Flying First Class, Grant Cardone, and How Sam Enraged Goldman Sachs

was reading an article in new york times and and it was about these malibu homes and how like the these crazy rich guys are coming in and buying these homes and grant card was one of the features and they didn't feature him as grant card they're like another local buyer is motivational speaker and real estate entrepreneur grant card and they you know he was just like a guy there interviewing not like this internet and he recently bought a house in malibu i think it was for sixty million dollars and he was like i gonna spend another i forget tens of millions of dollars renovating it and that's one of those things that when you see people what they spend on their personal real estate you know i mean it's it's hard to fake that and i'm just thinking and who would have thought that those things that he's selling would make that much well i have a question when was the last time that you have flown i just flew last week oh no sorry not last week last month hawaii where hawaii how about before that yeah i don't know when we went to austin miami something like that so like once a year at this point or once every six months yeah i i'm not flying a ton right now when you flew to hawaii did do fly first class or coach yeah first so i i went to idaho this weekend with ben podcast ben and i spoke at an event which we have to talk about convertkit kids new thing and i don't like to travel you don't like to travel and this was work related so like they wanted me to speak at a conference and whenever they want me to speak at a conference i say yeah that's cool i'll come and speak but you have to pay for a first class flight for me and sarah my wife i'm like that's a fair trade you don't don't pay me to come because i like you but like i do want you to pay for my flight and it has to be first class because i don't like flying coach well my flights got screwed up for some reason both ways and i had to fly like middle seat like back row because like basically the flight i canceled and they like fit me on these like last ones and i was flying on this and i started thinking do you know that stereotype a story of this like rich billionaire and they say like oh yeah you know even though he's a billionaire there he's still flu coach and like nothing changed like i think the it guy came to the nothing changed and i like that is oh amazon all their desks were old doors which i tried to dude i did that i did that to be cute at our office it cost more to do that this so door isn't an a door expensive like what's i bought the door it was like yeah i bought like the shit door and it was like eighty dollars and then we bought ci blocks and it was like a pin in the like dude this thing's an ikea for twenty five bucks this is way better like door into it flat like towards yeah like you're index in them that that's a stupid story it's like maybe like they had a door while they like full t shirts on that door like for a day while they waited for the real supplies to come this whole like client coach as a rich person thing and i'm not talking about like rich like millions or tens of millions i'm talking like will you hear billionaires or hundreds of millions of dollars people say this i think that is total nonsense and i tweeted that i'm like this is that is just a lie eddie rich person that i'm talking like real rich who says they do that they're lying and i wanna see proof if that's true and i had a bunch of really really rich people holler at me and tell me they do it and so do you know who palmer lucky he is so palmer lucky started he created oc list which he sold for is in the ballpark of billions of dollars and he has a new company worth tens of a billions so if he's not a billionaire he's like he's like right there basically he tweeted backup he's he only a billionaire guy guy's definitely doing dude he tweeted back to me and he said i only fly coach and then i had a other i had yeah i think that's crazy i had other some other people at dm me they go in who i know with their company's public and there they're like i'm worth hundreds of millions and i i'll i i fly a first class no matter what internationally but like i have no problem taking southwest if it's like a short flight and i understand that argument if it's like an hour but if you're going from new york to la or something anything above three hours i don't believe it i think they're lying i just think they're full of it i asked da on hubspot i'm like do you do this he goes no that that's a ridiculous thing of course i don't do that and like had this all is if you're like us at the bi million podcast where we are cultivating that trillion our minds that multi trading or hashtag mindset hashtag grants you have to even before you you have multi trillions you better be flying private you better find private when you can't afford coach because if you can't afford your future can you afford your present and that's how i feel i just thought it was the most ridiculous thing but i was sitting in this seat i was just like my back was sore and it was just terribly uncomfortable and it took for everything just like just a vibe of the peasants that you're sitting next to it awful it's sucked and i know i have a problem doing it i mean i i will do it but i'm just saying if i could like if i'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars what's the difference between fifteen hundred dollars and five hundred dollar ticket and anyone who lies it says otherwise i think they're idiot and they're lying yeah i i so some people were like oh bill gates i i read that thread because it's pretty interesting they gave you a ton of examples they like slams you with examples of of it happening and i think the main they just told fake stories well yeah so so that's the thing i think the you know the main thing that they were saying was like x person used to do this which is either simply just their p team being like hey bill we need you to do a coach like flight here and like you know whatever we'll we'll keep your your private jet and epstein jet like off the radar you know just so we can kinda have this measure of austerity here and so that you know i i'm pretty sure it and because it works by the way like the fact that so many people posted articles of billionaire flies coach it's like dude that's not news by the way but the fact that it's news worthy is like more proof that this is likely a p stunt because i've done it too i've been like oh you know built you know warren buffett you know still drives an old beat up you know eighty three you know camry and like i was say saying banquet he's the newest young billionaire and did you know that he only eats bananas and sleeps on a bean bag and you know like these stories work they're like worth telling which makes me think this is like a p r scheme but the other interpretation was they did it so that they could like tell the company hey from the top down we're all being frugal we're not wasteful so like you know mister you know senior director of business development is not like you know flank first you know to every country i understand that but it's like dude you and your three kids are taking your vacation of france and you're gonna fly coach on spirit airlines yeah now that that ain't coulda happen like that's right that you're you're lying you're lying it's an absolute lie and i was shelby be ryan air receipts if you're really doing this like show me your spirit airlines frequent flyer miles history if you expect me to believe this like dude i've sat spirit air and i've had the pilot come out mid flight and rearrange the seating because someone was too fat and had to like hey we need to do a two for one trade you need to get to the left side of the plane and then two y'all need to move to the right we need better balance like that's absolutely unless you've done that you don't have that trillion energy yeah dude i've thought that on pontoon two boats like where you have like or yeah people in the back you you're like hey you guys got so