Lessons From Sam's New Business Venture, High Stakes Gambling, and More

Okay, I just sent you something hilarious. I've been following this Twitter called Mugshoties, and it's like a play on mugshots.

And we talked about this.

You've talked about— did we talk about Mugshoties? Yeah, it's so funny. And the tagline is, uh, the tagline is, uh, 'Pope Bay Gets Bail,' uh, and it's mugshoties, and it's all like good-looking girls who have a mugshot. It's hilarious. It's so funny.

Yeah, we've talked about that because there was the guy who his mugshot went viral because he's got like— he's just like really stunningly good-looking, and he became like a model afterwards or whatever.

Yeah, I remember that guy. People still talk about him.

Can I tell you a crazy story? Yes. Uh, so have you ever seen— I think this is probably outside of your your, like, kind of orbit of what you pay attention to. But have you seen these gambling livestreams where Drake will go on Twitch and he'll gamble like $20 million live on stream?

No, really? Yeah, like a, like real $20 million.

Is he really that rich? That, I mean, like, if you're $200 million rich, that's 10% of your net worth.

In a night? No.

Okay, that's a substantial amount.

Good question. I had the same question, which led me to some pretty interesting findings. Okay, so, um, so I saw Drake doing this, and I've seen other popular streamers like xQc and these guys, they do these gambling streams from time to time. People love to see it because they're playing kind of like high-stakes online, uh, you know, gambling, and they're reacting to the highs and lows or whatever. Uh, Ben, have you seen this? I think it's probably also outside of your, you know, Mormon orbit. You don't watch these kinds of sins. Yeah, so exactly.

So, so I saw this all, uh, this is all on Twitch.

When you play blackjack, you lose against the dealer, right?

The house. Yeah. So they're just, okay. Like if I gave you $20 million to come play my rigged game, I gave you $20 million. You lose it right back to me. I get not, I, I, you know, I, I'm back whole. Um, they don't even lose the vig cuz they're the house. So they would take that, you know, 4% edge or whatever that they would have. They keep that as well. And if you win, maybe they have some deal where like, hey, if you win, you keep the winnings. I would assume they have some deal like that with them.

But it's electronic, right? Like, it's like the cards are digital. It's not like a camera. So then they could just be like, oh shoot, Drake has 20. We have to make ourselves have 21.

Yeah, well, that's— yeah, that's a little bit— that's illegal for sure. But they wouldn't need to do that. I guess that's kind of my point is that they'll already have a house edge and over time, like, they will win.. And so, and even if they don't, like, this is as a marketing campaign, like, uh, this is like kind of genius. And so what they're doing is stake.com is this website and it is the largest cryptocurrency-based online gambling site in the world. And nobody knew who was behind it until recently. Some guy in Australia bought like a $36 million home and they were like, who, who is this? Well, you're in your 20s. How did you buy a $36 million home all cash?

Like what's, what's he, what's he, he was, he was in his 20s.

So these guys, they're in their mid-20s. I think one guy's 25 or 26, the other guy's 28. And, um, and so there's this guy, Ed, you can just search Ed Craven, uh, Ed Craven Stake, and you'll see, uh, the secret origins, uh, secret Australian origins of the world's biggest crypto casino. And so get this. So basically they have headline, there's these guys in, um, in Australia and they've got this office and it's just like, and they, the office is under this name called EasyGo Gaming. It's like we build online, uh, games.. And the office is super nice and people would see it on social media. They would see like, wow, these guys got like a chef and they got all these perks and they got like, they're always going on these trips and like, what's going on with EasyGo Gaming? You guys must be an awesome gaming company.

So it must just be like a couple of people and they're just hanging out at someone's house.

And so, well, no, no. So this is a legit company, but basically EasyGo Gaming is the licensed gaming provider. Like they provide the games. To the casino company Stake, which is based in someplace called Curaçao or something like that, which is like some Dutch Caribbean island, uh, where the actual casino is based. And these guys own both. So they were kind of known as only the owners of EasyGo, but they actually own Stake. And so it all got kind of like revealed when the guy bought this home for whatever. You can see even there's like a Daily Mail article.

He bought it. I'm reading it right now. Casino.org.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is, I'm researching and I know how I recognize this. They're a sponsor of the UFC. Yes. And so they're big UFC sponsors.

They also sponsor Watford, the, like, uh, the English soccer team. So they like pay $10 million a year as their like lead, uh, lead sponsor for that too.

So I'm doing research just as, as you're talking. Um, on LinkedIn, there's— I, I don't— well, here, one guy says he's the CEO, but that seems— I don't know if that's legit. Uh, this is, this is crazy. This is one of those amazing companies. This looks just like VPN and a few other things that's completely under the radar and is totally crushing. And I've said this to you before, I actually think that people's personal homes the price of it, it, you know, like a rich person can live in a low-priced home, but if you purchase a high-priced home, the likelihood that you're rich is like, it's indicative of what you have because it's hard to, it's not impossible, but it's hard to give a bank to give you a loan if you don't have a significant amount of income, not just assets, but income. So if he bought a 30 and if he bought a $37 million home in cash, is that really what it said?

So then, yeah, I don't know if it was all cash, uh, but it was like 3 times more. The house sold in 2018. For 3 times less. And then the guy renovated it and he— this guy bought it for, for whatever, almost $40 million.

To buy a $40 million home, I would think you'd want to be worth like at least $250 million in at least some type of liquid situation as well, not just privately held company.

So here's my notes on this thing. So I'm just going to read you my raw notes from last night. It says small company in Australia, in Melbourne called EasyGo. Looks like your typical successful startup. You got ping pong tables, you got a chef, you got perks. You're going on on boat trips with the team, but they're hiding a massive secret. They're also the founders of Stake, which I believe might be the world's largest casino ever. It's crypto only, which is a massive growth lever.

Does that mean that it's legal?

Um, you mean illegal? I don't know the legality of it. That's like probably a pretty complicated thing.

Like, like Full Tilt went away in America. I used to play Tilt.

Yeah. Like you can't go if you're on stake.com in the US, you can't go to it. It's like, no, this is not available to US citizens. Um, but it— but internationally it is. And they, they based out of Curacao, which gives out the online gambling. So I think they are fully licensed, but they use, uh, crypto, which I think lets them do things like no, um, as I say, KYC, AML, like know your customer. So basically I think you could just transfer in Bitcoin or whatever and you could just gamble it on the site. Uh, you just put an email in and you start gambling. And, uh, so they got like all these games or whatever. Um, I think that they're paying Drake like $20 million a month to be the sponsor of this thing, which is—

no way. You really think that much?

Because he's gambling at those stakes. And I'm pretty sure that's all house money. I don't think Drake is promoting this company for— by putting in $20 million of his own money and losing it every month.

Well, they're not— they're not giving him $20 million. They're saying you can win up to $20 million or you can—

no, they're giving him house money. They're giving him a chip or a credit line that basically says, here's $20 million to go play on the site. You probably can't just cash that out. You have to gamble it here. But, but I'm pretty sure that's how it's working.

That would be crazy. I mean, I like— okay, so the private— some of, some of the private equity guys like Steve Schwarzman and a few other folks who founded Carlyle and BlackRock and Blackstone and all that, there's, there's some years where they'll get paid like $800 million or $500 million because of performance. But $20 million a month is $240 million a year. That would— they're probably— I can't imagine there's more than 100 people in the whole world that earn that much income. I mean, of course there's a lot of people who earn like paper gains, but who earn that much income in a given year, that would be absolutely astounding.

So get this. So they, so the guy buys this house for $40 million. They also own multiple penthouses, like the top floor of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne, which is the largest skyscraper. But here's what's even more interesting. When they were 18, Um, when one of them was 18, the other guy's 20, they started something called primedice.com. It's still up. If you go to primedice.com, it's basically a crypto gambling site where you just bet, is it going to be, uh, like what, what's going to happen? It's like a heads or tails. It's like a roll of the dice and, uh, you could just wager on it and like, you know, here you go. And you can just see people just betting constantly on what the dice is going to roll out to. Right. Uh, and like what they're gonna, what they're going to win for it. So they created this when they were back in, I don't know, uh, 2013. It says, I think on the site says largest crypto gambling site since 2013. Uh, so they're pretty early on that.

