EPISODE

473

Threads vs Twitter & Millionaire Sam Ovens Doesn't Believe In A.I. Hype

Jul 11, 2023·78:00·Sam & Shaan·with Sam Ovens·Listen·Apple Spotify

0:0039:0078:00

15 moments · 260 paragraphs · synced to the second

Parker, I think it's Parker Thompson on Twitter, he replied to that. He goes, okay, so for those keeping score at home, Elon bought a product for $44 billion, and then Zuck built the same product for 1,000 times less, is stealing all of his users like an absolute chad, and is, God willing, about to choke him out in 90 seconds on a steel cage soon. Huh. So that's what a cuck means now. All right, what's up? Today's episode, we're talking about Threads versus Twitter, the big debate. And we're going to talk about where we, where we land our predictions for what we think is going to happen, how it's going to play out. We told some funny stories. And then in the second half, we have an interview with a guy named Sam Oven. So Sam met, Sam met this guy Sam. He used to run a business called Consulting.com that at its peak hit $30 million in revenue. He was all over our Facebook feeds as kind of like one of these internet marketer guys. And so we were curious, like, who is this guy and what's he all about? Definitely an interesting interview. I would say he had some interesting stuff to say. Also, his energy was totally different than most of the guests and also different than what you would expect out of an internet marketer. So I'm curious to see what people think of it. I would say it's sort of like a different style of interview than we've done before. Sam, what do you think?

So for those watching on YouTube, I'm sweating right now. The reason I'm sweating is around minute 35, I can't stop laughing. I'm still laughing about it. You're gonna enjoy it.

Taco Bell story.

Let's just leave it at that.

The Taco Bell.

Oh my God. It's ridiculous. Uh, I don't know like how this story came about in a business pod. I'm happy it did. I'm sweating right now. If you are on Spotify or Apple and you're listening to this, go to our YouTube page, uh, search My First Million, go to this episode. Let us know in the comments what you think. People liked when we did that the last time, Sean, we got a lot of comments, got a lot of good feedback. It's, it's, uh, we actually, it's been fun to read all the comments, but let us know what you think and we'll talk to you soon.

All right. What's up? Um, Sam, we got to talk about Threads. Threads versus Twitter. It, uh, Threads came out a few days ago. We've had a few days to play with it, to sit on it, to think about it. And I think everybody's given their opinion on it. And why not ours? I want to hear what you, what you have to say about this. I have kind of like a way I think we could talk about this. The, uh, what I'm calling the bull and bear case. So the bull case, the bear case, and then where we land. But I first just want to hear, like, I don't know, when did you get on it and what was your kind of initial reaction? How, how on your radar was this thing to begin with?

I had only heard about it 3 or 4 days before it launched, and I heard about it because of a leak. I think there was a leak, right? There, somehow it leaked out that it was coming out. So I downloaded the app, like the, you can download it before it launched. And then I got the notification. Right at midnight or whenever it said it launched and I signed up. I think it's pretty cool. Are you jealous that I already have more followers than you do on that? Because I was already going hard on Instagram.

Yeah. Yeah. Going hard on Instagram paid off there. Uh, you got like a, like a double bonus for, for growing your Instagram. So, so props to you on that.

I think it's great. You know why I think it's great? I really only think it's great for one reason, which is Twitter to me is pretty great, but dude, my feed is just like fight videos and people getting shot and dying. Like it's real. It's kind of become a little bit sad. That's on you though.

I also, I don't know if that's anyone else's fault. You know, when you click the follow button and the like button and the save button, the algorithm will just give you more.

Look, here's the deal. If you see like a fight video, you watch it. Like, you're not, not gonna watch that. It's like when you have a hot girl that like scrolls through, like, you, you slow, you scroll slower through that. What is this?

How does this get here? All right, keep scrolling down.

Yeah, so just all these weird handles. I also think that I've, I've become such a stan for Zuck and this whole thing. He's just proven to be like the man. He's, he's, he's come off very likable. And so I find myself picking sides based off of the owner of the company.

Yeah. Yeah. It's become, it's become sports. It's become tribal. Whose team are you on? And I don't know how the hell I ended up team Zuck, but I'm like, I'm on team Zuck. It's very obvious to me. It's very clear. I think this guy's done an incredible rebrand of his personality because he went from easy to hate for a bunch of reasons. One, becomes rich and powerful. People don't like that. Two, he looked like a robot, talked like a robot, seemed to have no personality. So that was, again, for the people who didn't get turned off by the power and billionaire thing, they got turned off by, okay, this guy's a lizard or he's a robot. What's going on with this guy?. And then somehow, you know, he hired the top, top PR agencies in the world. He hired the fixer. The Wolf came in and tried to fix him. All he needed to do was start working out. The guy takes 10 jiu-jitsu classes and learns how to do a pull-up, and all of a sudden idiots like us are like, you know what, I fuck with this guy.

Yeah, he's relatable somehow.

Yeah, it totally worked on me. And then to the point where you start thinking about it, this happened also with LeBron James. LeBron James at one point was super hyped. Then he became the guy, then people started to turn on him. Then he did this thing where he left his team, went to Miami, and everyone's like, oh, I hate this guy. And then somebody's pointing out, they're like, so you're telling me this kid who had all the pressure in the world when he was 17, 18 years old, delivered on the hype, lived up to it, never got in trouble with the law. You've never heard about this guy. Married his high school sweetheart, is a good dad to his kids. Is one of the best players of all time and just keeps himself in phenomenal fitness and shape and tries as hard as he can every single year. What do you have a problem with? And in the same way, I feel like that's happened for Zuck, where it's like, so this guy who built this company that billions of people use, stuck with the company, he works hard every single day, married his college sweetheart, never been in trouble with anything, doesn't tweet out offensive stuff, doesn't say anything just to get a reaction. Seems like a perfectly reasonable guy, works out hard, is a good dad. What do you hate about this guy again? What's going on?

Do you know how old Zuck is?

I don't know. He's like our age. He's a little older than us, right? He's like 37, 38, 39.

Yeah, he just turned 39. And LeBron also 38. These guys are the same, man. They are the same. They've been, dude, since they were 18. Yeah, LeBron got drafted. He was a high schooler, right? 18 years old out of high school. Zuck has been the man since he was 21 or 22. There's been nothing. I mean, there's been like, if you look at the grand scheme, it's, there's been no like human, uh, errors.

No, no, no, no self.

Yeah.

There's been like business errors. There've been cringe, but there's been nothing that they've done where you're like, oh, that guy's a piece of shit.

If your biggest crime is cringe, you're doing all right. You know what I mean?

Yes. When you're the man for that long, that is impossible. That is so challenging to do that.

So we're clearly Zuck fanboys. Let's talk about Threads though.

Oh, and by the way, did you see what Elon posted? I don't know. Did you see it on Twitter? He goes, Zuck is a cuck. You know what a cuck is?

Yeah.

Yeah. I had to look it up actually. A cuck is a guy who wants his wife to sleep with other men and he like enjoys it. And then he also goes, I challenge Zuck to a dick measuring contest, literally a dick measuring contest. Like he says stuff like that. Dude, he says stuff like that. I'm like, oh my God, he's an absolute tryhard to me.

Don't like it. It says, by the way, there's a funny tweet from Parker. I think it's Parker Thompson on Twitter. He replied to that. He goes, okay, so for those keeping score at home, Elon bought a product for $44 billion, and then Zuck built the same product for 1,000 times less, is stealing all of his users like an absolute chad, and is, God willing, about to choke him out in 90 seconds on a steel cage soon. Huh. So that's what a cuck means now.

I think it's great, man. Zuck is just looking great on this. All right. So, but Threads, you have on here that they grew to 70 million.

It's actually 100.

It's 100. So they grew to 100 million users in a week.

