Big Fish In A Small Pond, LIV Golf, And Financial Freedom

Have you heard of this thing called LIV Golf? I think it's called LIV. I don't know how you pronounce it.

L-I-V-E. No, what's LIV Golf?

LIV Golf. Okay, so you know about the PGA Tour. It's like the main— it's like the NFL, right? No, golf. So, so LIV Golf is a competitor to the PGA that just emerged out of Saudi Arabia. Saudi-backed rival. And these guys are basically trying to— it's like they're trying to spin up a new league by brute force. They're investing hundreds of millions.

I appreciate—

I think they pledged— yeah, yeah, me too. Big, big swing.

So this is not—

this is the opposite of SPS, right? So this is, uh, BDE.

Yeah.

So, so basically they, they put the Saudi Public Investment Fund put in— they pledged $400 million to start the league. I think they've even committed more than that now.

I thought they offered Tiger Woods like $500 million or something crazy.

News came out, yeah, they offered him $800 million and he said no, which is like just kind of an insane thing. So, but they have signed other huge stars. So Phil Mickelson, uh, you know, Dustin Johnson, this guy, you know, Brooks Koepka or whatever, who, who recently won the, the— he won like 4 majors or whatever. Um, Cameron Smith, who's like this young star, he signed a $100 million deal. Dustin Johnson, $125 million deal. Phil Mickelson, $200 million deal. They offered Tiger and didn't get him yet.

All right. What's going on, dude? How are you? Fantastic. So I have something that I've been thinking about that I've been wanting to talk to you about. I started— have you ever seen that video of Adolf Hitler at the Berlin, at the German Olympics in 1936 when he's watching the Olympics and he's like rocking back and forth. Have you ever seen that, bro?

You can't be blond-haired, blue-eyed and coming on here starting off saying, have you ever seen my favorite video of Hitler?

No, no, no, no.

Have you ever seen the video up the charts, bro? We're trying to go up.

Have you ever seen that video of him? Like, so he's like, basically there's this video that I saw a couple of weeks ago where he's at the Olympics and he's rocking back and forth and he's very clearly on drugs, like some type of coke or something. Like he's on drugs. And I started getting curious about it and I started looking into this and someone in the comments said that there's this really good book called Blitz. So I bought it. It's right here. It's called Blitz. And basically it's a— it's called Blitz: Drugs in the Third Reich. So basically, after reading it, Hitler and a ton of the Nazis, as well as just a ton of Germany starting in the 1930s, like morphine, heroin, and meth was invented. And they used to think that it was like a miracle drug. Doctors were like, take this meth, it makes you feel great. It's like this— it's like a— it's like a— it's like a miracle drug. Like, you get euphoria, you want to stay up all the time, you'll eat less. It's this wonderful drug. And like, it was a legal drug that Bayer, you know, Bayer, the drug company now, they were like selling this shit and they would even put it in chocolates. And there was like a chocolate that you would eat that had a little meth in it. And it was like always satisfied or something like that. And like, it was so common. And turns out Hitler was a junkie. He was getting injected with meth for years. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, like when they were getting bombed the very last minute, he was like, oh no, we're doing great. Because he had like these, like, you know, he was like hallucinating, you know, he had like thoughts of grandeur, typical meth shit. And I started thinking about this. What other stuff in history was supposed to be one way and be happening like one time? But turns out it was for a totally other reason. And I started looking into it. So for example, Henry VIII, he was the kid. Have you, you know what Protestants are?

No. I've heard that word a thousand times.

I knew you wouldn't know.

Tell me what it is.

Dude, Protestant. No. So like there's like the Catholics and then there's the, uh, the Protestants. It's basically like if you're like an evangelical Christian, if you're a Baptist, if you're like all these other different types of Christian religions, you're probably a Protestant.

All right.

Maybe by definition you are. Anyway, someone came up with it, like Martin Luther came up with it. And, and in the 1500s, the King of England, he basically like had like 8 divorces because he couldn't have a kid. Like it was, it was him. He was infertile. And the Pope was like, hey, you can't have these divorces anymore. This is bullshit. And he's like, no, fuck that. Then we're going to switch to Protestant because that allows, like, you know, me to get a divorce and I can have all these kids. And so now, like, there's a billion Protestants in the world because he just turns out like wanted a divorce. And then like, there's this like, there's this like story that you ever know how Barcelona people say Barcelona really funny? Like Barcelona. Yeah. There's like this urban myth that the, uh, King of Spain had a lisp and someone's like, hey, you know, it's pronounced Barcelona. And he goes, no, from now on it's Barcelona because you know, that's just how I say it. That's just my first million.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, you know, Mike Tyson ruled the world world. Uh, and just thinking about like what other stuff did we think that was going to be like, you know, was for this like grand reason, but it was really just like, you know, like the guy's dad said something like, like George Bush invading, like, you know, looking for weapons of mass destruction because like his dad was like, you know, you're not strong like your brother. And like, or, you know, because he couldn't find the remote one time.

Now he's got this complex.

Or he had this like leftover like mission accomplished banner. He's like, well, we got to do something with it. You know, like what else, like what else in history has been done just for like totally the opposite reason?

I don't know, but I bet there's so much, like I think about this with food all the time when I see, oh, you know, uh, you know, people are like, oh, you know that the active ingredient in Advil or aspirin comes from this like oak tree and like blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, but how do we figure that out? Like who was just gnawing on trees and was like, you know, this one, I had a headache earlier and now I don't have it anymore. Right? All foods where it's like, oh, this one kills you. This one's good for you. It's like, uh, okay. But like, you know, who were the testers? Who was figuring this out along the way? I actually think that that was probably like, what's the most fun time to be alive was then when nothing, when no one knew anything about anything. Like you didn't know what was food and what was not food. Like how much just random soil has been eaten by somebody being like, this has to be food.. And then somebody else is like, you know, sees a chicken running by. He's like, no, I think under that feather, under those feathers, there's something there.

There, dude. There's all types of good stories like that. And I never research it. So like, have you heard about like the invention of LSD? No. The guy, uh, he, it was a European doctor.

He was trying to like, he was a doctor, right?