switch seats those boats go to little sideways but i've never done that on the plane i didn't even think it was real i thought the pilot was joking and it wasn't a joke they literally were like we need to rebalance i was like jesus christ let me tell you about one more interesting thing another rich guy thing so you know who grant card is of course i know gram met grant so so i'm not gonna like even comment on if i like my lap but i will okay that's cool i don't entirely dislike him i don't dislike him i don't really lie i don't like everything he does and i like a lot of what he does and but i kinda paid to him as this guy that was kind of like in the internet marketing world just selling like talking like cheap books and cheap courses and if you're so why are you selling a course right yeah yeah yeah yeah a question i've asked myself many times also yes speaking of and it's course available july eleventh power writing sign up today go to m dot com and sign up baby mark dad daddy needs a new course i was thinking about that i'm like alright if if this is this course guy and he has this like he's wearing only these nice suits like is that legit is that real and i was reading an article in new york times and and it was about these malibu homes and how like the these crazy rich guys are coming in and buying these homes and grant card was one of the features and they didn't feature him as grant card they're like another local buyer is motivational speaker and real estate entrepreneur grant card and it you know he was just like a guy there interviewing not like this internet and he recently bought a house in malibu i think it was for sixty million dollars and he was like i gonna spend another i forget tens of millions of dollars renovating it and that's one of those things that when you see people what they spend on their personal real estate you know i mean it's it's hard to fake that and i'm just thinking who would have thought that those things that he's selling would make that much wealth is that's pretty that's pretty crazy isn't it you know what's even crazier so the one time i talked to grant card down for an extended period of time like we had like i don't know afford even at conversation twenty minutes of it was on why buying a house is so stupid and why he rents everything and he was going off like people are like oh your pet house is rented that you're in he's said yeah bro your house is not an asset why would i buy a house and he was like i he's like i buy real estate that pays me brother and he's like you know yeah i rent this i always rent i rent everything i wanna be able to move i wanna live in the place i like and i take my money and i put it to work you see that over there that's my money working and you know he because he's like he's big tough show right and so what is it like dow bills like dig holes i don't like what po he's he's like he's like hold on brother i can't hear you i got something in my ear it's a voice tell is asking me one question who's got my money and that's what i gotta every every morning i wake up and i looked to the heavens and i say who's got my money and then i go and i get that money from them i was like whoa this is incredible wait where'd do you where'd did you hang out with them for forty five minutes so he used to use lab the same product that where i met marge crowley i've it attracted a whole bunch of drift and greg card was there and i was like okay who's the i would go into all the rooms that had a big following i was okay this guy's driving a bunch of of growth and engagement your power user who are you and sure enough like you know it was it was often you know people who are are you know somewhat controversial that's who people like to watch livestream stream and so grant would go on there and he would do his ten x meetups and he would just see people come in they be i gotta keep doing it by my president it was so if you haven't gone into this world by the way you need to spend three hours and i need you to love watching his videos he's got great watch his watches his community because you'll be like wow this is like the ko drinkers so they would come on they'd be like grant they put it a uncle g uncle g what's up man what's that brother and they'd be doing the ten x ten x alright thank you so much for all the content man i was i was broken homeless i used to eat mcdonald's wrappers instead of the food and now i'm i just had i i got a ruth chris subscription membership and i just wanna say thank you and i had a question for you so they would could do this and then it'd be one after another of grant grant ten x ten x brother just wanna thank you before i was thinking where the sky's the limit and now the sky is the floor am i right man brother the like and so they're were doing this stuff i was like wow these people are like really like they're this is these are the converted right and they so a lot of people really found value in his thing because this wasn't like a recorded testimonial this is a live stream where random people are calling in and it'd be very hard to like fake this and they're wearing in the hat they're holding up the books they're like they really liked the stuff and i've never heard of this guy he's like in the tech world you don't you don't know who this character is right like in you're if you're in real estate you know if you're in the motivational self self help thing you know but he's not leaving like tie like ty lopez crossed all boundaries people like all knew who he was a card is like not like that that's the first thing you should watch second thing is he does these deal breakdowns very interesting to watch so he's sitting at a at a table and it's like you know what's that i guy ramsey dave ramsey who like you called and you're like dave i i i make eighty thousand dollars a year and i got student like what should i and he's like save your money and so people who do that with grant they're like hey grant i got two hundred thousand dollars i'm looking at a property the address is thirty nine zero nine you know west boise street and and idaho whatever and then and he'll do and he he basically google's it he's got a whiteboard behind them him and he basically he's like talking to the he's like alright so what he putting down alright what terms are they giving you and he basically like workshops the deal with them he like kind of like sort of like a speed version of underwriting the deal live and i actually learned a bunch from it like i'm sure somebody who's like you know a real estate master is probably like oh this is all just like this is the jim kramer of like real estate here where he's saying things that make it sound smart but he's actually not considering a but just from a like if you're a beginner in real estate which i am you will learn a bunch and you'll be entertained just in the style and he does things so i like that the last thing he's like a it's like the he's he's got like pro wrestling vibes yay exactly and that's why i i'm doing the pros because i'm like why i said i like them i like him because he's entertaining like i like them because yeah i've learned some stuff and i've been very entertained through the rest like have you seen these videos on youtube where he just does sales calls for an hour i have i think i they're so good i think they're fake yeah it might be fake because he'll be like he's always pulling a rabbit out of a hat and you're like oh dude it's like a pickup artist it's like you watched their video you're like oh my god you know she was she was like literally just she was run she was getting into her cab but he said this one thing that she got out of the cab and started talking to him this guy's amazing and you're like wait a minute he's just like edited like three really good ones out of five hundred failures into this video that's kind of what it feels like but he's doing other hour of continuous sales calls and so it might be scripted where the guy on the other line is like yeah i'll say yes just call me yeah there we'll play we'll role play here it's like the tv