EPISODE

Lessons From Billion $ Founders, The Nelk Boys, & More

Aug 02, 2022·56:00·Sam & Shaan·Listen·AppleSpotify
0:0028:0056:00
15 moments · 190 paragraphs · synced to the second
SHAAN

the, uh, hospital software guy. Here's what he said, uh, you'll like this. His was simpler. He's like, he said, yeah, like, agree with all that stuff, uh, here's how we thought about it. Um, we need to have 500 salespeople that can sell $1 million worth of product a year, um, or 250, uh, oh, sorry, 500 that could sell half a million a year, or 250 that could sell $1 million as their sales quota per year. So we just work backwards from that. All right. What features, products, and like people do we need to like let a salesperson like get 500 salespeople that could sell half a million dollars a year of like sales quota? Like first, is that even possible? Can the, can this market support that? Yes. The market is very big. Hospitals spend a lot of money in healthcare and in our category they spend more than, you know, much more than that.

SAM

All right, we're live. So look, um, I— you said, Sean, that you didn't want to like do an event because you didn't want to travel. I decided to host one anyway. It's just like a meetup. But do you see the— you saw the link that I posted, like the Eventbrite thing? It's no big deal, but you see it?

SHAAN

Yeah, you posted like an event in New York with you, uh, and a bunch of our like kind of tech buddy friends.

SAM

No, just me and Sahil. I was just like, I want to just get out of I was like, I want to get out of the house. I want to do something. You said no. And dude, 1,000 people have RSVP'd and I have no idea where we're going to host it. I have no idea what we're going to do. I don't have a plan.

SHAAN

I know nothing. I don't know. It sounded like you had a plan. You were like, we're moving it to this other place and blah blah. It sounded like something's in the works.

SAM

Some guy DM'd me on Twitter and said, I'll help you find a venue. And I said, great, you're in charge. I don't know his name, but cool.

SHAAN

You're it. No takebacks.

SAM

Yeah, hope it works. And then I got Nick Gray, the, the small party guy, to come, and I was like, dude, just come and organize this and you could sell books there. But I don't know what I'm gonna do. Would it be lame if we just stand around and just say hi?

SHAAN

Yeah, kind of lame.

SAM

Well, what the fuck? What am I supposed to do, juggle?

SHAAN

I don't know, should have thought of that before you posted it, bro. Like, we did the live pod thing in Austin, Miami. And honestly, I don't think it was very good. I don't think listening to a podcast live is that entertaining.

SAM

And unless it's like a planned, like, comedy skit— unless, like, we, like, planned— like, if we had a bit, you know what I mean?

SHAAN

Scripted stage play.

SAM

Yeah, well, no, just like, uh, that's what comedians do, right? You know, it's like scripted, but they also kind of flow a little bit.

SHAAN

But yeah, or you're just so big that that people, like, simply the idea of seeing you live is that entertaining. Like, I don't think we're there yet. Like, I went to— Tim Ferriss did a live thing once, and it was just him sitting on a chair, fireside chat. Uh, I've seen the guys who do, um, whatever that political thing is, like Jon Favreau or whatever. They have like a political podcast, Pod Saves America or something like that. They do live shows, and people just like geek out about meeting them and seeing them. I don't think we're there yet. Um, and also just in general, I'm a big energy guy and basically my idea of a good time is where the energy is like steady up and rising to the right. And like, you know, my idea of any kind of bad time is a dip in energy. Like the same way people feel about awkward silences in a conversation, I feel about energy dips. Like if I sense the energy going low in any room or hangout, because that's what happens when you do, hey, we're two dudes from Twitter or a podcast. Let's talk in front of you or let's say hi. Like, it's just kind of lame, isn't it? Well, maybe the say hi is less lame.

SAM

That's not helpful though. I don't know what to do. I gotta, I have these people coming. I, here's what I think is going to happen. I think that they're not actually coming to see me. I'm just the excuse for all these Twitter dorks to see one another.

SHAAN

So I got an idea that I think would be dope that you could use for this. Um, or we could use for something else, but, uh, Basically, I was like, okay, um, like, I'll tell you, I went to this event in LA just now, uh, that my buddy Ramin threw. And it's like, whatever, there's a conference, but the day before the conference, there's like the dinner. And now this was like a baller dinner. It was like at, uh, the home of an NBA team owner. It's like on his rooftop looking at the beach. It was like beautiful, right? But like, even if it wasn't that baller of a surroundings, like the house wasn't that sick, this still would have been awesome because it was basically The table was full of like, basically there was two tables. Each table had like one really famous person and then like two kind of famous people. And then the rest were interesting but not famous people. And just simp— like there was a cocktail hour.

SAM

Which one, which one, which one of those were you?

SHAAN

I was the just interesting person.

SAM

Got it. Okay. I'm just trying to understand like the level of fame we're, we're talking about.

SHAAN

No, no, I'm talking about like real fame, like professional athlete, actor. That's that level of fame.

SAM

Which actors were there?

SHAAN

I can't say the names of anybody that was there. It was more athletes. It was an athlete event, not so much actors.

SAM

But like A-list people?

SHAAN

Uh, of athletes, it was like former A-list. It's like, or former B-list, let's say. It's like, uh, I, you know, I, you're not on the COVID of the video game, but like, you know, I remember your name. I've seen you play. I had you in the rookie card.

SAM

You know that gamer's attributes.

SHAAN

Yeah, I, I, yeah, exactly. I could tell. Yeah, exactly. I have memories of you playing the game, not like a benchwarmer. So anyways, but the, my point is these dinner table, like basically just like a table and whether that table is like you're playing poker or you're eating food or something like that, just like a round table of like 8 people where the expectation is that, hey, we're all here to get to know each other. Like we're all here to talk and then you kind of can rotate. I think we could do one of those for the MFM community where we take the like 10 or 15, like most baller guests. So it's like Andrew Wilkinson has his table. And you have your table, I have my table, and then Steph Smith has her table and Ben has his table. And like, we just do this with like, kind of like well-known business people. We take, you know, we get whoever, you know, our famous guests. So Rob Dyrdek, or we get Bology or whatever. We get some of these people to show up and then we curate the rest of the guest list is you are interesting, but you're not necessarily famous. So maybe you got a really interesting business. Maybe you're really like knowledgeable about some science or domain or something like that. You're just like a nerd in your own right. Um, but they're all fans and we basically just set up these tables and it's like, whatever, this room of 10 tables and whether it's food or poker or something, there's some activity to do while you're there, just casually while you're talking. And, uh, and you get to hop, so you get to rotate between, I don't know, 3 or 4 of these tables while you're there, random draws. And, uh, and like, that's the event. I think people have more fun with some, something like that cuz they participate than sitting in and, and watching other people talk. That's my, my personal guess. So I would do that. For an MFM event, bro.