So we'll deliver the bull case first. So the bull case is this, uh, will, and the will Threads win argument. So the bull case is we're 5 days in and they've reached 100 million users, making it the fastest growing product of all time. Okay. Instagram has about 1.5 billion users. They seem to be converting over pretty quickly to this. We already got 100 million on the platform. If 20% of Instagram's users come on board, it's now bigger than Twitter. So 20% conversion from Instagram is what they're going to need. They've done, I don't know, 5% or something like that. I don't know public math, something like 5% so far in 5 days. The next reason that this is bullish is Instagram.

And Zuck shared that on Threads. He said, we just hit 100 million. And he said, we've not even really promoted it yet.

Yeah. We haven't even done our promotions yet, which is nice.

It's also really cool that he's revealing some of this stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. He's really active on it right now. He's part victory lap, part like community engagement, which is, which is cool. And he tweeted for the first time in like 15 years, right on the day of the launch, which was, which was also nice.

And it was like the meme of the 3 Spider-Mans pointing at each other. It was pretty.

Yeah, he's great. He's in on the joke. Whoever he hired, like his nephew or whoever, like just is like, yo, give me your app, give me your phone. I'm going to make you likable. Like, hey, instead of like fighting it, just post a meme. It's cool.

Don't worry. But he needs a verb. So there's no verb. What do you say? You threaded it? You posted it? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

We're threading. I don't know what's going on. So the interesting part is I go on Threads and I expect to see the same sorts of people as I do on Twitter. And there's some.. But there's a whole new market of people who were basically never on Twitter, just didn't— like, Twitter didn't work for them. So you get a whole new set of people that are going to use Threads that weren't— they don't have to switch off of Twitter. They're just new people to a Twitter-like behavior. So it can basically beat Twitter without getting people to switch because it's expanding the market. Twitter is— I don't know if you know this— Twitter is basically the most abandoned product I think ever. So more than a billion people have signed up for Twitter or tried Twitter and then been like, nah, I don't get it, I'm good, just, that's not for me. And now the big question, the, like, sort of like the $100 billion or $200 billion question is, is that because the idea of Twitter doesn't appeal to that many people, or that Twitter's execution was not good enough to hook those people? And if it's the idea, Then those same people who try Threads will eventually bounce because they're like, they're just people who like to look at pictures and videos. They don't want to write text and read random ass text messages from different people. So if it's the idea, then Twitter's safe. All these people will try it and they'll bounce. But if it was the execution, if it was that Twitter didn't hook them properly, then they're screwed. Because if there's one thing that, that the Instagram and Facebook teams are going to do is they're going to execute. You can already see it in the small Things that they're doing where they're like, yeah, we're just going to make like kind of like the feed work better and blocking and muting and like all of the, like all of the stuff. We're just going to do the stuff good. The stuff that they've been doing for 20 years, which is like, hey, when somebody signs up, let's just make it really easy for them to find like their friends or interesting people for them. And like, let's just make this, this feed killer. Like this is make this algorithm killer where you just want to keep scrolling stuff that Twitter never really did. Like if you go look at Twitter's ad product. Like, have you ever run Twitter ads?

Yeah, so this is what I was going to say. This is another bull case, which is if you've never run ads before and you go talk to anyone who has run any ads, Facebook is always in the top 2 or 3 parts of the conversation. So normally it's number 1. It's usually the best platform. I've spent maybe $10+ million of my own, like me actually running ads. Facebook is always number 1. Twitter is never part of the conversation. I don't even know if it's any— I don't know if it's like that anymore because I haven't run ads on it in 4 or 5 years.

I run ads on it now, so I'm running ads on it literally right now, and it works. But the ad platform is so trash compared to Facebook and Google's ad platform, which is so surprising because that's how they make money. You would think they're highly incentivized to do it. So anyways, I guess my bigger point is not really about whose ad platform is going to be better. It's just execution. It's going to be execution on all the details, on getting people linked up with the right people, making the feed super interesting and handling spam better and abuse better and all the things that Twitter has struggled with over the years. So the bull case is basically this: 100 million users. If they convert some of Instagram people, they'll be bigger than Twitter. They don't even need people from Twitter to switch. They can just bring net new people to the market and they can just continue to promote this across Instagram and WhatsApp.. So that's the bull case. Now I'm going to switch to the bear case. Oh, also part of the bull case, Twitter shoots itself in the foot a lot. So Elon does a lot of dumb shit, pisses a lot of people off. He's basically pushing to basically put a paywall where you have to pay $8 a month in order to have your shit be seen in the feed. So that's basically introducing friction. He added the tweet limit not long ago, which introduces friction because, oh, which is insane. No more tweets for you. Cut off the ability to post tweets and have them embed in other places because he was like, oh, we're getting scraped too much. So he basically put a login wall in front of the content. He's adding friction everywhere. So these are foot faults. This is not Threads killing you. This is you killing you. And so that's part of the bull case. Now, here's the bear case, why this won't work. If I was to argue why this won't work, here's what I would say. I'd say, hey, name the last Facebook standalone product that just worked. Not one that they bought, but one that they made. And that's where there's really a kind of a graveyard of Poke and a bunch of these other apps that they tried to create. They tried to create a TikTok competitor, didn't work. They tried to create a Snapchat competitor, didn't work. So there is a graveyard of these things. The only things that have worked have been things that they put into the Instagram app, like stories and reels, because people are hooked on Instagram. So the standalone app thing hasn't really worked, and this is a standalone app. The next problem. Just because 100 million people try it doesn't mean they're actually going to stick. There's going to be massive churn, just like there is when any—

have you gone back to do this?

Yeah, I open it up right now, but I'm not hooked on it completely myself yet. Are you?

I'm not hooked yet. No, I'm definitely not hooked yet.

I think on Twitter, but I've also built up a big following plus a bunch of people that I follow. So my feed is more interesting on Twitter.

It's a curated—

I've curated it for 10 years.

I was going to say we might be the 1%, the 1% because we make a living in part because of Twitter. And so we could be like, there could be a part of it of like, ah, shit, I don't want to use this other thing because I already have this one thing that's working and this thing is just going to like cannibalize it. So I can't tell if there's that bias there or what it is, but no, I'm not hooked yet, but I am opening it maybe once a day, maybe once every 2 days. I am a little bit like, shit, I don't want another thing to have to use. Uh, but I am happy that it's text-based because that's where I excel because, you know, I'm a Missouri 6, but, uh, like, but I'm a Microsoft Word 9. Yeah, I don't want— I'm not like— I'm not— I don't— I got the— I got a good face for Twitter. Uh, so like, I prefer that, but I—

yeah, we, we are the outliers because both of us have— I know together we probably have almost, almost a million followers together on, on Twitter. And so now I go to Threads. I have 3,000 followers or something. I'm starting from scratch again. And I'm like that guy who I moved to San Francisco and I bought a house and I just redid my lawn and then everybody started moving and they started raising the prices. And I'm like, I'm dug in.

I'm like, yeah, I'm dug in.

I already paid for the reno. I guess I'm just here when everyone else is choosing places that might be a better fit. So we might be the wrong person there. Here's the other reasons that Twitter might win. Twitter, after the churn, Threads might have 20 million or 30 million active users compared to Twitter's 300 million. Right? So I think there's going to be so much churn that this 100 million number is a bit of fool's gold. The next thing, Twitter has key content. So it has news, it has sports. So it's got the journalists, it's got the athletes, it's got the people that cover the NBA and the NFL. It's got famous people. It's basically got this key rapid breaking news and influential content. Threads is going to have new content, but the type of person who's big on IG may not be the right type of person for what works in this text medium. TBD. There's a TBD on that. The next thing, Threads is just a straight up clone. There are no product improvements. And in fact, there's some big drawbacks.

They don't have DMs, they don't have like, you know, uh, dude, I get DMs. I've been getting DMs. I think I don't know what they're called.

There's no inbox.

People have been messaging me. Let me pull it up.

But I think they're @mentioning you.

There's, there's definitely no, no, maybe that's what it is. I don't even know how to use it yet then. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a mention, but it looks like a DM, like the, the, the thing looks like a DM. All right. Yeah, you're right.

