonna collect? Can I get collecting from these people? No one's collecting.

Yeah, how could I insert this? And how can I insert myself into this situation? But now it's $2.6 million to get this guy on the show, and I'm— I think he's said so far that he's not going to do it. And I just thought, this is awesome. I love a good freak show. I love, like, I think that, uh, we actually have a presidential candidate coming to our pod soon. Um, I don't know if you know this yet, but I've said it.

Actually, don't tell me. I'd love to be surprised. Yeah. I love a good surprise.

He's a guy, he, he, uh, he started a pharmaceutical company. His name's Vivek. And, uh, he like DM'd me like 6 or 12 months ago saying he's going to run for president. And I like laughed at it. I didn't laugh at it. I just didn't even respond, which is worse.

You know what I'd love to do? Because, uh, I think that guy's kind of interesting, but I think what would be more interesting is if we have— because he's kind of, let's say, a, uh, you know, an upstart candidate or whatever. Like, he's like, you know, not the favorite. He's not the leading guy. Um, I would— it would be great if we had two of the upstart candidates come on at the same time, and so we could debate them. Because it's actually kind of boring when you have one candidate come on and, uh, they just kind of monologue their piece for a very long time. I've seen a bunch of these guys go on podcasts, and frankly, it's kind of boring when that happens. I would love to have the most pipsqueak debate of all time. It's like us moderating who don't know anything about politics, the two candidates that only have half a percent in the polls, and we're just like, this is the showdown. Hundreds of dollars donated to charity.

What's the question going to be like? What's your opinion on car crashes? Like, we don't know anything. Like, do you like websites?

Ending of Breaking Bad, good or a little underwhelming?

Yeah. Like, yeah. Call your wife right now.

Call your wife right now. I want to talk to her. I want to see what she's got to say about you, dude.

Like, we don't know anything. But last time, what was the Asian guy who ran last year who like said he loved math?

Andrew Yang.

Yeah, dude.

Andrew, did he run and say, I love math?

I mean, that's just like I think that was like his slogan, was like, make math great again. I thought that's what it was. But he, he messaged me also a year before. Well, he messaged me before like one of our events, HustleCon. He's like, hey, I'm gonna run for president, can I come talk?

And I was like, wanted you to be VP.

I was like, dude, you're gonna make me look stupid by some crazy guy saying he's gonna run for president. You're like that guy on the street who like holds up a sign, you know, that says like aliens are coming. I can't associate with that. And then Turns out he kind of made a good run. And so this time I was like, I have to take this at least a little seriously. And so that's why we have to have Vivek on. But yeah, what are we going to have two guys being like, uh, arm wrestle? Comms or .govs?

Yeah. We just ask them about their workout routines because we're going to compare you on things that we value in other men. So, you know, like, here's a situation. Person breaks into your house and we just see how they react.

The reason I'm bringing this up is I'm not one of these guys that says like, oh, like I think Jason Calacanis said this. He's like, podcasts are going to shape the next president.

He said the next president will be, will, will be decided off of podcasts or something ridiculous like that. Let me, let me, let me look. I'm not like an absolute, by the way, do we have a little beef with Jason Calacanis? He's kind of sliding into our mentions here. He's coming in a little hot. I gotta say, I like Jason Calcanis, but if he'd like some internet beef, I would happily be the recipient of some internet beef.

Yeah, you're the Chef Boyardee of internet beef.

Let's do it. Grade A grass-fed internet beef. I mean, sign me up.

I like Jason too. I've only hung out with him a couple of times and he's always been nice to me, but he's been nice to me in like a rude uncle type of way where it's like—

Pat you on the head, give you a compliment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, oh, that podcast you have, it's really great. I think it's precious. You know what I mean? Like, he's like—

It's like, yeah, Jason said he loved my startup, but And then he said he was cute at the end. Yeah. What's up with that?

Yeah. But for the sake of entertainment, I'm happy to call him out.

Well, I want to do two things. So first, on your birthday, I tweeted out just a little thing. And then he came into— I tweeted out a thing. I was like, yeah, happy birthday to— and I made up a bunch of nicknames. I was like, the Vanilla Gorilla, the Long Arm of the Law, whatever, the 2% Milk himself, Sam Parr.

And I was like, gave you a little shout out.

