Why "Desperation Induced Focus" Is the Key to Success, Plus Listener Questions

If you could only get done one thing this year, what would it be? Don't waste your time with anything else. Just take your best person, which is either you, the CEO, whoever, and make them responsible for that problem and give them everything they need to do it. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off on the road.

Let's travel, never looking back.

Do, do you, do you know, you know where I am or no?

I have no idea where you are.

Oh, I'm in Portugal, dude. I'm recording this on a microphone, like a Blue Yeti mic and just my iPhone.

Oh, okay. That's pretty good.

It's sick, right?

What are you doing in Portugal?

So, Jack Smith, our friend Jack, he is looking at retreats out here in the rural area of Portugal, like the outside the city. And he wants to buy a retreat and turn it into a meditation retreat. And he asked me to go with him and check it out with them.

So I— he's like buying a retreat center.

Yeah, but like a plot of land that has like 5 to 20 cabins on it. He's looking at multiple places.

And why is he doing that?

Because Silent Retreats made a difference in his life and he's like into meditation and stuff and he wants to do it and he likes Portugal. I don't know why. It's really cheap here, dude. We went out to dinner with like 6 of us, and I felt like we went to a fancy dinner and ordered a ton of stuff, and it was $120.

That's amazing. Um, so he's also buying a farm.

Isn't that funny?

Your short-term rental thing is just like— you're— it's not even short-term rental. I wouldn't even say that. Buying a big-ass piece of land, a place to put your flag down.

Is it— is this like the yellow taxi cab thing where like we're talking about yellow taxis, therefore we see them everywhere? Or have you noticed that this is like— this is popular? I can't decide.

Um, I don't know if it's popular or not, but ever since you posted your photos of yours, or you sent me yours, it went from like an idea that just sounded like a pain in the ass to something I'm like kind of itching and wishing I had myself. So, and I don't even like, like we discussed, I don't even like leaving the house. So, you know, I don't even know why I want this piece of land. I'm never gonna go. I'm literally never gonna go.

I don't think I'm gonna go that much either. I'm renting it out much of the time.

Yeah, and I don't want to deal with all that. I don't know. Um, Ben, have you— do you want a piece of land now ever since you saw what Sam was doing? Did he influence you?

100%. Portugal sounds like it's— I actually, like, I was already into it, but Portugal is just like increasing my interest like exponentially. That sounds incredible. I think buying a place out here is not wise. Um, whenever I go abroad, I just— I love going abroad and I love meeting new people and cultures, but it makes me realize how America, like, we have our act together for, for most things. I would be a little nervous to buy a place out here without speaking the language and being a foreigner and stuff.

What is Jack even buying? What do you need for a silent retreat? Like, you need like a place to sit on the ground. What do you—

why does it depend on anything? Well, you have like staff like feed breakfast, like give you breakfast every morning. And there's like, they have like a pool and a restaurant. I mean, it's like a proper like hotel. But the salary is pretty sick.

A silent hotel.

Okay.

I kind of like this idea now. Now I don't know why I went from, why does he need anything to, I need this.

It's cool, right, man? This stuff is actually cool. Um, so I, it's, people are talking about it. It seems like in my world at the time, but I can't just tell it's just cause I noticed it now.

I wish he was not making it like a retreat cause that's still going to be like only for those who really want to like have this intense life experience. I wish it really was more like a silent hotel. It's like a place you can go for a night or two while you're in town and you're just gonna have a good time.

Like the, the, it was the place. He didn't, I don't think he's, he's not turning it into a silent retreat. I meant to say he has gone to many silent retreats and he loves them and he wants to create like a nature, like area.

Would you go on a silent retreat?

No, I think it'd be really hard, but I would go on a nature-ish retreat. Uh, but It would be really hard. But can I— let me show you something kind of intriguing. So do you see that Instagram link?

Yeah, I got the thing.

It says, Sam, one, have you seen this shit?

No, I haven't. All right. Open it up. Raw meat. It's Instagram.com/rawmeatexperiment.

So read this guy's description. Just read it out loud and let me see your reaction.

Eating raw meat at Whole Foods every day until I die from bacteria.

What the fuck?

Seeing if I live for 5 days or 500 years. Follow me for more recipes. So click a video.

I mean, so all this guy does is he has a video and look who sponsored it. Nick Gray, my friend Nick Gray sponsored it.

It said, who is this person? What is their name?

I have no idea who he is, but all he's sick.

He's just eating a fish carcass. And like, do you know my friend, the second video, he's holding us giant fish, like a salmon, a piece of salmon that's raw, and he's just eating it. He's not even eating it like nibbling on it like a burrito, like from the top down. He's just eating it sort of face on. It's very strange.

Look at some of the other ones. He'll eat like a prime rib. Is this the grossest thing you've ever seen?

Wow, almost 100 days of eating uncooked animals and everything is fine. Learning a lot each day. Today I got a juicy New York strip. I forgot a glass for the egg, so I had to suck a slonker out the old-fashioned way. I'm gonna write up my thing, blah blah. Okay, so he's not dead, so that's good, I guess. Kind of feel like he kind of, kind of was rooting for him to die a little bit just for this idea. But, um, is he healthy? Is he like doing well?

I don't know, man. All I know is I see his videos of him just eating meat and it's so gross. I've got to turn it off. But the two things struck me. One, This is just crazy and weird.

And two, that he's not eating anything else.

Yeah, I think so. And two, his copywriting in his bio is beautiful. Like, I saw that and I was like, this is the best.

And he's getting featured by everything. He's like, just talk to Ladd Bible. The interview is going, of course, because everybody wants to talk about this. I'm going to talk about this. You are currently talking about this. This is crazy. He's literally eating a brick of ground beef. With a cup of 4 egg yolks just as his drink.

It's disgusting, isn't it? Is this the craziest thing you've seen in a long time?

That's absolutely filthy. Yeah, this is crazy. Wow.

Hmm.

Yeah, I guess it gets better. He does this than becomes a serial killer. You know, he had 2 paths to choose from and he chose raw meat experiments. I guess good. Good on him for that.

It's crazy. Um, one thing I wanted to ask you, I think you're more in tune with this. I was talking to, um, a friend who runs like a 40-person startup that has engineers. It's an app. And they were telling me that the salaries that they're having to compete with, like they said their people are getting poached to work at like a Netflix or something like that. And those big companies are paying engineers like $500,000 a year cash. Like that's the salary, right?

I think she's, she said that average engineer, it's not even like the, uh, it's not like a 30-year-old guy. It's not like you're a specialist who's gonna bring some something so unique to the table. It's like, no, you're like a mid-level solid engineer, maybe senior engineer. But, uh, yeah, it's crazy.