So it's just, they cloned the app, but they left some things out. Now that might, that might make it better, but Uh, for the most part, I would say the product strategy, like if you printed out the roadmap, it's like, here's some features. Then you turn the page and it just says, not Elon Musk, like not Twitter, right? Like it's just basically here's not Twitter. And like there's a bunch of people who don't like Elon, don't like Twitter, and they'll just try this out. So I don't know if that's a great long-term product strategy.

Oh, by the way, speaking of mediums and leaving things out, do you use Twitter on your phone or desktop?

Both.

Yeah, I mostly use it on desktop and I, used the Thread app and I was like, hey, when's, when I need a desktop thing. That's why I prefer typing on it. And people were like calling me boomer and shit.

And apparently that is, that's some boomer shit, dude.

That's some boomer shit, I guess. But I hate using it on my phone. I want to use it on my computer so I could scroll through and click shit. Yeah.

That's like if a guy knocks on the bathroom stalls like, hey, I got to take a piss sitting down. And you're like, what? And you're like, it's not illegal to do what you're saying, but certainly not acceptable.

And that's, yeah, you're more of a, what are you more of a pee with your shorts down at your ankle type of guy while standing up?

So, so your, your desktop thing, it's okay to use desktop, but let's not, let's not get out of control.

I think most, not most, I think a ton of people do that, man. I'm telling you the older guys, I guess I'm old now, but I needed this. I needed desktop.

That's who we should appeal to as a social media platform, the older guys.

Yeah, we'll call it khaki.

All right. So here's, here's a couple other things, which is, uh, the best creators on Twitter. So the people who have basically in a 10, 15 year period proven that they're really good at creating text-based content now have a big following and don't really want to start over from scratch on, on Instagram, AKA me. Yeah. So, so I think those are some of the, some of the downsides of this, but I do think, you know, once you take into account the bull and the bear case, it's prediction time. How do you think that this plays out?

Let's do the interesting nuggets really quick. If it doesn't work out, Nikita, our friend Nikita, who has worked at Meta and did all the social stuff. What did he say?

Uh, he was basically like, you know, this thing's gonna be at 100 million users soon, and if it fails after that, that will sort of officially make it the biggest fail in social app history at that point.

Which I think—

I don't think that really means anything, to be honest.

I think the truth is, I think it's going to end up closer to the bull than it is the bear. I think it will— it will more work than it does fail. I don't think Elon would ever sell Twitter out of like pride reasons., but I think it will, if it weren't run by a billionaire, I think it would effectively put it out of business, uh, for the ad, ad purposes. I think it's going to work. I don't know if it will overtake, but I think it's going to work so good that it's going to cannibalize Twitter and it's, they're going to be at least equal.

The CEO of Cloudflare tweeted out a chart. I don't know if you saw this of Twitter traffic because Cloudflare has like, I don't know, they run like That's fucked up, right? In some way. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they haven't paid their bill or maybe there's all— That's like a doctor.

That's like a doctor, like, revealing, like, your illnesses, isn't it? It's like, it's like these two guys are making fun of each other. It's like, actually, this guy, his cholesterol is way worse than yours, right?

Yeah.

So, like, if you want to beat him up, but kick him in the left knee.

He, uh, he did that basically. He tweeted out showing that this, uh, that Twitter's down, like, 5% in overall traffic so far this week from, from Threads. So it's like, you know, he said like it's plummeting or something like that, like dropping off a cliff, which is like pretty dramatic for, I don't know, 5%. I wouldn't call plummeting, but that's weird that he shared that.

That's super weird. Yeah. Uh, it's going to be closer to the bull. I, and whatever I've learned, Nikita actually would always joke about this. He would say, never, ever, ever bet against Zuck. And I've heard so many people say that. Would I bet against Elon? For sure. Not often. Not often. I think that he follows through a lot. He's just been closer to death so many times, and I don't think Zuck entirely has. I just think that Zuckerberg, when it comes to this field of consumer social, I just think that he's— I would not bet against that person.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's the rub here. I think that it's not Zuck versus Elon mano a mano. In the same way that in the cage, Zuck will probably win because he trains. He's been training jiu-jitsu for a couple years, so that gives him a little head start. In the same way that Zuck probably could not build a rocket company or a car company.

You're playing off— I mean, he couldn't even build Oculus. He couldn't even do that type of hardware.

It's doing pretty well, to be honest.

It's doing okay, but I think that they're going to miss— they're not going to be the one.

Perhaps. We'll see. But I guess it's his domain. The social app thing is their domain. They have Instagram. I think I'm with you. I land where I do think Threads will be bigger than Twitter. I don't think it kills Twitter. I just think it sort of stunts whatever slow growth that Twitter has. It just stunts it even further. And Twitter remains this kind of niche, this basically this thing that has really strong appeal to a niche. And I think that Threads becomes the more mainstream version of it. Like, I think it becomes the more palatable, just cool, interesting thing in the same, in the same way that like this happens a lot with music or with TV shows or with, with stuff like that where something has its time and then the new thing comes out and it's just has like a little more mainstream appeal and it just becomes the default. And the other thing doesn't die, doesn't go away necessarily. But I do think that if you fast forward 2 years or 18 to 24 months, I think it's pretty— I think my bet would be Threads is bigger than Twitter. And Twitter basically has now like a ceiling on its head that it's bumping into. It can never really grow from there. It might get better at monetizing those people or preventing them from switching, but the dominant place for that will be Threads, which is insane to me. It seemed impossible, like, to dethrone a social network, like, 12 months ago.

There's this cultural shift with young people where they're so much more kind and nicer than our generation when we were that age. And you see that on TikTok. So if you go to TikTok and you look at the comments, people are so much more positive. There's still some—

they're not more positive. That's TikTok is amazing at sorting comments and hiding comments.

Whatever, whatever that is. Okay.

Maybe, maybe there you go. Because all you see is kindness and jokes and then you're like, oh, that's how I'm supposed to behave here.

And Twitter never figured that out. It builds a culture. Whereas on Twitter, I post something and I get made fun of so much sometimes. And I always click on the accounts and it's clearly like a bot or I don't know what it is, but there's this huge underground culture. I have no idea how this is happening. Of people who all they do is make fun of, make fun of people. And I always, it shows it to me. Do you get that when people are making fun of you all the time?

Yeah. Yeah. Cause it just shows you everything.

Twitter says it shows you everything.

You said something. Here's what they said back. And guess what? There's always going to be people that either disagree, argue, or just say mean shit to you. That's like, you know, just that's actually the way the world works. The best companies have figured out how, how to algorithmically like suppress that behavior.

Yes. And when the day I opened up Threads, it was like Gary Vee saying like, I hope you all have such a wonderful day. And it was like, they like seeded it with like these positive people and it like created this weird culture where it seems significantly more positive.

So you open up Threads like, good morning, y'all.

Yeah. Or like, I have like Pomp saying like, I hope you have a wonderful day and get after it. Uh, like it's just so much. And I have Sahil already popping up on my shit. It's like all positivity.

Whereas Twitter, it's way more negative.

And honestly, it does wear me out.

And by the way, Zuck has sort of said this in his threads where he's like, yeah, that's part of our key strategy. He's like, I always thought there should be a sort of like this town square conversation, public conversation type product that gets to a billion users. Twitter, for some reason, never figured it out. We're going to do our best. And then people were like, oh, I noticed that this place is like more kind or sort of like much more positive energy right now. And he goes, yeah, I think that's really important. That's what we're going to, you know, that's something we're going to really focus on and try to get right. I don't think that Twitter ever got that right. Some of these features, like setting the culture in that way, are invisible. They're not like, now you could do live video, now you could do Twitter Spaces. It's not a feature that you see. It's almost what you don't see. That's the feature. I think that Facebook and Instagram have a lot of experience fighting abuse. Spam, hateful content. And it's not going to be nowhere. It's not going to be gone. Like, whatever, that's fine. I get that. But I think they're going to do a better job of it in the same way that, like, you remember, it used to be a common thing people say, which is like, if you ever want to see sort of hell on earth, go to the YouTube comments. Like, YouTube comments were considered like an actual cesspool. And now if you go to a popular YouTube video, the comments are often like They add to the joke, they're funny, and they're positive. And I don't know what they did over time, but over time they fixed that problem, which was that the YouTube comments were like, you know, where hope goes to die. And now it's good. It's part of the experience. And sure, there's some spam or there's still obviously like the one-off thing, but it's nowhere near where it was like in the early days.

