MFM Mini-Camp, Lessons from Selling a Company, and Storytelling Wins

so i had a crazy amazing weekend and i wanna tell you about it go for it i wanna hear about it alright so we've done these before but i'll explain kinda how they work for for people are listening so about once a year maybe twice a year we do these kinda like friends slash founder weekend hang type things so by the way sorry you should have been there out of the why the in invite i lost in the mail don't worry about that i'll worried about it you're lucky i could you're lucky i couldn't have made it but i'm worried about it i was gonna text you while we were doing it and i was like wait why isn't sam here and i was like ben do we did sam saying no or did we got tell sam and that he was like i don't know this whole thing got screwed up because we whatever we bumped it back twice and then this happened anyway so what's twice a year go somewhere rent an air airbnb and b four to five kind of founder friends and hang out and the is different this this one was a intimate birthday thing as opposed to last time we did it it was like a twenty person one maybe yeah i don't even remember it's got bumped back twice so at this point who knows but basically it was like alright start the new year let's all get together hang out and do whatever and so we we go to san diego we rent an airbnb from mark jenny who you've talked about on the pod before just to explain what he's doing he founded a company called rv share which is like airbnb for renting rv and grew that sold that for i think a hundred million dollars and part of it yeah i think he's called sold the private equity the k r i believe i think he's actually sold twice so he sold one chunk the first time second chunk recently and and i think he still owns a piece of it but anyways ar share really successful business he's got a crazy story where i think he was like homeless at one point in time and and made the whole thing happen we'll have him on shortly but inspirational person he now has an a luxury airbnb portfolio worth about fifty million dollars and so he's got i don't know twenty something properties and he goes for the over the top kinda like destination experience you know maybe like party type of how houses so there's like house we fit like family parties family or like buddy's going for a golf trip you know type of thing where it's like like his one of his most successful properties set is in scottsdale arizona and we're like scottsdale why he's like oh people guys go there for golf trips and so you know eight buddies get together and they they rent my place that it's great and they all have money and so the price isn't as big of an issue or whatever so this one is in san diego and the backyard i think this guy must have put somewhere between one and two million dollars into the backyard so he we get you go outside there's a basketball court there's a pickle ball court there's a with ball field with a fence like a full baseball diamond basically there is golf course there is like pool sauna everything you could think of it is like a boy you know boy paradise space a little boy paradise so was perfect for us right but that's all we were doing you go inside the house you know there's like a full poker table with the poker set with the perfect chairs there's pool table there's all kinds of good stuff anyways so we get there and a couple really cool things happen one mark came over for dinner he's like you know hosted dinner for us there and he was telling us his story which kinda crazy but i kinda wanna save that bit for the podcast i've asked him to come on tons of times by the way he turns me down and i'm good friends at mark and he turns me he's like oh no i'm with my family all summer and yeah whatever he just he just had a baby so i think like i appreciate that i appreciate it i think he'll do it he's definitely he listens to the pod so you know instead of listening one day for that hour just come on and talk it's no extra time for you mark and so then the next so we we kinda hang out first day just straight sports mail bonding sweaty mail bonding let's call it and we're just playing every sport that's there and in between we sort of talk business or whatever second day we i tweeted out go who's in san diego and a bunch people replied ben goes through curate rates and it's just like alright these fifteen people seem cool i'm gonna invite them over to the so they come over the house and i just wanna set the scene of this kinda like party first of all first of all this whole segment should be called sean leaves the house because i'm explaining how cool this was this is probably a monthly occurrence for you to me i was like dude i left the house i met all these cool people it was amazing because i'd never leave miles house and so this time i was out of my house i met a bunch of cool people you didn't but you still didn't leave the state i didn't leave the state no i i barely got on a flight so so so here's the scene in the room there is two guys who own n projects that have probably done two hundred plus million in sales wow they're both under the age of twenty three mid twenty four maybe so that's kinda crazy one of them one of them didn't even have a public identity until like you know a month ago so that was people know frank from from d gods so d gods was the number one project on it's like the board apes of and and yeah he basically he just kinda asked said hey hey here's my real identity whatever so he can now show up to parties and say what he does whereas before he can do that okay second thing so that's one group then there was the d c crew these are people who have built products that like created a product one guy created this thing called gel blaster think like a nerf gun or a bb gun but just with like gel pellets i love it went from like zero to i don't know if i'm allowed to say the number but tens of millions in revenue in a year and then like has a crazy story i'm gonna get him on the pod too to come tell the story but has a crazy story of sort of getting screwed over by one of the big toy companies they they pretended to buy his company for like a hundred million bucks and then he like does the diligence with them shows them all the design files the cad files the everything the specs of the product they fall out and then three months later launched like an identical product to to compete with them and like steal his influencer marketing plan and everything a kinda crazy story there other people in the room remember the mini katana guy we talked about oh i think he came so he's there and he's showing me like how they basically do eight figures in revenue without a single dollar on ads and it's not out of pride like he just can't advertise because it's like facebook's like you this is a weapon you can't advertise swords on facebook so he had to get creative and was just like okay how do i make organic content that's so good you wanna sword yeah tens of millions of dollars worth of the sword and i thought that was pretty remarkable really super nice guy that came over and he's like dude i was listening to the podcast while driving and i heard you guys talking