Q&A: Gut punches, favorite guests, plus advice for life
All right, Sam, I was going through the mailbag. People email us questions and there was one that I had to, had to bring up. We got to start with this. So here's the, here's the, here's the email.
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 look back.
Dear Sam, last month I sold my e-com biz and recently a startup that I invested in went public. I'm in my 30s. I own very little. House, cars, nothing. I have $53 million in cash sitting in my bank account, but I'm not sure what to do. If I do something, it needs to be big. I'm torn between a few options. Just put it in the S&P 500 and move on. Get into real estate. Trying private equity, chasing a billion-dollar idea. I've hit 3 major wins in a row. I exited my company, I invested in a winning startup, and I got really lucky on a real estate deal, but I'm not entirely confident I can rebuild it from scratch if I lose it all. My life goals are pretty simple. Have 5 kids, a wife, and become a billionaire. I'm currently with someone I'm planning to marry. What do you got for me? Okay, so let's start, let's answer this question. And then there's some good other mailbag questions that we have here.
All right. So let me tell you what I told the guy. I basically said, if you make $50 million at the age of 35, that basically becomes a billion eventually, but that's kind of irrelevant. But like, I think that's a dumb goal to become a billionaire or want to become a billionaire. I think you should do what you love after, after you have that much money. But if you want to become a billionaire, you will. But what I told him was basically, I think he should put most of it actually into a high-yield savings account or just like some type of like short-term treasury note or something like that. And just sit for 6 to 12 months and do nothing except read and have conversations with interesting people. And that actually 6 to 12 months, that may take 36 months. That might actually take 5 or 10 years, but whatever you want to do, I, my opinion is you should. Plot and read and talk and only do something if you're obsessed with it. And oftentimes when you make a lot of money, you get bored. And because of that, you start kind of, it's like falling in love with someone when you're like really horny. It's like, dude, you don't actually love that person. You know what I mean? Like don't actually do it. And so I think, but you have to be really intentional about what next project that you do and you don't give yourself a timeline, but you sit and you read and you wait for it to happen. So with the money, I would do some type of high-yield savings account for like 6 months. And then eventually I would do 80/20 S&P bonds. I would try to live off 3% of that money. And then I would just plot and wait until that one thing I find. And then I would take a percentage of the money. Like, for example, let's say that you're comfortable living off of $1.5 million a year. You take how much you need in the S&P to live off that, and the rest you are willing to allocate towards your big dream and new adventure.
All right. I like the advice. Here's an analogy. Here's what I would tell this person. Do we have a name for this person? They don't want their name out there.
Let's call Derek. Derek.
Okay, Derek. All right, Chuck, here's the deal. Here's an analogy for you. You've got a beautiful big screen TV, beautiful 96 inches. It's an enormous, beautiful plasma retina, whatever the display is. But it seems to me like behind the TV you have what a lot of us have. You got the cables all tangled up. And the reason I say this is because you asked one question that's actually 5 questions probably in one. So let's separate out, let's start to pull the tangles on these cables that are stuck behind the TV. So one, one cable is what do I do with this cash? Meaning I've got cash sitting in an account. Should I just leave it there or do I do something with this money? There's another one, which is what do I do with my time?? And those are two separate questions because when you get rich, the point of getting rich in a way is to separate the questions of what do I do with my money? What do I do for money? And what do I do with my time? Those are now separate questions for you. But before, when you have no money, they're the same. You work, you put your time in, that's how you get the money out. Then you have a third question, which is, what are my actual goals? So he said, my goals are to have 5 kids, have a wife, and have a billion dollars and have, have, have. I don't know very many happy people who got happy because they acquired things. They have things, they have cars.
The kid thing might be different. I think you could acquire a kid and be happy.
Actually, I don't think so. I think life is a lot more about figuring out what you love to do, where you feel most useful, and who you want to become, and more importantly than the things that you end up doing. So I think I would ask a question, which is, what are my actual goals? And I use the word actual as a loaded word because usually we have these goals that we just borrowed from others, either from our parents, from society, from the movies, from newspapers, these goals that are theirs and we make them ours. It's a goal you had 10 years ago, but you're not the same person you were 10 years ago. When I did this episode with Mike Posner, he's like, dude, I was in my 20s. All I wanted to do was get rich, get famous, be successful, be respected. He's like, and then I was in my 30s and I was doing things that would get me those things, but that's not what I wanted anymore. I was living the dreams of 21-year-old me rather than 31-year-old me who actually had new dreams. And I needed to update that. I needed to update the sort of motivational thing on the poster. There's another great question, which is, he says something like, if I'm doing something, it's got to be huge. And anytime I hear that, there's usually like a chip on your shoulder you probably want to work on. Great question here is, are you being driven or are you being dragged? So it's like, what's the reason? Why do I feel the need to do that? Is it to prove something to other people? I talked to a guy who had dinner with a guy who's created a $50 billion plus company. He's doing a new one. I was like, why are you doing another company? Like stressful, hard. You just had kids. Why are you doing this? He goes, I just want to prove, you know, I need to prove that like it wasn't just a fluke the first time.
Really?