I went out to dinner last night. I'm in Williamsburg. I went out to dinner last night and You know, Williamsburg, everything's tight in New York. And I sat next to this guy who worked at Meta on the Threads team. And I'm not going to reveal a lot because I don't want to rat this guy out, but me and Sarah were out to dinner and like, I texted her. I was like, just, let's just not talk. And we just listened to this guy. We just listened to this guy talk for 2 hours about launch week and like what it was like. And he was like, it was the most exciting time of my career. This guy was so bought in. To like the Threads movement. He even was talking about how much money he was making. It was crazy, man. I was just sitting there.

All right, dish. What'd you hear? You don't have to say the person, but tell us everything.

It was, it was 7 figures a year. It was 7 figures. This guy, and I like, I feel like I know all about this guy. I kind of know where he's from, or at least I know where he moved from. I heard the very, the very typical, this is so funny. You hear people say this all the time when they first moved to New York or when they're like tech guys, they say, uh, San Francisco was all about what have you built lately? New York, it's all about how much money do you make? You know, you're reminded every time about how important money is. San Francisco is all about what you build. Like, that's like such a—

Are you saying it in a positive way?

It's all you— the guy who was asking about this— it's refreshing.

It's refreshing that my pay stub delivers.

Uh, but he was just talking about like, he was like the launch and he was just saying like how the morale of the company is really high and how everyone was pumped, which is, which is something Facebook needed because it was pretty shitty for a long time with all the negative PR. Then he was just talking all about like the launch and like what they were doing. It was so fascinating. I would just sit there. I'm shocked that he didn't like catch the hint that I was just like listening into this whole conversation. I just heard everything.

There's one thing that Facebook engineers don't have a lot of awareness of. Dude, I don't think he noticed that you weren't talking to your wife.

You ever go out to dinner and like if you're with like a business associate or like a successful friend and you talk about money. Uh, you're talking about like, you know, like I want to buy this house. It costs this much money or like, this is what I'm earning. What do you think I should do with it? Whatever. When you talk about these sensitive topics, whenever the waitress or waiter comes over, I always quit talking about that because I'm like, that's embarrassing. It's tacky. They didn't get that hint. And so I remember them talking about, I remember them, they, they said the 7-figure thing. It's like, yeah, it's not that big of a deal. You can just go get like a director at a startup and get a, you know, a million-dollar package. And that's okay. But like, are you really doing anything meaningful? Right. As the woman was like waiting to see if they wanted dessert. Yeah. And I remember seeing that, I was like, oh, I hate that. That is so fucking embarrassing and obnoxious. You gotta shut up at that point. That's when you, you know, you're like, you gotta lower your voice. You gotta whisper, "A million." You know what I mean? Like that's what you're supposed to do in that scenario. But these guys did not catch that hint. I hate that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a little piece of you that dies inside every time.

You know who sucks at that is whenever I'm with our friends Suli Suli is horrible at that. He'll talk about shit.

Yes.

He'll talk about like, you know, about like what he's investing in so loudly. And I'm like, dude, shut the fuck up. This is embarrassing. Everyone's looking over you. Don't, don't use that word million, please. Not anymore in this conversation.

I haven't seen that, but I've, I have another friend that does it like crazy. And then I'll be like, hey, I'm like kicking him under the table and he'll just be like, what? Why are you kicking me? And I'm like, dude, we have a friend. That we took to this place in San Francisco that I guess has like the best hot chocolate. He likes hot chocolate. So we're like, dude, you're a little baby for liking hot chocolate, first of all. But if you are a baby that likes hot chocolate, you got to go to this place. Has the best hot chocolate. So we go, sits at the bar, bartender comes up or whatever, like at the table or whatever. And it's like, hey, this guy loves hot chocolate. And we told him this is the best spot. So he had to try it.

And he's like, oh. That's why the waiter was like, what are you, 4?

Yeah. He's like, oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. Let me bring you one. And so he brings one out. Guy takes a sip, immediately gives like an audible like, ugh. And what? And then, uh, he doesn't like it. And so we're like, oh, you know, whatever. Okay. Guess it's not, I don't know. Guess not your, your way, uh, your, your type. And so he just puts it, he just, he puts it down, right? So it's sitting in front of him. Uh, waiter walks by and he just like pushes it forward towards the bartender guy, almost like he's pushing his chips all in at like a poker table. And the guy's like, oh, are you, are you done? And he's like, you didn't like it? He goes, no, it's not very good.

Oh my God. That's so embarrassing.

What are you trying to accomplish here? Why are you doing this? So I literally just fall off my stool and crawl away and die. And, uh, you know, had to deal with this interaction, but it was terrible.

I had a friend, we went out and got dinner and afterwards they gave us coffee and we wanted decaf. And the next day we texted back and forth. We're like, hey, did you stay up all night last night? And he was like, yeah, I was like, I think they gave us regular coffee. And he's like, I gotta call them. I gotta call them and let them know. And he was like, insistent. He's like, I gotta call them. And so he like called them. I'm like, dude, what, what's, what are you doing? We're, we're on vacation. Like we're visiting. Like what? That's such a weird, it was such a Larry David move to like call someone to tell them you made a mistake last night. You gave us a normal coffee instead of decaf. And I, those types of people are very challenging for me to be around.

It's like, uh, likable and adorable. And, uh, when anybody else in real life does it, it's just hateable. My mother-in-law has a version of that where anytime we're complaining about something, her go-to is not even like tell them and call them. She's like, call the news, call Channel 5. They will investigate this. And I'm like, no, it's really not.

Dude, I can't stand that.

It's really not what's going to happen here.

I've ordered a steak before and they've brought me pesto chicken pizza and I won't say a word. I'm like, yeah, whatever. It's food. I could eat that.

I got to tell you this story. I can't decide. I wanted to do a segment called L of the Week. Because I think we sometimes brag a lot on here. We say how we're so great in all these different ways. I think it'd be nice to share a big L that we took. But I got to be honest, this might actually be a dub. This might not even be an L because the experience was so incredible.

What was it?

All right, so I go, I'm feeling, I'm doing something, I'm working, whatever. And I'm feeling hungry while I was driving back from an errand. And I'm like, I'm hungry. I'm just going to pick up some food real quick. So I go to Subway and I'll get a sandwich., and, uh, I go to Subway, I walk in, there's like 5 people in line, there's only one guy working, and it's a black guy, and there's a white guy checking out. And I'm like thinking about what sandwich I'm gonna get, and I kind of decide— I noticed that that guy's still checking out, and I look over and I'm like, what's taking this guy forever? And these guys are talking about like, it's like, so where'd you grow up? It's like South Africa. He's like, yeah. And they're talking about Africa and talking about race, talking about race relations, and they're just talking and like zero. Like, I'm happy that there's whatever, no racism on Earth, but I'd really like a sandwich right now. And so would the 4 people in front of me.

How about that meatball marinara?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Red. That's the color of my meatball that I'd like right now. And so they're just talking and then they fucking, they hug and I'm like, what's going on right now? And when they hug, I lose it. I leave. I walk out and I'm like, I'm hungrier than ever because I've just I've killed 9 minutes here thinking exclusively about a sandwich, and I got teased. There's no sandwich coming. Right next to the Subway is a Taco Bell, and I make a business decision. I say, I guess it is what it is. I'm going to Taco Bell today. I haven't been to Taco Bell in like 13 years. Going to Taco Bell. So I walk into Taco Bell and I'm in line. And you could always— I have this theory about places, which is you could see your future when you go into a place because it's you're going to end up— if you go to a place regularly enough, you're going to start looking like the people that are in that place. So sometimes I'll go to a fitness class and I'll look around and be like, all right, if these people who are the clear regulars here don't look the way I want to look, I'm just going to leave now because this is not a good path. Right?