show pawn stars you're tell me like holy shit in one day you had a guy come in with like a like a civil war gone a guy who had napoleon's hat and another guy that owns a picasso all in las vegas coming into a apartment that's crazy yeah yeah it's like dude the undertake was dead and then he came back to life and won the match it's like yeah yeah you're falling for a scripted drama right like so it might be that but nonetheless these sales calls are very entertaining to listen to and like there it's obviously like very wolf wall street style like macho sales but i like to see it because i never seen anything like that like of all i don't do phone sales that's not like it's not even like in my life secondly i don't know people who are as ridiculous as grand card own and are willing to say things this ridiculous as is grand card own and third like this is not a style of communication or sales chip i've i think you can read or study or intuit and so it's just nice to like see so anyway i've i've i've gone down these rabbit holes of grand card and i've come off the other side being like yeah he is definitely self promoting and he's making most of his money it seems like on the like the brand and not the like meat and bones of his business but you know respect he hustle really hard and he's a good self promoter and he is smart and like you know he does well so you know i i i don't think that you know you're not learning from somebody who's a hack like he he's something i don't think he's a hack at i don't think he's a hack at all i think the criticism isn't that well i think maybe i just don't always agree in his values but i don't think he's lying right i think the the criticism would not be this guy's dumb or or lazy or anything like that the criticism would be he's just selling you you know a bag of dreams basically and like you know he makes his money on people who wanna be him and wanna be like him and they're not really gonna be like him any he's sort of like you know promoting that dream i say that that's probably true but i think that's true of a lot of things in life like that's true of nike also like would i go by nike sneakers you know because michael jordan wore them do i really think michael jordan a sc bag for i'm not he's not tricking me into thinking i can i can be like mike but yeah that is actually what the commercial literally says dude i'm i'm working on this new thing and i wanna tell you two things about it i'm working on this new business and i'm like i'm still like mvp it out and making sure it's legit yeah and i i i've got six figures in revenue now six figures of cash in the bank and it was all from phones i from calling calling constantly no website a type form and calling them and then setting a strike link so what's if what are you doing that's effective on the call give me the give me the strategy of the call without sharing you don't wanna share i'm not and i'm not really selling so basically the thing that i'm making like a community verb six salesman claim yeah you gonna sell you anything well because because here's here's the thing what that's no offense but of sales so the the the place where the business is at right now which is like i only want like let's say fifty people to join right now i don't want a lot of people to join because i wanna make sure that it's like legit and good and also because it's an exclusive like private paid community i need to make the that like each person actually can provide value for one another so i can't just let anyone in i can only let in the type of person who makes the person feel yeah feel more value they came in so in a way i'm like no like i'm i really like i i don't know if i have space for you i don't know if we can make this work here but we we may be and that's why here to interview to see if this be a good fit for you and that's basically what i'm doing it's like i also you're using the bullshit line but this time it's not actually bullshit it's real this time i i yeah i guess that's true but like i don't know how to explain it it is true like we we only have a certain i can only make it truly work for a few amount of people otherwise it sucks and so remember how we interviewed the chief folks she said that they had sixty thousand people apply but they only have like ten or fifteen thousand members so i kinda of believe it but anyway i'm working on it and i and i went to this i'm starting it with my friend joe and we did something interesting the other day and when i had started companies in the past i did i partnered with the wrong people not every time but sometimes and i'm and the mistake that i'm trying to not make this time is basically making sure i partner with the right folks when we did this by the way you're same partner like business partner partner not like a external partnership you're you're talking about like your c cofounder type of thing business partner like someone who you give a substantial amount of equity to which is very similar to a marriage and i i actually did this in my marriage but i've never done this in a business partner but we basically like said like hey like separately write down three things write down what like what does success look like to you in ten years what are you willing to give up in order to achieve that and like just your day to day like what what do you value and how do you wanna get there and so we each wrote that down and we came together and we're like alright here's all the things that are important to me let's look at what what's important you oh wow they actually align really nicely this thing doesn't align is that a game breaker for you and then we and then there was another thing that we went through scenarios we're like let's say your lance armstrong it's nineteen ninety nine you know that everyone's cheating and you have to cheat if you wanna win what are you gonna do right like how how do you wanna play it like what do you wanna to play and there's no right or wrong answer but it's just like let's just see how our values align in different scenarios and so anyway we've been doing this thing where we're like trying to figure out why won't this partnership work let's get all that out of the way at first and it has been awesome more people should do this have you ever done this i have actually done that which is so funny you say this we did something so similar we we sort of stumbled upon it organically in our first business because the first business i ever created with that sushi business and the idea was to create like a chipotle like restaurant chain for sushi and so we're going about it we've been at that's at this point we've been doing it for i don't know six to nine months something like that so we're not like it's not like that it's not only day one we've already already committed we already have the equity splits and we're all best friends we've known each other for four years so like surely we know everything about each other right and a smarter business person kind of like a mentor type dude was like at this time we were really big on mentors and he was like oh he was like you know how aligned are you guys and he's like if i so he was the guy we wanted to partner with the chef he was like he flew each of us out one by one to la and hung on out with us and he told us he was like yeah i feel like all of you guys say the same words but they mean different things i was like what do you mean he goes like you all be like you know oh man this what really matters is that we do this like the right way he's like but i think you all have a different definition of the right way or like we yeah we all want this to be a success i i think if i asked you what you mean by success like put a number put a time frame around it like i bet you it's all different and so we came home we he told her he gave us that feedback and we did it we did the same exercise we go i i created a list of questions and we all went sat in our corner of the room silently and we wrote our answers and then we came in and we compared and jesus they were so different me and one guy