The GameStop Guy Has Returned… (And Has A New $210M Bet)
Sam, this podcast is not financial advice, but if I was going to give anyone financial advice, I would have said rewind the clock to May 1st, just a month ago, and all you need to do if you ever want to triple your money— forget Warren Buffett, forget Bill Ackman— all you had to do was buy GameStop again. Again. 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.
On the Mount Rushmore. Of investing. There's Bill Ackman, there's Warren Buffett, these wise older men who just exude confidence, exude wisdom. Right next to them is deep fucking value. That's the world we're living in right now. So a lot has happened with this guy. Let's tell a little bit of the background of who this person is and what happened. All right, so it starts— what year did this start? Probably 2020. So like peak zero interest, COVID's happening. A lot of people are streaming online and saying their thoughts because they're working from home. There's this guy named Keith Gill. Keith Gill, I think he worked at like MassMutual or like just some normal boring job, like a $100,000 a year job. However, he loves stock investing. Like he studies it and turns out he's a very charismatic guy and he starts streaming some of his picks and why he likes certain companies, whatever. Now we all remember that in 2020, 2021, the stock market went crazy and there was a subreddit called WallStreetBets and a lot of people had extra income because of whatever was happening and they were betting crazy amounts of money on silly stocks. Well, this guy Keith Gill, he has a username on Reddit called DeepFuckingValue, and then he has a YouTube page called Roaring Kitty and he starts explaining why he likes GameStop and he invests roughly $56,000, which at the time, I think that was like all of his money. And he just goes on this kind of campaign explaining why he likes that stock. And it's kind of like an underdog story. It's this kind of nobody charismatic, cool guy versus the large companies. And the reason he starts investing into GameStop is these large companies, these large hedge funds, he finds out they're shorting the company. And he was like, I actually think they're wrong. I think this is great. And so it becomes a little bit of a Robinhood, David and Goliath type of story and all of Reddit, all of Twitter. Gets behind Keith Gill, Deep Fucking Value, Roaring Kitty, and the stock goes crazy. He makes something like $30 million off of his $50,000 investment. And he spends about— how long was that? 18 months, 2 years, like with his campaign talking about it, but then he makes $30 million. He goes silent. Nothing happens. There's a movie made about him with Seth Rogen. It was an awesome movie. Uh, but at the end of the movie, they go, we try to get Keith Gill to comment on this movie and give us insight. He didn't say anything. He's been silent. We haven't heard from him until last month. It all changed.
What happened? So great summary. Last month, uh, Roaring Kitty, as he's known, he's got a couple of different names, right? There's his Reddit username, but then Roaring Kitty was kind of his, uh, streaming name. And he comes back on Twitter and he just posts a meme and it's the meme of the guy, uh, sitting in his chair and then starts to lean forward. Like he just became interested in something.
The gamer lean.
The gamer lean, the lean in. Many of you listen to this podcast right now, might have the gamer lean going, and I hope you do. But he posts that, nobody knows what it means, cryptic. And then he starts posting some more cryptic videos, little messages.
That tweet got 30 million views.
Yeah, people are ready. And, um, and immediately like stock pops a little bit, but nobody knows what it means. And nobody knows really what happened to this guy during that run where he turned basically like $56,000 into tens of millions of dollars. He held the whole way. So what everybody thought was great, the short squeeze is great. What happens when people start to take gains? This whole thing's going to collapse. And sure enough, that is kind of what happened. It didn't stay at the peak. I think at the peak it was like $480 and it did start to come down, but he had, as we say in crypto, diamond hands, and he did not sell during that time, or nobody knew what he was doing during that time, but he had never, there was no evidence of him selling. So He comes back, he starts posting all these clips and people start getting excited. And what's happened in the last, you know, I don't know, month or so is the stock has tripled and it's tripled in spite of Robinhood and others halting the stock again because like last night and after hours it was up 100%. Your money just doubled last night if you had bought yesterday. And then they had to halt the thing because it's like, you know, pretty abnormal behavior that's going on in the after-hours trading. So the internet's going crazy. He then goes and posts on Reddit and he goes into a Reddit subreddit called Superstonk. And so he goes into Superstonk and he says, here's my GameStop, my GameStop YOLO update. And he posts this screenshot and the screenshot essentially shows that he currently has between his equity and his call options, $200 and something million worth of GameStop, which basically means that And people aren't exactly sure when all this started, but there's a Twitter handle called Unusual Whales.
Unusual Whales, they is unusualwhales.com. I believe it's an option buying platform. And they noticed, then they started reporting on this on their own platform. They said a few weeks ago, they go, someone is buying $2 million a day and they're a whale. What is going on? And they've been doing it for 3 weeks. And a call option basically, and I'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff, it basically just means they think the stock is going to go up and they leverage their money to buy a ton of options to purchase the stock at an agreed-upon price. I think his agreed-upon price was $20. He starts accumulating that share, that stake. No one knows who it is. And just last night, I think, or the night before, he revealed it was him. He's been doing this all along.
Yeah, it's insane. And so, you know, currently right now today, it's up another 24%. He's basically doing it again. And the hedge funds, I believe, were shorting it again.
So I'm not again.
That's the part I'm not 100% sure on is like initially the appeal for doing this was, um, he would say, you know, I like the stock, I believe in the company. He would say those things, but it was unclear how much of it was his belief in the company versus his belief that the hedge funds had shorted more than 100% of the stock float. So it was like just massively, massively shorted. And the way the shorting works is you're basically betting that the stock is going to go down. And so as the stock rises, your losses, like normally, let's say you buy a stock for $100, the most you can lose is $100. That's what you bought the stock for. That's all you have. If it goes to zero, you lost your $100. When you short a stock, you can lose an infinite amount of money. And that's basically what happened to these hedge funds. They lost billions of dollars by shorting GameStop because when Keith and then all the other people on Reddit started buying, it created a short squeeze, meaning the price was going up so much that they were getting called in and said, hey, you need to cover your positions. You need to, they need to now buy the stock at this elevated price in order to cover their short. And so that put, you know, a couple of them almost out of business. One, I think one or two went out of business and another one had to get a bailout basically.
And there's a lot of accusation of collusion, meaning these big hedge funds colluded together. Uh, some of the hedge funds had a stake in the company Robinhood, and they called Robinhood and said, hey, we need your help on this. You can't let these guys keep doing this stuff. And so it was a, uh, a David versus Goliath situation of like, can the little nobody retail investor somehow beat corporate America, beat the big billion-dollar hedge funds?
And for what it's worth, by the way, I think it's totally true. I don't think this is a whack conspiracy theory. So I don't think they owned a stake in GameStop. What I think was, uh, they were the market maker.