It's like a good life path. Yeah. What'd you see in Taco Bell? Like a bunch of Tweety Bird shirts?

So I go to Taco Bell. First, everybody in Taco Bell was under 17. So I was like, oh, I get it. Their body can still tolerate this. I'm the only guy in his 30s at this place. So I'm, and there's one guy sitting there and he's probably like 28 and he's sitting down and it's just him and he's got a feast in front of him. Like this guy, he was like, hey, omakase, chef's choice, bring it all out. So he's omakase'd at Taco Bell and he's sitting there, he's eating up a storm. And there's only me, these 3 teen girls who are in front of me ordering, and then this guy. And it's kind of quiet in Taco Bell. And I'm standing in line and this guy pulls a move that I, I'm still stunned just thinking about this. He's sitting there in Taco Bell eating his feast and he just rips the loudest fart. Just the loudest audible fart. And we all look over and I'm like, wow, so embarrassing. This guy just farted loud in public. Wow. And it was almost like he's sitting on one of those benches. It echoed. It was like this crazy auditory experience. And I look at the guy and he just stares back at all of us and he just raises his eyebrows like, what? We're all here. You're also here at 3 PM on a Tuesday. And that is what it is. And I was like, holy shit. This guy did not back down.

He did not cower in shame.

He alpha'd us and was just like, he literally was like, what? And I was like, nothing, I guess.

Just carry on.

You're right. We're all equals here at the bottom of society.

You just got Dutch jumped by a Taco Bell guy.

It was incredible. So I, it was like an L I took and a big W for this guy. And I just, it was an experience I had to share with you.

When did that happen?

This is like 5 days ago. I've been sitting on this story. There's no one else I could really tell. Like, uh, I started to tell the story to my wife. And she was like, you went to Taco Bell? And I was like, you're missing the point of the whole story. And I didn't even get to the good part. And I just thought, okay, you should have farted back at him. I wish I had one in the chamber. I didn't. I mean, he really just like laid it down right there in front of us.

And what did the girl say?

I mean, the eye contact. Nobody said anything. We all looked to laugh at him and then we just got stunned by his bravado. And I was like, holy shit, this is the biggest power move I've ever experienced in person.

That's the best. How was the food at least?

Horrible. Honestly, the food at Taco Bell is phenomenal. Like, the taste of Taco Bell is great. It is a great taste. They got like the menu. I mean, first of all, the innovation. You've been to a Taco Bell, like, you know, Taco Bell used to be tacos. It's not like, it's like, dude, it's just the same shit. It's Doritos that's become a taco. Now it's a taco inside of a burrito. And it's like, how's the taco inside the burrito? And you're like, that's we call it a cheesy gordita crunch. And then they had like this thing called the volcano right now. And I was like, I guess just give me the volcano because I didn't even know what to do there. I was like, I don't really understand what's happening. I'm still reeling from what just happened a few minutes ago. And I got the volcano thing. It was great. It was fantastic.

You should have brought that African guy over to let him sniff up America. Let him see what it was. This is what we're about, bro. Come on. Peace, love, and happiness.

That hug shit. That's not real. That's not the usual experience.

This is the real This is why we're World War back-to-back champions, because guys like that, salt of the earth, they don't make them like that anymore.

Can you imagine a European doing that? Impossible. Impossible. No, like a kind person from Singapore?

Never.

You get arrested for that in Singapore.

That's crazy. Yeah, that's like 5 to 20 in Singapore. There's not a chance. So Sean, I've got a funny story. So we have Sam Ovens today. I'll do a little bit of an intro, but about 3 or 4 years ago, I used to see Sam's ads everywhere and it was basically him in a bright blue blazer in his fancy apartment overlooking Manhattan. And there was a little bit of hate in me and there was a little bit of, uh, you had slicked back hair too. I remember he had slicked back hair. Yeah. And for some reason he pissed me off and I wrote like on one of the ads, like, you're full of shit or something like that.

You did a hater comment?

I did a hater comment and it sat in me for years. And I talked to my friends who eventually bought some of his products and they're like, oh no, it's awesome. We loved it. And I started learning more and I was like, I think I was wrong. And so I sent Sam this message, I think 18 or 24 months ago, and I was like, I'm sorry. That was for some reason that one comment, it bothered me. And eventually I saw Sam 4 weeks ago at a party at Sophia's party. And I talked to him and my wife and I talked to him for like an hour and I was like, you're, you're one of the more fascinating people that I've ever spoke to. And I was like, did you get that email where I apologize? I said, I got it. So that's kind of like how we got here. But Sam, how do you describe yourself? You had consulting.com, which was like a big information business, but you have a new thing. You want to, you want to tell us how you describe yourself?

Sure. I'm an entrepreneur and I have a software company called Skool. I'm CEO of that. It's like a community platform for creators.

You're, you're kind of underselling yourself there, eh?

What do you want me to say?

The reason why I like hanging out with you is, Sean, he reminds me of Jack Smith so much. Like, it's the same type of like, yeah.

The funny thing is like Jack. You're right. There's like definitely like an echo of Jack there. But Jack's— I almost feel like Jack picked business models that suited his like personality and his like way of thinking. Whereas Sam, the funny thing is that when I discovered you, like Sam, I saw this sort of like outgoing persona. It's like guy who's like, you know, recording a selfie video of himself in his fancy apartment. Telling me something, it's sort of like, oh, this guy thinks he's some hotshot business guy, whatever. And now you talk now, and I'm like, this guy owns a surf shop or something. Why is this guy like in the, like, the most zen, zen mode, almost introverted to an extent? Isn't that strange? Was that strange for you to have like a very public persona even though you clearly are actually more of a of a, of a laid-back, maybe more introverted guy.

Yeah, I think that's why it rubbed people the wrong way, like Sam, because, you know, that's kind of the thing that I didn't like about that business. Like, if you're selling training or coaching or whatever, is you have to be very out there. You have to make content of yourself. You have to continuously promote yourself, right? And I was always very uncomfortable doing that. And I guess I, I used like the New York apartment and the blue suit as like a character. Yeah, like a character or like a crutch to help me, you know what I mean?

Yeah, and it worked. You built consulting.com, which was like a— the way I'll describe it is like sort of like training masterminds, courses type of thing where you would teach people how to start their own consulting business. And people would pay you a few thousand dollars and you put out a bunch of free content, and that would get people sort of in the funnel. And then eventually they would pay you a couple thousand dollars to learn how to start their own consulting business. And from what I understand, like, you scaled it up to about $30 million a year at one point, sort of the peak on the revenue side, before being like, this is too much and too crazy, and we have too many people, too little profits. We're pushing the boundary too much. You sort of scaled it back down. To a more manageable level where the revenue went down, but the profits went, you know, up or the same and you had less headache. So it definitely worked. Did you get, where'd you get the idea for that? Were you just like in a basement watching Tai Lopez videos being like, okay, I understand I could do this now. Or like, where, why did you decide to even do that?

You mean like sell courses?

Sell courses in the way that you sold them, which was just like a really heavy, uh, paid ad strategy with you as this character or this persona, the face of it.

Very internet marketing.

Yeah.

I wanted to start my own business. I used to have a job. This is going back like 12 years. And I used to watch this, this interview site called Mixergy. Do you guys remember that? Yeah.

Yeah. We love Andrew.