SAM

Great, that's cool, but I have 1,000 people coming on a— can we have 10 people and 100-person tables?

SHAAN

It's just a lot. That's a lot of a lot. You don't have to let all 1,000— that was an interest list, that wasn't a you're accepted in, right?

SAM

I don't know. I made— this was a toilet event. I made it on my phone. I was on toilet and I tweeted it out and it worked.

SHAAN

Here's what I think you should do. I think you should, uh, whatever, you do something the Sam way. You're like, all right everybody, we're all meeting in this junkyard and we're going to look for cool scraps and like that'll filter out people you want to hang out with. It'll be a no headache event. And then separately, I will host this cool event that's well planned and you just have to show up to that. You don't have to do any work.

SAM

Um, whatever. We'll see. Uh, can I talk to you about one thing really quick? And then I want to hear about your event, dude. Have you listened to the Full Send podcast?

SHAAN

Uh, like not regularly, but I've definitely seen clips like when they had Dana White or Mark Cuban. I see a bunch of clips.

SAM

I don't exactly understand what Full Send is, but I know they're incredibly popular. Like it's, I don't know if it's like a boy band where it's like 4 guys doing something or if it's just the 2 main guys and the rest are co-hosts, but it's basically a group of like, yeah, go ahead.

SHAAN

Can I explain what it is roughly? So I'm also not an expert, but it's basically the group is the Nelk Boys. That's like the main name of the group. Full Send is like their brand and one of their podcasts and stuff like that.. But these guys are basically, the way I think about it is they are like what Jackass was when we were growing up. That's what the Nelk Boys are now. So the, so Jackass back in the day was basically guys doing, you know, stunts, pranks, you know, punching each other's balls, basically a group of guys who are kind of like, they're willing to go all out for your entertainment and their own amusement. They kind of, um, they, they, they live a certain lifestyle and it's kind of like the, like, If you take a boys like fantasy, you just like crank it up to 12. It's like, that's what these guys do. The Nelk Boys are a little bit like that. They make YouTube videos. They got big on YouTube. They also have a bunch of brands. So they have one brand that's basically an equivalent of Girls Gone Wild. It's like a paid membership club that's like for photos or videos of something. I don't know.

SAM

I didn't know about that. What's that called?

SHAAN

That's called— I don't know, Ben, find the name of that one. Um, so that's one of their businesses that I think is really smart. Probably prints money. They have merch that they drop and they've done merch drops. Uh, they like show the live stream when they're like doing it. Obviously there's a little bit of hype, but like whatever. They're basically like the Shopify dropshipper bro on steroids. They'll do like $2 or $3 million worth of sales in like 5 minutes when they do a drop.

SAM

Uh, so the New York Times, well, New York Times said last year they did about $80 million in revenue, which is pretty good, but right.

SHAAN

$50 million in merchandise, it says, I think.

SAM

Yeah, and then it said they're on track to do 8 or maybe 70 the next year, and this article is a year old. And then, uh, they have this new shtick going on, an NFT. They got all types of crap. But then if you go to that link that I sent you, each guy has like a video page. And one of these guys, his name is Steve, and I think this is like a point where I realized I'm out of touch. He's just like giving away a million dollars in every video.

SHAAN

Literally like MrBeast playbook.

SAM

But he's like giving to— he's like, here, I just gave this guy $100,000 watch. I just gave this family $2 million. And in all these videos, he goes, yeah, I'm gonna go, uh, give this guy a car. And then he was with Dana, and he goes, I'm gonna, uh, Dana, I just got this $400,000 van made. It's yours. Um, on one of the videos, they gave a guy $250,000 in cash for his birthday. On another thing, they're giving away $200,000 just to her family in need. Like, so whatever, find videos. But he's doing these multiple times a month. These guys are gonna run out of money, right?

SHAAN

I have no idea how they give this much away, or if they actually give it away.

SAM

It's so much.

SHAAN

It's so much. It's actually just like, you know, you know, like a stage thing, or if there's some like caveats or whatever.

SAM

I have no idea. They show his apartment. They show the guy's apartment and he's got his watch collection. And I know a little bit of watches. It's literally $3 million worth of Rolexes.

SHAAN

And then it's like, yeah, well, I believe that they could have dope stuff, but literally giving away millions of dollars, kind of crazy. And if I look at his YouTube channel, he does do that sometimes, but like he has other ones like, here's my $3 million man cave, here's, you know, uh, here's me, you know, whatever, buying this car or racing this car. So that, that's a little different than giving it away. But, um, I know, like, so did you watch when MrBeast was doing this when he would go and he would basically give away $30,000, $50,000 or he'd go into a Twitch stream that has like 2 viewers. He would just drop $20 grand in a donation and the person would freak out and that clip would go viral.

SAM

Like, yeah.

SHAAN

Did you see those? And do you know how he was doing those?

SAM

I know, I know they exist and I saw them. I don't know like anything about behind it.

SHAAN

One of the things that he was doing, I don't know if this is the full story, Ben, maybe, you know, you're friends with MrBeast, so maybe, you know, you know, he seems to consider you one of his top 3 closest friends. Uh, that's just playing. Um, you may know better, but I remember meeting one guy who worked at this site called Quid, Quib, something like that. Quid, I think it was. And basically Quid was like these, like, I don't know, little collectible stickers and cards or something like that. Um, it was kind of like aimed at a teenage audience. And what they did was they would go to MrBeast and they would say, hey, we'll pay you $50,000 for a sponsored video. And the genius of MrBeast was he was like, Cool. But here's what we're gonna do. The, that's not you paying me for a shout out midway through one of my videos. Let's make the video about using $50,000 in an interesting way. How about that? And so he would do these videos where he would be like, I'm gonna go to this coffee shop and I'm gonna tip the barista $15,000 and let's see her reaction. And he would go and he would tip her. She would have this crazy reaction. He'd be like, thanks so much to our guys at Quiv who made this possible., you know, go check them out. They do this thing, right? That video would get like 5 million or 10 million views. And so for the, for Quibb or whatever, they were like, dude, this is great. Like we're getting way more bang for our buck than any other influencer shoutout we're doing. So then they would up the ante. They would do $50,000, $100,000, $200,000. 'Cause each video he was getting like 10 million views. And it was this like perfectly, like, I forgot what it's called in biology where like the parasite actually helps you. It like sucks out the toxins. So the parasite's getting food, but you're also getting healed. It was basically like a symbiotic relationship like that where the, the brand was basically putting up loads of cash and he was using that to create huge amounts of views and subscribers to make himself the biggest.

SAM

I don't think these guys have— that's cool. I don't think these guys have sponsors.

