#190 - Making Billions in Coworking, the Dark Side of Confidence, and the Future of Sports Recovery

i get to see how they're wired i get to see what makes them tick i get to see what what they're motivated by so now when it comes time to get great you know great effort out of them i know what moves the needle for them personally yeah i feel like i could rude work to know why i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road travel never looking back so on this episode we're we're talking dan we're asking about them asking about the episode we talked about we broke down the c working space and we and we found like an interesting opportunity a founder started and saw the company in that space and he still said he would start another company in that space and things that could be huge which is a good sign we talked about this weird business called ice barrels and then we talked about the nike for recovery the nike of recovery which is a really interesting company great story and we talked about adam new neumann the founder of we work and how he's got this like crazy h personality and i love learning about that i actually think it's like something that you need if you're gonna ever lead anyone and then i shared a steve jobs story i heard that may or may not be true i have no idea but it could be true it could be true and that's all i would guarantee alright that's the episode by the way if there's like a follow button on your spotify do me a favor click that because we're trying to grow the podcast and then click the subscribe button on itunes thank you it literally makes us like you only need like a handful of people in order like go up in the ratings and it's because of that i think so click it what's up what's going on cool shirt thank you me dan dan got dan got a harvard shirt also so he's part of the crew now vega dan you like nice can but i actually dan did you go to harvard i could see that yeah he was like a harvard man i didn't go to harvard but i happened into the bookstore oh alright same same same what's going on anything new yeah lots of new stuff let's jump back we have a bunch of topics today so we'll we'll spare people to small talk alright i think they'd like that but that's fine i'm down with did done a business where do you wanna go first you have something that you did a bunch of research on i wanna go go to that first was it the c working spaces you were going into what what are you looking at yeah so oh by the way i see a ice barrel here interesting yes i'm happy to discuss that ice c working so on our trip ben made a suggestion he i i was one of us was teasing like we should do this we should do this we should do this him or you or me one of us but he he was kinda nailing down the point mentioned c working yeah and i was that kinda cool i think his quote was he's like but here's my big idea for the podcast take the m mfa take my first million and and create like a network of c working spaces that already exists just license the name out and offer the promotion to your members to be to be able to access them that was his idea yes and i started thinking about that and i've always i i wanted to get a little bit more into real estate and i thought it was cool and i just basically put the bat signal out there and i tweeted out who is an expert in c working i wanna learn and what i love to do for this pod i did this with this vending machine all i do is i get someone on the phone and i don't wanna bring them on the podcast because they mean they're boring or they're not good at that this type of thing but i basically just wanna ask them tons of questions and that's what i did and i took notes and so i found a guy named preston i actually don't how to pronounce his last name i know i never know how to pe p e s e k so it's twitter handles is preston pe p e s e k and he had this company called spacious which he sold for he sold the we work and i imagine he sold it a lot of money because when i called him it was like noon east coast time and he was just going for a bike ride his it doesn't work anymore yes well it looked like he was in like a nice area of town in new york and he wasn't working so i imagine it was a good deal but have you heard of a spacious a no chance what was it okay does it still exist or they shut it down they shut it down but it's it was crazy interesting so the way so so we're gonna talk about c working right now and we're gonna talk about where the opportunities are and where this guy where this guy thinks there's opportunities and he has an interesting perspective he wouldn't tell me the revenue but i bet i would imagine it was north of eight figures a year in revenue but spacious what it did originally was they would find restaurants that were only open at night and or had most of their business from six to you know dinner time and they would do a c working thing where they you would pay a little bit of money twenty nine dollars i believe and you would get access to to to use this restaurant as a c working place so i'd heard of this before that there are restaurants that basically have prime locations nice interiors and they're only gonna be used during meal times and so the kinda of pre dinner service which is like your workday they were turning into this i i remember thinking oh that's cool and i never heard about it again so i sort of assumed it didn't work but what you're saying is it started to kind of work and they got acquired no so well he was saying that it worked wonderfully but we work made him an offer so good he's like i can't refuse this i don't know if this guy i i at he worked at a hedge before but maybe like you know he he he didn't come from a a rich background and it was a big deal so i don't blame him but basically it started by doing restaurants eventually it did retail so what that means is you have some type of like ground level real estate and they would make a deal with the retail so retail re real estate so not necessarily like it's not like a lulu lemon store it's like a store that's typically used for a lulu lemon they would make deals with them for as short as thirty days but it could be as long as six to twelve months where they would lease the place and then they would charge people twenty nine dollars and you would try to get people to come in it'd called a a hot seat basically it's like a pop up yeah you well you know what that is hot desk yeah so basically you don't have a you don't have an assigned seat you come in and it's sort of like first come first served type of thing for the day so if i told you about this and you didn't know anything about the business i imagine you'd be skeptical and things like this doesn't this probably can't work that well right i i'd be like yeah it's hard right you know it's cool to have airbnb for for for for c working or for for your for work and i've heard of a lot of people try this people are trying this with your home you could take a part of your home and turn it into a like a cafe for people to come and sit and have wifi and i just felt like i heard from any of these companies ever again i heard the idea and then like crickets for the next two years so according to preston who started and exited the company he he he may not start this because like i don't if i wanna start another company but he goes i would love to invest in this space which is always a great sign if someone has started and sold something and still wants to go back and do he goes it crushed it and i think that someone could still crush it he goes it's just like a hotel a four seasons can exist and also like motel six a motel six like a lot of different brands can exist in this space but it's incredibly lucrative and it can work wonderfully so for his spaces the way it would work is they would have at least a hundred seats which means a hundred place a hundred areas so someone gets sit so a hundred seats and then they would have check ins but they would aim to have two hundred to three hundred seats and a good location the target was fifteen check ins per month