Yeah. And I watched an interview one day and this guy was saying that he was going to show, he had a software company. His name was Dane Maxwell. And then he said, he was going to teach some other people how to start a software company. And that was my first experience of being in a course. He launched a course, it was called back then the Software Roundtable, and I learned how to start a software company in that and started a software company. It was called SnapInspect. And so I first experienced being in a course, like from the student side, and Through that experience, I, I had a successful software company and then I was like the star student of that, of that Software Roundtable Foundation thing. So then I did an, he made me do an interview on Mixergy. This is back when I was very young. And then a bunch of people started emailing me and saying, could I, they wanted to pay me so I could help them with their software company.. And I would just sell like 6 1-hour Skype calls for $1,000. And then very quickly I ran out of time to sell. I sold so many of these packages and I just noticed that I was repeating myself on these calls like a lot. And I was like, oh, this, this could be a course. Everyone's like struggling with the same problems and I've run out of time, right? So the next guy I took through this 6 one-hour calls. I recorded the calls and then I put them in a Dropbox folder. And then the people that wanted to buy my coaching from that point on, I said, I don't have any time left, but I've got like a course that you can buy for the same price. And I would just sell it for $1,000 and give them a login to the Dropbox and they would watch the recordings in there. And they liked it and they didn't ask for their money back. And like, and that's where it started. And then when I sold more and more of those, I was like, whoa, this is, I should put some more effort into this. So I did. And then I wondered, how can I sell more of this instead of just waiting for people to come to me from my Mixergy interview and ask me over email? So that's when I started learning about like internet marketing. And then I remember the people back then were like Frank Kern and who else? There was like Ramit Sethi. There was this guy called Clay Collins. Do you remember this era of like, yeah. And so I just, I learned how to market from that world, like that kind of underground internet marketing world. And then my course business started to do so good. It quickly overtook the the profit of my software company. And I just wasn't very passionate about property management, which was the niche that my software product was for.

Was that called SnapInspect?

Yeah, it still exists. It's snapinspect.com. And I just wasn't passionate about the niche. So I sold my shares of SnapInspect to my co-founder and then just went all in on the course business. And that's what eventually became consulting.com. And in the end, I was making courses, showing people how to make courses. I just fell in love with the craft of finding a group of people that you care about and solving their problems and then sharing the solutions with them and turning that into a business.

How did you get the domain consulting.com? Because that's a great domain.

I went to the URL and it was, there was nothing on it. And then I used like MX Toolbox to find out like who owned it. And then I just sent him an email and I said, do you want to sell it? And he said, yes.

How much did you pay for that one?

That one was $300,000.

Just in the 10 minutes that you've just given that spiel and telling the background and then the hour that I've hung out with you. You have this trait that I love that certain people have where in your brain I could see you're the type of person that you see a challenge and you don't think of it like a lot of people think of it as an emotional thing, but it's a very logical and you're like, this is a puzzle. I'm going to figure out this math equation. And that gives you joy. At least it seems like it. With the marketing thing, it seems like the same thing where you're like, if I wear this jacket, that will pop off in a thumbnail. And that's important for a higher click-through rate. And it's like you just read tons of books and you put together like an algorithm on what to do. And it's, and that's why it, it didn't seem entirely authentic that that was who you were, but it seemed like you were just playing a game that you wanted to win. Is that how you went about it? And who did you, what interesting people did you learn the, the, the algorithm from that aren't entirely popular or that are like some strange resources?

I guess. I just looked at the people who are doing quite well, like Brendan Burchard and Marie Forleo. This is back then. And I knew, I noticed that they had like a, if you thought of their name, you could quickly assign like a couple of attributes to them. They had like a brand essentially. And I was like this kid from New Zealand teaching people how to start a business. And so I was like, Whatever it is that needs to— if when people see my video, they instantly need to think of money, basically. Um, and my main market is America and New York is like so iconic. It's like the money place, right? So that was why I went to New York and why I found an apartment with a view like that.

I heard a rumor that that apartment is almost like exactly the same apartment as something from— it was at a Wolf of Wall Street or one of those like iconic money movies where they like hang a guy over the balcony. I heard that, that you wanted that apartment for that reason. Is that true?

That isn't true. I wanted the apartment because it had a really cool view. But then we were watching that movie and we had to pause it and be like, wait a second, is that this building? And we realized it's not the same building, but it must be one of the 5 in that area that are all very close to each other.

Got it.

And so you, you start doing this. Now I'm curious, a lot of the names you mentioned, I never hear about those people anymore. Uh, you know, I've, I remember Frank Kearns, I remember, uh, Eben Pagan and some of these guys that, you know, you could kind of go study their, their content, their funnels, but they're not around anymore. Or if they are, like, I don't know where they are. They're not, they don't seem to be like crushing it anymore like they used to. Am I wrong? Are they just out there crushing and I just don't see them for some reason? Or why do you think that they— very few kind of sustained, or did they just get so rich they quit? Or are they like locked into one mode and they didn't evolve with the times? What do you think happened?

I think things have changed a lot and a lot of people didn't adapt. But also I think some people just got— they're just not going as hard, or they might have got burned out and they're just relaxing a little bit. Probably a combination of all of those things.

How, how big were some of those old school marketers? They're old school to me. How big were some of their businesses?

You never know.

Like, you never really— that's why it's always so interesting. I, I, I have no idea because they don't talk about it.

They weren't real businesses in a way because they would make a ton of money on a launch, right? But then that product would kind of go away, and then they might do another launch in 6 months. And it was all based on this launch model, and these launches would pull big numbers, like millions of dollars. But, and I'm sure there was a lot of profit in that too, but they weren't like these products that were evergreen that could be sold continuously, and they didn't have a team, and they weren't like contributing to this body of work. They weren't building on top of what they built yesterday, essentially.

You had this interesting video where— yeah, I— there we were talking about Jack. Jack's one of my best buddies, and he was on the last episode, and you guys are very similar. But on this video, you opened it up and you just looked at the camera and you go, I'm back. And apparently, like, the story of the video was Consulting.com— Consulting got, got to like $30 million in revenue, and you'd hired dozens of people, fancy offices. You hated it. You basically scale it down to, I think you called it a band. I think it was like 5 or 6 people. You were like, we're going to do $10 million in revenue, $5 million in profit. Everyone gets a share of the profit. What was like the peak of the consulting business? And then where was it when you sold it?

Sure. So the peak was, it must have been around like 2017 or 2018. And it was doing $36 million a year in revenue. But profit-wise, it was probably only like $5 million on that. Most of it was, was expenses. And we had about 50 people and we were spending like $2 million a month on ads. And it was just, everything was breaking. I hired everyone way too fast and it was heavily dependent on ads, which I didn't like. I was reading this book on my honeymoon in Tulum in Mexico, and it's called Lean Thinking. And apparently it's like Jeff Bezos's favorite book, which is why I was reading it. And in there they talk about how you should optimize a business based on customer, based on value, the way a customer experiences it, right? And you should analyze like the headcount, how many people are like working on, how many people are actually contributing to value the customer would experience in your headcount. And then your, your money flows. So like, how are you allocating the capital? Where is all the money being spent? And does the customer experience value from that? And then your time and attention and energy, right? So you're just analyzing all of these flows. And I realized that all of our time, money, attention, and headcount was on ads. And that customers did not think ads were valuable. In fact, they thought what you did, it actually pissed them off. Right. So I was like, oh man, I've really screwed this one up. And I was like, everything should be focused on the customer. And so I went back after that vacation and realized that I basically had to start again. And so I just started restructuring that company. I realized that organic content was really good because customers find that valuable, right? Like a good YouTube channel, good email newsletter. So I was like, we should do that. And then if we do that, we don't need to do ads. And then I was like, everyone on the team should be contributing value to like the customer. They should be doing support or they should be account management for Mastermind clients. They should be customer facing in some way. And all of my time and attention and energy should be thinking about the customer's problems instead of advertising problems, right? And so I just, with that kind of mental model, I just started restructuring the whole company.

