Finding Profitable Business Ideas By Studying Trends, Hood Rat Stuff, and More

You're good at doing this, which is you identify these lifestyle trends. You like pick up pretty quickly on like there's a group of people that are deciding to like live under a different paradigm or different motto or creed. And actually that was like one of the best ways to build a business around that lifestyle because you can speak to that audience and you can differentiate a product super easily to that crowd. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never look One time I went to an amateur fight in, uh, you've been there, it was at the, in Golden State Park or something, remember that?

Yeah, Dragon House.

And there was like 1,000 people there and at the fight, you know how, so basically when people, before people get into a ring, the referee checks to make sure you don't have any weapons on you, it's just like a precaution, but that's like, they rub, they like rub your shorts to make sure you don't have a weapon, they check your gloves to make sure that there's not like cement in there, and then they also look at your fingers to make sure, in MMA's case, you don't have long nails. One time I went and they go, no, you got to cut your nails. And so they made an announcement and they go, does anyone have a nail trimmer? And someone— and we waited for like 3 or 5 minutes and someone had to like run to Walgreens or something and bring a nail trimmer and he had to cut the nail. And I was like, hey, like, how did you not figure this out? Like, you know, 15 minutes ago, this nail thing is not new. Like, you should have checked this out before they came out. And B, it was just crazy.

That's so funny. That— yeah, every time they do those checks, I'm like, what? Has anybody ever discovered like a razor that this guy's sneaking into the cage? Like, no, they never do it. It's like just a— it's like a TSA pat-down without ever, ever finding anything except for that. That's the first time I've ever heard that they like actually found violation.

One of the reasons they do it is in the '80s or '90s, there's this guy who's a real— it was a real famous fight. And this guy basically put his hand in like a cast. So it was like— and they like, they casted it. Yeah, it was called a Paris of plaster or whatever that phrase is. It's like, it was like plaster. And then they put his gloves on and they beat up— and he beat up this guy so bad that the guy eventually killed himself because he had so much brain damage. It made him depressed. And like, it was like a really bad thing. And so that's one of the reasons why they're like, they check your gloves so much. It's such a big deal.

Wow. The plaster caster.

All right.

I feel like Uh, well, I'm sorry that that guy died and now I, I respect these checks. In fact, uh, I too got caught in TSA yesterday in a slow line and missed my flight. So, you know how I'm always 2 minutes late for this podcast? I was 2 minutes late for my flight and missed my flight yesterday.

Where were you going?

I was going down to, uh, I went down to Mexico actually. So yesterday I went to Mexico and back.

What? Why? For, uh, e-commerce stuff?

For business. Yeah. We were visiting a supplier, uh, down there and I wanted to, um, you know, go check them out. And so, uh, yeah, one day trip, missed my flight. Uh, did the thing where I was in the good line. Other line looked a little shorter. So I was like, let me optimize real quick. Made the switch, took a mental note. I said, all right, that's my line buddy right there. We'll see who makes it first. He was long gone. He made the flight. I didn't make the flight. So I ended up— and I have CLEAR. I got all the shit to skip the lines. Still, still didn't make it. So that was kind of a— yeah, well, it's fine.

You know, now it's like, you know, whatever the situation, that's just the price you pay.

Exactly. That's the price I pay. The splinter is the cost of the wood, as I say. And that was, that was, that was, you know, the start of my day. But dude, I crossed the border on foot yesterday. I was like, you know, Donald Trump's enemy. I literally walked across the border from Mexico back into the United States yesterday.

How? I don't understand.

Like, I drove down, I got driven down to Mexico. They don't check you. So they're like, oh yeah, come on in. It's fine. Like, you know, they don't, they don't, they don't really care. But then to get back into the United States, they're like, hey, hey, well, you can't just walk into the United States. You got to show me some ID or whatever. And the guy who drove us down, the guy we're meeting for business, he was like, well, I have this like FastPass that's like the global entry thing, but it's only for me. I can't just like bring other people in my car using that. So when we get up to the thing, you're going to hop out, you're going to get in this line with a bunch of other people trying to cross the border, and then I'll pick you up on the other side. And so that's what we did. I crossed the border on foot yesterday, which is kind of a stunning experience. And it was amazing, dude. It was like, it was just so different than anything else that I've ever—

What were your peers like on the, on the—

My peers? Yeah. So my peers and my peers and friends online, they were, you know, a lot of like single mothers with kids. It was like, you know, not a whole lot of English going on. People, you know, there was an amazing rapper. So this guy was rapping. I got a video of him., but I, he had no call to action, dude. He had the, like, his top of funnel was amazing. His like rap was great. He had a speaker. He was, we were, he had a captive audience. Like we're stuck in line and he's just rapping to all of us and he's freestyling about us in Spanish. And so I'm sure he was just talking mad shit about me, but then I was like, wow, this guy's like got the, all the talent in the world. And so I was literally like, dude, I'm gonna get this guy to like make a song. Like he'll do our outro for the podcast or something. Cause this guy's so good, but he's got no, no Instagram handle. He's the rapper from my illegal crossing. It was legal, um, you know, it was a legal crossing and he was there and he was amazing. And but he had no sign, no name, no nothing, no, no English. So I couldn't like— dude, he was— that was his Kanye, Kanye moment and I was his Jay-Z. I was ready to take him to the top, but he didn't have— he didn't have it there. So, you know, lesson learned as always, give people a way to, uh, you know, to, to, to take you forward, to give the call to action. Otherwise, you know, you might just be a rapper at the border for the rest of your life if you don't if you don't have that with you.

Well, you should have told them that.

I tried to, but, you know, my Spanish stops at biblioteca, so I kept saying library, library. And he's like, what are you saying, man? I don't understand. And so, you know, that was, that was the end of that.

So let me tell you about something really quick. You have more ideas than I do. So let me, let me go first and tell you about something because, all right, so South by Southwest is going on this weekend and I went to this dinner two nights ago that was pretty wild. So let me tell you about something, uh, not entirely related or, uh, tangentially related at first. Have you ever heard of the overview effect? Probably not, right? The overview effect?

No.