That's interesting. And in my head, I'm laughing because I'm like, proof to who? You know, nobody doubts that you could do this. Like, we all actually respect and admire you. We think you're amazing. Who are you proving this to? Is it proving it to yourself? Why do you doubt it? You did it. Then doing it to prove something wrong or prove something right is sort of a silly way, a silly reason to do something. So anyways, my final advice would be I would do nothing financially. Like you said, just put in a savings account for a year. I would get a coach to help untangle some of these mental wires that are tangled up. I would get in shape because when you're in shape, all things start to look a little different. And I would spend a year with people that you really love, helping people and hanging out with them. So I would find people who need help, I'd go help them. I'd find people who are free, I'd go hang out with them. And I would start to hang out with people who maybe have gone through this season of life. And I think of it like a season. I'd be like, oh, I had this season of achievement and now I got a season of wandering, but I got to figure out what I'm doing next. Call it that so you don't feel uncomfortable when you're like, oh man, I'm so unproductive now. Call the season what it is and go hang out with people and make no decisions until, you know, the clarity will show up.
The worst thing this person can do— well, one of the bad things this person could do is go and buy a bunch of stuff or get himself into situations that can't easily be untied. So for example, I mostly followed my own advice when I kind of had an acquisition. I did one dumb thing, which is I bought some real estate that I was like going to turn into a business. And I did it like right away. And a few months into it, I'm like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I don't like this. And it took, it took like a year to like unwind all of that. It consumed my brain and it really messed with me. And so I regret doing that. And I think a lot of people make the same mistakes. It's a very common mistake is to go and like acquire a whole bunch of stuff, which weighs you down, and it ruins the whole seeking process.
The only alternative version of that is when you go and you do something for your parents. So like, there's a great clip, we should play this clip of, you know who Stephen A. Smith is, the ESPN anchor? He talks about when he first got money and he drives to his mom's, where his mom worked, and he's like, I went into her office and I said, mom, get up, get your bag, we're leaving. And I told her boss she ain't never coming back. And he talks about how he retired his mom on the spot. And I was like, that's a cool thing to do. Pay off your parents' mortgage or debt or something like that. If you're going to do anything, do that. It's a sort of a philanthropy in your own economy first.
That's what I did, by the way. I flew my parents first class to Europe and it was awesome. It was awesome. And I have this video of them. My father stood up and like, you know how old people hold their phone with two hands? And he like is holding his phone, like doing a circle of like, and I, and I like taking a picture of like his seat. And I have a video of him doing that. And that brought me so much. I feel happy that I got that video. That made me happy.
By the way, I got a little hack on that. When we sold the Milk Road, my mom was on a vacation with her, all of her siblings. She has like 8 or 9 siblings. And so I got them all like a, like I was like, hey, uh, have the hotel call and be like, your, uh, your, you know, your massage is ready and call all of the rooms at once. And then they all went down and basically I've got them all kind of like a day pass at the spa in Vegas. And it wasn't even that expensive, probably a couple thousand dollars, but for my mom, it was like having a mortgage paid off in that she felt like, oh, my son treated me to something, but also she felt so good. Yeah, I got to brag. My kid is so good. She felt good that it was good for everybody. It wasn't just good for her. And that, you know, doing something nice for her siblings made her feel so amazing.
Yeah. And she could brag that her kid has his shit together and, uh, maybe the other ones don't. Uh, someone asked us this question and I'm, it's related to a topic that we're talking to. What's the number one thing that you've read or seen recently that's wowed you? I read this book called Replay. It's a novel. Do you ever read novels? Yeah, I'm like big into novels now. I thought like, I thought like growing up I was like, okay, flex question.
Do you read? Novels. Like, don't even tell me you like novels.
Like, I was scarred by like grade school or middle school of like having to read novels I don't like. And then I got into the business world. I'm like, oh, we only read like Peter Thiel books. We don't read the fic. We don't read this nonsense. And then now I've fallen in love with them. So I love novels. I read this great book called Replay by Ken Grimwood. It's about, uh, this man who basically dies at the age of 35 and he consistently relives his life over and over and over again. And it's like all, like he does everything that you would do if you could replay your life, which is like, what would you do? You would like get rich by buying stocks. You'd probably like get, try to get a ton of girls, whatever. But he is able to talk to his parents again when they were alive. And I read that book recently, right when I got to that part where he talks to his parents who had died. Now he's reliving his life again. He's able to see his parents. It made me very emotional. And I called my parents. I go, hey, November 4th, what are you doing? Cool, clear schedule. And so we're taking a big, like, lavish trip together. And so this book made a really big impact on me because it gave me this idea of like, in 30 or 40 years, however long it's going to be, when my parents are no longer alive, or whatever the situation is of like, you cannot do in 20 years what you can do today. Well, I have regretted, you know, not taking advantage of that period. And so I'm, I'm trying to, I had made a list. I'm like, here's all the things that in 20 years I'm going to regret. I'm, and I'm gonna go and just get it done now. And so that book had a big impact on me.