She told me that someone from Brex was got recruited to Brex and like the offer was like 300 or 400 cash and then like another like equity grant that was pushed it to like 600,000, 700,000. Is that How on earth can a small startup keep up with this? Is this crazy?

Yeah, but this has been going on for like, I don't know, almost a decade now where you have this crazy outsized compensation that's guaranteed. It's like, hey, this is, this job is easier and pays you more. And then you're the startup being like, hey, you wanna work twice as hard for half as much? And it's like, shit. But people do take the trade for two reasons. One is, there's a lottery ticket element to startups, which is if a startup hits, you can like kind of like leapfrog up and you can, you can make a lot more. Probability-wise, it's not a good trade, like, right? Your expected value's not that high, but, but there is a chance. The other component that helps is just people don't have a lot of fun working in big companies like that.

But I don't remember it being like $500,000 or $600,000.

It's crazy numbers. And you were a PM, were you a PM?

Uh, yeah, technically I was a PM.

Yeah. What was your cash salary?

So mine, when I, when I joined was, so they have a, uh, I'm trying, how, how should I split this out? Okay. So basically what they do at Amazon does is they, they always say, The highest possible salary you can get is $185,000 a year. Even Jeff Bezos only can make that. So no matter who you are, that's your set cash salary. But then they do assigning, they do a cash bonus. So it's like, it's kind of the same thing. I don't know why they split it out. So those two combined, I think took it up to like $400,000, $500,000, something like that. And then on top of that was your, your, your stock. Yeah. So I think $400,000 was the cash component and then stock would then be bigger. And then we got acquired. So we had not only your job, normal stock package, but then the acquisition stock package on top of that.

Yeah. And that's what I have now. I think, what is my salary? I think with the bonus, it's like $300,000, but the stock is much, much larger. Yeah.

Anyway, I'm insane numbers, but you know, I would say like, you know, this is, this wasn't the case for non-engineers. So, you know, if I look at kind of like, you know, people in the marketing team or community team, theirs would be like a program manager for something like that. That's more in the, like, what people are used to as like a good job. It's like, you know, you make like $150,000 a year and you work at this company and you get benefits and all that good stuff. Or they could get to $180,000 or $200,000 or something like that max. It was really only the engineers, engineering managers that were crazy high. And then mine, I wasn't just like a random PM. It's like I ran a whole division of the company. There was only, I think, 7 people at my level in the company. So it's like, so, so, you know, how many, how many peers do you have? So if you could manage a team of 50 to 100 people, then you could have that kind of comp.

How many people do you think who worked at Amazon? Because I don't think Twitch would apply here. How many people do you think that would work at one of these big companies that probably had a liquid net worth north of $50 million from their comp?

Uh, I don't know if you said Twitch, but yeah, not, not at Twitch.

Not, I meant Amazon.

I don't know, man. I, I've, I kind of put this out there once. I think I asked, I was like, how many people at, um, at this company would make more than X? And I kind of got like a fuzzy answer. So I don't know. I don't, I don't have a great answer for that, unfortunately.

Yeah. I was thinking about that with HubSpot. I'm like, how many, how many people do you think have made more than $20 million from their stock?

And well, like, for example, even when Twitch got acquired by Amazon, the stock had gone up, I think, 4 or 5— 4 or 5x since then. So, you know, even if you came in and you got a million dollars in the acquisition, you actually had 4 or 5 million dollars if you just held on to your Amazon stock. And so there was, you know, like, the appreciation of stocks is crazy. Like, if you just go look at a 10-year chart at Google, you know, you might have had a $300k salary, but that was effectively, you know, a $3 million salary when you look at it over the, over the 10-year period. So it's pretty crazy. Uh, tech companies have just accumulated so much wealth. And the funny thing is, is these numbers sound crazy, like, wow, these people are sort of like almost overpaid in a way. But it's like, actually, um, like the company's getting the best deal on average, right? Because the company's creating way more value per person than they're giving out in comp, which is hard to understand.

That's a really tough exercise to understand. I, I, I still struggle with it. I'm like, how do you have 3,000 people at this company who you have to pay this much money for? And it's like, well, because it makes billions of dollars.

Well, yeah. Just think about it. Like between Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, these are 4 of the greatest wealth generating machines, cash machines ever created, right? Like these are trillion dollar companies. Multiple— Apple's like a $2 trillion company or even more. So it's like, you know, there's, uh, these are the greatest businesses created in the history of Earth. So yeah, you know, like the compensation is kind of outsized and it's pretty crazy and it's hard to get in. And even when you get in, it's hard to move up. But once you're there, it's like a, you know, it is really kind of a golden ticket, which is why it's funny. Like I quit, you know, like, and a bunch of people quit and go do other stuff because at the end of the day, it's just like, it's not gonna move the needle that far for you. Like if you can have an opportunity to feel like you're making a bigger impact or just have more fun on a day-to-day basis, it's very tempting to go take that path. And I see, you know, you see a lot of people do it. There's, by the way, there's a great blog post that I've read. Have you read this blog post? It's called Desperation Induced Focus.

No, but I think that's a really, really good headline.

Yeah, exactly. And then he goes, he has another one. He goes, uh, he ended the thing. He goes, the next time someone tries to tell you to do something because a big company says, big company does it, be suspicious. Don't let them infect your company with a thing that's slowly killing theirs.

This is beautiful. Yeah.

Good. I'm gonna meet up with this. I emailed him, so I emailed this guy right afterwards and I go, I just sent him an email at like 2, I read this at 2 or 3 in the morning and I'm gonna read like what I sent him. Um, I just go, I go, wow, the desperation induced focus blog post, one of the best fucking posts I've read this year. Uh, I could give you a dozen examples. Um, you know, my startup got bought by Twitch a couple years ago that, that proved this, but you don't need to hear them because you know, Only somebody who knows could write this blog post. I'd love to meet you sometime. I'm Sean. I live in the Bay Area, blah, blah, blah. Here's what I do. Okay. I'm gonna go read some other blog posts on your site right now. The bar's high. Don't disappoint me.

What did he say?

He was like, wow, thank you. I appreciate that. Would love to meet. I'm over here. You know, like, let's, let's hang out.

So you guys are hanging out?

Yeah.

Jesus.

I was like, anybody who writes this, I'm gonna get along with you. I'm gonna get along with you. We're gonna be thick as thieves. It's just a matter of how much time we hang out.

What's he do at Sequoia?

Uh, he's a partner or something like that. He has another one.

He's a big deal.

This guy, I'm clicking around, is a very good writer. So his blog is rkg.blog. His writing is very, very, very good. This guy's a clear thinker. I can read his writing and I understand his, I understand how he thinks just from reading his writing.