about a katana store and i was like he's like i almost drove off the road i was like no are they talking about me who are they talking about he's like that was a surreal moment alright so he's there a guy you know a a former cia operative came who i think you interviewed for the pod you did a pod with him and then we couldn't release it yeah we don't even need to say more because that already sounds juicy as a mother effort right we couldn't release it because he said a bunch of classified stuff and so this person i don't even know what i can say now but basically this is me this is me speaking not him but it's almost as if they convince people in other countries to become treason smile yes yeah sm is inspired the trees at us if you've watched jack ryan this was like the real life jack ryan and we asked him all about that and then he left the government and he created a business and so there was a good overlap so i'm gonna tell you one so i'm don't say his name though by the way yeah yeah i'm not gonna do it so i was like i was how do you do it how do you convince somebody you're just this like you know american person coming into their country you know you go into afghanistan or wherever you know yeah man i some place how do you convince them to like you know work for the us government to help us and he's like well like two years of rapport building and then it's you know it's manipulation right like you're trying to and i was like so how would you do that yeah i feel like you couldn't do that and he's like remember earlier when we were grabbing a drink you said you really want x and i was like no i i it's like in passing i must have said something he's like for about a year i will basically talk to this person and i'll find out they're every want their every need they're every problem and i'm keeping a file and i'm keeping this file for years before i flip them and i was like wow and this person's really don't mock anymore he's very charming and he's very likable and would he great story when he tells a story you're captivated he he's gotten an factor and so when i was with them i was like oh yeah i understand why i would i would commit this thing in order to like you know please you right so he told one story amazing i've called four people over you gotta hear that you gotta hear this come here tell another one he's like and i'm like shit i just yeah you ruined you're like hey you're funny tell a joke then he tells another bang and i'm like everybody's like oh wow to the last three people who didn't hear the first one get over here get over here get over here hey you got another one and he's like oh you know the the thing is you know blah blah he's kinda humming and hog and i was like look if the story shit no problem you're already you already won this is just a bonus lap if it's terrible i have no problem with you i already think you're amazing i depress the moment for a second and i was like you know i just try to give us one more he gives us one more and i was like wow this is a you you know my friend jason hi hitchcock has this thing he says he goes you say one interesting thing i say interesting two interesting things i say those are interesting three interesting things i say you are interesting and that's what happened by the third i was like you are interesting that's how i felt that guy was kind of amazing and by the way i'll say i this kinda sucks to talk about because i can't reveal a lot but you and i have a friend and this person is related to a bunch of like seals and cia people and it just so happens that there's this weird community of like these x cia nsa seals all these like you know yeah and and well they they get out and they go when they start businesses because like i they guys they have a pension so they have a little bit of money like right they're they have some of their basic needs covered and then they go and start businesses and we're they're in our worst successful and they're very successful and it's i love hanging out with these guys you know and and they're like proper heroes and then they're like talking to me about like internet and c and i'm like yeah but what about isis like tell me tell me the story about that like tell me that time you eliminated eighteen isis people you know what i mean it's like they're heroes it's fun talking to these guys yeah and then let's see who else so then our buddy ramon is there ramon there with his son and and ramon telling us amazing stories has ever told you the contractor story the best thing i've ever heard yeah you wanna re tell it yeah can i retail it here yeah i don't know when the next time he's gonna be odd but he's like and he's got officially he's an american now ramon an america that was the big thing he's he's officially an american we go out to before he arrives would go out we get him a cake from like the safe way there or whatever and we're like hey can you write a message on here like now it's closed for the day was like bro you gotta write a message and you know convincing got he writes a message welcome to america miss misspelled welcome so it just says well to america like sounds the most non american thing ever right he and i was like you know so you got your citizenship that's amazing what happened afterwards and then his son victor was like oh man in the car afterwards everybody who was calling he would just answer hello fellow american so that was amazing so he's at at the dinner party we're like you know tell us a story no we were like what's an ice maker for a group like this is like what's the what's the weirdest way you tried to make a buck like what's the weirdest way you try to make money because otherwise in this type of scenario if you kinda say oh so what do you do people just go into their script yeah yeah and it's kind of and the whole thing is just kind contentious because there it's a room full of successful people and everybody starts kind of one upping each other in this weird way so instead you wanna like meg the whole group so this is the egg the whole group question what's the weirdest way you tried to make it buck and ramon like you know he's got like ten of these and we're like dude this is thing about ramon is he's very quiet but when you start getting tells stories it's like a vending machine like endless vending machine of stories you've never heard of even though you know known the guy for ten years so he's like yeah back in the day i was like okay i wanna start to construct what is he's i'm gonna start a painting business he's like i need money i'm eighteen years old i'll paint walls and so he just puts up a thing that's like i'll paint walls but you know being the hustle that he is he's like i'll you know what how can i widen the top of this funnel let me just say painting handyman i'll fix anything whatever you got i'm in general i'm a general contract right i'll do generally anything and so he's team like he puts up his listing on the like the dutch craigslist like that and he gets an inquiry next day it says hey i need a electrician for some electrical work and he's like great be there tomorrow morning and he's like he's like i go to the store at like home depot type