Oh, that's great. I'll give you a couple. Chris Williamson put a little screenshot essay up that I really liked and he called it, I forgot exactly what he called it, but he goes, Type A people have Type B problems and Type B people have Type A problems. And what is he describing? So Type A is like the achiever, the obsessor, the kind of like high-functioning ADHD or high-functioning high-anxiety person, which is a lot of people who we know, a lot, probably a lot of people who listen to this podcast. It serves you really well. You get great grades or you'll be successful in your career because you're so like Type A about it, but you suck at just relaxing, chilling, enjoying, slowing down, being grateful, you know, the moment, being in the moment and not thinking constantly about planning for the future or assessing the past. And just being there. And he goes, then there you have the Type B person who we all characterize as like the guy who's just, they're just walking around wandering through life sniffing flowers. Like, dude, you're not getting ahead. Where's your savings account? What's your plan? How are you going to get ahead? You don't have all your ducks in a row. What you're missing out. And society, basically we reward the Type A's who, even if you're high Type A and you suck at Type B, it's like, okay. Feels like you could always catch up, even though in reality you can't. And the Type B person, we sort of look down, they almost seem lazy in a way. It's like, why aren't you getting your act together? You know, what are you, okay, you're prioritizing your happiness too much almost. You should be productive right now. And I thought it was so true that people fall into these buckets as a cliché, as an oversimplification. And it really highlighted to me how undervalued Type B people are. And I have a few Type B people in my life where if you look at their resume or you look at their series of accomplishments or how they spend their day, and it just feels like, wow, you're behind. And then when you hang out with them, you're like, wow, you're ahead. You're the one who's got this thing figured out. And I think that one of the big mispriced assets is, do you know how to chill? Dude, that's such a Type A thing. It would fuck out.
Did you just call it calmness a mispriced asset? Sure did.
Sure did.
You need to listen to your own advice, brother.
Good call. I call them cold plunge people and hot tub people, right? Cold plunge is like you're trying to optimize everything. You're trying to shock your nervous system and get your adrenaline pumping in the morning. And hot tub people are trying to hang out, have a beer, kick it with friends, and they're happier than the cold plunge people. And I think one of the things to really do is to take pride in being able to do both well. Like, instead of trying to be a higher high achiever, you know, working on being able to shift gears and be able to have both gears and be able to do both well.
Where— when did you see this post? Because like a lot of times people ask us these questions and it's almost recent thing. It's always the most recent thing.
This was last night.
Oh wait, really?
Yeah, yeah, that's the question. You said one thing you've read recently that wowed you recently, last night.
Which is, 'cause I try, like you do something interesting. So whenever you go like to some conference or anything, you're always like, I took these notes on like lessons I learned. And I suck at that. And so I was curious if this is something that you like saved from a year ago and you're still contemplating.
Dude, I have a Slack channel called Golden Nuggets that is like, it's a conversation with me, myself, and Irene, dude. It is the longest conversation. It is all just little tiny nuggets that I pick up from from people. When Gary Tan was on the podcast, for example, I go here and I write, he had this great line. He goes, at some point you realize it's all made up, but you get to make it up. I was like, man, that's just such a powerful, simple way of explaining a lot of life. It's all made up. These are all stories we tell ourselves. The rules are made up, but like you get to make it up. You get to make up your story. You tell yourself about yourself and about the world, about how your life's going to go.
I think Gary Tan was a top 10, maybe top 5 person we've ever talked to.
Yeah. Um, I, I, well, that's a good question because one of these in here, let me find it. Here we go. Jason from Detroit wants to know a similar thing. He says, fellas, I was looking at the numbers recently. You've hit 600+ episodes, 100+ guests. I have to ask you, who is on the Mount Rushmore for MFM? The number one thing you learned from them. And PS, I don't want to hear, I love them all. I can't pick favorites. I need you to Deion Sanders it. P.S. P.P.S. Did you know that Deion Sanders publicly ranks his kids? Check it out. And he linked us to an article where Deion Sanders is ranking his kids. Shiloh has moved up.
Dude, Deion Sanders Jr. is number 1. Yeah, as he should be. That's insane. Poor Deion Sanders, number 5.
What? Shador Sanders, who's the quarterback of his team, number 4 out of 5. Not doing so hot.
What a weirdo. Okay. Well, um, I guarantee Tan's up there, but that's like a recent one. So I try actually to stay away. I'll, I'll go, uh, let me tell you mine really quick, dude. They're all brown dudes. I just realized Dharmesh, Manish, and, um, Syed. Uh, I guess Syed's not, uh, uh, Indian, but two outta the three are Indian, which is, uh, pretty funny. Dharmesh is amazing to me. Dharmesh proves that you can be aggressive while still being calm and nice. Dharmesh is like shockingly aggressive towards life. Do you know that about Dharmesh?
Dharmesh is a billionaire, maybe a multibillionaire. I don't know. He started HubSpot, which is like a $30 billion company, and he's been on 2 to 3 times. I think he's coming on next week or in a few weeks. He's super aggressive about life, but he comes off like a really nice guy. And calm and easygoing. And like, he is calm and easygoing, but he's very aggressive about life. And I love that.
What do you mean aggressive about life? That's a, that's a, that's a word. That's a phrase. Tell me what that means.