Um, this site is wild. Do you see all the live users betting money?

Yeah, it's crazy. And, uh, it's just look at this one guy, Shane Recover, who's just betting over and over again.

This company, this is, this is such an amazing find. This company alone, this Prime Dice thing is awesome.

So then let me tell you some of the, the other things that, that come into it. So, uh, so basically, um, I think one of the YouTubers that they pay, or, or maybe, uh, Twitch streamer, this guy Aiden Ross, I think is getting paid a few million bucks per month to, to do it. That, that I think there's pretty good authority on.

Um, $3 million a month.

Yeah. Uh, no, I think $2, $2 million a month. Um, okay, now let me go, go into more. Okay, so all of that was like, you know, And this is all like not confirmed, but like these are now like some rumors. So, uh, or I guess this part's not a rumor. Like if you go to their website, you could see that there's a company called Medium Rare NV, which is incorporated in Curacao. That's the company that holds the gaming license. If you Google Map the address, it's just like a shitty warehouse building that you'll find of like where this company is based. So I don't know what's going on there. It's like, you know, when you incorporate in Delaware and they give you like a PO box. As your address.

Um, so, okay.

And then a couple of other, you know, random rumors are like, uh, they had, uh, they, they added, um, Dogecoin to their site as like a way to deposit back in the day. And like when Elon, when all the Elon stuff was happening, I think they dumped like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Doge. They like sold it all when the Elon pump was happening to Dogecoin. Um, and, uh, yeah, it's crazy. So, so anyways, this is just like a crazy thing. Well, what, like, okay, let's say you even had the idea for this.

I Googled, I Googled I'm Googling these guys as you're talking. There's very, very, very little information on these folks. There's just, there's almost nothing. Do you think, could I change my browser to Australia and maybe get better results? Because I'm Googling their names now and there is like, there's one picture on them on the whole, on everything.

Yeah.

I like found their Instagrams. Both their Instagrams are private, but like, uh, yeah, like I know somebody who, who follows them or whatever. So I like stalked their Instagram too, just to see like what's going on.

And it's like, are they jacked? Are they jacked bros now? Or are they still nerds?

They're, Uh, they're— I wouldn't say they're jacked, but they're fit. Uh, and they're bros for sure.

Like, damn, they're breaking the stereotype.

You know, like, here's the— like, I'm just going to describe to you. I'll send this photo. We can put this in there.

Are there Ferrari pictures?

Okay. So one— okay. Picture number one. Uh, you would have guessed Ferrari, but here's a close second. Picture of a Range Rover with a giant bow and somebody hugging them because they just gave them a Range Rover. Uh, okay. That's a classic. You gotta love that one. Another classic, you know, the like influencer balloons you get when you cross like a million followers or whatever, the yellow giant inflatable balloon of a number. They have that, uh, and it's like some guy, uh, you know, hugging him doing that. Another one like courtside at the Lakers game, courtside at the French Open. Like I could see Nadal's calf like, you know, right behind this guy's head in this picture. So they're definitely living it up, uh, and as they should. This is what I— this is exactly what I want my online casino dealer guy's life to be. This is who I want it to be, and this is how I want them to live. And I'm glad that they are doing exactly what they're doing.

And one of them's only 26, is what you're saying?

Yeah. This article might be a little out of date, but, uh, you know, that is—

they definitely—

they definitely hit this scale when they were in their 20s.

Like the youngest rich— the richest young person in the world. Like, uh, uh, richer than what's his name, the Sam Bankman-Fried guy.

Yeah, and younger.

Or on par with it and, and younger. That is outstanding. That is crazy. What a good find.

Speaking of young billionaires, uh, I think the world's youngest self-billionaire now is this guy Alexander Wang. Do you know this guy? I, I don't really know him. I think I was in a group chat with him.

Um, is that from that company, uh, the startup? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what, what they do is pretty cool. Um, they basically saw the kind of like machine learning trend, you know, like, this is going to keep growing. And they were like, well, you know, one thing that's really hard is like when you're doing machine learning, you need like the data to be labeled, right? So if you're trying to teach a computer how to recognize a, you know, a kitten or something like that, it's like you first have to train it in some ways or be able to like teach it when it's wrong and correct it. And so that labeling process is quite like time-consuming. And so what what they did was they created like a, I think a giant workforce of overseas people that will label your images for you. And so like if you're a self-driving car company, if you're a Waymo or Tesla or whatever, you get like tons and tons of footage. And then now those need to be labeled as like, yep, that was a dog crossing the street. Yep, that's a stop sign, even though it's partially obstructed. And so how does that happen? That's like a human intervention. Humans go and do that. And so Scale started off as like a, It was labeling as a service. I, I'm sure they do a lot more stuff now, but it's pretty crazy. That's like a $10 billion company now. And this guy, I think he started it when he was 19 or something. What?

Um, is he cool?

Yeah, he was cool. Uh, like I didn't know him for long. Cause as soon as there, it was pretty funny. It's like, I'm in this group chat. That's like for founders. Um, yeah, for, for a bunch of founders. It's like, oh, this is kind of like the underground founders hang out. Like we, we chill here. Everybody's trying to do big things, but then when one guy actually started doing big things, he's like, I'm busy, I need to leave this now. And so it's like the ultimate signal. It's like, oh, when it really takes off, you don't stay in these chats. You just sort of like go do your billionaire thing now. Meaning you go do your like, I'm actually on a rocket ship, I don't have time to socialize anymore. Um, which, you know, respect to him, dude.

I was gonna show you something that I thought was like a major Good find. And now it seems like achievable given that you just set the baseline at two 26-year-olds who are now worth $10 billion. This one's a little, this one's much smaller, but still oddly interesting. Uh, go to the, the MFM or the, uh, Million Dollar Brainstorm document that we have and scroll down. And so you can kind of see that like, this is truthful. The guy sent me a picture of his QuickBooks. So you see that?

Yeah. I'm looking at it.

All right.

So this guy named Matt Paulson. So you remember when my Twitter got hacked? Yes. So, uh, there was basically people hacked my Twitter and they tweeted out like, I'm giving away a PS5 or whatever the number is. And just like, send me $400 and I'm donating the money to St. Jude's. And this guy, Matt, I, when I got back in my Twitter, I saw that he sent 2 times the asked amount. He was like, he's like, I just want to set it, went ahead and sent you $1,000. Just, you know, so St. Jude's has a little extra money. And I, I was like, oh my God, dude, that sucks. I'm so sorry about this. And he was like, oh, no big deal. And I was like, all right, well, who are you that you're this nice? And I clicked out and he runs this website called MarketBeat. Have you ever heard of MarketBeat?

You know, got him.

Uh, yeah.

Uh, and so he sent me a picture of his QuickBooks and he was like, here's the profit. I mean, keep in mind, this doesn't include my huge salary. My huge salary is part of the expenses, but we actually do $17 million in profit. The P&L that he sent me, it's like, I think, $13 million in profit. So it's called MarketBeat, marketbeat.com. And for the first 2 years it was just him. And you go to marketbeat—

Yeah.

Like, what is this? Yeah, you go to marketbeat.com. Like, I always Google like HubSpot price targets because I'm curious what HubSpot's— what analysts think the stock might be in 1 year. And he shows up early in Google. 1, 2, 3. If you Google Amazon price targets, Target price targets, whatever, like any company. And it's, he calls it a web portal, but if you didn't know better, you would look at it and just call it a media company. So you, you see different headlines and different news. It's kind of like Wall Street Journal, but really even more niche and just for stocks, just for dividend stocks. And it's just a way to really quickly see headlines of what's coming up. So it's kind of like a, um, a portal or a data aggregator where you could just like see like All right. Um, this stock has an earnings call on this date. So it's basically just a place to get information, but it's also part, um, media company because they have, they publish 250 articles a year or sorry, a month. And they have contractors who they pay $150 per article to write these. But he told me, he goes, regardless if the articles don't actually add to any of our revenue, people come to the website mostly just to see like the stock prices and things like that. And so right now the guy, uh, has 11 employees and I actually have a list of, sorry, 13 employees. I have a list of what they all do. He's got, he's got 4 developers, 4 support people, 1 ad guy, 1 accountant, 1 content manager, 1 marketing assistant, and him. And, uh, they make money through subscription and through advertising, most of which comes through advertising. They've got 15,000 subscribers who pay between $20,000 and $40,000. $20 and $40 a month. And, uh, one ad guy selling all these ads and it's mostly direct marketing and he's got, uh, a bunch of different brands. Like he's got, um, sorry, you're going fast.

