We found the weirdest ways to make $1M, $1B, and $5B
So today we're talking about a very specific topic that I never thought we would go there. Sam, did you ever think we'd go here?
Maybe by episode 2000, but I wasn't sure if it's going to happen this year.
Yeah, it's a little early. Today's episode is about the business of butts and guts. Cue the intro music. 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. So Sam, have you ever seen this story about how, uh, honestly, actually, it's not a, it's not an act of desperation to talk about this. It's actually, this is us flexing on everybody. It's like, dude, we can take anything and we can make it entertaining and about business. I don't know if you've ever seen Larry Bird one year, he was playing against the Atlanta Hawks and he decided in the second half he was just too good and he's decided to only shoot with his left hand.
Yeah, I saw that.
For the whole second half. That's this. This is our shoot only with our left hand to try to do a full great business episode on, with the constraint of everything's got to be related to butts and guts.
Dude, we actually, we, you know, we've done an episode on Rose Namajunas, the UFC fighter, when she was doing like her walkout, because we thought that was inspiring. We actually should have done a whole thing on Larry Bird trash talking. Doesn't relate to business, but just his ego. I love.
Also one of the greatest nicknames ever. Uh, and in fact, if I was white, I would try to steal this. You should try to steal this. The Hick from French Lick is one of the greatest nicknames I've ever heard.
It's the best. I love like stories where he walks into like the, uh, the all-star room and he's like, I'm just looking around to see who's gonna get second in the 3-point contest. All right, so we're gonna do Butts and Guts. That's a, that's a framework. Uh, that's, that's something.
Our YouTube team was like, hey, you guys, we've analyzed the data and you guys need to do themed episodes. You know, pick a topic, guys. Don't just show up and just shoot shit randomly. You gotta pick a topic. That gets more views. And so we were like, got it. And I think they meant like 3 ways to make $1 million before the age of 25, you know, like YouTube-y type of things. And we're like, guys, no worries, we got it. We're going to do a Butts and Guts episode. It's going to pop off. It's going to be great.
Do you have the first Butts and Guts story?
I have some Butts and Guts stories. Let me give you—
you go one and then I'll give you a good one.
Okay. I'm going to give you a quick one. This actually— my wife taught me about this. So a few years ago, Maybe 7, 8 years ago. It was before kids. My wife is like, I'm like, hey, what are we doing this Saturday? What do you want to do? You want to go for a hike? You want a farmer's market? What should we do? And she's like, I got to go into the city. I'm taking a class. And I was like, a class in the city? What do you mean? And she was like, kind of being evasive about it. She's like, no, no, I'll be back later. Don't worry about it. And her sister comes and picks her up. And I'm like, what's the class? And she's like, it's called the Twerk Out. And I go home and I Google and I see that there's this amazing business. I don't know if you remember when twerking kind of really came on the seen. It's like 10 years ago. There was a woman who basically made it her business. Her name was, I think, Lex Twerkout. And her name is Lexi. And this woman was touring the country, and she was making millions of dollars touring the country, teaching women in every city how to twerk. And so the class would be full. It was like sold out months in advance. And you would go, and there'd be hundreds of women. And she's like, all right, ladies, put that dump out. And then she's like, and twerk, let me see your— and she's like, get a baseline. The point was, I couldn't believe this. And I started Googling it. And actually there were several stories of women who jumped on the trend. It's like those businesses that started selling PPE during COVID When the twerk trend started, there's another story of this woman who was a kindergarten teacher who decided to take up, you know, twerk training as a, as a side hustle and ended up making millions of dollars. And it became a big issue. Because the parents were like, that's whatever, that's Miss Henderson. What is she doing? And I just thought it was amazing that you could make millions of dollars literally just teaching women how to twerk.
Where are they now?
So initially she was like, this is the next Zumba. And she did all these interviews being like, this is the next Zumba. Zumba was this kind of like Latin dancing thing that they translated into a fitness class. I'm doing that with twerking. And she started getting all these celebrities to come to her stuff. So Christina Milian was like a huge fan of it. And then there was like, you know, other famous people that I don't really fully know who they are. And she was approached by investors. It's like, let's blow this up. Let's take this concept nationwide. No, no, international. And then I think it kind of fizzled out. She's now like an aspiring musician. So she's like a female rapper now. So she's— she made her money during, during that phase when the getting was good. I don't think it— it didn't turn into like a nationwide franchise concept like they had hoped. But I don't know if she just got bored and moved on. Or it fizzled out and the numbers started dropping. But at the time, it was like you had to— these tickets were hard to come by. It was like the hottest ticket in town.
So did your wife learn how to twerk?
The funny thing is, already knew how to twerk. She was just going for a refresher course, you know what I mean? This is just a lifelong learner, a student of the game.
My friend Josh, he had like the most like precious Instagram story the other day. He was like, my, you know, 5-year-old wanted to learn how to play piano. We took him to these classes and he was getting a little nervous. So, because at the end of like the 6 or 12-month class, you had to do a recital. And I said, screw it, I'm going to do it too. So he went and learned how to play piano alongside his kid. And I see a video of his kid playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Stars at the recital. And then Josh goes up and sits down and plays like the same thing. And I think that that could be a good mother-daughter bond that your kids have, right? They could have a play. A legacy play. Yes.
Generational twerking. All right. So that's my first one. That was just appetizer, by the way. This is just like warm-up stretching for me here. All right. So that's just— I just kind of got my shoulder loose and gave you that one.
Go ahead. Okay. Fecal microbiota transplants. You ever heard of that word? You ever heard that term?
Those are 4 words I never heard together.
Yeah, well, it's 3. It's 3 words. But yeah, you haven't heard those 3 either. This— I came across this in 2 ways. The first way was I was listening to a podcast with Shane Smith. Shane Smith was the guy who founded Vice. And for a little while, about 10 years ago, he was like the big man on campus, big shot. And he told this story about how he had colitis or something like that, or Crohn's, some type of gut issue and he got surgery where they took another person's poop, like a healthy person's poop, and they put it into his gut. Have you ever heard of that? No. So it's called— that's what it's called. It's called fecal microbiota transplants. And there's a 90% effective rate.
It's poop or it's not even like the bacteria. It's actual poop goes in.
Well, I don't know where you draw the line. Like, I don't know. Like, is it like a minuscule amount or a tablespoon? I'm not sure. Like, you know, like How much do you have to, like, zoom in on the microscope before— between poop comes bacteria. But ultimately it's still like poop. You're putting fecal— your fecal matter you're putting into someone's gut. And I was talking to this woman recently and she was telling me that she was working on a startup and it sounded actually ridiculous that this was a thing, but it was kind of brilliant and it opened up my eyes. And she was working on this startup where they found a handful of people that have amazing microbiomes. And they were taking their poop and you can actually replicate it in like a Petri dish and sell it to people. And so you can get a surgery or get— I don't even know technically if it's a surgery. I don't know what— if that would be defined as a surgery, but you basically are taking someone's shit and you put it up in their colon and it changes their microbiome and it has like a 90% effective rate. And what she was telling me was that their premise is that they are thinking about working in a way where people work with fitness influencers. And so instead of like someone selling a workout plan or an ab plan, you can sell someone else's microbiome. And let me give you an example. So a few amazing ways that using someone else's poop and get one of these like fecal transplants is for depression, for Crohn's, for, uh, colitis, uh, and even anxiety. And some people even think like it can help with autism because people who have autism, something is funky going on with their microbiome, and you can actually like use this to improve those conditions. However, they were doing a study. Harvard did a study in 2019 and they have found that elite athletes, specifically endurance athletes, they, they have something special in their microbiome. So in their gut that allows them to have slightly better endurance, specifically meaning a, uh, like different lactate thresholds. So like. Without getting too nitty-gritty, like your lactic threshold is like how well you deal with lactate, which means how well when your muscles get like really tense and really, and you go through strenuous activity, how well your body can recycle that acid in order to help you keep going. Well, anyway, they have found that when they have, when they took certain endurance athletes' microbiome, basically their shit, and put it up into another human being, their endurance is better. Something like 15 or 20% longer., they can like, let's say, run for a marathon. And this woman's premise was that she can take, hypothetically, a Lance Armstrong and sell his microbiome. And I thought that was insane and incredibly fascinating. And I went and looked up a lot of the research. I think openbiome.org, it's a nonprofit that's like leading a lot of this stuff. This all seems incredibly legitimate, not today, but in the next 5 or 10 years. And I thought it was so weird and so awesome.