Like that, just freestyling. And he replies with the think face as if— because I think I was like, what the hell is this? What does this mean? And then somebody, they were like, oh, I think he thinks you stole his shtick from All In where he gave them nicknames like the Sultan of Science, the Queen of Quinoa, whatever. Right.

Is that a Jason Calacanis trademark?

Yeah. Yeah. I was like, oh, you think you started nicknames?

Can I nickname, like, the, like, turning left? Like, is that a thing? Like, can we trademark blue?

Yeah, ridiculous.

That's a little weird.

So yeah, I do think he pats us on the head and thinks he's great. But then there was another hilarious Jason Calacanis moment, I got to say, from Twitter. So I just replied and I said, all in billionaires talking about billionaire shit. MFM millionaires talking about millionaire shit. And that's a description. So people liked it.

But someone said, except Jason.

They go, all in, 3 billionaires and their friend Jason. I was like, okay, that's a good burn. And then he came back and said a bottom 5 lamest thing you could say. He goes, more like 1 billionaire and 3 centi-millionaires.

Whatever. Just roll with the punches, man.

You never want to say centi— centimillionaire. That's like, if I had to insult someone with $100 million, I would call them a centimillionaire.

Yeah, like 5'11 and a half. Yeah, exactly.

That's got big 5'11 energy. Uh, that's so good. I do want to challenge, by the way, I want to challenge the All In, uh, podcast to, um, to a poker game. By the way, I will play all of the All In podcasts, I'll play them all heads up in a game of poker. So I will play them heads up, I'll put up $100,000, and, uh, and if they beat— if, if two out of the four beat me, uh, they get that, they get the $100 grand. But if I beat 3 or 4 out of the 4, I get $100 grand from them. They each, they only have to put up $25K each and I'll play them heads up.

We'll livestream the whole thing. You really think you'd win?

We'll livestream the whole thing and I will go in order from centimillionaire to billionaire. So I'll play Jason first, make quick work of Jason, and then I'll go Friedberg, Sacks, and then Chamath at the end. 'Cause I think they think Chamath is the best player out of them.

So are you good? I mean, I, I, I, I know nothing about poker. Are you good?

I'm better than them. That's all they need to know.

I mean, they named their pod after it. I mean, they're basing their, a little bit of their, their brand on that.

My nickname is the Nuts. And if you know about poker, you know what that means. So, so, you know, we, we have our own nicknames for ourselves. All right, let's get back to it. I don't know why I got on this Jason Kalkowski rant.

So we could wrap up, we could wrap up this little part, but I'm not one to say like, I'm not going to make an absolute statement like Jason did, but I do think that there is like, we are going to see that this, this little freak show that's going on right now is awesome for RFK.

Beneficial to him for sure.

And I think I, for sure. And I think we'll see a little bit more of podcasting have a, and here's why I think that this is inside baseball. A lot of people don't realize this, but so The Hustle now is read by, let's say, 3.5 to 4 million people. I have 250,000 followers on Twitter. I think precious. Yeah, it's precious. Sean, you had 250,000. I've got 250,000 followers on Twitter. You have 350,000. The pod, let's just say, has 100,000 listeners per episode. The pod consistently out punches in terms of engagement, all of those things, I would say. Would you agree with that?

In terms of like people who actually like, trust, and will take action on things.

Yeah, I think YouTube would do the same, but, um, but yeah, podcasts definitely do. I, I agree with you. I think podcasts are a bit of a, a little bit of a sleeper still, which is You know, depending on who you are, but I think people are shocked at how effective podcasts are at swaying opinion. I want to point out a couple other things. So some people are saying, oh, Joe Rogan, you're just doing this self-serving thing. You're just trying to have this freak show, this debate to like pump your ratings. I would say not true at all. Look at somebody's actions, not their words. Joe turned down having Trump on his podcast. He turned down having, uh, other presidential candidates on his podcast that he thought would just kind of be promotional or not a good conversation or bring unwanted attention, um, to the pod. Like, saying no to Trump is saying no to ratings, especially in the last election when he was, uh, or when he was kind of on the rise. And, um, he just said, you know, I'd rather not, I'd rather not do that. I'm not sure I'm the right person to moderate that debate. And, um, I don't think that they would be truthful. I think they would talk talking points if I had Hillary or Biden on. So I'm not sure that that would be a good thing. So I think you can't really say that Joe's just doing this for ratings. I think Joe actually thinks RFK— I think he actually sides with RFK and says, all right, if you're going to say this guy's full of shit, come explain why and let him argue with you and let's see where it lands. That's the first thing. The second thing is, have you seen this guy, this, the scientist?