I said the, the, just to break down that revenue, it sounded like subscriptions is something like $4 or $5 million a year out of the $25. Is that right?

Uh, well, he told me 15,000 premium subscribers and they pay either $20 or $40 a month depending on whichever one they get.

So let's call it $30. So that's $5.5 million. Uh, from the subscription, from the premium, and then the rest being ad revenue, $20 billion of ads. Okay.

Wow. Crazy. Right. And there's only one ad salesperson. He doesn't have a team of ad sales guys and he'll, they'll sell directly to large, uh, like, uh, maybe like The Motley Fool or some other like, uh, stock picking newsletter or some other financial brand or some company looking to promote their stock or different financial brokers, uh, financial products like wealth advisors, things like that. But if an advertiser is too small, they just work with an agency and they just say, hey, agency, you know, we've got some leftover inventory. You want to put your ads in here? And it's just one guy doing the whole thing.

Doing all the, uh, unbelievable. So it seems like the trick for them, and by trick, I mean hard work and strategy.

Yeah. Oh, by the way, they've been around, I think they've been around for 15 years.

Right. And it was SEO. It's SEO that drives the bulk of the traffic. Is that the idea?

I think early on, now it has a little bit of a brand. Before I even knew the guy, I would actually go to it all the time just to look because their interface is nicely organized.

Like I'm on like the Amazon one right now and it's basically like, it has just like a bunch of stuff put together. It's like, oh, here's the execs, here's the CEO, here's their age, here's their pay. It's like, here's the, um, you know, here's the percent shareholding, you know, amongst these different groups.

Yeah.

Here's their analyst targets, et cetera.

It's kind of ugly by traditional web, you know, 2.0 standards. Like it doesn't meet any of the design requirements that like Airbnb would approve of, but it, In my mind, it's perfect. It actually is designed beautifully. Like, it works wonderfully. And so it's like a cluttered website. It kind of looks like Drudge Report or Craigslist or something, or eBay. Like, it's this messy website, but I think it's quite good.

Like, that'd be sick, dude.

It's embarrassing. Like, I, I get some people who are like, now there's people who are like, I would say kind of like a little more successful in the tech industry that are getting into our podcast. Whereas I feel like before we were kind of like a different audience for whatever reason.

Like, like kids, almost like kids.

It was not, not kids. It was more like, just like Wentrepreneurial, I would say, is definitely a big component of it. Uh, which might be Ks, but might be like somebody in their 30s that wants to make a change or whatever. Or it's just like, yeah, I own this awesome business. I'm based out of, you know, Peoria, Illinois. And it's like, what the fuck? Who are you and how did you find us? And, but like, that was more of our main target. And now I'm getting people that are like kind of in the heart of Silicon Valley that are like, dude, I kind of got hooked to the podcast. And I'm like, dude, I've been telling you about this for like 2 years. And they're like, yeah, it's actually good. And they're like, What are like the best episodes? You got like 200. And I was like, uh, I don't, I don't really know. He's like, well, what's like a, what place to find the most popular ones? I was like, ah, I don't have it. He's like, is there a place with summaries? I was like, nah, not really. He's like, well, you have all these ideas. Is there a compilation of all the ideas? I was like, ah, there should be someone. I think maybe once it's like all the obvious, like kind of like growth things that you would do or like onboarding things you would do. We've done none of. And so I'm like kind of embarrassed about that, but, uh, I'm not embarrassed.

Who cares? It's working.

Yeah, I just think it would help us. Like, I think, I think I would want that if I was getting into a podcast.

And let me, this is funny. Let me tell you how I found out about MarketBeat. I was reading Starter Story. I like that website, Starter Story. And one of the questions is, what books and podcasts do you read? And he said, on the podcast front, I really enjoy listening to My First Million, which breaks down unique ways that business owners are using, uh, unique ways business owners are generating massive profits. That's how I found out about, about this guy is because he said he listens to us as his only podcast.

Oh, nice. Uh, that's great.

Uh, who told you that they're listening?

Uh, I don't wanna say their name, but, uh, you know, someone cool.

That's cool. That's always funny when people listen, dude. I was with my dad when I took, I took my parents to Europe and I brought my parents to this conference and my parents are like, you know, in their 60s from Missouri and they were walking around this conference and they were like, oh, we love swag. They call it swag. I think it's like, I think it, it's supposed to be swag. They go, we love swag, which means free stuff. And they're like, Oh, let's go to this company and get this. And it's like some like European sales marketing company. I'm like, you know, Dad, like no one gives a shit about like, you know, Sales.io. Like, I don't know what they do. Yeah, yeah. He was like, he's like, oh, let's go talk to him. I'm like, dude, I don't— like, you don't even know what that means. I can tell you what it— they go, what do they do? I'm like, I can use words to explain it, but you won't understand. And so he's, well, let's go get some swag. They're giving away like free, uh, bouncy ball, bouncy balls.

It's like shawarma. But it's—

and he's like, he's like, let's go get a ball, we're going to bring it back for, for the kids, their grandkids. They go, let's go. Oh, like, oh, they have envelope openers, like, let's go get one for the kids. Oh, they got candy. I'm like, Mom, this is a Snickers.

Like, you could—

that's awesome, dude.

He's just going to give it to you in the hotel. He's like, hey kid, I got you this bouncy ball. And you're going to be like, sweet.

Well, and they're bringing like, they're bringing like Kinder chocolate, you know, like Kinder, like the eggs. I'm like, you guys realize that you can get that at 7-Eleven down the street from your house? Like, this isn't special, and they're just grabbing all this stuff. And they brought an empty suitcase because they knew they were going to find swag, just a pile. And so like, I come home, I come home and my 4-year-old nephew is like wearing a t-shirt that says like, "Hi, we're here to help with customer solutions." Like, it is— and it's like, and the kids are bragging that they got that from Europe. I'm like, oh my God.

Anyway, yeah, it's European, it's European fashion.

Yeah, they're like, what's this brand, Gideon? It's just, it's just, yeah, they're just like crazy. And then they're at this conference and they're like, they're talking to people and they go to people. I hear like, I would, it was hard for me to stand next to them and I hear them talking to people and they go, hey, do you like podcasts? And they just said, do you like podcasts? Do you love podcasts? And the guy would be like, yeah, you know, I listen. He goes, my dad calls him, he goes, Sam, he says he listens to 8 podcasts. I'll tell him to listen to yours. What's the name of it again? And I'm like, Uh, Dad, like, how do you know? You don't know? You don't know the name? It's called, it's called My First Million. He goes, oh, okay, I'll tell him. Hey, so it's called My First Million. And then he'll come back, goes, hey, I got you another listener. I made him click subscribe. And he's just going up to people saying like, you like podcasts? Oh, great. I got you. I'll get you. I'm going to have you subscribe. And he doesn't know the name of the podcast. Every single time he goes, what's it called? Million Dollar Podcast? Uh, he's like, I listen to it all the time. It's my favorite, but what's it called again?

My mom does the same thing, dude. She clicks every ad in my newsletter. She's like, I clicked your ads today to help you. I'm like, Mom, I don't know. I don't think that's not going to count. It's not going to do anything. She's like, no, no, you said you get paid if they click, right? I'm like, well, kind of, you know, you got to go buy the thing. And then she's like, oh, I'm not going to buy it. I'm like, yeah, you also don't need to click it. In fact, you don't even need to read it. I don't think you're very interested in this subject.