Would you ever do this?
Yeah, yeah, for sure, dude. I like— sure, for sure. Like when someone talks about PEDs, performance enhancing drugs, they talk about it like it's a bad thing. And I'm like, I, I want my performance enhanced. I would love that. Yeah, inject me with everything. I've tried so many things.
PEEs, baby. Performance enhancing poop. This is pretty wild. So do you know, like, roughly what stage is this at? Like, people are doing this.
People do. I think it's a wealthy person thing. I think it's like, like plastic surgery. Where it's like a, a, you have to have money to do it. You have to be like in a certain category to justify this. But no, like people for sure are getting this right now for Crohn's and colitis.
And okay, so, so hold on. So you said I would for sure do this and this is available. So does that mean your appointment's booked or what does that mean?
Well, soon. What it means is they are doing that. So there's like, for example, colitis, that's a colon illness.
You have to have a condition to do it.
You're saying, yeah, like that's like one of the reasons now to do it for like anxiety or to make me like run a faster 5K. I think that's a little bit more elective and like, you know, the money is not in that area at the moment. Gotcha. But like studies are showing that it's incredibly promising, so people are doing it, but it's not like a common thing.
That's interesting. Okay, let's move to, move to number 3. Before we do, you wanted to take a quick little walk through history here? The, the history of butts and yeah, it's pretty interesting. So back in the olden days, it was a highly attractive trait, not for the aesthetic part of it, but because it was like rooted in, oh, if somebody has a strong glute or strong pelvis area, they're going to be able to run, they're going to be able to hunt, they're going to have a very long and healthy life. And so people have studied this. They have a waist to hip ratio. You know, you know, this waist to hip ratio, 0.7 is the ideal.
I think Sir Mix-a-Lot rapped about that, didn't he?
Yeah.
Was it that? I think 0.7 was one of the lyrics.
Ancient philosopher Sir Mix-a-Lot also pontificated on this. And actually it was a thing more for men than for women. So the, the, the appeal of having a nice butt was more important for men because they were the ones who needed to go hunt and gather and all that. But then there's also this, uh, statue. I don't know if you've heard, uh, I don't know how you say it, but it's the Venus statue. It literally translates to Venus of the Beautiful Buttocks. Have you, have you seen this statue before?
Let's see.
Okay, so I'm zooming in on this statue's butt.
I mean, it's fine, but imagine back in the Roman days. This was, this was as good as it gets back then, right? Like, they didn't have like that Kardashian genetics yet and the surgical enhancement. So this was like, this was it. By the way, the comments on this are so funny on Reddit. Like, literally the top comment just said What am I on? Stonehub? It's so good.
So, dude, this is very like— this is mediocre. Not even in the same category of someone worthy of having a statue that lasts 2,000 years to obsess over.
But just think about the honor at the time to be immortalized in this way.
The average person that was— was— had a pancake ass. And if this was considered like art worthy, Right, right.
And then, and then there was this, this era. So this is not now the Victorian era, so you might think, oh, that was just a phase. No, no, it's all— it's just translated from one era to the next. So this little thing back here, this is called the bustle. And, uh, the bustle is basically this artificial enhancement to make, uh, to make it look like you have a big butt. And so this was kind of like this, uh, this sort of like Victorian age or whatever. So this, it sort of lasted then as well. And so this has been the thing for a very long time. And then there was a brief period in the '90s where actually flat butts and more slim women became the thing. The Kate Moss—
Yeah, like the Kate, the Kate Moss era. I'm not a fan of that era. Not my favorite era.
Well, luckily the world came to its senses. And then with J.Lo first, then Beyoncé. I, I, I was— I asked AI, I was like, hey, can you explain how this all shifted? And it was like, honestly, J.Lo. Um, J.Lo was a huge influence here. And you know, it led to now what's kind of like gone overboard, I would say. And there's a new business, and that business is related here. So, Sam, do you know the number one fastest growing plastic surgery that there is?
Uh, I would probably guess— I'm guessing, uh, it's the, uh, the, uh, poopy diaper Kim Kardashian, uh, what's it called, a Brazilian butt lift?
That's right, the Brazilian butt lift, the BBL. And so this is a cosmetic surgery You basically transfer fat. It's actually a double win. So you take fat from the belly and you inject it into the butt. And it is the fastest growing cosmetic procedure. It's growing. It's grown 800% in the last decade. So it is growing very fast. Do you want to see the guy's face who invented this, by the way? Yeah. Yeah. Can I interest you in looking at this dude's mug?
All right, here we go. Oh, man.
This is the guy.
It's a happy man.
This guy Ivo. So Ivo invented this, and he's actually kind of a legend in the medical profession. In fact, when the Olympics were in Brazil, uh, in, I think, 2016, he was one of the guys, like, who's holding the torch for, like, a period of it, right? Like, you know, they only select, like, 8 people to touch the torch. He was one of them. And so he, he was the inventor of the procedure. It didn't get as popular though until later when they sort of improved it because it was kind of dangerous. It was kind of painful and they've improved it since then. And now nearly $1 billion a year is spent on BBLs just in America. It is the fastest growing cosmetic surgery and there's a whole business around it actually. That's pretty interesting that people have popped up of recovery from your BBL surgery.
How, how much is it? I don't even know how much these things cost. How much does that cost?
That doesn't seem crazy at all, right? To get like a huge ass that you have for life. Like, I like—
you just called it a diaper butt, dude.
Well, but I'm just saying, if you want like your body to be altered forever, first of all, what are you going to look like when you're an elderly woman?
Yeah, I don't know. I don't think they've done a long-term study on this.
But no, I think that like I've, I've gotten tattoos that have cost like, you know, a quarter of that. So that seems like a steal.
That's funny. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's, uh, yeah, it makes sense. I think it seems like painful and dangerous. So there's like a pretty long recovery and actually there's like a whole business of recovery centers, recovery pillows. Like, check this out. So like there's this whole brand. So like this is like their pillow that you, cuz you need a, a special pillow to sleep on. So people have looked at it and said, all right, if there's $1 billion a year spent on the BBLs, every one of those people's gonna need recovery. And they started selling recovery products to them. And I've actually seen this trend happen now with like pretty much every big macro health trend, right? So like we talked about this with Ozempic, how when Ozempic— as Ozempic's trend rise started to rise, people created auxiliary products. So there's Shotzi, which is an app that helps you track your usage.