Yeah. He was just trying to make like a, I forget what it was, but some type of antibiotic, like just something normal. And he got a little bit of the shit in his skin. Like, he like touched it funny and he was like, oh my God, this is awesome. And then he like starts tinkering with it even more and he goes, all right, let's try this. And he gives himself a huge dose and he starts riding home on his bicycle. He's like, nothing's happening. Like, this didn't work. And then all of a sudden it hits him and he like has the biggest trip of his life. And then he like, you know, changes everything.

Yeah, I feel like penicillin— there's a whole bunch of drugs that were discovered by, by accident for sure. Um, yeah, it's, it's I mean, I don't know where you want to go with this topic, but I don't want to go anywhere.

I just thought it was interesting, this book. Like, I just been reading this book about drugs and like the Nazis, and I was like, it's crazy. Like, the book says that they at the time in the '30s and '40s when World War II was happening, that something like 60% of German doctors were addicted to morphine. And they are the ones like, you know, voting on what the laws were going to be around, you know, how these controlled substances are handled. It's, it's, it's crazy. It changed my perspective. I guess it didn't change my perspective, but you know what I mean? It's just like an interesting read.

Let me tell you an interesting story. Have you heard about this math teacher in Florida?

No.

No. These stories can go one of two ways.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Was he on Dog the Bounty Hunter? I'm not— I mean, this could go a bunch of different ways. Yeah. Is there a funny, like, viral video of him in a 7-Eleven?

No. So get this. So, so, um, so Brandon was telling me about this. This is kind of amazing. So there's this guy. Okay. So, you know, like, um, you know, those like kind of like school competitions, whether it's spelling bee or math competitions or whatever. So there's this math competition and there's this kind of strange thing going on where one small school, it's not a private school, has won like 15 out of the last 17 of these math competitions. And people were like, God, what is going on at like Buckholz High School? And the story is kind of amazing. So there's this guy, Will Fraser. He starts as a banker on Wall Street and he's doing like bond trading or something like that. And the guy's, you know, this is like in the '80s. He's like, you know, this is the heyday of where, you know, you've ever read those books like Liar's Poker and things like that. It's like the heyday of Wall Street. People making tons of money. He retires by 27. So he's made a bunch of money. He's like, dude, this is too stressful of a lifestyle.

How much did he make?

I don't want to do this anymore. I don't know exactly how much he made, but enough to retire at 27. So let's assume it's, you know, like I would say $10 million at least. Okay. That's my guess. So he buys a Ferrari. He drives down to Florida. He's like just dreaming of like a slower, calmer life. He's like, you know what? I'm just going to go to Florida, bought this Ferrari. I'm going to just play a bunch of golf, play a bunch of basketball, and I'm just going to hang out.

Do Ferrari shit. He does that. Yeah.

For a decade, he's, you know, that guy you see on like Tuesday at 1:00 PM, just like hanging out at the park. And you're just like, how do you know you don't have a job? Like, what's going on? He's that guy. And he does it for 10 years, no income, 10 years. He's just chilling and he plays a bunch of golf. And along the way he's sort of like, yeah, you know what? Like, I'm feeling a little aimless. Don't have a great purpose in my life at this point. So he's like, uh, he reaches out to a local high school and he's like, hey, um, Can I teach golf over there? They're like, ah, sure. He comes over, he teaches golf. He was like, I like teaching actually. Even on Wall Street, I actually, I liked teaching the young guys. So he's like, um, what else? Can I teach like a finance class? You know, I'm a former Wall Street guy, made it big, retired. Can I teach finance? They're like, no, we don't have finance, but, uh, you can become a math teacher if you want. And he's like, all right, I'll do it. And so he goes and he becomes a math teacher and he walks in on day one and he's like, listen, let me tell you this right now. I don't need this job. You guys, you guys give me any shit, this will be my last day. And they're like, okay, you know, respect. And so he gets one day, he's like checking his mailbox as a teacher and he sees this math competition coming up. He's like, oh, like, that's cool. Let's try this. So he enters into the math competition. They go there and they get smoked. They get 5th out of 6th place. So this is the second to last. And he's like, dude, I couldn't even solve some of these problems. Like, this was hard.. But like the flip, you know, the switch got flipped, the competitive switch in him gets flipped. And he's just like, actually, I liked that competition. I missed the competition of Wall Street where it was just like completely dog-eat-dog and you were like high intensity. And so he decides to do it again and again and again. And he, and he, he, he goes and they get 5th the next time and they get 3rd and so on and so forth. And he basically decides that we are going to dominate these competitions. That's exactly what's happened.

Dude, isn't that the best?

15 out of 17.

The 15 out of 17. Isn't that the best when someone just like sees like a small opportunity and they're like, no one takes this as seriously as we're going to take this. Let's do it. You know what I mean?

I love that. That's exactly why.

Just like that cheerleading movie that we watched, uh, on Netflix that it's like, they just like check it. Yeah. They take it to the highest degree.

That one I discovered.

Yeah. The one that you made popular.

what's that? Where'd you read this?

It's just like the— I think they— so it's been in just like the local Florida news for a while, and then I saw something. Brandon sent me an article.

Who's Brandon?

No, he sent this article from the Wall Street Journal or something. It was like paywall, so I only got the first paragraph. I'm too cheap to pay for it. But I was like, oh, what's the story? And then I found all these local Florida papers that had the rest. And so they said like during COVID they were like, oh, you got to teach remotely. And he's just like, oh, okay. Yeah, we're going to downgrade the intensity. He's like, hell no, I resign. And then he went to a church, rented out the church. It was like, hey, if you guys want to come and train here, we could do this. And 140 kids went and trained daily in his church during COVID when everybody else was low, had to lower their intensity. He ratcheted up.

How old is this guy now?

So now he's like in his 60s. And so he's been doing this now for like, you know, a number of years. So he was basically 27, he took 10 years off. So he's closer to 40, 10, 11 years off. And then basically from 40 to 60, he's just been dominating this one thing. Uh, isn't this incredible?