That's hilarious. That is so funny. Uh, God, it's so funny. You should have seen them walking around just like putting around this conference, like saying like, oh, Sammy, come look at, let's look at this booth. And it's just, I don't even know what it is. Like, I don't even know what it is. You know what I mean? And it's like procurement. I'm like, I don't, I don't even know what that means, dad. Neither do you. You definitely don't know what that means.

Dude, that's so funny. You said procurement. So, so Ramin who runs like, he's my basically my partner in my fund and Ramin's got this company that's like kind of like an old school but baller company in, uh, based out of like Georgia, right? Yeah. So he lives in Georgia. So he's like in the tech scene, but he kind of lives in Georgia and runs kind of like a bit of an old school, more, more service-based company that like, I think his wife's dad or something started and he like took it over and like grew it a bunch and is doing great with it. So I think the business does like $50 million a year or something like that. It's like a sizable business. And so I've asked him, I think no less than 15 times, like, so yo, yo, so what does your business do again? And he'll be like, yeah, we do procurement. For, for SMBs and for whatever enterprise companies. And I'm like, like, you get office supplies? I can't wrap my head around what procurement is. And he's like, he's like, you know what the word procurement means, right? And I'm like, yeah. He's like, so it's that. And I'm like, but this— see, I guess I don't know what the word means then because I still don't know.

Like, does anyone use Staples anymore? Like, I don't.

Yeah. And it's like, he's like, he's like, it's not office supplies. It's like, you know, you need a vendor for something. But I was like, So then why wouldn't you just Google and get the vendor? He's like, yeah, but like bigger companies, they just do it differently. They need like this middleman who's going to basically like help them get the things that they need.

And I'm like, you get paid for that? It's like, yeah, is it like someone who just like knows all the people who do blank and they just—

yeah, it's like unique vendors. I think I still fucking don't know, dude. I'm on explanation number 17. In fact, I just feel bad now every time I ask him or I try to tell somebody else what he does, because I'm like, I clearly don't know. It's almost like, you know, like there's like a spot in my brain where there's just like, if you did a scan, it would just be like, oh, there's some dark cloud here. It's like, yeah, that's the part of my brain that's trying to understand procurement and it's just never happening. It's just like a fuzzy region.

So I've got a story related to this. So, uh, 2 days ago, Saturday night, I went out to dinner at like the fan— a fancy place in St. Louis. And we get to dinner and my dad goes, Or, uh, yeah, my dad goes, hey, the president of NASCAR, I guess NASCAR like performed or raced or whatever you call it yesterday, Sunday in St. Louis. And he goes, my dad likes NASCAR. He goes, that's the president of NASCAR, like Jim Nantz, or I don't forget his name.

And, uh, the football commentator.

Yeah. The football, I think it was Nantz, something like Jim Nantz. Yeah. That's Jim Nantz. And, uh, he, uh, and I was like, oh yeah, you know, he's sitting with this guy named David Stewart. He's like the second richest Black man in the world. And that like, and it's like, it's pretty funny. I like, I knew exactly who that rich guy was. He's, he's worth like $4 or $5 billion. And I start researching him. I was like, yeah, I've seen that guy before. I've seen him on articles. Cause he's like the second or third richest black man. And he's from St. Louis. He's like the richest guy in St. Louis. And he's got this company called Worldwide Systems. You've never heard of that, have you? No. So it does, uh, $14 billion a year. Uh, and it's like the fourth or eighth, like in the top 10 largest privately held companies in the world. And him and his partner just own, own the whole thing outright. And what they do is they're a systems integrator. And that's one of those words, like procurement. I heard that and I'm like, what does that mean? And so I went on this deep dive. I'm like, I got to figure out exactly what they do. I don't understand this. And then like it says they're a Cisco systems integrator. And I went to Cisco's website and I'm like, what does Cisco do? Yeah. I'm like, they're like networking hardware, networking or like networking hardware.

And I read those words and I'm like, the website would just be like networking redefined. And you're like, I didn't, I didn't know the first definition. That was really great.

Yeah. I didn't know we had to change that definition. And then like they talk about like switches and stuff and I'm like, I don't know what like a switch is. I guess it has to do with electronics. Like I just, I didn't have any idea what this stuff did. Uh, and, but I Google it and like, I know that Cisco is like one of the largest companies in the world, but I'm just, I like, I don't know what it is. And so I had to research it. It took me forever to figure out what a systems integrator is. Do you know what it is?

Dude, no, I don't know any— I don't know what this— I don't know what SAP does. I've been on a mission also to understand what SAP does for a long-ass time.

And they're European though, they got a different word for everything. We'd never be able to figure that out.

I feel like sometimes I'm watching TV and it'll just pop up SAP and I think it means like closed captioning or Spanish or something like that. I'm like, oh wait, this is different now. I'm super confused about SAP.

Yeah, but I don't even know why they named their company after their stock ticker either. It's kind of weird. But, um, They, uh, so, so a systems integrator, basically. So what my father-in-law does for a living is if you're like Chase and you have 100 employees working on floor 18 and you're like, hey, we got to move these 100 employees up to floor 43 in the same building. He studies it for a few weeks and then you go to home for work on Friday and you come back on the floor at 47 and you sit down at your desk. That's already set up and everything just works. And there's no downtime. And I think system integrators kind of do that. But like, if you're a $20 billion company and you're selling like a $3 billion division to this other thing, like they have to go to work one day and like all the computers are new and like this new setup exists. Or if you're like a hospital and you're like, we need an app, it's like, well, it's not as simple as just like checking into your lobby and saying you're there. Like, you got to like integrate all this crap into it. And I think that's what they do, but I don't know why they don't just call it like an agency. You know what I mean?

So yeah, I don't know either, but I do know, like, you know, I guess like jokes aside, you know, there's basically things that are like, uh, like, you know, NetSuite, NetSuite's another one of these where you're like, I don't know what, what is NetSuite?

Is that like QuickBooks but different?

It's basically like, um, I mean, I'll butcher the thing, but like, I mean, people use it for like inventory management, for example. So it's basically like a database that's like usable for, um, like it's usable in a couple of different ways. It tells you what you got. It tells you what's like running out. It tells you, um, what you need. It'll tell you kind of like it'll help generate a purchase order. It'll do things like that. Um, by the way, if you go to NetSuite's website, I just went to it, it says complete procure-to-pay purchasing. Oh no, procurement. It has to do with this too. But basically there's, there's entire companies. I think this is what, um, you know, like the P word, what Deloitte and other, other consulting companies do a lot of, which is basically they teach your company, like these, these businesses, there are these programs are so intuitive that there's entire consulting businesses that generate billions of dollars a year that just go to a company like, oh, um, like right here on their website, Lovesac uses them. So it's like, you go to Lovesac, you're like, great, you guys sell giant beanbags, huh? They're like, yeah. Like, you notice things are getting a little out of hand, get a little willy-nilly now that it's growing so much. Yeah, it is. Sure is. Don't you wish there was just a way to have everything organized in one place in a system that just all talked to each other and Every one of your employees can log in and interface with it. They're like, that sounds pretty good. So I, I just go set it up on my own. I just go to the website and they're like, no, no, no, no, we do that for you. It takes 12 months and we will, we will add NetSuite to your thing. We will add Oracle, we'll add these different services to your, we will, we will integrate them into your current business and we'll train your employees on how to actually use it.

Is that what service revenue in a SaaS line. So if you go to like Atlassian and look at their annual report, there's a huge amount of services revenue. So do they charge? I don't know what the— how they— what they bucket in services. I would have thought like, does that mean just the software?

But I think it's different for different companies. But at the same time, this is sort of like if you were like, hey Sean, you know, what does it mean to blanch a vegetable? I'd be like, you know, I think it uses hot and cold water in some way. It's like, you know, like I just don't know. Right. Like when you're asking me about like, what are these like giant enterprise companies that are like B2B service/software companies. Like, these are like, again, I don't know the first thing about the first thing about this.

Dude, the, the craziest thing to me is when I think about these is to understand how someone came up with this idea. So for example, uh, there's Okta. Do you know Okta? That's what we use for like logging into like websites and shit like that. Or there's, um, what's that one? Snowflake. You know Snowflake?

