Million $ Quilting Empire, Babyville, USA, And Rapid Fire Business Ideas

it started off simple so he's like i need a building where they had like kind of a warehouse or production it's about one building okay i'll grew that bought a second building and he's from this very small town hamilton missouri i think it is and so you know buys two buildings and then at some point they kinda realize alright why do this with like nameless face list warehouses what if we could turn this into content or marketing like the youtube channel is working so what if we do kinda youtube behind the scenes and what if we make this more interesting so instead of just buying two warehouses and then just like you know operating in stealth what if we just bought all this land and we bought all the buildings that are in this area and we turn this into a tourist destination a vacation basically so like it's a themed town in the middle of nowhere but it's like the quilt mecca or like people call like the disneyland for quilt and there's like twelve like main street it's all about quilt this is like quilt chop tilt chop qui alright what up we got ben levy here sam is out today but my business partner ben so we got producer ben who's ben wilson and then we got business partner ben ben levy and ben is here today we got a bunch of topics that we wanna talk about but first welcome to the pod y what's up sean how's it going man i'm good your your dad who's a regular listener is gonna be pleased because he's gonna hear you on here and i'm sure he he always sends you like like a huge text message of notes every time you come is that right yeah it's more like six emails he'll be like hey did you hear sean say this thing or did you hear sam say this or who we say this and i'm like love the notes to so you were just in san francisco last week and we did a bunch of meetings we hung out worked a bunch and then we hosted a meetup up we hosted a private dinner i wanted to start with that so i wanted to start with give me as many nuggets of interesting things that that came up people you met stories you heard products you heard about whatever you got from your trip to san francisco i'll let you take it from take away yeah so the first the first thing that comes to mind is one san francisco is awesome but two went to the went to the warriors game so we went to the warriors game on last monday with this guy named a do i think he's been on the pod about nine months ago so for people that don't know a is the founder of a quilt company and he said one thing so sean i'm sure you could talk more about a but i think the one thing that he said that was pretty the ben just said quilt so because you said it in passing i think people wouldn't even it wouldn't even register what you just said it actually the the way we met matt alice pretty interesting patrick campbell came on the pod and patrick campbell runs like what you had profit well which like does like saas payments or analytics and all that good shit so he has data on what companies are crushing it in terms of terms of their subscribers and their payments and he had he had told us that quilt is a huge niche and he came on the potty he mentioned quilt and from that we found a who basically runs a multi hundred million dollar quilt business that he c founded with his mom so so that's the setup but i kicked did you yeah i think his mom and like his four brothers and sisters so it's a family it's a family affair so we hung out with him the last time we hung out with him was camp m and i think gals an interesting dude one he's like six seven so he like sky over you at every time i see him i think he could have played in the nba but he said one thing that really you know one his business is doing great but two the thing that he said that really raised an eyebrow from me was he's in the harvard executive nba program so most people when i when i hear the word nba i think immediately that it's stupid i just think it's a waste of money and ish build something instead of they'll get an nba but he was like yeah i just hung out with the air of crystal geyser water so the place of the water you know the basically every water bottle you ever see in the airport convenience store and sean and i were both like wait how do you know them and he when he said like i think he said the the the woman is like you know basically it's an old french couple or something like that like he's like yeah i was out with my friend my friend she's french she's she's older and blah blah and i was like how do you have this like old lady french friend where did that come from he's was like oh i did this harvard nba thing and a like personality is not what you would connect with harvard nba first of all he does a quilt e commerce business so that's you know like not like a fancy pants you know harvard thing second he's this big dude with a beard who lives in the midwest and his he's like super funny he's basically like you will ferrell slash vince vaughn and and so you just don't see him as a you know as a suit but he did this suit thing and we were like was wait is that a good idea shit i'd be doing that that was my takeaway away from it yeah i was like we should definitely be doing that i looked it up i think it's like a fifty thousand dollar a year program they take like thirty people and everyone in there has a really successful business so definitely should be doing that i i think he said it's all people whose business yeah i think like the minimum bars like your business does ten million dollars a year so like you know that's like the minimum sort of like norm he goes it's people from all around the world because international people like value brands higher like if you've ever seen a louis vuitton store that's just full of chinese people it's like international people really love american luxury brands and harvard is an american luxury brand and he's like you know it's i think he said it's three weeks a year for three years or something like that he's like but dude you make the best friends like you know the the people who you know not everybody but he's like i made a bunch of amazing friends through that and like dude i'm in the middle of nowhere missouri so i gotta do things that will connect me with other people and then even this trip to s us we're like what are you town he's like well i live on a farm in the midwest so my wife is you know down for me to just like take three days a month and just go to wherever s f new york la just meet up with friends and hear what's going on in the world so i don't stay like totally disconnected in my bubble yeah so yeah i think that was awesome that he does that either way we should you you you should tell the tell the missouri star because you you wrote this newsletter on on our our personal newsletter yesterday about a and you should tell the tell the highlights of stores yeah and the the thing that you didn't mention earlier about a is the way that we met him is patrick campbell mentioned him and then i think i just d him and i said a do hoop and no other context then that was and i was like i've never met you what do you wanna come hanging out in north carolina it's a weird question why did you ask that did you know he was tall or how did you or did you just take a random shot like do you play basketball come to our basketball camp i think i looked on you i watched a youtube video like i i heard of him i looked on youtube watch like a minute video and i was like he looks tall seems like he has a good personality in this one minute clip i found on youtube so hey let's just get to business do you play basketball and then then he was like yeah i'm i'll come and he was like i no idea who you i i barely know who you guys are but sure i'll guess i'll fly there and see what deb yeah and he was amazing but his his story is pretty cool so basically i think the the short version to think you wrote in the newsletter yesterday if people go to it's it's just my name dot com so sean p dot com you you could sign up for these other you'll get this it'll it'll send you the story after a couple of emails so the story is his mom takes up quilt as a hobby and she's just having fun she's quilt and then she wants to do i guess like whatever is a more advanced quilt where you like you gotta like send your thing into a machine quilt company is that right like how does that work you certain certain