Okay. The overview effect is a cognitive shift that affects how some astronauts, that affects some astronauts when they see the Earth from space. So basically, when you take a person— there's only been about 600, 700, 800, something like that, people in space— and when you take someone away from Earth in space, they basically start seeing themselves no longer as, uh, they don't like identify with a particular nationality, a particular culture, a particular race, and they just see the world as like this like fragile thing floating around. And there's been tons of astronauts who, they go up and they're like, wow, the Earth is so fragile. It's so beautiful. It's just floating around and it's protected by this thin atmosphere. And basically it makes like—

Is this a bad thing or a good thing to have the overview effect?

Well, it's most likely a good thing, but really it's nothing. It's just like, it's just a different perspective where it's like, look, this idea of like nationalities and borders, like that's Fine, if those exist, but that's not really important. We're all just floating on this rock, you know, trying to figure shit out. And it's just like, it, it changes how a lot of astronauts view the world. And they say they're like, I'm different. It's almost like an LSD trip or something like that. And so it's this like really fascinating thing. And this one astronaut was— astronaut was like, my life changed after that. Like, I'm not stressed out about certain stuff. I see us floating around on this fragile ball throughout, you know, throughout space. And, and just these little things don't bother me because I think that all the— a lot of those problems are just made up. So It's kind of, and he said, I think everyone should, should be, I wish that everyone can be able to experience this. So because of that, because of that idea, there's this one company that hosted a dinner that I went to and it was awesome. And, uh, basically what they make is this like pod. It's like a, it's like the size of a really small room that can fit 10 people sitting down. It's like, it looks like, um, like a capsule, like a circle. And you sit down in this thing and above it is basically a hot air balloon. That's the size of a football field, a huge hot air balloon. And each person pays $50,000 and over 6 to 8 hours, it brings you up above like 100,000 feet to the point of you kind of, you're not, I guess, technically in space, but it's the thing where you're like so high that you see like the black, you know, above you. And then you see like the dark above you and you can kind of see Earth from a distance and you can start seeing different countries. And they're doing this because they want you to, the, Like the whole shtick is like, you know, once you see this, like your life changes. And their first flights are going— it's called Worldview. I think if you go to worldview.space, I think that's their URL. I've got nothing to do with this company, although a friend just invited me to a free dinner. And it was— I have no idea if these guys are going to be able to pull it off, but it was a really good story. And this idea is crazy fascinating to me. Their first flights, I think, are going live like next year. Kind of interesting, right?

So you— I thought the dinner was in the pod. I thought you went to space. That's kind of where I— first of all, that's what I heard. I thought it was like, you know, the Space Needle restaurant. He's like, I go in this tower, I spun around, I saw the whole city. I thought that's what you were saying you did for dinner.

No, my friend John like does PR for this company, and he's like, hey, I got some spots, you want to come hang out? And I went and I actually met a few interesting people. So would you dream— would you dream— Grenier was there, by the way, the guy, entourage, uh, Vinnie Chase. He was there and it was, it was just this thing. Uh, would I do it? Definitely maybe. Not a for sure no, not a for sure yes. I'm really afraid. I'm really claustrophobic.

Maybe, possibly no, probably yes is where you're at.

I would say yeah, like the $50,000 thing to me, that's not a deal breaker because I think that's actually pretty, like $50,000 to like change your life and see the world. Like look at these pictures that's been showing. It's kind of interesting, right?

Um, we're— you're rich, we get it. Uh, $50,000, not a big deal to you.

Uh, no, I, I understand that part. I just mean like if you want to like buy, like if you're gonna like have to buy a car or like experience this, like I don't know, it's kind of like it's a compelling offer.

Yeah, yeah, this is like you, you described it as kind of like the, uh, go do ayahuasca Um, like change your perspective on life. You know, it's like, seems like there's cheaper ways to change your perspective, but all right. That's a cool one. Do I have a friend, Matt Kelly, who used to do a pod? I think he did a podcast. It wasn't even that popular of a podcast, but one of his listeners was this mega rich lady, this old rich lady. And she bought him and the other host 2 tickets on Virgin Galactic's first flight, like worth a quarter million dollars each or something like that. Why? So before this, there's like multiple years before they even had the space flight, but they like, they did the presale and this woman bought the two of— this listener bought the two of them quarter million dollar tickets or something like that to go to space. It was kind of insane.

And they did it?

But at that time it was like, it wasn't even possible yet. Like Branson had just announced it. Now I think those flights do run or they're about to run or something like that. So I don't know if he ever did it.

If Well, hey, Worldview, we're giving you guys free PR and we're giving you guys a shout out. If they offered you, Sean, a free opportunity to do this, would you do it?

No, I'm going to say no. I, I mean, bro, you could drive across the, across the border to Tijuana and walk back, and walking across the border will change your perspective. That's free. So, you know, I just did this for free. I changed my worldview. Tijuana yesterday.

Well, you know, that's the That's the cool thing about perspectives is you can have many of them. So we can go into Tijuana and also we could go to space.

The, uh, this is a good hypothetical, which was, uh, this was, I remember at one, one day at lunch at work, this was like the big debate. It was like, if you could go and be a part of the first, I don't know, space colony or something like that. Um, it's like you get to be one of the first people to actually live in outer space, like in either in the moon base or like Mars or something like that.

I wouldn't even consider it.

Of course. Would you do it? And I was like, hell no. And the, you know, it's like, why? The risk? Like, no, the boredom. What am I gonna do out there? Like, I like my life here. I'm enjoying it so much. Like, all I would do if I went out there, to be honest with you, I would just think about how I'm gonna tell everybody about this when I get back. Like, that'd be the only cool part about going there for me is like the momentary stunningness of how it looks and then the content I'm gonna get to come back to Earth and talk about it.

Dude, that's why I hate vacations. I feel like half the time it's just like, I just gotta take a picture instead of my parents. That's why I don't like vacations.

So yeah, I don't post on Instagram. I just refuse to post on Instagram because I'm like, once I start performing here, this is just gonna be another fucking place I perform. So, you know, choose wisely. I chose Twitter and my podcast and like, I don't know, my email list. Those are the only places I want to perform. I don't want to perform on like how cool my life is. I only want to perform on how cool my ideas are. And that's the, that's the one I want to perform. Probably better off performing nowhere and never having to think about that stuff.