Yeah.

Like a data warehouse. So I like, those are all companies that are founded relatively recently, like in the 2005, 2015 era.. And I'm like, how did a person know that this was a problem and had to get built? You know what I mean?

Well, you're just working in a big company, right? Like, okay. So for example, um, we were talking the other day about, uh, what was it called? The, um, or like, like we have, like you were—

MailChimp for companies.

Yeah, exactly. Uh, what was the name of it again? I can't remember the name off the top of my head. Uh, I just committed to invest into it, but, um, but basically we're, when we ran a company or like you ran a, um, uh, you know, like an email-based company. And so if I asked you, you know, like, what does ConvertKit do? You're like, if you're very well versed on like what ConvertKit does, cuz you're like, well, like here's a scenario. You get a bunch of people come to your website, but you, you know, you wanna grab their email cuz you're gonna be able to market to them later. So you, so ConvertKit lets you put up a little webpage that grabs their email and then once you have it, you wanna be able to like tag them or segment them based on like if they've paid for your thing or if they're free. And then like, wouldn't it be cool instead of like waking up every day and like writing the same email over and over again, you could like automate a, a sequence of emails. One that goes out on day 1, one goes out on day 3, one goes out on day 10. And it's like you saw a problem in your business and therefore, you know, you kind of understand what the solutions are and you can even create them. Well, there's another one that's like, uh, like, you know, that this is basically what happens when you're— when you work inside of a large company, you're like, oh man, there needs to be a solution for X. You just see a problem and you're like, there needs to be a solution for X. But you understand that context because it's like, like we spent basically 15 years just starting companies from scratch. You started media companies. I started more like software, social networking type of companies. Um, and we've done content a bunch, so we can tell you all about content. Like, we just don't have that, that same frame of reference to that. Like, somebody who's been like, you know, somebody who's used Salesforce every single day for like 10 years, then they understand why you need this like Salesforce add-on, which all the time I'm like, damn, I wish I knew how to do this stuff that people charge $1 million a year in subscription revenue.

I'm like, Damn, I just gotta talk to some stupid freaking guy about starting a newsletter, give the same spiel constantly. I don't wanna talk about how to get your first 1,000 subscribers on Substack. You know, I'd rather get paid like $1 million a year to do X, Y, and Z and get, you know, get 100,000 customers.

Yeah. And we had talked about it. It was like a high school newspaper, but for your company.

Yeah. And by the way, Workshop is the name. It came to me now.

So what's the URL?

Did they launch—

but did they launch this because of our podcast or were they already—

no, I think they were already working on it. Uh, and we just got connected from, we got connected when they were, um, they were doing, somebody pointed it out to me. They're like, hey, these guys are doing almost exactly what you're talking about. I reached out and they're like, and the guy was awesome. He's like, yeah, we had this past company that was successful. We kind of like, you know, like this is our second merry-go-round. We got the team back together to do this. And then it's like, it's working. Hey, we just signed this client, this client, this client, big name, big name, big name. They showed me the chart of revenue and I was like, oh, this is like, so spot on. Like, I really think that a tool like this is going to exist and it's going to work.

Yeah, this is sick.

And like, the design is just really good. Like, if you go to the design of the page, it's like, just like, clearly these people are good at like, they're good at simple products. And that's kind of all you need to do to be able to build something like this is like, yeah, nice, clean, simple, easy to use.

And they have the use cases. So for employee engagement, right? A change of management, company alignment. Hybrid work, mergers and acquisitions, internal marketing. It's pretty sick. Uh, measuring performance. Yeah, this is awesome.

And like, you know, you send these emails out normally in your company, you don't have the open rate, you don't have the open tracking, you don't know who's actually engaged and who's not in your company emails. You don't know how— you can't test a subject line difference and be like, oh, this one got way more people to respond to the engagement survey or whatever we sent out. And so it lets the internal comms team like do their job better. They didn't really have a tool before this. I can't find this client info.

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application.

Every team can stay aligned.

No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot.

Grow better. Are you angel investing actively right now?

Yeah. You, you stopped, right? Or you like took a break?

I, well, I've taken a break because A, the markets and B, because, um, I'm working on this. I got my— I could talk about a little bit, but I got like 20 customers for already for my new project.

I agree with that, but like the valuations, maybe it could have changed. It's like, feels like it's changing week by week, but like 2 weeks ago when I was looking at a few deals, the valuations were still quite high.

Yeah, I think they are coming down and they're coming down week by week. You're absolutely right. And I, you know, you could be disciplined on that where you're just like, oh, you haven't gotten the memo that like, you know, what used to be $50 million is now $22 million and what used to be $20 million is now $8 million. Like you need to get that memo. And some people just haven't got that memo yet, but like a lot of them—

Right.

That's why I'm— I'm waiting like that amount, like just a few more weeks maybe until— so that's what— when I say wait, that's what I mean. Because we were talking to people and they weren't budging and I was like, well, all right, we'll wait. And now I'm getting emails from some like portfolio companies and they're like, you could see their cash balance and how much money they have left. And it's like, damn, man, I think there actually might be like a lot of things going out of business in 6 months.

I think there absolutely will be. I mean, I've gotten a ton of, hey, we just raised this extra money. Like a lot of smart founders basically are like taking the bag while it's available., just to give themselves buffer. Cause like, who knows how much worse it's going to get. And, um, but the values start coming down. So I actually think that like this, this year, next year, the next basically 2, 2 and a half years are going to be like kind of an awesome vintage of startups to be investing in because you're getting all the, you know, like none of the big trends have changed. Like the world's just getting more tech-enabled. Tech is just going into more and more industries. Size of the prize is getting bigger. There's more and more people coming online. Machine learning and all that stuff's making stuff better. Like all of that's still true. It's just that the prices got cut in half. And so it's like, oh good.

I'm, I'm, I'm on board. I'm just like, wait, I just think that like there's, there's so far been like this 2, 3 week period where it's like, there's a discrepancy. I'll get fixed. I think in like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks, you know, I think that's going to happen pretty, pretty soon.

Should we talk about your, uh, your thing now? Or do you want to do a devoted, uh, all right.

Well, we could, we could, yeah. I don't want to do a devoted thing because I'm not going to announce what it is entirely yet. So, but we can kind of talk about it, but basically, uh, like I'm kind of going back to my roots. I'm launching this new thing. I'm not even saying I'm launching it. I'm more so like, uh, launching, uh, enough of it to prove or disprove if it's a good idea. Okay. And I've gotten, uh, like, I forget exact, like tens of thousands in revenue in the first two weeks.

Amazing.

And, um, and I didn't tweet about it once.

So, so tell me this, tell me, uh, what are you doing differently this time around than you did? So last time you started this rodeo was maybe 6 years ago, something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so now with, you did the whole hustle chapter, do you get acquired? You go to HubSpot, you see a bunch of things, you meet a bunch of people, you get smarter, wiser, all that stuff. You got some hair on your chest now. And so it's like, what's, what did you decide? Like, all right, this time I'm doing these things differently.

Amazing. What, um, what else? What else is different about your mindset? I bet there's more.

Right.

And I was, I wasn't impatient because I'm happy I did what I did because it unlocked a lot for my life. But had I not— I said this a bunch of times— if I was already wealthy, I would never have sold because real value seems like it comes like— now I've only experienced a business from like around year 5, but it seems like maybe there's something that happens year 5, year 6 where value is created. And then who knows, maybe someone who's owned a company for years is like, man, 20 and 30 is when like shit magic really happens. So I don't know. But I do think like year 5, if you bootstrap, is around the time where you're like, all right, I recruited some actually good people. I've got people do helping and everything, but like, I don't know. Do you agree with like year 5, year 6, year 7 is where some crazy stuff happens?