I saw what he looks like. He looks like, I would think, a sci— like, I mean, he just looks like a, a nerd, right? Like an older nerd.

Yeah, he looks like a guy like cosplaying Neil deGrasse Tyson. So he, um, so check out this clip.

Do you take care of your immune system in other ways? Do you take probiotics? Are you cautious about your diet?

I'm not as cautious about my diet as I should be. I'm a junk foodaholic.

That seems ridiculous for someone who works with health.

Yeah, yeah.

What's going on with you, man?

Sometimes, man, I just don't get it right.

So you live in large, we call it.

Like that mouth pleasure so much you're willing to sacrifice a little bit?

I am, yeah. You know, I, you know, I, I can— I have to concede that's the case.

Do you take vitamins?

I don't take vitamins.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow. I think What about essential fatty acids, which are great for your brain? Fish oil, all these different things that are fantastic.

I'm not gonna— I'm not gonna argue with you. You got it, you got it, you got it over me.

Yeah, you gotta listen.

But it would—

you would have a much better argument.

You're making my wife's day here.

If you're taking care of yourself 100% instead of—

but you still need— but you still need your vaccines.

I'm sure you do, but vaccines aren't going to prevent cancer.

No, that's true.

We gotta get you healthy, buddy. Yeah, can't be pushing only chemicals and injectable forms to facilitate health.

Fair enough. Yeah, they're not chemicals, they're vaccines.

I'm sorry, what's in them? What? So I mean, it's some sort of chemical?

No, no, they're antigens, right? They're, they're fluid macromolecules. What's the liquid stuff? Uh, typically it would be saline or, you know, salt water. So it's him on Rogan. It's the same scientist, I believe, on Rogan and, um, in the past.

Peter, his name's Peter, I think.

Peter Hutz or Hutz. So he's talking and he's talking about vaccines and he says something about, he says something about he's very pro-vaccine. So he says something vaccines and Joe's like, yeah, but not everybody feels good putting chemicals in their bodies. Like, oh, it's not chemicals. These are antigens. These are cells. And he's like, okay, well, you know what I mean? Just putting something else in your body. Are you taking care of the main things? And he asked Peter, he goes, He goes, do you, do you do other things, uh, to be healthy? Because like Peter's kind of like, you know, he's circular in shape. And so, uh, and he's like, well, you know, I, I do, I dabble in junk food. And Joe just starts pressing him. And I've never really seen Joe do this, but I think he wanted to make a point. He's like, how, how much are we talking? Like once in a while or like every day? He's like, no, not every day. Like, he's like, so how often? And he's like, I don't know, like every other day. And he's like, what do you have? He's like, potato chips or candy or whatever. And he's like, do you exercise? And he's like, basically this guy over like a 2-minute period is like, yeah, I eat like shit and I don't exercise. And Joe's like, isn't that crazy? Like, shouldn't you— like, you know better than that, right? Like, you're saying people are crazy for not taking vaccines or pushing against them, but like, you are not doing the basics of human health. Like, you're not exercising, you're not eating in a nutritious way. Don't you see that that's a problem? He's like, yeah, I should. No one's perfect. And he's like, do you really just love that mouth pleasure so much that you— he goes in on him a little bit, which I've never seen Joe do. He's generally quite amenable. He's not really— doesn't really do that. But I think for him, he plants a flag around You gotta, he's like, it's non-negotiable. Like, you know, he's like, you know, for me, I travel somewhere, first thing I do is I go to the gym. It's just a non-negotiable. It's just something I do. And then the other guy goes, yeah, I do that too. And I was like, no, I don't think you do that too. Like, you could just tell him, look at his face. He's like, yeah, but it's different maybe the way I'm doing it and the way you're doing it because look at what's happening here, dude.

Whenever I, when I go and pick which doctors I'm going to use, like when I move to a new city or something, I definitely— their body matters to me. Right, right. You know what I'm saying?

You don't want the bald barber.

Yeah. Like, I went to this one doctor and she had this beautiful vein up her bicep, and I was like, I'm in. I'm in, Veiny. I was in.