quilt you gotta send in yeah i think there's is like certain things that just needed machinery and there was like i believe there was a six month wait to get some machine built quote machine built quilt made and he was like oh shit there's a business here how is it a six month wait and it was just like there's too much demand and so he's like mom forget this quilt like you need to like and they bought the machine they're like let's create a service company where we do this because sounds like there's too much demand so they bought the machine and then they make the website where they're like oh yes and does your stuff and we'll do the machine you know quilt thing for you and and then people started asking them for fabrics and so they started selling fabrics and people started asking them for patterns they started selling patterns fast forward they've built this company it's called missouri star quilt company and again does you know nine figures a year in revenue profitable bootstrap family business c founded with his mom they sell they have like thirty thousand fabrics for sale now on the on the website and i was like dude what was the what was the turning point like did this work right away and what did he tell you he like he's like well i started he like posted on facebook like hey guys made this quote website for my mom check it out yeah like two likes and and i went back and looked at all his facebook post yesterday and it's like i started a quote company buddy and that was like his milestone is life fifteen years ago and they must have figured something out well it it sounded like the thing that made it take off was he got his mom to start making youtube content so he was like oh youtube was like still pretty early at that time he's like alright mom record videos teaching people like how to be better at quilt and she they now have the number one quilt channel almost a million subscribers and jenny who's his mom is like beloved like the comments are just like jenny is the best she's still holds some oh my god i love her she's a she's a star so the youtube thing took off and then he went and stole the idea from a woo dot com about having one crazy daily deal so something that's like fifty to a hundred percent off but it's limited quantity limited time and they call it the quilt daily deal or something like that and that trained people to just keep coming back to the website to see like you know what amazing deal could they get for some new pattern and those two things were like pretty major you know like growth hacks that they pulled off to to to grow this thing and he might just be the most successful like daily deal site ever right like in terms of credibility yeah i don't know how big group on is now but like you know it's it's what he did is bigger than woo so you know that that kinda worked and then the other thing that he told us about was his town so explain this town and what he told us like he's like how he thinks about this town things yeah so basically when we had when he discovered a we realized that he had a town it was written about an n p over a few other the places and essentially what it is he had he needed a bunch of production done so we needed a manufacturing facility for all the closely were selling so they bought a town basically that which means they own a few restaurants i think they own a few gas stations and they own a few manufacturing facilities and they made it the quilt capital of the world so basically it's where people go when they wanna learn and seek learn and use quilt and they also so he's basically like really basically i think he's the pioneer of towns i think he talked about this the pod a while back but he's all into towns and he i the yesterday he was texting us even more ideas about taxes well it it it started off simple so he's was like i need a building where they had like kind of a warehouse or production it's about one building okay i'll grew that bought a second building and he's from this very small town hamilton missouri i think it is and so you know buys two buildings and then at some point they kinda realize alright why do this with like nameless face list warehouses what if we could turn this into content or marketing like the youtube channel is working so what if we do kinda youtube behind the scenes and what if we make this more interesting so instead of just buying two warehouses and then just like you know operating in stealth what if we just bought all this land and we bought all the buildings that are in this area and we turn this into a tourist destination a vacation basically so like it's a themed town in the middle of nowhere but it's like the quilt mecca or like the people call like the disneyland land for quilt and there's like like main street is all about quilt this is like quilt shop quilt shop quilt and and then they have like the missouri star one which is the biggest store so that's their retail flagship store they use this to create content to create interest people then like take a a pilgrimage a trip to go visit here if that's their bain hobby if that's their big hobby it's like i go here's the here's the vacation i wanna go on and when they're there they also have man but is called man's land just basically like fear the dude who got dragged to this quilt vacation they have one area called man's land which is like really comfy recliner chairs tvs food and it's just like yeah you hang out over here and watch football and let her you know let let let grandma go crazy at the the the quilt shops and so creating that town i think is kind of amazing he said that they have a hundred thousand tourists come there every year which is which is you know still kind of relatively small but he's like yeah dude we just need like a developer to build a hotel there's just no place to stay and he's like you know nobody knows about this area but i'm really he's really bullish on turning the the the sort of the cost center into a marketing a marketing tool and i think that was really really smart and what i i wanted to tell everyone about the time you were thinking about yesterday well we asked him we were like dude that's i was like dude that's genius what else would you do he goes got it baby usa i was like what he's like so he's got four kids or he's about to time his fourth i think and hey he's like yeah basically i think you could make a town for all things babies so let's say you're a pregnant mom or you just you just delivered during your yeah maybe you have a newborn a one year old a two year old so most know travel is hard first of all for either break the late pregnancy or or know early kids and nothing is optimized for them like even places like disneyland and like places that are like kid friendly it's like ages three and up really is like what's what's like acceptable and useful and so he's like dude if we made this town where you could come and it's like some combination of like just a crazy spa for mom mom deserves it like she is her body going through a lot she's not sleeping that all this stuff let's take care of her let's have the best sort of most baby friendly places whether it's restaurants retail whatever it is let's basically let you try any baby product so like there's like the the mass stroller store like you're gonna get the best stroller we're gonna it's like you have the consultants there you have a testing ground you know this is where you're gonna find the best products and you get to test them you get to learn about them and it's like a it's like a the expo for all things babies so you're gonna sell a ton a product you're gonna provide a vacation or rest you're gonna be the most baby proof and baby friendly everything is gonna be optimized for that type of clientele and you could also do a bunch of fun things so he's like dude stroller races you know he's like you know we could he's like this would be such amazing like funny content that you could do around this whole thing baby so he's like baby phil and and it's it's kinda true because like we just hired a guy and he's like oh yeah can i start after this date because i'm i bought my wife of a push present and a push present for those don't like you know after you deliver you basically it's like here's a gift or a vacation you know to celebrate you know putting yourself through one of the hardest things ever which is like you know labor and and so