SHAAN

Well, they must have it somewhere, right? Like the model must be that either it's the same thing. The money comes in one, one door, then they reinvest it in stuff like this because they know that seems to be a pretty good formula. I give away, you know, I give— I'm going to give this family in the hood $100,000, uh, you know, let's see what happens. And it's him standing with like 3, you know, 3 Mexican people in front of Home Depot. That's literally the, the second most recent video, and it's got 2.7 million views. So clearly that works.

SAM

This video will monetize, um, and then on top of that, that's, that's their whole shtick, is they got banned, they can't monetize their videos.

SHAAN

Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't know how it's sustainable. Maybe it's not sustainable.

SAM

But by the way, and it's also explicit. I don't think you could put ads on an explicit channel. But just like the economics behind what these guys are doing, it's, it's, it's outrageous to me. Something is crazy. I, I, I don't think I'm the— I, I think when I see this and I predict that they're gonna go broke, I don't think I'm the crazy one.

SHAAN

Yeah, maybe, uh, I could see that. I could also see these things being money printers. So like in the same way that I think the Jackass franchise ultimately was successful, right? You see like, oh dude, there's like a midget in a thong, you know, kicking this other guy in the balls. You're like, well, this doesn't seem like good business. But in actuality, as long as they have a good man, as long as they have their Kris Jenner in the background, that's like, yeah, go act the fool. Like, this is, this is what drives ratings, then this will work. And like, the New York Times headline about them is, what won't the Nelk Boys do? And this is like, how— like, that's a brand, right? That's a really powerful, valuable brand to own. Is the question isn't what do they do, it's what they— what won't they do? It's like they do pranks, parties, crude humor. They get in trouble, but the backlash is the brand. That's literally the headline. Now, would they go broke? I don't know. I don't know enough about them. But, you know, I'm, I'm actually a fan of what they do. I think they're pretty cool. We should get them on the pod. I want to hear their business.

SAM

I agree. I think one of their manager asked to come on. Maybe we can talk to them. I heard a story about a friend, a person I know who made $60 million a handful of years ago, living in— living out of their car now. I learned that this week.

SHAAN

What?

SAM

So I know a person who made $60 million like 10 years ago and now they are homeless.

SHAAN

Yeah, dude, that's crazy. That's not even crazy. That's normal, bro. Like, Jack Dorsey is like, you know, starts two multibillion-dollar companies and then like actively tries to dress like, you know, a homeless guy. Like, you know, Doesn't— that's the thing you do when you get rich. You then go on some journey to like find the meaning of life. In fact, I was telling somebody this the other day, we were reminiscing. It's like, dude, at the event, I was like, dude, I haven't seen you in so many years. Like, oh, when was the last time I saw you? It was like, remember we were advising that kid on his company and we were both afterwards like, yeah, but that's never gonna work. Like, you know, yeah, I, uh, good kid, but like, you know, he'll be, maybe he'll be successful in like 5 years.. And then his company currently is like a multi-billion dollar company. And I was like, now that motherfucker's 25 years old running around like with a huge beard trying to like figure out, like basically trying to figure out the meaning of life. Like, oh shit, you're on a spiritual journey already. Damn it. You're like, you are so far ahead of us now after we kind of were joking around about how, you know, you don't have this thing figured out. That is the part, like the classic tech cliché is to like be like, get, I made all this money so that I'm going to live like somebody who has no money. That's like the stereotype.

SAM

I want to get to your event, but really quick, one more thing, because this is the new cliché. So I hate talking about these guys, but Elon, um, in the Wall Street Journal, it came out yesterday that Elon Musk slept with Sergey Brin, the guy who started Google. His wife and Sergey aren't friends at all. Elon tweeted two things that were hilarious. The one, he goes, this isn't true. I haven't had sex in forever.

SHAAN

I haven't had sex in months. Yeah. And then the next thing— sigh— like a middle school girl.

SAM

And then the next thing that he tweeted was, here's me and Sergey hanging out right now on a boat. And it's them like drinking wine together, like partying.

SHAAN

Did he post a picture?

SAM

Yes. Or yeah, either he did or someone did it. He replied to it, said, yeah, that was us literally yesterday.

SHAAN

That's so funny. Yeah, it's so funny. Here's what I— here's how I was feeling about this. I was like, all right, I saw the— saw the news break or whatever. It was like scoop on the Wall Street Journal, scoop, exclusive scoop, Elon Musk sleeping with whatever, blah, blah, blah. And, and I was like, okay, that's kind of interesting, I guess. Like, all right, got some TMZ shit. And I was like, well, pretty sad for like, you know, the Wall Street— it was the Wall Street Journal. Pretty sad that that's like the Wall Street Journal thing. But of course I get it. If I had that story, I'd publish it too. No doubt. Then he tweets out like the, like the thing, like not true and haven't had sex in months. Sigh. And I was like, ah, now another sad thing. Like first Wall Street Journal disappointed me, then Elon Musk disappointed me. Like, dude, I want my billionaires like being cool. Not like, dude, that was like my MSN like away message, you know, just a cry for attention back in middle school or high school. I was like, oh man. Wouldn't be nice to get a— like, I wonder what a kiss feels like, you know, some shit like that. It's like, dude, lame. And then I was like, well, so did the Wall Street Journal just make that up? Because that's even lamer. So it was just like a lame sandwich that I was not into.

SAM

Uh, but I just thought it was hilarious how he, he tweeted a picture of him and Sergey just hanging out. Uh, I enjoy the drama. I'm here for it. I don't care about the cars. I don't care about the solar stuff. I just like this type of crap.

SHAAN

Yeah, somebody had this great tweet. They were like, uh, Elon Musk is like, you know, he's on some pirate shit. He's taking over companies like Twitter. He's trying to like conquer new lands like Mars. He's sleeping with his friend's girlfriends. Like, he's, he's on, he's on that pirate shit. And I was like, oh yeah, it's true. That's cool if true. But it sounds like, you know, maybe this one's not actually true.

SAM

All right, what's this? What's this event?

SHAAN

Uh, by the way, we forgot to say on the Milk Boys, they have like their beer, which I think is also like a big thing. Their Happy Dad, like like seltzer or beer or whatever the heck that is. Um, Happy Dad is like everywhere on Instagram. Like it's like the main brand.

SAM

I've seen a lot of people drink it. Yeah.

SHAAN

Um, I've seen a ton of people drink it. All right. So I wanna tell you some things about this event, and these are gonna be kind of rapid fire little nuggets. You can choose to say the following. You can either say, that's stupid and I'll simply move on. I won't defend it. You'll say, that's cool. I have nothing to add and I'll simply move on. Or we could talk about any of these things. All right. So I go to this event in LA, uh, my buddy Ramin, who, uh, we run our fund together. He hosts this event. Um, and it's basically like athletes and big shot investors. So at this event, we're like 3 or 4 owners of like sports teams. So these are basically like billionaires or billionaire families, like legacy families.

