The GameStop Guy Has Returned… (And Has A New $210M Bet)

sam this podcast is not financial advice but if i was gonna give anyone financial advice i would have said rewind the clock to may first just a month ago and all you need to do if you ever want triple your money forget warren buffett forget bill ac all you had to do was by games again again i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in and like a days all on a less travel and the mount rushmore of investing there's bill act there's warren buffett these wise older men who just ex dude confidence ex zoo wisdom right next to them is deep fucking value that's the world where we're living good right now so a lot has happened with this guy let's tell a little bit of the background of who this person is and what happened alright so it starts what year did this start in probably two thousand twenty so like peak zero interest covid happening a lot of people are streaming online and saying their thoughts because they're working from home there's this guy named keith gill keith gill i think he worked at like mass mutual or like just some normal boring job like a hundred thousand dollar a year job however he loves sock investing like he studies it and turns out he's a very charismatic guy and he starts streaming some of his picks and why he likes certain companies whatever now we all remember that in two thousand two thousand two thousand twenty thousand twenty one the stock market went crazy and there was a subreddit called wall street bets and a lot of people had extra income because of whatever was happening and they were betting crazy amounts of money on silly stocks well this guy keep gill he has a username on reddit called deep fucking value and then he has a youtube page called roaring kitty and he starts explaining why he likes games stop and he invest roughly fifty six thousand dollars which at the time i think that was like all of his money and he just goes on this this this kind of campaign explaining why he likes that stock and it's kinda like an underdog story it's this kind of nobody charismatic cool guy versus the large companies and the reason he starts investing in into games stock because these large companies these funds he finds out there shorting the company and he was like i actually think they're wrong i think this is great and so it becomes a little bit of a robin hood dave and gil goliath this type of story and olive of reddit olive of twitter gets behind keep gill deep fucking value roaring kitty and the stock goes crazy he makes something like thirty million dollars off of his fifty thousand dollars investment and he spends about how long was that eighteen months two years like k with this campaign talking about it but then he makes thirty million dollars he goes silent nothing happens there's a movie made about him with seth ro it was an awesome movie but at the end of the movie they go we try to get keith gill to comment on this movie and give us in insight he didn't say anything he's been silent we haven't heard from him until last month it all changed what happened so great summary last month roaring kitty as he's done he's got a couple of different names right there's his reddit username but then roaring kenny was kind of his his streaming name and he comes back on twitter and he just posts a meme and it's the meme of the guy sitting in his chair and it starts to lean forward like he just became interested in something the gamer lean the gamer lean the lien in many of you listens to podcast podcasts right now might have the gamer going and i hope you do but but he posts that nobody knows what it means cryptic and then he starts posting some more cryptic videos a little match yep the thirty million views yeah people are ready and and immediately like stock pops a little bit but nobody knows what he means and nobody knows really what happened to the sky during that run where he turned basically like fifty six thousand dollars into you know tens of millions of dollars he held the whole way so whatever he thought was great the short squeeze is great what happens when people start to take gains this whole thing's we could collapse and sure enough that is kind of what happened it didn't stay at the peak i think at the peak it was like four hundred eighty dollars and this did start to come down but he had as we saying crypto diamond hands and he did not sell during that time or nobody knew what but he was doing during that time but he'd never there's no evidence of him selling so he comes back he starts posting all these clips and people start getting excited and what's happened in the last you know i don't know month or so is the stock has tripled and it's tripled in spite of robinhood and others halting the stock again because like last night and after hours it was up one hundred percent your money just doubled last night if you if you had bought yesterday and then they had to halt the thing because it's like you know pretty like abnormal behavior that's going on in the after hours training so the internet's going crazy he then goes and post on reddit and he goes into a res separate called super strong and he goes into super stock and he says here's my games stock my games yolo update and he posts the screenshot and the screenshot essentially shows that he currently has between his equity and his call options two hundred and something million dollars worth the games which basically means that and people aren't exactly sure when all this started but there's a twitter handle called unusual whales unusual whales they is unusual wales dot com i believe it's a option buying platform and they