Say no more, Veiny. Yeah, dude, that's hilarious. I also think that there's some other strange stuff about this guy. Like, his daughter has autism and he wrote a book called like Rachel's Vaccines Didn't Cause Rachel's Autism or something like that, which I just thought was like a really— I don't know. I can't imagine as a parent doing that. That sounds like just very aggressive. Yeah. So anyways, I would say, and it's funny to see the debate here because some people are like, there's on both sides, there's the Rogan, you know, macho bro, which is basically like Yeah, bro, showdown.

Let's go.

But you and me behind the school at 3:00 PM, they want to see a fight happen, and they really just want to see him get punked is kind of like one energy. And then the other energy is like, this is stupid. This is not what scientists— like trying to bully a scientist into debating when that's not his skill. This other guy, he's a politician. He's going to have talking points written for him, all this stuff.

Well, he's not a politician. He's not a politician. He's a wannabe politician.

Well, he's, I guess, trying to be currently. But they're basically like, this one guy's like, this is what he's doing. He's going around talking about the stuff he's been doing, that he's been giving talks on this stuff for a long time. And this guy's trying to just be a scientist. He didn't sign up to be kind of a debater of this stuff. So that's like the other point of view. And they're sort of like anti-bro in that way of like, you can't stop trying to make this a fight. That's like anti-science to do that. This one guy who I really like, his name is Yishan Wong. He used to be— he's like from the tech world, and he worked at Facebook early on. He was the CEO of Reddit.

Oh, he has a new company where he's trying to plant trees, right?

You know, like he, he writes so well and even though it's theories, I'm like, oh, it must be true.

Yeah, exactly. Sound familiar? No, I'm not holding up a mirror right now. But basically that person is going to disproportionately sway what actually happens. And actually there's another method. So he basically, it's called the Delphi method. And the Delphi method is basically this method where you bring up a topic, everybody sort of presents, everybody gets the same set of facts. Then you write down your initial thoughts and statements, and then they're circulated. Everybody reads everybody's initial thoughts and statements anonymously. You don't know who said this, so you can't just, oh, the CEO thinks this. Okay, I guess it's right. You just judge it by the merits of the argument anonymously. Everybody reads it, and then you can go revise your statement based on new information that you've got, and you update it and you pass it around again until you get to a sort of like what people believe is the strongest meritocratic argument after several rounds.

How do you spell that?

Robinhood.

Robinhood. Uh, he invested in Discord. He led growth at like 4 of the biggest consumer hits there's ever been. He, for fun, the other, you know, while he's kind of like, you know, just kind of goofing off now, he for fun built this Slack app that does the same thing. He's like, yo, Slack is kind of rewards the same thing. Like whoever's online the most gets to like say the thing in Slack. Um, and he, he created this app that was like a time delay. So you, anybody could prompt a question and then everybody has a certain amount of time. Like in the question it'll say you have, you know, we'll, we'll read the answers in 4 hours. So anybody could write their answer within the 4-hour period.

What's it called?

This is A, awesome. I'm gonna use these things. I like that. B, in real time, I just wanna call out what just happened. This is called a good partnership. Where I bring kind of shit and Sean just kind of polishes that shit and we somehow get something amazing. This is, this is, this is called chemistry, my friend. This is, this is how it's done. That was, that was beautiful. I didn't know you knew all that stuff and you tied it around perfectly. I'm actually was asking those questions and I'm writing notes. I'm actually going to go use this thing.

Thank you.

Yeah. And the Delphi method. That's awesome.

Um, I've got a few more things, but you want to go to a quick one first? Uh, I got to. Simple business opportunity for people. So I don't know if you know this, dude, but, uh, so Google Analytics, which is the most popular analytics tool on the planet, is just basically shutting down. They're not saying it's shutting down. They're like, it's changing for the worse. Like, I would love to see— actually, I want to film a commercial on behalf of all marketers out there of the Google fake Google Analytics commercial where it's like, But what if we made it worse in every way? What if we rethought it, dude, and removed all the key functionality and replaced it with possible vague analytics? Wouldn't that be better than precise analytics? It's like, and so people are wondering why. I think the reason why is because of all the privacy stuff, the cookie stuff. So basically the same thing that happened to Facebook where Apple changed their rules, the iOS 14, uh, rules. And all of a sudden Facebook ad performance went down and it was like, yo, geniuses over there, why, why is, why is performance down and why don't you have attribution? Like, why don't we know if I spent $1,000 on this ad, did I make $900, $1,200? What did I make? Why can't you just tell me that? Uh, you know, I put your pixel on my website, you know, you're Facebook, you're the biggest geniuses in the world.