That story's wild, right?
That's like a multimillion-dollar subscription SaaS business. That's a— an app to help you manage your semaglutide injections. And there's, there's more too. So there's people who are selling drinks that are like Ozempic++. So it's like, oh, you're on Ozempic? Take this to manage the, like, manage your gut health while you're on, on this, or to, um, to actually accelerate the benefits of it. And so they're piggybacking on the trend and creating, you know, sort of like these like trend surfing products.
Have you tried it yet, by the way? Ozempic? No, that's a shocker, man. I still— I microdose it every once in a while. Just a little bump.
Biggest slam of the week right there. New segment, Slam of the Week.
No, I just— I meant because it's like pretty amazing. Like, it's amazing.
If you tell someone it's shocking you haven't tried Ozempic, you know what that means? You know what that means to a fat person?
I'm not alluding to that at all. I'm just saying that everyone—
I had the funniest Funniest thing. So I did this blood test and I got back this result and it was like, oh dude, like your TSH level is really high. Your thyroid level is high, really high. You got to like work on that.
Mine was high too.
And I was like, oh sweet, I got a thyroid issue. That explains it. I was like, it's not me. It's not my own lack of discipline and self-control. That's the problem.
It's the—
I got a thyroid thing. And I was with Ramon at the time and Ramon was like, Dude, every, everybody wants to have a thyroid issue. I was like, it's so true.
Uh, I, do you think you'll ever try Ozempic?
I don't think so. I don't think I would, mostly because I've heard such mixed things about it. Some people swear that it's like one of the greatest inventions of mankind. It has all these other benefits and it's like, you know, kind of a no-brainer. Uh, other people are like, it's gonna kill you and like sort of mess you up for life. I have no idea where the truth is in the middle. And if you have a way to solve the problem without it, seems like you should just do that, right? Like, you know, if you don't need to intervene, you shouldn't. And I'd like to prove to myself I could do it without it, is kind of where I landed.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm okay taking the shortcut, so yeah, sign me up.
Okay, I think this is a good transition for you to tell me about this research you did on On our next Butts and Guts business. All right, the big one, the big one you've been researching, the one, the one you've been, uh, been a big fan of for a while.
I have been a big fan of this one for a while. Okay, Sean, zoom in, zoom in on those guys for me. These guys are, are, are, are the man. That's who they are.
They look like your banker's banker, you know what I mean?
They do. Well, you know, these guys, uh, they got it going on. So the guy on the left is James Fu Bin Lu. Also known as just James Lu. James, I think he started Chegg, the textbook company where he got wealthy, and then he worked at Amazon and a couple other companies. But he's like an internet web 1.0 OG. So he made a lot of money being early on the internet and he just crushed it. And now he runs this thing called Longview Capital. The guy on the right is Raymond Zage. So he— Raymond, Ray— runs a hedge fund., and he's also a big shot. He lives in Singapore, so he must be incredibly wealthy because I'm sure he's there for some type of like tax reasons, but he's definitely a billionaire. So those two guys are responsible for one of the best turnarounds in a long time. So those two guys are the largest shareholders in an app called Grindr, uh, an app that is beloved by many and an app that I had to download for research purposes only, which I need to put that disclosure there because every single financial analyst who I saw I talk about this app, they put the exact same thing, and I found it hilarious that they put like a disclosure in there saying I only downloaded this for research purposes. But anyway, do you know your buddy James? What's James's last name? James Currier. So James Currier had a partner named Rick Marini.
Yeah.
And, and these two guys created, uh, a bunch of apps. They created, uh, Tickle, which like got huge. It was like one of the first viral apps of all time. And then they helped create Monster. Was that another one? Or no, Branched Out. You remember Branched Out?
Yeah, they created these like viral apps, right? They were kind of like the OG guys of going viral, actually. And that's actually where your old partner from the guy who founded Bebo, I believe he worked there. So it's like this whole like Silicon Valley, the original viral mafia. Yeah. So Rick Marini in 2019. So I hung out with Rick because he spoke at HustleCon. Rick Marini is just like a very corporate looking guy., and Rick Marini made this announcement that him and this other guy named Jeff, with the backing of Ray and James, bought this company called Grindr. And I had heard of Grindr, but it was one of those things when I'd heard about it, I was like, oh, I forgot that it was even a thing. And they bought this app for $600 million, I believe.
Was it public or was it private?
Do you know? It was private. And interestingly, it was owned by a Chinese company. So it was started by just like a guy, like a gay guy in LA. Who was like trying to solve his own need. He like wanted to meet dudes and created this app and it just grew organically, but it wasn't like that well-run. Very interestingly, a Chinese company bought it, a Chinese company who helped make Clash of Clans, and they were accused— the Chinese company was accused by the US government of blackmailing users. So for example, on Grindr, you can say they have like weird features where you can like be a closeted gay guy, so you can like not give away your full identity to other users, or you can even like say, I do or do not have HIV. And they were accused of blackmailing their users. So basically the US government accused this Chinese company of using the user's information nefariously, and they said, you've got to sell this thing. And that's where Rick, this guy named Jeff, and then James Lu and Ray stepped in and they bought this company for $600 million. And right away they basically fired everyone. So, uh, in one of their like proxy statements, they said they replaced something like 90% of the staff and they rebuilt this company., and I think when they bought Grindr at the time, it had like 2.5 stars on the App Store. And these guys stepped in with, uh, Rick Marini and Jeff being the, the guys, uh, at the helm, and they turned this thing around and they turned it around so much that if you Google Grindr stock, it has outperformed every other dating app. And so basically if you look at Bumble, Bumble has $1 billion in revenue. They're not worth nearly as much, I believe, as Grindr.
Right. So it's, it's worth $4.6 billion right now. And the stock is up 30% this year, 155% year to date, and over the last 5 years, 120%.
It's been a very steady increase, this app, like since their SPAC. They're actually one of the, the handful of SPAC kind of like, uh, good stories. You know, SPACs got popular when and what, 2021? And like, they all sucked. Uh, these guys have absolutely crushed it. And I was reading about their turnaround. And what they did. And it's pretty freaking amazing how they've, they've turned this business around to be as successful as it is now. And I thought it was interesting that like when it went public, this dude named James, who's a— I think he studied like literally rocket science from like University of Michigan. And then Ray Zage, who runs a hedge fund out of Singapore, is the first billionaire of the crew, the first guy who's involved to become a billionaire.
Does Rick still run it or no?
No, no, no, no. I think they're out. I think they like did a proper turnaround and they bounced. And like, it's pretty obvious like why it works. Like, you know, it's sort of like Grindr. Like, have you ever played Call of Duty or James Bond? And like, have you ever seen like on the top left, there's like a map with like red dots and you just run to that like dot for immediate action? That's like pretty much what Grindr is.