and if a location had that at twenty nine dollars that comes out to be around ninety thousand dollars a month and the profit margin on that could be about forty percent right so one low and that and that profit margin includes the the person manning the location and then rent so quite lucrative and he was like yeah we we could crush it and he was like you could definitely bootstrap this into a smaller location but he goes i think that there's a lot of space for this and if you're gonna do it raise as much money as you possibly can and i think a person could build a business that makes a or makes a billion dollars a year in revenue so how is this different than just we work right like isn't this just we work i'll explain so the problem with we work basically it's long so so here i've tried to break this down into a framework and so the reason why a lot of c working doesn't work now we're talking about what's it call hot desk hot desk is different than quote the traditional when you think of traditional c working you probably think of like a freelancer or a small business owner who wants to spend three hundred dollars a month to have a desk all the time at a at a at a we work so let's just call that the traditional we c working and the way that that worked is basically you sign an agreement for ten years for a lease and then you go and do arbitrage where you find alright if i'm spending this much in my lease per square foot i'm gonna sub divide it and i'm gonna rent it for a short term but there's here's the issue long term liability meaning your tenure year lease with a short term income stream but a a short term rental agreement and so the people may only stay for two three four months because it's a month to month lease that you're renting to you and he goes he goes basically you just get churn and it's just hard to keep up with that and because things can change like a pandemic where everyone works from home yeah and he's like that it just doesn't work and so what we did was we took short term liability meaning a lot of their places can kick them out at any time but they had so many of them and it was considered like a pop up that it was okay and so it didn't matter if a place closed for a little while because i can just go to somewhere nearby in that building or in in that area and so it worked out really really well okay i i don't know if it's because i didn't talk to this guy or what but i still feel a little bit like yeah you know same shit different toilet as far as like i'm not sure i i'm not sure the i don't i don't fully understand why this is that much better than traditional c working and i think traditional pro working is you know kind of marginal marginally good or maybe i've just seen some disasters right breather breather raised a ton of money and looked like they were the next unicorn and i think ended up selling for three million dollars so sell to three million dollars or i don't know like you know i of i have like an uncle who could bought breather right so so it it didn't have like a fantastic exit what we work is also running into problems that i think we're not just the pandemic but this arbitrage model was sort of thin so i don't know i'm a little bit skeptical but okay we're we're of the opportunities behind okay if you're skeptical to be honest un skeptical too but i still think it's cool but i've got another angle here yeah so c working i asked them but c working sounds more interesting because i want that well i want that like more i want that recurring revenue and i don't wanna open up like loads of locations how do i make that work and he goes well the best way that you can make that work is you've got supply and you've got demand and the the supply being i'm probably gonna screw up my supply and demand so actually let's just skip that part but basically you have your consumers so your people who wanna come and rent that place he was like that's actually not that important what's important is that you pick good locations and you do the real estate part well but what if you could figure that out which is like kinda straightforward but still a lot of work you have to figure out how to make your consumers incredibly sticky and the only way that he could find that can make it sticky is you have to have shared interest so for example do you know the wing yeah yeah the female c working space he says that that's a great business and the reason is is that there's likely not to gonna be the reason why you need to be sticky you need someone to be willing to stay there for over a year right and so he goes shared interest is the best way and he goes how do you come up shared interest you go to facebook group so you go to meetup dot com and you just find like whatever like people have like a fan base so it could be like women it could be different minority groups it could be fitness enthusiasts seems is like i think that there's a huge opportunity for people in c working as on if you can make it sticky so people working on similar type of thing and they don't wanna leave their their office that's where you have a really good business whereas we work it didn't really have that as much right so maybe an m msn c working business could actually work but yeah maybe not yeah maybe may maybe you know the one interesting thing i don't know you saw there there's a bank that did c working inside of i think chase bank or well was awesome i used to go there all the time what which one was it capital capital capital one sorry whatever the capital one is to the cap the capital one chase i think is is is the the parent there so used to go there so i don't why were they doing that they just wanted foot traffic in the branch or what so here's the other thing is that c working actually can actually be a great customer customer gen so another way is if you wanna go into c working business it could actually be far more interesting if you're a software i i joked with my guys at hubspot i was like guys we should do this so if you're a software company i actually think there's an interesting play here to have a c working or if you're a bank something that you trying to get freelancers or business owners and you have a super high lt of tens of thousands of dollars and actually i think could be interesting to do this yeah like i wonder what why doesn't you know every every tech company spending so much money recruiting engineers and like just recruiting in general why not just have space as your recruiting tool so so you basically rent out space even if you break even or are slightly unprofitable you would make up for it in the actual recruiting of people who are there because they're in your orbit they you know they're in the uber office in the uber c working ring you know area and they get to eat the food and whatever else and sure enough you're just absorbing talent you know as you go as part of that i don't know if it'd be worth it but it is that's why i don't those are my thoughts on c i have a ton of thoughts i think that we work as great as a real estate company and by great i i don't mean like it's bullet bulletproof obviously the pandemic was sort of the worst possible thing that could happen to any c working you know c working company but i i mean i do believe most most value in real estate is by change of use so you you buy a thing that's valued at at warehouse you know square footage and you converted into a self storage and you make more per square foot that's what we work with doing the same fundamental model as as self storage but they were doing it with people and and i think that that business if not sort of managed by luna probably wouldn't have got as big as fast but also would not have had the fall it did and and i'm curious to see how this shakes out i would be shot like a lot of people love to shit on we work they think it's a terrible business well i would be shocked if ten years from now there wasn't at least two or three multi billion dollar c working companies out there so like you can shit on the space you can share on we work