How to Interact with Famous People, The In-Person Event Playbook, and More

so bankers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies and when you sell a company for like anything north of probably fifty million they likely have a banker and i've been contacting bankers and my pitch for them is this hey i'm thinking about starting a company in this space you've sold a few companies in this space tell me everything about why the this company was bought as well as what the opportunities are that the buyer what they were looking for and maybe in five or ten years i'll let you sell my company and i've been able to line up meetings doing this and if way genius and i've been a part of one or two of those types of conversations and i was like oh wow these guys are like vault filled with gold i i met a famous person this weekend i went and saw jimmy is it yang or wang the comedian i think jimmy oh yang or somebody oh yeah it was jimmy o i forget his last name but he's when was his character in silicon valley jin yang jin yeah and he's a comedian and he was an awesome guy and my friend is dating him brie and funny in person or not yeah he's awesome he was awesome like funny like you just talk to him where you're like were you like wow this person should be a comedian if they weren't no he was just really insightful and he had like really good strong opinions and he told stories well i mean i think you could actually do it if you were to sit down and write a a bit i actually think that you have the same traits but no he was just a really nice thoughtful guy but he was like legit famous to wear everywhere we went people would talk to him and right it was pretty pretty cool to see and i imagine quite annoying for him because the people who are fans of him because he he doesn't actually talk like that you know he's american right right right and but their are yeah yeah well there they are fans of him in particularly the asian community they love him because while he just like he's like represent nicely but basically they come up to like like a white guy came up to him and kinda said something a little inappropriate and it was like rooted in like the silicon valley show right and i like they think that he has a max accent and things like that and that's super annoying particularly in austin where there's tons of like white bros so i imagine that could be annoying but he was legit famous and it was kinda cool to see when you're around people who are like you know famous in their world do you how do you act do you like do you go door a treat them like a normal person in fact almost disregard their fame b nerd out about you know asking them zillion questions about you know the show and what blah blah like you know basically to ask them all the questions they probably heard before but with enthusiasm or see something else what do you do dude so i do i the i do be but i do it in a very direct way kinda like the podcast were where it could tell that i'm like really confident but i'm asking questions up that everyone wants to know so i'm like so what like like nagging them yeah yeah and so it's like so what's it like here's a tiny example i've got a friend of a friend who had cancer and he lost his leg and when i first saw i was like what's going on man yeah are you're crushing it at pull ups because you're lighter now like how many pounds did you lose off that leg and he like really quickly opened up because he was like oh you just got that out you got it we got it all the i'm saying like it's not here but you're also not making a huge deal out of it yeah yeah yeah and so that's like how usually when i'm with famous people so i'm like what's it like you're pretty famous is that cool or is it bad like just very direct and i typically find that it makes people lighten up and they and they'll and you you are making them in a sense but you're also like congratulating them and they really will just open up you're like you're better looking in person i watch the show yeah yeah you're way taller than i thought yeah you're not nearly a slight of build that does as i was expecting yeah you're you're actually money yeah i don't know yeah you're it's like you know i don't care what people say i think you're great dude my brother law's has the best celebrity move he he if he sees a celebrity he greet them like a long lost friend so he'll see like i can mike tyson and he'll be like mike what's man how you been he'll go adapt them up and be like but could seeing you he'll just like keep going and they're just like do know this guy where did i people like like george y i was houston a george and then he'll like god i just keep going and like just he'll just make it seem like they are there's just reconnecting rather than meeting for the first time and i thought what a hack one an amazing hack because these people meet tons of people so they don't they don't remember and so they'll automatically go with your assumption that they like sorta of know each other or your equals in some way peers in some way you ever have you ever been to a restaurant and the owner walks around just green people and asking how things are of course yeah that is i had a friend that told me he used to pick up women that way where he was just like i would approach this with the attitude like i wouldn't act like i was the owner but in my head i would act like the owner how's was doing here yeah yeah and i was just and i had that energy and i was able to meet so many people with that energy restaurant owner energy dude that's yeah good it's a good one and so i like at hustle con when we're hosted hu scott or when you and i are hosting one of our events like you you kinda know everyone knows who you are and and so you kinda know that you have the feeling where you can just walk up and talk to it and and they'll know what's up right you have that energy when you're trying to meet girls and it's the best dude that so good like i'm just gonna start wearing like a a small dish towel and my waist and go to restaurants and then just yeah just just walk around just have a drink and just be walking around you know greeting each table making sure everything's going smoothly for them you're and you're not lying you're not telling them you assumed based on my big restaurant energy here alright bro i got a a few interesting things to by you do you have a did you have a lot left from last time yeah i kinda do can i tell you about one yeah i don't know