It's so true. So way back in the day, I think 2012, 2013, we were, uh, at, uh, when I was at Monkey Inferno, one of the apps we were trying to build was a dating app., and we had this idea. We were like, I think it was called like, I don't know, it was this horrible name. It was like Get Out There or something like that. It was basically like, uh, a dating app where instead of messaging people, you actually go on dates. That was the premise. Okay. This is before Tinder had come out and the iPhone. There weren't, there weren't any mobile dating apps really popular because again, like I said, even Tinder hadn't come out. There was a couple that were doing okay, but I'm downloading a bunch of them for research. And the most popular mobile dating app at the time was Grindr. So I download Grindr, say, okay, let's see the, you know, I'm here for the, I'm here for research again. I'm here for just find out what is the user experience. And dude, I don't know if anybody's ever seen this. It is a very stunning user experience. It's not like any other mobile app you ever downloaded. As soon as you load the feed, the feed is basically pictures of people's, you know, private parts. And there's no like a, there's not like a profile picture of their face. It's just that. And you're looking at that and then you. You, like you said, you click the map mode and it's like, oh, there's a dude over at Nordstrom's in the dressing room right now. It's like, you know, this thing says like green, he's, he's open, he's ready. And it's like, what? It's like 0.3 away, right? Everything was based on a distance away from you where there's a dude who's DTF right now. And I was like, this is the most aggressive thing I have ever seen in my life. I couldn't believe it. Uh, like no other app works this way.
You know this, you know, the GoldenEye thing is a perfect analogy.
It's the The only other thing that ever works that way.
It's like, uh, imagine the stereotype of like 20 construction workers like catcalling a girl as she walks by and like the woman being into it and catcalling back. Like, it's like immediately. Yeah. Like, uh, so they were talking about in their, like, in one of their reports, they were basically saying they're analyzing the onboarding time of Hinge and Tinder, and they said it was like 15 minutes and 22 minutes. And they're like, with our thing, with Grindr, once you sign up, within 120 seconds you can go meet someone. And so like they're optimizing for speed. So like it's really all— I mean, it's just a hookup app basically. Like I was reading like a funny article. Have you ever seen those articles where it was like it costs, you know, $1,800 a month to be a woman? You know, we got to get our hair done. We got to get nails. A guy did that. He was like, it costs $1,200 to be a gay dude in Manhattan. You got to like do this thing and then this thing. And then you need your $40 a month subscription to Grindr. Like it's like, become like a, uh, cost of doing business to be a gay guy and like to have this app. Like it's table stakes and they've completely dominated the niche.
I'm on Rick's LinkedIn right now. So he's a 4-time founder, 25 years of operating experience. The guy's a Harvard Business School graduate, blah, blah, blah. He built Tickle.com. They sold it for $100 million. And then it says he's the managing partner of Catapult Capital. It's a private equity firm that focuses on consumer tech. And then it says in May 2020, They partnered with those guys that you talked about and they bought Grindr for $600 million. He became the CEO. They rebuilt the team and every single system and process grew revenue and EBITDA by 80%, improved the app rating to 4.6 stars, blah, blah, blah. And after 2.5 years of hard work, it went public with a market cap of more than $2 billion. So in 2.5 years, they turned $600 million into $2.5 billion.
It's wild, right? And this is something that interests you, I know, and a lot of our guests, which is like buying companies. Like we talked— we've talked about that a bunch and I know it intrigues you. It definitely intrigues me too. And but for some reason you don't hear about this in Silicon Valley a lot.
Dude, we got to have Rick on. Rick is a— Rick is kind of a legend. We need to have him on the podcast.
Rick is a legend. He's real low-key. I've hung out with him only a handful of times. He's got—
he's got a lot of like style, you know what I mean?
Dude, he looks like Patrick Dempsey. He looks like Patrick Dempsey from Grey's Anatomy.
He's— I was about to say he looks like McDreamy. Is that the guy's name? Is that what his real name is?
Yes. Yes. He looks just like him. And like, I'm friends with him on— I'm friends with Rick on Facebook. And he just like recently posted a photo of him and Patrick meeting. And he said, finally we meet, because everyone says that to him.
He looks very much like him.
That's— he's cool. This guy's cool. And this— someone was joking and they're like, one of the reasons why this stock confuses a lot of people is because financial bankers and stock analysts, it's all straight dudes. Like, they aren't like— this isn't like— well, it's not— it's not something that they're like potentially using in their life on a daily basis. And so it's kind of like been a little bit under the radar.
It's 10 times bigger because there's a bunch of reasons. One being like gay guys earn like twice as much as, uh, uh, straight men, uh, straight men, dude.
And they have way less, and they're working with a population that's like 10% of America, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like they're— everything about this, it's sort of like bumblebees aren't supposed to fly.
Yeah, sort of an underdog story. I'm kind of inspired right now.
Yeah, man, they've killed it.
One of my greatest inspirations, Grindr stock.
It's wild, right? That's what I'm saying. You don't hear about these turnarounds at all with like a lot of Silicon Valley and internet companies, and they've nailed it.
Yeah, that's wild. Okay, I have one more. It's not really a good one to end on, but I'll do it anyways. Well, first of all, I'll do two quick ones. Dude wipes.
Oh my God.
Great idea.
Who? It's insane, right? You're gonna say, you're gonna say this.
I think I touched a nerve or something.
You need to say the stat. This is, so here's an example of, so one time we had this guy messaging Sean and I and he had a company called Hostage Tape. Yeah. And it was where you put tape on your mouth and you go to bed at night and it's supposed to make you like breathe better or sleep better, whatever. And I think Sean, I think you and I had said, you know, he messaged me a ton of times. We both said, you're an idiot, you're an idiot. And then he texted us like updates and it was like eventually scaled to like $20 million in revenue in like 2 years. And it was like the initial, the initial gut reaction we had was like, wow, this guy is so stupid. And then he like texts us, he's like, hit $1 million in revenue. And it was like, oh my God, people are so stupid. And then it hits $20 million in revenue and you and I go, we are so stupid. That is exactly how I have felt when I saw the Dude Wipes number, their revenue number. Can you say what it is?
Insane. Insane. Who would have thought?
And look at this. Actually, I got to show you this. This is hilarious. As you're saying this. So there's— I'm on an article and this is— this must have been made by the team itself, but it's literally a chart of their growth. So check this out. It says, Dude Wipes, now over 200 million. And there's a slide, it says 2020, 40 million. It says, there's a callout, when the experts said our growth was done. It might as well just said, when Sam Parr said, this is stupid.
No, I even, yeah, I mean, I would have said it was stupid the whole time.
Yeah. Pretty amazing, right? Back when we started the podcast, I don't know if they sent you, they sent me a giant package of Dude Wipes that has, it's now 2025. We started this podcast like in 2020 or 2019 or something like that. It's been like 5 or 6 years. I'm still living off those like a prepper, you know, rationing out Dude Wipes, dude. These things have lasted. They've sent so many.
It's lasted for so long. And so, so everyone knows it's just a, it's what you wipe with and it's wet. It's like, uh, like a, like a baby wipe, right?
Yeah. It's like a wet wipe. I don't actually know. I don't know. Maybe that's why they've lasted so long. I don't really use them. I actually use them only on my baby, but it's flushable, right? I think that's the key difference is that a normal A normal wet wipe is not flushable. You're not— you're not supposed to. It'll mess up your toilet. I think Dude Wipes, you can. And it's basically like an alternative to the bidet, right? Uh, you don't need a bidet if you use this, I think is the idea.
Ah man, this is a great story idea. We definitely should have focused on this one. I cannot believe how they grew so fast. Where did they— did they grow through retail or, uh, online?