but in reality i think that there are gonna be winners in that space let's talk about the the luna tick real quick so you just said it was one by luna if you're one of this is probably even more fascinating so i went and did a a lot of research on this and i talked to people not this guy by other people who knew adam or worked with adam yeah so we work with run by this guy named newman he was like crazy maybe not always in a bad way probably mostly in a good way and i talked to a bunch of people and i narrowed it down and i basically said what makes this guy so great so basically they are explaining to me they're they go adam was here's like a quote from this woman i talked to adam adam was unique on a one to one combo it was like looking into it when i talked to him it was like looking into a mirror and seeing myself but that mirror was a mega phone of my best self he made me believe that i was the best and i could do anything and i asked him i was like was he's d isn't he and they go yeah i think he is dis i've noticed that d people a rank so high on having this ability to and this sounds negative and i don't mean this negative to manipulate people and to manipulate them into believing that like like to con to to persuading and leading people and they and they just said he would i would tell himself and he would echo it back to me but for some reason i would believe it and i believe that i was the best that i possibly could be and he made me feel that anything was possible and i think that that is so fascinating and even more interesting than we work did you watch the we work documentary on hulu did you know i i did because you know you get to sort of see first firsthand what's the guy like because he's on camera it's pretty raw it's from you know it's footage from when he when we work with so of still on the rise and and yeah it was sort of this cult of personality around them he didn't seem particularly charming or anything like that it but it i think the the thing i've seen with this is some people are so irrational in their belief right like it takes some rationality to do anything because if if you're just perfectly rational you look at your current situation and you'll say this is what it is and anytime something else you know what a goal or a vision or a dream it will look completely irrational and so we all have a little bit of irrational in us otherwise we wouldn't have goals we wouldn't have dreams he he was like sort of ninety ten ninety percent irrational maybe not even ten percent rational maybe it was just ninety nine one irrational to irrational where from day one he was saying what this was gonna be how amazing it was gonna be how this investor was gonna give us all every dollar that they had however this customer was gonna have the greatest experience of their life and he believed it with every bone in his body and when you encounter somebody with that kind of certainty is very like addictive and sort of like into because if they believe in themselves that much there's really two ways to to go some people become haters because they don't have that sort of self belief in themselves and then other people sort of become followers and they they they join in because they're just like being around that level of certainty so i know be cool i love it i by the way you know when i watched that fire festival documentary yeah i felt the same way i was like first of all badass vision fire festival was a great idea with and it almost worked god awful execution and it almost worked it was so irrational than it almost overcame rationality but it didn't it failed in the end but most people point and laugh and i think that that was you know like kind of an amazing swing agree it that was more impressive than that failure was more impressive than most people success as far as i'm concerned i thought there was a big big au audacious vision got a bunch of people on board almost pulled it off almost might be a little generous but you know at least least like he rallied people around like almost in the sense of like it could have yeah sold all the tickets got all the big names on board right like right you know and and it wasn't fraud like it wasn't intentional fraud from what i remember like it wasn't like it was but that's okay but that that that that's like not entirely important i mean i do think that like there was fraud but like there was a true belief of i can i can pull it off right there's fake could tell you make it and then there's fraud fake could tell you make it is hey it's not there area but i i believe i pull this off we're gonna do it we're gonna find a way if i just tell them this if i tell them it's already booked then we'll figure out a way to get it booked you know intention matters i actually when we hung out this weekend i felt not the same thing but a little bit of that with you where you like you didn't say these any audacious things but you have this sense of belief it's like well yeah why not like you went and met with people that i'm like really you're doing that yeah just talk to him i'm gonna do this mean like you you do you do you know that you have a little bit of that in you as well you you have a more of a i think you and this this is not insulting you are because you're like emotionally healthy you're not like adam to where you have to say i'm gonna take over the world in know where to feel good you know what i mean yeah so you like you're very confident you're you're you do shit almost because you just like it's more fun than it is out of a of a personality deficit of like i have to be on top and and so it's a little bit more healthy but you have that same magnet do you you realize that right i do realize it because i try to do that and you know once you try it something for like five years straight you stop having to try you know effort effort is what creates effortless so i put an effort into it and now i don't have to try that anymore it just happens and the reason why the reason i know i did it this because i was really conscious about it the reason we both love conor mcgregor and why i think really any fan loves conor mcgregor is not because of the way he throws his left hand when he punches it's because the guy had this ludicrous self belief when he was literally on welfare you know as a as a failed plumber in ireland and he was talking about how he's gonna become you know the largest you you know i'm gonna become a two way world champion the biggest sports star on earth number one on the forbes list and then guess what this year where he landed number one on the forbes list he's the number one star in combat sports you know two weight world champion achieved and so those of us who got to see that rise it's yeah we're happy for a connor but really we're happy for ourselves that holy shit this guy would just literally nothing but self confidence self confidence drove him to work because he believed that he could achieve it so he's motivated and then when he worked plus the self confidence you know overcame all the odds and had it maybe i can have some of that too put a little bit of that in my drink that's how i felt about it and so you know i don't care about becoming the two eight world champion but i have my own versions of those that i just sort of decided why would i why would i doubt myself right what that see what's you can see what's written behind me this is my this will be one of my sunday story so i i don't wanna i don't wanna spoil it but the the teaser is the teaser for this sunday story time with sean is doubt doubt if you're gonna doubt anything doubt doubt and so that's how i feel now what so how do you feel confident what you you start to doubt doubt you look you start to lack lack you start to doubt having lack you start to lack having doubt that's that's where you wanna get to in order to to have that sort of un unfavorable self confidence what's that it's conor mcgregor had that forbes thing at the two way champion what what what's yours i've always said this i wanna have a one percent of