SAM

How did he get these people?

SHAAN

They just wanted to come, I guess. I don't know. He just cold reached out that he's not paying anybody and it's a free event. So there's nothing, there's like no money to be made, but this is just like in network. Then there's pro athletes, mostly retired athletes, but some active players, like kind of like some guys from the Lakers, some guys from other, other teams that are younger guys, but then some older guys that are retired and they're like onto the next phase of their, their business life. And they maybe are doing content now. They got like a media brand or they doing real estate or whatever. And so the idea was, let's get together like 50 people from the world of sports and 50 people from the world of like tech and business and let's see what happens. So I went last year, I went this year again, and I have a couple of like little stories. So the first is, um, I'm gonna tell you, there was one talk that was good. There was, it was like a bunch of talks on the day of the conference. Um, there was only one talk that I thought was good. And by the way, that's shitting on myself too. I, I was, I hosted a panel too. I didn't think was very good. Um, but the one was really good. It was basically lessons from billion-dollar founders. So onstage was the CEO of Carta. So, uh, Carta, they do cap table management. They're a multi-billion-dollar company. Um, something called, um, oh shoot, what was it? It's like a therapy app. The name will come to me. It's basically like BetterHelp. It's like a BetterHelp, but it's not them. It's like some other company. Talkspace. Uh, another one, but basically they, they basically do like therapy and mental health. Um,, uh, through telemedicine, like online. And, uh, and then there's another one that was like some hospital software, Athelos. And then there was, uh, this most interesting one, just something called Relativity Space. And by the way, you could basically tell, you know, I wouldn't say that the most interesting person at a conference is always the one who dresses differently, but somebody who's dressed very differently is almost always very interesting at these conferences. Uh, last year when I was there, I told you I saw this kid who looked like a breakdancer wearing this like tie-dye shirt with like a black stud earring. It looked different than every other suit in the room, and it was the founder of Bolt, who now has become a lot more famous because he went on these Twitter tirades and Bolt is a multibillion-dollar company and all this stuff. But I met him there and invested in his company because I was like, this dude's just really interesting. So that happened again. This guy's the founder of Relativity Space. He's competing with Elon. His two competitors are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. No big deal. I'm competing with the world's richest man and second richest man, basically.

SAM

Is this Tim Ellis?

SHAAN

Tim Ellis, yeah. And so I'm just gonna share with you two things. One is this dude's company is insane. So Relativity Space, what they do is they 3D print rockets and then they send them into space. So basically there's a huge, huge demand for rocketry. So, but the ability to take satellites up to space to do, you know, some scientific missions, whatever. And right now SpaceX is like the number one, Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos' company, is number two, and Relativity Space is number three. Uh, but they kind of have a, a, a a differentiator, which is all those other companies, like, to build a rocket, they need like whatever, hundreds of parts, like specialty parts, and they might 3D print individual parts, but like the whole thing is like a very expensive, complex structure that where a million things can go wrong. Whereas these guys basically 3D print the entire rocket, um, with only a couple extra parts. And, uh, and so because of that, they're like, you know, cheaper and whatever. He said this line, this throwaway line, he's like, So he's explaining, he's like, you know, our mission is to make humanity, like humanity multiplanetary through 3D printing rockets. We're one of only two companies on Earth that has a mission of making the human race like multiplanetary. The other is SpaceX. He goes, the launch market today is $8 billion a year. So $8 billion gets spent launching things into space and is growing to $30 billion. There's really only three companies that possibly can serve this right now. And he's like, you know, we, in the last three months, we have, We've sold over $1.2 billion in launch sales. I was like, what?

SAM

Dude, he started the company when he was 25. He's 32 now.

SHAAN

So he used to work at Jeff Bezos' company, Blue Origin.

SAM

As an intern, his Wikipedia says, as an intern.

SHAAN

And he was trying to do 3D printing there. He was like, hey, I think this is one of the ways we can dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of rockets. And it was like, yeah, nice R&D, but it wasn't the main way they were doing things. So he left and he starts this thing. He goes, we have 850 employees, 500 are ex-SpaceX. And I thought that was literally the funniest shit anybody could say. I was like, what kind of absurd statement is that? That's so amazing to me. Um, and he's like, you know, we have a launch site now. That was like the big progress last year. We have a launch site, so we're gonna be doing our first big, like, uh, like our, I don't know if our first big or next big launch there. There are only 4 launch sites in the country. None have been built since 1960, and we now have exclusive rights to one for the next 25 years. It's like, you know, he's basically— because in this talk, he's like, what makes a company worth so much? Because people will see me, okay, I'm a young guy, I'm a young guy, company's not that old, and it's worth how many billions of dollars? Like, that's crazy. And he's like, well, here's what we did. He's like, we hopped into an emerging wave. So we basically like, there's surging demand for, um, for going in for missions into space, for satellites and more. Um, there's not enough supply. No, there's basically like not much competition. Everybody's sort of scared away. So in actuality, like just going into the space, we're not competing with most companies. Um, the next one is, you know, we, um, basically we're like defensibility. We have a launch site. There's only 4 of these. None have been built in like, you know, 60 years. And, um, and we have, we have one of them. And so like, you know, we just wanted to do this. It's hard.

SAM

What's this have to do with the billionaire lessons?

SHAAN

Well, these are lessons. What does it take to build a billion-dollar company? These are the core elements, like defensibility. That's, you know, that's one of their moats. The next one is like this, like this extreme imbalance in supply and demand.

SAM

Uh, dude, how lame must you feel if you're like a software guy like Carta, like following this guy? You know what I mean?

SHAAN

Well, they each had to say their thing, so I'll tell you what each of 'em said. So this is what this guy was saying. All right, the next guy, the, the telehealth guy, or that's not telehealth, sorry, the, uh, hospital software guy. Here's what he said. Uh, you'll like this. His was simpler. He's like, he said, yeah, like agree with all that stuff. Uh, here's how we thought about it. Um, we need to have 500 salespeople that can sell $1 million worth of product a year. Um, or 250, uh, oh, sorry, 500 that could sell half a million a year or 250 that could sell $1 million as their sales quota per year. So we just work backwards from that. All right, what features, products, and like people do we need to like let a salesperson, like get 500 salespeople that can sell half a million dollars a year of like sales quota? Like first, is that even possible? Can the, can this market support that? Yes, the market is very big. Hospitals spend a lot of money in healthcare and in our category they spend more than, you know, much more than that. Okay, cool. So it's possible. Then he's like, all of our product team, they know they work for sales. And I thought that was very different than what most people say. He's like, Silicon Valley loves to preach that like product is king, product is the god. You just need a great product. He was like, we build great product if it's gonna help us sell better. And like we build great customer support so that it helps us sell better. Everything is in service of sales. So I really like that guy's kind of like one-liner approach. The Carter guy basically was like, um, you know, we, uh, he's like, here's how I think about it. He's like, you need, uh, you need to, he basically is like, you want to find a multi-billion dollar wave if you're going to be a billion dollar company. He's like, so find an emerging wave. So for example, the telehealth guy, his is that, his was that, uh, mental health coverage was now required. So like a bunch of, I don't know if it's like insurance companies or companies, They were now requiring that like, uh, mental health is part of a healthcare package. He's like, that changed. He goes, second thing that changed was mental health is getting destigmatized. You're seeing all kinds of famous people talking about mental health. It's not like this taboo subject like it was 10 years ago.