Ben, you got the Georgetown Law shirt on. What do you think of this?

I think it sounds genius. Uh, by the way, my wife went here, not me. So, you know, I don't, uh, I don't know how much credibility this gives me. I'm just a wife guy here wearing the sweatshirt.

We already taught you how to, how to rock the, the Harvard shirts or the Georgetown Law shirts. Actually, I had this happen to me yesterday. I was walking in the neighborhood, walking my dog, and a lady in a Tesla swerves over, pulls over. She goes, did you go to Harvard too? And I, I go, and I go, she goes, Harvard, did you go there?

And I go, yeah, for a tour once.

Yeah. I go, I go, yeah, I was there in 2006. Loved the campus. And she goes, I know, I love, I go, I went there in 2006. I go, I was there in 2006. God, I missed the campus. She goes, oh, me too. And then she starts talking.

Wait, were you by yourself?

She goes, I'm class of '94. And I go, oh no, no, I just bought the shirt. And then she started cracking up. And then she told me a story of the same thing. She goes, she goes, that's— I go, sorry to fake you out. And she goes, that's so funny you did that. She goes, my husband has this shirt that says like, it says like some, it's like some army insignia. It's like some shield and like whatever. It's like some, some army shirt. Because his brother or dad or something like that was in the army or something like that, has the shirt. I think like his brother had given him the shirt. And, um, they were in the park and someone came right up to him and like stood and did like a salute and was like, you know, Colonel blah blah blah. And he's like, oh shit, he didn't know what to say because like the guy was really like paying him like serious respect. And so he just kind of rolled with it for a second. And then like the guy walked away and he felt super guilty afterwards. He's like, fuck, I should have said something. I don't know what I don't know what I was doing. Why did I just like play into that?

Dude, were you by yourself when you did this?

Yeah, I was by myself.

That's hilarious. I would not, I typically am not in the mood when I'm by myself to pull a joke like that. That's a good one. That's a winner.

Dude, it's the best. 'Cause my shirt also has like a hole in it, so it looks like worn. Like this is like a, it doesn't look like memorabilia. It looks like, you know, my old college sweatshirt.

Um, can I show you a business really quick? So check out, all right, look at what I wrote under specialty license plate. My friend Dennis,, was showing me this. So there's this website called MyPlate. Is it MyPlates? MyPlates.com. Can— yeah, sorry. Thank you. All right. So, um, basically you can do one of two things on this website. The first thing is you can buy— someone has purchased the website like 001 or like some funny phrase or something, and you could do an auction to purchase the vanity plate. But what this website does is they made a deal with the Texas government and they guaranteed the Texas government a certain amount of revenue. So in order to get a vanity plate, you've got to spend $50 to $100. And myplate.com makes it really easy to register and get that done. And they go to the government, said, hey, we promise you over the next 3 years, we're going to pay you $25 million in fees.

5 years, 5 years, $25 million.

Yeah. So they're basically, uh, they're doubling up, right? So they, they, they have this guaranteed payout, but then they probably have their own cost. So I don't know how great of a business it is, right? They have their own marketing costs and things like that. But let's say they did $40 million, $50 million, uh, you know, across that time they had to get, pay out $25 million total for the rights. Um, that's still pretty, pretty damn good for a business that has like, by definition, zero competition.

Well, and on LinkedIn I saw 2 employees. That's it.

Yeah, it's, it's sick. I came across this Dennis showed me and I was like, this is actually really badass. This is kind of cool.

Yeah. That's cool. I've been, I've been looking into licensing recently. Have you ever licensed a product?

No, but the only thing I know about it is our friend Suli who did it. And he like told me how it worked and licensing is, if you're the person who owns the license, it's like, it's amazing.

Well, yeah. In this case, like these are non-exclusive licenses, but I've been learning how, like, you know, like how does the Disney licensing process work? Like if you want to put Mickey Mouse on something, How does that work? And it's like, well, you gotta like get in touch with them. And you know, that's like, you know, hurdle one. And there's brokers that'll do it, or you could just get in touch with them directly. And then you basically are like, I guarantee you this much and I'll give you whatever, 15% of all sales. Um, and you have kind of veto rights on, on the design and all that. You have to approve it before we sell anything. So the whole process takes kind of like a year, but it's so powerful to be able to sell somebody something instead of from your brand that they've never heard of. You know, on a brand like Lion King or something where they have like already an emotional attachment to it. In this case, like it said that the top sold license vanity license plate was 12th Man, which is like the nickname for the crowd at the UT, at the Longhorns game. And so, um, you know, if you're, if you're a Longhorns fan, which is like pretty popular in Texas, like you have that emotional connection to the team. And so you're going to get, you know, get that kind of benefit. So I think licensing businesses are quite interesting in general.

That's interesting. Yeah, I, I didn't really know much about it. Um, I remember Suli like had some crazy story about how they did, did a bunch of licensing stuff. What are you trying to license?

What's, um, what do you know about Logan Paul? What do you want to talk about with him?

it was like an apartment building, right?

And so yeah, so he finds the apartment building and he's like, oh great, he's on the East Coast. He just moves to LA, moves into this apartment building, like finds like whatever the cheapest apartment is in this building. Gets in, moves in, and he's like, all right, I'm here. He's like, they're, they're here, I'm here. And he started— he's like, all right, uh, how do I bump into them? He's like, okay, they hang out— they like, they go to the gym all day. So he's like, I started going to the gym like 5 hours a day. He's like, I'll just hang out there. He's like, first of all, I got ripped, which was awesome because I was just at the gym all day every day. Secondly, I would just see Logan, I'd see Jake, I'd see King Batch. I just see these guys every day. And then sure enough, we You know, became kind of like friendly and then we became sort of like friends. And then he's like, hey guys, like, you know, have you guys ever thought about, you know, doing some merch? And, uh, ended up doing like a merch run with Logan Paul and that kind of kickstarted his e-commerce business, which is now doing, doing quite well. Does, you know, millions of dollars a year. So, um, but yeah, I just thought that was amazing, amazing hustle story of like, it's the, they found the line. Between determined and creepy? Um, like creepy is like I'm hanging out in your driveway. It's like, ah dude, leave me alone. Like, you know, I'm in the parking lot every day.

Do you want to share what your pickup line was for your wife, by the way? Is that story— I think it's the perfect example. Yes. As a friend, I recommend not telling this story. As a podcast host, I am hoping you tell this story because it's hilarious.