Yeah.
So they were one of the biggest market makers. And then, you know, everybody said, no, we didn't call them and tell them to halt the stock. What they did was they halted buying, but they allowed selling, which is like, you know, that's, it's sort of the most effed up thing you could do to a stock. And people lost like their life savings in this. And some people say, oh, they should have because they were just gambling. Okay, there is something called just gambling, but if the casino rigs the dice, that's not cool, right? And that's what appears to have happened here, where if you shut down buying, but you allow selling for a period of time, you will relieve the pressure and the short squeeze and the stock will start to fall. And then people start to sell because they think, oh, the game's up. And so I took all my money. I don't know about you. I took all my money off of Robinhood after that happened. I just fundamentally, morally was against what had happened. I believe that the CEO lied and continues to lie basically about what happened during that period of time.
I also took all my money off Robinhood. I didn't have significant amount, but like Robinhood started as like the underdog story. And this is a tale as old as time, at least in Silicon Valley, which is like the underdog is like, they're the coolest and the best. We're all behind them. And then they get big. And then all of a sudden they are the man and they start changing some of the things, the way they do things. And now I don't trust them. But I actually, so I currently have two takes on this. Number one, we've talked about the creator economy, which I think is mostly a lame thing to talk about. But basically, uh, the, some of the cool stories are some of these creators like Logan Paul. They now have a billion-dollar company with Prime. Roaring Kitty is the exact same thing, but instead of selling Prime Energy drinks or whatever, he's selling, uh, not financial advice, but he's selling—
Oh my God, I'm so jealous I didn't have this take. Holy shit. That might've been the most insightful thing you've said in months.
This is his version of monetizing his audience and it is beautiful. And here's why it's beautiful. Have you seen the movie? Uh, what's it called? Uh, Dumb Money, it's with Seth Meyers. So they chose this actor to play Keith Gill. And I've seen a lot of Keith videos. He's so much more charismatic than the actor who played him. Right. If he would have been that actor, it would have been way better. And so when you watch his videos, I think I want to get behind you. He is so likable. And so he is monetizing his fame in such an interesting way.
So let me just, let's just make that point again. So what you said is basically we've seen all the creator brands. You've seen Feastables, you've seen Prime, you've seen whatever, a thousand of these. He did it without having to sweat the actual business. He's like, oh yeah, cool. Like how about instead of having to actually sell products and fulfill customer orders and do customer support and all that, I'll just pick a stock and make the stock go up. And the product is you might make money on this stock. And not saying that he intentionally tried to do that or whatever, but like in a way he did, right? He was streaming himself picking a stock, doing his analysis. And the one thing I will say, because I went and watched these videos, is I expected it to be a lot more like pump and dumpy, meaning I expected it to be like either explicitly said or reading between the lines, like, hey guys, let's just do this and make a buck. And he really doesn't say that or do that in any of his videos or his updates. And maybe it's because he kind of had a job at a financial company and he knew not to cross that line. I don't know. Maybe that's why. Maybe he genuinely just liked the company and the stock and was like, yeah, I think there's value here. And in some ways got lucky. He didn't mean to start a revolution. He just did. So I'm not sure which one it is, but I'm very impressed that I expected him to be a lot more unrespectable. But actually when I watched his videos on Reddit's content, I actually respected him a lot. I thought that he was not trying to, you know, a grifter trying to make a buck.
He did not come off that way in the movie, which I think was a hit. They made him not come off that way. They can't, they made him, they made him and his wife come off as very romantic characters. They made, The people who followed him, they like showed like a poor lady in the Bronx or something. She was like, I really believe in this guy. He's the best. We can't let the big guys win. And so you get behind it. It's easy to get behind. The second take that I have, I think what he's doing is not illegal, but it might eventually become illegal. What he is doing is absolutely— so here's my opinion. We don't know what he has done between, uh, Basically when he made his $30 million and up until 3 weeks ago, we don't know what had happened. What I had, if I had to make a prediction, I think he tweeted out this gamer lean in. So he tweeted out this gamer lean in meme or whatever, and the stock jumped, I think 80% that day, which is insane. So he was, he ultimately, I think GameStop at the time was worth $6 billion and then it was worth $7 or $8. I, I, you gotta go look at those numbers, but he basically created something like a billion or at least hundreds of millions of dollars in value from a silly tweet. I think that there's a potential that, uh, he was doing, he was like, knew that him saying something online was going to pop the stock and that he is profiting from that. And then further after that bought the calls. You know what I mean?
No, no, I think it's the other way around. So I think what would make sense is he buys the calls first and it's cheap and then he, then he announces it, but his announcement, I mean, how are you going to get in trouble? Like, you know, I posted a meme. Of this guy leaning forward.
It's not illegal.
It's not illegal.
It's not illegal. And he, it's very wise. And so other tweets that he's posted are, uh, the, what did he post? The reverse UNO card. Just a picture of a reverse UNO card.
Like we're running it back.
Yeah. And I think it's hilarious. I think it's hilarious that, uh, uh, Nikita, our friend said, if you've been toiling away at your startup for the last decade, just remember a guy in his basement with a webcam and a headband just made close to $1 billion in 12 hours. And I think that that's pretty wild and potentially there is going to be some blowback for Keith Gill. But if you think about it, Bill Ackman announced, I think last week that he's considering taking his company, his hedge fund Pershing Square public. And what Bill Ackman is doing is not terribly different than what Warren Buffett has done, what Howard Marks has done, what Mohnish, the guy we had on the pod, what these guys have done, which is they've built a brand for themselves. And when you build a brand for yourselves in the hedge fund or trading industry, it basically just means whatever Warren does, I'm going to follow because I trust him. And so it adds value to a company that is not necessarily in the fundamentals of the business. And that is exactly what's happening with Roaring Kitty. And I find it fascinating. I don't know if I am good. I'm behind it because I like him and I want him to win. But I do have to ask myself, is this actually like ethical and correct? It's borderline, I think.
So here's a couple of interesting bits. So GameStop stock currently $28 as of recording this. If the stock hits $70 a share, he's a billionaire. Insane. Which is just kind of incredible. Insane. The second thing that's really interesting here is some open questions that I have. And I think if it's not obvious by now, we're noobs when it comes to this. We are not stock traders. We are not options traders. This is not the world we live in. We are both me and Sam. We are startup guys. We build businesses. We start companies that are tech companies. Um, this is not our game, but I do have some very simple questions as a beginner here, which is if he's buying basically on average, I think $2, $2.5 million worth of options per day for the last, like, you know, 11 days or something like that.