Well, I, I wasn't— we don't have to talk about this, but, uh, I want us to— I, I have 3 goals for us that I need to run by you. The first goal, 3 million downloads in 1 month by the end of the year. There's nothing you need to do, you just show up. The second one, yeah, um, I, I think you— we talked about this— in-person interviews and also get like proper famous people. Arnold Schwarzenegger, or, you know, like a proper famous person that we could tell someone at the restaurant. So like, when people are like, I went to the doctor yesterday, and they're like, what do you do for a living? And I'm like, I host a podcast. And they're like, anyone? Oh cool, anyone you heard of? I'm like, no, you don't know who any of these people are. So like, like we need like a proper like famous person, like, you know, do you follow Steph Smith on Twitter? Yeah. Yeah.

You don't know what Twitter is? Oh no, not—

Yeah. I'm unemployed. Yeah, it doesn't work. You know who Ariel Hawane is? Do you like UFC? It just doesn't work out. So we need like a proper famous person so I can get cred when I talk to strangers. And then finally, uh, an in-person event. We need, we need to have an MFM summit, and at that summit I think you should do a 10-minute comedy bit.

Oh, that's great, dude. Yeah, that would be the pressure I need. And also, also gonna be the best audience I could ever get. It's like if I ever had a warm a warm audience. It's the motherfuckers that would pay to, you know, the neckbeards that would pay to come see us at the summit, you know, hang out with us. Like, they're— that's the closest I'm going to get to a laugh.

Yeah, I think so. I think you can do it. I think you could pull it off. I think All In Summit—

why are we not doing this at your ranch?

It's not set up for like— what I think we should do is like 300 to 400 people. And I think that we should have like maybe 2 days of events where it's just like 1 or 2 times of us talking in front of everyone, but then lots of smaller sessions of people hanging out. And I think we should only charge like $500. So like just enough money to make like a profit that's interesting, but not high enough to where it prohibits people. All In Summit is $7,500 for a ticket.

Yeah, that's a bit pricey. Yeah, I'm not even getting to go to space or the border, so fuck that.

Yeah, you can get like one-fifth of the way to space with that, with the price of it all in something.

Do you know how many tacos that gets you in Tijuana?

$7,500.

I could have literally fed the town of Tijuana yesterday with $7,500. Um, what was I going to say? Oh, the, um, yeah, we should do this summit thing. Uh, why aren't we doing like— here's the trick, okay? So like, um, if it's like a meetup for the conference and we— then it's like, oh shit, we got to have like, I don't know, speakers, or like, you know, we have to do a good job. We just need to make this like a vacation. So like, we just need to make this what would already be a cool vacation, plus we're there and there's stuff going on. So, so I think this needs to be like a cruise, um, and it's just a cruise ship and people can hang out for 3 days and we're there and other people are there. There's some talks, but like fundamentally it's a cruise, which is already like, dude, this worst case scenario, it's a cruise. Best case scenario, we are awesome on a cruise ship.

I'm down. I, I would prefer not a cruise, but I get the idea and I'm down with that. And like, we get you and me, Ben, uh, we get like a, like, uh, Wilkinson, Steph, maybe Rob Dyrdek will want to come, uh, who, I don't know, like the best guests.

Name other non-famous guests.

Yeah, I'm like, uh, we have a podcast.

Do you use deodorant?

Yeah.

Oh, do you use all-natural Native?

No.

There is one, and he was on the podcast.

Yeah, it's like a Oh, you, you like Tom Cruise? Yeah, we had a guy on who looked just like him.

He has a keto blog, but he looks a lot like Tom Cruise.

Yeah, he looks just like Tom Cruise. All right, what do you got?

Can I tell you? Okay, so on this trip to Mexico, I saw 3 or 4 things that I was like, huh, tell me more. Okay, so I'm just gonna go through them in rapid, rapid succession. And by the way, I just got back like at midnight last night, so, um, you know, I haven't had time to like research a whole bunch of these.

Is that your first time in Mexico?

No, but I like, um, I got shit on bad for the guy who's hosting me there. He's like, you guys ever— so is this your first time to Mexico? I think because I was like, are we in Mexico right now? And he's like, yes. And I was like, is this your first time? I was like, no, no, I've been to, um He's like, don't say like Cancún or Cabo or like Acapulco. And I was like, yeah, those are the three that I've been to. He's like, okay, this is your first time to Mexico then.

Dude, I hang out. I've hung out for like collectively a month or so in Mexico City. Mexico City's dope. Mexico City's awesome. I would live there for sure.

That's what I heard. And then so again, so first I, you know, like here's my conversation with this guy. So first I dig myself in the hole with the, are we in Mexico? And it's a yes. Then it's, have you been to Mexico? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to build rapport with my Cancun trip. He's like, nah. And then the third one is like, but I heard Mexico City is awesome. I got a couple friends who swear by it. They say it's like one of the best cities. He goes, yeah, I don't go there. It's super dangerous. Everything I said, this guy like had like an extreme counterpunch to me. And I was like, all right, cool. I'm gonna roll down the window and just stick my head out like a dog. Is that cool? He's like, yeah. That's awesome. All right, so I go there and I'm looking at like— dude, have you ever been inside factories? You probably have, but I think most people haven't. Have you been inside like any kind of factory?

Why do you think that I've been in a factory?

You're gonna be like, I don't know, like my fucking cousin Bubba has like a bubblegum factory.

And you're gonna be like, dude, I went fishing for— I went fishing recently with my father-in-law and he's like, hey, so how do I set this hook up? What do I do? I'm like, dude, I don't know, I've never gone fishing. He's like, why didn't you just assume that I know how to do this? Dude, you look like a guy You just look like a—

seem for sure like a guy who goes fishing.

I mean, I've watched documentaries on it.

Like, I know how to— do you or do you not have a favorite place to fish?

No, of course not. I don't have a fishing hole that I go to. Um, but no, I've, I've, I don't think I've been to a factory. Not really. Like, what type of factory?

It doesn't matter. Any factory. Whatever factory you go into, it's fucking mind-blowing how— like, even to go to a warehouse, like, go to it. You've been inside like an Amazon warehouse or like a food warehouse, like how the food gets to restaurants. Um, it's insane in the same way that like going to a farm is like slightly crazy and you're like, whoa, I eat these, these, I eat these animals. Like, oh wow. Uh, you know, that doesn't seem right. But like basically a factory, it is kind of stunning. Like if you take any object on like, okay, I am holding this microphone. This is sitting on my, this is the foam. Cover of a microphone.