noticed then he they they started reporting on this on their own platform they said a few a few weeks ago ago someone is buying two million a day and they're a way what is going on and they've been doing it for three weeks and a call option basically and i'm an idiot when it comes to the stuff it basically just means they think the stock is gonna go up and they leverage their money to buy a ton of a option to purchase the stock at a agreed upon price i think his agreed upon price was twenty dollars he starts accumulating that share that stake no one knows who it is and just last night i think or the night before he revealed it was him he's been doing this all along yeah it's insane and and so you know currently right now today it's another twenty four percent he's basically doing it again and the the hedge funds i believe we're shorting it again so i'm not again that's the part i'm not a hundred percent sure is like initially the appeal for doing this was he would say you know i like the stock i believe in the company he would say those things but it was unclear how much of it was his belief in the company versus his belief that the hedge funds had shorted more than one hundred percent of the stock flow so it was like just massively massively shorted and the way the shorting works is you're basically betting that the the stock is gonna go down and so as the stock rises your losses is like normally let's say you bought buy a stock for hundred dollars the most you can lose is a hundred dollars that's what you bought the stock for that's all you have if it goes this year you lost your hundred when you short a stock you can lose an infinite amount of money especially what happened to these touch funds they lost billions of dollars by shorting games because when keith and then all the other people on reddit it start buying it created a short squeeze meaning the price was going up so much that they were getting called in and say hey you need to cover your position you need to they need to out buy the stock at this elevated price in order to to cover their short and so that put you know couple of them almost out of business one i one or two win out of business and another one had to get a bailout base and there's a lot of accusation of collusion meaning these big hedge funds c together some of the hedge funds had a stake in the company robinhood and they call the robinhood hood and said hey we need your help on this you can't let these guys keep doing this stuff and so it was a a david versus goliath situation of like can the little nobody retail investor somehow beat corporate america beat the big billion dollar hedge funds and for what song by the way i think it's totally true i don't think this is a whack conspiracy theory so i don't think they owned a stake in games up what i think was they were the market maker yeah so they were one of the biggest market makers and then you know everybody said no we didn't call them and tell them to halt the stock what they did was they halted buying but they allowed selling which is like you know that's it's sort of the most f up thing you could do to stock and people lost like their life savings in this and some people say oh they should have because they were just gambling okay there is something that they call just gambling but if the casino rigs the dice that's not cool right and that's what appears to happened here where if you shut down buying but you allow selling for a period of time you relieve the pressure and the short squeeze and the stock will start to fall and then people start to sell because they think oh the game's up and so i took all my money i don't know about you i took all my money off of robinhood after that happened i just fundamentally morally was against what had happened i believe that the ceo lied and is continues to lie basically about what happened during during that period i also took all my money off rock hood i didn't have a significant amount but like robinhood started as like the underdog story and this is a a tails all this time at least silicon valley which is like the underdog is like they're the coolest of the past we're all behind them and then they get big and then all of a sudden they are the man and they start changing some of the things the way they do things and now i don't trust them right but i i actually so i currently have two takes on this number one we've talked about the creator economy which i think is mostly a lame thing to talk about but basically the some of the cool stories are some of these creators like logan paul they now have a billion dollar company with prime roaring and kitty is the exact same pig but instead of selling prime energy tricks or whatever he's selling not financial advice but selling hey oh my god so jealous i didn't have this take holy shit that might been most insightful think you said in months this is his version of monetizing his audience and it is beautiful and here's why it's beautiful have you seen the movie what's it called dumb money the it's says on so they chose this actor to play keith gill and i've seen a lot of keith videos he's so much more charismatic than the actor who played him right if he would've have been that actor it would've have been way better and so when you watch his videos i think i wanna get behind you he is so likable and so he is monetizing his fame in such an interesting way let let me just let's just make that point again so what you said is basically we've seen all the creator brands you've seen feast you've seen prime you seen whatever a thousand of these he did it without having to sweat the actual business he's like oh yeah