like business slash idea this niche that's i got my attention right now so i did i talk about this the other i i went to that the blip show tell you about this no alright so so do you know who blip is if you ever heard of blip i don't know what that is no alright so like remember like back there we had barney or like you know like pee herman or whatever i these he's like it's like it's a dude so he kinda looks like peter herman or whatever but he's more like a barney or you know sesame me street style show so basically there's a guy who went on youtube created this brand called blip and he he's entertaining so he'd be like oh by the way the funny thing that he does is there's no like set he just goes into like hey we're at the aquarium but they just go in like after nine pm it's like closed down and so it's just they have it all to themselves like hey we're here in las vegas at this run climbing studio and so he just uses that to film this thing but he gives it a shout out at the beginning of the video the video it gets like forty million views so it's like well you know it's it's worth it to let these guys film there and he just like goes around basically play with toys be like i'm at an abandoned chuck e cheese and he'll go play with a bunch of toys and there's like music and whatever overlay and it's the same guy i'm looking now it's the same guy every single time it is except for as he blew up and got famous then they switched him out with just a stunt double for a bit and so like that guy like a substitute teacher sometimes and then sometimes blip comes back but like the main guy is the main guy he wears his outfit like this blue outfit with this orange glasses he like always looks the same anyways my daughter love blip we used to watch a ton of blip and all of a sudden we see this ad that says blip like the live show is coming to oakland and so we were like oh shit we and so instantly my wife tickets for for all of us of the family we go to this thing last weekend and it's it's at the same place you did hu so it's at the paramount theater and it is packed like you know hu khan was like you a sold out ish this was like sold out sold out like all the even the back shitty seat is like sold out and it's full of parents and their kids and then they just just like this they basically just created like a little play like a little mini musical one hour because kids don't have that long with attention span and it's just kinda like music and and like you know lights and colors and he's oh dinosaurs oh rocks oh how much did it cost so every ticket i wanna say was that venue seats maybe like sixty bucks a seat something like that so that venue seats between twenty five hundred and three thousand i believe yeah so i think there was two thousand there and i believe the tickets were were something like something like fifty sixty seventy bucks something like that so we're in like a hundred and twenty thousand and and he played four shows in a row that weekend and he went to the next city so it was our like man may no he had done eight shows or he's was doing something like that so it was like some crazy like thing where i was like oh wow this weekend they made whatever eight hundred grand and yeah the tickets tickets basically range from like you know sixty bucks to ninety bucks and and the place lit by the way so like you know he comes on stage kids go crazy he's like you you know he'll be like you know what does the bubble do and everyone's like pop and he's like when i say can you say pop and like so it's like not like a quiet show like because kids are allowed anyways so some kids are just not paying attention it have like my daughter during inter iteration was like i wanna watch blip on youtube and so we like had to open up youtube on our phone and give it to her during remission because she couldn't like go five minutes without stimulation and so is and then they have like the merch and the like the concessions i have like all that shit right so it's like pretty dope actually and i was like wow this is kind genius they just took youtube ip and this is this guy who was there was not blip the guy on stage was just some you know theater kid who like didn't make it know and it's like he's like alright plan b i'll be i'll be blip and and so it was like they they took the ip but they made their own show out of it and so i started looking into this and there's a company that does this called vs star entertainment awesome so vs star what they do is they go license these kids brands and then they put on kids broadway basically and they tour around the country awesome and so and blood beans just a guy with a guitar right or there more instruments no guitar he just just him he just were there any instruments or is it just like a soundtrack just soundtrack and like lights and like stage props so like so he he always got like like you know if they came out as sharks like a bunch of like little backup dancers came out as sharks and then they would it like that's an awesome in theater and so vista entertainment they do another brand that you've probably heard of call or you may have heard of called paw patrol it's basically another kid's cartoon team so guess how much this is my like kind of tri guess how much they sold in paw patrol tickets last year just take a take a guess twenty twenty million forty million dollars forty million dollars in event tickets in event tickets for and that's just the tickets it's not the now it's just last year in twenty two i i don't it's like this is like the just before covid number so like i don't talk twenty nineteen twenty twenty or something like that wow so they got bought by cirque des sole so first so the the backstory is some guy decides oh you know what like he's watching sesame street he's like sesame street to do a live show and he goes and he basically raises five hundred grand from this guy he mortgage his house gets an extra twenty five grand out of his home equity so he's got five hundred twenty five thousand dollars he goes and he gets the license to sesame street started with the sesame street show then mu it and like you know did that must have been years ago this was in the like nineteen eighty something like that yeah and then this other guy was doing it they merged and that whole thing gets bought my cirque des sole late last year it cirque us sole by the way like yes how much cirque to sole revenue was have you called search show no i'm not but i