Dude, I, I want to get diagnosed with a bad case of SPS. I want small pond syndrome. And like, I, I, I am a huge believer in this, dude. When I— so I lived in Houston, uh, in high school and Houston, uh, I went to a big public school, 5,000 kids and kids from all over Houston. And basically Um, I, my life was basketball. I loved basketball. And I remember a game in 9th grade, um, the varsity coach, I was on the 9th grade team and I, you know, the, the goal would be to someday be on varsity and the varsity coach watching our game. And for some reason, I think I scored like, I had like 2 threes to start the game. And then all of a sudden the most athletic kid on their team decided like, nah, this guy's not gonna like see the hoop again. And he starts picking me up full court, basically, like, from the moment I can move, this guy's, like, in my shirt. And, um, you know, and I, I can't, I literally can't get by this guy. Like, I'm trying to go left, I'm trying to go right. I cannot get by this guy. And I don't know what to do. And I'm just basically, like, getting frazzled. So coach calls timeout. The, the coach calls timeout. The varsity coach walks into the huddle, and I think he's going to give me this, like, epic advice, maybe like that varsity advice. How am I supposed to get by this guy? And he just goes, You will never play varsity basketball.

Oh my God.

Thanks, Coach Hollingsworth. And he's just like, if you can't handle this guy, you will never— like, he's like, I thought you might be, and now I see no, as like some motivational thing.

Yeah, then he just gave you a wedgie and walked away.

Exactly.

Fucking nerd.

Yeah, exactly. Like, hey, I'd like to report a bully. Yeah, yeah. Is there a checkbox for faculty? But he was right. And in the Houston pond, I was nowhere near athletic enough to be whatever. Now, luckily, my parents— my dad gets a job in Beijing. We move to China in the 10th grade. I go to China. First day, I start playing basketball.

They ask for autographs.

The captain of a football team in rural Alabama with 100 students. Students. They live the life. Screw the big city. Live that life. You know what I'm saying?

And there was a part of me, a foggy part of my memory that remembered like, you ain't shit.

Do the main big splash.

It quickly got washed away. Yeah, it quickly got washed away.

And like, I forgot.

And I thought it became like, you're the shit. You're the shit. You're the shit. And that's what you want to do in life. This guy, this guy's doing it right. I actually have this dream too. I was like, I just kind of want to retire and coach high school basketball. Like, I think that would just be a lot of fun. And, um, and, and yeah, you know, this small pond thing, I think we're onto something.

I, I've thought about this for a long time. I thought about moving back to St. Louis for a minute, but my wife wasn't down. But I was like, dude, I could just be the man here. Uh, you know, I could buy a million dollar house and it would make the news. You know what I'm saying? Like a million dollars in San Francisco or New York is a studio. But I was like, it would be, it would be one of the biggest purchases of the quarter. I would make the news. It would be awesome., but then I realized I, you know, I don't wanna do that. Yeah.

I, I don't wanna do that, bro. What else you got? By the way, I, I have straight fire today if you want, uh, if you want more than that.

All right. I've got fire too, I think. Did you see what I have in there?

Uh, no, I don't even have the thing open.

Oh, well, fuck. Um, well, you could screw— give me one. Well, okay. So, I spoke to like a, a bunch of different companies this week and they gave me all their revenue, all their profit, and a few of 'em are interesting and I could just like bullet point and quickly go through a few of 'em. You wanna do that?

By the way, explain why does somebody, you know, why does somebody just give you all their revenue and give you all their profit as you say? Uh, cuz it sounds like A, unrealistic and B, like you sort of like tricked them, but that's not the case.

No, I said that. So what's actually going on? Okay. So, um, I've got this like, community that I'm running that I'm not going to talk about yet, but it's like a CEO community. And when they join, they tell me all types of interesting information so we can place them in the right group. And I messaged 8 of them and I said, hey, can I talk about you on the pod? And can you answer these questions? And am I allowed to reveal all of your information? Well, if I— am I allowed to reveal the information that you gave me? And they said, yeah, sure. So that's how I got it. So nothing like crazy. Um, which one you wanna do? All right, I got a couple of 'em actually.

Gimme the most interesting one first.

Let's do, uh, okay, well here's one that's actually not on, I don't even think I put it on here, but have you ever seen those pedal taverns in, um, like Nashville and Denver? It's like the bars that you like pedal with like a, is there, they're honestly pretty obnoxious, but you know what I'm talking about?

No. Pedal what?

What do you, I don't know. It's called a pedal tavern.

So basically, like, is it a bus?

Like a, you never see, I guess you don't like leave the suburbs of San Francisco. But in a lot of other cities— Denver, Austin, Nashville, like these, like, style cities— there's these things called pedal taverns. They kind of look like, um, imagine a bar in the middle and there's 8 people sitting on one side and 8 people sit on the other side. Now imagine that being on top of a 4-wheeled platform and you're pedaling that platform while you're drinking booze. You've never heard of that?

But you're outdoors, right?

You're outdoors on the street.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's like some party thing. Yeah.

So what are they doing differently? Because that's more revenue per subscriber than most, I think.

So, right? Yeah, it's pretty good. But basically he— they just said that, uh, um, with— in Canada, like, there's not that many— there's not as many publications and B2B advertisers, soft software companies. They don't have that many places to advertise. And so these guys have just done a really good job of getting the banks the telecommunication companies, um, B2B software companies, all these like high-end enterprise companies to advertise with them.

Gotcha. That's pretty good. Um, okay.

Uh, we'll do one more.

I wanna tell you about a company.

Oh, fine. You can go.

Okay. Okay. I wanna tell you about a company that you may have heard of. Have you heard of this thing called LivGolf? I think it's called Liv. I don't know how you pronounce it.

L-I-V or live. Wait, LIV? Yeah, just LIV. No, what's LIV Golf?

LIV Golf. Okay, so you know about the PGA Tour? It's like the, the main— it's like the NFL, right? No, golf. So, so LIV Golf is a competitor to the PGA that just emerged.

Oh, the Saudi Arabia fact.

Exactly. It's a Saudi-backed rival. And these guys are basically trying to— it's like they're trying to spin up a new league by brute force. They're investing hundreds of millions of dollars. I think they pledged— yeah, yeah, me too. Big, big swing. So this is not— this is the opposite of SPS, right? So this is, uh, BDE. Yeah. So, so basically they, they put the Saudi Public Investment Fund put in— they pledged $400 million to start the league. I think they've even committed more than that now.

I thought they offered Tiger Woods like $500 million or something crazy.