There's nothing bad about it, in my opinion, because like her family knows, and like it worked, like we're married, so it worked out. But, um, so I met my— I was with my friend Lily, a girlfriend of mine, a friend who's a woman, and it helped. The reason I say she's a woman is it helped me look a little more disarming. And I was with Lily, and this woman walked in the bar, and I go, Lily, that woman's beautiful, like I'm— I can't let her— like I got to talk to her before I leave, and what should I say to her? And as I'm saying this to Lily, Sarah, my now wife, walks by and I go, hey, what's the difference between a chickpea and a lentil? And she looks at me funny and she goes, what? I go, I don't pay $400 to have a lentil on my face. And she was like, bendito Dios. And I was like, yeah, classic, classic hummus joke. Big fan of hummus jokes, are you? And we became— Now you're married. Now we're married. And we basically like fell in love like 10 days after that. So it worked out perfectly. And so that proves my point that the difference between creepy and not creepy is just getting that laugh. So kudos to this guy.

That was like the most high-risk maneuver. Ben's— Ben looks so— I've never seen Ben so shook.

He's—

I— as a man of Georgetown Law, what do you have to say about this?

Sam, Sam, you know, ghetto country Romeo, like hose water Romeo over here. It's a crazy, crazy joke out of nowhere. When you told me that, by the way, I was 100% sure you were lying because I was like, there's no way that's a true story. That's a, that's a fake story. It's a funny fake story. But I was, I was still happy with the fake funny fake story. And then, uh, Sarah was like, she rolled her eyes. She was like, yeah, and then rolled her eyes. I was like, wait, is that real? She's like, yes.

I'm telling you, it works. This is like classic copy. I, I would— the, the best thing that has helped me meet women. Cause you know, like, like a lot of computer dorks, I'm just, I was just a nerd learning how to be a better copywriter, taught me how to like grab people's attention, get them interested, make them desire, and then take action. I'm telling you, it was classic copywriting.

Yeah. Anyone listening, go try that. Let us know how it goes. Go try that line out tomorrow.

The difference between it working and it not working, remember, is getting the recipient to smile. I'm telling you, that's like the key and a good smile, not like Not like, you know, like you want to say like, wow, not like, wow, you know what I mean?

All right, what else we got? You want to do one of yours? You have Dharmesh is amazing on here.

Okay, so let's listen to this. So Dharmesh, Dharmesh is the founder of HubSpot, the co-founder. We had him on the podcast. He very likely, just based off his HubSpot stock, is a billionaire. Knowing Dharmesh, he probably has like, like he's made other investments that have made him a huge sum, but I don't know. And he basically, when this app Wordle came out, he got obsessed with it or just became a fan of it. And he created a new game on its, his own game where I believe I don't play Wordle. So I'm sure you've seen it because you play that game. It's like basically is Wordle a once a day thing?

Yeah, once a day.

So Dharmesh's app is like, once you're done with your daily Wordle, come practice and train on my Wordle app. And it's like a training Wordle app, right? And it's really good. Have you seen it?

No, but I need that because every day I do the Wordle and then I'm like not satisfied with the 1 minute, you know, like I need more of a break. So then I go Google Wordle archive and I go to this bootleg site and I start playing an old Wordle., just to play a little bit more.

So you see his Twitter, look at his thing.

Wordplay.com.

I think that's it.

Yeah. It just says he has an amazing domain.

It is amazing. I'm playing the game right now. So excuse me if I'm a little, uh, a little off. I need a word that's R-U blank blank Y. R-U blank blank Y. Rubby?

No.

Rummy? Rummy?

Could be ruddy?

There's no N. What is it? Ruddy?

No, there's no D. Are you DDY? But this is amazing, right? That he's able to do this. He also, um, when Bitcloud came out, I believe he was one of the largest, uh, or most active per— one of the more active participants on Bitcloud. And I was like, why? He goes, oh, I'm not sure if it's gonna work, but I wanna just understand this technology so I know what's going on.

Right. Yeah. He's, he's amazing. He's a tinkerer and a hacker for sure, which is like one of the, um, highest kind of like predictors of success in my opinion. Is people that just scratch their own itch. They're tinkerers, they're hackers, and they build cool stuff. Uh, there's this founder, Farza, who's building this thing called BuildSpace right now, which is a cool company. It's like, helps Web2 engineers get into Web3 and like learn, learn, learn about Web3 and then get a job. And, uh, over the weekend, and he's like, you know, he's raised money, you know, from Andreessen Horowitz and others. So it's like a serious business. But over the weekend, he posted this thing. He's like, All right, check this out. And he's like, put this 30-second video up and he goes, I bought this NeuroCity device, which basically, I don't know if you've ever seen this, it's like a thing you put, like, see how my headphones are on my head right now?

It's like this. Yeah.

Yeah. And it measures your brainwaves.

Yeah.

And so, and it could be coded again. So he goes, I, I have this NeuroCity device and I made it so that anytime I'm focusing or I'm thinking hard about something, it's attached to this motor on this hat with a little, uh, fan on top of the hat. Like, you know, those like goofy, like, you know, whatever, Pee-wee Herman type hats. And it's like, this, this thing should spin anytime I'm thinking hard. He's like, so watch this. He puts it on, it's not spinning. He goes, okay, I'm gonna do some math. 2 2 is 4, 4 4 is 8, 8 8 is 16. He starts going up and, uh, the wheel starts spinning super fast as he gets to like 128 or whatever. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. It's useless, to be clear, uh, but it's also completely amazing. And, uh, and so, you know, I give him credit.

If someone made that, I wouldn't bet against them.

Yeah, exactly. It's like this person, they're just going to shoot a bunch of shots on goal and they're eventually going to get it. The same thing happens on the marketing and marketing side. People want to hire somebody who's a marketer. It's like, oh yeah, I ran, you know, I ran market. I was head of marketing at Coinbase. It's like, dude, there's probably 15 people that say that they led marketing at Coinbase, first of all. Then secondly, um, like, you know, the things you had to do Yeah, the things you had to do there to make Coinbase grow, it's actually like Coinbase is already growing rapidly and you just helped kind of like, you know, you know, soften up the edges. Whereas the person who's like, yeah, I made this website, there's this guy who's— I love this guy. I've been trying to hire him for Milk Road. This guy Rohan Vora, if you go to his, his Twitter, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. So R-O-H-U-N Vora. V-O-R-A. So his thing goes, his thing is just, I created bitcoinorshit.com and bitcoinisdead.lol. Um, and so if you go look at those, it's like bitcoinorshit.com. It's like, it's a little mini website that just says, um, if you bought Bitcoin instead of, uh, stupid shit, you'd have blank by now. So you type in how much you spent on like, you know, whatever, a TV that you bought, and it's like, you would've had this by now. It's like, shows you if you had invested in Bitcoin instead, How much would your money be worth?

Dude, this is the way to go.