store and i'm looking at like these vest i'm like which one looks more like an electrician he's like basically he's like halloween he's like trying to find a costume and he's like i go there the next day and the guy's like cool yes so we need like you know forty amps here and we're gonna do we're gonna run a line under the circuit over here he's like dude he's saying words like forget about knowing how to it i didn't even understand the words he's saying and he has the clipboard though but he and he's exciting notes he's wearing the vest and he's saying u u yeah yeah okay tell me more and he's like just the guy just keeps going to took a very complicated job he's like i hope it was i was like dude what you think was gonna happen he's like i hope it was like light bulbs like he's like electrical electricity i don't know light bulbs and he's like once i got there i was like oh shit but i'm writing i don't know what to say i don't what to do so i'm like okay maybe i can figure it out you know open up the certain the that open up the the thing there's just a thousand wires i'm okay there's no way i know what to do here and so he's like yeah listen man i think he tells him this the next day or something yeah nice day he goes home yeah he goes home and he thinks about it and he reflected and he's like i gotta come clean to this guy like i don't know how to do i don't know anything i don't i don't know what to do he's like reviewing his notes he's like i don't know what any of this means she goes back he's like hey gotta tell you man i've never done electric he's like i just needed money i thought i could figure it out and slept on it turns out of i have no idea how to do this and the guy was like what the fuck he was also like you know what kid like he's like i'm an entrepreneur he's like i respect the hustle i expect that you were honest and he's like remember was like you know when you're honest and you're young like good things happening and the guy he's like gave me a great lesson and he's like you know what like instead of telling me like don't ever do this again he was like actually you know what you should do is you don't need to know how to do electrical work you got the job now you need to find somebody who does know electrical work and sub subcontractors it out and keep a margin and so you shouldn't be here anyways you should be doing that and he's like oh and he started at actual like general contracting business doing that from there and think guy like helped him out basically they gave a job and helped him out and that eventually he did that for a couple years and he actually made maybe for sure hundreds of thousands i think he made close to a million dollars i think his first million was running that business and then he immigrated to america and he created a brazilian music festival i have no idea why and he lost all of it and then he created more internet business and made it all again i had lost it all again it all again it's done that a bunch of times he's a very fascinating guy yeah even his current business he has his business called alpha paul and he sells like doc great dog products so dog ramps things like that and even that like went up up up boat and then hits then like you know when covid happened shipping cost went through the roof so like a container for shipping used to cost three thousand dollars not then it started costing twenty thousand dollars so like a six every increase and when you have a huge product you need a lot it takes a lot of space so you need a lot of container so his his unit cost blew up that was really tough and but he's so resilient so like he he's like alright what's the pivot and he pivoted to he's like dogs having trouble cats and so he's like alright and he made this kitty litter product called genius litter and now you just got a deal where he's now in pets smart nationwide which is amazing and now he's like back back you know in the and now it's like dude i need so if you're listening to this you know the gentleman's agreement to go smash subscribe but also if you have a cat or you don't have a cat you got a dog it doesn't matter what you got go to pets art by this guy's genius letter so his business you know thrive because this guy deserves the best guy know so you know so just amazing stories one after another of each person about like bouncing back so there was a bunch of like i don't know takeaways i had from this number one storytelling wins there was a bunch of people at this event that were all equally impressive but it was the ones who understood how to tell a story that stood out and that everybody loved made a bunch of connections people started helping them out they're like oh you should try actually i say oh you gotta meet blah blah blah blah and it was the people that didn't understand how to tell their story they only told facts and it was just sort of like i i'm you know whatever i'm steve this is what i do blah everything's been great alright thanks steve see you know like you know yeah they need some of that sizzle yeah you they didn't have that sizzle and so the sizzle the storytelling tell telling sizzle was so important and so obvious and then there's nuances like there were some people that were storyteller that every story was how awesome they were and if you could just see it was like just repel people like there here's how awesome i am and then slowly what's your okay great got one of those stories i'm gonna go get a drink now see you and it was the person who could tell a story that was like slightly making fun of themselves even the cia guy he goes i have a rule i only tell cia stories where i look like an idiot i never tell cia stories where you know i beat the bad guys i fought five guys and then everybody clap he's like i'll never tell a story like that and so i was like that's a great rule in general for people so that that i think that was like one big takeaway second takeaway is i should probably leave the house a little more often this was dope and i used to do this all the time and i kinda got a little cocky and was just sort of like yeah i got a great network you know i don't really need to like put in like this but when i was in my twenties i used to do this all the time and this was just a reminder of how much value you can get by talking to other people in the game or like you know i i think this podcast serves as that for people too where you hear these stories you get inspired you get ideas growth hacks and and it's surprising how helpful people are you know what i describe that as you when you're around certain people you realize that the world is malleable and you see all types of people who are bending the world to the reality that they want and then you feel like oh yeah that's cool i could do that too so it doesn't matter you're like i don't care for selling if you're if you're in the cia if you're selling genius litter it doesn't matter it's just cool to see people who are kicking their dent into the universe right yeah exactly exactly and second thing i would say is there was a huge difference in life phase attitude alright what does that mean so we at this event so we have her ramon son and his