i think baby moons are a thing push presence or a thing i think there's already a whole bunch of like the culture around this stuff and so if you made the instagram worthy town for that i think that could be big i'm i'm i'm hoping he does this because i want this know and i want the baby combine i feel like i'm so competitive and so many of my friends are like yeah i don't care about my my how i stacked up to people in my age but i care like you know what percentile is my son and height and wait and how fast is he and is he crawling i remember when when when my summon was like one we would just watch other kids on instagram and decide who looks like they're were in better shape yeah just compare yeah so i wanna i think that's a great idea and i still have the a baby vocabulary contest baby crawling contest yeah like crazy horoscope thing where we we we give you a scroll that tells you the future of your baby for for a hundred dollars i i could think of a million things to sell at this town and yeah i love to and like what else we had a we go to the game what else did you got another guy that i met up with was this guy justin called so for people that don't know justin callback i think is one of the best angel investors of all time he led the snapchat c deal pinterest c deal he does have kind of a checkered past so i think he was essentially canceled so he was at light speed was basically canceled i don't know three to four years ago and now he's writing seat checks as a as a gp so i i basically met up with this guy had talked to him a bunch on twitter and he said a few things about investing that i thought were particularly interesting and particularly worth thinking about the first was the question which was like are you a good investor and what's your answer to that sean like do you think you're a good investor i think i i think two things you can't know yet so i can't say with anything definitive because he only get measured i don't know seven years after you start investing so the honest answer is i don't actually know i do think i will do well with investing because i have a good network i have good judgment when it comes to what startups ups have legs what don't and and like you know i'm aggressive so like you i what i make what i lack in iq i make up for in like guts and so so i think those three will result in in a great outcome for me and then the other question that he kind of asked is like can you what did you say what he said that by the way that's a great question to ask somebody to be like are you good at what you do is a is a fantastic question what did you say did you did you did you butt cl in did you know what to say in that moment i said i don't think i'm great i think i could be great if i tried id said that's what everyone says you know i said yeah but i think i could and then he was like well okay answer me these questions then can you defend every deal that you've kind of pushed the table for without saying these two words great founder he was basically like i hate when someone tells me they're investing because it's a great founder because that's the it's something that nobody can argue you on you even know if they know the person because they're just like i can argue you on work it i can argue you on product i can argue you on you know ten other things but i can't argue you on great founders so can you defend every deal you've done recently without saying those two words what's your answer to that question can i defend every deal yes i could explain why we did every deal would i defend every deal no because i think we've made mistakes along the way and we did deals or deal sizes or add valuations that knowing what i know today i could say you know that that wasn't a good decision you know going back i with benefit of hindsight i would think about that differently now but i think that's natural like there's no way that you could get into anything as a you know start a new activity new job new hobby whatever it is and from day one be flawless hell no right now could you but should you have a a line of thinking on everything you did yeah here was my line of thinking was my line of thinking i was correct no here's some errors i made and i i say specifically like three errors i made one i would say is the on oh but i love this business i hate the valuation but i love this business i think that is a is a pretty common mistake and even though it sometimes works out like you know we invested in a company that was valued at two hundred million i invested because i had been trying to invest since the seed round but i hadn't gotten in so i kinda had i was like you know anchored to this lower price and now it's a multi billion dollar company so our our investment still up i don't know forty x so it's a great investment from a return point of view but honestly it was a pretty dumb investment like my only out was that this thing would this company would go from two hundred million to a multi billion dollar company even though at the hundred million i thought it was valued based on where the revenue was and i think even i think i got lucky on that more so than that was the correct decision and i think that's the case for like a bunch of things i did where two the difference in your outcome would you invest at a eight million dollar valuation versus eighteen versus fifty versus eighty is is just really really profound and the better move is to stay disciplined don't chase the higher valuations just pass even on a good deal because you just wanna deploy all your dollars in at the lower valuations so that you can have when you hit you hit super super big you know we did another investment that it was at a five million dollar valuation and now it's at i don't know three hundred three hundred four million and it it may be it may end up at the same multiple as the first deal i talked about but the second one was actually using sound logic and judgment and the first one was chasing you know something that i wanted and you know i only had one possible way to to to get a good outcome out of that yeah i think that yeah i think i think that makes sense and i think he thinks similarly like i think you know the only thing that he said then i intuitively knew but never really thought about is how many deals he looks at a week know he's talking to a hundred to a hundred and fifty founders every single week which i think is just like a to do maybe one deal among at most so maybe he's doing one out of six hundred things he talks do and the thing that he said that i thought was interesting about that was you know you kinda noticed what good and great is you know most there's a ton of people you meet that are in the good category in terms of founders right it's like really smart people building interesting things great backgrounds but there's very very few people you meet that are great so i think that was like a learning for me which is like really being disciplined only do deals when you think they're great which i think applies to more than just angel investing and applies to everything it's like most of the time you know what crate is but you just get impatient and you go for good right the and i think his his portfolio is pretty nuts by the way gru hub snap open door stitch fix whatnot imperfect foods boom aerospace like you know these are these are some some pretty solid ones especially if we got in yeah and i think you know i think obviously he was cancelled they me too for reasons so like i don't i don't i can't say he's like the best dude personally but obviously he's a great investor yeah yeah you know it's hard to know what happened in certain situations and i don't know i try to for better for worse my thought when i meet people is when somebody tells me how great somebody is i don't assume but they're perfect and when somebody tells me how horrible somebody is i don't think that they're evil and terrible i sort of take people at face value so i meet them i you know ask them about the situation i hear the story and then i see how they treat me and i i observe how they treat the other people around them and i kind of just use that as my filter rather than getting caught up in the sort of stuff and i also have friends that i think are like you know great in one area of their life and i can learn a lot from them in that area you know whether it's investing or business or fitness or