When I was, uh, running my company, I would, if I got an applicant from Apple or Facebook or Google At first I would flip out. I would be like, I am so honored that a rocket scientist from Facebook would want to apply at my company. That alone, I feel like validated in my existence. And I hired, uh, I'll try to be vague. I hired from one of these huge companies and it was horrible. It was horrible. We, we, it didn't work out. Um, and what I learned was like, basically they just don't do anything. Like when you're at Facebook, I had a friend that worked at Facebook and his job was basically to figure out what stickers to, what stickers to make in order to put on a picture that gets people to upload more pictures.

Right.

But they didn't actually do the work. They had a team of like 18 people and then they got approval. And I'm like, and I was like, oh, like, so like, are you like skilled? Like, what are you good at? They're like, I'm not good at anything. I just like organize shit. Like I can't do anything. Right. And so I learned the hard way that it, that it's not interesting. Yeah.

This is why when you interview people, you have to be like, you know, okay, cool. So, so what's, what's a project you did there? And they're like, oh, I did this project. Cool. So talk me through where the idea for that project come from. This other person. Okay, cool. So then, um, you know, explain to me maybe like the 3 different directions you could have gone with it and then which one you chose and why. And they're like, uh, it's like, oh, you didn't think you just kind of did the The first thing. All right, cool. So you didn't actually weigh the options about which way to go and come up with 3 plans and pick the best one. All right, great. Uh, cool. So then when you wanted to do it, um, you know, what, what'd you, what'd you do in the first kind of like, I don't know, 10 days? Like, I don't know. Cause they don't think on short time spans about like, how do I get momentum? How do I generate some velocity and momentum and actually get the ball rolling? It's like, no, we just like did it. Took a year and I never considered it taking kind of like less than a year. And, uh, you know, so that was that. And I was like, cool. So how would you measure success? Well, it was hard to measure for these reasons. You know, it's all, it's too many variables.

Oh, the question I ask, thank you for coming. I ask, yeah. The question I ask is what tools do you use? And if they tell me like, well, I just use like Google Slides and then I take a screenshot and I just drag it on over. Like, I'm like in. But if you say that it's mostly like Excel or database stuff, like SQL, I'm like, I, I don't know if you can actually create, I don't know if you could do it. If they say that they use tools where I'm like, I don't think that you, I don't think that you can actually make something that a user sees, then I don't know if this would be a good fit.

And yeah, I can't stand that.

And I'm sure there's people who are successful who don't do it that way, but for me, I'm instantly like, this is one red flag. It's not a disqualifier, but if I hear 3 more, like, this is, it's a definite no-go here in terms of this person, because I just can't fathom how you would do something and not try to understand where the others are at in numerical terms and not like just your opinion of them.

I'm on the same page, and I do that when I'm in, when I'm in making investments. I say, How big a business do you think this? And I name like a competitor is, and they're like, well, you know, I'm not sure. It's like, dog, I know you're not sure. I didn't ask you if you're sure. I just said like, just like, let's have a conversation with me about like, I know you've researched this, right? And if they haven't researched, I'm like, fuck, man, I don't know if you're going to be in a good place.

It's hard to say. I'm like, are you sure it's hard to say? Or can I just go to this site and this site, triangulate basically within a very close approximation where they're at? Um, or, you know, that's just like a crazy thing to me when, when people don't know that.

Do you want to answer a few questions? I'll ask you a few questions on your Twitter.

Yeah.

I'll, I'll, um, pull up your thing and I've got it up too. I'll ask you one and you answer first and then I'll answer second. And while you're, while each other's answering, just scroll and find another one. So this one's an easy one, straightforward general question, but tell me the percentage of your, uh, personal portfolio, you know, stocks, crypto, rolling fund, real estate, e-com, et cetera. Um, actually for this, I don't I don't know if you can include e-com or any private businesses because that could be like illiquid, right? Do liquid. Uh, you could do liquid and I'll, I'll, I'll do it as well.

Okay. I don't have the numbers exactly in front of me, uh, for like updated, but I think I did this last 2 months ago, 3 months ago maybe. Uh, and crypto is like, I did it right before the crypto crash. So I think some, some of the numbers are gonna be a little different now. I roughly have 30 to 30 to 40% in stocks. 40 to 50% in crypto. Um, I own no real estate at the moment, and I have very little cash. I keep less than, I don't know, less than 5%, maybe 3, 4%. I keep a very small amount of cash compared to most people. Um, that's also just because I did a bunch of startup deals where I invested personal money into startups and things like that, so that that took some cash and put it into illiquid startups. And then there's startups, which I didn't say, uh, that's kind of the remainder. Uh, so of liquid, liquid money, that's, that's where I put it. Uh, the business or the e-commerce business, that kind of like your paper net worth, I don't count that. Uh, I don't, um, yeah, I don't count any, I don't count anything in net worth from businesses that are not exiting or yeah, that are not, not exited yet.

So it looks like I'm at 85% equity, public equities and bonds. Of which that 85%, it's basically 90% equities. Um, and that includes Airbnb and HubSpot. Um, and then I own 10% in real estate and then I have 3.5%, I call it private equity. So that's basically angel investments that I consider it. They've marked up and they're like profitable and like relatively safe. So I like, and I put a discount on it. Um, and then I have, uh, like 5-ish of crypto.

Okay. And, uh, I guess the follow-up to that is, do you like your allocation or do you wish it was different?

Um, it is really painful right now. It's painful. I, I've lost a fair amount of net worth in the past 3 months.

Right.

Um, I, if there's anything, I wish it was more real estate, but I don't regret not doing real estate.

Yeah.

Uh, do you, do you have regrets?

No. Uh, you know, yeah, basically my, my stock holdings are heavily biased towards tech and my, which has gotten slaughtered, um, you know, over the past, I don't know, X number of months, 6 months, something like that. And then crypto has also taken a dive recently, but my basis is quite low. So, you know, definitely still up on all of it. And then, um, I forgot startups and private equity. That's a good one to bundle together. That's probably like 10, 10-ish percent of it, uh, at least. Um, yeah, I think it's fine. I, I like, I like my allocation. Maybe I, I think, I think I probably should get out of some stocks and go more into crypto, if I'm honest.

Wow, that's crazy.

Um, I got, I got one for you.

All right, go ahead.

Question, uh, this one comes from Dylan. Dylan asks, how do you negotiate the value of the company you're selling? So how did you come up with the price? How did you get to a price with your, with your company when you sold it?

I made a huge mistake. I made a classic mistake. I said the number first. I said, these companies typically sell for blank X and blank X.

And of course, the first offer— they asked you like, what's your, what are your expectations? Or what's a range? What do you, what price would you be happy with? What are they at? How do they ask it?