friend shout out to judy he came so he he's a fun kid too super fun kid super chad chad cathy and but by the way the next day he was like he's holding up the gel blaster gun thing he's like so they said they make this for whatever i'm make numbers they make this for three dollars and they sell it for nine i was like dude he's already picking it up guy's he's like ten or eleven he's like that's a really big like you margin and i was like wow you know margin that's that's really impressive so so anyways we had people that were ten or eleven we had the guys who were kinda of like twenty to twenty five the the n t boys and and and d some of the d guys we had guys like us who were in our thirties and we were like alright yeah and i'll tell you the differences and and how are each one is approaching it in a second we had guys in their forties so that's like you know you know tomorrow absolutely love that's what they yeah and then we had then i went met up with a guy in his seventies and like a husband and wife in their seventies so i saw all those life phases i want you to guess what do you think was the like notable like differences in those ages in terms of like what they cared about what they thought about what were the differences have you ever heard the story of like there's like an old bowl and a young bowl and they see a bunch of cows and the young bowl goes let's hurry up and get down there and have sex all them cows in the old bulls like whoa whoa whoa we can walk we could we could walk out there and we could take our time and that's kind of the difference i imagine the twenty two year olds are like let's do everything the thirty year olds were a little bit wiser the forty year were like hey let's just pick and choose our battles a little bit more wisely and like yeah let's enjoy the process of the seven year olds were more so like none of it matters yeah exactly that's exactly right so the the the tea the teens or pre teens they were basically just like you wanna play what's what are we gonna play hey you guys wanna play this while we play this it's like we were on the pickle ball court and then in between points they're running and kicking the soccer ball and then ira afterwards like you wanna play monopoly you wanna do this and like till the last minute of the last second of the day it was like you wanna play yeah and i thought that was like you know just an awesome energy to be around the other part of it was like they also we're doing khan academy a bunch and i was like wow they really like want to learn this stuff like you learn cool you know that's that's kind of amazing that just kinda blew me away so they were all about play then you had your guys in your twenties that were the i got it all figured out guys and i remember being that guy and it's like they actually do have a lot of life figured out their way ahead of the curve but the problem is they think they're at the end of the curve they think they got it all figured and so you listen this stories and they're saying things and you're like you know what four out of the ten things you just said we're totally wrong but you know what it doesn't matter the fact that you believe all ten is gonna work and and i just love that you think all ten are right i love of the odds way to summarize it yeah but they were they were a lot of fun and their thing was just sort of like we're going huge like of course this is gonna work this is gonna be massive we got it figured out and not in a cocky way just like they had only known winning mh and and i thought that was awesome because as you get older you start to take l's you take health l's you take you see friends take l's you make big expensive mistakes you take those l's and that sort of humble you a little bit and so this was pre humbling and i loved it i loved that energy because you know even at first i was like man these guys are delusional and then i was like how do i hey pass the delusion please i'd like to sip on some of that that's a lot of fun actually i forgot how useful that can be alright guys in their thirties like us weird middle state it's like i have a lot of self belief but i now know how expensive it is to go down the wrong path whereas the guys in their twenties don't know how expensive it is to go down the wrong path wait don't even know didn't think about the path like i'm just path i'm just path and bro i'm just on the path i don't even think about the fact that i could be doing five other things doing this and this makes completely complete sense to me whereas the thirties were like could do this or could do and they're almost paralysis by analysis yeah they've accomplished two month too much to just do something stupid like the guys in their twenties who created this n project they were able to just do something stupid and it paid off they created this this you know gel blaster nerf gun because it just was stupid and they thought it was cool and like that was enough justification to do it oh that looks fun do it where's the guys in through like that looks fun but let's let's spreadsheet this out real quick and just see well you know back of the envelope when when you have something to lose it changes a little bit right and so they back at the envelope themselves to death but you know they're still at least they're still picking the the the difference was when you compare to the forties the forties were like we know what we're doing when i hear about what all these other guys are doing i'm half amused and half of it exhaust me and i wanna go take an nap like you're just confusing me with all these things that honestly like i don't feel like i need to know any of this stuff i i i i'm perfectly happy not being an n entities and not knowing how to do tiktok videos to sell mini swords like that's cool but man i just wanna go relax right now and the the second thing was they were like like one of them he just like found out he has high blood pressure so he had a blood pressure monitor with him and he was like just took his blood pressure and we were like i was like i dude i take my blood pressure to put me in and so we took our blood pressure like four times a day just for fun but i was like you know they were like like you said they wanna to enjoy the journey so they were like yeah yeah we could talk business but like let's go place and pick a ball that'd be fine yeah and i think i as you get older you you you respect all the different ways that you can get there but you know your lane and you go they you their lane i know by lane and i know if i just do this all the time for an i know what compounding looks like and everybody else looks very scatter brand in comparison but the know they're lane and i i don't mean that in a discouraging like they were they were definitely learning and and they've they've made adjustments but they weren't seeking the next hit they they were just like i found a hit and i enjoy this hit and i wanna also think about life and marriage and kids and health and that was a way bigger part of their their life like their more their own mortality was more on their mind than proving themselves like the twenties and thirties and the older i get in the more