do know that the guy who started it is a canadian guy he's a billionaire i read dan aria book and they talk about that guy a lot i think he's like i mean he started a circus liberty or whatever is yeah he's really eccentric and while than everything so it it made him a billionaire how much revenue does it make ben have you been to a a search la show cirque du sole delay did a billion does a billion dollars a year in revenue watch is insane ten percent a five or ten percent of all las vegas tourists go to a search show when they're in town is that what do what what's that at ci is that the is that when they have like ten shows right it'll be like they have oh and then they have zoom humanity they had like whatever and the beatles i yeah i i know about it and i'm i'm into it and it's publicly traded or at least it was before it was acquired by private equity right private equity owns it now and and it's a pretty bad business the idea was do a circus but no animals so it was like only human performers and to do that they did like crazy acr and like great costumes it's basically it's own genre at this point though right and so he built that thing into a a real juggernaut and so ci then bought blue man group and vista star entertainment and so they got blue man which is like an ad they what they had said was like we do ten million in ticket sales a year for cirque des la blue man adds another two million and then and then vista star adds another two million but they're all like different ticket prices but like they do fourteen million in tickets sold per year and so this this like live entertainment thing really has caught my attention because i think as the world moves more and more digital the the like demand for like these one off experience like hey let's get out of the house and go do so i think it's just gonna keep going up music festivals that's a winner and then there's like i think plays and musicals are gonna be a winner i think they're gonna be bigger than they were before even though the world was digital and in fact because the world moves digital what do you think about all this i one hundred percent agree and so earlier today i sent you a notion doc of some of my notes on i'm interested in peer businesses which is basically like you pay money in you're part of a club and you meet up with them and i i can't talk too much about what the name of the company's were but they were doing like one of them does a hundred million a year in profit and they it's basically two or three meetups ups a year and there's executives paying fifty thousand dollars year to be part of them and i think actually these are gonna completely boom i think conferences right now are interesting but those are really hard this actually seems way easier to pull off all types of meetups airbnb b's i'm one hundred percent on board that i think that in person is is the move yeah i i and i think that so then i started thinking like what are the other opportunities and so i think a you could just like go compete with these guys on like the either the same brands or other brands like what they did was the vista star guy took tv ip turned it into a live show the what the blip guy is doing is taking youtube ip and turning it into a live show and i think you could just need to do this for more so like i think you can even do like we've talked about religion which is the greatest free ip in the world so i think if somebody could do this for religion which would make a extremely kid friendly in fact kid focused like christianity show basically i think you could do this for dinosaurs or science as a generic genre because it's like if kids love trucks and dinosaurs or whatever and you could just basically create the like the the show you know day with dinosaurs or something like that and once you get like if you have a certain level of quality moms will spread this and they will talk about it and they will like in their mommy groups they will help you sell these tickets and and i just feel like there's a like it's not that hard like you build one show and then you sell that one show a thousand times right like the show goes on to her mama mia has made like i don't know some stupid amount of money just being the same show on tour with replacing the the low cost john i'm trying while we're talking i'm trying to find the numbers so we used to so we did events but we would do like these this thing called hustle come which is like the our big one where like thousands of people would come but then we do this thing called two x and two x was basically from like seven pm to like ten pm and it was basically we got fifteen or ten women all who are in tech business not that many of them were like well known but they would have ten minutes to like tell a story and we would charge like twenty five dollars but then we would get tens of thousands of dollars and sponsors but we got to the point where we could pull this off like kinda like almost weekly in other cities and when we started doing this the hustle wasn't that popular but we were making like i think like thirty grand a night when we were doing it and we had one employee running it right and she would use a team of contractors and then we wouldn't supply anything like i think we had free wine but i no i don't even think it was free i like we wouldn't supply anything but then when we have corporate sponsors and we crushed it and in my head i'm like i can always fall back on this to make a living because it was so much easier than people thought right it yeah that's pretty good for a tech bro a tech pro business like almost of you you have you were running one of the best like women's entrepreneurship events because you got labeled wrong dude i yeah they're i'm looking on your man there's layers so but basically like we used to do this thing called pizza forties where we would do a meetup and i would interview someone and they would drink a forty ounce and when the forty ounce beer was done the talk was done but then like women were like this is like there's all dudes here and so we created like a like a wine version and that had like way better it was like like cheese and wine i i don't even remember but that had way better engagement and so we're like oh like let's pursue this thing like this there's clearly an opportunity here until we created two x which comes it's it's like two x chromosomes which i thought was clever i stole it from reddit but anyway we would do i think we