I don't even know if they asked it, but I said, oh, you know, I was like, I think I said like Look, like it's— I'm not— I said, I'm not going to mess around. Like, so these companies typically sell for blank to blank. So if you're in the market, let me know. And the first offer was the low number of that.

And the last offer, was it the high number or somewhere in the middle?

In the— well, so it was in the middle, but like the thing is, is that when we sold the company, HubSpot stock was $350 and basically a week later it was like, you could look it up, it was like $550. And then like 3 months after that it was like $850.

Right.

So like it, it changed the, the sale price was one thing, but it pretty much changed quickly. But it was like right in the middle of that number. But, um, I made a huge mistake. I should not have done that. And a, as soon as I said that, I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck.

And you said it in an email.

Did I say it in the email?

I think you said, I think, I don't know. It sounds like the story you're sending it. You're saying you said it in an email.

It probably cost me, it, it cost me many millions of dollars.

Right. It's like that one decision you made actually was more important than like the previous two years of operating probably.

Yeah. A bunch of, I don't like thinking about it, but yeah. How did you do it?

Um, we, I did not say a number right away. Um, I fucked up in one regard, which was I let my emotion. So when we, so the way we decided to sell was, and there was nobody coming and knocking on our door saying, we need to buy you, you're the best. Uh, we, we, we're, we wanna be in the business of you. I was basically, frankly, I saw the writing on the wall for my business. I was like, okay, I think this is not zero,, but it's not gonna be huge. So what do I wanna do? Do I wanna ride out a middle of the pack, like small, like medium-sized outcome for the next 5 years? Or can I just go flip this thing now? And I decided I wanna go flip this thing now. I was also really tired because I had been doing, I've been trying to find product-market fit with different startups in our idea lab for like 6 years. I was ready for a change in general. And so I told my investor, my co-founder, I said, hey, I wanna sell this thing. I think it's time. And they were like, okay, if you wanna sell, then let's sell. And I said, all right, let me, let me run a process. I'm gonna try to sell this in the next 45 days. So first that was good because I timeboxed it, but I also, you know, like, uh, it added a lot of pressure. And so the mistake I made when I was figuring out how, how to sell, I was, I let my emotions of the day dictate how I sold, how, how hard I sold the company. And so what does that mean? At first I was super confident they're gonna wanna buy us. So I went to two, two or three companies with my super like swagged out, uh, like cocky, cocky, like pitch basically, which was sort of like, yeah, everybody wants us, but like, you know, so if you guys are interested, you know, you, you basically like, uh, you gotta let us know because this is moving fast with, you know, these other people. So you, we, we got approached, we're interested, we might go that path. You're either gonna get on the train now or you're gonna miss it. So I was like kind of cocky confident that was like working. But then like 2 days would go by where like somebody, you know, they didn't text me back or they said they were gonna review the thing and email me and they didn't email me. So then I started to have doubt creep into my head a little bit. So then I would like, kind of like, it's like a booty call. It's like desperation, reach out to some other company. And so one of 'em was I reached out to Facebook through somebody I know and I was sort of like, hey, like, you know, we're gonna sell this thing. I, I used the word acquihire. Which was like the wrong word to say because acquihire means a specific range of what outcome you're going to get. And it basically means don't value my company, just value my talent. And, um, I shouldn't have done that. I should not have said that there. I was luckily able to recover because it was such a big company that by the time he made the intro to the person who made the intro, I had like changed the narrative completely. But the third guy was like, yeah, you guys looking at acquihire? I was like, I don't know where the fuck you got that. No. And it's like I literally had sent an email and it was, you know, with myself saying that, but I luckily was able to change it. And actually they, they came in with the— Facebook came in with the highest offer. And so we— so I ended up recovering from that mistake, but that could have been critically bad, which was—

you wish you would have taken the Facebook offer?

No, uh, like the Amazon offer ended up working out great, but, um, you know, whatever, it was a good deal, uh, in the end, I guess, but But that was the main thing. And I didn't have a comparable. I didn't have comparables really. I kind of— the comparables I heard were such a huge range that I was like, okay, I just need to forget I heard any of those numbers because it's too wide of a range. It just means like, it depends. And so then I started negotiating. I didn't say the number first, and we waited till we got offers. They tried to get a number out of us, but I was like, not gonna do it. And, um, I was anchoring in other ways besides saying the specific number. I was like leaving little hints or kind of just like, you know, just making sure they knew that we had other interest. And eventually once we got one offer, I was like, okay, that's a ballpark. And then I basically just texted the CEO of Twitch and I was like, hey, I'm gonna take this other offer unless you can match. And, uh, he's like, you know, give me some time. Let me give it, give me some hours. Like, I don't have time. He's like, oh, give me an hour. And I was like, okay, I'll give you the hour. And, uh, and then he came back with an offer that wasn't quite a match, but it was good enough where I said, okay, all other factors considered, we think this is the best because they were gonna take more of our team and other stuff that the other one wasn't gonna do.

What a stressful— it's such a stressful period.

Yeah.

It's such a stressful period.

Yeah, I gotta actually say that that was the most useful thing. Like how we sold our company was I was totally okay if nobody bought it cuz I was kind of excited. About just ending it and going and doing something completely different. Like, I was kind of like a maniac in that way. I was like, okay, look, if we— if I got zero millions out of this, if I got zero dollars, I'm actually kind of excited about that path too. So I was like pretty free in that way. Whereas I think you had a real business that was producing real revenues and profits. You didn't have that option of like not a good, like, you know, not getting a good offer.

You needed— dude, I felt that way though, where I was like, I'm done. I'm out. I was like, I, like, I just, I need to get out of here. So I, I felt the same way as you, uh, and I'll learn a little bit differently how to run things so you don't get burnt out. Um, all right, last question. Someone— oh, we'll ask two more. The first one, how many Twitter— someone asked, how many Twitter notifications do you get a day?

Oh, I have no idea.

I turned mine off.

It says, uh, like the way Twitter works, it just says 20+ or like 100+ or something like that. And it's just always like, anytime I go to Twitter It's 20+ on the little bell, which is the max. Yeah. And then when they go to the thing, it says like 100+ people have followed you or something like that. So it's not even useful because, and it's very addictive because you can just always go, it's like a thing to refresh that's always going to show you something like literally like within 2 minutes of itself, it'll, it'll show you something new, which is crazy.

I turned my, uh, mine off. So in order to see what people are saying about me, I've got to search my name. Um, but I had to, I turned it off cause I don't even want to know.

Well, you're talking about the phone, the phone like notifications you're talking about.