And the reason why is because now legally they're not allowed to like use this type of tracking that they used before where it's not a technical problem, it's a regulation problem. Meaning the site that serves the ads can't also track the users on third-party websites. And this is why portfolio company Triple Whale exploded— one of my investments exploded in popularity and is now like, you know, on track to be this huge winner. Because let's say you owned an e-commerce store and you were using Facebook and you're spending— like, we spent hundreds of thousands on Facebook ads every month, um, we, we have to know is, you know, how our Facebook ads are performing. And when Facebook's ability to track that got cut off due to regulation, people were like, what's another solution? And Triple Whale was like, hey, we have this thing called Triple Whale Pixel. We can tell you more accurately than Facebook how your ads are doing. And so everybody signed up. Triple Whale takes off, does amazing. And so I think the same thing happened to Google, where Google had to, because of the privacy reasons, be like, all right, You know what, we—

yeah, they're just gonna—

yeah, because of the ads business, we gotta just, you know, lick a finger and, and guess, you know, roughly you got about this much, uh, traffic conversion, etc. And so, um, not great. So they're upgrading to this thing called GA4.

It's called, uh, Google Analytics Lackadaisical. That's like the new update. Yeah, they're like, that's the update.

Analytics after 6 beers and it needs a nap.

Um, yeah.

I agree. I need it. I need it. We've been trying to like figure this out. I don't even know how to set up reports. I was out of the game for about a year and a half and then I came back and everything done changed. I don't know how to do it. Dude, you know what else has changed?

Pronouns and Google Analytics. What the hell just happened?

I take 2 years off and business doesn't work the same way anymore.

There's no office.

Dude, everything has changed. Another thing that's changed is newsletters. Like people are asking me, like, what do we do for this newsletter? And I'm like, Dude, I don't know. It's been 2 years and in that amount of time everything has changed. Like when we started The Hustle, it was us, Morning Brew, and The Skimm. And I always, I don't like saying it this way because it sounds like it's a bigger deal than it is because it's not. But we kind of like pioneered this very small industry and now people take it seriously and there's all these like agencies around it and they tell me what they're doing and I'm like, I don't, I don't get any of that. I don't understand how any of this works. It, it just, things have changed very quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say something, but I decided to, to, um, take the high road on, on something. I was gonna call someone out on Twitter, but I just decided not to do it. I think you'll know who it is, but, uh, yeah, I'll avoid it. Um, okay, I got another thing for you. What? How would you like to hear about a business deal that, uh, involves one of the GOATs? Uh, that involves—

I like goats.

Billions of dollars. That involves A messy divorce. Let me tell you the story about Michael Jordan selling his team right now, the Charlotte Hornets.

That was related to a divorce?

In a roundabout way. So the story actually— so a lot of people are looking at the story right now and they're like, Michael Jordan bought this team for, I think, $275 million and it's about to sell for $2 billion.

The whole thing? Did he sell the whole thing?

Or majority owner? I don't think anybody— I don't think any of the NBA owners own 100%, but I think he was the majority owner. So the valuation of the team at the time was $275 million, and he bought it, and now it's going to sell for $2 billion. MJ strikes again. The GOAT strikes again. The guy's going to make more money doing this than he ever made playing, and more money on this probably than he made through his Nike deal as well. So found a new way to double his wealth. But what's interesting is actually who owned the Hornets before MJ did. So I don't know if you know, do you know the story? Do you know who the owner was? This guy Bob Johnson. Does that sound familiar? Most generic name.

I know a Bob Johnson.

Well, do you know the one that was the richest Black man in America at a given time?

Well, okay, we're narrowing it down. No, but maybe he's the guy who started B&G. So yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I listened to his, his wife was, his wife was like also the, the head honcho, I think. Right? Him and his wife kind of ran it.

did he own the whole thing?