the world's population consider me someone who is you know like they're one of their favorite somebody who who who they've learned from so the version of that that i saw was that math teacher that guy beat you in india who sold out a stadium he had a stadium full of people come to watch him teach i thought that was incredible and you know you start to see it into reality right we just did a live show okay wasn't it wasn't seventy million people it was three hundred people it was four hundred people showing up at our live show right but but you start to see that come come to fruition of like okay a year ago that didn't exist that who's to say a year from now that's not three thousand people who's to say a year from that it's not through thirty thousand people right like that seems entirely believable to me and i've sort of envisioned it it's so when it happens i i won't be surprised i'll be pleased but i won't be surprised and i've actually heard stories about a lot of these people so i've talked to a lot of the early employees one one of my good friends who named will he was like number forty or something at uber and he tells me stories where he was like he's like i just felt like anything was possible it was i felt like i was in in in war and my coworkers were were my fellow troops and i loved it i felt like there was constant action and we were in this together that had a similar type of vibe i've heard it who else have you heard that from i mean here from a lot like fraud stir obviously but yeah who else well it's it's the it's it's the sword that cuts both ways right you know if you spot it you got it that's that's sort of the way that most of these things work all the extreme strengths come with a corresponding evil right just like facebook a technology that connected everybody in the world and then guess what you know like fucking chaos also from connecting everybody in the world the spread of information has never been easier we can spread you know and a student in india can you know has more access to like knowledge then the emperor did you know a hundred years ago we'll guess what they also have access to fake news and porn and all these other the bad things right like the that's why it's funny whenever somebody would criticize crypto i'd say oh it could be used for all these bad things all that tells me is that this can be used for extremely good things also because there's a duality with all of those and so that's how i think about you know this extreme confidence if i was gonna rank i would put at the top if you look if you think about what's the most into desirable thing when you meet somebody the first number one i would say is a sense of peace when you meet somebody who's truly happy like they're not like bubbling over with with joy but they're just happy you know when they're at rest when nothing is going on or even when was you know quote unquote bad things are going on i think that is when you see that it's really hard to like you just wanna be around that person you wanna be like that person and who yeah have you met anyone like that my trainers like that like just the other day he came came to our house i think at one he trained me for eighty ninety minutes then he trained train the next person and next person so he was going from one pm till seven thirty pm which doesn't sound like a lot of hours but when you watch what he's doing like he's not just sitting there like on his phone while you're while you're working out he's fully on motivating you changing the weights demonstrating the thing bringing that excitement talking to you whatever he's gotta be like switched on performing and so it was like hour seven he hadn't eaten anything he hadn't had a sip water you know he hadn't had a single break and it was just one person and it wasn't even expected by the way it was just somebody who was like at my house was like oh can i get a session in he's like come on in and so by wait said wait wait you just had people coming in into your house like my mom was over and it's she she wanted to work out normally she does it on a different day but he was like alright yeah jump i'm here and so what happened was by the end of it he so so i walk into the garage where he where he was cleaning up the like kind of like the workout stuff and he's got this huge smile on space me and my wife we walked out because we were gonna go for a walk and we see him he he's smile and he's laughing i don't even know nobody was i don't know what he's smiling about he was just smiling and then he was putting things away and he just looks at me he goes part of time and i i don't even know what he was talking about i have no idea what he was thinking about but he just was like in that mood and he was a huge smile and i go man i told my wife i go man you know how i am at the end of a workday day like when i work hard and i feel like i really exert effort and i had to go above and beyond and do it a little extra that day i become like such a w little brat like i'm like so tired i need to eat i need like like i did so much now you know i know you need to do that work i'm i'm done you know and i become this sort of like entitled little brat about myself you know and i'm i'm like crashing and i felt like this guy was just like mean to come out me and be like party time like i don't know what he was even thinking about but that's not the way i end my workday day when i feel like i worked over time so what's number two then you said happiness the next one is the is the is the sort of self delusion it is the like irrational confidence self when you meet somebody like that that is into even if they are not successful so like i intentionally have not put rich and famous people on this list yet because i've had experiences with both you meet a really successful person you meet a really famous person you meet somebody who is completely happy or somebody who is you know truly believes in themselves even when you're like dude there's no way you're gonna pull that off and they truly believe it they're not just boasting their pump pumping their chest out to me that is like you know that's a drug to be around somebody like that because i wanna be like that i wanna be truly happy i wanna be truly confident and and they they they don't even have to try to show it it's just like it's on their face it's in the way they walk it's the way they talk and and i can contrast that to the way i think and i see oh that's the gap that's why i wanna be so i think those are the two most i guess like into things and people what do you think is that the same for you or is that just a amazing and i know a bunch of people like that and i'm like in in both ways i'm like i'm exhausted i can't be around you anymore but then i crave constantly and i preview when you're gone yeah yeah you know what i mean like i've got like when my friends talk about working with travis so like you're you gonna go work at his new company they're like he's trying to recruit me and i just can't do i can't go to war again but i'm just too worn out but like i miss it every day so it's like a it's it's a duality there but yeah i completely agree with you and i'm actually reading this book with yeah the laws of human nature in order to like learn a little bit more because i used to study this stuff constantly i would read books on influence and persuasion because i was like i can't build anything so i just have to be a leader of of people and i like persuade people to do this because i i can't do it i don't have the abilities so i i gotta bring some attributes to the table and so now oh there you go dan it too so what do so like i read the laws of human nature by robert greene which is about like how to like influence humans a little bit and how we think i like how to win friends of influence people and i like thinking and grow rich for self confidence is there anything you like i i don't know so book flies whatever maybe i don't know but at this you just reminded me of something i read yesterday there's a quo story about