SHAAN

That, that exact, that's exactly what he was saying. And the last one he mentioned was like the pandemic was another inflection because it forced everybody, if they needed a doctor visit, to do a, a video one. So it's like a, everybody had to try it for this 2-year period. And so video visits and telemedicine, not now the hospitals know they need to have it. Doctors know they need to be willing to do this, and patients have like tried it once. Uh, all right, the next thing he goes, he goes team, he goes billion-dollar companies are almost never bootstrapped. So you kind of have to know that going in, like if you're gonna build a billion-dollar company, you almost certainly are gonna raise money because you're gonna hire A+ players. They need to have an A+ mission. And secondly, you need to have a high-velocity customer acquisition model. And I just thought that phrase is very good. High-velocity customer acquisition model. It's something you could just kind of ask yourself. Do I or don't I have a high velocity customer acquisition model? Every business wants one pretty much. Um, and you gotta say like, okay, what's our current velocity? So at what rate are we currently adding customers? How high would it need to be for us to get there? And like, what are we gonna do to make this, this little wheel spin faster?

SAM

Um, all right. But let me ask this.

SHAAN

So that, I thought that was good.

SAM

Those 4 guys, it was 4 people, right? 4 guys.

SHAAN

Yeah. Yeah.

SAM

Did, were they a tired and exhausted looking? And B, do you think they're happy?

SHAAN

All right, I'm gonna give you the scale. The mental health guy honestly looked not tired and happy. Um, he was like fit. He didn't have like crazy bags under his eyes. He like spoke with energy and he was like sitting upright.

SAM

That makes sense. Uh, that checks out.

SHAAN

Carta guy, he looked calm. Like he didn't look like he was facing death, but he looked like he like had been facing death for some extended period of time.

SAM

He only has 5 lives.

SHAAN

Kind of hunched over. Yeah, like, you know, I could tell he wasn't in bad shape at all, but, you know, like, didn't look like, you know, he was springing around with energy necessarily, right? Space guy, that guy looked like he just walked in. He looked like he just walked out of a room, you know, like those scenes in Game of Thrones where like, oh shoot, we're going to war, and the guy like gets up and out of his bed scramble like 4 nude women, and he's like, ah, okay, yeah, let me just go do my next thing. That's how this guy looked. He had the swagger of a guy in Game of Thrones who was just sleeping with 4 women, 4 beautiful women. He had the Tyrion Lannister energy. Um, he— and that's when he was like, yeah, billion dollars in sales in the last 3 months. And like, you know, we have 500x SpaceX employees. Yeah, they leave Elon to come.

SAM

So he seemed like he was happy.

SHAAN

That's the energy he was carrying. He looked happy.

SAM

Damn. Well, fuck you guys, right?

SHAAN

I, I was sitting with him at lunch and he was asking questions to everybody else. And like, that was one of the most— that was one of the coolest parts of this event. I don't know how they did it, but nobody had an ego. Like, everybody who was there, I don't know if they just filtered people out who had egos, or they're just like, everybody got the vibe, which is like, everybody here is equally valuable. Be curious about others. You're not just like the star. And all these people are used to being the star. It's like, yeah, you're— you own that, that NBA team, you own that football team. Or like you're like this superstar. Like, you know, the guy on my panel with me, I think he had like, you know, $90 million. He had a 90— he just signed like a $90 million contract. He's like one of the highest paid NFL players. And the guy was like, dude, I'm just here to learn, man. I would love to, you know, subscribe to your newsletter and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, wow, this is incredible. You are going to go so far in life because you are obviously skilled and successful, but you're so humble. It was crazy.

SAM

Damn, how many people were there?

SHAAN

About 100, 120, maybe.

SAM

Romain organized this?

SHAAN

Yeah. So basically Romain and then Tribe, which is like a VC fund. Um, uh, Tribe was one of the hosts and then TPG, which is like one of the biggest private equity companies in the world.

SAM

Like, why is this guy working with you?

SHAAN

$120 billion. What?

SAM

Why is this guy working with you, bro?

SHAAN

I always have that Tyrion Lannister energy regardless of what my situation is.

SAM

Holy crap, this guy's amazing. Well, that's badass. That was in LA.

SHAAN

It was in LA. I'm gonna give you a couple other things that I, I took away from this. Ben, so Ben Levy, who's not producer Ben, my business partner Ben, he has a superpower that we talk about. Now, have I told you about his superpower?

SAM

His superpower to me is, um, people just tell him shit and he just smiles and laughs and then he uses it against them. If, if he needs to.

SHAAN

He's a fucking trust magnet. Yeah. I don't know what he does. Everybody trusts him. Like me and you, I've known you for, I don't know how long. I've known you for like 8 years. We spent time together. We've gone through ups and downs, adversity. We've, I've seen each other, whatever. We know each other very well. You might have met Ben twice in your life, but even you will be like, if you, if there's something interesting or something going on, you like text Ben, like, dude, my new business is doing awesome or something like that. And he just has that pull with people. Everybody wants to talk to Ben. Everybody wants to tell him about things.

SAM

He's so enthusiastic.