cool like how about instead of having to actually sell products and fulfill customer orders and do customer support and all that i'll just pick a stock and make stock go up and the the product is you might make money on this stock and not saying that he intentionally try to do that or whatever but like in a way he did he was streaming himself picking a dog doing his analysis and the one thing i will say because i went and watch these videos is i expected it to be a lot more like pump and dump meaning i expected it to be like either explicitly said or reading between the lines like hey guys let's just do this and make a buck and he really doesn't say that or do that in any of his like videos or his his updates and maybe it's because he kind of had a job at a financial company who knew not to to cross that line i don't know maybe that's why maybe he genuinely just liked the company in the stock and was like yeah i think there's value here and in some ways got lucky he didn't mean to start a revolution he just did so i'm not sure which one it is but i'm very impressed that i expected him to be a lot more respectable but actually when i watched he did some red content i actually respected him a lot i thought that he was not trying to you know a g trying to make a buck peter did not come off that way in the movie which i think was a hit they made him not come off that way they can't they made him they made him and his wife come off as very romantic characters they made the people who followed him and they like showed like a poor lady in the bronx or something she's like i really believe in this guy he's the best we can't let the big guys win and so you get behind it it's easy to get behind the second take that i have i think what he's doing is not illegal but it might eventually become illegal what what he is doing is absolutely so here's my opinion we don't know what he has done between basically when he made his thirty million and up until three weeks ago we don't know what what had happened what i had if i had to make a prediction i think he tweeted out this gamer lean in so he tweeted out this gamer lean in meme or whatever in the stock jumped i think eighty percent that day which is insane so he was he ultimately i think games stop at the time was worth six billion and then it was worth seven or eight i i you i you gotta go look at those numbers but he basically created something like a billion or at least hundreds of millions of dollars in value from a silly tweet i think that there's a potential that he was due he was like knew that him saying something online was gonna pop the stock and that he is profiting from that and then further after that bought the calls you know what i mean no i i think it's the other way around so i think the what would make sense as he buys the calls for sorry this jeff and then he then he announces it but his announcement i mean how you gonna get it in trouble like you know i posted a meme of this guy leaning forward what it's not illegal it's not illegal it's not illegal it he it's very wise it's so other tweets posted our the what did he post the reverse uno car just a picture of a of a reverse uno car like we're running it back yeah and i think it's hilarious i think it's hilarious that nikita fred said if you've been toil away at your startup for the last decade just remember if a guy in his basement with a webcam and a headband just made close to a billion dollars and twelve hours and i think that that's pretty wild and potentially there there is gonna be some blow back for keep deal but if you think about it a bill ac announced i think last week that he's considering taking his company his hedge fund purging square public and what bill ac is doing is not terribly different than what warren buffett has done what howard marx has done what what man niche the guy we had you have a pod what these guys have done which is they built a brand for themselves and when you build a brand for yourselves in the in the hedge fund or trading industry it basically just means whatever warren does i'm gonna follow because i trust him and so it adds value to a company that is not necessarily in the fundamentals of the business and that is exactly what's happening with roaring kitty and i find it fascinating i don't know if i am good i'm i'm behind it because i like him and i want him to win but i do have to ask myself is this actually like ethical and incorrect it it's borderline i think so here's a couple of interesting bits so it games stock currently twenty eight dollars as of recording this if the stock hits seventy dollars a share he's a billionaire it's insane which is just kind incredible it's saying the second thing that's really interesting here is some open questions that i have and i think if it's not obvious by now we're n when it comes to this we are not stock traders we are not option traders this is not the world we live in we are both mans and sam we are startup guys we build businesses we start companies that are tech companies are this is not our game but i do have some very simple questions as a beginner here which is if he's buying basically on average i think two two and a half million dollars worth of options per day for the last like you know eleven days or something like that where did the money come from where did the money come from this is a guy who didn't have money he made a bunch of money in games stop how did he have the ability to buy like sixty million dollars worth of these calls he bought to that's my point i think there's more behind the scenes he owns five million dollars of five million shares of games which is worth