whatever and they're not so great in others of their life rather than sit there and judge them i just tried to if i find somebody that's great at one area of the life i just focus on that and i try to learn from them on that and i move on you know i don't really get to caught up in the the full picture yeah a hundred percent and then in terms of you know other thing i i took away from san francisco was it was one other thing that we did that i took a lot away from which was we had a small dinner with about ten people had no idea really what you expect like i i went in cold basically knowing none of these people so sean you wanna set the table for what that dinner was like yeah we hosted a dinner at f dot inc which has a great office in in fort mason and san francisco we invited about twelve thirteen people something like that i would say some of them knew each but most people didn't so it's one of these like san very san francisco things it's like one person curate the guest list and they're basically saying trust me these people are cool and then everybody else just goes on that of that assumption and if you ever violate it's like dude i went to this one dinner this guy i hosted and people were not cool you're like they're out but as long as you can successfully curate this you could sort of build a a really cool community and brand around it so invited some people the the conversation was basically i think you know i saw your face point because in the most san francisco thing possible the conversation quickly shifted to like drugs but like not like party drugs but like you know people services love this like you know sort like oh i micro dose this thing or i do ayahuasca or i do dmt or i do mushrooms you know for productivity and like all those other stuff like i do this instead of therapy i do this in addition to therapy i do this in addition to or to help my productivity and it's like broke do you just drink coffee like why do we have to do all this are you sure that's like my feeling because i'm i'm like a a more straight arrow guy like i just i don't do i don't do any of this stuff but that was you know that was pretty heavy part of the conversation at the beginning and then there was know it it transition from there but what was your take on the the drug con yeah i mean you know i've been someone that's always i haven't done anything but i'm not like incredibly opposed to it i you know my take was just seem like that's what most people were focused on like ever most of the people in that were were really successful and the thing they were focused on was figuring out in some ways how to be happier like that's kind of what it boils down to is like how do i be happier and how do i have better relationships with the people that matter and it's always odd to be in you know i always find it kind of odd to be in those rooms where everyone seemed like they have everything they possibly want right like i'm probably the least wealthy person in that room the least well known person in that room and yeah so i find it interesting that people are resort to that type of thing and maybe there's a lot of creative to be had like the other thing that i took away from it is everyone talked about this thing called touchy feely which is the thing that happened i think it's like a stanford class where basically you boil your class so if ever is talking about how to be a better leader and how to really connect with people and the one thing i wrote down in my phone was i'm an asshole so i remember it like basically the their their take was this is like really when all these things boil down to is recognizing that you're the asshole at every situation then i remember afterwards i was like i don't know maybe i'm just in a hassle for it to everyone for these tighter of reasons i think the line was every great marriage comes down to one realization i am an asshole and once you realize that and do you accept that it humble you but it also it it it's sort of like you understand the other person's side because damn they're dealing with this asshole i thought that was like a really don't know if i believe that but i thought it was a great line there was one part on the so the the the drunk part i thought was interesting because it was like some of these things that are taboo today become very normal ten years from now and silicon valley is usually at the the front of that curve and you're right it was stunning i mean this is a very successful group of people there there wasn't a person in that room who wasn't wealthy successful all that stuff and i would say what forty percent of the people at that table had experimented with some version of a like i don't know what you would call like hall carcinogenic type of drug in order to try to be happier you know happier less anxious or better in their relationships and that's just a crazy ratio to me you know that's a that's a wild ratio that's a very san francisco a ratio that you get and sometimes san francisco is just off the off the reservation and sometimes they're ahead of the curve and it's pretty hard to figure out which ones which you know it's this this these are the same people that in you know twenty twenty twelve we're we're talking about bitcoin and this is the same group of people that you know whatever they're like you know experimenting with ai four or five years ago you know so they are the hard part is you can't write it off because often these are people that are that are right in a bunch of areas the one the touchy feely thing i thought was cool because they said that one framework for communication i think that's probably worth worth saying which was so they're talking about how great this touchy feely thing is and of course my natural question was like wait so like like what they well what did you like what's an example you're saying how great this was and it changed everything for you like what's an example and our friend si si chen who now runs runway gave this great framework he goes they teach you that there's what was it five layer five layers of communication and so let me see if i can remember this off top of my head so he's like the first one when you deal with people you're gonna be at one of these five layers so it's like level one or layer one is ritual this is like you know you walked you're walk into the office hi hey hi you hey what's up up you know like just like it's automated it's not like it it's just a ritual thing you're just a quick quick hello then there's number two which is extended ritual which is hey how's it going how's your day you know what's new these things that you you say it's an extended version of the ritual you don't really care or you're not really asking the question not really expecting anything nor are they really telling you what's going on in their life it's sort of this like just this dance we we do the third level is you're talking about some content but it's surface content so at the third level service content is you're talking about a project you're talking about something you're working on or something you're doing something that's happening you're talking about the game you're talking about the you know the project whatever it is and what he basically said was like you know most of our communication just happens at these three levels every day but the problem with it is imagine in every interaction there's two tracks so on the on your left hand is the track of like the content of the conversation and on the right is the relationship between the two people and at these first three layers the content might be moving but the relationship is not moving relationship the relationship is not being invested in and so if you wanna be somebody who's better at building relationships like you don't you need to get out of just these first three layers and get to number four four and five four is feelings about the content so how do you feel about what's going on right i feel stressed about this project i feel worried about this thing i feel so excited about this game tonight you know whatever it is and you're sharing a little bit about what's inside for you how you're feeling about the thing not just talking about the thing so that's that's better that moves it forward because you're there's some vulnerability there and then the last one is feelings about each other which is dude you know i felt disappointed when