Where'd the money come from?
Where did the money come from? This is a guy who didn't have money. He made a bunch of money in GameStop. How did he have the ability to buy like $60 million worth of these calls?
He bought 60. That's my point. I think there's more behind the scenes.
He owns $5 million of, uh, 5 million shares of GameStop, which is worth $115 million. And then he has $65 million worth of call options. So there's some theories on this. So that's the first question is how did he do this? And the theories are basically, I don't know if this is true, but here's, here's a theory that, uh, this guy Jonah Lupton, uh, posted on Twitter. So he goes, I'm trying to figure out how Roaring Kitty ended up with $180 million plus— what's now $210 million of GameStop. Here's my best guess. In late April, early May, he sold most of his equity and loaded up on calls. Then he came back to social media, posted the meme, and it went up 300% in like, you know, 3 days. If he sold his calls near the top, that would give him cash back, which he would then go back to buy equity. And then he decided to do this game again recently, and he's basically using this scheme of like sell equity, buy calls, sell calls at the top. Now you have a lot, Calls are basically like a leveraged way to buy. Take that leveraged gains that you have, now buy equity again and rinse and repeat basically. So he's like, this is insane. I've never seen anything like this before.
His Twitter page, instead of the word post, it should just say a dollar sign. That's his ATM. Every time he clicks that button, he's like, that's how much power this guy has. And it's insane.
Yeah. Yeah. Everything about him needs to, he needs a rebrand. Roaring Kitty is now like the fierce lion. Like he's no kitty. This guy is, is just legendary. I mean, the tweets about this are also just hilarious. So one, Brendan Boyle, we put these up. I'm telling my daughter that this was Warren Buffett. It's just a picture of him wearing his purple, like, cat shirt at home. Um, Trung, your boy Trung, uh, posted, uh, here's Warren Kitty and his $180 million GameStop position rolling up to the stock market tomorrow. And it's the wheelbarrow with, like, the guy from South Park with giant balls in the wheelbarrow. He's got— I mean, these are it's really, really pretty crazy. Another one, um, Quiver Quantitative is saying depending on how GameStop moves tomorrow, his net worth is about to pass the other great stock trader in history, Nancy Pelosi. She's currently at $245 million estimated. He's at $210 million. And they said two legendary investors at the top of their game.
It's great. It's great. This is a very captivating story.
Well, there's a, there's the obvious question, which is what do you do about this? So during the first GameStop run-up, I went through like whatever the, you know, the 7 stages of grief. It's like the 7 stages of FOMO, which was first I ignored it irrelevant to me. Who cares? Then I became dismissive and I said, why are you guys wasting your time on this? This is stupid. This is not like GameStop. Really? There's no, like, you're going to lose your money. Then I became jealous as all my friends made money doing this and all those random strangers on the internet who were doing the dumb thing were making the money. And then I went to chasing FOMO and I bought $100,000 worth of GameStop during that last craze.
No way. Did you really?
I think I made like, I don't know what I made. I made like $50,000 or something like that off of it. I made like 50%. I sold and I got out and then I became confused and then I went back to ignoring it again. And that was my cycle. And so the question is, what am I going to do during this cycle? I already have ignored the first lean-in meme, saw that, ignored it, didn't even know what to do with it. Didn't pay attention to the next two tweets either. I should be entering jealousy currently. All I need is a few text messages and I'll enter jealousy, then I'll chase, then I'll reap the consequences of that. We'll see what happens.
I think you should do nothing.
I will do nothing. That's the honest opinion.
I think that that is a mature answer.
Even making money last time, it didn't feel good. It was— have you ever read the Annie Dukes book where it talks about this term resulting? No, it's like she's a poker player and it's the idea of you play a bad hand in poker, but you got lucky on the river, you got your card. And is your conclusion from that, I'm a genius and this was a good play? And for a lot of people, unfortunately, that is how they result. If something goes badly, they assume it was a bad decision. If something goes well, they assume it was a good decision when actually the decision and the result are in many ways disconnected and you should be able to analyze a decision without only basing it on the result. And so similarly, even though I made money last time, I think that would be resulting to say that was a good idea. In fact, all I did was probably waste 3 days of my attention focused on this random stock that who gives a shit.
So there's one person in this story that's not being discussed right now. And I think that over the next handful of months, He's going to be a lot more famous. Uh, and so that's Ryan Cohen. So Ryan Cohen, he is most famous for starting Chewy.com. Chewy.com was a pet food company. My co-founder Joe, my business partner Joe, also owned a pet food company first, and then Chewy.com came about. And Chewy.com's, their whole thing was we're going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and we're going to spend like crazy on marketing. We're going to lose money on our customers for a long time and we're going to provide such a wonderful experience. Experience that hopefully they come back for us and they like us so much, whatever. He was right. Ryan Cohen was right. Chewy.com worked. My friend, or my partner Joe's company went out of business and it became a huge success. He sold it for $3.5 billion. Well, when he made his money, I think he made roughly $500 million, he put virtually 100% of it into two stocks, Apple and Wells Fargo. And there was this big article written in the Wall Street Journal about him. And that's when we started learning Ryan Cohen is kind of, uh, He's different. Not, he's, he's, he's different. Not even amongst like the average person because he started and sold the company for that much money. He's different even amongst crazy people who are talented enough to do that.
David Goggins. He's uncommon amongst uncommon men.
Yeah. And so he starts becoming an activist investor where he starts buying stakes in companies that he thinks aren't going so well.
He's also the CEO now. So he's been in, he's actually running the company now.
That's bought himself a job.
It's working. And he did the same with Bed Bath Beyond, which was for a minute another meme stock, but he would buy, I believe if you buy a larger than a 5% you have to, uh, reveal, uh, you have to disclose it. And so he's done that a few times and he's become an activist investor where if he buys 5% of your company, that means something is going wrong as in management is screwing up, but the company has potential. And then WallStreetBets and the rest of these crazy degenerate retail investors see it and they buy into the company. Anyway, Ryan Cohen has been present for all of this. Ryan Cohen is only 37 or 38 years old. He's a young guy. And he is still, as of right now, I believe he's still the CEO of GameStop. And so GameStop, and I'm very curious to see what's going to happen with him over the next handful of months. And I would love to get him on the podcast because I think he is a guy who is not just interesting for his Chewy business, but I think that he's a guy who thinks very, very differently and has very strong will. And we're going to see a lot from him over the next handful of months, I think.
He only follows one person on Twitter. Who? Unfortunately, it's not Roaring Kitty. It's just the GameStop corporate account.
Is that really?