this guy who interviewed at apple with steve jobs have you ever read the story no oh sorry i'm pulling it up right here so you can you can have the link but i was shaking my head no yeah podcast bro we gotta have audio so i so okay so so there's was this thing like so so this guy racist this anonymous this might be by the way this might just be straight up like fan fiction so so like if i fell for some fan fiction you know my bad either way it was pretty inspired this guy goes yeah i was at mit and and you know i was getting recruited by apple and i didn't wanna work at apple i wanted to go do something else i don't know stay in school or like go to a different job he's like but you know people me like okay just go go go interview see if you get the job see if you get an offer like that's good for you so he goes to apple and he's he's sitting in the interview and sure enough like they're asking a bunch of questions that just make him be like this is your question i just definitely don't wanna work here and then he's like then i heard this sort of like sound on the other side of the like kind of the glass door or whatever the mirror and and you know steve jobs walks in and steve jobs walks in and he kinda like dismiss the vp who was like doing the interview and he looks he's like he sits down he doesn't look at me he looks at the sheet of questions and he's just reading them he's like like i don't know five six seven minutes go by he hasn't introduced himself he has a said word to me he hasn't looked up and made eye contact he is just reading this list of interview questions and he's like kinda sc at them as he's reading them and he's just like you know mu kinda like like you know stupid and so he and he basically that you know sort of the long story short as he goes you know how would we ever expect somebody interesting to to work with us when we ask the most uni interesting questions and so he's like mud that and so he he he he puts the paper down and he looks at the guy and he goes who are you and he goes the guy kinda like answers like most people would or whatever he's like you know i'm i'm tom i don't know his name let's pretend he's tom you know i'm tom you know i'm you know i'm interviewing for the job here yeah i know what you're doing i said who are you who are you he's like you know honestly i don't even really want this job like you know like i'm not done interested working at apple he he's like he's i'm not asking if you're interested in the job i'm asking you who are right right so he's like going back and forth and the guy guy's like look you know whatever he tries to answer the question and then steve's like why don't you wanna work at apple and he goes honestly you know i just blah blah blah steve goes like take a walk with me right and steve jobs famous for like these walking meetings so he he's like okay like i guess so you know he say takes a walk with him and so they they walk around the the sort of campus and he's like you can literally see like it's like he's got a real like a gravity field around him like everywhere he walks people just clear the path because they don't want to like talk to him they don't want to like get in his way bother him or anything like that he's like we're talking and he's giving me the whole spiel like you know we're breaking some really great stuff here like we're really really great like you won't believe eric just like kind of the like steve and the keynote he's doing the the kind of like build up he's not telling him anything yet when he's telling him was really great he's like you gotta meet john johnny iv right you kinda come meet johnny and they go into johnny iv office and he's showing him cool stuff or whatever anyways the story ends with with the guy sort of like getting wrapped up in the like into of steve jobs he's like dude i told you i don't wanna work here i don't wanna work here and steve jobs is like give me a month it'll be the best month of your life i will you know i'll pay you three times what your normal rate would be for the month you know for one month i'll make you pay you triple we'll get you a car in an apartment and whatever else just say yes and like say yes and we're we're we're it's done my guy guy's like okay and he's like fantastic and he's like jennifer jennifer will help you from here and like jennifer you you know like whatever he that goes and introduced or he he he leaves the guy for a second he's like okay jennifer is gonna help you jennifer now knows all the details about this whole situation asks no questions you know has him sign a thing he's like what's my job title it's like you're a steve higher he's like who do i report through i i guess you report to steve we don't know don't ask those questions those are not questions you wanna ask steve and he's like okay cool but like i don't live here i live in pittsburgh so i gotta like move my stuff he's like i no know he's like he's like you know i i just have kind kinda of my suitcase with they're like no no steve's arranging all of your stuff to be moved here he's like well i know if i'm gonna stay the month he's like that's okay well we'll move it back if you decide not do steve prefers so wants you to have your stuff here and your apartment is across the street here's your keys and a car will be there waiting for you he's like this was like an hour of total time at elapsed and somehow like the world had moved to make steve's like wish come true and so i don't know again this might be true do you think this might just be fan fiction and even if it is i fucking you love it it's a great like you know random tech fan fiction god i love that but if it's true how if fucking cool is that i i find it hard to believe it's so cool and also there's no fucking point to the story right like i read the story i was like what's the point of this story i didn't know and it's stuck in my head and i told you now and you know tens of thousands of listeners and i still don't know what the point of this story is excited for how fucking cool is that if that happened i think it's sick and i've and and and to bring it back to like these personality things cult functionality personality to wrap it up any i mean you've got a good personality what do you any resources for like improving that i'll tell you one thing i do i think that the whole cult of personality ego thing that might work for some people where they're like i'm great this place is great we're gonna do great work i think that works i find that to be a really hard in practice to like execute with a straight face and so the thing that i use is like maybe my stepping stone towards being more like that is i i do this exercise with anybody i worked with and in fact you know we met dan in miami this is the one dan wanted to chat about ideas for the podcast because he's trying to do his job he's was like hey i a bunch of ideas for how we can grow the pod and make it work better and we did that normally what i would do when i first bring anyone on to the team as i basically do like a dream exercise with them i'm like okay come to this off come to the come to the whiteboard room go to the whiteboard and they expect me to like kind of outline their role or talk about the project i'm like no like same sort of thing who are you or who are you trying to be by the time you're done here this this job this this job is like getting into a car right you're gonna have a bunch of it's a going on a road trip you're gonna have a bunch of other people in the car with you we you know we're cool it's gonna be a fun hang the music is good the vibe is nice roll up the window you're gonna feel it feel the air going through you know through your hair okay we're trying to get to some destination and your job is not to be like focused on the car making the car as great as it can be you're recognize that every business every experience is just a vehicle to get you to some other that like destination for yourself and so like what is that for you who are you today and who do you wanna walk out of here as