There's some like huge factory that like is churning them out.

If you just go back to trace the process of how this got to my desk. So, okay, I just go on Amazon, I just microphone, uh, I don't know, maybe this one. I click that, I buy it, right? So it goes from an Amazon warehouse onto a, like, Amazon warehouse packs it into a carrier, carrier brings it to my house, puts the package on my doorstep. Okay, great. How did it get to the Amazon warehouse? Well, first it was in probably like another warehouse before it even got sent to Amazon. Before that warehouse, it was in a factory being made by human beings. I don't know, actually before that, before it got to the warehouse, it was on a boat in a container, like sailing from fucking China on a boat with human beings just living on the boat as it sails for months, you know, 2 months to, to the coast. And then it gets like un, you know, like docked and separated out of a container ship and like Humans, beings are there in the factory. There's human beings, you know, I don't know how many, you know, small children died making this foam cover, but it's like the amount of work that goes into everything that's sitting in our house, just arriving there is insane to me. Like just the materials. So where did the material for this foam come from? Right. There's like a, you know, if you have cotton, right, that starts in a field somewhere, it's plucked, it gets plucked and it gets pulled and it gets processed and it gets shipped and then it gets then it gets manufactured, then it gets printed, then it gets manufactured again. It's like, that is insane. Yeah, to the point where I'm kind of like, we're kind of ruining the earth and also people's lives. Like, you know, like, to get a $20 t-shirt—

well, I canceled my Amazon Prime membership. I was like, man, I feel guilty. I like, I, I order something and it's like so much energy behind the scenes went to ship this. Of course, I only see they ship a dongle to a computer, a small-ass thing with bubble wrap in a huge box. And I'm like, oh, this is horrible. And then I have to pay money to pay a truck to come pick it up because I— it's too much, you know, boxes for my—

oh yeah. Then the truck, you know, burns gas and then takes it somewhere else and fucking dumps it somewhere. And then it's someone else's problem, right? Like, so it's just kind of like, on one hand, I'm amazed that the system even works. Like, the fact that the package gets from the factory in Vietnam to the warehouse. And then you go to the warehouse and there's like an unbelievable number of boxes. And then they get sort, you know, picked and packed into the package and that gets shipped. And if you ever go to the post office, like if you go to the post office and you, you should just ask them, be like, hey, can I see what it's like behind the door there? They'd be like, what? Why? I'd be like, I just never seen a post office. They'll open the door. It is like Santa's, like, you know, elves factory basically. It's like the most unbelievable number of packages. And you're like, where's the system? Like, aren't there conveyor belts? And they're like, no, we just got these like trolleys. And then we just kind of keep them like, you know, the ones going over there, they stay over in this area. Then we hope we don't lose them. It's like, wow, this is insane that this system even works.

It is pretty crazy.

It's like an incredible achievement.

It's crazy you can mail something from California to New York for like $0.45 and it gets there in like 4 days.

That's what I'm saying. Pretty reliably. So I'm like, it is on one hand amazing and on the other hand it's horrifying the amount of like— I forget the environmental side, right? I'm not even that environmentally conscious. It's not like something that I think about all the time or I feel super guilty about. I actually feel more like the human energy and labor and just the amount of effort and resources it took to get this thing to me. It makes me think like, you know, we had that guy David Friedberg come on the pod. You weren't there for that one. But the thing he's doing, which is basically like, hey, he's doing the same thing in the drink industry, which is like, instead of, you know, putting 20 liters of water to grow grapes, then crush the grapes, turn it into wine, add sugar, add alcohol, pack it up, put it to a, you know, send it to a bottling factory, then send it to a warehouse, then put it on a shelf in a store, and then drive it home and then put it on a shelf in your home. Like, he's like, why don't you just like manufacture it in your home? Using this little printer that'll print a drink for you. And, um, and it's like, oh yeah, that cuts out like 90% of like the, the, you know, this like energy and like kind of resources and, and time and effort that goes into, to bringing this drink to my, you know, you know, to be able to drink this drink. So I just feel like more than ever, there was like, that was the big wake-up call. That was my going into space moment, was realizing for every single product, every shirt, every pair of boxers, every sock that I own, how much goddamn, like, effort, labor, travel, resources goes into it. And realizing that that's not going to be the way, um, that's not going to be the way forever. And like, this kind of like 3D printing, you know, like sort of basically manufacturing just in time at the endpoint and cutting out a whole bunch of these like factories and warehouses and all that other stuff that needs to happen was my big wake-up call.

I want to ask you about then what else is there that you can do that for, but before that Have you ever gotten into the Buy It For Life movement? Have I told you about that?

Um, no, but I think I understand it from that. What is it? It's like an eco-friendly way of like buying.

I feel like you do stuff like this, Ben. Do you, do you have like objects that you stuff that you buy that's like meant to sort of last. I don't know why, my hunch just tells me you do.

The funny thing is my dad does this, but not out of like, um, like environmental justice ideas, but just like because he's crazy that way of like he drove the same car for 22 years and just like couldn't bring himself to buy a new car and always shines his shoes because he's owned the same shoes for like 40 years. And so that like kind of got ingrained in me as like a good way to live. And so I do do this a little bit.

It's awesome. It's fun. And also like some of your shit, as you wear it and it patinas, it actually looks cooler, right?

And I seek those things out. So there's a bunch of things that I don't agree with or I don't want to live my life that way, but I love just like seeing it. I like seeing how basically I love freaks. I like weirdos. I consider myself a weirdo and I love a good freak show. I just love, I'll see it like, I remember the first time, like 3 years ago, I went to my friend's house and he didn't have a microwave. I'm like, what? You don't have a microwave? He's like, well, it's bad for this reasons. And I was like, you're a freak. Like, we all have microwaves. You're the weirdo. And then you start thinking about it. I'm like, well, okay, tell me why, why do you think you might be right? And I'm like, okay, maybe there's a point there. Or like, uh, my friends, a lot of my friends now refuse to use plastic Tupperware or plastic, anything that you eat with. And I'm like, well, why? I just put my thing in microwave. Who cares? And so like, there's a bunch of little things like that that I love learning about.