So if you ask him about his background, he grew up poor in India and he was like, I wanted to be the best because I wanted to prove that I was capable of achieving. And I also didn't wanna have nothing, which is what I originally had. So he is like, I wanted to be great at ping pong. And so I studied ping pong and I was the best at the school I went to. Or he was like, someone told me that when I moved to America, that apparently what these people do is they go play golf in order to meet clients and take care of clients. And he's like, I'm a 23-year-old guy who moved here from India. I don't know, even know what golf is. But then I, someone else said, well, if you can't do that, just buy everyone's dinner as much as possible. And so he has paid for 100% of the dinners that he's ever gone out to for everyone. Did I tell you that story?
No, dude, I went— he paid.
Sure enough, I went out to dinner with him and it was me, Nick Gray, Neville, and Dharmesh. Dharmesh walks to the bathroom at the end. Nick Gray goes, watch this. He runs and he pays for it. Dharmesh sits down and Nick goes, my treat. Dharmesh stands up. He goes, this is unacceptable. I'm sorry. I can't. Well, hold on. I'll tell you in a minute. And he runs to the back of the kitchen. He makes him refund Nick Gray's credit card and he gives his credit card. And he comes back, he goes, let me tell you a story. You know, when I came here, uh, from India, I didn't know how to play golf. Someone told me to buy dinners. So I committed at that age of 22 to 100% of the time pay for everyone's dinner. And I have done this. Maybe he's 55 now. He has, he goes, I've done it for 25 plus years. And so by you paying for dinner, I will not allow you to break that, uh, break that thing. And I go, have you really done it? He goes, dude, I've done it so much that one time, uh, we went out to, I went out to eat with just like me and Brian of, of HubSpot. And like, apparently there was a company there at a company outing. Who saw us and bought our dinner as like a thank you because we use HubSpot, whatever. And so Dharmesh was like, I didn't have a lot, that much money. We were kind of new, but we paid their $15,000. He goes, dude, he goes, we paid their $15,000 dinner bill because I refused to have that streak broken. And so Dharmesh is very aggressive about life. He started, he wanted to teach his kid how to program. So they made an online video game that, you know, makes $1 million a year or something crazy. Like it's like hugely popular. He's very aggressive about life, but if you go and hang out with him, he's gentle, he's soft, he'll let you do all the talking. And so, uh, I would say Dharmesh is one of my biggest inspirations. What about yours?
Classic gentle giant. Um, hard to pick my, it's funny though, my Mount Rushmore of guests has really nothing to do with their episode. And it's just what impression they left on me or what I took away from them that it may not have even been a remarkable episode. Maybe they didn't tell the best stories or have the the best ideas right off the bat. So here's a couple of mine. Mine all fall into the bucket of people who are playing their own game. So I really admire probably more than anything else, somebody who takes the time to define how they want to play the game of life, what their rules are, what their goals are, what their code is that they live by, and then of course succeed in doing it. And the result is that they are both happy and successful. Because one without the other is sort of the ultimate failure. Ryan Holiday comes to mind. I don't even remember. I couldn't tell you one thing he said when he was on the podcast.
Dude, he runs cool shit.
Since then I followed Ryan. I was like, man, I really appreciate this dude. He seems, he was, I think the only thing I remember on the podcast, I told him, I go, you are one of the, I don't know if you call them like mentally well or something. I was like, you seem like one of the most well-balanced, like grounded people that's ever come on this podcast. You just seem like genuinely happy and content. And it just comes through in his vibe. For example, instead of getting money and being like, now, how do I— like the question we had earlier, how do I parlay this into a private equity thing and make more money off of it? He did the thing that he really wanted. He bought his own bookstore and made an awesome bookstore. And he's like, a bookstore is a terrible investment. But he bought a bookstore at the top. He built his office at the bottom. He's got a bookstore. Why? Because he absolutely loves books. He loves the vibe of a bookstore. So every day, he gets to bask in the glory, the vibe of his investment. Whereas I put something in the stock market, it's just a number on a screen somewhere. And there's these clips of every time he has somebody come on the podcast, they record upstairs and on the way out, he gives, he just starts handing them books. He's like, have you read this? They're like, no. He's like, oh my God, you got to read this. Here, let me earmark the page where you're going to love this book. Okay, this is their famous book, but actually this book is better. And he just leaves them. They walk out like it's a library. And they got like, you know, 6 books. And I just love Ryan Holiday's approach.
He did that with me and I think it was literally $1,000 of books, right? Like it was like a year's worth of reading. But he's the man.
I don't know him too well, but he's got his ranch, he's got his family, he's got, he spends his days doing what he loves, which is reading and writing and, you know, exploring ideas. He's tremendous. You know, everybody I know who's met him respects him and it just seems like he's living life on his own terms. He's not playing somebody else's game.
Do you know how many books he's written, by the way? How many books he's published?
I would guess like 7 or 8. 15. Yeah, he's prolific.
And he writes a daily email. I don't know how he's like this prolific.