News came out. Yeah, they offered him $800 million and he said no, which is like just kind of an insane thing. So, but they have signed other huge stars. So Phil Mickelson, uh, you know, Dustin Johnson, this guy, you know, Brooks Koepka or whatever, who, who recently won the, the, he won like 4 majors or whatever. Um, Cameron Smith, who's like this young star, he signed $100 million deal. Dustin Johnson, $125 million deal. Phil Mickelson, $200 million deal. They offered Tiger and didn't get him yet.

But, and Phil can only be on— it can only be on LIV and not PGA.

Yeah, I'm looking at the revenue, 1.5, a little over 1.5.

And, you know, 85% of that is like their, their tournaments and the media rights and ads and all that stuff that comes from that. They have like a 9-year— they're in year 1 of a 9-year contract. And then Mr. Steal Your Girl comes in and is starting to just take these stars away and, uh, and basically is trying to, you know, compete with them. They also have like prize money as well. And so they need, you know, they would need to generate like a billion dollars as well to sort of like have like a similar economics.

But what's the play here? Do like Middle Easterns watch a lot of golf? Is that the shtick?

Is like this? No, I, I, I don't know if that's why. Like maybe, uh, like, you know, there's like that weird thing where like Russia really loves like women's basketball. I don't know if you know this. No. Like, if you're a great women's basketball player, you play college in the United States, then you try to make it to the WNBA, and the WNBA pays you basically nothing. Like, you know, you'll make like $70,000, $80,000.

Yeah, like a shoe salesman salary.

And then you'll get like $300,000, $400,000 for playing the offseason in Russia.

Yeah.

And everyone's like, why does Russia care this much about women's basketball? Like, nobody asks questions. And like, yeah, it's a little bit whatever. I don't know exactly what's going on there, but, but that's like, you know, they disproportionately like that sport. And so maybe there is something in Saudi Arabia for this, or it's just they have a huge amount of money and they see the business opportunity where PGA basically had a monopoly on this. And if you can create a successful sports league, these are worth billions and billions of dollars. Like, we both love the UFC. UFC sold for, I think, $4.2 billion, which in my opinion is under— now, like, very low, undervalued for where it is. And that's like The UFC is like fringe compared to NBA, NFL, like these major, major, major leagues.

What's more popular? And so golf or P— or, or UFC? Golf, right?

I think golf is not more popular, but it generates more revenue.

What's more lame?

Because it's like sort of the wealthy one. Who beats up who? A golfer with their club or a UFC fighter with his hands?

Dude, I fucking hate golf. I hate golf. I cannot stand golf. Golf's not a sport. Golf's an activity.

Answer this honestly. How much of your thinking at the end of the day boils down to who could beat up who? Most.

Most.

I think that—

I think because that's like, that's like something that we're all like, uh, like we're all afraid of. Like the guy who at the end of the day is like Oh, I can kill anyone in this room with my bare hands. He is, uh, you know, he's the true, the true dog. You know, he has nothing to fear.

Somebody said this once, I was reading like an NFL scouting report. It's like there was a draft, there's 4 quarterbacks, they're all like top prospects. It's like, who's going to go number 1? Who's number 2? And the guy who does like the draft, he said this line that I thought was so badass. He goes, If they were all on vacation and going for a road, you know, they, they were walking out to go to the car, they would all throw the keys to Mark. Like they would chuck the keys to Mark. Mark's driving. And there it was like this like alpha male thing. And I was just like, what was this analogy? And why did I love it so much? Like if you just said this, if it was like, hey, Elon, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates go out to dinner.

Um, who's paying?

Who's picking up the check? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

'Who ordered the Uber?' Yeah. 'Cause none of these guys are driving.' Do you, uh, when you're in a room, like at a restaurant—

Who sits aisle?

How— what percentage of the time when you're at a restaurant do you look around and be like, 'Whose ass can I kick and whose can I not?' Zero.

Really? But I know that you do, which is why I asked you this question, 'cause it's hilarious. You don't think about that? Zero. 0% of the time.

Dude, I cannot stand golf. Any sport that you wear khaki pants— to, to like play. It's not a sport. That's not a sport. It's an activity. It's a hobby.

It's checkers, but it's not, you know, like it's barely a job if you have to wear khakis. Barely a job.

Like a sport is—

sport is out of the question.

Khakis and a collared shirt. That is not— that's— I mean, that's not a sport. Like you, you don't sweat. It's an activity. It's a hobby. Uh, this is amazing though. I, I, I don't— Like, let's get rid of the Saudi Arabia thing. I think it's pretty cool. But if you're Phil Mickelson and you have fuck you money hardcore and Saudi Arabia, who has, you know, a lot of human rights issues, offers you this, what do you do? Do you take it or not? So you double your net worth. I think you're him.

So there's a fact, there's a price that you would take for sure.

Oh, of course. Of course. If you know, if somebody said, hey, you got to go do this podcast on, on Android. And I'd be like, Android, even is there a podcast player on Google? And they'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, we were putting a lot of investment into it. I'd be like, All right, all right, I'll do that. I'll take this podcast to SoundCloud. I'll take it to the Google Play Store, but I'm gonna need to see $7.5 million. That's what I would say about this podcast. I would move this podcast for $7.5 million. That is my price.

There's a price to pay to be a whore. I'm down.

How much, how much do, do some of these guys make just on Twitch?

So shortly after that, the contracts exploded. But like at that time, the top guys were making like single digit millions, uh, per year off Twitch. So like, let's call it between $1 and $5 million. Plus there's some endorsements you don't really know how to track and they sell some amount of t-shirts. It's hard to know. And then it sort of exploded. Guys started signing $10, $20 million deals, but they're multi-year deals, 3-year deals or something like that. So they're making $6 million guaranteed or something like that, $5 million guaranteed, $10 million guaranteed. So that was what our estimates were for the very, very top guys. We thought, okay, So how much would we need? It's like we basically did the math and we're like, okay, I think you need— I don't remember what the number was today, but let's call it— let's just pretend it was $150 million. We need $150 million to go through with it.

But it's like, if I told you you could go raise $150 million, and you're saying you needed $150 million in order to pay the streamers and tell them, bail on Twitch, come to our platform, and when you come to our platform, you're going to bring your audience and we're going to make all this money eventually. Through other people coming.

You get this much guaranteed. All you have to do is just continue to stream and you have to promote it in this way and let us promote you.

Can I make a prediction?

We're gonna need $5 million to build this platform.