Do you know what I'm talking about? But I've seen this for toothpaste, um, and I think it's a great idea. I think this is a great business idea.

Um, and I at first I thought it was small. I think Moise was the one who told me. I'm pretty sure he said it's like killing it. Um, you don't know what I'm talking about? I forget what it is.

Uh, no, I don't know the name.

Uh, I'll have to look up what it is, but it, it— they're crushing it.

I know there's like, um, for cleaners. I think there's one called Blueland. I think— doesn't Blueland do this?

Is it Blueland? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And it's like chemical-free containers, and then they send you one container, and then they— you, you order something, and they— I, I don't know exactly how they send it to you, but you just like pour it into the thing, right?

They send you a plastic pouch that you throw away.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's like less, less bad.

Um, By the way, speaking of these kind of like niche crazy people, I got two for you. So one is we talked, I think, about, um, anti-work, r/antiwork. Did we talk about that on the podcast?

I don't remember. I don't think we talked about it, but it pisses me off.

So there's r/antiwork, which you should explain that. And then I have another one that's the counter to it. So first explain r/antiwork.

I don't even entirely know how to explain it, but it was, I'll tell you the background from what, if I remember correctly, It was started 8 years ago, but like in the last 3 years since the pandemic is when it really got popular. It was made up of a lot of people who were waiters and waitresses and they were pissed off at how they were being treated. And it started out as like a labor movement thing, like we need higher wages, we need this. Now it's like got 8 million, 10 million subscribers on, on the subreddit and it's people complaining about like, you know, My manager said that like they fired me because I told them I was busy when I need to come in and they just basically shit on anything where it's like demanding of, of workers.

And so I think so. So here's their, here's what I think their stated thing. Ben, you tell me if I'm being too harsh on it, if you find a more generous explanation. But here's what it says. It is a subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, and want to get the most out of a work-free life. The subreddit has cracked over 1.4 million members by the end of 2019, which has got to be a lot more than that by now.

It's 8 million now, and it went— it went—

sorry, 1.8.

Oh my God, sorry.

I think one went viral after a warehouse worker posted a screenshot of a text that they sent their boss, and then that basically made other workers— the other workers like kind of like saw that, were inspired, did the same, and it was part of this like, you know, the Great Resignation that people were talking about. And there was like this funny clip where they put— they took a mod from r/antiwork and they went on Fox News. I don't know if you have seen this.

Yeah, and this— the person got destroyed. It was embarrassing.

It's like antiwork person gets destroyed by, you know, Fox anchor is like the video, which I didn't like.

I didn't like— I mean, I hate when they do that. This person clearly like is not that smart, I think, and like they— it's very easy to set them up to look silly in that— in those cases.

The subreddit also didn't like it because they were like, dude, horrible representation of us on TV, um, did not articulate our points. And, um, you know, why did you go on there? Like, this movement is not about you getting your personal fame, you know, to like do this. Um, we kind of— I think they had some rules around like, we're not going to do appearances or speak to the media unless we kind of agree on what the message is. Um, and so this person went rogue, I guess, and did that. But they basically embarrassed themselves where they were like, yeah, I just don't want to work. And then guys like, okay, cool. So like, you know, do you don't want to work at all? Or like, no, I Like, I want to be able to do what I want to do. It's like, all right, what do you want to do? It's like, I want to teach people. I want to be a teacher. And he's like, you want to be a— you want to be a teacher? You know, should we let you teach? Basically was kind of like the, the end point that they were kind of making. But anyway, so this— there's Antiwork, which went viral. Then there's— have you seen r/overworked?

No, what's that?

But that's not— that's the optimistic way to look at it. The probably realistic way, like I'm looking at the top title and it says, "J— my J3 job forgot about me today." And they say, "I started my J3 yesterday and by started I mean I was giving an orientation on Zoom and no one showed up. So now I'm just sitting here on the payroll." Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's people who are like, yeah, let's beat the system. And so there's like a, basically a counter movement, but that kind of always happens. There's like a, there's like the movement and then there's the counter movement that comes shortly after and like it kind of polarizes. And then there's mainstream, which just does things the way they've been doing them and they don't really pay too much attention to this stuff. And so, um, you know, that, that's kind of common for, for many, many, uh, many, many of these movements. I think subreddits are a great place to look for that.

It's a great, it's a great question. I would not be offended.

He was not offended either. And he was like, he was like, that's a good question. He's like, I think like 2,200. So he was like, yeah, I think we're a little short of what we need to hit his goal. And he's like, he's, and then he, his take was basically like, you know, I'm not saying we have all the right people or the most talented people or that like there's not people here who are underutilized or just kind of, you know, the fat. That wasn't really his point. It was like, I think we can be this much, this ambitious. And to do that, we would need, you know, like 2,200 awesome people, like working in unison. I still think he was wrong. I think we— I think, you know, the company could operate. I actually—

I would have followed up with a few questions. The first one would be, okay, but do you think that you need to hire 2,200 people because you know that only 10% of them are going to be actually value-add and you just have to hire the rest in order to find that 10%? And then I would say, and also, is it possible that you only— that you think you need 2,200 because you really only need like 20% effort from all those people and that's what your expectation is? And then finally, how much does redundancy come into play here? How much do people— are you just paying them and you just don't want to mention to them, but you're paying them to sit on the bench and when the person next to them quits, they just are ready to roll, right?

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't follow up that hardcore about it, but I think those are, you know, very like valid, valid points. And also, you know, one thing I kind of learned from him was like, let's take that redundancy one, right? Sounds bad, right? Sounds like, oh man, you're paying a bunch of people to kind of do nothing, just sit around.

No, it's insurance.

I agree with Emmett, I think, on most things. I imagine I would—

by the way, I should say I'm not putting words in his mouth. This is like what I gathered from a bunch of different conversations. I'm sure he would disagree with like, you know, 40 or 50% of what I just said. Some are paraphrasing him poorly.