were like pretty aligned and then the third guy and we all thought we were all totally aligned the third guy his was like way different and the biggest differences were like timescale scale like how long do you how long do you expect to work on this before we see any like any like tangible success what your expectations on that and then what would be a win for you and i was like one guy was like oh man like if i could be making six figures in like you know and you know i'll do this forever and then i was like oh dude know i wanna like i wanna make ten million dollars in you know three years and the other guy was like somewhere in the middle and then we were like oh wow like we all have a like you would be happy with one path and i would be completely unhappy if that same thing we both are and if we didn't talk about it our of definition of success would have been very different and the same thing with values of like what for one for two of us it was super important like look i don't know if this business is gonna work or not but i wanna do it our way like the thing that's makes this fun for me like there's a lot of shitty components to doing this business the part that makes me like wanna wake up and do it every day is that i feel like we're putting our own stamp on this and for the other guy he's like yeah that's cool but like i don't really care about that and we're like oh shoot it's important to know how important it is because so spend a bunch of energy doing it yeah well it was clarifying like we were sort of through the partner the partners yeah well that's why i'm saying you gotta do this early on because it's in a way a business partnership is actually more of a commit to commitment than a marriage because with the marriage you can just like end it and be over with a business screwing up your cap table and someone owning a portion of your i mean that could be it it's just a it's just kind of an irreversible decision and the only way that you reversed it is by spending a lot lot a lot lot lot of money yeah like well what we did what was lucky for us was that we were all twenty one years old so we were all like a blank slate it's like dude i don't know this is just my first thought i'm not like married to this to this belief system you know like something it was very few things that we were like no i am certain and i'm stubborn on that point now in my life if i said something if i i may if i answered ten questions eight out of the ten would be things i'm like no i i stand by that like that's really that is what i thought this through and that's what i believe back then it was like i don't know i hadn't really thought about it but if you had now you're asking me to articulate it so i'll just say these things so what happened in our thing was we kind of we would all hear each other's answers and then we would be like oh i like that that's right let's all agree to align on that and we were like yeah i like sure that sounds better i don't know what the fuck i was thinking it was that wasn't i'm not married to that and so it worked for us because it got us to like get to a right answer versus who's right you know what i mean yeah this exercise i've been doing with joe we be wonderful publish this by the way because you know we i think we talked to it this one time was like some new york times article that was like seventeen questions you should ask your future spouse or something like that like before it was like it was like twenty seven questions to ask on the first state like as a single guy who just wanted to like meet girls i was like oh i'm just gonna ask it was like twenty seven questions to like make someone fall in love with you or something like and it was like for like relationships and i was like oh i'm asking every woman out this like this is the first day question this is the first hour first birthday question and i remember doing you like three times them like fucker up them new york times they i didn't know what the hell they're talking about none of these people like me okay yeah i very i mis remembered some we but i do think it would be useful whatever you and joe just did because i did this like that enough ten twelve years ago now i think you did it just like last month so you you should definitely like compile these so that more people can can do this because it'll save it'll straight up save people years of pain in their life if they like can identify some of these things up upfront versus just rushing in to the c founding yeah i mean i i i like it was like alright so here's what i want just in my personal life and i put like a net worth i said i want i wanna have a seat at the big boys table and i want people able to think that know i'm talking about when it comes to business i want freedom i wanna be able to live in different cities with my family i wanna be present in my children's lives i wanna own a bunch of real estate i wanna have fun and adventure and i wanna work like really hard for three or four weeks or for six or seven months and then i wanna chill for like three months and then it was like alright and ways i wanna get there is i wanna build this particular business i don't wanna boss i don't wanna have any meetings so i wanna have a few if any employees reporting to me and then it was the ways in which i wanna approach this particular business i wanna be incredibly aggressive about it wanna treat like a job so we're working forty hours a week on it i wanna have close to no standing meetings few employees and basically that's it yeah i oh in a revenue target of a hundred million dollars and five years don't care if we actually hit that but i want that to be the target and then he like answered similarly on a lot of those it's like alright there's is like some alignment here nice nice okay i like that and yeah okay i think yeah i think you should i think you should publish some of those things and also the lance arm arms armstrong things i think those are if if nothing else like it doesn't it doesn't really matter but it's like at least knowing how the other person is wired and being like am i okay with this am i okay with the weird psychology of this person i think it's not so much that do all of our answers match just like in a marriage it's not do we do we think the same way about everything it's like do we think the same way about the really important things alright so what did you say would you would you if you're in the land situation what do you do i for sure cheat you're basically have two options do you either exit the sport or you cheat right like it's not even cheating at that point when everybody is doing it it's just the new normal right like there's not a it it'd be one thing if it's like is if one person cheating and they're winning and everybody else is clean would you would you cheat to to try to wait and or would you stay clean it like my belief is that all these olympic sports plus pretty much all professional sports are full of pd and like you know it's just a just a naive test whether you believe that people are clean or not it's like in the same way it's like oh i'm my what percentage of nba players you think cheat on their wife it's like like you're you know i don't know but yeah the answer is yes not a not a number and so like there might be one outlier and like cool you know credit to that person for for being the the the you know the the the outlier the ac green of this but but i think same thing with cheating so yeah that one's an easy one for me our software is the worst have you heard of hubspot see most crm are a cobb together mess but hubspot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous i think i love our new crm our software is the best hubspot grow better dude you wanna you've got to meet you wanna like quickly go through some of your topics or do you wanna talk talk about a company that i had listed that what do you wanna do let's do one of yours and then we'll be wanna mine we'll finish up alright have you heard this company called n two publishing no what did they do the reason i like this story