i expected this was gonna happen but actually this happened or i felt annoyed or i felt frustrated that we keep ending up in this same loop and being able to share that is obviously the the the the saying how you feel about the other person and i said negative ones but it could also be the other way like you i feel you know i love working with you i love alright you know i had so much fun i felt you know tons of joy when we were doing x y z so you can sharing how you actually feel about the other person is the hardest one but when you do it that's what moves that other track the furthest and and you talked about like the little nuances like instead of saying i feel like blank blank blank and time you say like you took it away from how you actually feel it's just i feel blank or i felt blank is the right way to do it so i thought that was pretty cool because that stuff it's hard to learn anywhere like school or whatever and it sounded like that you know you talked about the harvard does a school thing that was one note and the other one was the stanford for touchy feely thing i was like oh that sounds pretty cool i should check that out or know i wanna get better at that this data is wrong and it freaking time have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform where everything is fully integrated well i can see the clients whole history calls support tickets emails and here's a test from three days ago i totally missed hotspot hubspot girl at him and and you told the great story basically about your experience doing that same thing at the prison you already should tell that story yeah so alright so once once upon a time i i get an email from my boss and this is a guy michael burt so he basically the the main investor in our company and he's just kinda like my mentor when i moved to silicon valley i moved here to work with michael michael built multiple successful internet companies that's what i wanted to do so i was like i wanna learn from this guy and i always i don't know if other people feel this way but whenever i'm around somebody who i really admire or i really like like i feel an intense pressure to just like do good in that it do good in that setting like i just always wanted to like put my desk forward if it was a meeting i wanted to look smart if it was a a so solicit situation i wanted to be mister charisma and like be the be this they brought me to this event i wanna have the best conversation and sometimes that's okay that's natural but often it felt forced and it's just a lot of stress so anyways he's he emails me the thing says hey come with me to this this i did this event and i want you to come to it you know don't ask too many questions just come he's like it's friday at this time to show up and so i show up and what he signed me up for was this group called inside circle i think it's called and basically they take a group of kinda like silicon valley ceo type people group of men from from the business world and they bring them inside of fu prison and they take you to meet inmates who are in prison for life so they have a life sentence and so you go to this sort of like i don't know if it's maximum security or whatever but you go to this like intense prison and you're gonna meet with people who are in prison for life if you're in there for life you did something that's you know murder or you know sort of equivalent and and so i'm like oh shit and he's like yeah it's a two day event it's like an overnight event i was like what the hell alright thanks michael well so i go to this thing we walk in and i don't i still don't really know what to expect i'm like are we giving a talk is this like an on entrepreneurship talk like what what are we trying to do here so i'm prepared for like some presentation or something like that but instead we walk in the guys all get un handcuffed we all walk in together and we all sit in a circle and i'm like oh this is a feelings thing oh shit this is like you know this is like aa or something i don't know what i got myself into but i'm my brain is racing and when the guys were walking in you know i'm i'm like just kinda like scoping everybody out and there was one guy who walked in that just stood out right away he was wearing sunglasses and he had a cane but he wasn't blind so i was like i don't know how this dude has this privilege to like be able to have a stick that he walks around with and sunglasses but this guy got clout immediately you could tell and he was the only guy who was like not smiling not talking to anybody he had like two guys around him who like kinda escorted him to see brought him a a clip of water and i was like oh shit this is the guy who like runs the prison got it i've seen movies about this shit i know how to like spot the alpha this guy's the alpha and so the event basically starts as follows they go break him like smaller circles you know groups of six and and you know this guy who's been here is the facilitator he'll he'll begin so break up a group of six of course i get paired a group with this thinking of the tough guy and i'm like alright what do i have to do here how what do i need again what am i trying to trying to do to like you know do well in this situation and basically the group was sort of like what the the activity was sort like you just each person goes around you just say what's on your mind first guy gets up and he tells this super intense situation that he's said he's like right now i'm feeling frustrated man i'm feeling pissed feeling angry i'm like oh fuck he's like i'm feeling angry because my daughter who's on the outside told me that you know she had been sexually assaulted and i'm pissed that i'm not there to beat that guy's ass and then you know protect her and and so this guy tells us like really intense thing and then i'm like shit and then the next guy says an even more intense thing and third guy says this really traumatic he's he's working through this really traumatic experience by the third person i'm no longer listening i'm in my head and i'm doing the math i'm like okay i'm three people away what am i gonna say and like mean look i'm wearing on a mickey mouth shirt right now i'm like you know my parents love me my life is pretty good i'm healthy i'm happy and all of a sudden i'm like god damn it parents why did you have to love me i don't have shit to say here like i i couldn't see have just had a drug problem and made this a little easier for me like what am i supposed to say that's not gonna stand out like a i sore thumb like i can't be like the biggest problem in my life right now is we have this deadline for this thing we're trying to this new feature we're building by friday and i just don't know if we're gonna hit it guys like you know that's shit's not gonna fly here so i'm like fuck fuck i'm panicking and i'm not listening at this point it it keeps going around the circle finally gets to me and i'm like okay i just gotta tell this like this like this the most traumatic thing that's happened in my life whatever i guess i'm gonna say to these strangers and i'm gonna i hand ham it up a little bit and and really like you know just try to deliver this i essentially start performing and so i i tell this thing about some family thing that happened in my past and i'm like doing these dramatic pauses and i'm like you know not like pretended to cry but i'm definitely pretended to feel it a little more than i was actually feeling it in that moment i tell the story and i told it good i'm a good storyteller and so i'm like i brought my aid here because i was under pressure i told a great story and i'm like alright thanks you know thanks all for listening and onto the next and then the hard guy goes man that's a bullshit and i was like oh no what what's happening go and i get what hang goes man that's a bullshit man you're just saying that shit i go no that really happened because i don't care if that happened he goes you ain't really feeling that and so this guy basically instantly sniffed me out in a way that very few people can really tell you know when i'm bs like that and now i'm feeling like am i gonna get beat up like what's gonna happen here this is a worst case scenario the hard guy is like just like went out of nowhere he didn't say this to anybody else in the group but for me he's like that's some bullshit man and he was like out he was like out on me and he