a hundred and fifteen million and then he has sixty five million dollars worth of call options so there's some theories on this so that's the the first question is how did he do this and the theories are basically i i don't know if this is true but here's here's eighth theory that this guy john up and post on twitter hundred he because i'm trying to figure out how roaring kitty ended up with a hundred and eighty million plus what's now two hundred ten million dollars of games here's my best guess in late april or early may he sold most of his equity and loaded up on calls then he came back to the social media posted the meme and it went up three hundred percent in like you know three days if he sold his calls near the top that would give him cash back he which he would then go back to buy equity and then he decided to do this game again recently and he's basically using this scheme of like sell equity buy calls sell calls at the top now you have a lot calls are basically like a leveraged way to buy take that leverage leverage gains that you have now buy equity again and you know rinse and repeat basically he's like this is isn't insane i've ever seen anything like this before his his twitter page instead of the word post it should just say a dollar sign that's his atm every time he clicks that button he's like that's how much power this guy has it it's insane yeah yeah everything about it easter he needs a re brand roaring kitty is now like the fierce lion like he's no kitty this guy is is just legendary i mean the tweets about this are are also just hilarious and one brand boyle we could put these up i'm telling my daughter that this was warren buffett and just a kid picture of him wearing his purple like catcher at trunk your boy tron posted here's warren kitty and his hundred and eighty million dollar games position rolling up the stock market tomorrow and it's the wheelbarrow with like the guy from south giant balls in the wheelbarrow he's got i mean these are it's really really pretty crazy another one quiver quantitative is saying depending on how games moves his his net worth is about to pass the other great stock trader in history nancy pelosi she's currently a two hundred forty five million estimated he's at two hundred ten and and there's said two legendary investors at the top of their game it's great it's great this is a a very captivating story well there's a there's the obvious question which is what do you do about this so during the first games stop brought up i went through like whatever the you know the seven stages of grief like the seven stages of fo which was first i ignored it irrelevant to me who cares then i became dismissive and i said why are you guys wasting your time on this this is stupid this is not like games stop really there's not like you're gonna lose your money then i became jealous as all my friends made money doing this and all the random of strangers on the internet who are doing the dumb thing we're making the money and then i went to chasing fo and i bought a hundred thousand dollars where the games stopped during that last grade no way did you really i think i made like i don't know what i made i think i made like fifty grand or something like that off of it like fifty percent i sold and i got out and then i became confused and then i i went back to ignoring it again and that was my cycle and so the question is what am i gonna do during this cycle i already have ignored the first lien in me saw that ignored it didn't even know what to do with it didn't pay attention to the the next two tweets either i should be entering jealousy currently i'd all i need is a few text messages i'll enter jealousy and then i'll chase then i'll you know i'll i'll read the consequences of that we'll see what happens i think you should do nothing i will do nothing that's the that's the honest i think that that is a mature answer even though the last time they didn't feel good it was you remember the andy dukes book where that talks about this term resulting no it's like she's a poker player and it's you know it's the idea of if you you pay you play a bad hand in poker but you've got lucky you know on the river you got your card and is your conclusion from that i'm a genius and this was a good play and like for a lot of people unfortunately that is how they they result if if something goes badly they assume there's was a bad decision if something goes goes well they assume it was a good decision when actually like the decision and the result are in many ways disconnected and you should be able to not analyze a decision without without only basing it on without only basing it on the result and so similarly even though i made money last time i think that would be resulting to say that was a good idea in fact all i did is probably waste three days of my attention focused on this random sock that who gives us shit so there's one person in this story that's not being discussed right now and i think that over the next handful of months he's gonna be a lot more famous and so that's ryan cohen so ryan cohen he is most famous for starting chewy dot com chewy dot com was a pet food company my c founder joe my business partner joe also owned a pet food company first and a chewy dot com came about and chewy dot comes their whole thing was we're gonna raise hundreds of millions of dollars and we're gonna spend like crazy on marketing we're gonna lose money on our customers for a long time and we're gonna provide such a wonderful experience that hopefully they come back for us and they like us so much whatever he was right ryan cohen was right chewy dot com worked