No, but you can, you're like, literally when I log into Twitter, I only see a notification if someone I followed sent me a message or DM'd me or, or mentioned me. That's cool. If a random person mentioned me, yeah, if a random person mentions me, I don't ever, I never know. The only reason I ever find out, for example, did you know that Graham Stephan, that guy, that YouTuber we like, he talked about us on his podcast. Alex Hormozi was on it, and in the beginning he goes I wanna give a shout out to My First Millions. It's like, I love this pod. I, I saw you on that when I was watching the whole thing and it was, I watched it a bunch of times and I only found out about it because someone DM'd me it where he was tagging us or something like that. And I, I had no idea.

That's dope. I gave, uh, Ben my Twitter like account login. And so he goes in there and he'll just be like, hey, these 5 interesting people followed you. This guy's the founder of that, that brand we like. This person is high up at this company. And so he just kind of manually, he just gets curious. So he likes to see it or he'll go into my DMs. Or any, any product we like, he'll go DM them as me and he'll just be like, yo, your thing is like, name of, name of your thing is dope. Love it. And then they'll reply and they're like, I only see the, once the replies are, it's like a conversation has been started, then I'll take it over. Uh, but that was your wingman. It was like the best feature of Twitter is like, just give Ben your account and let him like, let him go ham. You know, it's, it's cause it's a good resource. It's just mentally exhausting for me to like try to keep up with.

Last question. Who's a bigger asshole in real life and why is it Sean?

Is this question from you?

No, it's someone—

didn't someone say that from Shampar over there?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I am. I think I am actually the bigger asshole. I think you, I think you would come across as a bigger asshole, but you're actually a nicer human than I am. That's what I'm saying. Like, I think your verbal style could, could brush, like, ruffle feathers faster than mine would, but your actual intent, I think, is very pure, and I would say more pure than mine almost.

Well, no, I think, I think that you are better at being selfish because you're more comfortable. I definitely want to be selfish and say no to all this type of shit, but you're— I think you're a little bit more comfortable with confrontation than I am, so oftentimes I come off as nicer, even though I don't think that's exactly what I want to be doing.

What's a— what's an asshole thing you, you did this week? Let's make it—

well, someone just now was knocking on the door. It was the cleaning lady at the hotel, and like, she knocked like a bunch of times, and I just ran over there and I was like, hey, can you please go away? I'm right in the middle of something. And I just closed the door. So I get really mad. Like, I get mad with incompetence. So like if I'm like, if I go to a restaurant and there's like a menu that's like taped, Scotch taped to like the mirror or something or like to like the glass, I'm like, hey, what are you guys doing, man? Why don't you guys just get like a nicer, like, like take some pride. Like I'll say stuff like that. I get really mad at that. That makes me angry. And I'm like, hey, just so you know, like if you like, this stuff makes me not trust you. So that's like an asshole thing that I'll do. What else? When people DM me their ideas, I just say like, yeah, send it to me when it's live. Like I don't want to hear about your idea. So I I get short-tempered with maybe like people just like not taking their job seriously.

Yeah, that's good. Um, do you want me to ask you another one? I have one here. Here's a layup. How do you vet your ideas? There are so many ideas out there. What would you do if you're starting from scratch? Plug your thing.

Uh, wait, what do you— oh, the Ideation Bootcamp.

Of course, your Idea Bootcamp. That's what this is, right? You're like literally teaching.

Dude, uh, the Ideation Bootcamp. So when, when I, I, me and Sean research like crazy. He was, he, you used the word, Sean, triangulate. We do that like, like a mofo. So I created a course about that. If you go to maven.com, you'll see it. Although I'm not even taking people anymore. So we had 150 people sign up. I'm afraid to— I'm not letting more people in. I'm really nervous. I want to nail it. Right.

Were you—

are you— were you nervous ahead of your— I'm scared. I'm like, I have stage fright.

I thought about that the first time and I said I was going to cap it. I think I did end up capping it, but I capped it at double what I was comfortable doing.

What did you cap it at?

I think the first one was 200-something people.

This is, so this just crossed $100,000. It's 150 people times $699, whatever that is. Yeah. Um, I think that's like $100 grand and like, I'm scared. I'm like legitimately nervous.

Well, it's gonna be the same either way, whether there's 150 people there or 200 people, you're not gonna notice the difference between that. Like if you had only 30 people, yeah, you would have a different vibe. But once you get to 150, 200 is no different. 250 is no different. I think once you get to like 500 or 1,000, now it'll again start to feel different because it's just nameless, faceless people that are like, they know that you couldn't possibly keep track of everything.

But do you feel like you're giving— how much was your— did yours cost?

$950.

Oh my God, doesn't that intimidate you?

But were you scared? Like, I just, I have like, dude, you know your shit.

You know your shit. As soon as you do your first class, you're going to be like, you're just going to be effortlessly spitting off these like things because you've been doing them for a long time. Like, it's not like you're teaching material you don't know. You're teaching the thing you know really, really well. And as soon as you start, you're gonna say something that's obvious to you and people in the chat are gonna be like, like I always tell them, I write, I say, write, I teach something, I go, your job when you're here for an hour, you're here to get one golden nugget. A golden nugget is an insight that you can take, you can go and you can actually act on. That's like a kind of a game changer for you. And so when you're listening, if, if one comes up for you, just type it in the chat so I know what the golden nuggets are for you and other people can get excited about them too. Cuz you're kind of like grabbing this insight that's coming out of my, coming outta my mouth. And so now like I'm 7 minutes into one thing and people are like golden nugget and they have one and you just see people in the chat saying this and it's like, then you're like, oh yeah, I didn't even realize that. So that part is so second nature to me. That wasn't even my, that's not even my A stuff. My A stuff is coming 30 minutes later into this thing.

But oh, if that's valuable to you, you weren't nervous the first time.

I wasn't nervous, but I did feel a responsibility to do well. That's how I was. Like, I'm gonna make more money doing other stuff, but for some reason, the fact that someone's paying me just for knowledge, I'm like, then I'm gonna give you fucking— I need to make sure that I'm giving you fire knowledge. But I'm not nervous, isn't the right word. It's just I took it really seriously to, to, like, I was like, I'm gonna overdeliver. Whatever they think it is, I'm gonna overdeliver it. So I like spent more time on my stuff to make sure it was really good.

I think there's a world where, I'm not sure right now, you've got a bigger Twitter audience for than, than I do. So I'll say for sure. And you have an email audience. I don't have one anymore. Uh, there's a world where this becomes a half a million to $1 million a year stream for you. Is, is that crazy?

That's the current world. Yeah.

The question is, do we try to get, well, do we try to get bigger?

For sure.

Half. Okay. Do you think it could be above 1? 1 million's a lot for doing, I mean, that's, that's a, that's a decent sum.