is because they're succeeding wonderfully in a place that everyone thought that it was impossible to succeed so it's called n to publishing they just rebranded it like last week stroll and it's basically neighborhood magazines so magazines and like upscale neighborhoods and i'm almost positive they have like eight hundred of these or six hundred fifty of them but they're all print so it's like in your in in like dan or in like the nicest suburb i don't even know what the like the very specific hood you're in where it would be clear don't live there but black because i can black no no but black example of a nice neighborhood at dan so what they do is they send you a magazine like once a month and it's just a magazine it's like a bulletin it's like a it's like a newsletter i don't know what you wanna call but it's literally physically a magazine and the company has like two hundred and fifty employees most all the employees are ad salespeople and they hire someone and will not exactly hire they friend is a franchise so someone who lives in black hawk pays like five or ten grand and become the official publisher of that area and that person has to gather a couple stories every single month but like the stories really are like they're not that good but it's just like people there's this old like idea with local publishing we're like dude don't care about the writing they literally just wanna see people they know and their friends and places they know in a newspaper and you could just list all their names and they would like that and that's kind of what they do and it's just like a magazine every month and it says here's what's going on like but you know the local highs school had their graduation and like eight people went to stanford like this new restaurant opened and the guy a greek immigrant and he's bringing some of his greek like taste to the area and like the fed is amazing i'm like that it just like goes something to think so anyway it's a boot bootstrap business that's been around for like eighteen years and they announced that they're doing like a hundred and fifty million dollars a year in revenue and they've been profitable every single year and they don't have a website so like or they the hq has a website but each individual magazine there's no website it's one hundred percent done through through paper and everything that they're doing is something that you would say like it it it it can't be done and it's kinda killing it it's kinda it's kind of a major business isn't that why so so how did you get these numbers today is it something public that like do they have all their numbers yeah so if you google stroll ax axiom they just did a big announcement on ax axiom last week for the founder and the ceo kinda get he gave a revenue he said we do a hundred and thirty million dollars in revenue we have eighteen thousand plus advertisers wow we've been profitable every single year we expect rev revenue to double every four years that was an i believe an exact quote and we're just expanding to all these cities and we changed our name from n two to stroll it's kind of a really fascinating story i guess if it's doubling every five years that means it's growing what like ten ten or fifteen percent a year it's not like killing it but it's doing pretty good yeah that's yeah fourteen percent a year bob this is i mean you've done it again a sam park special like how do you find these businesses this is amazing it's pretty wild no literally it's a real question how did you find this business i just read like i there's this blog i read called flash flames there's this blog i read called flash flames so if you google flash flames it's just some guy named colin in england who just writes about cool b media companies and i just i read like loads of trade publications like trade publications that has like literally five hundred website visits a day just the the most niche stuff i read it i want and if you google if you dude google it it's hard to even find their website the only way you find it is you type the ceo's name is dwayne hicks and so if you you have to type in like n two because there's like ten or twenty companies called n two right and to and then dwayne hicks and that's how i found it and when i did a little research on him i think they're it's heavily rooted and christian stuff because their their mission is like to like to bring like to create jobs and value people and to bring glory to god and we're just so happy to be doing it through like creating this like newspaper thing and podcast mission or the theirs both so anyway like it it it just kind of an interesting guy outside of our world really fast this is great i wonder how many more of these there are like i could imagine somebody doing freaking doctor's office daily or doctor's office monthly or whenever doctor's office magazine and you just go to every doctor's office and you're like hey here's you know this awesome magazine for whatever for doctors who on their practices is and you just if you eat the cost of the print then you're like you could basically go to advertisers and you know pharmaceutical companies and be like hey yeah we have fifteen thousand doctor's offices that read didn't subscribe to our thing and you know you should here's the thing like selling local ads so they're selling like the the advertisers advertisers are like local dentist local realtors selling ads to those types of people is really hard because you're selling like five hundred dollar ads that's a hard business you just have to be like smile and dial you know you gotta do it constantly so like maybe they threw that whole god chicken in there because they're like but you're doing it for the will of god therefore you have to be it like that's the only way that you could motivate someone in order like be at the phone all day sell a five hundred dollar add to kathy in scottsdale arizona about coming to her open house right right that's a hard sell that's a grind that's like grind ben could ben did it for two years he probably wouldn't wanna do it for three or four more years it's a hard job but but what i'm saying is if you did this for other just say other like subgroups right so like docs office you wouldn't then need to advertise locally because you could advertise like to all the companies that sell to medical professionals are like if i created you know e com you know shopify mag right and i sell i send this to every shopify owner's home and i'm just putting out like awesome case studies about e commerce and it just cool like stories of brands or whatever and in it i just go to cla and post script and like every e commerce company every company that sells to e com stores like every shopify app i'm like yeah you should advertise in this thing we have like you know pretty like pretty like hyper targeted distribution basically the question is is this better than a newsletter like you know you you know both spaces we know our that andrew's is doing this local news thing but for not neighborhoods but it's for like local cities and he's doing it through newsletter right is company over story what's better this magazine idea or newsletters in your opinion so i actually think that's the wrong question the the because the what's what's quite interesting is that they're selling a franchise which is very weird for a media company that is actually the more interesting thing do i think that this i think this is an awesome business do i think it's better than a newsletter no i would probably do that the newsletter but i would consider doing it this way where you're like you're like hey like we have ten thousand people already pre signed up to for the small neighborhood in arizona if do you wanna you wanna buy this list from us as a publisher it's a ten thousand dollar buy in and we'll monetize it for you and you get fifteen percent of all the revenue that we sell but you gotta make sure that you put it out all the time that is that's kind of an intriguing that's an intriguing business model the do i think that it's better because it's in print