experience i get i understand compounding better i it that was that that was a really hard thing for me to understand in my early twenties and late twenties and then once i like start seeing it work a little bit you start understanding it and you go oh wow so if i just do this all the time for ten years like look at the i'll i'll be in a better place that i will be if i start a bunch of different things and yes so you understand compounding a little bit better so you know well if i just stay in my lane i can respect everyone else's what they're doing that's neat and i and i think that's cool and i can learn but if i just do this mostly the same i'm gonna i'm gonna get to where i wanna go yeah so so that was the forties and then the seventies are basically like some con come some combination of wanna contribute so they were like pitching me a project that was like a philanthropic thing and i was like the land oh okay that's what this is a different conversation than everybody else is all the other conversations i've been having all weekend and the second thing was they were just happy we came over their house like when we were leaving i was like man be really quiet once we leave here like is this a who was that's kind of who was the person can you say i don't wanna say their names just because i'm gonna like you know tell maybe i don't know what i'm gonna say about them so i don't wanna say their name but like kind of like a successful a couple in san diego okay and so i was like you know i went to the house and i was like did they were really nice really cool hosted us the fat house also out what's that fat house not my fat house yeah never like nice yeah nice but also you when you see a house at night by the way it's like you don't actually see the house because you can't see anything around it and you can't see like you know you only see like a part of it it just very different when you see house at night rest during the day but i just felt like the things that matter to them were their grandkids their kids marrying the right person figuring out how to like contribute and also just like their house not being so quiet it's like any live in the house it was like a win it didn't even really matter what we talked about or what came out of it like i i feel like us being there was a cool fun change of pace and i was like yeah i guess when i'm in my seventies i'm also gonna want that a lot because i'll probably be kind of like at home kind aboard a a bunch you know and so that was like also kind of a wake up call for me it was like oh wow yeah know this life thing does go pretty fast here dude so it sounds like it's sick weekend yeah it was a lot of fun that's badass ass yeah i i have to talk to ramon i gotta i wanna learn all about it or from his perspective but it sounds like a sick weekend yeah that should happen every six months yeah i think yeah i think we should do that again and also the it was cool that like even the house we were in was kind of like a business it was like this this luxury airbnb itself is a business and and it just kinda breaks your frame a little bit like i think that's a pretty important thing like how how often can you break your frame and an experience like this twice a year i think twice a year you'll you'll end up breaking your frame because you'll just meet a bunch of other people to do life and think about life in a different way than you i actually wanna ask you about like a frame breaking experience before i get into that i have to remind people that they owe us they're in debt to us if you just heard sean's story he just went and spent the weekend creating these things to tell you about and then he like did all this work to do it and we do that every week three two times a two to three times a week you're in debt to us so you owe us this is the gentleman's agreement part where you have to go to youtube even if you're on itunes or you're on podcast podcasts or you're on spotify go to itunes right now my personal and click subscribe and that's our gentleman's agreement and we'll be even and we'll be actually more than even because we're gonna keep doing this and we're working for you once you subscribe that's all it's like a it's the most fair trade because once you subscribe we get in the algorithm yada yada but this is a gentleman's agreement part we can't check that you're doing this that's why it's called the gentleman's agreement as we just hope that you are so please do that can't argue with that you can't argue with that that's the they spend literally one second to click subscribe and we spend thirty hours a week coming up this content it's a very fair trade i can find this client in full have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform so it shares its data across every application every team could stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets or doing databases hubspot grow better i wanna ask you about a a frame breaking thing now that your how long has it been since the silk road acquisition two months maybe a month and a half something like that so you're still early into it this february first is technically my last day at how's that that's two years so and so now i'm two years into it and i wanted to ask you and i have a list here but i wanted to ask you because i know that the guys running the milk road now or the owners are like recruiting interesting people because i like people like message me they say go hey this person's recruiting me should i join milk road so like i'm getting all these like at ass like to as your reference check what have you learned so far about what it's like to be the founder of a company that's now owned by someone else is there anything in thing that you've learned i a a a list of a few things that are interesting to me but there anything you've learned i feel like you got a more interesting answer to me so you go well i'll i'll i'll say a few things and these are a bit frame breaking and so the reason i'm bringing this up is because i think someone once said like or at least this attitude exists a lot silicon valley where they're like what's your exit plan and then everyone's like fuck exit plan don't have an exit plan you're not building things to sell great things get bought they don't get sold or something like that and i actually think that's nonsense i actually think if you want you can build a company where you're like i'm gonna exit in like four or six years or two years and i'm gonna make like tens of millions or hundreds of millions to whatever like you can build a company like that and i think it could be really successful and so one of a couple frame breaking things that i had the first one building something from scratch is a very very rare skill and one or two focused entrepreneurs with close to no money can probably do more in six months than a fifty person team with millions of dollars in twelve months inside of a large organization and that was actually really challenging to me i remember hubspot so they wanted to buy us and i'm like doc just launch your own thing like i don't why would you you know what i mean and being in at hubspot now for two years i see it's really hard