Yeah, and it's just like your opinion on your takeaway, my take of his takes, and I I think I would agree with— I bet I, I would agree with a lot of what he thinks. My issue is when you're like a small company, like under 50 people, you're all in it— a lot of times you're in it for a mission, you're in it to achieve something. I think that you can get away with just being in it because people just like being in the thick of it with their friends, uh, like they just like the action. When you get a little bit bigger, I think it's less mission-oriented and you're— and it's just a job. But you still have to put on this face like this to inspire people. And it kind of sucks because the truth is, is like, well, you know, I, I know that, you know, a lot of you are only working 40% and that's okay. I'm okay with that. I baked that into this. I know that a lot of you aren't working at all, but you're really just here in case the guy next to you quits. And then hopefully you're gonna train the next person. And I know that a lot of you wanna innovate and try these new things, but that's not really what we're gonna do. We're gonna keep doing the same shit, just a little bit better. And then maybe every once in a while I'm gonna have a team. That makes something totally new. And I know all this, but just tough. And figuring out how to navigate and but have that, like, to say what I just said, but in a really inspiring way, or unfortunately just lie.

We gotta lie. Not saying it is actually the best way.

Yeah, just act. You gotta just act and pretend, um, and be a politician a little bit. I find that to be incredibly challenging, but I think it's incredibly necessary.

Yes. Uh, you, you're, you're spot on. Um, you're spot on with that. You are spot on with, with what you just said.

Do you think you could do it?

Um, you know, the, I think the thing you said, so you, have you ever heard of Dunbar's number?

Yeah. What's it mean again?

So Dunbar's number is basically, it's, uh, 150. That's the number. And it's meant to represent the number of different, like how many people you can know. Like how many people do you are familiar, you, you like know their name, their face. How many people can one person know actually, right? Like somebody who's like, I got 6,000 friends. Like, no, well you don't really know 6,000 people. And so Dunbar's number was, was used to be 150. It's like in a tribe you could know 150 up to, up to 150. You could know everybody in the tribe past 150. You don't know everybody in the tribe. And then tools like social media and stuff came out that kind of like, it's like a tool for the human body to like do more. So like, you might be able to know and keep up with more than 150 people now because Facebook makes it easy with the newsfeed and photos, and their name is listed there and whatever. You get to see it all the time. I think what you're saying is like your version of Dunbar's number, which is 50, and it's like below— this is Dunbar's number, I'll call it. It's below 50. Below 50, um, the people who are there are like, you know, down for the cause. Like the larger prior, obviously they care about themselves, but like a bigger, like one of the top factors, either number 1 or 2 can be like the cause.

Along the way, he ran over 2 mailboxes, hit 2 parked cars in a Costco parking lot, and struck 2 moving cars near Walmart. I want to do it because it's fun. Fun to do bad things and drive into a car. Well, did you know that you could perhaps kill somebody? Yes, but I wanted to do hoodrat stuff with my friend.

First of all, that's how I feel about startups.

The YouTube feature for this podcast just took us to a whole new level already. First one is great. Second, we need to pull the clip of, yeah, just sometimes I want to do hoodrat shit with my friends. That needs to be a sound clip, Ben, that you can just play when me and Sam are talking about something dumb that we're doing. So just, just go ahead and cut that one out.

That's the best part about— that's the best part about startups. Like, I don't care if it's ad tech. I don't care if I'm selling clothing. I don't care.

Like, you get to do hoodrat shit.

When you're, when you're like pulling shit off and you're like kind of fibbing to people and like, yeah, you know, we've been— you know, we really care about our customers. Our team is— it's like just 3 of you. And, you know, there's like— you're just like trying to pretend that you're a big deal. Like, that's hoodrat shit. And I love doing that with my friends.

But I wanted to do hoodrat stuff with my friend. By the way, have you struggled to do that, uh, at now that you're at a big enterprise, you know, SaaS company that's like worth billions of dollars and hoodratchet is now frowned upon and you're like, I just yanked it. I yanked it. Um, you can't, and they're like, you just yanked it, Sam. Why did you do that? We have a process for that. You know, like, because I definitely could think of like 2 or 3 examples where I was bragging about something I did that was like the startup scrappy thing at Twitch. Well, I would just be like, yeah, like, you know, uh, like for example, there was like a competitor and I like went, met, I like talked to the founder and I was like, yeah, like, you know, I basically found out a bunch of their numbers and I was like, oh yeah, you know, they're growing this fast, this is how they're doing, blah blah. And they're like, well, how do you know that? And I was like, well, I talked to him, I told him I was interested in blah blah blah. And they're like, oh, uh, I was like, what? And they're like, Well, you know, we just usually we don't, mm, we don't do hoodrat shit, John. He basically was like, the, the reward I thought I was creating was like, well, we're gonna need to talk to legal and also Corp Dev is gonna have to, you know, we have a guy whose job is to have those conversations and we, we typically sign a letter of engagement before, you know, like whatever. It was like not the exact example, but like things that in the startup, when I was doing my startup, I would be so proud of my hack about like whatever, or like I remember once I was negotiating a partnership deal and like basically I was just like really negotiating for like every, like every inch, which as a startup I used to love winning a deal, like doing it, getting a good deal for ourselves. And, um, and they were just like, you know, they're like, you know what? Like we'd rather just use our standard deal and it's more favorable for him. So he'll be happy. And, uh, we don't have to like, you know, let you like negotiate deal by deal on these things. And like, you know, in general we don't really want you negotiating directly with the person. We have like partner business people who do that.

You're like the Big Lebowski guy. It's like, dude, you need a toe? I'll get you a toe. Uh, I can— I, I'll get you a toe if you need a toe. Um, can I— let me ask you a quick question before we wrap up. Um, do you think— okay, this question isn't a good question because it is in fact possible, and I have many of it, many examples, but getting wealthy like we're talking 9 figures liquid net worth wealth, getting wealthy. Do you think it is— I want to say impossible, but it's not. So I have to change my question, but I'm going to say it with the possible anyway. Is it really hard to do it just from cash flow, or do you think you have to sell something, sell a business, sell real estate, sell something, capital gains versus income?

You're saying liquid, so not paper, not, not your paper net worth.

Um, liquid, which includes things that could be traded in 30 days.

So, you know, because it's like you have a choice. So you could spend your time, you know, you could spend your time building a service or some type of business where you can make significant cash flow, $2-3 million a year, not work that much, but it's not necessarily an asset that could be sold. So there's a few businesses like this, or it could just be like, um, like the way that this podcast gets paid. Like, it's not like a particularly— maybe, but maybe the podcast isn't a good example, but it's not, you know what I mean? Not necessarily an asset. Like your Maven course. Your Maven course is not an asset that could be sold.