He's the man. And my buddy Billy works for him, and you can get a good sense of how somebody is when you talk to somebody who works under them and has for years. And he's got, you know, nothing but good things to say. So anyways, Ryan Holiday's up there. Jesse Itzler was kind of like that. I really admire this dude's variety. So doing, uh, you know, from rapper to starting a jingle company and selling that to starting a private jet share company and selling that to Warren Buffett to creating a coconut water brand to creating now a pickles brand, creating a running brand. Um, but he just takes the things he loves. It's, he is, his business is him pushed out. He loves running. He creates the running club. He creates the Everest thing where you run up and down this mountain until you've ran as many miles as Everest. He just seems to have taken his passion instead of wearing his heart on his sleeve. He just like manifested it through the world of business. I think that's really cool. Creative dude seems like a lot of fun. And I like some of his other things, like having a misogi for the year or how he, his little 3 C's thing that I stole where he's like, yeah, every day I take 10 minutes and it's a compliment, a congratulations or a, what's it called when you like console consolation for somebody when they, when they've gone through something. Yeah. He just thinks of who in my life deserves one of those right now, who deserves some congratulations, a compliment, or being consoled. And he texts that out. It's a very easy way to build amazing relationships in life.
I'm doing his, um, 20, it's called 29029. It's the, uh, Everest. It's Everest. You doing it? I think, yeah, I, uh, I, I was invited to his partner. I became friends with and he was like, pick which one you want to go. And so I got Sarah signed up for it. And we have to pick the date. But yeah, it sounds awesome, dude. It's really popular, by the way. It's also really expensive and they're always sold out.
As it should be. The last one I had is Mike Posner on my little Mount Rushmore, which I don't think that episode's come out yet, but he said a couple of things that stood out to me, but the biggest one is just an operating philosophy for any creator. You know, his first song was a hit, whatever, 5x platinum. His second song was a little disappointing, only 3x platinum. His third song, only 1x platinum, felt like total failures. And every time he went to the studio trying to make a hit, he goes, I only succeeded in making something that I hated and nobody else loved. When I went in trying to make a hit that everybody would love, all I made was something that everybody else hated or something that I hated. And also because I hated it, everybody else hated it too. And he goes, now my philosophy is very simple. I just do what's cool to me. And every once in a while, the whole world agrees. And I just thought that is a wonderful banner cry for a creator, an artist, is to say, I just make what's cool to me. And sometimes the whole world agrees.
Yeah, he, um, that documentary he has where he walks across the country, that was, or it's like a music video actually. Is it a music video? It's like a 10-minute video. So good. He's very inspiring.
Yeah, go watch the music video for Move On.
Is that, is that the, it feels like a documentary, uh, because like there's so much talking in it, but, or, you know, a 10-minute one. That's pretty badass. All right, which one should we do?
Let's go to this one. Isaac from Maryland says, I just started training boxing. Thanks for the inspiration. And I took my first liver shot.
Wow.
Son of a gun. Uh, it feels like somebody hit the off button on my body and I thought about it later and I started thinking, what's the equivalent of a liver shot in business? We all know that a punch to the jaw is the thing that's supposed to knock you out, but sometimes it's the sneaky liver shot that gets you. I told my wife about this idea and she says, that sounds like something stupid that your friends on that stupid podcast would talk about. So let's have it, boys. What's the liver shot of business?
Tell me if you felt this before. You're having a problem in your company and you think, I have found this one person that's going to change everything. Everything's going to be better because I've hired this one person. I think in— have I ever had a situation? Okay, so maybe that could happen. I don't think I've ever had a situation where my expectations have been lived up to.
And wait, what did you just say? You've never had a situation where your expectations have been lived up to? When my—
no, when my expectation is that this person is going to be the silver bullet—
oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah—
they're never lived up to. And it's not their fault, they could be fantastic. But like, whenever I— I'll buy into someone so much and they'll do like one thing that like kind of is a bummer to me, and then I'm like, what else is there that you're gonna do?
And then like another thing happens. Homeopathic medicine. Yeah, it's not the cure-all.
You get— yeah, it's like I have to try. Uh, it's so— yeah, I have felt that so many times, and I've always made— I make that mistake consistently where I buy into someone, you know, like when you're, you're like in high school and you're like seen a girl, or like a girl you got a crush on so much, and like she finally gives you the, like, the chance, and you're like, every life is perfect, I have crossed the threshold.
And like, it never ends.
Yeah, or like her, like, her ring toe is like bigger than like her big toe, you know what I mean?
Like, uh, I hate that. I know it's out of their control, and I think like 30% of the population has that thing where one toe is longer than the other. But it's disgusting to me.
Have you seen Shallow Hal where like he, uh, it's like this ugly dude dates like a 10 out of 10 model, but her toe is like that. So he breaks up with her.
Only on this podcast will you get a Warren Buffett quote and a Shallow Hal quote at the same, within 5 minutes.
Do you know who makes an appearance in Shallow Hal?
Is, uh, Tony Robbins.
Tony Robbins. He's like the whole point in the movie. Like he convinces Jack Black to only see people's inner beauty. So now he only sees people. It's pretty funny. I love that movie. I think it's a great movie. Um, getting my gut punches, like being let down by people, which is frankly, I'm 100% to blame for that.