did ten or twelve in one year and every single time it was like twenty and thirty grand and the cost the cost was nothing the cost was renting the venue which cost like three thousand dollars and we would make like twenty grand which also you had readers in every city right so that's how you sold the tickets is yeah yeah but we weren't basically the speakers sold the tickets the reason why we had fifteen speakers was was i was like i bet each fifteen will get twenty five people to come plus are like little bit of our engine like this is easy and weren't making the money at the tickets you're making out sponsors really anyway the tickets pay the the business model was the tickets paid for the event and then the conference was all or the sponsors were all the profit but when it's there's two things going on one like women so whenever you have like an underserved community like sponsors definitely are willing to pay more and two it was like a b2b component so it wasn't kids component which i think would alter the economics but my point of it is that i think that this it was far easier than people thought and it was way more rudimentary and broad than people thought and it worked we just used splash that i think if you google like two x the hustle you'll like see like the slash is basically event right it was nothing special and it freaking worked that's dope alright what else we got alright let me i just got kicked out of the document alright i got it so one thing tell me what you what you think about this one thing that i've been doing is i'm now starting to like get back into the game or thinking about it so i've been setting up calls with bankers so bankers which i didn't even know what those were bankers when someone wouldn't like sarah and my wife went a pen instead a bank yeah and she ed like i would always make her friends were like yeah like i i you're i'm a banker i work at a bank i'm like oh which branch and so bankers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies and when you sell a company for like anything north of probably fifty million they likely have a banker and i've been contacting bankers and my pitch to them is this hey i'm thinking about starting a company in this space you've sold a few companies in this space tell me everything about why the this company was bought as well as what the opportunities are that the buyer what they were looking for and maybe in five or ten years i'll let you sell my company and i've been able to line up meetings doing this and it's way genius and i've been a part of one or two of those types of conversations and i was like oh wow these guys are like vault filled with gold why they so much need podcasts like what why are they why are these guys not talking well they can't so much info no but they talk like generally speaking they don't they can't talk about any specific deal but like they know a lot do and they actually know everything it's like your your accountant it's like accountants and they know everything think yeah they know everything and they've been telling me so much information so i like they'll like basically they'll say here's why this company was doing well here's why it was succeeding here's why they bought it and i'm like alright great what what other companies was that buyer trying to buy and why and they're like well they always struggled with blank and i'm like boom thank you right and then i'll say like you sold three businesses in the same space which one was more fun to run and so like for example i'll give you i'll give you a concrete example the business that i'm interested in now we've talked about a a bunch it's like vest so which is basically a peer group so companies that it's like a group of ten or forty people who all have a similar job title and they meet together and they discuss their problems that it's like a safe basis shit you can't talk about in the internet and some of them do huge one of them i can't say which does over a hundred million in profit a year and they're just like meetups in real life and i'll just be like well what job titles was ga or whoever buys these companies what job titles are they trying to get to and they're really struggling to to to reach and they'll just tell me i'm like oh great i can create a community around that and i think i could build it to sell it which what i wanna know from your perspective is that even a good plan building to sell so part of me is like yes it's clear path to make money i know the part is like it's kinda lame though yeah well i think where you're at now let's take three three options build to sell that which is basically optimizing for like oh is there a sort of like a flip is there a is there a buyer on the other side of the of a business like this another other one is build to win which is basically like for example when i talk to these bankers what i'm trying to figure out is what which of these businesses is like not a special snowflake where it's like oh that's actually like a rinse and repeatable model like i didn't like that founder didn't like catch lightning in a bottle at the perfect time and it's their perfect background and make out really lucky about this one thing it's like oh those i don't wanna emulate i wanna emulate the one where it's like i think somebody could start that same business today and do equally well or do do it just as well in this one adjacent space and like you don't need to be a genius with that and so that's the second part of it which is i build to win and it's like optimizing for something that's gonna work and then as the last one just just sort of like you know build for fun or build information which is like go for something that like you something you would never wanna sell that you're willing to do even if it's low likelihood of success i think we all know the answers is to do that bucket right like i think the question is like how many how much security do you need before you go do the thing you know you should do well or it could be a combination of authoring like it could be like you enjoy winning or you enjoy this space and you wanna make it successful but there's a great clip from you and what's free what's what's all in yeah david free there's a great clip that i shared that you and him had where he basically said that founders always sell themselves short and they go for these small ideas because the because they think it's more reasonable but when doing that they kinda screw themselves