i definitely think it's potentially more interesting i think the ad rates could potentially be higher because i think that like it is actually quite cool to hold and see something i think it's a very fascinating business model i think you could also do this with a lot of different things what is the do they say anything about the cost of actually the print and the delivery like you have to print in mail magazines right which is kinda cost you something so that's that's like the biggest difference from the like a newsletter you get the tracked clicks and you get no you have no hard costs for the for the print for the shipping and the and the printing of the magazine do you know at all what that cost no i don't so they didn't reveal too much but they basically said that their national team has editorial oversight on what's published to ensure at a editorial editorial standards are non partisan and community focused news they keep a cut of all ad revenue they have local operators so the people who run the local papers the the local magazine used sc national printing copy editing and operational resources and the company distributes the magazine for free in readers mail right it it's pretty it's it's pretty fascinating it's an interesting business you know what else is kind of interesting did you hear what convertkit so convertkit is like a mailchimp competitor i went to the conference this weekend it's a email platform i think you use them right yeah i use them do you see the thing they loki key announced something that's kind of amazing so and the reason this is actually quite fascinating they launched this thing where they now hired an ad sales team and they're gonna go out and sell ads and they're gonna give you sean the user eighty five percent of the revenue that they go and and sell yeah this is smart i was always wondering why the like email platforms don't do this because once you start your newsletter you're like aren't cool get people being like hey can i sponsor it you're like yeah and then you've d facto become ad sales and guess what you're like not great at it because you're not doing it full it sucks and you would happily pay somebody a fifteen percent commission fulfilling your ad spots and doing it well and i i was always thinking like you know a a sort of a mail a b convertkit like why aren't they just making this their business model like in addition to their saas revenue of like paying for the email stuff like couldn't they you know convertkit at pretty significant scale like i i wonder how big this is gonna be for them dude listen to this the hustle there was a period of time where trunk was on fire and he was our only writer he basically we had like people that would kind of fill in when he was sick but basically he wrote the email by himself every day for like eight months and we were doing over a million dollars a month in revenue right and there was one trunk and there was like twenty ad salespeople that's ridiculous that is crazy it it was pretty crazy and that we had like adam scott so we had like four like growth marketers so like but it that business could have been trunk and like four growth marketers and it could would've have been making over a million dollars a month and but it had we had like eight or ten or fifty i don't even remember exactly ad salespeople and then each like four ad salesperson needs an operations person and then like like editors to edit the ad it was like like morning brew i think has two hundred and fifty people i don't know for a fact i would bet you that morning brew has thirty editorial people and two hundred and twenty ad sales or ad sales related people well there's some matters over it but like you so with your ad sales team yeah managing the the set the sellers when you when you get your add team you you probably had like some commission structure or whatever right like hey yeah four percent yeah so so what what how does you comment for basically what what so what was your comp model and then what is what was like the overhead so tim the fact that you employed them versus them just being let's say like with convertkit for example if i write a news newsletter i'm not paying for the overhead i'm only paying for the placement i pay this fifteen percent placement fee once they once they get me an ad right that's their commission well did you convert in more or less than that in overall ad sales for the hustle do you think so we basically when we kind of were getting going and we had two salaries like the entry level people so the people who were like two or three years of experience and then we had the hire people which for us was like five or six years experience so still not a lot of experience but i was like twenty four when i started so like it's basically like a twenty two year old and like a twenty seven year old like that was were like two get my jokes or do not get my jokes that's yeah your coffee yeah yeah yeah yeah and the the earlier ones the younger of guys it was like around it ranged from like fifty to seventy thousand dollars a year in base salary and then the upper guys got like a hundred to like a hundred and twenty thousand a year in base salary in the upper guys there it was expected that they would sell i forget exactly but between one to one point five million dollars a year and ad revenue and they would get for either four or four and a half percent of that the younger guys their expectations was that they were gonna sell between five hundred and like nine hundred we had some sellers like this woman katie who would sell i believe the year we sold she was going into the year with like two point five million booked wow two point five million and and so but so basically but then they had to get seventy five percent of their quota so if their quota was one million dollars if they hit only six hundred thousand they only got their base salary if they hit seventy five percent of their quota that's when the four percent started kicking in and then if they got a hundred one percent then the kicker would go up and they would start making a lot of money so the highest paid person at our company oftentimes was a ad seller and do you remember like did you just look at like what is our percent of revenue that we're paying out in commissions like did you have like because let's just say the easy apples to apples math is let's say convertkit relaunch this thing it's fifteen percent that's your that's your cost of ad sales basically if if they placed all your ads do you remember what you're well you can overs simplify it yeah you could overs simplify it by saying four point four percent of total ad revenue and then just assume a hundred thousand dollars ahead plus so let's say that you've got ten sellers doing ten million so that's a hundred thousand per salary with for ten people that's one million dollars and then commissions would be four percent of ten million so four hundred thousand so one point four million people one point four million dollars for ten ad salespeople for ten million in revenue but then of course there was like some account executives who would help with that and then like operations people but yeah that's basically it bro you just did a shit out of public math and i forgive of you because you're my friend you know we don't do public math but that's easy for you to just do that listen it's just not who we are it's not what we do and did do follow i i i tried to follow but it's like you're speaking another language no you you you do it ten million in revenue do it right too so you're gonna revenue two percent right which is about the same as theirs right so you for all that headache of employing all those people you saved like one percent let's say of like the commission rate now maybe you would feel higher or maybe maybe you'd do a better job than like the centralized service would probably i would guess but but here's why it's also a better model one time we had like goldman sachs or something as an advertiser and we had a story on fuck jerry and how fuck jerry fuck jerry is like this meme