Right, right. Uh, mine is actually just having a health issue, either you or someone, you know, really close to you when you're running a startup. Because the day before, everything felt level 10 important. And this was the most important thing in the world. We're on a mission.
We're at war.
This is, this is everything. And then as soon as you have a health, a real health issue, there's that phrase, you know, a man has 1,000 problems until he has a health problem, then he only has one problem. And it's so true. Like the liver punch in business is when you have a real life scare and you're like, wow, I feel so stupid for having just spent like caring so much about these stupid KPIs and metrics and dialing the knobs and optimizing this funnel. It's like, dude, honestly, who gives a shit? So it is the one thing that really just shook me out of the delusion of like, Business felt like everything to me until that happened. That was my liver punch.
I always feel that way whenever I have a nurse treat me. Like, you know, like nurses, nurses, like, this is a real job, dude. They're like the tugboats of World War, you know, like tugboats, like, are like, have like helped us win World War II. Like the tugboats work their asses off to get these ships out there, but they're the unsung heroes, you know, no one like gave tugboats love.
What do tugboats do? I don't know this.
So, uh, during World War II, we were like building ships like crazy, or I'll give you a better analogy. Uh, 9/11, during 9/11, uh, you know what a tugboat is? Like a tugboat. Really?
Is it a tiny boat that pulls boats?
So when you, let's say you have a cruise ship, when a cruise ship comes into a relatively small place, like for example, when a cruise ship is going to dock in San Francisco, you need a tugboat to go out and get it and like drag it and place it perfectly. Where it goes, but they've been the unsung heroes for many occasions. So for example, during World War II, we were building ships like crazy and getting them out there. These fucking tugboats were working their asses off and they like, and like the tugboat operators were like performing miracles. Same with on 9/11. On 9/11, it was like the tugboats that were getting people off the island of Manhattan, uh, to like Brooklyn or whatever. And, uh, nurses are like tugboats. Like you forget about a nurse, like, or you think you kind of dismiss a nurse as like, you go to the hospital for the doctor. It's the doctor who's the most important. And then you, like, a nurse will come and like give you Advil or like give you a popsicle and like soothe you and you're like, you're, you're so much more important. A, you're more important than the doctor maybe. And B, you're more important than my fucking job. Like, it's, it's not even close.
100%. All right, let's do another one. You, you pick one off here.
If you could shadow anyone for a week to learn how they operate, who would it be and why?
All right. I would split it between either somebody who's hyperproductive, which might as well go for Elon because there's all these myths about Elon and I just want to see it for myself. I want to see what's the real deal. How's this guy running 4 companies and playing Diablo at night and got 11 kids and like, I want to actually follow this guy and see what's going on.
What's Diablo?
What is Diablo? It's a game, video game. He's like streaming on X at night, like the same night, you know, they catch the Starship, right? They catch the heaviest rocket ever with like these chopsticks. Then the same night he's playing Diablo for like 4 hours on stream and he's like doing like a high level raid. It's pretty wild in the same way that, do you know this? LeBron James recently screenshotted this thing out that he was a top 100 ranked Madden player or like he reached rank 100, which is like the top rank.
No way. And that's going to be one of the most played games in the world, right?
Yeah. It doesn't mean he's a top 100 player, but it means he, he still reached the top rank of the people who are playing competitively at that moment.
That's still impressive.
It doesn't matter. Or like, you know, we've told the story about Travis Kalanick being the number 2 or 3 Wii tennis player in the world. Luka Dončić, who's like one of the best basketball players in the world. He's a, he's a top 100 Overwatch player. I played a lot of Overwatch. This is insane. It's insane that this guy—
What's Overwatch? Is that a war game?
It's a first-person shooter, um, or I don't know what you'd call it. It's like a team first-person shooter or whatever.
And he's the best or one of?
He's a grandmaster player, top, and he reached top, I think it was top 500, which is the, they don't do top 100, they do top 500. And Luka was in the top 500. It's insane. Like, I can't believe it. And people are like, oh, well, these guys are, they're athletes. They have a lot of time to play video games, a lot of downtime when their bodies are still ridiculous. I don't give a shit, dude. I was playing Overwatch, you know. 3 hours a day for like, you know, 2 years. I couldn't even break, you know, bronze. This is incredible how he did that.
I didn't read it actually, but a bunch of people recommended it. What did it say? So he's the CEO of Palantir. What did it say?
Alex Karp is the CEO of Palantir. Palantir is like an almost $100 billion company and they're kind of controversial because they typically have a libertarian to Republican lean culture in Silicon Valley. That's like not common. And he's also like a freak. And so he's a freak because he grew up like in Germany, I believe. And he says ridiculous stuff. So he is like, I've got some, I think he said, I got a Jewish mom and a black dad. I can get away with anything. Like he says like silly things like that. Or he'll be like, the only time I'm not, he said this on like a quarterly earnings call. He's like, the only time I'm not thinking about Palantir is when I'm out cross-country skiing or having sex. Like he just like kind of like says like ridiculous stuff like that, but he's just like a weirdo. And, and, and I, I really like this. He, uh, was raised in Germany. He went to school as a philosophy major. Peter Thiel and him used to argue all the time and debate. Peter Thiel's, uh, right of center. Alex Karp is left of center. And so they had opposite politics. And he said in the article that they would argue like ravenous animals. And because of that, they fell in love with each other. And Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale came to Karp with this idea for Palantir. And he was the perfect person to, uh, lead and run the company. And so he just tells like 25 years of stories in the New York Times article because this is his moment. The company's 25 years old, but they are finally like the top dog, and he tells all these crazy stories, and he's just quirky and weird, and I love that.