goes he said something he goes like he goes i go what do you want me to say he goes he goes i want you say what's on your mind well yeah what you're really feeling and i go i'm feeling nervous why i go because i want you to like me like the truth came out i was like i want you to like me which was it was the honest and sit ed i'm like oh my god what did i just say the lame possible thing of one man can say to another he paused he just goes that's your truth and he like accepted it he goes that show truth man and he got up and he like got and he like came up to me whatever and we like whatever he's like you know i i appreciate you for telling your truth he hug me and he's sat effect out and i was like what just happened he's laughing now this guy had and cracked to smile the whole time and he just thought it was so funny that obviously he scared me shit list which he did and he got me to break which he did but it also showed me like like you should just you know lead with the truth it's a lot easier than trying to perform but yeah that was my like touchy feely touchy feely like intense experience yeah that's basically what touchy feely he is right it's just like trying to get to the core of what you're actually feeling or thinking right i and sharing it yeah i mean i know i haven't done it but it does seem like it's about being a little more more honest more authentic and less of the surface level autopilot shit that like we get used to doing kind of in the real world alright what else we got so that was your san francisco trip any other big ones otherwise listed a couple of cool i ideas the last one from san francisco is the other person that came to dinner was this guy named kendall so he bought the milk brew with mike some milk creators is a crypto newsletter that sean i started and sold and i think from i worked with them for three months pretty hands on every time i see it him it makes me think of this which is you know instead of asking what would jesus do i asked what would mike candle do and they do two things really well that i try to embody whenever i ask that question which is like one one kendall himself is really good at spotting an opportunity so he's basically he's thinking and fishing all day to find what they should go attack and then mike is really good at consistent intensity so what i mean by that is let's say you're trying to figure out facebook ads every single day first ten hours he'd be looking at it try to see what's working what's not and doubling down instead of being like oh facebook working i'm gonna go work on pinterest now i'm gonna go stand up with twitter ad so i think when i saw kendall it just reminded me like be more of kendall and mike in anything because that's a winning combination to be like great spotting things and then once you spot something that you want like take in incredible intensity to get it done yeah so these guys each have basically you know candles bills and sold companies for something like just under a hundred million dollars two companies mike slash company i think sold for nearly two hundred million dollars so obviously very successful but when we met them you know i always look for okay what what was it about this person what what contributed to their outs sized outcome because usually the shit in an accident you know we always you gotta have some attributes so it's like what are the attributes that this person had that led them to that some people it's they're amazing engineers okay great they've built some crazy shit some people it's like they're amazing investors they are great at spotting opportunities and and whatever for some people they're great salespeople you know oh their this guy could sell ice to an es i can see how they were able to grow their business really fast this person you know somebody's really high iq they're just a super super smart they you know they they built this thing that i could barely understand half the words about you know but they understand that industry and they'd they navigated it with mike and kendall i felt like with kendall i was like you wouldn't wanna compete with this guy because he's just gonna figure out the loophole in the game like he's gonna figure out the cheat code and that he's gonna figure oh in mario you run onto this block that you just hold down and then you fall behind the screen you run and then you get the magic flute that lets you skip nine levels and i feel like that's kendall kendall will find the magic flute that lets you skip levels whereas you're sitting there trying to beat every single level he he was just like no that sounds painful i'm gonna find you know i i think i heard or you know there's gotta be this like solution where i can get ahead faster what is that who's making the most money and then how do i do what they're doing so he's he's good at sniffing out that thing and mike is like mike is smart but he's not like he's not he's the smartest dude i've ever met but he is one of the most intense dudes i've ever met like we'll have a meeting and then we'll go out for drinks but somehow in between he ships like a a a a notion doc with all of the action items tagged and like referenced because he's like well obviously that was a good plan we should write it down and then do it and i'm like yeah well don't say it like it's common sense like you know oh we're gonna get a little distracted over here and we're gonna you know we'll we'll stretch it out we'll procrastinate a little bit and he's like well why would you procrastinate just do the whole thing right away it's like i don't know because i'm not you i'm not a machine and he's a machine and so i think it's really useful to just be around somebody like that and i think we had this theory when we sold the milk road to them because we were considering different offers and it was like it's i don't know dude i think we're not like it's hard to put a price on we're gonna get to hang out with these guys who are gonna make us better as entrepreneurs that's a factor and and so yeah the i think we've noticed this in a bunch of people as we meet people me and ben always call each other in debrief after meetings and i think one of the more common ones is they have this like an intensity is often the most common trait that we're seeing in these successful people because they're so different in all these other ways but the one thing they have is like once they see an opportunity they're pretty effing relentless and focused on doing it they don't procrastinate they don't wait around they don't you know half do things or quarter do things they like overdo things and they do it with it like the intensity knob is is cranked past the ten they broke the knob and it's on twelve i feel like that's been common for a bunch of people that we've we've hung out with over the last few years yeah yeah and i i think like now that i see great i'm like okay i wasn't great i could be great yeah he's great right right that's true the other one that was funny was we bumped into rahul l at the warriors game so if if people don't remember this when elon bought twitter there was this guy that went and he was standing outside the twitter office with him a giant cardboard box and he was like yeah i'm a data science engineer at twitter i got fired on yeah elon came maybe he fired me and you know and then the reporters were like oh tell us you know what what are your thoughts on elon and and how does it feel to have this and he's like you know and he's so this guy didn't work at twitter it was a giant troll and he's friends and some friends that we have and he he had sent a text like an hour earlier being like dude there's hell of people outside of twitter i'm just gonna take a box and pretend i got fired you wanna come and him and his buddy went took an empty cardboard box and tricked reporters from cnbc in all these places there's all these articles about with the these these guys featured he he said his name was rahul l as in you know l these nuts and and you know he's got daniel johnson so was l and johnson who were pretending to be to be fired and so they they kinda went viral silicon lincoln valley as like silicon valley loves when people you know tricked the media or beat the media or point out that the media is stupid and the media loves the opposite they love to point out when silicon valley is stupid and overrated and over hyped and over