and i start getting them pumped talking about themselves and usually people have a very hard time even having a vision for themselves right it's like it's normal to have a vision for the company and a mission for the company nine out of ten people maybe ninety nine out a hundred people don't have a vision for themselves or a mission for themselves right and and and how crazy is that like yourself is a lot more important than than the the corporation you work for and so i try to like sketch that with them and that does two things one is they realize that i care about them as a person and i'm here to like i'm gonna help them get where they wanna go right and then the second thing is i get to see how they're wired i get to see what makes them tick i get to see what what they're motivated by so now when it comes time to get great you know great effort out of them i know what moves the needle for them personally so that's a thing that's a thing i do that's like kind of in this realm i i i feel like i'm taking notes good i dig this shit do you wanna to just bang on a few quick ideas you wanna start with you wanna wants to do the top barrels let's do yeah can i tell the story about hyper ice and then we'll talk about the i ice barrels go for it had you heard about hyper ice before do you know this what is it so it's this thing you might have seen if you ever seen anybody who's an athlete and after they work out or whatever they're wearing they're not like going in a iced tub anymore they're wearing this is just black thing that's wrapped around their legs that like is pumping some air or compression or cooling into their like on onto the body yeah you know the first time you see it they it looks weird right they're like kind of like like they're the michelin man they have discovered this from the guy who tweeted at us no who tweeted ask the someone was like i wanna send you guys hyper priced stuff oh no way maybe listens to the pod that would be amazing but i i know i just saw this because random random story but like i i saw it because in the nba games now you always see nba players all of a sudden for the first time ever when they go to the bench to rest they don't just sit there and rest right like it used to be you go sit down and rest the camera doesn't even show you then the camera started showing you because they wanna show your facial reaction and then what happen in the jordan era was he's always drinking gatorade right he's a sponsored athlete gatorade gatorade gatorade inside the cup of gatorade is probably water but like he's holding a gatorade cup always right because gatorade wanted to be the way you refuel your body you know as a as a drink right they wanted that that that niche and by partnering with all the sports team it was sort of a genius thing right when the super bowl ends they dump the gatorade on the coach right they created these branding moments and so now whenever you're at the super bowl hundreds of millions of people see the gatorade aids you know canister how genius is that so i saw a new thing they caught my attention and it was lebron went to the bench and he took this the gun looking thing out he started you know like mass self mass massage using this gun on his leg to like recover while he was resting and i was like oh that's cool but it wasn't a thorough one it was like a different device so i went looked it up as a thing called hyper volt and hyper voltage is made by hyper ice so what is this company so it's the same company that makes those those cooling like straps or i don't know what you would call it like this giant black thing you put it's a sleeve you put on your leg around your leg and it's like a way to ice your legs after you work out and so here's the backstory there's a guy who's like a teacher and a high school basketball coach and he was you know sort of always he was just a coach and he was sort of thinking about recovery because you know you get into your thirties and now when you're after you work out or after you play basketball you're gonna like not be able to walk create the next day and so he was sort experimenting like is there anything better than just icing like basically he thought to himself what do the pro athletes do he's like they ice they ice their knees the ice their ankles and if you watch them do it it always looked the same it was like a giant bag of ice yeah with an ace bandage around the the top of it and it literally looks like a wounded person right like it look like you're hurt if somebody was to draw a cartoon of somebody with a bum shoulder they would draw this giant ice bag on the top and and you know and and and basically bandage wrapped around it so he's like that sucks like you're not like broken you're recovering could we make recovery look cool and be more efficient so he starts trying to design a ice wrap that's less inconvenient and looks cooler so he's like oh it'd be cool for just like you know strapped onto to you and it wasn't a bag of ice that was like you know getting wet everywhere if it was just cold and you know so he starts working on it and his friend is a guy who trains with kobe or is like a a the coach of a of a little college that kobe used to train at at at irvine in the summers and so his friend sees his thing and goes dude you gotta show this to kobe and he's like okay yeah sure and he's like you know a week later he's like dude kobe kobe was icing his knees after after we did a workout and i told him about your thing he wants to see it can you come so he goes it shows kobe and kobe says two things he's like first you know some product feedback like when we're icing you know the pressure keeps escaping out of the top so like it's not working it's not compressing tight enough so can you fix that guy's like god his no notepad out he's like yay yeah for sure and kobe like also the name fucking sucks he's like oh okay hyper ice you know actually i named it after you your favorite shoe and my favorite shoe was like the hyper dunk by nike so i thought hyper ice and kobe was like name sucks and but he he ended up keeping it and so he ended up doing product development with kobe and kobe made him a deal with kobe goes look if you can make it better than my current thing i'll wear it on the bench so you'll get free you kind of exposure you know from this thing you see these pictures of kobe with icing his shoulder using hyper price so kobe does it people see it on the bench more athletes start asking more lakers start asking for it now other teams players start asking for it he builds a brand around this and what he's building is nike for recovery so which is like the greatest that wonderful that's wonderful because that calm he says that he wants to be the nike for meditation or nike for the mind yeah and that makes sense i get that i think that's cool i think this is even better it's even better exactly because what is nike nike was all about the performance when you're on the court when you're on the field where this you can run faster jump higher blah blah blah and that became a super competitive space how do we get you to perform better right where this wear this under armour you know you know use these cl what whatever it is but nobody was really he's like you would see them where all this gear sell billions of dollars of merchandise by wearing it on the court and then when they got off the court they were using ace bandages and plastic bags of ice what it's brilliant insight brilliant right fuck he's like dude i no idea no intention to go into business i was a happy teacher and coach but like you know just sort of stumbled on this path really and so now hyper price they do they have the ice product they have the the type product i'm looking at it and and i like this company because they're shit's expensive and i would consider we're gonna talk about nothing that's expensive i would consider buying this because i think expensive good health expensive equals good yeah i'm like i see and it like it looks use it equals good expensive equals good right yeah