SHAAN

I don't know what it is, but I saw his super on blast. So I'm gonna tell you a little story here, and I don't even know how much we can take away from this. I'm just gonna kind of explain that it happened just so that, just cuz I think it was amazing. And because I think that if there is a way to learn this skill, everybody should learn it. I'm trying to learn it myself. So I'm gonna talk out loud about it. So we go to this event. At the event, I get a text from Ben. Ben sitting across the room. We, we split up at the events. We don't always just sit together and just only talk to each other because that kind of defeats the purpose. And he's like, yo, the dude next to you is awesome. And I go, who? He goes, that's Chris Johnson. Or that's this guy who he trains some of the best NBA players on the planet. And I was like, oh really? I'm a big NBA fan. I was like, I don't know this guy. You must follow him on Instagram. Ben's just even deeper down the rabbit hole. So I was like, okay, cool. But I was like, I don't know what to do with that information. I guess like if the opportunity kind of presents itself, I'll go introduce myself. Like, you know, I have nothing to— yeah, I don't know how to force my way in. He seems busy right now, but okay. Ben does something where he— I don't know, I don't know what he did, but he approached this guy. Ben approached this guy and he starts talking to him. And I think two things happen. I think number one, in a room full of the guys who are usually on screen, um, this guy who himself is obviously like a heavy hitter in his space a lot, the average Joe did not know who he was, right? Like every tech nerd who was in there doesn't know who this guy is. Even people who liked sports probably didn't know that this guy's like the, you know, the skills trainer for all these top guys. And I'm talking about like this guy will train with Dwyane Wade and LeBron James and like other guys like that, like the top of the top. And Ben goes up to him, he's like, dude, I follow you, man. I love your videos. He gives him a compliment. They start chatting a little bit. I don't know what Ben said next, but I think I'm gonna skip to the end and we'll fill in the middle. The end is the event's over, everybody's leaving, people going to the airport. This guy comes up to me and he, he's, I'm talking to Ben, we're just figuring out if we're gonna get our Uber. He goes, I knew I was coming to this event for a reason, but I didn't know why. This man was the reason.

SAM

He points at Ben.

SHAAN

No way. And I go, what? And I was like, what do you mean? Like, what did he do? He's like, I don't even know, man. He goes, this— I am so happy I met this guy, Ben. I will always remember our conversation. He goes, he said something. He goes like, he goes, he's like, he's, he's like, bro, brother, anything you need, anything you need, I got you. And I was like, and he— this is not the type of guy— he's not schmoozing. This is not— this is a guy where when words come out of his mouth, they mean something. And I'm just like, I'm just sitting there. I'm not even laughing. I'm not even asking questions. I'm speechless. I get this look on my face like What the fuck did you do, Ben? How did you do this again? And Ben, still, he's just smiling. He doesn't even say anything back to this guy. He's just smiling. And I go, I go, what? I go, what did he— I go, what happened, man? Why? He goes, I guess I don't even— he goes, I don't even know. He doesn't even know the spell he's under. He goes, I don't even know. Because, you know, I'm a trainer, man. I work with athletes. When they need something, they call me. When they're in a slump, they call me. When they're trying to get better, they call me. When they want their next contract, they call me. I help these guys get paid. I'm always helping. I drive to this guy's house, I drive here, I fly there, I do this, I do that. I'm always pouring into other people. He goes, Ben, you filled me up. You poured into me today, man. And I was like, what just happened? I was so amazed. And the guy goes, the guy goes, when are you flying out? And Ben's like, tomorrow. He goes, come train with us tomorrow. Ben goes with him the next morning to his facility and does a session. The guy spends 2 hours correcting Ben's form. There's other NBA players there. He's locked into Ben. Ben sends me this video. He's wearing like a fucking weighted vest. He's got a glove on his hand because this guy like invented a shooting glove. He made an experience out of it for Ben and I really appreciate that. Like, this guy didn't have to do that. That was incredibly nice of this guy. He was just very like, I don't know, he was very like, you could see why this guy works with so many people because there's something magnetic about this guy's personality.

SAM

What's his name?

SHAAN

But 2 magnets met, dude. And I don't know how— I don't know what Ben's superpower is. I don't know how he does this consistently. These sorts of things happen where people are just very attracted to him in this way. I don't know what it is, but he's amazing. It's—

SAM

you know who else is really good at that?

SHAAN

Me. Who?

SAM

I'm fucking good at that. I'm good at that.

SHAAN

You are good at that. Can I tell you something?

SAM

I'm not that good, but I'm good. Yeah.

SHAAN

This data is wrong every freaking time.

SAM

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

SHAAN

Whoa. I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from 3 days ago. I totally missed HubSpot. Grow better. So yesterday, we'll talk about it in a second, but yesterday I did an interview with Martin Shkreli and, um, and I wanted it to go well. I was like, yeah, okay, you know, I think people could be interested in this. Let me do a good job. And I'm 5 minutes into the interview and I find myself doing the like bullshit socialize. I'm like, haha, yeah, I'm like smiling, I'm laughing. I'm like, so that must have been hard for you to blah blah blah. And what would you say? I'm just like falling into some fucking like script. Like, I don't know what I like became some character, this like generic podcast character. And literally the thought in my head was, Sam would never do this. Sam would like— he's, he said something, he was like, he was talking about like, uh, how he like, he's like, yeah dude, I, I like got a contraband cell phone. I was on the internet the whole time I was in prison. And I was like, and I was like, uh, I started to, and I was like, dude, if Sam—

SAM

oh no, you know what I would ask, right? What, what websites were you using?

SHAAN

Like, what were you, what were you doing? You would have been like, wait, what? How do you get in there? Do you like get it like You have to put it between your butt cheeks. And like, you would have said something like that to kind of disarm him, to get him to share an interesting nugget. And you would have just genuinely been like, wait, what the hell? Like, hold on. No. And you would have just reacted like a normal person rather than like, that's fascinating. You know, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on blah, blah, blah. It's like, dude, that's podcaster versus real person. And so I like literally switched into Sam mode and I started being like, I was like, what are you doing? And then he shares this hilarious thing. He goes, yeah, dude. And you, you, you would've been like, how much was it? I was like, how much you get the phone for? He's like, dude, he is crazy. He's like, you have to buy these things for like thousands of dollars. He's like, I paid $15,000 for one phone. And I thought, shit, this phone must be made outta gold because he's like, but you have to do it because to get the phone in, they gotta grease, you know, one guy to get one guy to get another guy. You gotta bribe 5 guys to get this in. And so like, you know, you gotta pay that vig. And he's like, most guys, I was like, so what do you use it for? Exactly your question. He goes, He goes, yeah, most guys just use it for porn. He's like, he's like, but me, I'm in, I'm on GitHub and like Khan Academy and porn. I did that too. But like, you know, I was one of the only guys using this for like advanced math also, you know, under the covers listening to this. And that little magic moment that came out.

SAM

Yeah, it was crazy.

SHAAN

It's like, that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen unless you kind of act the way that you act, that Ben acts, where it's like, yours is a little different. Yours is like, you get to like real talk really fast. Ben just kind of like seems so curious and earnest. I think that people really like— they like how genuinely interested he is in their life and how helpful he tries to be without like seeking anything or talking about himself.

SAM

Have you read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People?