The, the article starts, Alex Karp never learned to drive. His quote, I was too poor and then I was too rich. The picture is him wearing pink socks at his new New Hampshire home, just like sort of sitting in his—
Everything about him is weird. Everything you just said about that is like different and strange.
Keep going. I'm Jewish, racially ambiguous, dyslexic, so I can say anything. Yes. Um, okay. Wow.
He's just quirky, man. He's really funky.
So you want to follow this guy because you think he's a genius, or you just think this guy's a weirdo and you just want to see it up close?
All the above. And he's living in his own world. I have friends that, who report to him at Palantir and they love him. Like this is one of those stories where you said similarly to Ryan Holiday, where you talk to people who work for him, they all love him. They have jokes and they, I think they reference it in the article. They call him Papa Karp or Daddy Karp. Like they like revere him like this wise, like sage guy.
The only—
I would either do someone super productive like Elon or somebody super creative like the creators of South Park.
That documentary, uh, 6 Days to Air, is one of my favorite things to watch. How hard is that life?
I don't want to be either of them. Both of them play the game on absolute hard mode. But if you're good, you know, if I want to break my frame, I'm not going to hang out with people who have exactly kind of like what I feel comfortable with. It's I want to hang out with people who play the game at level 12 so I know what the hell level 12 is. And then I'll dial it back to 8 or 9, which is where I like to, I like to stay in that range. But I don't, you won't, you don't even know what an 8 or 9 is unless you've seen what the extreme is. I want to see the extreme of productivity in the extreme of creativity.
Yeah, man, that documentary is amazing. Basically, for those who haven't seen it, I think it's on YouTube for free. South Park, which has been around for 25 years. It's basically two guys, Matt and Trey. They come up with an entire 30-minute episode in 6 days. So from idea to it being live is 6 days, and they do that every single season, and they've done for 25 years.
Which is, which is unheard of. That, that timeline is unheard of. Most animated shows would be like, you know, sort of like a, it's like a year.
Family Guy is 9 months.
6 to 9 months, 12 months. That's like normal. 6 days just breaks your brain of how do you do that? And the way they do that is they're like, They're, you know, it's like Monday, we're pitching ideas and then we grab the idea. The animators start, start drawing. We go into the studio. We start doing the voices so that the animators have the dialogue. We're working out the jokes as we go. It's crazy.
They also do that, uh, with SNL.
By the way, I saw this interview with him recently. So, uh, you won't, I don't know if you will know this, but I lived in Denver and that's where they're from. And there's this restaurant that's famous there called Casa Bonita. Do you know about the Casa Bonita story? Dude.
They bought it and it's amazing.
Do you know what it is first?
Was it like, I know it's in this TV show. I watch it, the show all the time. It was a joke in the show where it was like Cartman wanted to go there and there's like, it's like, is it Mexican, I guess? And there's people jumping off like cliffs into pools and there's like all you can eat Mexican food.
Imagine you walk into the biggest Rainforest Cafe you've ever seen. So you walk in and it feels like you're in a cave or some kind of like treasure hunt sort of situation. But you're, it says part Rainforest Cafe on steroids, part school lunch, because you just grab a tray and you walk down this, it's like IKEA. You walk down this path and then there's like these lunch ladies just putting slop on your tray and the slop is the worst Mexican food you've ever had in your life. And then you get out till you finally exit the maze where you got your slop on your tray and you sit down and now you're at like this table. And there's this, it's this huge restaurant that has these like a giant indoor waterfall. And then there's a whole show that happens with cliff divers and they're diving into the water and there's like a, it's like a little play that's happening. So then you get Broadway. So you get Broadway, the Rainforest Cafe, and like the craziest prison lunch you've ever had.
It's like an experience.
It was dying. And I guess, you know, there, it's like a staple for anybody who lives in that area. It's like, it's like a thing. And you knew if it ever died, no, it would never come back. 'Cause the whole idea didn't even make sense in the first place. So they bought it for like, I think a couple million bucks. And the guy said, they go, he goes, so you've since had to invest in like kind of turning it around. I saw this. And he's like, yeah, we invest a lot of money. He goes, how much do you invest? He goes, we've put in about $40 million to rescue this restaurant, which is just insane. And they, along the way, they filmed it as they were trying to rescue this thing that turned into its own documentary. And so Just a crazy, crazy story.
Is the food better? The, the reviews on it are like still not good. I, I don't know.
I don't want to hear any bad things about it. I, I love those guys. I love Casa Bonita. I have a lot of memories from there as a kid. And I love that these guys tried to basically the same thing that the Fertittas did with the UFC, where they bought it for $2 million and then lost $40 million trying to like, like build the brand. They did that, but just with Casa Bonita instead, dude.