the reason it's really hard is the creative types who who are bold enough to go and build something they either aren't working at that company because they're out doing their own thing or they're just stuck in this political game where they wanna impress their boss and it's not because a company bad it's just this is the natural thing they don't wanna embarrass themselves they don't have a significant amount of upside to see the wind they don't get the dopamine rush of the sale coming into shopify and it's actually really really really hard to build something from scratch and so it's worth it to them just to buy something that's already working do you agree with that hundred percent and you could see it when an acquisition happens the velocity of progress slows down like molasses it is it's it's a kinda remarkable now that doesn't mean it fails but the velocity definitely slows down other things go better but the velocity and the pace and the sort of like yeah the aggression and productivity i think go down and that's what i describe as anxiety goes way down as an entrepreneur your anxiety goes way down your frustration way up that's the trade off that you're gonna make however this is another thing where i made this mistake where i would dismiss big companies and i would call them idiots that's actually in my experience not true and talking to a lot of people sometimes it's it's false they are idiots but sometimes operating like if you're around good operators just like a good employee at a big company they can be significantly better operators and a lot of the things that we make fun of bureaucracy meetings things like that that creates redundancy and if you do it correct redundancy creates predictability and predictability creates value and that's why your anxiety goes down and so a lot of that big company stuff a lot of it's bullshit a lot of it's really necessary and the people inside those companies can actually operate things really really well do you agree with that i agree that that's true i wouldn't say that that's the main value the main value that i saw inside of a big company was that when you're big you have usually two things one is distribution so you could take something that doesn't have a lot of distribution and give it more distribution or you could simply say i don't really need to innovate let all these other people innovate and i'll just follow because i have size and so when i have size i don't need speed right and so it's like a sumo wrestler versus a you know a a sprinter or like a you know a lightweight you know a a lightweight wrestler or something like that and so you basically trade that distribution and size for for speed i think that's the the first thing and very hard to have both and you know the the when you're at a startup up the the mistakes are very expensive when you're or sorry when you're at to start up the mistakes are not expensive like i don't know how many things you do to the puzzle that were like dumb or stupid or whatever and it's like roll it back you know at the beginning especially you know whatever i don't have any customers anyways i don't have much revenue to lose anyways i don't have a reputation to be burned the press is not watching me twitter doesn't care what i do whereas when you're big then you're every move matters and every mistake is quite expensive and so you have to be a little more careful and so careful is not a bug it's a feature when it's a big company and so i i started to appreciate that they're not slow because they're stupid they're slow actually because they're smart because they don't need to go fast because they got size and mix mistakes are expensive so they don't take they don't try to make too many mistakes and you know by going too fast and that brings me to my second to last point which is a lot of cool shit that you and i like to make you you and i are zero to one people like by definition we're not the best at one to whatever but a lot of the cool shit it's completely illogical or really stupid and a lot of the best stuff starts that way this podcast you called that my first million pretty horrible name my thing was called the hustle pretty bad name and it was just a newsletter that's kind of like not like when i pitch it to bigger companies they go this is stupid this will never be big and the reason why it existed anyway was because i was behold to no one we just said math whatever screw it we're just gonna do it when you're launching something within a big company you have to have logic you have to have reasoning you have to like make a point because you have to justify it for someone to fund it whereas when you're a nobody just two guys you say that's screw we're just gonna do this we're gonna have an anti black friday sale where we charge more this friday as opposed to last and it just because just because we want to because this is funny it's completely illogical and illogical stuff works not all the time sometimes when i was to hanging out with the the seventy year old person i was explaining i said yeah i'm think about what i do next and you know i really wanna pick a good project and i wanna pick right the right way to spend my time and he goes picking is hard and he goes and the hard thing about picking is that today she might look like a pi chu person you know here but twelve months from now as you take that idea you start dating it and then you kinda pivot it over here you change one thing get a new wardrobe all of a sudden she's a hundred and twenty pounds she's you know she's got a phd and she just got word in the mail she's inheriting seventy two million dollars and he's like you gave me this analogy he goes that's the problem with picking is that the best things don't always look like the best things upfront this goes back to a peter teal saying which is the best ideas are things that sound like bad ideas but are actually good ideas and why because those things have the least competition those things are the least done those things have the highest upside because are the most greenfield things that are obviously good ideas are super competitive things that are actually bad ideas it doesn't matter how hard you work they're bad ideas so the sweet spot is something that sounds like a bad idea but is actually a good idea and that's you know this guy put it in a you know you know a different kind of analogy that i i appreciate and i could i'm glad i didn't you know say who because you know people will get mad about that analogy but i thought it was hilarious and i understood what he meant which is you know when you started to when you started the hustle you were like oh great it's this conference and i was like you know conference okay immediately like a lot of work you know seasonal doesn't get that big who cares if your product you charge rained out it's kinda not good yeah yeah you have two hundred dollar tickets to your conference like alright sam good luck you know and then you kinda fumble and then you were like oh okay conference is working but you know conferencing ain't where it's at but i've been using content to drive ticket sales maybe i should just do this content thing through a