I think it's just, I think it's just generally true, right? Like you, you plant seeds and they, you water them and you water them and you're looking at them and you're trying not to just go dig up the dirt and be like, why the fuck aren't you growing? But like at some point those things do start to grow. Like we're seeing this with our e-commerce business too, which was, um, uh, my buddy had told me this. He goes, he goes, there's this magic moment in e-commerce where you've, You've brute-forced enough of the like building your brand and getting, getting new people to try you where every month your returning customers just come back because they love your product and you don't have to remarket. You don't have to spend money remarketing to them. And then the business goes from like this giant cash suck to this giant cash cow if you do it right. And, um, and I was, and we just started to hit a tipping point like that where you could say, and it's not every month, but there's some months where I'm like, whoa, what just happened? And it's like, Oh yeah, that's, that's what's happening. Like we actually just last year we brute forced and got a bunch of people to love our product. And then they came back and bought and this, like a bunch of them came back and bought this month to where it outweighed all of the new investments that we're making. Like, wow, that's nice. Or like at Twitch, we were always doing these like planning exercises about like, you know, these profitability targets. Um, I can't say too much, but like basically profitability targets. And I think Emmett had said something. He was like, yeah, we from the, like, he's like, pretty early on we modeled it out and it was like, it's going to take like 10 years probably. And this, and he said a huge number. He's like X billion in revenue for us to, you know, break even. And I was like, that's just a crazy idea. That's like, we need to get to X billion in revenue for this to be profitable. Um, and like, but it did like, that's exactly, you know, that's the, that's what actually how it was playing out. Yeah. And it's like, Whoa. Like, I hadn't even really— like, Amazon, I think, had a sort of— had a semi-similar story. Amazon, I think, for 15 years or something like that was like unprofitable on the whole. But the difference in Amazon was like the individual divisions were getting very profitable after like a repeat of like a reliable, like, I don't know, let's call it 4-year cycle. It's like books got super profitable, but by the time books was getting profitable, they were investing heavily in CDs and music and these other things. And so then the total always looked unprofitable. But they knew internally this is just a clock that goes, you know, every X, it's going to take 4 years or whatever it is to this unit to get profitable. And once they're all profitable, this thing's going to be like unbelievable, which is where it's at now.

Trusting that process is really hard, particularly for first-time entrepreneurs. But Bezos and Emmett were, I guess, you know, after like 10 years, it's like, well, I'm not exactly a first-time founder anymore, but you know what I mean?

So my sister has a business. I don't know, have I told you about her like Cloud Kids thing?

Well, I know she's a babysitter's a little— that's not actually accurate, but like daycare, right?

It was. It was. I guess it was kind of like an in-home daycare. Then it became like a preschool and became like an outdoor preschool, whatever it kind of evolved.

Yeah.

By the way, sorry, I didn't mean to call that babysitting. She would've punched me in the face and I knew that wasn't the right, I knew it wasn't babysitting. I was like, I called it, I was about to say daycare.

So yeah, that's okay. That's, that's, that's right. So, but during COVID she pivoted to like an online thing. Like a lot of businesses went from like, oh shit, brick and mortar is really hard right now. Cause they're like, You know, every month the government is changing the rules on what we can, if we can and can't operate our business. So she created this thing called CloudKidz. So if you go to CloudKidz with a Z, uh, I think it's preschool.com. Let me see if that's it. Um, yeah, CloudKidz with a Z preschool.com. So go to that website real quick and just look at this. Um, I actually think she's done a pretty good job with the website.

CloudKidz, CloudKidz, what?

Cloudkidz— I'll just put the link here. Cloudkidz with a Z preschool.com. So check this out. So, um, this is like helping her with this has been pretty fun because she like, she built this in like Wix. I'm like, oh, Wix looks great. Who's using Wix? And then, and I was like, all right, you need to add like, change the headline. You need to add like a video. The video needs to be not like a full-on video. Like just make it look like a teacher teaching something.

Oh dude, this looks amazing.

Exactly. So now it's really good. It used to be like, Um, you know, get info. Now it's like free trial, right? Like just optimizing the landing page with her, like headline, subheadline, button, hero image, um, you know, reasons to, reasons to buy all that stuff. Like, and then she's like working with people in like Fiverr and Upwork to like do these designs. It's like, it's actually turned out pretty good. And so she created this thing, which is basically like, um, these small group classes. So like, let's say you have your kid at home, uh, either because they're just like my, like my daughter, she's too young to go to school right now. We don't want to send her to full-time preschool, but like, we want her to like learn something every day. And it's like, kind of takes a shit ton of energy to sit there and be like the engaging, patient parent and like keep your kid's attention and be like, I'll teach you like how to write the letter W today. Like, but like with this, I'm like, I sit her down in front of the computer, I get the materials in front of her with paper and crayon. And like the teacher is like so good. They'll be like, all right, you know, like, hi, high five, let's sing our welcome song. And then they like do all the things. And so for 1 hour, She gets, it's like screen time without the guilt. It's like the, she gets engaged like it's cartoons, but it's not cartoons cuz she's actually like learning stuff and getting better. And so she created this service and it's like, I was like, dude, this is actually a pretty good product. And she, um, she's hired these teachers and the teachers are like, uh, like in Florida and different places like that. So, so then she was like, she calls me, she's like, oh, I'm just like struggling so much with the growth. And so I like, I was like, all right, well like tell me what, like, she's like, ah, just, it's not working.

And I was like, what were the numbers?

And, and to give the listener context, so it— prices range from $40 a week to— so you could— all right, all right, I understand. So you can get classes 1 day, 2 day, 3 day, 4 day a week. They— it all ranges from like $160 a month to $400 a month. And you get— it's basically— it's a— the, the tagline is actually quite good. It, uh, Although the website needs a little work. Like I clicked on the FAQs and it goes to privacy policy, but that's all right. Live online preschool classes, the number one live preschool program from home. We per— this is a beautiful line. We provide the curriculum, teachers, and friends.

Right.

That's a, that's great. And then, uh, there's a video. Who is this? Like this woman who works for her? You don't have a white sister?

Yes.

And, uh, it is great. I'm all about this. This is beautiful. By the way, the art is actually really good. Yeah.

I think it's a great, it's pretty good. Right. And so, so this, and so then the reason I bring I'm bringing this up is because you were talking about handling a no, handling an objection. And what I learned when I was like diving in, I was like, your funnel is not broken. Your website is good. Your services, your retention is amazing. Um, I was like, even your ad, like ROAS, your payback period is also amazing. So I was like, what are you talking about? This thing's— and she's like, well, I mean, like I talked to like, you know, so many people and they all just, you know, they don't come back. For the, from the free trial. I'm like, but you're converting 20% or something like that to, from free to paid. That's like best on the internet. She's like, yeah, but like I talked to 8 moms that were like, you know, we can't do it for this or this reason. And I was like, yeah, but 8 out of 10 is 8 out of 10 nos. That means 2 out of 10 yeses. That's a 20% conversion. That's again, amazing. And the numbers back out where this business is like an awesome business. And I think the, the psych— what happened was the psychology 'Cause I told her, I was like, hey, if you want to close more people, call everybody who just did your free trial and see if they'll convert to paid and be like, hey, I'm the owner of the school. How did you like it? So glad, you know, I saw, I dropped in on the class. I saw she was doing great. Like, do you think you want to continue? And like, did you want to do more classes? And like, oh, payment's a problem? Like, we can help you with a payment plan. 'Cause a lot of the people who are doing this, they're like Detroit inner city. Like there's a lot of people that are basically like, hey, I can't pay for full-time caretaking. I can't pay for even full school. Uh, or like in Detroit, for example, shit, what I learned through this was in Detroit, the public schools are full. So you just can't send your kid. Can you believe that? So people are like 6 years old and they're like, yeah, the school's full and I can't afford private school. It's like, I've never heard public school could be full. And like, that's what's going on in Detroit right now.

Dude, is this, is this your sister's just like, move over Sean, there's a new, there's a new big swinging D at the house.

Well, the funny thing is she's, she's got a better product in business than I than I have in any of my businesses in terms of all the core metrics are stronger than all of mine. The product offering, the retention, stronger than anything. The problem is, not a problem actually, the, she doesn't want to like, she's not trying to do world domination. She's like, no, this would be great if we got to like 50 students. And like, well then you'll want 100, right? She's like, no, because that'll be way more work. Like at 50, I already have these great teachers that can handle 50. I just wanna fill up my occupancy. And like, she truly is like, well, because when I do that and then I can go work out in the middle of the day and like, I just want my lifestyle. I can go to my daughter's thing.