My prediction is that would never work. I don't think that works.

Okay, so tell me why. I'll tell you how it— obviously it didn't happen, so, you know, you're partly right.

I think it could—

tell me why you think.

Well, I know that you didn't really try to do this, but, uh, or I don't know in earnest. I don't know if you— you didn't raise $150 million. I think Maybe the PGA Tour could work, maybe. But doing this for consumers, you need to have like a brand and you need to have some magic about it. It's kind of like, you know, even if you put all of like the resources into creating a boy band, like sometimes that shit just don't work. Even though like everything, like everything on paper, it's like, well, we got the blond-haired kid, we got the mixed-race kid, we got the, the dancer, we got the singer, like on paper this checks out, you know, like this should work, you know what I mean? We should be popular in Korea by this point. And it's just there's, there's just no magic, right? It just happens. And then like you have some like, you know, kid who just like sings a funny song and makes a joke about like wearing a cowboy hat and he gets hugely famous like Lil Nas X or something. It just happens. And I think that there's like a bit of magic that probably would be missing out when you're— because with consumers it's quite challenging to like grab their attention. It's like getting a a cat to play with something. It just, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Right. So, so, so I do think that, that, that's part of it. But there have been instances where people have thrown money at the problem and it actually worked, right? For every Quibi where you just raise a bunch of money, you go try to do the thing, it doesn't work. For every one of the, or every 10 of those, there's one where you're like, no, actually they did kind of just brute force their way in. I don't know if you remember this, but when TikTok first launched, TikTok was lame as hell, dude. TikTok was lame as hell. It was pigeonholed as like the lame version of Musical.ly, which was a pretty lame thing. It was like 12-year-olds lip-syncing videos. And now TikTok is huge. And one thing that happened in between, I remember meeting a guy and he was like, yeah, you know, TikTok is going to spend a billion dollars marketing the app. Because I was like, dude, there's billboards in San Francisco, like at bus stops to download TikTok.. I was like, do they really think this is gonna work? And we had an intern, uh, not an intern, really like a kind of just like a junior guy working for us. He was in 9th grade and he worked at our company. And I was like, he, he started mentioning TikTok and I was like, is TikTok actually a thing? He's like, yeah, you know, we just kept hearing about it, kept hearing about it, kept hearing about it. And then they started just paying all of the top YouTubers and Vine people to just make TikToks. And like, it works, you know, eventually it just worked. Like, it just like, we all think it's lame, but like we all kind of started to use it. And then sure enough, the lame thing fell away too by the end of it. And it became a pretty mainstream thing. TikTok really did brute force their way down. They did a bunch of other things, right? Good product, great algorithm. They did a bunch of other things. I'm not saying they didn't do that, but it's not like they started with this brand love and authenticity and loyalty and things like that. So let me tell you how this Twitch thing played out. So I had a hunch that you might be right. So I approached Discord and I said, hey, Discord, do you want to buy us? And they're like, uh, Maybe. Who are you? And like, what do you want to do? What do you do? And I was like, oh, we do this thing today, but here's what we would do with Discord. We would help you compete with Twitch. You have brand love. Like Discord is one of the most loved brands in gaming. It's like you have the brand, you have brand love, but you don't do this today. We will build the platform and like we can use this strategy to do this. And they were like, well, okay, this is kind of like a crazy big pivot idea. Like respect the audacity.

Who did you email? What role?

I don't know. CEO.

And you said, hey CEO, I'm Sean, this is what I do. Can I come to your office and pitch you? And then you went to the office and told him that, or you told him this all?

Exactly.

Exactly. Why did he take your meeting?

And he, at the end of it, at the end of it, his, his take was basically like, we will acquire you if you want. Uh, I don't know if we'll pay the most. So, you know, that's, that's, I don't know if the deal will happen. Um, and I don't know if we would do this, but the fact that you can come in here and whiteboard this on a wall makes me want you to like come here and do things. And like, that was his like takeaway.

That's the biggest bullshit artist thing I've ever heard of. And you almost pulled it off. What was the guy like?

He's amazing.

He's a young guy, right? He's like a young nerdy dude.

Jason Citron. Yeah. I was like, I had never met Zuck, but I was like, the way he talked about their product, their strategy and like his like calm, like confidence, he's like quiet, nerdy confidence. I was like, oh, I don't want to compete with this guy. And I see why they've kicked everyone's ass. Like this is, I was like, this guy's really smart and just really has a point of view about the way this needs to go. And it's just simple, it's understandable, it's different.

Why do you think he took your meeting?

That is so funny.

That's nuts. Or if I'm genius or I'm nuts and you can decide for yourself.

But he respected it.

I don't know what I said. Yeah, he was just like, you know, would you like to come, like, be one of the, like, C-suite type people? Because I don't think we're going to do that plan that you outlined. But I like you. You know, it's like, you know, there's not— I don't know. We didn't get that, dude.

This is how—

which you can be a leader.

Everyone needs the confidence of a Sean Perry. This is a great story. This is proof that you can just create shit out of thin air. Value. Yeah, you can create value out of thin air.

Yeah, I always say this, at my last startup, the best thing I did ultimately in that company was I did right by the team and the shareholders of at the end, I put my best foot forward to try to get us the most value we could. That was of all the things I did, that was the best one. And I tried to do many other things well, tried to find product-market fit, tried to scale, tried to hire a great team. And I did some of those okay, some of those poorly. The one thing I did great was this, this process. Let me, let me finish the story here. So then, so I'm like, okay, these guys don't wanna do it, but maybe we could still do it. And so we start trying to set up a meeting and I, I realized pretty quickly, oh, you have to do this as one. You have to do this as like a coup cuz it's kind of like a rebellion. And the, I was like, we need to do two things. We need to wait till people are pissed off about something that Twitch does, which big companies will shoot themselves in the foot. They'll come out with policies, they'll, They'll make some statement, they'll change some feature, they'll change the revenue split, and people will get annoyed. I was like, so we need to capitalize on that. And then secondly, we need to get everybody all at once. You know that movie that's out that people like, Every— Everything Everywhere All at Once? That's how I was like, that's how we need to do this. We can't just get— we can't just slowly negotiate one by one. It won't feel like there's enough momentum. And so I was like, we need to do this at Twitch's big conference where all the streamers will go to, all the big streamers go, cuz most big streamers, they don't leave their house. They're like, they're like me, but they actually have like, you know, they're actually, you know, rich and famous from their streaming, but they can't leave their room. That's like their job. And so they, they go on vacation very little. They take very few days off. The one thing they do is they often go to TwitchCon cuz they can meet their fans and it's the big event. So I was like, we need to do like a dinner the day before, the day of, or the day after the conference, probably the, probably the day before. And I was like, you know, this might be the worst time cuz they're gonna be up in, you know, the Twitch kind of like ecosystem. But it's the only time we can get them all in the same room. I was like, and we'll lay out our case, which is basically, look, you guys are gonna make stupid money if you all are in. There's no risk to any of you individually because you're, if you're all there, this will actually work. And see, like, you don't have to play by Twitch's rules anymore. Like, you have, you know, say in this thing. I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.