SAM

And I never read it. That book, that book like changed my life. And in one of the chapters, he talks about how there was a story of a man like sitting with the, with a young guy and the young guy like wanted something like a job or something from the, from the older guy. But the young guy, you know, used Dale Carnegie's practices and basically like he just listened to him the entire time. And, you know, the older guy did all the talking. And at the end of the, the end of the conversation, the older guy goes, wow, this was the best conversation I've ever had with anyone ever. And the younger guy was like, well, I didn't say a word. So, but like that, that's funny how that works. And the older guy goes like, you know, you should— we're friends now. You should come in, like, apply at our company, you know, like things like that. And that, like, changed my life when I learned— when I learned that strategy. And so when I want to get stuff from people, I usually amp them up. So I'll do one of two things. One, I'll either insult them a little bit, like if I know that their business is doing above $100 million in revenue, I'll be like, that's a nice little business. What do you guys do, like $50 million? Like, and then they're going to, like, tell me the exact— so I'll, like, make them a little. Or the thing that I do more often than not is I just encourage them like crazy, like, Wow, you did that? You are so amazing. You're my hero, dude. How did you do that? You know, and they'll like start like gushing and I'll just make them feel really good about themselves. This sounds manipulative, which I guess it is, but I don't think it's a bad manipulative. But yeah, it works.

SHAAN

Yeah. The way I put it is like you go to these events to make connections with new people, right? That's the point. Oh, we wouldn't go to an event if it wasn't for that. But it's kind of hard to do that. I find myself like feeling uncomfortable in a lot of those situations, you know, like Okay, I need to introduce myself to this person. How do I quickly, you know, like, are they interested in me? Am I interested in them? There's very much like a, like a dating component to that, to this, like a speed dating component to these events. And you sort of see their eyes start to wander. It's like, oh, they're clearly like looking for the next conversation or like, you know, the bathroom or some excuse to get out of this sort of thing. Or you're like, or you find yourself tuning out because you're like, oh shoot, I'm just kind of judging them like really quickly. Like everybody's got something to offer. I just want to, I should be in the mode of like finding out what that is rather than like looking at their badge and trying to figure out like, are you, you know, valuable at this conference or not? That's sort of a stupid way to do it. But like, I am fascinated with Ben and this guy Chris. Their, their ability to connect was so strong. Like the way Chris talked to me too, I felt like a friend of his within 2 minutes. And it's not 'cause he was manipulating me. No, he's just like, that's his energy he carries around. So if I think about why has he been able to connect with these athletes who everybody wants to connect with them, everybody wants to connect with LeBron James, everybody wants to connect with Kevin Durant. Everybody wants to connect with Dwyane Wade. How does this guy do it? Well, obviously he's gotta be good at his job, but that's not enough. You also have to have the people skills. He told me a story. I think I could share this on here. By the way, he, he wants to come on the pod. I'll tell, tell him to come on. But he told, he told me the story. So I don't know if you pay, you probably don't pay attention to this, but did any of the people who you met listen? Oh yeah, there were some people who listened to the pod.

SAM

Uh, nice.

SHAAN

Got 'em. Yeah, not a, not, not a ton I would say, but like definitely a few. Um, one of the franchise owners listens, which is kind of cool. Really? Um, and so, or like he had listened. I don't know if he's super regular, but, um, uh, so, so, okay. So he was, so basically this guy was talking about the, the trainer, he was talking about like, uh, uh, fear. And so he, so he was like, he was, somehow we got on the topic of fear. He's like, yeah, man. I, he's like, I work with these guys in the gym. They can hit like, you know, whatever, 80, 90, shit, 93 pointers in a row, like 80, 90%. But in the game it's obviously lower. And sure, it's the speed is there, the defense is a little tighter, but like take free throws, there's no defense, there's no speed. Still, the guys in the gym perform one way and in the game they perform another. And it's 'cause there's a huge mental component to this. He's like, so I train their mental just as much as their physical. And he's like, you know, um, LeBron recently went to play at this thing called the Drew League.

SAM

I don't know if you've ever seen this, but it's basically like, yeah, I saw it.

SHAAN

It's in downtown LA. It's like in the hood, basically the Drew League. LeBron, I don't think has ever played. And it's usually like kind of like former players or like fringe guys, journeyman guys who wanna make his league. They're very good at basketball, but they're not like stars. And, um, LeBron was like, I'm thinking about going and dropping in and just playing. And, and this trainer was like, that would be awesome, man. That would like mean a lot. Like, I think it would mean a lot to the people. I think you would, you would have fun. It's a legacy thing. Like just, it's like one time Kevin Durant went to Rucker Park and he played in Rucker Park. He dropped like 50 points or something like that. And the crowd like mobbed him. They just like ended the game because the crowd just rushed him because he was being so awesome. And he just like hit a 3 from, from half court basically. And like, he just gets mobbed by people. It was like this very memorable thing. And so the guy was like, you should do it. But like LeBron has a lot to lose at something like this, right? LeBron's already one of the best players in the world, already one of the richest, most famous athletes in the world. So he doesn't need the fame. He's not going to get any money. He's not going to get better, like just by playing in this one game with people who are worse than him. Like, um, And there's plenty of things that could go wrong. Like he could get hurt, he could get dunked on or embarrassed in some way, crossed over in some way, like, you know, that sort of thing. Or he could just like miss shots and like, oh man, he went and it was like, dude, you couldn't even like, you weren't, you ain't all that. Like, you know, it wasn't like hype. So he had something to lose and, um, but he decided to go. And then the trainer was, she like pulls up his cell phone. It's like the NBA All-Star Game is his iMessage. Like just one star after another. He's like, He clicks the text message with him. He's like, he told, he's like, I told him your victory is in your vulnerability. Like this, you felt you were vulnerable. That's why this was a win for you. Cause he went, it was amazing. Everybody loved it. He played super well, dropped 40 points and like, it was awesome. Uh, and the clips go viral on Instagram and people really respect him for it. And he goes, you remember that your victory is in your vulnerability. And he looked around the circle. He was just like, remember that. And all of us were like nodding like, yes sir. I was like, I will. I, what do I need to be? I will take my clothes off right now and be more vulnerable if it helps me be like LeBron and be, you know, like, but he was really inspiring telling these stories. And so I love meeting people like this. I love hearing stories like this. And I love getting these golden nuggets, these little things you can take away that like you can use in your own little, your own life.

SAM

You know what my takeaway when I hear this shit is, is damn, these guys are cool. I wanna be fucking cool. Like, like I wanna stick. How the fuck do you have to be cool? I just Google at Amazon how to be cool. Where's this book? I need one of these books. I don't want— I want men to want me. Like, yeah, how do you be cool, dude? Where's that book on how to be cool? I want that. This guy read it, I want to read it too. That's crazy.

SHAAN

I want to read that book too.

SAM

Yeah, I'm so envious when I hear people like this. I'm like, damn, they got a good shtick.

SHAAN

Let me tell you one other little nugget here. Do memorable things. I wrote this down. All right, what does that mean? I went to the conference last year. I went this year. In between, I've like launched a business. I've, you know, the podcast has grown, blah, blah, blah. Guess what the number one thing people remembered me for at the conference this year?