What he really should follow is Roaring Kitty. He should either swap it or go to two followers on Twitter. Ryan, that's my only criticism of you. Otherwise, I have no notes.
Yeah, so it's just a crazy story.
Well, where is this guy now? Where is Keith Gill?
In the movie, he was in Massachusetts. And what do you know about Massachusetts in the wintertime? It's the worst, right? Cold, bitter, cold, horrible. He disappeared for the last 2 or 3 years. Massachusetts in the wintertime, very uninspiring. This guy just made a huge bet. He needs some inspiration. Where do you think he would be going now?
He should voyage around. Voyage, that's not quite the right word. He should scamper around.
No, no, no, that's not it. That's not the right word.
What do you think? I think he should wander.
I think he should wander around. And that's today's sponsor, wander.com. That was like, That was a good plug. What is Wander? What is wander.com?
So Wander's a dope business. Me and you both invest in this because we are big believers in this, but we both like to travel. But when we travel, it's like you've got a couple options. Normal, the normal options were hotel. You go to a hotel and you're like, okay, great. I'm staying in this kind of like, I get all the luxury amenities, I get the service, but I'm in this tiny box. Or you go do a vacation rental, maybe on a schmear BNB or something like that. And you, um, you might get a bigger space, you might get more rooms, it feels like a home, but now you don't have the service and it's a, it's like a box of chocolates. It's like very hit or miss what you're going to get.
I was an Airbnb host and I could tell you my internet was definitely the cheapest internet that money could buy and it was not very good.
Sam's stunning views were his like plants right outside the windowsill.
Yes, it wasn't great. So, uh, Wander basically operates a bunch of really fancy, luxurious properties that you could stay in. They built it so it's kind of geared for like remote workers, but also high-end shit. So, uh, every or most of their properties have, uh, gyms. They've got work, uh, work desk setup.
So yeah, like check this out. So I'm looking at a trip right now that I was going to take with my family because, uh, I want to, you know, get out of the house a little bit. And I was like originally planning for a hotel, but a hotel. Now I now have 3 kids, 3, 3 kids that are under the age of, you know, 5.. And a hotel room now is actually Guantanamo Bay if you put all 5 of us in a room. We just put the do not disturb thing up there out of shame. We're like, don't come in here. You don't want to know what's going on in this room.
This room is like chaos right now.
You're being disturbed. Yeah, it's Guantanamo Bay Bay in there. So that's not working. But I would still want to be able to get shit done. So like, check this place out. I'm showing you this one that's at Bandon Beach. So Wander has this location. Look how sick this is. So all of their places are like this. They're like, just like pure, it like looks like it's straight off of Pinterest or Instagram.
It's like dream location. It looks like a desktop, like a screen setup.
But like, look at just like the work setup, the work desk setup at this place. It's like you have the standing desk, big monitor, Apple keyboard. They got, they're like, we have fast internet for real. And they're like, we have a Razer mouse for you. They have everything. It's like, here's where you could do the podcast. Here's the gym. Here's the views. Here's the beds.
This one has a sauna too.
They have like 24/7 like concierge. They have like a cleaning service. They have everything versus, uh, you know, you have to do it all yourself here. It's like you want to stay in a home, but it shouldn't feel like homey, right? In the same way that like you don't want your meat to be gamey, right? It's like, I kind of do like the luxury shit and that's why I like Wander. So if you're looking to travel, check them out, wander.com. They have amazing properties. I think like 200 now. These guys are growing really fast. So they grew to like 200 locations in like 18 months or something insane.
Well, that's the plug. That was a great plug.
Yeah, if we don't say so ourselves.
Yeah, that was a great plug. Wander.com, check it out. Um, Sean, you've been gone for 3 and a half or 4, 3 and a half weeks now. How you been?
2, but who's counting? Um, I'm good. Uh, paternity leave is harder than working for sure. So like, couldn't wait to be done with it. Um, I, I have realized a few things about myself. One thing I've realized is I love being an uncle and I love being a fun dad, but to be the primary caretaker of kids is so hard. And whoever like, you know, whoever created this myth of like, you stay at home with the kids and I'm going to go do the work, the greatest marketer of all time. That is, that is a great reframe of what's actually going on. It is so much work to be at home with kids, but it's great. Everybody's healthy, everybody's happy. So I'm feeling good.
Did you do any work over the last, uh, since your kid was born?
Not really, no. Just a few, uh, a few voice notes here and there.
Did you enjoy that?
No, like I told you, I am, uh, again, like I did other work. It's just work that's like, you know, more like changing diapers and like, you know, cleaning up spit up.
But did you enjoy like lack of screen or lack of thinking about, uh, like business?
Yeah, so one thing I did do is I shifted to, um, doing a lot more creative stuff. So I read a lot more, which I normally don't read because I feel pretty unproductive if in the middle of the day I'm just like, yeah, I'm going to just take a couple hours and just curl up on this couch and read a book. That seems completely unproductive, even though for my job, my life, that actually can be really productive for what I do. But I just have a guilt when I do that. So in this, I had no guilt. I like, what did you read? Playing the piano again, which was like just like a fun thing I could do with my kids. So I'm playing the piano. I'm swimming with my kids all the time. I'm, you know, reading books. I started working on some like comedy stuff that I'd always wanted to do, like just dabbling in like, oh, how would I do this? I went and saw a stand-up show. I went and saw a play, like the stuff I wasn't doing before that was very much more in a like art creativity Mindset versus productivity.
Did you go by yourself?
No, no. I took my mom to the comedy show and I went to the play with some friends. The play is actually pretty interesting. Have you seen or heard about the Lehman Brothers play?
I saw you share it. Yeah, I think that— I mean, it sounded awesome. I've never heard of it other than your share.
So I feel— I wish there was more of these things. This is really cool. So there's a Broadway play that's basically the Lehman Brothers story. And what I thought it is, I thought it's going to be the '08 crash. I thought it's going to be The Big Short., but as a play. And I was like, oh, great. Big Short as a play. I'm in. But that's not at all what it is. It's basically the story of the Lehman Brothers. It ends like, it's the, the play ends the first day of the, of the crash. Like it doesn't even show the crash. It's like implied. You already know what happens with the crash. It's the hundreds of years before that of how Lehman Brothers even became to be one of the 4 biggest like investment banks in the country. And it's a pretty wild play because there's only 3 actors in the entire play. It's 3.5 hours long, which is way too long, to be honest. But these actors are super talented and they basically carry this thing for 3.5 hours. And it's also pretty fascinating because I did not know this history and it's kind of like reading a biography, but as a play. And when I watched it, I was pretty inspired. I was like, I wish there was more business entertainment like this. Like, I am really into things like this. I could, if I was this interested in the Lehman Brothers story, which I was not curious about before. I feel like there could be 100 times more content like this, and I'm kind of inspired to try to go—
I think that would be the greatest pivot ever. Not quite pivot. I think you should 100% explore this. I think that would be awesome.