like everything i their branding tight it it's a well executed thing so let me give you some numbers last year hundred million in revenue is what they said they were projecting two hundred million dollars this year it raised last year at a seven hundred million dollar valuation so this gonna be you know if this continues to work this will be a billion dollar plus company that was started in the way that i just described how fucking cool is that story i love that story and i love this concept we have an you you you have an idea i have couple other ideas about what else you can do here but here's the framework the framework is athletes are the one of the greatest marketing vehicles of all time go look at the shoe companies if you want proof of that go look at gatorade go look at who mcdonald's and coke will sponsor it's the top athletes even though they're obviously not eating mcdonald's and drinking coke in order to perform their best but that's that's they're the best marketing vehicle and the native placement is what matters so it's one thing to say you know i'm holding a coke and or you know mcdonald's to in in a commercial it's another thing to watch them actually drinking you know from a gatorade cup during the thing or wearing hyper ice after they train because that's feels real it feels like this is what the pros this is what top performers actually do so looking at the pre game and into post game how much more is there if you walked into a locker room before and after a game what are all the other things you'll see them doing and then how could you turn those from un branded moments into branded moments right beats by dr is a perfect example of this beats dr sold to apple for three billion dollars one of the reasons why is they made headphones well alright there's already a bunch of headphones out there they're sonos they're sen highs there's all these other ones and what beats by dr did was they gave it to all the athletes they they you know dr was had the kinda hip hop roots and then all their commercials if you remember was colin cap showing up to the game the fans are booing when we puts the beat by dr he goes into the zone he can't hear the noise all he hears is his music and then he goes to the game right they intentionally always put it in the lockers of all the players so when they're doing their interviews they have headphones around their neck they have headphones hanging right behind him right they're walking into the arena that has become like before every nba game you they show the walk in what is lebron wearing when he walks in so those become branded moments where maybe you can build products around that and he obviously got all the right people to invest i'm looking at the crunch base it's all athletes fernando tat ricky fowler or doc rivers dean jordan what's that one naomi and osaka osaka yeah this guy is gonna crush it this is the greatest thing ever and so tell me about this ice barrel thing because i think you have a cool story around this so i was at a friend's house i've talked about him he he lives a few doors down for me and his name's is andy and he started this company called student loan here i believe and he sold it for a lot of money six million bucks and i was at his house for lunch my wife and and he had this huge barrel and i was like what the fuck is this thing and he goes it says company that i just bought a large stake and i'm helping them get their shit right and it's says barrel that you hop into and it's just an ice barrel that's all it is is an nice barrel but there's one pretty shocking thing about it it's two thousand dollars so like i'm in this text group with you well set this up in in in the way that that you're you're you were an athlete right people saw the quad they saw quad the in the funny the that picture the right they face all the quad you were track track athlete when you were done training did you ever ice yeah did you do ice baths yes and what did you do for in your post game if i had walked in the locker room looking for startup up ideas what would i have seen you doing oh i mean you're just sitting in the ice bath you're just sitting there ice bath made it's not a barrel it's what well they use like trash cans typically like literally like you'll use like a a shitty trash can or you'll use these massive plastic buckets but typically like a trash can right so it's this un branded thing that the athletes are doing to recover and it's like this literally like a sixty four gallon black trash can which is kinda gross of an idea that that's what do i do to recover i get in a fucking trash can right so like that was the opportunity to make that sexy and cool and a branded moment and that's what these guys did it's a giant cool looking like barrel so you know it's like a like a like where you would store like whiskey or something like and there's actually a few reasons why i think this is gonna be big so the best example i think of it is yeti there's two examples yeti and weather tech weather tech makes floor mats boring silly thing i buy whenever i buy a car i immediately buy weather tech wolf out yeah right a away and they like you think that these are like kind of forgotten things same with yeti yeti was just know everyone has a coleman cooler growing up they just made it cool and they like are four x more expensive than the nearest competitor and yet we all do it and this what's it called ice barrel dot they what's they basically if i was gonna dis distilled their formula it's like double the value quadruple the price right like that that's the way i would i would describe and it's like a massive plastic thing but the reason why it's cool is those trash cans if you're like a a big guy like i kinda am like you can't like push down on the thing otherwise it's gonna like collapse yes so you got like sucks and it's and it's inconvenient it's not that inconvenient but it's inconvenient but with the type of person at ice baths like if you're gonna like make it a little bit more convenient and it's too grand i'm like fuck whatever i don't care like like five hundred dollars and two thousand dollars is like kinda like the same thing to me a little bit when it comes to like health and fitness right so i'll buy it if i if i'm into that and so it doesn't really look that spectacular but when your shit's too grand you don't need to sell that many of them i mean if you're selling forty a day what's that forty a day is eighty k a day in revenue times thirty that's two point four million dollars a month which is thirty six million dollars a year you gotta sell very little and that's kinda why i like this business that think and i think i talked to him about it i i he says it costs a lot of money because it they it cost them a lot of money right so like it's a pretty interesting business are you bullish on that i love that idea i wouldn't have been as bullish until i looked at it through this through this lens now i see now i see the value the other ideas that i think are like this so if i was gonna be like okay what else what else can i do we've talked before about sauna i think sauna are going son just gonna keep exploding in popularity you wanna percent agree joe rogan is kinda like the lebron in this case who's been touting them but a lot of athletes usa san i had one i lot just kinda like yeah one on amazon for a grand it was called the barcelona yes exactly so i want you know like where is our son sponsorship i'm waiting for my home son sponsorship the you know i think a lot of people are gonna install home sauna there's also like other like technologies like that like i forgot like red red light therapy and some other the shit like that i don't know what they are but i do is educate me and then sell me right that's what you gotta do if you're try buying a sensory deprivation tank so i used to go to this place in the mission in san francisco and i'd pay fifty dollars and you like sit in this thing that kinda looks like a tan bed and it's filled with water and salt and you just float for like