You know, Sean, you know, she has something that you'll never have.

Oh no. Oh no. The E word. Enough. Yeah, she does.

She does. She'll have enough. My, uh, I went through, I went with my mother-in-law. She's like, hey Sam, can I drive you to the airport? I was like, why? She goes, well, it's 2 hours to get there. I need you to explain to me how online commerce works. Cause I want to start a store. This was 2 or 3 years ago. And I like did the ride and I told her how to use the store. Now she's got a business doing like half a million a year. And I was like, so why don't you scale this? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? You could be like— I'm always like, you could be like the Black Martha Stewart. Like, you could crush this. And she's like, but I like taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off. And I was like, oh, right.

Well, but if you made more, then you could take Tuesdays and Thursdays off. She's like, I could do that right now.

Right.

So yeah, it's the same exact thing that I'm like, but, but, but, but, but. And just to finish the point on the rejection thing, what I learned was when she called people and 8 people in a row said no, it was like completely demoralizing to her and she started to question everything. It's like, am I going after the wrong market? Do I have the wrong product? Am I priced too high? Am I this? Am I that? And I think it's really important to be able to back out numbers. I've seen the same mistake on fundraising all the time. So it sounds kind of silly when it's like, oh, my sister's little preschool. Oh, you know, she has 20% conversion rate. Obviously that's good. Like, even if it was 10%, it would still be great. Like, it'd still work. Like, oh, that's so silly. You know, she got demoralized by hearing, you know, 8 nos in a row, you know, on a Monday morning. And, um, or, or not even hearing no, it's just not hearing back from people. I'm like, yeah, yeah. But then I talk to founders and they're like, dude, raising money's so hard. I need to change this, change that. Can you, will you help me with my pitch? I'm like, how many investors did you pitch to? And they're like, well, yeah, we talked to like, you know, these 4 last week. I'm like, 4? And I'm like, you know, this is a numbers game. This is a sales funnel and you need, you are selling your equity in your business in exchange for money. And like, Like what you're doing is you're getting highly emotional and you're taking it highly personal that somebody doesn't want to fund your business. And like, in reality, yes, you should be learning from like how to pitch better. And like, you may, maybe, maybe in the end you will strike out, but you don't even know that yet. You haven't hit enough people.

So let's see.

I had— Did you convert anyone?

Yeah, I converted low 30s. I'd have to look. 32 people on my mission. So I was 2 years. And, um, oh man, how many doors do I think I knocked on in that time? Uh, I mean, it was, it was a couple hundred, a thousand. Uh, it was hundreds of doors a day across to every, every single day for 2 years. Right.

So you knocked on 100 doors a day, easily, easily 100 doors a day. What country?

Hold on. We're doing some public math. This deserves it.

Let's say, well, yeah, well, yeah. While you do it, let me ask you a question. What country?

So I was in El Paso, Texas, but I was speaking Spanish.

So if you did 150 doors a day, which you're saying easily, uh, is estimate every single day, 365 days, 2 years, you knocked on 109,000 doors. You did 109,000 and you did 32 at 109, uh, so that's 0.02% or 0.002%, something like that. Some, something that's like Yeah. Fraction, fractions of a percent, dude.

How, and how about the fact that your friends were all going to these cool places in Africa or South America and they sent you to El Paso? Yeah.

But I mean, what, you know, yeah, my brother went to Prague, my sister went to Moscow. Uh, but, uh, we had, we had, um, what's his name?

Austin from, uh, Lambda School, which is now Bloom Tech.

He went to Russia.

He was in Russia or something like that. He said he converted 0 or 1. He was like, oh, cuz we had asked him what would be good? He's like, one would have been great.

Yeah.

For where I was.

So that's, that's the trade-off you make is that like, yeah, my brother and sister were in much cooler places in Eastern Europe, but like Eastern Europe is hard, man. Like really hard.

But I thought like, so I guess you're dealing with, uh, mostly Mexicans or some type of Hispanic.

Um, yeah.

Oh, they're, they're the most hardcore Catholics there are. They, they were, they were willing to bail.

Well, so what you gotta realize though, El Paso is like, uh, very transitory. A lot of people just just got there from Mexico. And so it's like, ah, well, I'm not really going to my church that I used to go to. Maybe I'm looking for something new. Like my life is already changing. I'm open to something new.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you have like a weight loss thing. Ben, can you give me the like speed version of what is the pitch? So you knock, you literally physically knock on a door. I open up, what happens?

Yeah, so essentially what we're taught to do, uh, is—

no, just like do it, man, in Spanish.

Yeah, do it to me, do it to me. No hablo inglés, though.

You guys gotta, you gotta bear with me, it's been, uh, okay, so I'm, I'm, I'm 34, it's been 13 years.

You did this 100,000 times, you know this like the back of your ABCs.

So, uh, You know, I'd say, hi, how are you? My name is Elder Wilson. This is— I got my companion with me. This is Elder Lopez. How are you today? You know, just whatever.

Hi. Good. I'm doing great. Nice to meet you.

Gosh, how— gosh, I'm sorry. Hold on.

Let me think about this. What do you want?

Okay, we'll give you a second.

Once I get into it, I can get into it. But like, how would I first, first start? That's what I'm trying to think of.

How many times did people tell you to F off?

I couldn't begin to tell you.

I mean, more often than not.

Do they train you or you just sort of figure out how to sell this?

You go to, uh, well, so you got 3 weeks of training if you're speaking English. If you're learning a language, it depends on how difficult the language is. I got 6 weeks of training, I think.

Do you carry mace?

No.

No weapon? No, nothing. Like a whistle? You have a whistle?

No, I think maybe the women, it might be up to their own discretion. Maybe they do some stuff like that. I have a friend who got stabbed. He was in Honduras. Like a good buddy of mine got stabbed on his mission.

I guess I can't just put them up. Lethal weapon here.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of how, you know, start off with just like, you know, we're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And you start off by asking them questions like, do you believe in God? Are you someone who believes in God?

Yeah.

Oh, you know, like, well, what do you believe about it? Do you go to a church? Oh yeah, I go to a church. And so you start with kind of relating to them about their faith. And then you say, well, you know, our message is that, you know, you said you believe in Jesus Christ. We also believe in Jesus Christ from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And what we believe is that the same Christ, the same church that Christ established when he was on the earth 2000 years ago, was lost for a period of time. And so no one had the complete truth, but that it's been restored again, that exact same church. And so that's why we're out here trying to talk to people. If you knew that was true, that Christ's church was back on the earth, the same one that he established, is that something that would be interesting to you?

Oh my gosh, this is awesome. Just a sales call.

The wolf of—

Yeah, the wolf of religion. The wolf of Provo. This is great, man.

Dude. That's fascinating, man. I feel like, by the way, you know, whoever runs the budget at the, you know, the Mormon Church, me and Sam are available for consultation if you need some, some, you know, tips on how to brush up that, that opening script. I think maybe those first few lines, maybe we could give you some other hooks, maybe some other, some other, other ways in because—

Also, like, have you seen the trends on TikTok where it's like a baby or something like running away and they overlay audio that says, excuse me, ma'am, can I talk— can I talk to you about the Lord Jesus? You know, can I talk to you about the Lord, ma'am? Have you been to church lately, ma'am? Where are you going? Can we please talk? It's like always like something funny running away. Uh, you guys should pounce on that, man.

Would it be valid to do your mission through TikTok? Like, if you were like, I'm gonna make amazing TikTok videos that go viral and help spread our mission, like, could you do that? Is that like— or it has to be door knocking?

Um, well, no. So during COVID a lot of missions kind of went to social media, essentially. Now you gotta realize that, like, your mission is like a— it's a rite of passage, really. Like, for 2 years, when I was 19 to 21 years old, I didn't have any contact with my family except for I wrote them an email once a week, and then I got to call home on Christmas and Mother's Day. That was it. So, like, completely separated from my past life. Like doing this extremely hard thing. And so during COVID missionaries did like start doing like social media missions because they couldn't go to people's doors and talk to them. But my impression was like, man, that sounds like it sucks. Like you missed out on the rite of passage. Like I wouldn't want to do that for 2 years. Like that doesn't sound fun.