I am exploring this, not only as a play. I'm not sure if a play is the exact form factor, but something more in this style of content, not tweet, newsletter, podcast, YouTube. I think the whole newsletter, podcast, YouTube, and I'm just like, I feel lame doing it. Whereas if I did something like this, like a grand creative act, I think it would be a lot more fulfilling, a lot higher risk too.
What's the play called?
And who wrote it? And like, did you research?
Uh, yeah, I started looking into them and I started trying to figure out like how successful is this thing? And I started doing the thing, right? I'm counting the seats, like during, you know, one of the two intermissions of the, of the play, because it's 3 and a half hours long. They have two intermissions. I'm trying to figure out like how successful is this thing and how long has it been running and all that stuff.
So what's the background? I'm looking up, I'm trying to look it up now. There's not, it's not too, not many people have written about it.
I think it like started in London and then it's kind of like fanned out from there. So this was opening night in the San Francisco location that I went to. And to be honest, there was a lot of empty seats, but I also didn't understand because when I went to buy tickets, there was like no tickets available. So I think either they screwed up their ticketing system or I don't know why half the seats were empty, but Yeah. Anyways, the point is I think there should be more like this and I kind of want to create it. I'm also slightly intimidated because I'm like, I really have no idea where I would start. Never done anything like this. Um, and so, which is a good feeling to be in because I know the answer is, well, you just start putting one foot in front of the other. And like today it's, it's the Moyes quote that I've shared 100 times on this podcast, which is today I know nothing about deodorant, but in 6 months I'll know everything there is to know about deodorant. And that's how I would have to approach this because I know nothing about this.
Have you ever read the story about Sylvester Stallone and Rocky? He was a nobody and he wanted to make this movie and he wrote the screenplay.
No, no, no. The story's even better than that. He did not want to write a movie. He wanted to be an actor. That's right. And he goes to auditions and he keeps getting turned down and they're like, because I mean, if you hear Sylvester Stallone talk, like his voice is like, his mouth moves in a weird way. His voice is sort of strange. So he just kept getting nos. Instead of just taking the no and just saying, well, I guess I'm just not cut out for this. He's like, if they won't put me in a movie, I'll put me in a movie, which is one of the greatest, like, big dog moves anybody could ever have, right? Like, what's the opposite of no small boy stuff? Is to say, if they won't cast me, I'll cast myself. And he hates writing. So he's never written a movie before, and he actually hates writing. He's not good at it. But he, uh, the best part of the story is that he just ratchets up the intensity to level 12. So he decides, I don't know how to do this, so I'll just— why don't I just not come out of this house until I've written the screenplay? And so he wakes up, he's like, I'm going to start writing. I'm not going to do anything else. I will not leave this house until this is done. That's the only way I know I could force myself to get through the thing I don't like to do, which is writing.
How long did it take him?
And he goes even further. He paints the windows black. He's like, not only will I not leave my house, I don't even want to be able to look out the window. So he literally painted his windows black. And so this has become a phrase that I use with Ben a lot, which is, yo, let's paint the windows black on this. Which is, how do you have a phrase for what it means to turn the intensity knob up all the way where it breaks and you're just holding the knob and now the intensity is stuck at level 12 and that's painting the windows black. And so then in 3 days, he wrote the V1 of the script of Rocky. He then, then it's even better. The story's actually like, I don't know all the details are, but here's like the, the rough version of the story. I apologize if I get something wrong. He goes to, to sell, to, to like get the movie made now. And actually they like it. They're like, we like this. And he's like, awesome. And I'm Rocky. They're like, not that part. We like it, but you're not Rocky. And they're like, what? He's like, no, I'm Rocky. That's why I wrote this thing. And I think they were like, you know, you could do this other role. He's like, no way. Give me my script back. And they're like, look, look, we'll give you $200,000.
They offered him $300,000, which is the equivalent of a million bucks today. And he said, he goes, I had $106 in my bank account.
In the bank account. He turns it down. Things are pretty rough. He ends up selling his dog to like make ends meet.
What a dick.
What a dick. He sells his dog. But I think he also couldn't like afford to feed the dog also because he couldn't really afford to feed himself either. So he sells his dog. What are you going to sell your kid? Hundreds of bucks. He then goes and he finally gets— he finally, I think, sells the thing for $25,000 or something like way less than what he was going to get. And he gets to be Rocky. After Rocky comes out and it's a success, he goes back, buys the dog back for $35,000 because the guy was like, no, I like this dog. And he's just like, makes him an offer he can't refuse. Like, I will give you $35,000 for this dog back. And that is the story of Rocky. Which is insane because the story of Rocky, of how he got made, is more inspiring than the actual story of Rocky in the movie.
And he wins an Oscar that year.
Maybe that's my first play. It's the story of Sylvester Stallone writing Rocky.
That's a great idea. And he goes to the Oscars, they win the Oscars, and he goes, 10 months ago, I was a valet driver. I was parking cars. I'm here at the Oscars today. This is a great story. This is your story.
To the half a million people that are going to listen to this, do not steal my goddamn idea. We're leaving this in. Don't steal my idea. That's actually the beauty of this, no one's going to steal my idea because who the hell is going to go try to make a play?
You turned me on to this guy on Twitter. I don't know. I think his name is Zach Prod. So Zach is this guy who's like, he's like a 210-pound beefcake. He's a big guy, which means like, if you look like a donkey, you're not exactly going to think like, this guy's going to be a good long-distance runner, but turns out he likes running and he's run the marathon now under 3 hours, which is like really fast, particularly for someone who's that huge. And he's got this whole shtick called the Year of Obsession. And all he does is tweet out, he goes, if I could, I would just run and lift weights 24 hours a day. I'm so sad I have to sleep. Like, he tweets like crazy things out like that. And it is a little cringe, but I think it's more inspiring, to be honest, than it is cringe. I actually think it's quite awesome. I do think that crazy people like that are pretty cool. But he That's what your life needs to be over the next year. The year of obsession.
Paint the windows black, baby.
And his whole thing is he does a running club in New York City every Monday at 7 AM. All these people meet and go for runs with him. And he goes, here's the rules. You got to be at this place at 7 AM. We're going to run this many miles and then we're going to sprint afterwards and you must wear black. And so his whole thing is everyone who's following him or who's like into this, they put like a little black emoji next to their name. I think it's awesome. That's what you need to do. You already wear the black t-shirts. Now you got to paint the windows black and you're going to write the Sylvester Stallone story.