newsletter and then even that was still sort of pi and didn't really a newsletter i mean dude people over here making flying cars and uber and you're doing a newsletter like get a ambition bro like you know that that can't be big possibly right like aren't news newsletters just like a personal thing people send out to their fifty friends and you kinda figured it out as you go and then now people are like yeah how many freaking i wanna build the next hustle you know hustle for x you know how many people pitch you that myself included no road was a hustle copy yet after i made fun of you for the for doing a newsletter back in the day i was like you know i didn't invest in your thing because i was like i don't think that's gonna get huge right and i was like but you knew some you figured something out along the way that was not obvious upfront and by the way the hustle is very close across three million subscribers and that breaks me to my last point which is planning is something that i had never done like when people were talking about o okay ours which is like a framework for running your company they would put it on a quarterly scale and i'm like yeah how about a weekly how about a weekly one so we could like every single day we're gonna create something new and that's really important for starting out and i don't think you should plan too much right you call it worry about a b z yep which is i i i actually came we we both you separately had like the same thing where i'm like i carry about step one and step two and then like i'll worry about step i think about step ten as inspiration but i don't worry about three four and five yeah and so that's important when starting stuff but one i don't know when that point is maybe ten million a hundred million in revenue i don't know what it is but planning is needed it's necessary and it's incredibly important and that's what big companies do really well or they try to do it well and as i'm growing my new thing i'm trying to like bake this in of like planning and not worrying about like looking like like you know i could have like a quarterly plan it's okay i could i could even have like a six month plan i remember when we were selling the hustle we sold me around four years old and they wanted like a five year projection and i'm like what like that that that that's not even like i i can't even comprehend five years i don't know if i'm gonna be interested in this yeah one of these nuts what he he's talking about you you want me to write down a lie yeah my lines are verbal there's no paper trail you trying get me to write this down dude it was ridiculous and now i understand like it's actually okay to like kinda have some of these plans so anyway that's my list of things that i've learned like being like seeing the buyer's perspective just a little bit and i was just curious if you had any insights it might be too early yet let me tell you the different things that they've done so first they hired a bunch of people we were running the thing with basically three or four people and then one one freelancer right like it was very very lean they you know basically one dude wrote the email every day and then mir band edited it and that was like that's how the the the whole product the whole product was basically created by that now there's like a second writer there's an editor there's a head of content it's like who who are all these people what are they doing is the is the cut getting better i'm not sure right like but they've hired up people which like you said builds redundancy because if the main guy got sick which happened a couple of times it was like brett you know red alert yeah you know if we got a fact wrong it's like god i didn't have time to check it you know like you know we didn't we didn't have those things in place and so you know i think they've they've basically taken i would just say in general they took a longer term view they were like okay we're gonna be doing this for a number of years so what do we need to get to this point two years from now and let's start taking those steps today where i was like alright next month what would be sweet yeah really well because planning exercises you're in survival mode i had a even if it was wasn't a survival mode because it was like okay we got the business working would be like i just wanted every day to be a new adventure and like that's not how these people think when they are like long term oriented they want each day to not be an adventure they want each day to be like you know it's the difference between you know you know people who go for these like long hikes and you know a sprinter and like you know i was just more of a sprinter and so literally our goal planning we would say like what's the minimum thing that would feel like a win we call it a good win that was good and then what's the fbi win where we would be like fda dude we did abc b right that happened and that's and we that would create our goal and then we would shoot for the yet and we would make sure we don't miss the good and like that's what we did every single month and it was a little bit more and if we didn't hit it it was a problem like i immediately was like soul searching like everybody stop and let's figure out who do where you're wrong i'm ready to change every anything and everything which is not always the right approach sometimes it is right like these things serve you and then sometimes they hurt you and so i would say these guys they put more money into growth they hired more people and they don't panic there's the three differences between us and i think their approach has some bad things and i i think it has some great things and we'll see you know how it all plays out now i think i read somewhere where someone was like i was reading something like think about masculinity and like the difference between a man and a boy and like a a real man doesn't let like lots of different or doesn't let like shallow input change his emotions and change his plans and i remember when i was running my company i would always get emotional and i'm like no man if i gotta be a man i gotta like be calm and i can't panic and i used to think like oh no it was cool to be like mark zuckerberg and seeing go go in and see oh this isn't right you're fucking fired it's like no real men don't do that you know they could like they don't panic and they don't freak out and that kind of changed my perspective on that a little bit yeah my trainer he's been teaching me this he's like okay so like you know what you're doing a set so you're you're bench you're bench pressing or whatever and let's say you picked a weight that the first you know three reps four reps are easy the next four reps are getting harder and then the last three four reps let's say you're gonna twelve last four reps you're like you know it's kinda shaky and you wanna spot but more than anything i don't know for you but for me it was always like get to the end it's like i don't wanna i'm i don't wanna quit i don't wanna quit i wanna get there but like i would start rushing and when you rush your form changes and when you rush you don't actually have that time under tension that