I mean, I think these things become an everything story. I don't know their exact story, but I just know they did a lot of like guerrilla marketing. They're sort of like Manscaped in that they, they use the disadvantage of their brand being kind of seen as a joke as an advantage to be able to do sort of like shocking or, you know, like interesting marketing in order to like, you know, basically like bro marketing, right? It's like, how do you do bro marketing to grow? Like Liquid Death did this, Manscaped did this. And I think these guys are another one. Dollar Shave Club was another one that, that did this. So pretty impressive. So they're, they're impressive. Tushy, which is the actual bidet company. Is like also a 9-figure, you know, over $100 million a year business. It's basically like an attachment. You can, you can turn any toilet into sort of like the Japanese kind of like fancy toilets by attaching this thing. So TUSHY is one, but there's also another interesting one. This is less, less fun to talk about, but I guess like I found it pretty interesting. Can you go to gastromaryland.com? My buddy Diego, his wife used to work at this place and he was like, dude, these like It's like a clinic that's just for doing like colonoscopies and gut cleanses, colon cleanses, this sort of thing. And it's a kind of like a standalone practice that's just focused on colon health. And he's like, dude, they're booked up. Like, you know, they're booked out like, you know, months in advance. And he's like, I think that, and we were talking about, we're like, this is actually like a really good, like franchise concept. Cause everywhere you see locations of these, there's one in San Francisco, not, not the same brand. But I looked up one in San Francisco, also like very popular. And I just thought, oh wow, this is interesting. In the same way that these like med spas have become a big deal and med spas have become a big business, which is like these kind of like places you go for all these different aesthetic procedures. I think you're going to have the same thing. I think you're going to have basically gut spas. And I think more and more people are going to go here and they're going to look for help with their, all their, you know, GI issues and their digestion issues and their health.
That's wild. And are you— you're a year older than me. Have you gotten your first colonoscopy? Have you done any of that yet?
No. Am I supposed to? What age do you get that?
I don't know. I haven't done it yet either. I think we're 40, so we're a few years away. We have a few years. Not looking forward to it.
You want to do it together?
Should we book a date? Yeah, we can hold hands.
Do you guys allow doubles? There's like a couple's colonoscopy that we could do?
Like, put us out like kissing? Like all the— This is really fascinating.
I, I, there's another one that's in this. So I was like, oh, this is like interesting as a franchise or as a private equity play. Oh, of course, too late. They're, they're private equity guys are always on top of these trends. So if you look up this company, Exact Sciences, they do something called the Cologuard tests and they just crush it. And so they do colon cancer screening. They have like a non-invasive way to do the test. $2.76 billion in revenue last year. What? From this, uh, this private equity backed play.
Have you seen the guy on Instagram that just asks, like, he's like the most challenging person to talk to at a party. He's like, oh, that's nice. Are you guys PE-backed? I've worked at a PE firm.
No, but that's hilarious.
He just, everything is, are you PE-backed? Oh yeah, just because I'm a partner at a PE firm. Who owns you? Um, this is insane. So this is billions of dollars in sales. Yeah. Oh my God, this is wild.
I mean, just in this episode, we've basically talked about like $10 billion worth of guts and butts businesses, which just really shows like, you can— if you, if you can't figure out a way to make it, it's on you. The opportunity is literally everywhere. There's products like dude wipes and stuff that seems like jokes. There's things like BBL cushions for after BBL surgeries, right? Like where you just had to spot a growing trend and say, okay, what, what's the next product that they would need? Right? The Warren Buffett question. Then what? What happens after the BBL? You know, that, that was a question that you could have asked, you know, the Grindr turnaround, these guys who made this huge play. Isn't it like, doesn't it kind of blow your mind when you, when you realize like, oh man, there is like an infinite set of possibilities that I could go into if I wanted to, you know, build a successful business.
There's really no excuse. My in-laws live in this really nice building in New York City, and they're really successful. You know, they— my mother-in-law's a Haitian immigrant. My father-in-law is a high school dropout who started a moving company that boomed and killed it and allowed him to acquire this really fancy apartment. And I'm sitting in their lobby and I'm like, how many units are in this apartment? He's like, 200. And then I'm like, well, there's like 10,000 buildings like around here. Like, I don't know. So many, so many buildings. And I— it's just amazing. I'll be in the lobby and I'll just start having conversations with random people. And every person you're talking to, you're like, well, you must have had many millions of dollars to buy this apartment, meaning you're, you're, you're very successful. And you hear about what they're doing for work and there's just a million ways to make a living and there's so many of them. I remember thinking like, well, my in-laws, they're, they're one in a million, right? They're, they're the, they're the American dream, the success story. But everyone around me is one in a million. And it's just absolutely astounding to hear like all these stories of these people who just kill it in the most random ways that you never would have guessed it.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like those, you know, those like TikTok channels where it's like, hey man, I just want to ask you, what do you do for a living? As they get into like a nice car and it's like really, really shallow. But the general idea of actually what that person is doing is correct, which is you could basically go reverse engineer what people do. You can ask them. People are generally pretty open about what they do, you know, how they made it. Generally they had help along the way and they're willing to help somebody else who wants to be helped. And, you know, success leaves clues. You can actually go and start to see patterns or see opportunities and say, okay, you know, just like the way I saw that after the Ozempic trend, people built these like, you know, auxiliary side businesses. Now I see the same thing on the BBL side, right? Like then when the next procedure, the next health trend or, you know, health and wellness trend happens, you could do the same thing, right? You because you've seen it 2 or 3 times before. So you're ready to act when that moment arises. And that's kind of what I hope that, like, you know, if people listen to this podcast, just listen for the laughs, I'm flattered. But if they listen and sort of start to see the trends and start to see, like, you know, dots that they can actually go and do the things, like, you know, be that listener. There's probably only 1 out of 1,000 that actually— I mean, like, what do you think actually? How many— if 1,000 people listen to this podcast, how many do you think go from not having their first million to making their first million during their, like, 10-year listen to this podcast?
Well, we've had dozens or maybe even hundreds of people messaging us, say we inspired them to do X, Y, and Z. Sometimes I think a large percentage of them were already doing something amazing and they're just using that as an excuse to like, right. But I would say that I would say there's at least 50 people of the— I don't know how many people have listened, tens of millions, millions who I think there's got to be at least 100 people that have made $1 million from what they've learned from this podcast. What do you think? 50 to 100 at least?
I mean, that number is shockingly low, right? Let's just say on just the full episodes, I think we did somewhere between 25 million, roughly, roughly 25 million views and downloads last year, maybe 30 million. I don't know how many that— obviously there's a bunch of repeats. So let's just even take the low end. Let's just pretend for just math that it was just a million people. It was a million individual humans who listen. Take out the people who were already successful. Maybe that's the top 10% that were already very successful. So now you have 900,000 people left. Of those 900,000, how many do you think actually like end up making it, achieving what they wanted to achieve?
Okay, uh, out of 900,000, achieving, like, for example, being worth $50,000 and now they're worth $1 million?
Yeah, get to a couple million bucks, uh, life-changing money.
You go from nothing to $2 million in the course of 4 years. I think the threshold, uh, probably $200,000 or $300,000 maybe. What do you think? Is that too low?
Yeah, I think it's a little low. I would say it might be $1,000,000, but maybe, maybe a couple thousand, but you're right. A lot of them would have got there anyways. We're just, you know, a little bit of wind in their sails. We're not like the, we're not the tide, you know, that's actually like pulling them there. So I think it's higher, but I think it's because the type of person who would listen to this probably was already going to be, they're probably seeking knowledge and inspiration and trying to make shit happen. And so they were going to make it happen either way. So it's got to be high. I think it's actually probably a much higher number.