Yeah, that's really good. By the way, you said this thing, run club. What's the deal with run clubs? I feel like I'm getting my Seinfeld on. What's the deal with run clubs nowadays? This is, uh, I saw this TikTok that really spoke to it. This guy posts and he goes, uh, was there like a thing? Like, did I miss something? Maybe the pandemic was pretty, uh, a pretty crazy time. I was inside for a lot. Like, did something happen where everybody started running? He's like, everybody I know runs now and that's cool. Running's good, but where, why did everybody decide to start running and like why are there run, run clubs are like an insane thing now. Have you been paying attention to this?
Yeah, I have. And I'll explain to you what I think happened. So basically there's this guy Nick Bare. We had Nick Bare on the podcast. I don't think you've ever made it with Nick, have you?
Yeah, maybe we, I did one with him. Yeah. But then I tried to leave, you know, it's kinda like when your roommate hangs a sock on the door. I was like, okay, let me leave Sam alone with the beefcake. Like you guys can, you guys can admire each other's nipples for the next hour and a half. That's cool. I'll, I'll just, Take the pot off.
Nick Bare is a beefcake amongst beefcakes. Nick Bare is, he looks like a, he looks like if you like, ooh, he's the Wagyu version of the Obsession guy. Yeah. If you were to like take a Greek statue and put it into a white guy who's raised in the Midwest, that it would look like Nick Bare. So Nick Bare is this, he owns Bare Nutrition. It's a supplement company, but he has this shtick called the hybrid athlete. And the hybrid athlete basically means someone who likes to lift weights and run because typically runners, look like not great. They look very skinny. You could be skinny fat and a great runner. His whole deal was like, I'm going to lift weights while I run. He's been doing this for many, many, many years now. At this point, he's got 1 or 2 million followers on YouTube, and I think he helped popularize this thing. And so now a lot of these young men, uh, who like to lift weights, they're saying, I actually want to go running as well. And so they've made it popular to go running, and it's also a very social thing. So in Austin, run clubs have been getting very, very popular. And so on the trail that I go and walk on, or ride my bike or run, you see tons of groups of runners and it's very popular and you're starting to see pop up in other cities. In fact, the woman who runs, uh, my little project Sam's List, she used to work for a company that was trying to make money on run clubs. I think that's a stupid idea because I think it's incredibly challenging to make money off that, but it's a cool idea that they exist.
Cool guys start running, right? Influencers. So, uh, have you seen this one in Austin called the Raw Dog Run Club?
No, that sounds awesome.
The branding is It's a run club. Beautifully done. The branding is amazing. So go to instagram.com/rawdog. D-A-W-G.
Here's the profile.
Raw Dog, Austin, Texas. Sexy faces at sexy paces. Saturdays at 8:00 AM. Location posted weekly. Open to all. Just show up.
I've seen this guy. Yeah.
Look at the photos. The photos of this, it's Coachella. It's Lollapalooza. It's every festival you've ever seen. But they're just running instead of, you know, drinking and listening to music. They made it really fun. They made it sexy. I love the branding of this. This is kind of like the Pink's window washing, uh, like branding level thing. I've never done this and I would never do this because I hate running, but I really respect the way these guys are building the community and the brand around this. If you want to go down a kind of interesting branding and community rabbit hole, study these guys. I think they're doing a lot of things right. Uh, go look at their TikToks, go look at their Instagram, go look at their website, go look at everything that they're doing. And I think that they are doing a lot of things well. I also think that if I'm one of these influencers, like a Cody Ko or whoever, I would 100% lean into making a national, like, run club where, you know, the way we're doing our MFM meetups, which, like, to be honest, we didn't do anything, so we should take zero credit for this. But the way that the community started self-organizing MFM meetups so that a bunch of, like, like-minded dreamers and schemers get together in some city and they hang out, they get to learn about each other's businesses, and it has nothing to do with us, but like We were the reason that they got together, that they found each other. But then from there on, they had their own little community, which is really great. And by the way, we should shout out, I don't know, what's the URL for that? It's like getriver.com or something.
I don't know.
If you want to go to a meetup, you should do that. I think that is one of, not getriver.com for sure. That is something else altogether.
What is that? It's called getriver.io.
So, uh, it's getriver.io. And then if you go to the website, you'll see, I think we're on the front page. So you'll see it August 1st.
There's meetups in San Francisco Bay Area, wherever, right? So the getting people together in real life for real life experience, um, off of your online community, even though you're not there as the creator, I think is a really smart move for whoever does that. And whoever, like, you know, if I'm Nick or if I'm Cody Ko, if I'm one of these guys, I'm going to lean into that because it deepens people's kind of connection relationship with you and it creates this kind of grassroots movement. And if you end up, and you could end up building a business around that, right? Because you could sell, you know, those products that people have. What are those things like goo and like, um, what else? Like all the runner products, right?
Or, uh, the electrolyte drinks, by the way. So the club that you're referring to, Raw Dog, they're based in Austin. The guy who started it is, they're all young kids. So you look like they're 20. 3, 24, 25. He actually works for Nick Baer, uh, and so, and he's a former professional bodybuilder, uh, and so it is sort of rooted in that. And in this, like, 20 people who have kind of started this thing. There's another good example. So we talked to Jesse Itzler. He didn't tell us too much information, but do you know this thing called— Jesse Itzler started a company with this other guy, and the other guy recently joined Hampton, and that's how I got to talk to him. It's It's the, the name of the business is The Height of Mount Everest. So it's 29,029. I don't know if you pronounce 2-9-0-2-9. I don't know how you exactly pronounce it, but it's a, they do 8 figures a year in revenue. And what they do is they have got these events all over the country and they pick a really tall hill or mountain and you climb up that short mountain as many times as it takes to equal Mount Everest. And so it's like the whole shtick is like you can climb Mount Everest or at least the height without actually having to go, uh, to Asia and do that. And it's a great company. These guys do really well and they have, I think they have hundreds, for sure dozens of events throughout the year. And it's one of the events that I've seen that's killed it. And I've always been interested in these racing events. And so like, for example, Ironman, right before COVID happened, Ironman was acquired by a Chinese billionaire and they've tried to make it significantly larger. And I think they've done a good job of that. And so some of these events are actually really fascinating. Have you heard of this other one called the, uh, uh, I think it's called the Country Marathon. Have you ever heard? No, sorry. Maybe it's called the Rock and Roll Marathon. But anyway, what it was is in Nashville, they had this where for 26 miles, every mile they had a band play. And so it was called like, is it called like the Rock and Roll?