actually looks you wow time under yeah we're so classic classic muscle building words i like it don't make me say glycogen so so he's like he's like those last four reps you're trying to get them done but that's where the all the games are in that that last bit and so that's where i want you to show po slow and actually slow it down like don't just like do normal speed go even slower than your your normal pace was to maximize what you get out of it and so then that became is like okay when you feel that sizzle when you feel that burn that's the reaction is not panic and rush it's poised so the i took that i was like okay that's the lesson in the gym but the gym is just the metaphor for life so now i'm doing that same thing everywhere as soon as i feel that sizzle and that burn and i just wanna get out of it i wanna get done with it i'm like no no now now's is the time to be poised and slow it down and so that's been working wonders in the business work because it's like just when everybody thinks shit hitting the fan i'm like this is the time where we where we where we go poised we lock in and we calmly address the situation versus trying to re react over react and react to a to a a stimulus this my friend is called growth sean you are experiencing growth congratulations you're doing it right in front of all of our eyes and in our ears you showing growth what topic you wanna do next we're in a weird middle finals yeah let's do do you have anything little let me see if i got something little by the way while you're looking you have to tell me what to do for my researcher now i have four hundred applicants i've narrowed down to two hundred and i'm like i don't know what to do with these people you have to tell me how to like you should just tell them to do basically just give them the assignment which is i'll tell you what to do okay i'll i'll tell you how to do this okay so the what i would do is the best way to work together best way to know if you wanna work with them is to just do a project rather than narrow interview you wanna interview four hundred or even twenty people that would just take up way too much time so you give them all the assignment the assignment is hey every week here's the things that we do i want you to surface interesting nuggets that i might find interesting amount did that four hundred people did that dude okay so who are the best twenty five from that and did you do it for like two or three like have them do it for like two weeks be like you know hey do this for two weeks if you do it i'm gonna pay you you know i'll pay you two fifty bucks if you get through all the all the things i that might be a lot of money i don't know do the math but like do something so they're not working totally for free or cut the bottom like two hundred people right away and then just be like hey do this because because i think it's easy to do once and it's really hard to do for three weeks straight a lot of people could do a great m mfa podcast once i don't know how many of them could do this podcast a hundred times a a hundred episodes a year and that's what we do and so you kinda need a researcher who's able to who has some inflow of information that that they can steadily be curate good stuff and then the second thing is give them a couple of research topics so it'd be like the way i do it is sometimes i give them an assignment to bring me interesting nuggets but then i bring nuggets and i say hey take this story and i want you to research here's what i want and i basically gave them a format so my format for them is you want i want you to come up with the frame so the frame is the the framing of the topic how will i just bring this up out of the blue on m mfa right so let's say there's some interesting growth hack the frame might be you know here's three of my favorite growth hacks that i've seen in the past year right because just talking about this one randomly doesn't work or let's say it's a growth hack but actually or let let let me give the example the nugget was i bought a car from an anonymous account on twitter so that's a cool frame that's like a hook for a good story but we changed it to the guy mafia so i bought it from car dealership guy but you know what there are all these guys actually maybe there's a bigger topic here this called the guy mafia and people like that that frame right so it's i i teach them i'm you gotta hit hit me with a possible frame then you gotta have the supporting like evidence like what are the four or five interesting bullet points talking points that i could say about this thing that when minute make you say oh that's cool that's interesting and then what's the take or the takeaway and the take of the takeaway and let's say for the guy mafia was it was first it was here's why this works but then i was like no i'll better take would be here's what i think people should be doing you should be doing this with a girl anonymous account because i think it'll get more followers you should be doing it in all these other categories and then don't monetize with pay a newsletter or paid paid community sell the monetize by selling the actual thing like selling me the car and so that was the take and so i it i'm like here's a little excel table and for every story you gotta fill out the frame the talking points and the take and i see if you're good at that i need most people by the way are very bad at that that's okay i'm like our skill is we need to be able to do that but them doing it poorly is still super helpful because like no that's a shitty frame the frame gotta be this and that's still better than a blank page i need you to send me all this yeah i will yeah i need i need help with this it's been very challenging yeah these are the these are the tricks of the trade than other people are we're giving these out for free now i remember once remember the the tv show the p did one where he's trying to find a rapper yeah and he's like i need you to go to brooklyn and give me some milk and like makes them walk across the bridge you don't talking about he like makes him walk across to get up like a cupcake like five miles because that's how you started his career he was a runner yeah record label and he had to go get shit but he had this thing where he was in the studio and he's like he's like sing it and then they they saying it he's like sing it again to like it wasn't that good he goes no we need to make a double like what's a double he's like a double as you say the same exact thing and we layer the two audio tracks and makes your voice sound more full and powerful and it just sounds better and he turned to the camera he's like i shouldn't be saying all this shit on camera and and i remember literally like i was in the seventh grade when that's about and i was like i just heard a trick of the train i've never forgot that even though i'm not a rapper i never used it but literally i was like make space in the brain he just kinda made it sound like he just gave me an inside or tactic and i literally i still remember this now thirty four years old and i still remember this that's hilarious that's hilarious i just heard that's good alright let's get out of here