an hour and it was quite nice i loved it i tried to buy one i was like i was like you know i got space what i'll put one in my garage how much is it it's like twenty thousand dollars or i mean it's like a fuck ton and it doesn't have to cost that much much so here's the why why is it i don't need a full body tank that that works but if somebody made a dope helmet that was like go to the place of silence it's like what you go in this thing and you're not gonna hear a fucking thing or you're gonna hear specific sounds like you know like calming sounds whatever it is i think somebody could sell a helmet that is gonna like basically change your state it's sort of like the sensory deprivation idea as just a helmet i think that would be kinda cool as a random idea i think ice barrel what else so we got sauna we got ice barrel we got sensory deprivation here's another one i bought these little things oh man i could go pick them but they're basically these little inflatable pods so it's like a little inflatable plastic thing that i saw lebron using so lebron has his like warm ups that's become part of the the television programming is they show lebron before the game what is he doing to get ready and i saw he was always standing on or knee on these two little clear plastic things and one time when when he was recovering from injury the reporter kinda showed lebron when using this thing it's this instability ball and the idea is like a bo ball basically you when you stand on it it gives you an uneven like uneven surface right because most of our weight training we are on flat you know hard stable surfaces but then when you do athletic things you're not always landing at the exact angle as that so he does his training on top of that he does all his warm ups there and it like warm ups all his sort of like little micro muscles and microfiber they all get activated when he just spends time squat on this hand standing on this balancing on this same thing with steph curry for his ankles he does the same thing and so i think that little products like that can work ben sent me another one of these that's like a medicine bowl that's filled with water so you take a traditional piece of equipment like a medicine bowl it's just it's just you know solid and heavy when you put water in it and you move it from side to side the water you know your arms move and then the water slashes in that direction and then if you're trying to move back the water is moving one way you're moving the other so it's good resistance training and so i think water based water based training things if the athletes are doing that i think that's kind of interesting and people will wanna buy what the athletes buy the other is braces knee braces ankle braces shoulder wraps wrist wraps you know like anything that is like injury prevention i think could be sex up because they are usually pretty like basic stuff right now there's a when you're talking i'll keep googling but there's a so you know how when you get surgery you have you ever had like you've never had but you know like if you've ever seen your parents as a friends get like a a shoulder surgery you have to keep your shoulder in this like particular type of cast where your arm stays up high the l yes so there's this brand that is a startup up that is like rem making those and it's called like what was it call it's like champion sports or something where they did a whole thing around these soft cast so like when you have like a walking boot they made like cool walking boots and that's actually a great one it's like a cooler walking boot and they built this business all around this and that's actually really interesting as well there was a woman who i don't remember the name of it but i'll try to find it maybe we'll put it in the show notes there's a woman who was like a designer of some kind and she got like paralyzed and went in a wheelchair and then like changed her life mission she designed herself like the coolest looking wheelchair that didn't look like you know you're you know if you're younger like what how do you make a wheelchair looks like it had like cup holders a place for your phone it was just like nice looking it wasn't the kinda like blue and metal like kinda looked that you see at a hospital and she just made like an awesome looking wheelchair and it's like hey look if you're in a wheelchair like okay but let's let's make it as good as we can and i and she was like is my new life mission i thought that pretty great too by the way it's called game ready check it out go to game ready dot com it looks like they acquired they were doing thirty five million dollars a year when they got acquired this is the ice thing yeah wow it only got acquired for sixty five million dollars but yeah go to game ready they it's they have ice up but they also have like post surgery equipment mic kind of interesting right yeah same anyways i think that i think there's an opportunity the brainstorm would be go hang out with an athlete follow them pre game post game during the game during time and just look for what are all the things that everybody's doing that's un branded and then can you make a higher quality branded version of this can you create you know can you and then you you use that marketing strategy of the trickle down you give the athletes to cool shit other people see it and you sell it to the wannabe athletes you're not making the money from the athletes themselves you're may making the money off of right like ice barrel what they need is they need they need you to see this in pro locker rooms and then need then they need every high school to be like oh that's what you know that's what the lakers used when they're were covering or that's what the you know the the patriots using in their locker room dude i feel like i i gotta email this guy and be like hey we'll just give you a shout out we're we're definitely gonna get this guy's sales it it's a small company i don't think they i i think it's only like two employees they're definitely gonna see a bump from this and we're gonna have to ask them how many people bought because ice dot com just go there right now and buy their shit and and actually took by the way it's not too two grand i got it wrong it's twelve hundred yeah twelve hundred dollars yeah they're like thanks for the shout out asshole you you made it seem even more expensive it's yeah i thought it was two grand it's twelve hundred maybe the big one is two thousand anyway it's cool it's a cool thing i'm excited to actually see how this works their their website looks pretty slick what is this i know this is great so there those are some ideas yeah i think that might be it peace out we actually have like way more but we're gonna have to save those for later yeah dan what what'd you think yeah so i like the episode i like the c working section think you guys bring a unique perspective to that and having worked in a we work it's exciting to know that there are some i guess new opportunities and that whole concept isn't gonna die with we work what was the what was the absolute best part of the episode the best part of the episode i like the recovery stuff i have one of the the the knock off like a hyper vault or whatever i like using that i haven't done a an ice barrel before i have some friends have done like those like cold chambers or whatever you do like the two minutes inside yeah you know what else blows that up by the way wim hof wim hof has gotten really popular and like you know some knee circles i guess but he's all about cold cold would you pay merging yourself in cold would you pay thirty five hundred dollars to go to his house and train with him wim hof you can do it i maybe i i it's something like two or three year or four thousand dollars i think i would do it's not the money it's more of the time like yeah if if i had a little bit of time yeah i would love to do that that'd be great yeah i feel like i could rule the world i know why i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a travel never looking back