my friend or my partner joe's company went out of business and it became a huge success he sold it for three and a half billion dollars well when he made his money i think he made roughly five hundred million dollars he put virtually one hundred percent of it into two stocks apple and wells fargo and there was a big article written in the wall street journal about and that's when we started learning ryan cohen and is kind of he's different not he's he's he's different not even amongst like the average person because he started and insult the company for that much money he's different even amongst crazy people who are talented enough to do that david go he's uncommon amongst uncommon man yeah and so he starts becoming an activist investor where he starts buying stakes and companies that he thinks aren't don't going so well so well let's do the numbers he put two hundred fifty million into apple in twenty seventeen that stake is now worth over a billion well i don't know what happened with the wells fargo one but he puts seventy six million into games stop back when it was like four or five dollars a share so he owns thirteen percent of the company ten percent ten and a half percent out now he's also the ceo now so he's he's been in he's actually running the company now that's bought himself a job but it's working and he did the same with bed bath which was for a minute another meme stock but he would buy i believe if you buy a larger than a five percent stake in a publicly traded company you have to reveal yep have to disclose it and so he's done that a few times and he's become an activist investor where if he buys five percent of your company that means something's going wrong as in management is screwing up but the company has potential and then wall street bets and the rest of these reached crazy gen retail us or see and they buying the company anyway ryan cohen has been present for all of this ryan cohen is only thirty seven or thirty eight years old he's a young guy and he is still at as of right now i believe he's still the ceo of games stock and so games stop and i'm very curious to see what's gonna happen with him over the next handful of months and i would love to get him on the podcast because i think he is a guy who is not just interesting for his chewy business but i think that he's a guy who thinks very very differently and has very strong will and we're gonna see a lot from him over the next handful of months i think he only follows one person on twitter who unfortunately it's not roy kitty it's just the games stop corporate account is really really should follow is roaring kitty he should either swap it or or go to two followers on twitter ryan that's my only criticism of you otherwise i have no notes yeah so it's just a crazy story well where where is this guy now where is keith gill in the movie he was in massachusetts and what what do you know about massachusetts in the wintertime it's the worst right cole bitter cole horrible he disappear for the last two or three years massachusetts in the wintertime very uni inspiring this guy just made a huge bet he needs some inspiration where do you think he would be going he should voyage around voyage it's not not the quite direct word he should scam around no no no that's not it that's not the right word what do you i think he should wander i think he should wander around and that's today's sponsor wander dot com that was that was a good plug well what is wander what is wander dot com so wander the dope business mean you both invest in this because we are big believers in this but we both like to travel but when we travel it's like you got a couple options normal the normal options were hotel you go to hotel and you're like okay great i'm staying in this kind of like i get all the luxury amenities i get the service but i'm in this tiny box or you go to a vacation rental maybe on a b or something like that and you you might get a bigger space might get more rooms it feels like a home but now you don't have the service and it's a it's like a box of chocolate just like very hit or miss what you're gonna get i was an airbnb host and i could tell you my internet was definitely the cheapest internet that money could buy and it was not very good sam's stunning views where his like plants right outside the window sill yes it wasn't a great so wander basically operates a bunch of really fancy luxurious properties that you could stay and they built it so it's kinda geared for like the remote workers but also high end shit so every where most of their properties have gyms they've got work work desk set so yeah internet this out so i'm looking at a a trip right now i was gonna take with my family because i wanna you know get out of the house a little bit and i was like originally planning for a hotel but a hotel now i now have three kids three three kids that are under the age of you know five and a hotel room now is actually guantanamo bay if you put all five of a set of room like we just put the do not disturb thing up there out of shame we're like don't come in here you don't wanna know what's going on in this this room is like disturbed yeah you know it's guantanamo bay bay in there so so that's not working i would still wanna be able to get shit done so like check this place out i'm showing you this this one that's at abandoned beach so wander has this location look how sick this is so all of their places are like this they're like just like pure like it looks like it's straight off of pinterest or instagram it's like looks location it looks like a desktop like a like look at just like the work setup the work desk