And then, so like, you've talked about consulting a bunch on other pods, and, but the story is that you eventually, and we can go back to it, you eventually sold it, but your new company, Skool, it's, whenever I was texting to you, it always autocorrects to stool, S-K-O-O-L. You were telling me, you didn't exactly say it this way, but I read it this way. You were telling me that you, you're like, we're not taking any funding, or at least you're not. Anytime soon because you self-funded it with $10 million and you're like, I'm hiring the best people. So you like went from like this like internet marketing type of culture to startup. First of all, is that true? And second, was that number right? $10 million that you're going in on this?

That's true.

And why the shift from like the startup where you like have hired all the, like you're running things very Silicon Valley-esque versus what I imagine in my head a lot of, uh, internet marketers are not like?

Well, I started in software. Remember the first company I ever did was SnapInspect. So I've always had a love for software. The problem back then though was I didn't love my market like property managers. And we were constantly limited by our money. You know, software engineers are expensive. Subscription revenue has a cash flow trough in it. And so we were limited by money and I didn't love my market, but I did love software. And I also hated like having to market. I swore I was never going to touch software again unless it had network effects. Because I wanted it to grow itself, basically, like a platform instead of a software tool. So then I fell in love with courses and that The beauty of that was like, I was able to save a lot of money. And then I came back to software because I now was building software for the market that I loved, which was like online creators. And I had money this time, so I wouldn't be limited by that. I could get the best engineers and not cut corners on anything and take a more long-term view. And this was a platform opportunity instead of like a software tool. So we didn't have to have a marketing or sales team and we had no like CAC.

And how is this growing? Cause I see the traffic is like, I don't know, 8 million visits a month or something insane like that. It looks like you got an affiliate program here. If you're not running marketing, where's the growth coming from? Cause I get that there's network effects.

That's way more than like Circle. Is it called Circle? That's way more than a lot of like high VC competitors, the traffic, I believe.

Yeah. So I don't know if the number's right, but let's listen.

It's more than double Circle. Yeah.

How are you getting so much traffic?

It's a community platform. So once you start a community and you add some content to it, the first thing you do is you invite members, right? And then what happens is roughly 1% of members create their own community. So they're like, oh, this platform's cool. I want to make one of these. And then they create their own and then they invite their members. And then that there's a, there's a loop there or a network effect.

When you were doing your content stuff, your ads, I had read stuff like you did some interesting things. Like you— we talked about like the apartment and the suit, and I don't know, you had like a motorcycle in the middle of the room and stuff like that. What were some interesting experiments that you ran that, that either worked or didn't work that sort of taught you something about, you know, human psychology or the way that people's— what gets people's attention, what people— what gets people interested, what gets them hooked? What are some learnings from all those different kind of content experiments you did when you were doing, when you're making, you know, when you're your content, your face was the, was the driver.

A lot of people just want to make money. Like that one was annoying. So like if you just put a jet in something or a fancy car or a New York apartment, like it works so well that it's, it's annoying because you're like, oh, do I have to do that shit? Aren't people just, won't they just listen to the value of the idea? But that's what I learned back then when I was doing those experiments. I think now people are looking for like longer form real stuff that like a podcast, podcasts are really taking off, right? So I think the people that are doing a good job now is like what you guys are doing. I think having a podcast and an email newsletter, that's what I would do if I was starting again right now. That those two work really well together.

We have this friend, Rebecca Zamolo, who has tens of millions, or maybe 15 or something million YouTube subscribers, and she only launched it in like 2017, not that long ago. And I was like, Rebecca, why did you get so big? And she goes, I took it like a job. So like, I got laid off, or I quit, I forget what happened with her other job. And she goes, this is now my thing. So it was like a 40-hour work week. It's like, this is all I'm doing. And I was Doesn't everyone do that? She said, no, shockingly, no. Most of a lot of popular YouTubers, it starts as a side hobby, and even when they're like fairly big, it's still not full-time. But she's like, I just treat this son of a bitch like a company. Like, I just ran it like a company and it worked out. So I think that like that focusing—

no, no chance she said son of a bitch.

No, no chance she said son of a bitch.

I added it.

That's a Sam Parr special. Maybe, maybe I subbed that out. Maybe it was like You know, I took this wonderful thing very seriously. Yeah. You've been pretty good with focus. I mean, that's why even sellconsulting.com, if it's like doing well and you're not working on it, I mean, you seem like you're very, very, very focused on shit. I mean, just to go $10 million on that, on school, was that a significant chunk for you to do that?

And was that like a verbal commitment? Like, I'm willing to do up to X, or did you literally wire it into a bank account and say, that's now in the company that's being used for this company. It's— we're burning that.

That— yeah, that— like, I bought a house because, you know, I've got a wife and family. So I bought a house and I left some money in the personal account for like family. And then I was like, everything else, I'm just— I'm betting on this company.

So no other portfolio, nothing.

How big do you think Skool's going to be?

That's hard to answer. There's what I would like it to be.

Which is what?

I've always wanted to build something that a billion people use.

How are you sleeping at night knowing that you're holding, or a lot of your nut is in there? That's a very stressful thing.

Quite well at the moment because things are going really well. You know, the growth is compounding pretty fast and top tier VCs email us every week. I've had to just stop. Talking to them. And a lot of people want to give us money, but we're not taking it. And so I think the fact that a lot of people want to give me money has allowed me to calm down quite a lot, that I'm not— that we're not going to run out of money. Also, just the growth.

Is it profitable?

No, it's not, but deliberately so.

Okay, fair enough. And where'd you base the company? Uh, is it remote or people in In America, New Zealand, where are your people?

Everyone's in LA and San Fran.

And do you, like, when Sam says you remind him of Jack Smith, one of the cool things about Jack Smith is that while he's clever and interesting on the business side, he's also clever and weird and does crazy experiments also in his personal life, whether it's like sort of biohacking or lifestyle choice or not naming his child until she was 1 year old, whatever, parenting, everything. He takes sort of like a novel approach to each thing. I'm curious, are you weird in other areas of your life? Do you do anything that's sort of non-standard that to you makes sense but maybe to other people sounds a little strange?

I'm sure.

Would you like to say any examples since this is a podcast?

I mean, I slept on a futon for like 3 years. And I loved it. And then when my wife got pregnant, she, she made me give it up. But I really missed that futon, you know, Japanese futon.

Yeah.

I love that thing. I just like to keep things very simple and minimal. Like, I only have one pair of shoes and I only have like the same type of socks and the same kind of like underwear and the same t-shirts and then like 3 wool jumpers. And that's all I have. And then I have the same soap, like this tea tree soap, and I just have like 20 blocks of it. And I, I even take one with me when I travel because I only like that soap. I like don't wear sunglasses because I think they're unnecessary. And I just like to reduce things just to— I like to find something that I think is good and then only use that. And then just get a few different pairs of that and just keep things as simple and as minimal as humanly possible.

Is your wife normal?

Yeah, she is.

We were— the reason why one of the things you said, we were sitting around, Sean, it was me, Sam, and my wife, Sarah. We were sitting around at this restaurant. And Sam, you have, you've got some strange energy in a very cool way. You've got very strange and cool energy that I like. I love people like you. And we were just sitting around and the conversation kind of died and we were just sit, we sat in silence for like 3 seconds, I think. And then you just said, I delivered my baby. And we were like, We were like, what? With what? And you said, my hands. And we were like, hold on, say this again. And you're talking about how your wife, she, you're going to do like a home delivery or something and the midwife didn't make it in time and you just did the damn thing and you just did it. And I remember thinking like, the reason I love this guy is I don't think he understands, like, how strange— like, your mannerisms, your voice, they're— this is— they're so unique and strange in such an interesting way, um, which I frankly love. I love people like you because you're so unique and you're not vanilla. Do you realize that you're like that?

Honestly, not really, because I don't— I don't try to fit in, and I don't try to, like, I don't even look at what other people are doing. Like, I don't have social media at all, and I never look at really what's going on or what's in the news or anything, and I just do what I want.

So what do you do with that free time? So let's say no social media, no news. For most people, that's like 4 to 5 hours a day or something like that. How do you reinvest that 4 to 5 hours a day? Where do you put it? What, what does give you energy, or what do you do for entertainment, or what do you do to to unwind?