Rock and Roll Running Series.
I see. Yeah. I believe that business was acquired for 9 figures and it started as a kind of small niche thing where they had music every, uh, every mile. And so there are actually some of these, uh, really interesting, uh, uh, endurance events businesses where they just have one cute shtick on it and that makes it kind of cool. Uh, there's another one called The Speed Project. Have you seen The Speed Project? So The Speed Project, they don't listen to this. The Speed Project doesn't have a website. You can find it on Instagram, but it's invite only. And so the race has, I think, only one rule or two rules. The race has two rules. They start at the Santa Monica Pier and you, either you by yourself or you with a 4-person crew, have to make it to Las Vegas. And the rules are basically you can go there any way you want, but you have to be running. So you can't get in a car. You have to run the whole time. And number two, you just got to get there. And so you could take any route. Uh, there's, and there's no website other than you have to be invited to do it. They don't really, really announce when it's going to happen. And it's gone, whenever it happens every year, it kind of goes viral where you see like a handful of influencers who you like, they're like, what is the Speed Project? Why are they there? Right. It's super fascinating. Uh, my friend did it and got second.
I have two things to say about this. Number one, if you're the type of person that likes to do these and you're like world-class at organizing these, hit me up. So sean@seanfury.com. I have a small Google Doc of ideas that I thought would make for a really awesome event that would be just fun and awesome if it existed, but I will never do the work myself of organizing these. The second thing is, what is the pickleball of running? I'll let you stew on that. So what I mean by that is pickleball took tennis, made it faster, cheaper, smaller, more accessible to all ages and all sizes of people, right? What is, who's going to do that for running? So who can make running less of a marathon or an Ironman? Like literally the other direction. Who's going to shrink it into like, it might just be sprints. Like maybe sprinting is more like pickleball.
I was a sprinter in college. There's no sprint events for grown men and sprinting is way better for you anyway.
Hamstring insurance is needed for sure. If you're going to put adults in like, hey, just come out, come out here and sprint. But I do think that there's got to be something like this. Or I, we made this joke on the, on the pod where I was at a dinner and this guy goes, yeah, I, um, He goes, yeah, every Saturday morning we walk the trail. We walk a mile to our favorite kind of brunch spot. We drink a beer and then we play pickleball for an hour or something like that. And he's like, I call it the suburban Ironman. And I was like, holy shit, he's got something here with this branding of the suburban dad bod version of a fitness competition. Where it's more about the fun and just getting out there and doing something. Because I think in the jobs to be done of what's going on in these races, you have many things that are being bundled. You have the fitness component, you have the social component. I think a lot of these run clubs, by the way, have a big dating component because I think you want to meet people in a context where everybody's, you know, sexy, sweaty, it's sexy. It just, you know, everybody's, it's like a positive vibes community. You're going to talk to anybody, approach anybody. I think there's a dating component. So you have the social, you have the fitness, you have the photo component, which is how do I do something that I can brag about on social media, right? How can I go post something on social media that makes me feel better than the average person? And that's how Tough Mudder and Spartan Race, like, that was huge for them. So I think there's a bundle of things that you're getting out of these. And then the last one is kind of like getting people out of the general feeling of softness in their life, which is, it's just very real. And I think only going more and more over time as we spend more and more time on our devices and AI goes and makes our life even more, you know, everything you want at the touch of a button. People still want something difficult, physical to go do. So I think you can unbundle part of that and make it maybe ramp up the social and put down the physical, right? Or ramp up the photo and, you know, whatever. So I think you can unbundle that in a way.
So let me tell you something really quick and then we'll wrap up on this segment. But Google Hyrox. I think you pronounce it Hyrox. So H-Y-R-O-X. Don't go to the website, just click images. So this guy, I think his name's Christian. He used to work for Ironman, the company Ironman. And about 7 years ago, he started this thing called Hyrox and they have events throughout the year as well as a world championship. The world championship just happened on Saturday.
Oh, I saw, I just saw this on Twitter. Somebody was like, these Hyrox things kill. And it was like a photo that just looked massive in scale. It's like an airplane hangar or something. What is this thing?
So they rent it out, uh, this year it was in Brooklyn. So I imagine they rented out like a whole pier. And the way it works is, uh, I, I think the event changes every time, but I'm not exactly sure. But basically they rent out this huge area and you have to do a series of 5 exercises in a row. And the first person that wins wins the whole thing. And so the exercises are something like, uh, lunges with a weight on your back, and then it's rowing a certain amount of meters. And then it's running a certain amount of miles and then throwing like a weighted ball in the air. Like you got to like throw it in the air a bunch of times. It's basically the My First Muscle Challenge, but like real men. And yeah, and the winner did it in an hour, which means I imagine the race is an hour to 3 hours depending on how slow you are. And if you look at the photos, it's all people wearing all black. And they're all smoking hot. Like everyone who does this is good looking. And so it's sort of like CrossFit, but CrossFit kind of has a douchey component to it. This somehow toned it down and they added like a New York, all black Brooklyn, like swag to it. And it's awesome. So Lance Armstrong competed in it this, this Saturday.
And I think they're killing it. And this Ken Rideout, who was a guest on our podcast a few times or once, he, I hung out with him recently, he was like, hey, I'm going to be in New York, I'm going to do this race. He got third or fourth or something like that. And I went and looked at the Instagram of the people who won it, and it's their whole life. So now they're like dedicating their life to this. And so when you— when I saw that, I was like, this business is going to be huge. If people are like— it's like a lot of ex— a lot of ex-college athletes who are like, oh, this is like an interesting outlet where I can make a little bit of money and continue to train because I'm not good enough to like be a professional at whatever sport I was doing. I think this business is killing it and I think we're going to see a large exit from these guys.
Very interesting, man. This is a, it's a much bigger space than I would've guessed.
For sure. And I think you're seeing a COVID bounce. So I don't know about you, but as I work from home all day, I'm normally, I don't really like hanging out with people, but I'm like, I need someone to touch me. Like I just, I like, I need a man to put his arm on my back and ask how I'm doing. Or like, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like I need more touch and stuff. And like, dude, if you're 22 years old and you're working remotely, I feel really sorry for you that you don't get to experience some of this stuff that we got to experience. And I feel sorry for myself, frankly, that I'm still not experiencing it. And so as someone who doesn't like to go to these events, I'm now, I'm like, I want to go meet people. I need to go do this stuff. I need to find my tribe. So I think that's what's happening.