set up at this place it's like you have the standing desk big monitor apple keyboard they got like we have fast internet for real and they're like we have a razor mouse for you they have everything it's like here's where you could do the podcast here's the gym here's the views here's the beds and what has a asana too they have like twenty four seven like concierge they have like a cleaning service they have everything versus you know you have to do it all yourself here it's like you wanna stay in a home but it shouldn't feel like homie right in the same way that like you don't want your meat to be gaming right it's like you i kinda do like the luxury shit and that's why i like wander so if you're looking to travel check them out wander dot com they have amazing properties i think two like two hundred now these guys are grown really fast so they grew to like two hundred locations in like eighteen months or something insane well that's the plug that was a great plug yeah if we don't say so ourselves yeah that was a great plug one dot com check it out sean you've been gone for three and a half or four three and a half weeks now how you been two but who's counting i'm good pate attorney leave is harder than working for sure so like couldn't wait to be done with it i i have realized a few things about myself one thing i realized is i love being an uncle and i love being a fun dad but to be the primary caretaker of kids is so hard and whoever like you know whoever created this myth of like you stay at home with the kids and i'm gonna go do the work the greatest marketer of all time that is that is a great reframe of what's actually going on it is so much work to be home with kids but it's great every everybody's healthy every happy so i'm feeling good did you do any work over the last since your kid was born not really now just a few few voice notes here in there did you enjoy that no like i told you i am again like i did other work it's just work that's like you know more like changing diapers and like you know clean it up spit up but did you enjoy like lack of screen or lack of thinking about like business yeah so one thing i did do is i shifted to doing a lot more creative stuff so i so i read a lot more which i normally don't read because i feel pretty unproductive if in the middle of the day i'm just yeah i'm gonna just take a couple hours and just curl up on this couch and read a book that seems completely unproductive even though for my my my job my life actually could be actually can be really productive for what i do but i've i just have a guilt one when i do that so in this i had no guilt i like what did your playing the piano again which was like just like a fun thing i could do with my kids so i'm playing the piano i'm swimming with my kids all the time i'm you know reading books i started working on some like comedy stuff that i always wanted to do like just dabbling and like how would i do this i went and saw a stand show went and saw a play like the stuff i wasn't doing before that was very much more in a like art creativity mindset versus productivity did you go by yourself no i took my mom to the comedy show and i went to the play with some friends that the place is actually pretty interesting have you seen or heard about the le and brothers play i saw you share it yeah i think that i mean sounded awesome i've never heard of it other than your share so i feel i wish there was more of these things this is really cool so there's a broadway play that's basically the le and brothers story and what i thought it is and i thought it's gonna be the oh wait crash i thought it's gonna be the big short but as a play and i was like oh great big short it as a play i'm in but that's not at all what it is it's basically the story of the le it ends like it's the the play ends the first day of the of the crash like it doesn't even show the crash it's like implied do you already know what happens with the crash it's the hundreds of years before that of how le brothers even became to be one of the four biggest like investment banks in the country and it's a pretty wild play because there's only three actors in the entire play it's three and a half hours long which is way too long to be honest but these actors are super talented and they basically carry this thing for three and a half hours and it's also pretty fascinating because i did not know this history and it's kinda like reading a biography but as a play and when i watched it i was pretty inspired i was like i wish there was more business entertainment like this like i am really into things like this i could if i was this interested in the le brothers story which i was not curious about before i feel like there could be a hundred times more content like this and i'm kind of inspired to try to get i think that would be the greatest pivot ever not quite pivot i think you should one hundred percent explore this i think that would be awesome i am exploring this not i was not only as a play i'm not sure if it plays the exact form factor but something more in this style of content not tweet newsletter podcast youtube i think sort a podcast youtube but i'm just like i feel lame am doing it whereas if i did something like this like a grand creative act i think it would be a lot more fulfilling lot higher risk too what's the play called be le brothers trilogy i think and who wrote it and like did you research yeah i started looking into them and i started trying to figure out like how successful is this thing and i started doing the thing right i'm counting the seats like during you know one of the two missions of the of the play