There's sometimes there's people who message me and they will like, I don't know if they're saying this just to like win favor, but they'll be like, uh, you guys inspired me to do this and that. And they have made more money than I have off this podcast. And I'm like, shit, I should have just done that. Uh, but there's been like 2 or 3 or 4 examples. Have you ever had one of those?
Yeah. Well, dude, the other day there's a, uh, a guy who listens to the podcast. He's probably worth, I don't know. 50 to $100 million. And I find out his new startup is an idea I said on the podcast not long ago. And I was like, dude, let me invest. And he's like, ah, I don't know. I was like, I gave you the idea. That's, that idea is my idea actually. I should be letting you run this company.
I know that there are, so for example, Mixergy, Andrew Warner, uh, buddy of mine, I attribute a lot of my success to, he used to interview people and I learned about newsletters via Mixergy and Andrew Warner. And a hand— and there was like 8 interviews that he did on that topic that I literally used to like plan the business model. And so I have done that with other people for sure. Of course, I did it with Mixergy and I, you know what I do it with now is Founders, David Senra's podcast Founders. I use that like a crazy amount for inspiration and also education. Who do you listen to now?
Actually, I don't listen to Founders regularly, like once in a while I'll put it on. I like what he does, but I don't play that game. James Curry had this great phrase. He goes, some people are, you know, you got to decide what game you're playing. And I forgot the couple of options he said, but one of them was like the, you know, the great life. It's like you're trying to build a great life for yourself. And the other is the global greatness game. And it's like, you're actually trying to compete at like a sort of global level to do things that impact the world. And he called it global greatness. And that's like what Elon and that's what the people on Founders played. Whereas I'm actually playing the great life game. It's like, how do I create a great life for myself and my family? Like that, that's the number one objective, not proving myself or, you know, like becoming this like extreme outlier of success, just objectively only in the career space.
So who do you listen to to fuel, help fuel that? Because even like, I've always wondered like, you know, there's a lot of people who look up to us and then I grew up and I still look up to like way more people who are way above us. And I've always wondered, I wonder what they listen to or where they get this motivation from. Because even like the biggest of big shots have some type of like rah-rah listen.
Yeah, so I think everybody does. It's a lot harder to find somebody in the great life bucket because usually part of the great life bucket is you're not going around and you're not as famous and you're not, because it's not that famous to be like, yeah, and he's a great dad. He actually like every day at 4 takes some time, goes to places, tennis.
I put Jesse Itzler in there though. Jesse Itzler does content.
That's exactly what I was going to say. So, but it's not from his content because his content really is more about like kind of how to make it in life.
But I can't hang out with him all the time. So, you know, I got to like—
but you don't have to hang out all the time. Like, so for example, me and Ben, we made a list. We said, who are the 5 people that we think we kind of really respect, we admire, we love to hang with them and we want to, we want our world to look a little bit like to be inspired by their world that they've created for themselves. Jesse was one of those guys. And I said, let's make an excuse to go hang out with him. So, hey, let's just wake up and do whatever you were going to do. Let's hang out. Let's talk. I want to meet your kids, like, you know, that sort of thing. And he did. And Jesse was like, cool. Yeah, anytime. And, and Ben did. And then he kind of like shared his impression of, and he was like, yeah. And we pick up a lot from that. You pick up a lot from going to someone's house.
So what did you pick up?
Ton of energy. So like a huge part of it is how much energy the guy has. And like, it's like, what do you want out of life? So it's not just the things you achieve. It's like the type of person you are and what it's like to be around you. Jesse is that person. Super high energy, laughs a ton, like very funny guy and always like, you know, doesn't take himself or life too seriously. He's got his hands in a lot of pots, but in an interesting way. So for example, he has this one business, uh, cause I have this tension all the time. I have more business ideas than I have time. So like, how does somebody like Jesse do this? And I really liked that his career was really varied. So he, You know, he had his jingle company. He was like a rapper for a while. Then he did Zico Coconut Water. Then he did his private jets startup. That was like his big intense one.
Was it linear? Like this, then that, then this? Or is it blended?
Love your pronunciation of that. Uh, it was like saying like finance.
Yeah.
Like Bob Linier. Okay. It was, it was linear. So yeah, he did them one at a time. Not, not all in parallel. And then over time now, like, you know, he's got more things in parallel. So he's got his calendar business, his speaking business. He's got his 20— what is it? 20-29 or something like that?
29-0-29.
Yeah. So that's like his kind of like his fun races where it's like people get to run or they get to do the equivalent of hiking Everest, but you don't have to go to Mount Everest to do it. You could do it in all these different cities all around the country. And so we looked at that. We were like, okay, so what is he actually doing there? You sort of reverse engineer. He's like, dude, I— he's like, I take the things that I already want to do for free, right? Like my passions. Like one of his passions is like out being outdoors, running, doing these races. He does that anyways for free, uses business savvy to wrap a really interesting brand around it. So instead of just being like, it's just another race, naming it the height of Everest and letting anybody have that sort of bucket list, the semi-bucket list item of hiking Everest, like that little branding thing, that positioning was genius. And with that, he had the way he started that business. I guess it was like his buddy who was like, oh, I really want to do a business with you. And he goes, all right, we'll do a business, but here's the rules. I'll help you with it. But the operations of this business, I want to work one day a year and I need to make $1 million. So that's the constraint. We're going to work backwards about business that has to, has to satisfy that constraint. And I don't know if literally it's one day a year and it's $1 million. I don't know if that's the literal definition for, for Jesse's involvement or his like level of, uh, how much he has to work on the business. But even just hearing how he approaches that changed the way I'm approaching some of my businesses. Because I have, I have also people who want to do things with me and I have a bunch of ideas that I, I used to think it's all or nothing. It's like, no, there's some other ways to do this. You know, like Zico, the coconut water brand, he was not the operator. There were other operators. He was just a certain type of energy and hustle that opened certain doors that changed the trajectory of that business. And so I have a business right now that's like that. I have operators that run it, and I just did a certain set of activities, these door-opening activities that changed the trajectory of that business. So I'm trying to learn from him how you have it all. How do you have the— he's got, you know, he's got 4 kids, I think, and he's he's very involved as a dad. He has his own fitness thing. He's got the good marriage. He's got the fun life. He does these adventures with his friends and he has the businesses and he does interesting investments. It's like, okay, I want to go hang out with him, download his blueprint. And I can't get that out of a YouTube video or a podcast right now the way that I can with him.
That was such a long answer and it was so good. I want to keep asking.
I'm sorry and you're welcome.
I asked you what podcasts you listen to. You could have said like, uh, you know, like How Stuff Works or like Serial.
But there is no podcast for that. In fact, I would hope that this is the podcast that's closest to that, right? Because it's the thing I'm trying to achieve. So if I'm just talking about stuff that's relevant to me along the way, that the great life, you know, uh, by your own definition, then this should be it. But like, I don't know, where would I go? Who has a podcast like that?
I, I don't know.
You know, like, I like— I don't, I don't watch a lot of Modern Wisdom, but I watch clips from Modern Wisdom, Chris Williamson's podcast. Chris Williamson's podcast. Because I think he pulls wisdom out of people. And I think wisdom is what's lacking, not knowledge for me. And so I'm trying to avoid knowledge-based things and look for wisdom on how to live a life well lived. And so actually, the real answer to your question is it's not podcasts. I read a lot of books now. And I really wasn't reading books at all, like, 2 years ago.