Yeah.

But it could potentially make many millions of dollars a year. Versus you just say, you know what, screw it, I'm not doing that because I have to build a business that could sell. So do you prefer, do you think, cash flow or, or, or an entity, an asset that is independent of you and can be sold?

Um, I don't know. I don't think do I prefer is really the right way to think about it. It's like you need both, right? Like for example, um, I, you need both for two reasons. One is maybe you're gonna use the cash flow to invest, right? Maybe what you're gonna do is you're gonna buy great assets and let them compound over time. Well, where are you gonna get the cash flow to begin with, right? When we had Andrew on it last week, he is like, I, I took the cash flow from the design agency of Meta Lab and I used it to buy majority stakes in all these other businesses and then let those compound over 10 years and like boom, you know, so he reached, you know, that goal and more., doing that. And so you, you know, maybe you need the cash flow to make those investments, right? Like if you, if you don't have no cash flow, how are you gonna invest in anything? And secondly, um, I like to live a good lifestyle. So sometimes cash flow businesses are great because it's like, yeah, I sure, compounding is awesome, but so is, you know, like fucking, I don't know, Gucci shoes or whatever. Like choose your, choose your thing you're into. Like, yeah, Gucci shoes. Like sometimes those are better than like this 20-year-old asset.

Whenever I hear Buffett talk about the long term and like patience, I'm like, bitch, you're like 95. Like, there is no long term. You don't have patience. You shouldn't have patience anymore. You should have like— you should immediately spend whatever you want to spend. There is no such thing as a long-term view for you.

Same part. See, like the headline, Sam Farquhar, to Warren Buffett, bitch, you're 95. There is no long term. You're right, that's what I think. He needs to pivot his strategy.

Well, I'm just like, you know, like, if you want to do X to the max, you have to be fine. But like, and Bezos talks about this too, he's like, a long time, like, I mean, you don't really— who cares? Like, you know, just live life how you want to live, you got it. Yeah, so I've always— it's like, why are you delaying? It always pissed me off. I'm like, why are you delaying to have the best time of your life when you're like old and don't even want to do shit? You don't have to do that anymore.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, some people are happy along the way. That's, that's fine. But like, yeah, I feel like you had it. I feel like you asked me this question because you had an opinion or a story. So let's just skip to that. Oh, because I think you have a good opinion or story on this.

I don't have a— no, I don't have an opinion yet, but I'm like, with my life now, it's like, I can— I think that it— I think in 6 to 10 I think in a matter of 6 months I could probably create a business from scratch that does $1 million a year in profit. It would be based off of like my image. I'm not saying I have that, I'm just saying like, I, I'm sure I could do that. Plus with like a couple other side projects, I think I could very realistically have $2 or $3 million a year in cash flow easily, but very— but yeah, easy. And maybe I do already have that. I'm not—

I don't even want to say I do or do not, but I But like, if you did, that would have been a weird way to say it. It would have been a weird hypothetical, but okay, let's continue on.

I got some cool shit going on, I'll say. But, and I'm thinking about where do I spend my time, and I'm like, is it actually worth it? Like, or should you just not care about cash flow and build something that's like much bigger that you could sell? I don't know, I'm just trying to figure out like, where do you actually spend time? The real answer is what gives you most joy.

Yeah, I don't know. I've just been thinking about like how to spend time. You know who's killing it and has done a really good job of like putting off making cash is our friend Nick Huber. I am an investor, and so I get to see some of the numbers of his storage deals, and I don't think he crushed it like in terms of personal cash flow for a long time, but like the way that things have compounded, I'm like, oh, holy moly, if you just eat shit for like 6, 7 years and pick the right asset, Things look really cool. Yeah.

Yeah. I think he's done great. And also I think he is like a— I think he personally has great terms with his investors, meaning like, I think it's quite favorable to him.

Yeah.

Incredibly bad way. But like, he makes sure he gets to eat, right? Whereas at the beginning, if you have no capital, you're like, you know, you sort of make a deal with the devil in a way where you're like, all right, I'm going to take no management fees, no acquisition fees and a low carry. I think now he's like, look, I'm good and I know it. So I'm gonna take a higher fee, higher, higher acquisition fee, and I'm gonna, uh, take, you know, my, my healthy carry. Um, so, you know, I, you know, good on him. I think a lot of people in real estate are able to do that pretty well. Uh, I know somebody's crushing it in real estate and they, they do just that. They, they have like a, you know, fucking 50% carry on the deal or something, something crazy. And they're like, yeah, because my deals are awesome. I make hits and I win. So like, it doesn't make sense for me to do this at any less than that.

And I'm like, there's this—

that's like next level winning.

Exactly. Exactly. And respect. I respect somebody who's like, I'm playing the game and I play to win the game. You know, I'm not playing something else. I'm not going to tell you I'm not playing the game. I am playing the game and I'm playing to win. That's actually like, uh, I really respect people who just clearly play the game and they're like open about it. And they're like, yeah, I play the game, I'm playing to win, and here's, you know, like, good. If you, if you dislike the game or dislike me, that is your, your choice. And I actually dislike people that are the like, uh, virtue signal types where it's like they are playing the game but they'll do anything in their power to like make it look like they're not playing the game. And there's a lot of that, like in Silicon Valley there's a lot of that. Here's how that plays out that I see. There's person starts the company, bullshits about like why they're doing the company or why this problem is the problem they decided to spend their life on. Like, no, bitch, you like, you're, you know, you're doing this because it's good business, not because you really wanted to help, you know, small to medium-sized enterprise businesses save money on whatever, right? Like that wasn't your actual intention. You probably like that, that you have happy customers and that they're good, you know, you're helping them.

But like, let's be real, like, uh, if I took away the money, you'd stop one cloud. Have you ever seen on Silicon Valley, they go, we're saving the world one cloud processor at a time, or some bullshit? It's like, yeah, and then they're like, they're like at the— they're like, uh, someone calls them out, they're like, dude, this is all rich guy. Like, Kid Rock just was the singer for the, for the, uh, for the show, and he's the poorest guy here.