Yeah, they were the— I don't know what John Malone got. I don't know if it was a loan or equity, but like, yeah, he owned the majority of it. So after everything is all— after everything settles, Bob Johnson is reportedly worth, you know, about $1.5 billion, $1.3 to $1.5 billion. And he diversifies. He puts a bunch of money into real estate. He owns hotels, so he owns hotel chains. He owns, um, uh, you know, a bunch of different like assets basically, but they're all kind of like cash, cash-heavy assets. So building hotels, that was a lot. Um, he had like, I think, a casino type thing or like some, some gambling thing or whatever. He needed money for that. Um, so he's put out a lot of cash. Then he gets divorced. He gets divorced and his wife gets $400 million out of the $1.3 billion awarded to her in the judgment. So that judge gave her a very nice settlement or a very nice ruling. Guess who she marries a few months later? The judge.

Wife divorces him, gets $400 million.

I don't know if it was a few months later. I shouldn't say that. Marries the judge, which is just an incredible—

wow.

Just an incredible anecdote. I honestly wasn't going to tell the story till I heard that. I was like, Oh, I gotta tell this story just because that is—

that's how thankful she was.

Amazing.

So, so did, did— but didn't they— did they freak out afterwards and appeal it, or is that a thing that went in some court?

I don't think it was done. So, so he— so this happens, he buys an NBA team. So he buys the Bobcats at the time, um, for $300 million. And, um, I think they were like the expansion franchise basically. And so but they're burning money. So he's losing $20 to $25 million a year. He loses another $200. So he buys it for $300, then he loses $200 million operating the thing and just operating expenses, which is crazy because there's this famous phrase when it comes to NBA teams that nobody's ever lost money running an NBA team and all the owners claim they're losing money, but it's really just like a negotiation thing against the players. They don't want anybody to know how much money they're actually making, or they'll run it at like a slight loss, but the franchise value is appreciating like crazy. So they're like, Oh, poor us. How could we ever afford to pay for our stadium? It's like, dude, you bought this for $300 million. It's now worth $3 billion. Like, I think you can afford it. So he's losing money. He's got all his money tied up in investments. He's got a ton of debt. He's using a ton of debt to build this thing. He's like, all right, look, I need to turn this team around. He hires Michael Jordan. So he's like, Mike, come work for the Bobcats. You're from Charlotte and come work for the local team. You run the team. So Michael's running the team. But Bob is getting stretched for cash and basically he's got too much debt and his shit's all about to come due. And so he's about to lose his entire empire because he can't come up with enough money to pay off his note. And they're about to take all of the collateral. So he is about to lose all his hotels and his team.

Do you think that in those situations, which has happened a lot, they go to the ex-wife and they're like, listen, hey, uh, Remember that time that I tried to make sure you got nothing, but you still got something? Can we talk? You know what I mean? Like, I wonder if there's any—

I wonder if I've never like been close to where we had our first date. Uh, you know why I brought you here? I just wanted to see if you had any of those feelings left for me because, uh, I'm about to lose it all. So he's about to lose it all and he's like, okay, I need to like sell the team or something, but the team is losing money and they're the worst team. They're the sorriest team.. So he wants to sell it for like, you know, $350 million or something like that.

Can't find a buyer.

Just a shark. Is that story popular? I've never heard that.

No, that's not popular. That's a MFM original, an MFM classic, soon to be copycatted by all of our little fanboys everywhere who who will take this and turn this into a thread, a newsletter, a TikTok, and an IG Reel for themselves. And so, you know, it'll be everywhere soon. The one thing that— another interesting twist, it's going to be—

here's what it's going to be called. It's going to be called like, Michael Jordan made money. He became a billionaire in ways that you didn't even realize were possible and has nothing to do with him playing and has nothing to do with Nike. Here's the story of how Michael Jordan turned $25 million into a billion.

There you go, Sam wrote your hook for you too. There's, there is more to the story potentially. So the team has sucked ever since Jordan bought them, and like basically he actually underperformed. Like the team sucked, the franchise values are down, uh, his franchise value should be up more than it is, uh, he, so he didn't actually maximize the value on it, uh, but it just shows when you, when you buy right, it's hard to, you know, hard to lose money at that point. Um, the other rumor is that MJ is only selling the team because he himself owes a bunch of money. That's the other rumor. I don't know if this is true or not, but—

well, there's always these crazy conspiracy theories that he's like a degenerate gambler and like there's always— there was a— I listened to a podcast called Conspiracy Theories and it was how the mob made him retire from the NBA or something like that. And then they— there was even theories that they killed his father.

This is, this is juicy, man. This is, this is a, this is a juicy grape. This is a, this is a grape of a story. I love this. This is a big, big grape.