HubSpot.

Grow better. Dude, there's this like, there's this like famous meeting that happened in Atlantic City in like 1930s. And that's when they— it was all the mafia guys that got together and like Al Capone and all these guys. And that's when they like formed like the syndicate or whatever, you know, like the mob and like, you know, it's us versus everyone. That's basically what you did. You had like your little mob meeting. And that sounds awesome.

I didn't do it. I wanted to do this. I didn't even get there. Why? Because there was one thing that happened. And when we ended up getting acquired by Twitch, uh, Emmett was like, hey, let's grab a drink. We'll celebrate. So we go to the first time I met him, like, outside the office. And we go to this bar and, you know, we're talking about stuff. And I was just like, you know, uh, I was like, what do you think? How would somebody beat Twitch? He's like, hmm. He's like, thinking. He's like, it's pretty hard. We do have like a pretty good business and it's hard to compete against these marketplaces once they get big.

Did he know about your meeting?

Tiny-ass detail.

How about the fact that they probably hired some like MIT, like rocket scientists And he's like thinking for years, like, I'm going to, I'm going to help get man to Mars, you know, I'm going to help. I'm going to be part of saving the world, the human race. I'm just a little small part of this, but I'm helping. And he gets his job offer from SpaceX and it's $135,000. And then he gets this job offer from Twitch and it's like $140,000. And he's like, yeah, they got free lunch though. Like, you know, like it's, it's like the office is down the street from my house. You know, I can do this. This space thing will always be here. You know, like, their office is beautiful. Yeah. And then they take that Twitch office and then they spend the next 8 years of their lives and the only point is figuring out how to make it so a streamer can click a button and like a cat pops up on their shoulder like, like an emoji, you know what I mean? Or it's like, how do I just make it so like on Monday Night Football, the first year, the downline, the yellow line moves perfectly with like the How do I do that? You know, space will always be there though, but like, how do I get this?

Like, right, right, right. Yeah.

Just imagine someone like dedicating their lives to that. That, that sounds horrible to me.

That is, um, not far from the truth. And in fact, some people try to use that to their advantage. Um, like, you know, Steve Jobs did that thing where you're recruiting John Sculley or whatever he's like, you know, when are you going to stop selling sugar water to kids and come like help change the world? And, uh, Scott Harrison, the CEO of Charity:water, he's like, I remember he came to Silicon Valley, he was recruiting for Charity:water and I was like, how do you recruit from like Google? You're this, he was trying to hire somebody from Adobe. I remember he's like, yeah, she makes 4 times as much as I'm gonna offer. I'm like, how, why would she take a, like a huge pay cut like that? Like 4x less. He's like, I just gotta hope that she wants to do something that actually matters. And like, I was like, well, okay. And he actually did succeed in recruiting a bunch of really interesting people. Um, but yeah, you know, it does happen. Like when you're at these companies, it's like, what percent of your life goes towards like being like, you know, can we get, you know, chat engagement up by 0.2%? Like, can we get the, uh, you know, if I add this emoji of this, like, you know, bouncing cat, like, are you 34% more likely to come back next week? Like, you know, there's a lot of life that comes down to you. If you work a big tech company, you're working inside of a slot machine. And you're looking at this like person sitting down on the stool and you're like, can I get another 4 quarters out of them? Like, what do I need to— let's make that light flash over there. Hey, cherries, get a flash.

Yeah, that'll do it. My wife, you know, went to this fancy, uh, Ivy League school. She's this brilliant woman and she was at Facebook when we started dating and she was telling me what she do. She's like, I'm a PMM. What's that stand for? Product marketing manager. And I was like, what's that mean? She's like, oh, well, we just help people Like, we want more people to use Facebook. I'm like, oh, are you guys like the thing that puts like the jet above India so like they get free internet access? She's like, oh no, not really. Well, what do you do? She's like, well, you know, I create different products to help people to use Facebook. I'm like, okay, but what do you really do? She's like, I'm making it so you could put a sticker on your picture and more people will spend just a little bit more time on this app. And I'm like, oh, okay. 'Yeah, you should quit, right?' And like, that's what she quit. She's like, 'Yeah,' and went and did something that actually she cared about. But, uh, yeah, I remember hearing about them, like, 'Oh, that's why you went into debt for all these universities, and that's why you did all that, was so you can, you know, walk around the Facebook campus for like 3 hours a day and make like a sticker of like Poojim the cat,' or whatever the fuck that thing was called. Remember that thing, Poojim? Or what was that thing? It was like a— it was like a Japanese cat.

No idea what you're talking about.

It was called like Poo— remember how, uh, Facebook, they would have all these like Japanese cartoons? There was like that dog with his tongue hanging out. I don't remember, it was a thing. It was like Poo Gene. It was like a cat that was Asian, and like it was like a series of stickers that—

yeah, it's the thing in Snapchat, that, that dancing hot dog, which has been seen more than like any cartoon or animation ever. Uh, I think been seen like 10 billion times, or like 100 billion times or something like that. It's like, yeah, this hot dog is actually more popular than Mickey Mouse.

Just like the stupidest ways to time. It reminds me of on that TV show Silicon Valley, one of the apps that they said was amazing was Nipple Alert, and it alerts you of erect nipples, uh, in your vicinity. I'm like, ah, this sticker thing, that's Nipple Alert. Sounds good.