2 years ago, I distinctly remember us doing a podcast, and I asked you— you were telling me about this book that you read, and I asked you a question about it. You're like, Well, I don't know. I'm actually only 10 pages into it. You did a whole spiel on this podcast or on this book and how amazing it was.
And I was 10 pages in.
Correct. And you were 10.
It's a great book.
And so now you read books?
Now I read books.
That's great.
So put some respect on my name.
I'm a boat reader. What you tweet is what you're interested in. And I noticed that you have been saying you wanna spend time with dead people and dogs or something like that. And then you also tweeted,, you said, why do you, why do people like history? Like you couldn't, it was like something where you're like, you read something historical and you're like, wait, I kind of like this, but do I like this? Why do I like this? Like, what are we doing? And then someone like had a great answer that you put in your newsletter. You said, um, it's, uh, knowledge wrapped around a story or something like that. And, uh, it just, I was like, oh, finally Sean is clearly like, uh, starting to read historical stuff, right? Is that right?
Whatever you're doing, I tend to do about 7 years later. So, so I would probably be getting a fecal transplant or whatever in 7 years. I should just put that in now.
Wait, are you reading history now?
I'm reading anything that's interesting. So like right now, one of the books I'm reading is the Warren Buffett biography, but that's for a specific reason.
But which one, Snowball or the other one?
I'm reading Snowball right now. So it was good.
It's really long. It's 1,000 pages. In order to read 1,000 pages, you got to like really love The Person.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's good. That's like 3 months. That's cool. I'm happy you're reading now. I'm happy you like books.
You want me to tell you some other books I'm reading?
Yeah, I would love that.
I'll give you one more. That's good. Let's see. Have you ever read Seneca's letters? I think it's called like 50 Letters of a Roman Stoic. That, that's pretty good.
I like that. So you're reading Stoicism. That's pretty cool. So Meditations and Marcus Aurelius and all that stuff.
Just, just the book I mentioned. That's just the one right now. I read this book called Kill the Cat., and it's about how to write a screenplay. And I found that pretty fascinating of like how people write movies. Have you ever read Five Dysfunctions of a Team?
Yeah, by Patrick Léonard. Patrick L. Yeah.
I think that's kind of an underrated book. I read that book and I was like, dude, this book really describes an experience that I've had in like, you know, the corporate life and sort of management life.
And like, I think Charlie Munger, he stole this idea. Charlie Munger gave a famous speech that he stole from someone else, which is like, I don't know how to live a happy life necessarily, but I'm gonna tell you How to Live an Unhappy Life. Right. Step 1: Have envy. And like, he like explains like all these like attributes you should have to be unhappy and just avoid that. And that's what, uh, that book is cool. He tells a story about the 5 teams that, you know, every, uh, or 5 things that losing teams have. It's pretty good.
Yeah, exactly. Anyways, yeah, I'm reading books now.
That inspires me to reread that book. I don't remember the 5 dysfunctions.
Especially you're operating a company now. I think it's like very useful when you're operating a company because you'll be like, oh yeah, we're doing that. Oh yeah, I did that.
So what I do right now is whenever I read a book, I go and I download it and I convert it from Kindle to text. So a text file, and then I upload it to ChatGPT and I can reference it. And so I'll like, for example, with this Five Dysfunctions of a Team, I'll type out like an interaction I had with my company, or I will screenshot an email interaction that I've had and be like, what would Patrick say about this?
Can I show you something amazing? Yeah. So I told you that I was like, dude, I convinced Diego, who, my buddy Diego, who—
To live there.
We hired on my team. I convinced him to move out here and I didn't know what would come of it, but I just knew working in person could obviously be more fun. And I don't want to have like, I'm not trying to have like an office. Like I still work from home, but he like comes over and we don't have a big team. It's our team is very small. It's me, Diego, Ben, and my assistant. And so how do we actually like work? This is something amazing he started doing. So he just drops off. Like once a week, these binders. So it just says Scratch the Itch. And in this, he just pulls a bunch of like super interesting either blogs or articles that he knows that I'm going to like that maybe we even have a channel where we put stuff like, oh, I'm going to read this later, but he prints it out for me. He marks it up. And so I'm going through, it's basically like our own book club, but for blog posts. And so it'll be like, oh, it's, uh, you know, an annual letter from 1999 Bezos when the market crashed or 2000 when the market crashed. And then it'll be like, uh, here's like an actual, like a really interesting, uh, a very interestingly explained, uh, technical explainer, but not too technical about how like ChatGPT actually works. And so I have these, which are not books, but it's just amazing brain food to have.
2 years ago, I almost launched a business that would sell that. What I thought about doing was instead of doing a newsletter, like in your email, I thought about doing a physical newsletter and it was literally going to be a binder and things that I read and my notes on them and why they interested me. Interested me. And I think that tactile experience of doing what you're doing right now is wonderful.
It's a total game changer. Plus it's curated. I mean, this is lucky, right? Like he curates it, he marks them up for me, he organizes it, he delivers them to me. Like, you know, like this is, this is like my version of luxury. Like what's a Gucci bag to me? This is a Gucci bag. Uh, right? Like this is like, you know, right up my alley. Thank you so much.
I can't even believe he does that once a week.
Uh, he does it just like at random. There's not even like a schedule. It's like once, roughly once a week or every two weeks, he'll drop one of these off.
That's amazing. That's actually pretty cool. Hold it up. I actually like how he like makes it look— scratch the itch.
And what does he say at the bottom? Uh, then it says— this is a Charlie Munger quote. He says, go to bed smarter than when you woke up, at the bottom. And then, uh, that's amazing. It's amazing, right?
And the bright colors— he makes it look like an 8th grade, like an 8th grade like binder. That's awesome.
You want to see something else he's doing? Hold on one sec, show you this too. So you might see just like this box of little truffles. Little chocolate truffles here. So we call, like, uh, we were trying to just— we, we were trying to describe what we like to do. It's like, what, what do we— what do you really do? What are— what are you really good at? It's like, what's the common thread across all the shit you do? And one thing we, we were like, uh, somebody had this analogy of a truffle pig. They're like, you're like a truffle pig. You go and you just sniff out these little, like, these little, like, truffles, these, like, high-value, like, things. And so he delivered this. I thought it was chocolate, but actually it's this little thing You unwrap it and inside he's printed out like a, just like a golden nugget. Just like something.
Is Diego your coworker or does he run the daycare?
Cause dude, he's my arts and crafts.
Diego.
We're big into like, as the world goes AI, we're just super like tactile everything. It's like, no, no, no. We're going to do everything like very analog. We're either going to be extremely AI and digital or extremely analog. And ideally we take the things from. The digital, but we pull them out and make them analog. Like, if you could see on my wall right now, we have like things that are printed out that are like of this month's kind of like different things that we're learning and we're diving into. What are the biggest, you know, what are the biggest things we want to like not just read it, nod and say, oh yeah, like, okay, that's— gee, that's cool. And move on. In fact, could I just tell you this real quick? That's the number one takeaway I have so far from the Buffett biography is that when he was 8 or 9 years old, he read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. And he knew he was like socially pretty awkward, right? The guy's like buying stocks at age 7. He bought a farm when he was 14 years old. Like he wasn't a normal kid. And so he wanted to be better socially. He didn't know how. He reads this book and there's this line in the book which basically says, unlike most people who would read this book, nod along and say, gee, that makes sense, and then put the book away and then forget about it, like never do anything. Warren made it like his, like, religion to study this book. So he would read the book, he would go immediately try to apply the principles. He would regularly come back and reread the same sections again because it was like really important to him to actually like get the wisdom out of the book and not just the information.