That's very cool. Yeah, this is a great, great segment. Can I leave you with one interesting thing that happened to me in our catch-up segment here? I got a phone call the other day that kind of blows my mind and makes me, I feel simultaneously grateful, embarrassed, and inspired. And you might be wondering what could possibly make me grateful, embarrassed, and inspired at the same time. Here's what happened. Scott Harrison calls me the other day and I see this voicemail from Scott Harrison. Scott Harrison is the founder of Charity Water. He's been on the pod once and he's an incredible guy. I've told a story before, but I'll leave that out for now. He's definitely somebody in my, like, top 5 people I admire. If you said, which entrepreneurs do you admire? I'd be like, Scott Harrison is up there. The short version of why is the guy is using his entrepreneurial talents to kind of save the world in a way. He's providing clean water to people who don't have it, which once you see firsthand, you feel like something's wrong in the world that people don't have clean water to, you know, to drink or to bathe in or sanitation, all that. He's been doing it for a long time. He could be, he could be making himself rich some other way if he wanted to, but he decided to devote his life to this. And he didn't, the best part of why I admire him is because he didn't start that way, right? There's some people who, they do amazing things and you're like, huh, they're just sort of born Mother Teresa. This guy was like a partier, right? Party boy. You know, he was, he's like, I was living every deadly sin you could. For a period of time, for a 10-year period of my life. And he turned it, or he sort of decided to make a shift and ended up doing this. Anyways, here's the story. Scott calls me. I missed the call. I call him back.
What's up?
Do you need something? Is there something I can help with for Charity Water? What's going on? He's like, hey man, I'm listening to the podcast and I had some feedback for you. Unsolicited feedback. I said, sure, hit me. He said, you want to do this, right? Like you really like doing this. Yeah, I love doing this. And this is like your thing, right? You want to make this your thing? Absolutely. I think I can be great at this. You got to say like less. Oof. And I was like, what? Here, there, you heard it again. So I'm, I tell him, what do you mean? He said, I was listening to this episode that you guys did. Great episode, but I think you said like 700 times. And I'm like, oh no, he's right. And he's like, you know, I used to do the same thing. It's hard to get rid of, but you can get rid of it. And I wanted to tell you that I think you do it too much. It doesn't add to what you're doing. I think you could fix it and you will be better if you fix it. And I just wanted to tell you that. And I was like, man, I had two thoughts. I said, first, how do you get rid of this? How do I improve that? Is it like you said that you improved it? How did you do it? Was there some technique you did? Did you hire a coach? What'd you do? And he's like, don't worry about that. It's just once it's in your awareness, you'll fix it. You're like, I am worried about it. Basically, the answer was pay attention to it and you will obviously start to reduce it and you'll work on it. That's all. It'll just take reps. The second thing I felt was, dude, thank you. I'm not that close with Scott Harrison. I like him. I would consider him a friend, but This was the first phone call in 5 years, let's say, right? We don't talk that often. So for him to do that, the courage and the care that it takes to call somebody and be like, yo, some feedback for you. I thought that was an incredible friend moment. And I was again, simultaneously grateful, embarrassed, and inspired by it. And since then I've been thinking about this.
How can I just call and insult people?
Call people and just ruin their day.
No, I'm playing, but like, hey bitch, I've been thinking about you. You're only 5'5". We gotta add a few inches to that, dork. Radical Candor out, bye.
You're welcome. No, seriously though, this is a gift. He gave me a gift and I was thinking about this. How many of those gifts have I given people? Um, very few, very few. I think it takes a lot of guts to do that. I think it takes a lot of care to do that. There's different ways to show somebody you care. There's different ways to give, you know, an act of service for somebody. And I was like, this is one I can do. And for the people in my life that I know, like me, would take it as a gift, I'm going to do that. Of course, I'm sure that it can go the other way where some people do not take it, uh, well.
Dude, Neville, uh, Neville Medhora, my best buddy Neville does that to me all the time. Like he'll, uh, be like, hey, could you come over for a few minutes? And I'll, uh, yeah, sure. And I'll go over. He goes, hey, so last Friday night, you need something?
He's like, no, you do.
Come over. Well, like he goes, last Friday night I had a party over and this one woman brought her parents there and you did not let the mom talk nearly enough. You were, you're, you're kind of, uh, talking over her and I think it made you look really dumb and I don't think you are dumb. He has done that to me so many times. Uh, that's one example. Another example, I stayed at his house and I didn't make his bed right. He goes, let me show you how to be a better guest in someone's home. Did you see how I had that bed made? Because I really care. I need you to make it this way. Come on, let's make it together. I'm going to show you how to do it. And that's what I expect from you. He does it all the time.
That is amazing. Also kind of, kind of big dodgy there. I like that.
Uh, but he's older than me. He is kind of like an older brother to me. I've always looked up to him, but he's done like when I was like 25, I think, uh, I had a towel. He stayed at my house and I had a towel that smelled like mildew and he goes, and I gave it to him to use. And he goes, come here, Sam, let me show you something. This is not how you treat guests. Like, anyway, and it's always really helpful. He's always said that to me and I think it's great, but I will say, I know you say like a lot. I kind of like it, to be honest.
Oh no, I'm getting feedback whiplash now. Wait, is this my thing? Maybe it's my thing.
We should do a charity thing with him. Uh, we should do, we should do something.
You weren't on that podcast when we did one. So we did one where I—
no, but we should do like a proper campaign, like, uh, just the way we did My First Muscle. We should do something, whether it's that one or anyway, we should when we did, uh, we've done a few things where we were kind of charitable, but not really. And whenever we do those, it's like the right thing to do. And it feels good. We got to do, we got to do a little, a little give back thing.
And I'll post an update of the one that we already did, uh, which was, it went to the campaign went to India. So we provided clean water and wells to people in India. And I think we raised like something like $50,000. So I want to provide an update of like what happened with that, the impact, which is what one of the key innovations that Scott had with his charity, he was like, No, he was not like, he decided to change the way that charities work. He's like, I give money to charities, but I never hear back from them. Like, I don't know what happens with the money. And then they just come back again the next year and they say, can we have more money? He wanted to have like a closed loop so that when you donate, you actually get to see where the money goes, what impact it had. You get to see the photos. He literally installed like little, Google donated these like, these flow meters so that you can see that the well you helped build, you can go in the app and you can literally see how much water is flowing through that well right now. And so he did a lot of experiments like that to like change the feeling people get when they give, where they actually get to feel the impact. Because his belief was if people could see how much good it does, they would do more. And he was totally right. That's why Charity Water has raised so much money.
All right. Is that the pod?
That's it. 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.