because it's actually easier sometimes to do much grander bigger ideas because that attracts the crazy types of people who you wanna work with you understand competitive because nobody not not every joe is going to try to you know do it like you know going and try to you know start a a railroad business or whatever versus an fba business it's like they're both gonna take all your time so that's equal money well you're gonna go have to go raise money from investors one will let you just raise you you're still gonna get the money you need from investors just one you maybe raise more at a higher valuation and the other one you'll raise less at a lower valuation right like did you agree do agree with him i i do agree with him and i've i've thought just for a very long time i remember back of the day age you ever here about this thing called the unreasonable institute i don't even think this around anymore that's the great name it's sort like the same guys who did summit it's not not actually the same guys but it's the same it was like the same idea i was like right the unreasonable institute it was basically this like it was based on this one word unreasonable in the way that the hustle built on this one word hustle and trans is built on one word trends and so unreasonable it was exactly that it was like it's gonna take unreasonable people to do unreasonable things for the world to move forward and it was like very inspiring and then they met with all bunch people know a bunch people who did that the sort of elon musk types who went and did unreasonable things and then you start to look at it and you're like you know all things equal you know i guess like your inputs are sort of the same it's just your time and energy and then like the outputs can be very very different because the the the the inputs aren't the same because it is possible to build something pretty cool and not work that hard but it's kind of impossible to build something huge and not worked very hard alright who do we know and i let's do real example i'm not saying it's not true but lowe's who do we know that's building successful awesome businesses without working too hard well how about su i actually don't know what's his schedule does he grind constantly he works hard yes he he works hard so than no one you don't we don't know anyone but you and me like maybe i'll give you one nuance on it he got there faster than the normal person so it like it looked like it came easier but that's just because he was better it wasn't because he worked he wasn't putting in a tenth of the hours he was putting in the same number of hours and getting their ten times faster which is like i just think that like there's a world where you have business a and it doesn't grow nearly as fast and you're working forty hours a week and then you have business b that's growing significantly faster and you have to work a hundred hours a week like that that is a reality yes that's true that's what i'm talking about i'm not talking about like very little i'm talking about normal versus not normal also things like this podcast or like people who have like newsletters or blog or something like that where it's like or they teach a course it's like you know like like let's to take your buddy neville right so neville i don't think you and me well but because but i'm doing multiple things right so it's like on each one i'm not putting in as much time but like overall i'm working harder and if i didn't do those other things that one thing would just expand and time i would just do more i would just wait how often are you working now day normal work hours not normal hours but i work like a the equivalent of eight hours a day got it just not all it not not all continuously alright but back what was the original point so my my what my point was like is it is this really true that you can kinda like chill and win and like i didn't mean i chill but i mean chill less or sorry chill more work less yeah okay great so then bro if you agree with fried burke which i think i do why are you not going after like one big grand thing like i started a newsletter that's not exactly like you know that's not like world changing entirely it's neat but i i i would put it on a six out of ten in terms of like maybe a five in terms of like big ideas right yeah i i agree with you the reason why is because to me it's not a big contest it's a do i have a clear picture of what i want like my life to be and then can i like do i have a crystal clear picture and then can i make that happen and it's like knowing what i want and then getting what i want and so if what i wanted was not to work the hundred hours right even though i even though i agree like that's cool it's fun and if i did do it i do think there's all these extra benefits you would get amazing talent to come join you you'd make bunch money you'd have a bunch of fun like there's there's great benefits if i did the big one the the the big big big one but i decided that like what i was wanted you wanted yeah yeah what i wanted more was more like the forty hour a week but our spent on doing these types of things like i love teaching teaching is not the most is not the most like world changing unreasonable institute style you know like let's go land to rocket on mars type of idea but i have the most fun doing it so i'm just optimizing for like a different thing rather than a big i'm optimizing for like you know my own enjoyment and so that's why i'm not going after that so i need things that are sufficiently interesting so that i'm interested and big enough so i don't feel like i'm wasting my time but like it's not maximally big right i feel you well to wrap up the bank thing i think it's it was it's it's been kind of interesting i'm gonna continue doing it maybe i'll i i didn't ask these people who i spoke with today if i i could talk about what we discussed so i'm not gonna break it up but very useful i thank you the notes they were cool great and also this technique whether it's a specific technique or a a similar technique it's like there are people who just know a lot of things you know people who invest other people's money accountants bankers people like you know vcs are like this they see they see hundreds and hundreds of businesses a year and so it's like those people if you wanna like speed dial your learning you can go to them and you can get basically free learning off of off of them alright that's it that's the episode