Yeah, honestly, when I was there, when I was— I didn't think it was like, you know, a waste of sort of time and energy in that sense. Like, I don't know, maybe—

I think Twitch is actually okay because Twitch is like this is like this cool subculture. We're nerds, no one likes us. We finally have a space that we can do this stuff. Facebook, I think, is different.

And I respected the game theory of it. I was like, when this whole like contract thing was going down and they were like, you know, how— basically the question of how much should we bid? I was like, I don't know, you know, like it's like in sports there's like this Moneyball movement where you're trying to figure out the value of a player. And if you can accurately forecast the value of a player You have an edge in winning in the, in the, in the league. The same, the same thing is true now for all these like big media platforms that are like in, in Twitch's case here, they were bidding for content. So they're bidding for, for this. And you know, I went and met with people or like, you know, talk to people who are at Netflix and it's like, hey, how do you decide how much to spend on the production of this? Or how, you know, how do you figure out if it was worth it to spend, you know, whatever, $100 million on House of Cards? And like, and you go there and you'll meet, you know, you meet the guy who's doing that same thing, right? Like the brilliant data scientist. Whose like job is to like A/B test the thumbnails of, you know, like the, the new Garfield movie to figure out which one is gonna lead to higher engagement, like lower churn. And it's like, yeah, you know, you're, you're A/B testing thumbnails for, for you, for, for Netflix and YouTube and all this stuff. Like, yeah, that's like, it kind of feels like, you know, bringing a gun to a knife fight type of thing. Like you're, you're, you're damn, like really, this is where all this money goes.

I know, but there, it's a scale. It's not binary. It's a scale. You know, and so for some companies it's like, oh no, this is just way too lame. For others it's like, oh, this got a little pinch of lame, little half a cup of lame, but like it's mostly pretty cool, right? You know what I'm saying? Netflix, I actually think that's cool. It's like, oh, I'm giving the world a little bit of entertainment. Facebook, it's like, I'm just making people hate themselves.

No, I agree. You wanna do another topic?

Can I give you a framework that I think is, uh, pretty dope that I, that I heard?

Mm-hmm.

Like a 6 or 12 month thing.

Yeah. Yeah, I could go for a year. I could try a startup or go tra— backpacking or whatever. Like I could pursue a passion of some kind. So that's a new thing you could say no to is like work for a little while. Then at kind of like, I would say $3 million, you could just say no to jobs. Like, uh, I'm only gonna work for myself. I can bet on myself and, and give myself enough time to figure stuff out without having to stress about it. At $10 million, I think you just say no to working in general. It's like, I like my money makes enough money. I just don't need to use my time to make money if I don't want to. And then it kind of goes on and I think that you say no.

Well, at like, I've been thinking about this as well. Um, at like between some number, maybe around $100 million, you say no to having to be in one location. So for example, right now I rent a place in one location and I own a place in another location. If I had $100 million, I'd probably own 3 or 4 homes and it's just like, hey, let's just go from place to place to place. I don't have to spend any time organizing a rental or, or anything. And then maybe around like $200 or $300 million, it's, I'm gonna say no to wasting time at an airport. I'm just, we only, yes. You know, we only fly private.

So I, I think it's that, but the numbers are a little bit less. I said at $50 million, I think you could say no to any inconvenience that money can solve.

You could, I think you could.

Right. Like, but you could fly private at $50 million. You don't have to own the jet, but you could fly private. You sure?

For sure.

You could hire assistants to do anything you need. You can hire, you know, chefs and drivers and, and, you know, errands and accountants and anything you don't want to do, you don't have to do. I talked to you—

get to sort of— I talked to a guy the other day who owns a jet, and he said it's about $2.5 million a year in expenses, right? And he owns it. If you want to rent it, I think you could go most— you can go to a lot of places and spend half a million dollars a year. And if you have $50 million, that's, that's doable. But you can't own like an $8 million house in Brooklyn and then a $3 million house in Austin and then a $5 million house in LA, but you could own pretty nice shit in those places, right?

And so, and you know, like the top ladders, you get to $100 million and I think you could say no to the way the world, world works. You get to change some rules. And at a billion, I think you say no to like politicians. You say no to the police. You say, you say no to a bunch of people, uh, when you get to a billion because you have the ability to kind of fight back. Uh, you, they, uh, they kind of, there's, there's a different level of respect. And so to me, I liked this framework of What does this amount of money allow me to say no to that I want to say no to?

Did you, um, yeah, what would, what hourly rate would you say no to right now for a, for a project that you don't want to do for a 1-hour phone call? What would you have to accept?

Uh, so like, I think there's like what you say and then there's like what you actually, like what the market clearing price actually is.

So you would, you would, right now I charge $2,000 an hour and I take about 2 hours a week of phone calls. Um, would you do that or not?

So that's the exact borderline. So on GLG, that's like what you get, the max you can set my rate to is $2,000. And if I get a, if I get a bid and I'm like, ah, this phone call doesn't sound like it's gonna be a lot of fun. Um, it's like right at that borderline where I feel like I kind of should like, uh, for an hour I should, dude.

I don't take, and I, I don't take the calls cuz I need the money. I take the calls because I feel guilty saying no.

And so it's the same thing, right? Like, uh, feeling like I should means feeling like I wanna say no, but I don't think I should. And therefore if I say no, I kind of feel like I made a, you know, I'm guilty, right?

Like what I've done is it all has this, I've used the app Intro and I just like, for example, I'm flying down to your event and then I'm flying to LA.

I, um, I schedule it so I know when I'm gonna be, you find the money.

Well, I know when I'm gonna be in the Uber and I just make my availability there. So I'm like, sick. I'll just take this in the Uber and now I can afford, like, I could justify a $200 Uber Black because I'm making $2,000 in this hour. And so I'm gonna be comfortable and I'll order even early. So if I arrive early at the airport, I can just sit outside of the airport and finish this call. So that's kind of how I've been justifying it now. But, right, it feels weird selling time per hour and I don't even know if I like that in general.

Do you have a polite way of saying no to all the inbound or do you just ignore?