funded and all this stuff it's like a little war that goes on and so rahul was like he won he won a key battle in that war and so we're at the game i'm like dude that's that's the guy that's like again he's a random engineer start founder that nobody knew like you know a few months ago and now he was sitting court side at the warriors game with two like billionaires and he was just hanging out and i was like you know this guy probably went to college studied hard spent a hundred fifty k giving a degree you know i was trying to make a start successful and the thing that like catapult like a a random inflection point in his life that catapult him was this random troll he decided to do and i think that's just kind of amazing and very i know there's a lesson to be learned in there well what was your reaction to that yeah one i thought the troll was incredible like i think you know i'm not an anti big media guy but i have seen you know when you're on the inside of a story and what they you know how they spin it to make a great headline so i have one great troll the the the best part of the troll he's holding up a michelle obama up book is it was a cardboard box and he had a the michelle obama book and then they go what do you think about you know getting fired to elon you know is is was that right it he goes this would have never had happened under michelle obama which makes no sense is so funny yeah and they didn't somehow pick on that that this guy's just you know this guy's lying yeah so good other thing is just like do things that make no sense like i think a lot of a lot of stuff i try to do like makes no sense why you would ever do it you can't like map it to anything going forward you're just like oh it sounds fun and funny so fuck it like let's do it yeah we've talked about that before the do cool shit budget which is do you have a budget of both money and time that you allocate towards things that don't have a clear roi except for that sounds fun or like do that would be hilarious or that would be that that's amusing or i don't know like i've never done that before and i think you know the way google had google had twenty percent time where basically if you worked at google you could spend twenty percent of your time on anything that you thought would just be cool for google so they you know they're like hey we're gonna pay you in one fifth of your time you can spend not on any project that we assigned to you or that has roi and like gmail came out of that and facebook had these hack that were the same thing it's like these late night hack it would take away a bunch of productivity from engineers but they were like you know this is fun this is good for culture and good shit can come out of this that we can't predict and like you know the like button was built during one of these hack for example you know with the like button is obviously you know massive for facebook and so i think that everybody should have this do cool shit budget so how do you put take ten percent to twenty percent of your time and your money and put it towards things that are just for you know shits and giggles i i know i do that i think we should do that with our companies i think everybody should really do that yeah i mean one thing i try to do consistently is just talk to a bunch of random of people that you know there's no real roi but a lot of interesting stuff comes out of all those conversations yeah you should explain how you do that because i gave you access to my twitter and i was like i don't know i a bunch of yam i can't keep up with all this and you kinda took that and turned it into an asset so like what did you do and you you basically just blocked off like what thursdays or something we just have back to back rent like four random meetings with people that you think are interesting with no agenda is that like that's my read of it yeah man i think you know a long time ago started by basically saying oh people think sean is awesome so how do we dm them and just get on calls and meet interesting people and have no agenda and just shoot this shit so we're just dm people and say what's up this thing is awesome and you get like a ninety percent response rate sometimes it is a little weird because people will be like thanks and then you're like alright i don't know what to do with that but don't have people give you an opening and they're like oh cool dude what's up and i i would be like how do i poorly was into conversations talk to as many random people as possible over time i started to do it from my out account and the main idea is just like no agenda talk to someone about what they're working on ask a bunch of questions almost every single time i worn something that i didn't think about before whether it'd be like oh wow this company is huge or this thing they're working on is actually way more interesting than it than it appeared when i first saw and then i try to send them interesting things as i see him on twitter like i think my best one of my best skills is them always on twitter see interesting things that i just send it to a bunch of people and over time it tends to lead to get outcomes like i think almost everything i can count to or like say in my life is because i'm good at that on twitter yeah like when i think of oh this person's great at networking i think about you know you know some like i don't know tall dude is good at shaking hands and making small talk and like you know some smooth operator politician type dude and that's not you're an amazing network but you are you do nothing like that and your method is first of all all online secondly you're just like you i feel you don't overthink it i if i was to kind of reverse engineer what i think is good what you do that's good is you find interesting people you compliment them on what they're doing that's interesting you then send them things that are like kinda helpful like oh did you see this or check this out or you might like this or you i met this guy you should talk to them and you just like add little nugget one two three and by the third nugget they're like well i like this ben too this guy's this ben guy is alright you know he seems to he likes me and he's helpful to me and like therefore you're interested in them and therefore they're interested in you whereas i think i always took the reverse approach which had terrible results which is i want you to like me so i'm gonna tell you all the interesting things about me and like no matter what how interesting i am i nowhere near as interesting to them as they are to themselves and i think you do an amazing job at like just being interested in them and being like helpful not asking for anything in return and that's how we met and then that's how i feel like you've built for all the people i meet you end up with a better relationship with them so there's something you're doing that's amazing and i'm i'm still trying figure out i think the other thing is like introducing them to other bay people like i think that's always an easy win to be like you should you're having this problem meet this person who can help you that's like a great way to do it and in apologize used to be like oh i just need to always check in and see how someone is doing for them to like me i wanna talk to me like now if someone did that would be to be like brit what do you want me to say like i'm good or i'd be like oh you went to duke i should write that in my notes and like send you an email when duke wins a basketball game then i kinda realized like what do you give think you know like well but if someone sent a note every time the suns on a game or it i'd be like okay like what do you want me to say like thanks for like thinking to me that the sun's on a game so i was like how do i just actually understand what they want and like when i see interesting things just send it and maybe it's useful maybe it's not but they know i'm thinking about dev in that moment in time right yeah that's i think let's i think that gil us a long way julian shapiro has a interesting version of this that he does that i kinda love which is he'll just send you an email with one image in it no no subject line no text and the image is a random meme but it's like julian sense of humor is really weird and so it'll be like a picture of a pair and then in the on the on the on the par chest it says look in the top right corner can you look