But Yeah, I don't know if the outcome's gonna be the same, but that's pretty wild. I mean, they're like epically rich, those guys.
They, they, rich guys and restaurants. Name a better combo.
Like, shit. All right, wanna do one more or is that it?
Let's do this fatherhood one. So Jeremy from Austin. Okay, that's maybe somebody you know. He says, I'm a soon-to-be dad. I've read all the books, I listen to podcasts, but I gotta hear from the boys. What advice was actually useful? Underlined. For when you became a dad? So we all get advice. What was actually useful?
Dude, mine's so much easier. Um, yours is going to be like insightful and philosophical. Here's mine. Mine was like so easy. So you—
it's—
it was called like the 5 S's, but it really could just be like 2. So when a baby's crying, 0 to 3 months, you swaddle them super tight. I was shocked at how tight you need to be. Yeah, you turn them tighter than you think you're supposed to be doing. Yeah, like you're putting this thing in a straitjacket, like, like Child Protective Services need to be called. Like, that's how like tight it feels like when you swaddle these kids and then you hold them on their side when they're crying and you lift them up in your ear and you shush them. But when you shush, it's super loud. Like I, when they taught me how to do it, I'm like, that's going to hurt the baby's ear. And they're like, no, this, I don't know. However it works. This is what they're used to hearing. You shush really loud in their ear and they quit crying after like 20 seconds. So it was like the swaddle sideways shush. That was very productive.
All right, that's good. I'll tell you what doesn't help first. So when we got pregnant for the first time, it was like, oh, better get some sleep now. That's not how sleep works and that doesn't do anything. Don't tell me that.
Well, you can't build it up with a bank.
If they wanted to say, what could you actually do before the kid comes, which is not much, it'd be like, hey, just take this 15-pound dumbbell and curl it. Just hold it in the curl. And then try to do the rest of your life. So now operate, you know, do your computer and like make food and do everything while curling this thing. Because that's actually the only prep that would have actually helped. I think the biggest prep is mental, uh, for at least for the dad. Here's what I think are the 3 phases of fatherhood. This is my bit. I'm working on it. I'm working on a bit here. All right. The 3 phases of fatherhood are: I want kids. That's phase 1. I want kids. Yeah, I want kids. Hell yeah. And then phase 2, which is when you're pregnant and the baby's coming, I want kids, right? Yeah, that's scary. Now that's phase 2. And then phase 3, which comes— you think it's supposed to come when the baby's born, but it will not for most people. It comes like 12 to 18 months later, is I can't live without kids. And then that's what— that's where you will get to. That's the third phase. It does come have faith. And so totally normal to have the initial, I want this, then the questioning and the doubt and the panic, the freakout, then the initial anticlimactic thing where the baby's an inanimate object and you're kind of useless as a dad. You're kind of just helping the mom. You don't feel too much. That was at least my experience. And you're kind of concerned. You're like, wait, do I not have a soul? Why don't I feel what I'm supposed to feel about this kid? And then at sort of 12 to 18 months, once they start to like smile and laugh or you know, crawl, like do things like that, then you're able to— then it turns around and you're like, I can't imagine life without kids.
I probably spoke to 30 guys before I had my kid and I was like, what should I expect? Uh, and I asked all of them a very like blunt question, but they all understood what it meant, which was, did you love her right away or did you love the baby right away? And of the probably 70% of them said no, I had love, But I wasn't in love. Cared about the well-being. Sure, I cared, but like, I wasn't in love until, let's say, 8 or 10 months, something like that. I personally was into it because I had animals. Like, it kind of replaced like a dog for me, if I'm being honest. Like, where like, I love dogs and I was— I like that. I like that type of shit. So I was into it, but I was preparing not to be into it right away.
Lowered expectations, the key to life.
I think most men aren't into their kids for, you know what I mean, when I say into, uh, in love for like 8 months.
I had a hilarious dinner with this guy and he was like, yeah, I am, you know, if I'm honest, it's hard. I, I can't— same, same description. I care, but I, I guess I wouldn't say I'm like totally like head over heels, like, you know, can't live without them type of thing.
It's like a roommate that you enjoy.
I was like, oh, totally, totally normal. Turns around, you know, 12, 18 months. They're like, yeah, they're 3. I was like, oh, you're broken, dude.
You know what also shocked me? Like, every— all of my friends, after they have kids, they all— most of them have said similar things, which is, I wish I started sooner. And that shocked me. I was always the opposite. I thought I always thought it was the opposite.
Yeah, I don't wish that. I'm like, I'm glad I got in all the stuff that you can only do when you're, you know, young, wild, and free. I'm glad I got that in because it's a one-way door. Once you do it, you can't, there is no, there's no breaks. There's no mulligans that, you know, at least for me. So, you know, it just seems like it's, I'm glad I took the time.
All right. That's this episode. We're going to call this mailbag. Mailbags are fun. Yeah. If you have questions again like this, go to mfmpod.com and we're going to add a contact button and you could ask questions there.
Yeah. We'll add a mailbag button, drop them in there, make them entertaining, make them fun. We like them.
All right. 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.