What I don't know is if I teach it often, like to do, to do a million, you basically need to teach it 5 times a year. So if I taught it 5 times a year, the question is, am I gonna exhaust my existing audience of like the people who are in my audience who cared about it, want to improve this part of their life and are willing to pay for a course and can afford it and all that good stuff. I think I'll run out. Maven's like, no, you won't run out. Uh, like it'll, you'll keep growing your audience. And trust me, like this is only 250 people at a time that are joining this thing. So think about your total audience size and think about 250. It's a very small percentage.

Yeah. But that's not how many people are seeing the page. The, I think that's a flawed way of looking at it. Not that he's wrong or right, but the right way is how many people saw it and didn't sign up. You know, like how many people will come to your landing? How many qualified people will come to your landing page?

But that's a lot. Cause like if I send an email to my list about something I'm doing, it'll get like thousands of clicks, tens of like close to 10,000 clicks. And so 10,000 people will go look at the page and decide if it's for them or not. So I don't know, we'll see what happens this year. I'm gonna teach it more times and if it runs out, it runs out. No problem. Like I'm kind of excited to teach something else. I wanna teach a crypto thing. So that's like my, the main thing is I teach this writing thing right now. It's good, but I'm like itching to teach a crypto thing instead because that's where I'm more interested right now and where I'm learning a bunch and I wanna share a bunch of things. In fact, that's the question that I was gonna ask you, which is, Some— this guy Clay says, if you could invest anything for Sam with his money, um, that he would not feel comfortable with at first, not like at first, but would ultimately thank you later for, what would it be? And vice versa. Um, so I know what my answer for you would be.

So, well, you say it and I'll think about what I would do for you.

It would be in the crypto space, but it would not be something super high risk. So what I would do is, have you ever heard of a stablecoin called UST? Terra, Luna, any of these words sound familiar?

Yeah, well, you, you told me about Luna.

And I would take 19% any day. Yeah.

So you, you, so I think you'd be comfortable with the idea once it's explained as I just did. I think you'd be uncomfortable if I said, hey, Sam, go figure this out, because you'd be like, fuck, okay, where do I even get this thing? I got to sign up for this other thing. I got to move it to a wallet. I'm kind of scared I'm going to lose it. Is this legit? Am I really going to get 19%? Where does the 19% come from? There's all these questions. And so the thing I would do, I would just do that for you and then you would just see your number going up and you'd be like, this is great.

Isn't there— there's not a way where I can just click buttons and like wire money and it works?

Yeah, it's all clicking buttons. But it's just how many buttons and are you comfortable with that product? Are you comfortable be careful with where you're wiring the money to, right? Like, that's the question. You have to have the confidence that if I wire this money, I'm actually going to go— my money is going to be mine. I'm going to get 19%. Like, that's the trick with crypto, is navigating it, you know, sort of a little bit of a minefield of knowing which buttons to click and then doing it in a way that you feel confident with.

Um, all right, well, thank you. Maybe I'll do that, and then I'll wrap up with my answer for you. I think it would be Do you own a squat rack?

No.

I would love for you to own a squat rack and to hire a coach and teach you how to squat properly so you can lift heavy weight. I think that, I think that, I think that, or build you like a really nice home gym for like $4,000. I think that would be—

I think what are the benefits? So why do I care about lifting heavy weights? Really? What am I going to get out of this? Because it just seems to me like That's cool if that's your hobby or your ego thing, but like, do I really care if I could squat 275 pounds or 500 pounds, whatever? Does it really matter?

The number doesn't matter. The number is irrelevant because the effort that I— when I say heavy, I want you to be able to do an exercise where you can only lift the weights 5 times and on the 6th time you wouldn't be able to do it.

Gotcha.

So failure, it doesn't matter what the number is. It just because I think that when you squat heavy, I think a couple things happen. First, it releases chemicals. I'm, I'm not a doctor, but like it releases hormones and chemicals in your body that impact the rest of your body, not just your butt and legs. Number 2, you, I gain a ton of confidence when I have that weight on my back and I can do it properly and I feel free and I feel like I've overcome some adversity and it makes me feel really good and like a mini high. So I would say those are like the 2 biggest things. And 3, I do think that being able to put some weight on your back and squat really low and stand up is just an all-around really good for your joints and everything like that. I'm not saying like hundreds and hundreds, and I don't necessarily think that getting like huge is the best way to go, but like being able to squat like maybe your body weight or a little bit above your body weight is really good.

Dude, we got one great question that we should have answered because I, I don't know what, I don't know what my answer would be. Liam goes, let's do it fast. Liam goes, what's a physical feat you could bust Sam's ass in? And it goes, Sam, what's one way that you're much more charismatic than Sean? Embrace the debate. And then it's a picture of Kanye West holding a notepad that says, I'm here to stir shit up. I'm just here to stir shit up.

Um, you would bust my ass in basketball, I think.

Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true.

I don't think I could. I just, I just don't have, I've like not shot a basketball in like 10 years. I think you'd kick my ass in basketball.

Yeah, I'm good at basketball. Uh, and then, or probably golf.

Could you play golf?

No, but I'm good at basketball. So we'll stick with that one. I don't need two. One was enough. One was enough for me. And then this charismatic one, I feel like you're already more charismatic or as charismatic, so I don't feel like it's a fair question, really.

I'm willing to admit I think you're on fire. I think you've had a good year, a good two years. I think you try really hard.

I actually like getting a compliment by Sam.

No, no, no. Here's why. No, I think you care more because like since I've known you for like the last 8 years, you've told me you wanted to be an actor or you've wanted to, and you used to be an actor as a kid, or you wanted to be a standup comedian. So I think you study this trade a lot and I study it, I study it a medium amount and you study it a lot amount. And I think you're also natural at it. So I would say that you care more, not in the sense of like it's good or bad to care, but you, you, you're fascinated by this craft a little bit more, but I am also fascinated.

Yeah, I love speak. I love public speaking. I love content. I love comedy. I love all that stuff. All right, we're done. Ben, what'd you think of the episode?

Great stuff. Uh, just one last question is, did you ever figure out what the word was, Sean?

Oh no, I still have it open. I forgot. Do you know what, what have we got here?

I just guessed rugby, I think is my best guess.

Oh, rugby. That's gotta be it. Damn. Perfect. Let me see. Rugby. I would've not got that. Boom. Because I did, I was going through my head. R-U-G. What, what could go after that? Ruggy? No. Ruggly? Rugby.

Wow, got it. Uh, all right, uh, I thought it was a really good episode.

Uh, that's why you got the Georgetown— that's why you got the Georgetown diploma and I don't.

That kind of— that level of analysis, a good episode, you don't get that just anywhere.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back.