I mean, all I really do is focus on school, and that's mostly the product. So I'm just obsessive about the product, all the details of it. And then I go home, hang out with my wife and daughter, and then I need 2 hours of like watching something to unwind. Otherwise I can't sleep. And so I'll, I'll watch series. Like TV series. And I like old stuff, like things before technology, because it's, it's nice and slow and it helps me go to sleep.

But when you say you're obsessive, what does that mean? Like, do people like working with you? Like, are you the type of guy who, like, if something very small at the footer is screwed up, you freak out over that?

Yeah, I can see a pixel. So if something's off, like, I'm like, something's off over there, and then I'll inspect it with Chrome Inspector and it will be one pixel. So I can like, I've, I joke with the team that I can see a pixel and yeah, I'll, I'll go into those details. Like I designed Skool's interface in Figma, like the whole thing and defined a lot of like how that entire system works, which is, it's quite complex.

I knew you were like that because when consulting.com first came out, most courses don't, didn't look the way yours looked. Yours had this, like, you had this really cool thing of a, it was like a caveman becoming a person, right? Is that what it was? And then it was like a picture of the globe and it looked like a software page. It looked very unique. And I remember seeing the design of it and I thought that is incredibly unique and it stood out. It made you feel more sophisticated than most other people in the space. Do you remember that page? Am I describing it accurately?

I do, yeah. Yeah.

What, uh, what were you thinking when you made that?

That's what I like to do. I like to just spend a long time on the tiny details. You know, I've spent days trying to figure out the right pixel radius of a rounded corner for the— for like a button.

Is that a feature or a bug? Like, uh, if somebody I worked with was spending days on a, uh, how much the border radius should be on a button, I would slap them. I'd be like, what are you doing? This is not— this doesn't matter. And this is not going to be like high impact. So why are you doing this? So, you know, is that a— is it a good thing? Or is that a byproduct? Like maybe you do that in certain areas where it really works, then I got to live with the fact that I do it in these other areas where it doesn't matter at all.

Yeah. So I, I won't block anyone by doing that, right? So like when we're building the thing, like I'll be very fast and not the bottleneck of the team. But then in my spare time, I'm playing with things, thinking about the next time we update the design system, and I'm just tweaking little things in my— that's what I do for fun. So it's not like what I'm doing is my work kind of thing.

How do you organize your day? Do you have like a— are you like focused on one thing? Do you have like a morning, like, okay, this is my to-do list? What, what, how do you, how do you create your day?

Most of what I do, I would say it's product strategy and design. That's like where I spend all of my time, just in those zones. And we have got like 3 product teams at school. So 3 full stack product teams with backend, frontend, QA, product manager, designer, right? And they've got 3 roadmaps that are all going in parallel. And I need to think ahead of them. Like I've got to dream up like the whole product strategy and roadmap and everything. And then I have to reverse engineer it into chunks, break it down, and then figure out which team should work on what thing and sequence it. And then I've got to design the whole thing, spec it, brief that team, and stay a few development cycles ahead. And so I'll either be designing something, trying to figure out a priority, Talking to that engineering team or checking, doing the final QA check before we push something into production.

I actually think that that's totally the right way, in my opinion, that a lot of companies should run. The reason they don't is because A, that's really, really hard. So like you're the brainchild, you have to like, you probably know every single thing that's happening. That's incredibly challenging for just about everyone. Number 2, it doesn't feel good to feel like a dictator. It's like basically you guys are a band and you're like the main, you know, you're the main guy. You're Celine Dion and everyone else is the backup band. That's a weird reference, but it is what it is. You're Billy Joel.

I don't know.

That's where I went.

Yeah. That's where we went. You're Celine Dion. I don't know. Long hair. You're like the guy. Whereas, I don't know if I can recover from that. Whereas most startups, It's like, it's a lot more decentralized and things like that. But with this type of product, it seems like you're like the main person and there's a circle around you with shit going on. Is that right? It sounds fucking exhausting.

Funny example of this was I remember, Sam, when you were running The Hustle and I was running my company, we would meet up every couple of weeks as part of our like kind of like founder mastermind thing where we would get together. You know, I was sort of drinking the Silicon Valley Kool-Aid, which was like autonomy and like empower your people and all these things. And I was like, you know, preaching to my team like, hey, whoever's got the best idea, we're going with you. You know, oh, janitor, you got an idea? Let's do it. You know, like, let's make it happen. And Sam showed me, I meet up with Sam and Sam shows me like a 12-page doc that he wrote out for some new woman that he hired. And he just go, the document just says, welcome. Here's the things that you're going to do. Your job is to do this. Here's how you will do this. Step 1, do this. Step 2, do this. And he wrote this 20-page doc and was just like, handed it to her and was like, this is, do not deviate from this. I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear your ideas on this. And I asked you, I was like, why'd you do this? You're like, because people fuck up. And I just, I need her. I think this is the right way to do it. And I just need her to do it this way.

No, because whatever Sam has said, I totally agree with that. The problem is that it's fucking exhausting. You know what I mean? Like, it's really hard to do that for a long period of time.

It's not scalable.

Yeah, it's kind of scalable.

Yeah. Like the engineers, I'm not telling them what to do, like in terms of code. Right. So, and then I'm not even coming up with all the ideas from my own mind. I spend a lot of my time looking at what our community wants. So like going through our school community where people ask for stuff and share bugs and feedback. Then I'll talk to power users. I always find who's spending the most time on the platform, get a top 100, just DM a few of them, get on Zoom, talk, just talk to them for hours about it. And then I use the product myself. And then I talk to the team too. And so ideas come from all of these places, but I'm like the the filter and the, the sorter and the prioritizer, basically. And then when I go to engineering, I know what the feature should be, but they, they might push back on a lot of what I say based on how easy that is to implement with code. They might be like, oh, do you really need to do it this way? Because that's going to make the code messy. Or why don't you do it this way? That would be way more simple for the system. And I'll listen to that feedback and adjust the actual feature because I'm trying to like I'm trying to give the, the users what they want, but I'm also trying to keep the code clean and, and I'm trying to build things fast too. So I'm like, how could we shrink the scope of this to make it so we could deliver something faster? And, and so it's not like I'm just dictating to everyone. There's a lot of collaboration.

You know, Sean, something I've, uh, do you know that company Jasper?

Yeah.

Have you talked to those guys? The founder's name is Dave or David. First of all, on the website of consulting.com, dude, that's what I was going to say. For one, if you go to like Unsplash, I think it was called, or one of those like stock websites, stock image websites, for some reason Dave is on the picture of so many stock pictures. I used to use a picture of him and then I met him. I'm like, dude, I use your face for a stock image. You're on this like royalty-free website. And number 2, he used to be part of Consulting.com, didn't he? So Jasper's, for the listeners, like a, I guess a billion dollar now company that does AI stuff. Was he part of your crew?

He was, uh, he bought my course like many years ago and he was one of our like most successful students. He used to sell coaching, like training and stuff, but then he, he wanted to get into software. So then he did this thing Proof. Do you remember that? That little pop-up? Yeah. Yeah. And then that turned into Jasper.

And did I, why did someone, someone told me to ask you what you think about AI? Why did they say that?

I think it's like massively overhyped and somewhat like just unnecessary. Like, I don't know about you guys, but ChatGPT hasn't replaced my Google usage. I still use Google every day and I've found no real task for it, honestly. It seems— but the hype is extreme.

The hype cycle is there around like the growth and like, well, it's, it's not there yet, but I can see the future of this. So you're not bullish at all in the future of it?

No. All right, I'll take the other side of that. Um, Sam, anything else you want to ask before we, we wrap up?

No, I, I appreciate you coming. I find— I want to talk to you again another time. I find you fascinating. I think that you're an original thinker and I appreciate people like you.

Thanks.

All right. Well, that's, that's the pod.

That's it. 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.