That is a lot of what I just said is stitching together pieces because people don't come out and say everything, uh, but they do say pieces, and then you kind of have to assume things in between the gaps.

And he's protected. Jordan's protected pretty hard. Like, I remember, uh, you remember that rapper Chameleonaire? Yeah. Uh, he told the story, he, he like, because, you know, rappers love, uh, Jordan because of Well, he's like a good, like, you know, a Black, a Black man succeeding and they love his brand. And Chameleonair was like, nah, man, Jordan's the worst. One time I tried to get an autograph from him and Jordan goes, nah, I don't give autographs or take pictures with N-words. And, uh, like there's like the store at Chameleonair was like, huh? And he's like, at the time he was like, I was famous, like not famous enough that I thought like Jordan would bow down to me, but famous enough that like I thought maybe I would get like a, oh, nice to see you type of And he's like, I got nothing. I got nothing from Jordan and he's an asshole. And I don't remember how he explained it, but basically I was like, oh, Jordan, not a nice guy. Not nice at all. I would have thought that it was like a story of like everyone knows that he's a jerk on the court, but I would have thought like, oh, well maybe that just like ends once you retire. But it sounds like maybe that's not the case. Yeah.

I don't know why that would end when he retires. Okay. Yeah. So that's the Jordan story. Where do you want to go next?

All right. I have got one interesting thing. So everyone wants to say, Sean, what's your e-com store? Tell me all about it. And you give out little nibbles and you kind of tell people, you know, things are going well. But you want to know what the problem with e-com and also a lot of other businesses that we talk about, the things that are somewhat easy to start, the valuations are shit. Like a decent e-com business right now, what do you think it sells for? 5 times profit.

Yeah. 1 times revenue, which is usually, which is the same thing as 5 times profit for most of these.

You don't want to be Tony Robinson.

Yeah, I love it. I think that's great. Um, nobody talks about trade shows more than you in my life. And, uh, I was stunned when I heard about that guy who did Shop Talk, Money 2020, and I think they did the healthcare one. I forgot what that one was called. Um, uh, those are— it's really, really remarkable. I don't fully understand it, meaning, um, what don't you understand? Like, let's kind of walk through it. So basically, um, what's the draw to get the attendees to attend? How do you tell the— what, what is the value prop for the attendees? Is it meet others in your industry? Is it see these vendors up close and personal? Is it listen to these famous people, three famous people talk? What is the core draw?

Well, I think it's all of the above, but let's go through each one. First one you didn't mention is I think sometimes it's like, oh, sick, I could justify a free trip to Florida. Like, I'm gonna go hang out with people and also, oh, hey, Bob, who is not really our competitor, but he's in our industry, he might be there. So maybe I can go and shoot the shit with Bob and hang out with him, but I could bring like 8 of my teammates and we could justify this trip. I think that's definitely a thing. The second way that you get the, so it's all about, this is a marketplace. So you need the attendees to be there. The second place or second way you get there is you need like interesting speakers. So it could even be someone who's not even related, but it's like, oh wow, this one person, like Gary Vaynerchuk, like that's not really in our industry, but like, whatever. Like I would, I've always wanted to see what he had to say. Like, all right, cool. I can get that person. And then the third one is let's just see the latest and greatest technology. And so we can spend one day like getting to know. What's going on in our industry. But I really think a lot of times it's rooted in, I want to get out of the office and I can justify this $3,000 ticket and I can get 5 of my coworkers to go and it's an easy justification.

But in this one, they were giving away the passes for free. Is that correct? The, this UKI thing?

Correct. Uh, when I went to their website, they advertised free passes. So that's the extent of my research.

Gotcha. Okay.

And then in Money 2020, they charge people, right?

And so how do they sell those tickets? How do they, how do they build the brand from scratch? Is it content first, free content, then they lead up to it, or are they just cold emailing? What do you know about how that guy Jonathan Weiner or whatever his name was, how they did it?

What kind of show would we do off MFM? Let's say we could get magically get somebody to organize this whole thing because we don't want to do it. What could we use our distribution for that would be awesome?

Well, I would never want to do this because I think this, because the value here is low, but podcasting. So you could do a podcasting one. You know, we have 30 friends who are big-ish name podcasters. You could do a podcasting trade show where you have like, what are we using now? Riverside. Riverside would be a booth and like, fuck, I don't know, like all this shit that we use. All right.