SAM

Like e-commerce stuff? Oh, last year?

SHAAN

This year? This year. When they, when they're like, oh, I remember you talked about X.

SAM

Probably investing.

SHAAN

The Michael Jordan house thing that we talked about on the podcast.

SAM

Wait, really?

SHAAN

The idea of buying MJ's house. So two things happened that went kind of semi-viral in the sports and sports media and sports agent world. Um, people shared that clip. Like, remember the Twitter clip has like 100,000+ views. Uh, people shared that with important people.

SAM

I think like the TikTok thing was like millions.

SHAAN

Maybe it got shared with a lot of people. They were like, oh, I remember you were gonna buy Michael Jordan's house. What happened with that? And they were like, it's like, dude, you remember that from over a year ago? And like, I've done a bunch of other things way more seriously. That was just one. Brainstorm with Sam about this idea. Like, that's crazy. So that was the first thing, uh, people remembering me for that. Then this, then we, um, while we were there, Ben took a call to potentially invest in this company. And, uh, and I'm like, cool, what's this guy's background? And he, the guy's done many things. Ben goes, you remember the, uh, Taco Bell Mexican pizza dish? I was like, uh, kind of, I guess. Like, yeah, I know it exists. He goes, they took it away off the menu. And people like, like were outraged on social media. And this guy got like a million people to sign the petition to bring it back. And they brought it back.

SAM

And I was like, that's what he was known for.

SHAAN

And well, that's what Ben remembered. And like, this guy's done a bunch of interesting things. And he had like 3, this guy had 3 stories like that. And once you have like 3 stories like that, it's like, all right, I need to know this guy. And I feel like you do that really well too, where you have these little things where it's like, uh, the hot dog stand, like calls, you know, Sam's Wieners as big as baby's arm. Um, or it's like, you know, the Pawn Stars guy, the pawn shop thing, or like, I feel you have these things that are like that. These little nuggets or stories that are like, they're memorable, but not for the thing you actually spent years of your life building. Yeah.

SAM

But dude, the problem is, is that I'm like trading on old stories. I need to do some cooler shit now. I'm like, you know, we gotta like do some stuff. I gotta do something.

SHAAN

Well, I think that's the thing. It's like, do more memorable shit. Because these punch above their weight. You know, they don't take that long. They're not that hard to do.

SAM

But like, I was gonna do like a, the other day I thought maybe I'll like spend 3 weeks riding around on a motorcycle. And I was like, that's lame. I already did that. I gotta, I gotta think of some, I gotta do something cool, you know? Right. I think I'll, maybe I'll have kids next year. I gotta do something. I gotta go out with a bang.

SHAAN

I don't think you understood what I was talking about, but fair enough.

SAM

Let's do something cool. Cool, man. We gotta do something cool.

SHAAN

Let's do cool shit. Yeah, I think there's a bunch of things that would be cool to do, but they don't make any sense. And what I'm learning is that those things do make sense just on a different time scale. And, uh, you gotta like— and in a different weird way. And having the— having that little collateral of like cool shit that you could talk about is worth it.

SAM

I thought about walking across the country and I was like, that would be— that'd be pretty sick. And then I kind of like thought about like playing it out and I'm like, huh, it's pretty far. It might take like 6 months. Like, I don't know. Like you just listen to audiobooks all day. Like, I don't know. Like, you know what I mean? I gotta think of some, something like kind of cool.

SHAAN

It's gotta be authentic, right? Like extreme for extreme sake doesn't work because again, you don't know if these are gonna pay off or when they're gonna pay off. So you gotta do it where the, the, the act of doing it or talking about it, or like, that has to be itself enough for you.

SAM

I was like, maybe I'll just like use Twitter and like see if I can hitchhike from like New York to California. I don't know. I gotta figure out something. I, I'll, I'm gonna figure something out. But this stupid podcast, I gotta be here all twice a week to record. It holds me back. I thought about walking across the country, but I gotta have like, gotta carry around this lame-ass mic for this stupid podcast. I gotta figure something out.

SHAAN

That's hilarious. Yeah, let's do another topic.

SAM

Um, you remember how I tweeted out that thing about Hasan? How do you pronounce his last name? Minhaj? The comedian? Yeah, I tweeted out this thing that basically I like saw him walk by me and I went and grabbed him and goes, what's up, man? And it wasn't him and it's really embarrassing. I, you know, I've never like really talked with him. Did you give him my number?

SHAAN

Yeah. Oh, he texted me. He was like, this is funny. He's like, give me Sam's number. Uh, and I, I'll text him and then I, I send him your number.

SAM

So I'm getting dinner with him. Um, and, uh, it's gonna be the first time I, I didn't get to meet him when you do that podcast, but I thought that was also a cool example of just like these cool things just happen when you, when you take a lot of chances.

SHAAN

Wait, would you say that maybe your victory was in your vulnerability here by sharing this embarrassing story?

SAM

By sharing this embarrassing story where I look like a racist. Yeah.

SHAAN

Yeah.

SAM

All right.

SHAAN

Your victory was in your vulnerability, baby.

SAM

And it was— you hooked it up, so I appreciate that. Yeah, it was, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go hang out with him. You guys are like homies, right?

SHAAN

Uh, yeah, I really like him. We, uh— you better be funny, dude.

SAM

I'm not. It's so—

SHAAN

isn't that like, you got to go one way or the other if you're gonna hang out with a comedian? You've either got to be like funny or just like blatantly unfunny.

SAM

Is he funny when you're like just hanging out with him?

SHAAN

Yeah, he's a funny dude.

SAM

Shit, I'm not prepared at all. I gotta go read a book. This is why I need that cool book.

SHAAN

Fuck it, try to be hot instead.

SAM

No, I can't do that either.

SHAAN

You're closer to hot than funny.

SAM

That still ain't far. I'm average at both. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm average at best. Like, it's—

SHAAN

all right, Rich, try to be rich instead.

SAM

Dude, I'm still a 6 out of 10 on that too. Oh man, I'm just like a 6 across the board.

SHAAN

Panic of meeting— the panic of meeting, uh famous people is so funny to me. Uh, like, I just think it's like a hilarious thing that happens with people. People be funny, people meet famous people, their instinct is like to just like throw all good common sense out the window and start behaving like an idiot.

SAM

Dude, it just sucks being a 7 at everything, you know what I mean? I'm just a 7 at everything.

SHAAN

So always the bridesmaid, always the 7.

SAM

A jack of all trades, a master I'm none. I'm just this fucking 7. I need to like— it just doesn't work out.

SHAAN

Um, yeah, but you're a, you're a hard 7 though.

SAM

You're not— yeah, I'm a hard 7. All right, that's the pod. We'll talk to y'all later.