Just exploring yourself, losing your virginity, going to parties, converting people.

Well, the funny thing is like Uh, no, this shit, baby, it's definitely not.

Yeah, you're saying, you're saying, uh, man, that sounds like it sucks. I wouldn't want to do that. And like, when you describe like not seeing your family and like, you know, having to like whatever you said, like, you know, no, but the thing is, like, if you're going to wash your knees every day or whatever, like, you want it to be hard.

You want it to be like this like life-changing, difficult, crazy thing that you do with your life, not like sitting behind a computer for 2 years.

That's the difference between Mormons and Gentiles like us.

Yeah, exactly.

There's a bunch of heathens.

Dude, I spent my whole life avoiding hardship. Like, yeah, well, I would be in the military or like, you know, the Mormon Church or whatever. Like, if I really wanted to lean into like difficulty, I spent my life running away from difficulty.

We are not the same. Yeah, we are not the same.

Yeah, it is like a big cultural thing. It's hard to explain how excited I was for this again, 2 years.

Oh my God. Well, that's why, uh, you're, you know, are going to be probably more successful than both of us and happier and, um, and happier and more emotionally healthy.

I have a ton of respect for anybody who does that. I also have even more respect for whoever was able to convince people to do this. I think that is like one of the greatest, you know, like, uh, greatest like organizations that that's been created, like with such a strong pull. That its members would take such a, like, large, you know, uh, movement and, and like to support it.

Like, and they're obligated to convince 10 other people to join.

Yeah. I'm trying to get somebody to give me their email address for like 2 seconds and I'm like, ah, this is so hard.

And they have to give you, like, they have to give you 10% of their income. They gotta give you 10% of their income and go and recruit about 50 more people. It's the greatest thing ever. Yeah.

Give me 2 years of your life, 10% of your income, all of your social capital, And, uh, probably something else that I don't even know about.

And we can't pay taxes either because we're giving it all away.

It's the, it's the sweetest deal in the world.

It is, it is a great deal.

10% is cheap on, uh, on what you get in return.

Well, oh wow, amazing. And you have to believe it's the greatest deal in the world. Even better. Wow, amazing.

I didn't even join this, man. I've never seen I'm convinced now. You're like, do you guys want more?

So let me—

I'll tell you this.

I do.

I do. I pay 10% of all of my income. I donate a ton of time. It sucks all my time.

I donated to—

I gave 2 years. I paid for 2 years to be on this mission. Okay, I get— I give up a lot. But at the same time, like, if I move anywhere, I show up at a new place, I call the local congregation, a bunch of dudes come help me unpack my boxes and move in. I go to church, I immediately have like a dozen friends. People invite me over to dinner for the first few nights that I'm in this new city. If I need, if I need a job, there's someone dedicated in the congregation who will help me find a job. If I'm ever like down on my luck and I need food, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will provide me with food, make sure I don't go hungry.

Like you just described being a famous podcaster also, by the way. Sam just— Sam went on a road trip last year and was just like, hey, Who wants me to drive their car? And people are like, here, here, here's the keys. He's like, hey, anybody here's wife want to cook me dinner and give me a massage? People are like, honey, honey, Sam's in town.

Maybe I am Mormon after all.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, I look like it. Maybe I am Mormon. Maybe I should do a DNA test.

Jokes aside. And also, I don't want to have the wrath of God if he does exist against me. So, you know, Uh, I think it is pretty awesome. And also like, I think people study like what makes people happy in the end.

I think the biggest— it's always religion. That's always part of it.

Well, I think the biggest one is, is like, um, quality time spent with people you care about, which like is a combination of like family, friends, communities, spiritual community, all that stuff. And so what you're describing is basically like meaningful relationships with people who like, you know, have like kind of an unconditional support of each other, which is great and something that everybody would sign up for, you know, depending on, you know, what the situation, the cost.

I do think believers in a religion live longer than non-believers. And I also think they're happier. I was curious about that.

Sean, that was a great point.

Are they going to have a succinct pitch for why it's a great thing?

We need to send you on a mission.

Elder Puri. I would love to go knock on a— I would love to go knock on 100 doors. I really want to just do door-to-door sales just to see if I could do it and how it would work.

The pitch needs to be, excuse me, man, do you know what the average life expectancy of an atheist is? Now, what if I were to tell you that Mormon believers, it's this? Would that interest you?

Right.

We—

I don't know if, if, uh, if the church would go for this, but if they would, we should do a YouTube series where like we send Sean with a couple missionaries I could hook you up with in the Bay Area and just go knock on like 100 or 200 doors with them and like see what it's like, offer your thoughts, and then like give them some observations and tips from, uh, well, I would like to just go sell my own fake religion and just see, like how well I could do.

Um, because you know, I need a, I need that kind of fresh slate. I'm more of an entrepreneur, not an entrepreneur, if you know what I mean. So I gotta create something from scratch here and, um, keep all those tax benefits to myself as well. I've actually considered this many times about creating my own religion. Um, because I do have my own philosophy, my own belief system. I do share it with others, and, uh, and, uh, it's a life operating system. I don't like taxes, and I think that it's fantastic to, to own a religion, or to, you know, own a church of a religion.

You're Indian, so, you know, you, you can be a guru.

Like, people expect that, you know.

I know. I mean, when I had the longer hair, I was much better suited for this. But, you know, if I— like, Sam, what would be your opening line? Like, what— where— what direction would you take it? Like, he was like, hi, I'm Ben, do you have Do you have a moment to talk about it?

I would have said exactly— I would say, excuse me, ma'am, I know this is so strange, but I gotta ask you a quick question. What would you say if I told you that the average life expectancy of an atheist was 72, but the average life expectancy of a Mormon is 84? Would you want to know why? And I think they would say, yeah, I guess. Well, you see, it's—

do you want to see your grandkids someday?

Yeah, like, well, because when you believe in a religion, it means this, this, this, and this. And it just so happens our religion— I would tell them—

well, that's why it was good that he He started with, do you believe in God? Right?

Because get the losers out of the way.

Well, no, you got to separate. Are you talking to an atheist? Are you talking to somebody of another religion? Because you can't— you got to know which way you're going there. The other way is, you know, you do the thing where you're like, you know, hey, you know, I was just at your neighbor's house and I thought I would pop by. Just so you're like, I hate when I get— I'm in the neighborhood.

I would say, which neighbor?

'Yeah, it was the Johnson's across the street, and, um, uh, you know, I thought I'd stop by because, um, blah blah blah.' Or like, you know, 'I really just wanted to chat with you for a minute. Do you, do you believe in God?' All right, you know, maybe go with something that's like, um, uh, 'I was just wondering, have you seen this video?' Hold up my phone of that TikTok of the baby, uh, to be chased away. You know, like, I'm just trying to like, you know, stun them into not not like automatically rejecting me, right? Like, it's like, how do I get some curiosity? Which would be something like, um, you know, I'm going around the neighborhood, I'm just asking, you know, do you go to church, uh, regularly? And they're like, oh yeah, right, awesome. Uh, would you say you believe in God? Yeah, I do believe in God. Um, you know, where'd that start? Was that from your parents? Yeah, my mom was super religious. My mom too. And then I was like, you know, trying to do something like that. That's off the top of my head how I would try to like You know, build rapport quickly as I get them to talk.

Stick to podcasts. Stick to podcasts.

Hey, give me, give me 100,000 reps at this. I think I'd be pretty good by the end. Yeah.

Better than Ben and having to think about it. Yeah.

Ben's response made me think he might, he might not have gone on that mission after all.

Hey Sean, I had 32 converts.

You've got zero so far.

So you got to get on my level.

I just don't know how you forgot the script. You said 1,000, 100,000 times. That sounds a little suspicious.

Over a decade's a long time, Sean. A decade's a long time.

All right, I got to go bathroom. I'll talk to you all in a little bit.

See ya.