What? It's just like the podcast, the business side of podcasting is just so small.

But it's like, oh man, but small is good. Small is good. The problem is, is that the contract value is low. That's the issue. You need something where people spend millions of dollars. So the podcasting would, but like, but would you ever want to go? You don't leave your house. So, but hypothetically, a person like you, would you want to go and like shoot the shit with some other guy who's a little bit ahead of you and like just hear best practices?

Yeah. Yeah.

That's fine.

Maybe. Okay. So podcasting is one. What else?

I don't know, dude. What, what, what are you interested in?

Oh, it's not what about, what I mentioned is what do you think, what niche do you think, what type of niche do you think would work? So for example, these guys are doing auto parts and the automotive industry because it's B2B and a bunch of people are selling, uh, you know, high price things. We've seen that, um, Money 2020 was like, hey, fintech is going to be a thing. Let's just make the number one. I don't even know if those are trade shows as much as they were conferences, but like, let's make the fintech conference. Let's, uh, let's make the e-commerce conference. That's kind of what they tried to do with those to like ride an upstart wave.

Um, we could probably do something either involving investing or high net worth people. So where, and your, your booths are, uh, different type of like a question that you and I and our friends constantly ask each other is like, does anyone have like a, an accountant who they trust? Or I am having this tax issue, what are some lawyers that I can trust? I think you could do something in that vein. I would have to narrow in on what it would be. I think you could do something like that, um, where like one customer for a particular law firm can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in a lifetime of fees or, or, or a net worth, uh, or a, um, financial advisor could. I think you could do something in that vein.

And by the way, we've been to a couple of these. FarmCon, I think, is, uh, is exactly this. So that's for the agriculture industry. We went to that. Another one is, um, back when I was doing the sushi restaurant, I remember we somehow were at the QSR— I don't even remember what it's called— is the QSR event. And I just remember that the CEO, the guy who created it, his last name was Hamburger. And I was like, like, I forgot what's the name of that effect where people end up living up to their name? Um, like, there's like some, uh, there's like a whole subreddit about this. Uh, Reddit people live Was he just a big juicy guy?

I mean, what was that about?

I mean, just basically the idea of somebody who's named John Hamburger ends up creating the quick, the fast food trade show. Like, you know, Usain Bolt is the fastest man on earth. Like, this is just, it's too good to be true.

Like, if you're that Wolf of Franchise guy who we like on Twitter, you definitely could pull off something like this. Now, it's really, logistically, it's still like, this isn't easy. There's some challenges, but it's simple. Not easy. It's a problem that's been solved tons and tons of times. Like, it's a, it's not like you're inventing, we're not inventing anything new. This is a, uh, this is, we're selling t-shirts, you know, it's still like revolves logistical issues, but like, it's, it's not, you're not inventing anything.

Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Um, all right. Well, I think that's, that's good. I'm going to save my other topics for the, for the next episode.

Did that not tickle your fancy? It does.

It seems like you, you know, it's good when I'm slacking in the background. Cause I'm just like, oh, here's a half-baked idea. Here's a half-baked idea. Of what could happen. I think the trade show stuff is actually pretty fascinating. And I like, you know, I think there's two ways to approach a business. One is like, what do I love to do? And let me just follow the, like, follow my curiosity, follow my natural, like, scratching my own itch type of thing. And then the other is like the cold calculating, like, all right, let me work backwards from businesses that sell with high multiples. And I'm just going to go fishing over there because I don't know what my passion is. So might as well. Just go calculate the best opportunity. I've actually done both in my life. Both can work. You can win both ways. I think it is better to win when you follow your passion, but like, um, but I, but if you're not going to do that, this is a fun way to, to reverse engineer what business you should be in.

And I don't want to say this is like an absolute thing, but it appears as though the comp, there's lots of buyers for these businesses because the way that like there's a handful of publicly traded companies as well as some really like heavy, heavy, heavy backed PE companies where what they do is they just buy like 8 of them and they put them together and they do synergistic stuff to reduce costs and whatever. And it seems as though it's a very, very high buyer market, whereas like e-com, for example, I don't know if agencies are like this. I don't know. They might be, they may not be, but some of the things that people start, they're, they seem a little bit more difficult to sell, whereas these things aren't as difficult to sell.

Totally. That's right. Um, good stuff. All right, that was a good episode. I like that one.

That's the pod. I feel like I could rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back.