Yeah, exactly. And so So I think in Silicon Valley you see that a lot. You'll also see that with the origin story about like, you know, why they decided to do this. You're like, oh, are you sure you decided to do this because, you know, your cousin got diagnosed with this, you know, rare thing and that's why? Or, or was it that you ran paid ads at 5 different products and this was the one with the highest click-through rate? Cause I'm pretty sure when I was talking to you it was, this was the highest click-through rate. All right, cool. That's my company. Right? Like there's a lot of that.

Yeah, exactly. That's why we did it. Exactly.. And you know, I'm in the 2% of the population. I think you are too, where we're like, oh, sweet respect for trying to flip the storage container and then realizing there's a business there versus like, you know, the, the, the kind of like the Shark Tank version of the story, which was like, we were just so fed up with our options. Right. And like, I get, again, I get it. I've done that. I might do that again, but am I a little bit disgusted by it? Yes. Uh, same thing with, same thing with, I'll do that usually when I have business partners, not when it's my own business. Um, like when I'm, when I'm the only, when I get to just be a cowboy on my own, I'll just do what I want. Be like, yeah, I don't care if this is bad for the business, it's fine.

The other day I ate a, I ate an entire jar in one sitting of peanut butter from, it was the Jiffy cheap shit, and I just felt so bad about myself, but I didn't regret it. And that's kind of like how you feel.

But I wanted to do whores stuff with my friend.

Mission statements are like a pint of Ben Jerry's. Like, if it feels good doing it and you may not regret it, but But you feel guilty about yourself.

The other version of this is like people who on Twitter are like, uh, they call themselves like shit posters or they're like, you know, they basically, they basically try to signal like, you know, I'm not gonna just, I'm not one of those investors who blogs about content and tries to, yeah, I'm a cool mom. I'll tell you the real deal and I'll, I'll make jokes and blah, blah, blah. It's like they're the ones trying to carefully curate their brand more than anyone. If you actually meet these people, They're like so conscious about their brand, uh, and like, you know, how, how many followers they're getting and like how viral their stuff is going. And like, they are, you know, like, uh, they're, they are so meticulous about that stuff while trying to give off the appearance. It's like Bed Head, right? It's like, oh no, I just woke up like this. It's like, oh, are you sure you don't use a product called Bed Head that like, you know, like makes it look slightly messy, but like, you know, you're actually caring where every strand of hair goes.. And so, you know, I have more respect for like, um, people who are like, yeah, like, you know, like Pomp or Sahil, or they're like, yeah, like people really like to hear about Bitcoin. So I just tweet Bitcoin shit all the time. It's great. Like, I like Bitcoin and they like Bitcoin. So I'll just tweet, like, I'll just set up a calendar and I'll be like, yeah, I'm gonna tweet Bitcoin stuff because I figured if I get a big Bitcoin following, that'll be really, really good for me. Or like, you know, Sahil's like, yeah, I put it, I put out these threads, uh, about these like finance topics. Cause I think I'm good at it and they go viral and then it gives me all these dope connections. Versus like, you know, I just want, like, I feel that knowledge is, um, you know, knowledge needs to be accessible for all and free.

And that's why we need to democratize knowledge.

Yeah, I want to democratize financial knowledge. Like, I used to work on Wall Street and the insiders know things that the rest of us don't. So I quit my job and started writing Twitter threads about finance to democratize finance. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, you didn't do any of that. You wanted followers and so you did what it took to get followers.

Have you noticed how the word democratize is the new corrupt.

I can't stand democratize it. We're going to democratize this by only charging you $50,000 for this piece of clothing instead of them like I've seen people like, we're gonna democratize knowledge, and it's like a $5,000 course. I'm like, uh, not really, dude.

Um, you could democratize these nuts. It's like, oh, the ratchet.

What do you think, Ben? Was today, uh, were we with it or what?

I thought today was a hit. I thought today was a huge hit. This is, uh, yeah, other than like the Steph Smith episodes or Rob Dyrdek, this is, uh, this is A+ territory.

Did I not say at the beginning that this was going to be a fire episode and I had the juice?

You did say, although I actually— the beginning was a little bit slower, um, but it was once you guys started getting into those trends and you were just hitting people. There was like, if you capitalize on one of those trends, you guys, like, they're like 20, 30 good businesses you could start with ideas that were thrown out today.

Ah, great. Are we gonna have to cut out my, uh, democratize these nuts?

Yeah, and then so we have to plan the MFM summit. So I agree that making it destination is cool. I have a thing that I— you're gonna have to bleep out what I'm about to say, but I know the thing.

I know the thing.

Yeah. Yeah, I got the guy. I got a really like famous house that person might be interested in hosting us.

I don't know, that's gonna be a dinner, right? Like that's gonna be like—

no, no, no, no, we might be able to do a proper thing there, but I don't know if the logistics are gonna work out. So I think— but but I think that we could do like something outrageous, you know. We have to think about what outrageous means, but I do think we could have something outrageous. I think a cruise ship, I like it. That's a— it's not a bad idea, a cruise ship, or like some type of famous venue, or fuck, we could just go to Hawaii, let's do like on the beach in Hawaii. We can figure something out, but we do need to do like a summit.

Fly out, like if people are gonna have to travel for it, I think to get the value again, the easiest hack is First, make it a couple days where people get to hang and meet each other. So do it, make it like a 2-day thing. And then, and then secondly, um, just make it already fun if it was just a vacation, if there was no content on top. But it's like, then you combine some content, uh, getting to meet us and getting to meet other people in the community. Plus already it was a good, like, kind of vacation type experience. Then that's cool. Right. And like, I don't know, let's do like, bring a fitness component, bring a, like, let's bring all the components of the stuff we talk about where there's like, you know, experiences beyond sitting down and listening to people talk. It's like, why not do a group workout? Or like, let's get an MMA guy to like, you know, take us through a set, like take people through a session or something. I don't know, like something like that.

Down. All right, let's schedule it. I, I do, do you like that $500 price mark, price point?

This, I mean, we should do this as an NFT, no doubt. We should make this an NFT and then only the NFT holders can attend and then they could flip their NFT to somebody else if they want to, but make it a limited number of NFTs, uh, for this.

Yeah. All right, that's it. All right, that's the episode.

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.