I used to just ignore, and then I realized like it's totally fine to just say, um, hey, this sounds cool, but, um, I just got my hands full. I don't want to do anything else. Or like, hey, this, uh, you know, um, hey, you know, uh, thanks for reaching out. Um, I don't want to do any more phone calls than I'm doing right now, but if that changes, I'll let you know. Yeah. And like, I'll just say something. And I think, you know, people, A, they just appreciate a response more than a blow-off. And B, I think there's some level of respect for, um, thoughtful emails. Yeah, for, you know, somebody just being honest and like just saying, look, I, I don't like— I don't want to do that. Um, you know, I, I've decided I want to travel less, you know. Um, so I'm gonna say— so I'm saying no to travel.

Dude, I had this guy messaging me saying he wants to come on the pod, and I was just like— I ignored it. I ignored it because I hate when people ask to come on. Because I'm like, dude, why are you going to make me say no? Like, I say no to everyone, practically even good friends. So we just say no to most everyone. And this guy, he was like, I was like, hey. Or he was like, can I come on? I'm a huge fan. And I just said, like, thanks for reaching out. Like, I didn't even— I tried to avoid it. Like, it was quite obvious. And he's like, hey, so can I come on? And I go, you know, this isn't a good fit, but I really appreciate you listening. And he was like, can I get some feedback? I was like, it's just not a good fit. And he goes, okay, but why? And I was like, oh, okay. Cause you're not interesting and you're not that successful. And, uh, he was angry at me and I was like, dude, what, what the hell? I mean, I was trying to like, you know, make a point of like avoiding this topic and being kind, but you, if you're gonna ask for feedback and I'm gonna tell you, you know, what, what, what it's about, don't get angry. Right. He's like, well, yeah, I, I, what's not interesting about it? He said, I go, it just, there's, uh, you know, I just don't care about you.

So my, my, my Goldilocks thing here was I was too cold when I just blew people off cuz they didn't like that. And then they would just stop. Like, you know, I, I found I would miss opportunities because I wouldn't reply to things, uh, miss opportunities I cared about, uh, in the long run. And then the too hot was I would just be like, I don't do phone calls. I was like, okay, you know, you're an, you're sort of a jerk for just being like, uh, I don't do phone calls. Or like, I don't meet with people I don't know. Or like, you know, I, I don't do this. It's like too hard of a rule. And I found that the sweet spot was somewhere in the middle of just saying, uh, you know, hey, thanks, but, uh, but you know, I'm trying to do less of this right now. Or, or sometimes I'll say like, um, they'll be like, hey, did you want to do this? And I'll be like, um, you know, I haven't decided. And, uh, you know, like, I don't know. I don't, I don't even know what I want yet. So let me get clear on what I want and then I'll come back if I, if I, you know, when I get clear, if I ever get clear on it. But like, it's not about you. I just don't know exactly what I want to do right now. And like, I'll just say like something honest like that. And I found that that tends to work a little bit better.

Dude, we went from Hitler to Saudi Arabia to saying no to people. Mental models. Yeah, mental models. Good pod. You— I'm going to be in LA on Sunday. You're not coming, right?

To LA on Sunday? No, I don't think so.

But then I'm going to see you in—

What are you going to— What are you going to LA for?

I told you about it. I'm hosting an event there, dude. For the New York event that I'm hosting, we've got like 1,300 RSVPs. I'm eager to see how many show up.

You gotta cut that down, right? You can't, you can't do it. You're gonna do a 1,000-person event?

No, that's how many people said they're coming, but it's free. So like maybe half will come. Um, but we put up $10 grand.

You're gonna do a 650-person event?

Dude, it's all guys, by the way. It's all guys. I like scroll through, it's all dudes.

I could smell that event already.

Ugh. Yeah. It's fucked up, man. So many Chads are gonna be there. And then I'm doing the same thing in LA, and that one has like 500 or 600 RSVPs. I just— you and I were talking about an event and I was like, kind of like, actually, this is like a toilet decision. And I just wrote it on Eventbrite on my phone and just posted it right away. And people signed up and said, we're committed. So we're doing that. And then I'm going to be good. And then we're going to go to the Carolinas for the thing you're organizing, which everyone's been reaching out to me. Did we talk about it last pod? Yeah, we mentioned at the end of the last part, dude, so many people are reaching out.

They reach out about—

they want to come, uh, they basically people wanting to come, and I'm like, this isn't— no, no, sorry, it's not my thing.

Great idea.

What's— what is something that's really fun? Because I don't want to go to something that's like like even this like 1,000-person meetup, like I'm sure it's cool and there's cool people, but—

Well, it serves a different purpose. It's a party versus, uh, an experience.

Yeah. So I want to have experiences, you know, when you were like, I'm a fucking artist, man. Yeah. That's how I am. Like, I want to have experiences.

This is going to be a good one. Now we got to come up with another one. Let's go to like Hope.

And so some of these will be like this one, which is like ultra, like more like super exclusive, right? There's only, there was only supposed to be 12 people going. It's expanded to 24. And, um, you know, that's a lot. I wanted it to be more like 12, but I'm like, there'll be those. And I think we should do some that are for like, dude, if you can, like, if you know the phrase, you know, we don't do public math, manifest cowboys, you know, uh, Sam wants to own a lake. Like if you know the inside jokes of this pod, then you're, that's your admittance into the, to this, this camp. And I was like, I think we should do these like twice a year, um, that are just like fun and awesome and get people together.

Or quarterly.

I mean, Camp MFM should be the thing. I never wanted to do the work for this, um, and neither do you. And so that's like, you know, one of the challenges.

But, but it wasn't a lot of work for this one, was it?

Kind of feel like it is. It's a lot because as soon as I try to do something, I'm like, well, let's make it fucking awesome then. Like, you know, so like all of a sudden, like for this basketball thing, we got like Nike's giving us all like, like sneakers, like from like one of their players. And like we're getting like custom swag. We rented these like dope Airbnbs. We got like a chef. We got like all this stuff come together. I was like, well, if we're gonna have good people, let's get like some like good names in here. Let's get like some people we're excited to meet. And then it's all coming together and like, but like each one of those now I'm like, now I want it to be like awesome if we're gonna do it.

Dude, we got, we can have like, you know, we can get a sponsor to say like, all right, you get a, you get $300,000 a year to do cool shit, but we get to be there at all the events.

Yeah, okay. If somebody wants to do a sponsor camp at Camp MFM, you could do this. All the money will go to basically hiring a planner to actually like do these things for us. And, uh, and secondly to, uh, to, you know, the venue and logistics of it.

All right. That's the pod.

I'm out.