instagram count that says like funny stuff they like launched like fuck jerry news or something like that and i was like oh well let's for this email by the way every single sentence let's use the word fucking it and then like another time we we talked about donald trump and we're like this entire email let's write it in the voice of donald trump like if you sound read it to yourself it sounds like donald trump and goldman sachs got really mad us and they're like you you said fuck like literally eighty four times in this email like we were not sponsoring you anymore and i was like well good fuck off like i don't care about you like you know screw fuck you but katie sold the ad and her commission was gonna get lost so i was like okay i don't wanna hurt you so i'm willing to like not say certain stuff just because i don't want you to experience the pain but i don't give a shit about that brand if they wanna like know muzzle screw them right so now with this new with with this new setup it actually could be a lot more advantageous for the creator yeah katie's are amazing by the way we we work with her too she's she's really good so so what are the do we wanna do another one or are we we're gonna wrap it we could do it one more maybe let's do okay i let let me just do do you want an idea or a life hack a life hack alright so so ben business partner ben not podcast ben yeah ben i just referred to you as god's ben and the the other ben i'm gonna have to say is it's not god's ben so not god's ben was was town way he's you gotta converse yeah wait he's zeus so so he's visiting and i was like and so you know it's always interesting right like in one way you know he he came you know basically stays in my house we we hang out for for the week we get a bunch of stuff done so he gets to see a bunch of stuff in my world but how i live life and i'm sure that's you know somewhat interesting to him where he sees some things he's like wow thank god i don't do them that way and other things probably like oh that's cool like maybe i should be more like that and the but the same thing happened for me because ben on the last day i see ben and he's like i'm like oh yeah you know you're just packing up what are you doing what are right now because he's he's like hunch over his table he's right he's like got a pan out he's writing something by hand which is not like you know we do everything on our computer so i was like what are you right now and i noticed he's not holding the pen he's holding a marker and he he's drawing and i was i've been what are you doing what are you drawing and he's he's drawing like a birthday card basically on a giant piece of paper and he's got six of them and he's drawn all these and i'm like what is this yeah it's like my daughter's birthday what are you doing he's like it's my dad's birthday and he's like oh at family tradition we have he goes every time it's someone in our family's birthday we all get out of get out like paper and markers and we draw them like birthday cards and it'll be like you know inside jokes or like dad you're the man for this reason you know i we always say that you got the best whatever you know just you got the best calves and so he draws a of him with like huge calves or whatever right you love this you love the suns here's a picture of chris paul holding a birthday cake for you singing a new happy birthday like this player on the suns and so it's just like whatever is this goofy and i saw it and i was like this is amazing and like everything he's told me about his dad by the by the way his dad was his so shout out to shout out to andy his dad's amazing and like tell you one thing is amazing about his dad is he's like so his dad's a huge phoenix suns fan so it's ben i'm like oh did you get it from your dad like your dad you know growing up as a huge fan that's why you are he's like no it's the opposite growing up my dad didn't really care about basketball or the suns and i got super into it and he's like my dad just does this thing where like whatever each of his kids is into he like he's like alright i'm into it too and like not just like small that's great dad mood the great dad move right i was like holy shit i didn't even i'm now so i'm like i even think about that he's like he's not just supportive because i think that's that's normal the common would be here you're supportive oh you like this great good you know go on bigger your thing i'll i'll show up at your game and i'll kind of be you know doing the cross on my my you know in my lap lab because i'm bored it's not my thing and his that's the opposite he's like oh we like the you like the sun the suns no we like the suns and we we love everything about the suns now and we eat live and breed the suns and so far his other kid his other son is does real estate he's like oh you do real estate no no no we do real estate and so he works for his son for free just helping him sell real estate forty hours a week because he's like oh yeah we gotta sell some real estate look i'm in and so he's like a free employee who's like hitting up linkedin he doesn't pay i'm like he loves this podcast because he'll hear growth ideas i he'll be like oh shit i'm gonna do that for my son's real estate business and wait that's a that's an amazing bat amazing dad and a horrible son pay your dad dog he's he doesn't want the money he's decorated creative of and then the other son like he does this like comedy thing and he's like oh comedy alright i'm in the comedy scene now and like he knows that and i was like wow i'm gonna do this so on the dad's side i was like hold like ben ben works with me that andy he basically works with me too he's like he listens to every episode the podcast he responds to every email like we put out he like he's not trying to get special treatment he replies like a fan like he's gonna be like oh yeah i do my five tuesday he's like i love number three or he's like the podcast oh i love the way you and sam did this and i'm like dude how sick is that to have your dad become your wing man for your favorite hobby or your passion like i'm gonna do that so that was the first learning the second was this birthday thing he's like yeah my mom like came up with us early on like you know lu not about the gifts and like this is a fun thing we do for each other and we always i do it we we we did it you did what this birthday posters so when you waste is this like a white person thing i didn't know about i don't know but i mean like in my house when you wake up on your birthday you wait the my mom would put puts like posters all over the house that that all of the other kids like and it's like throughout wow okay i don't no man what did you did you this too we do where did you get no this is this is new to be as well no no at no sam yeah we had it as well and honestly it made my day would i like i would i would be so eager to walk upstairs it's kinda like when you walk upstairs did you see like stuff on the christmas tree it was like i felt that same joy i walk up around the thursday and i see my signs all over the place dude and i know that like that i get the breakfast that i want that day that's it's pretty cool this so so i i've basically like i don't even care about my birthday anymore because it's always like the same thing and i hate the same i hate the same ness of life there's so many things that are just the same all the time like when facebook came out with it you can write happy it'll remind you how then your wall becomes a thousand people who don't really care about you writing happy breaking i hate that i because then i feel guilty like i gotta reply yeah i idea i never reply and like you know and but it's just the same thing right or but what other people do is let me throw money at the problem which becomes a different kind of burdens like i gotta get you a gift i gotta think of something or if let's say i go buy you a nice card it's like dude the the birthday poster is so much better than a hallmark card because it's like a is like actually thoughtful b is like kinda goofy and funny