at the top right corner and it says not this one the left corner you go to the left corner it says not a appeared idiot down there you look down and it goes go to the right corner you finally go the bottom right corner and it says i love you it's like he'll send you that and nothing else or he'll just send you like eight straight random images of like you know i don't know whatever gorillas is eating cake and you're like jillian what's going through your brain right now and i don't know what this is but it makes me laugh and it's just different and it's like it's really quick and easy for him to do this and it's like i don't know who this guy is but he's interesting and he's fun and he makes me laugh and like he does this like you know we talk about these things that like sam does his you know let's fuck when he gets into town and he he wants to meet somebody who he only knows online or he's friends with and that's just like a better like more fun version of like let's hang out julian like random meme thing is interesting your your thing where you send a little helpful nuggets of hey did you see this i think that works too everything's everybody's got their own style but you know the style i think doesn't work is me me me me me which is the the style that i originally taken which was like well i'll just focus on what i want and what i think is cool and then people will be interested in that like now not really yeah and for and for a while i'd be like you know in college that a number of people at teach you and college like oh make a linkedin post about your internship you're getting a lot of people are gonna care or like send people updates on what you're working on i'm like i don't know who cares is that i got an internship at walgreens you know and like if someone sent me that be like instead send me something interesting or cool or asked me an interesting question or like sent me something you found interesting about what i'm doing that's way more i think that's way more valuable than like what the other person wants right and right but we we should add this on a few ideas we should do like five minutes a rapid fire ideas is okay you go first first idea i've been thinking about is something related to your d business which is wholesale like one of the things i think been thinking about is wholesale so for people that don't know basically you have a shopify store you wanna sell more in micro is still micro boutique so let's call it the local closed store in your city right now that's really hard to do so i've just been thinking about someone could build something in the space that makes it really easy we talked to a company doing this that basically makes it really easy what to spin up and run your sales channel as wholesale sale anything to add to that one that's a great idea and a no brainer we have a person in our for our e comm brand who well we have one person dedicated to kind of doing this process it was very manual it's like find a list of all the mom and pop boutiques great now reach out cold in this script it's all managed through gmail and or you know some sales tool and then you know so like sourcing them reaching out to them managing the payments and invoices keeping track of your analytics who's actually who's do who's a big spend for you who's a who who's falling off and churning you should reach back out to you know all that stuff making it easy for them to shop because they're buying in bulk all that stuff i think can be i would love a tool that does this and by the way we should reach back out to that company that we talked to you about and be like hey we gotta do this yeah what alright give me give me one of your ideas and did two more alright you told me about n which is the college name and likeness thing we're basically college athletes can now get paid so up until now they couldn't get paid now they can get paid of to do you know appearances or merge or different things like that i love businesses that are built around rule changes or law changes because it takes something that was impossible and now makes it very possible and there's great examples of this like oscar health was built as soon as obamacare care came out and so one i think that somebody should do is if i'm like you know twenty one years old or or whatever i'm eighteen years old right now i would be like alright i now have access to a bunch of influencers that are in college that wanna get paid in the and the marketplace is not efficient yet meaning they have more sway than their priced at just because people haven't abused this channel yet so i'm gonna be the one to abuse this channel i'm gonna be the one to girl like crazy off this the way that the movement watches guys built a luxury watch brand using kind of cheap watches because they were like y instagram has these people are popular influencers we should send them all watches and pay them to to promote and they built a hundred million dollar watch brand before instagram became a big deal so i think somebody should do this and it's like alright you should work backwards from what do who follows college athletes and what do they need so let's let's assume for a second that it's other college students at that college or fans of that college that follow them what could i sell and so what are the best products and so you know maybe it's financial services like credit card type stuff or maybe it's like a beverage brand like an energy drink because i remember in college like people would drink red bulls at five hour energies thing up late studying i think you could create a new five hour energy off the back of n n or you could create a new condom brand like i don't know how big trojan or directs so these brands are but you know they've been around for a while they're kinda stale and they don't they're not that fun and i think somebody could build the the college condom brand or the college energy drink brand using these n influencers yeah i think in general n n like i tried to book someone before using like open doors which i think today is like kind of the winner of the n n marketplace based but the idea of i can book someone on demand for anything whether it'd be an appearance auto etcetera i think there has to be a startup out there that is doing this now in a really good way locally so we should find that start up too that like is attacking the and i don't marketplace in place in a different way right alright that's gonna be it for the pod thanks ben for coming on and actually if you if you like dan you wanna see some of stuff one thing he's working on right now is we took every episode of my first million so we've done four hundred plus episodes now and we had somebody go through and pull out every idea every framework and every tool that's mentioned and we're categorizing it and we put it all into a giant air table so that you could basically see like what are all the ideas they had and then you could sort by like you know the ideas that were you know all about ai or all about crypto or all about saas or you know side hustle right for example and then i took the top ten for each both frameworks and ideas and i'm writing about them and expanding them and saying you know here's the idea here's what i would do for each of those and we're putting it together so this is gonna be like i don't know some super pdf type thing so if you want that go to go to my website go to sean dot com drop your email in and you know i know how long it's gonna take us to finish this maybe another week or so but that's where that's where i'm gonna send it out so so go there sign up and if you want basically to take the best of from the pod and then kind of updates you know have an update and give my commentary on on the sort of the best ones from there so i think that's gonna be an awesome resource for people if you're a fan of the pod you know i don't know it's no brainer it's kind of a must must have if you've been listening all the way through there's no way to keep track of all the different ideas that we've we mentioned on here so so i think that would be that's gonna be awesome so i'm excited about that thanks for ben for coming on and again i'll put the link in the in the description on youtube and in the podcast but just john free dot com and then you could put your email in in there alright guys thank you for thank you for listening that's it that's the fine