He even taught a class on it.
Exactly. And I thought if there's one predictor of success, it would be that. And I think if there was one superpower to have over the batch of other smart people who are also listening to podcasts, also reading books, also on Twitter, etc., it's— I think most people do exactly what he said. Most people just read something, they nod, they say, yeah, that makes sense. And then they just move on with their life. They don't actually, like, internalize it or do anything with the thing that made sense. And, or if something's like kind of obviously true, they're like, yeah, I get that. I know that. Versus like, yeah, you know that, but do you do that? No, you don't. So you don't actually know it. And I find that that one trait about Buffett is so important. And that's like one thing I'm trying to do is I'm— whether I'm reading or learning anything is like, can I develop the skill of noticing the big idea and then not just moving past it. Like taking that big idea and being like, I'm going to work on this idea until it's like playing a piano piece. It's like until I could play this, you know, fluidly from memory, then I actually know the song.
And there's not a, they didn't act on everything, but they did a good job of finding, they had like a bank of stuff. They had like their Spank Bank for investing. And so basically like, There's a story about how Munger had a Barron's subscription and this guy who worked for Munger was like, yeah, he read this freaking newspaper every week for 15 years and he told me that he got an idea from it. He goes, this is the one idea I've ever gotten from Barron's. He goes, I've been reading this constantly looking for this one idea and I just found it. And it took me 15 years. So they did a really good job. Am I not supposed to call it— can we not say Ideas Bank Bank?
No, that was beautiful.
I loved it. I saw Ari roll her eyes. That's what it is, right? If I just said a bank of ideas, everyone's going to be thinking that.
Dude, did you watch the actual, the second Mohnish episode that I did? Because in it, he pulls out the Moody's Manual. He's like, when people say Buffett read this, this is the thing he was reading. He showed me, it's like size 4 font. It's, and he reads page by page. It's like not even a, it's not a book. It's not something you're supposed to read page by page. And he did. And he was showing, then he's like, oh, then he read the Japan Company Handbook. It's like the version of Moody's for Japan because he wanted to look for companies in Japan. And then the bet that he made was insane. So he reads that Japanese book and he notices, he's like, huh, so there's these exchanges in Japan, like the stock market exchanges, and they basically have a monopoly. Like nobody really builds new stock markets and you can't really get a new stock market off the ground. And he's like, there are these incredible businesses that are kind of undervalued. And then he went and he borrowed like $5 billion in Japanese yen and bought all of the exchanges. I bought like a chunk of all the exchanges at like a 0% interest rate. It's just like this unbelievable asymmetric upside trade that has just paid off in spades. And I feel like people don't even talk about that. Like if you talk about Buffett's bets, it's all just like GEICO, Coca-Cola, See's Candy. Like that Japanese trade is unbelievable.
Maybe I should read Snowball as well. I've read the shorter one.
I don't even think that's in Snowball because that was more recent.
But I should read— I should read Snowball and we could have like a book club, talk about it because he interests me. He doesn't even interest me always. Like, I don't want to trade stocks, but I just love his— I think that— I think he— I think that just how you describe Jesse, that's not quite how I would describe Warren because he was— his personal life was a little wacky. But there are so many like philosophical things that you can learn from him.
Totally.
Totally. By the way, last night I— or I was watching UFC on Saturday night at like on the East Coast, it's like freaking midnight. And I opened up my living room door to let like some air come in because it was kind of hot or whatever. I just wanted like fresh air to watch UFC, you know, as one does. And I, I was sitting there and I saw— I thought I saw a moth like flying around. I'm like, damn, get that moth out of here. And I kind of like swatted it. And then I saw it again. I didn't really pay attention. And then it took me about 45 minutes and I was like, oh my God, there's a bat flying over my head in my living room right now. And I jumped up and I flipped out because that's a weird phobia. Like bats just are one of the scariest things for me. And I run out of the room and I wake up my wife. I go, Sarah, that's a freaking bat in the room. I have no idea what to do. And I, I put like a hoodie on and like all these gloves and I run in there and I open up the door again to see if I can like get this bat to go outside. And the next day I had to go get a rabies shot. So last night I was in the ER getting a frickin rabies shot. Me, my wife and my little girl had to get it. And it's insane.
It didn't even touch you, right? Why did you have to get the rabies shot?
Rabies has a 100% fatal rate. So if you get rabies, you die. Okay.. And do you know how many rabies deaths there are in America a year?
No idea.
Um, I was gonna—
3.
3.
I was gonna try to lowball it with 100. 3.
There's, there's about as many shark attacks, uh, that end up killing, uh, that end up with you dying. There's like none. And every doctor I called, they're like, you have to go get this rabies shot. You have to go get this rabies shot. And I was doing the math and I was like, well, let's say that there's like, first of all, like the odds are that it bit you and you don't know about it is like super low, right? Like, like, so it had to have bit you and I had to not realize it.
And I'm like, okay, so you thought a moth was a bat and they're very different sizes. So, you know.
Yeah, but imagine sitting in your living room and seeing something in your peripheral. You're like, oh, I think a moth just flew in. And then I was like, oh my God, it's a rat with arms. It was just— it's freaky. And so I had to go get this stupid shot. And I was thinking of the odds and I was asking ChatGPT and they're like, there's probably like a 0.001% that you have rabies right now. But I had to go get the shot and it's incredibly painful and you have to go 4 times. So I've got to go back in the next 3 days. For the next 4, 4, like 4 years.
You had to get it 2, 4 times, dude.
It's ridiculous that my kid— no, she's got to get it twice. It's a very painful— and like, my kid wasn't even in the room. It's just ridiculous. And I just realized I gave in to so much fearmongering because like the, like 60,000 people a year or something like that die from driving cars, right? And I'm like, I'm not afraid to do that. But I— and there's 3 people die a year from rabies. And I went and got this freaking rabies shot and my arm is killing me. It was such a painful shot and it cost $25,000 if you don't have insurance. These shots are 25 grand. So it was, uh, what's that, $75,000 worth of shots that I had to get last night for freaking rabies. Is that ridiculous?
You know, I don't know if you ever see those like, uh, memes where it's like they have like a silhouette, like a ghost of a person's face. They like make it transparent. Like we just need RFK's face just shaking his head at you for, for what you just did.
But like, it's, it's such a, like, there's so many cognitive, like, uh, There's so many, like, biases or whatever, like flaws that I've made, like thinking flaws, like regarding whether I should go and get this or not. But just the idea of, like, me foaming at the mouth, because they say that when you— the thing about rabies is when you show symptoms, that means you're going to die.
It's too late.
It's too late.
Yeah. So maybe, maybe it was not a bad decision. Maybe, you know, you avoided potential ruin for a pain in the arm. That's okay.
Have you ever gotten that? No, no, no.
That's never happened to me. He said this super absurd scenario.
You're like, is that—
Happened to you? No, dude.
People get rabies shot all the time.
First of all, I'm not from like the 1910s. I don't like open up the doors to create like a breeze. I just turn the air conditioning on if I need, if I need a—
Here's the truth. I didn't want to tell my wife. I wanted to pee in the yard.
Dude, they need rabies to get away from you. You live with this feral man.
Frankly, I deserve this. Butts and guts. 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.