it's like more entertaining and since it's a kind of personal touch right and so so i love this idea when we came home from that farming conference my daughter had drawn a poster that says welcome home data and it's still the first post like in my bathroom it's a poster of the wall every day i go to the bathroom i see welcome home data like the the bathroom is my home which is you know a little bit true and so i'm like this personal poster thing is a great life hack and it got me thinking i'm gonna start stealing everybody's favorite family tradition and so that's my new question for people is like y what are these i family traditions you got like what are the things that y'all do and like people don't even know they're so like baked into their operating like they don't even know them and then you kinda keep digging and you'll find them and if it's like if it's a family tradition that's lasted like you know twenty years of your life it's probably awesome and like i should steal that for my own family what do you think i yeah i think that's good i'm trying to think about it if i even heaven like my family we're all atheist but we still pray before every time we eat dinner like you don't eat till you pray even like no one believes in god that's like an interesting tradition we do do birthday posters i don't think we have any other traditions like that i i wonder i bet ben has a ton a bunch but the one that we start i think i talked about this so we started doing our end of year reviews where we like do product reviews and and todd and preview the year to come that's our newest tradition i like that one a lot yeah but that that's some new age shit the the problem like actual product here like i love this microphone or what do you mean no no no just like just reviewing like the year the the what was benz and two thousand twenty one or whatever and then preview yeah yeah but no the the other like what we have a bunch of tradition we do have a bunch of traditions like one of the simple ones sweet waffles like every sunday morning and i just like i think i know i can look forward to every week my wife i think really good waffles with black straw there just was like goes out yeah that's just one el top it's one meal a week that i know i can always look forward to and i love it you don't have any sean no i do i have some and and now i'm like and i i give credit to my dad my dad was really the one who was bringing the like the fun factor with some of these where my mom's more like practical whereas my dad would be like like once a week he would do the same like the the whatever like the monday night dinner as like oh dad's making dinner oh sweet it's not because he's a better cook but he would like he would just add some show and shipped to it so he would like make he would like get this tray and ever everybody had their own circular tray with like four dishes in it and and then he would add a quarter and we were was like yeah the coins there like i got a quarter and like it's was like the equivalent of a mcdonald's happy meal but like we're a quarter and like and there would be just like some flourish there was always something that was like a little extra that he would do and and like yeah like these little like he would come home and he put his wallet down but the game was i would always steal the wallet and i'd have he run and chase me i'd i have to hide it and like the game was like can he get his wallet back and was like how do you turn that like two minutes of coming home from like oh hey how's it going like autopilot into like something that's actually like fun and breaks everybody's kinda like mood for a second so he used to do that's a great question to ask someone what family what what's a really good family trish traditional yeah i'm gonna steal them to like a good idea buddy actually that just can't mind i don't even i don't think i wanna steal this because i don't think i could convinced my family to do it but his family did it and i remember because i he started dating this girl and i was like oh how's it going you know date mike or whatever and she was or i think maybe the other way i was like how's he going dating dating this girl she's like they got the she's like they got this weirdest tradition they kiss on the lips basically was like that he was like yeah they go to he's was like i went i went on the they're like annual like come or annual family like vacation to tahoe or whatever they went to a cabin and i'm expecting skiing and all this other stuff and there was but at night they did this thing i'm like my gosh shit well what did they do like blood cult like what's going on and he's like yeah they all read harry potter but like they read it aloud and they read it like in the voices and he's like thanks oh my goodness that's a bit much send in the circle exactly but i was like but to them there was like they're thin and i was like i you know what like as as cringe as i would feel that and i love harry potter by the way but as cringe i would feel like doing you know dumbledore's voice as i read the book that would be a lot for me and definitely a lot for me if i'm the visiting boyfriend into that family that was like a lot but like you know respect to to have a family that's like willing willing to be a little silly even as everybody gets old like i really respect that and like if that's your thing that's your thing alright whatever like you know let me go ahead and and read you know over of the phoenix like in in the voice like let's do this you know like i say like corn and tattoos or corn and sleeve tattoos i respect that others do it but that for me not for me dude you what i like my new line i tweeted to this out yes i just bother people but i i i called i was like product managers are are the bottled water of tech and it it's just a funny backhand it's like like nobody nobody one knows what to make it like it's a compliment but it's clearly kind of an insult like like bottled water but i guess bottled the water is useless and then somebody one upped it and i'm like oh that's my new shit he goes he goes they're more like the throw pillows and i don't like dude throw pillows there's such a good dis because it's like it's like you know girls love them they look good but they're completely fucking useless and know and like annoying when you actually need to go to sleep and so calling something the throw pillow of x is just an awesome slam that i'm like saving up in my back pocket to use i met people at this conference that i went to and there was like a lot of listeners there and someone came much at me goes so like when did you guys decide to make the switch to go from talking about business just being in like twelve year olds and and are you ham and i yeah that's what you said it and he goes are you happy with that switch and i was like a i don't remember and b yeah i think so but i was like yeah there definitely was like a decision yeah thank you you and luck is my who's like do you he's like was there but he but he wasn't trying to like roast me who was like it was steph fiance steph miss fiance and he goes you he's like i love the pod but like when was that switch made were you were gonna like go over for like talking about actual business to be in twelve when i was twelve we had a question like this which was i was like you probably know it it's like when did you tell your dad you're gay and it was like it was like to the viral question that went through our middle school like covid it was like instant someone said this and people realize like oh my god it it's a hilarious trap question there's no good answer to this question and literally everybody in every school in the school district of texas was saying this question for like three months and then it went win that's what that question is like oh when did you guys decide to like switch the podcast guys up to being like twelve real video it's like yeah is totally you're like it alfred me and i was like oh i don't remember calvin it was pretty good and on that no we're out alright alright we're out to you