because it's three and a half hours they have two missions i'm trying to figure out like how successful is this thing and how long has it been running and all that stuff so what's what's the background i'm looking i'm trying to look it up now there's not it's not too not many people have written about it i think it like started in london and then it's kinda like fan out from there so this was opening night in the san francisco location that i went to and to be honest there was a lot of empty seats but i also didn't understand because when i went to buy tickets it was like no tickets available so i think either they screwed up their ticketing system or i don't know why half the seats were ramsey empty but yeah anyways the point is i think there should be more like this and i kinda wanna create it i'm also slightly intimidated because i'm like i really have no idea where i would start never done anything like this and so which is a good feeling to be in because i know the answer is well you just star put one foot in front the other and like today it's it's the moist quote that i've shared a hundred times on this podcast which is today i know nothing about deodorant but in six months i'll know everything there is to know about deodorant and that's how i would have to approach this because i know nothing about this have you ever heard the story about sylvester sal and rocky he was a nobody and he wanted to make this movie and he wrote the screen play not the story is even better than that he did not wanna write a movie he wanted to be an actor that's right and he goes to audition and he keeps getting turned down and they're like i mean if you're hear sylvester just still long talk like his voice is like his his mouth who's in a weird way his voice is sort of strange so he just kept getting nose and instead of just taking the know and just saying well i guess i'm just not cut out for this he's like if they won't put me in a movie i'll put me in a movie which is one of the greatest like big dog moves anybody could ever have right like what's the opposite of no small boy stuff is to say if they won't cast me i'll cast me myself and he hates writing so he's he's never written a move before and he actually hates writing he's not good at it but he the the best part of the story is that he just ratchet up the intensity to level twelve so he's he decides i don't know how to do this so i'll just why don't i just not come out of this house until i've written this the play or the the the the sorry the screen play and so he's he wakes up he's like i'm gonna start writing i'm not gonna do anything else i will not leave this house until this is done that's the only way i know i could force myself to get through the thing i don't like to do with just writing how long did take him and he he goes even further he paints the windows black he's like not only will not leave my house i didn't wanna be able to look out the window he literally painted his windows black and so this has become a phrase that i use with ben a which is yellow let's paint the windows black on this which is how do you have a a phrase for what it means to turn the intensity knob up all the way where it breaks and you're just holding the knob and now the intensity is stuck at level twelve and that's painted in the windows black and so then in three days he wrote the the v one of the script of rocky he then and then it's even better the story is actually like i i don't know all the details are but the here's like the the rough version the story i i apologize if i get something wrong he goes to to sell to to like get the movie made now and actually they like it they're like we like this and he's like awesome and i'm rocky they're like not that part we like it we you're not rocky and they're like what he's like no i'm rocky that's why i wrote this thing and i think they're were like you know you could do this other role he's like no way give me my script back and they're like look look we'll give you two hundred thousand dollars they they offered up three hundred grand which is the equivalent of a million bucks today and he said he goes i had a hundred and six dollars in my bank account in the bank account he turns it down things are pretty rough he ends up selling his dog to like bake ends meet what's heck what a dick he sells his not i think he also couldn't like a afford feed the dog also because he could couldn't really afford to feed himself either so he sells his dog we get sell a kid hundreds of bucks he then goes and he finally get he finally i think a sales thing for twenty five grand or something i'm like way less than what he was gonna get and he gets to be rocky after rocky comes out and it's a success he goes back buys the dog back for thirty five grand because the guy was like no i like this dog and he's just like makes him an offer he can't refuse like i can give you thirty five thousand dollars for this dog batch and that is the story of rocky which is insane because the story of rocky of how we got made is more inspiring than the actual story of rocky in the movie any he wins in oscar that year maybe my first play it's the story of sylvester alone riding rocky that's a great idea eddie he goes to the oscars they win the oscars and he goes ten months ago i was a valet driver i was parking cars i here at the oscars today this is a great story this is your story to the half a million people that are gonna listen to this do not steal my goddamn idea we're leaving this in don't steal by idea that's actually the beauty of this no one's gonna steal by idea because the hell is gonna go try to make a play you turned me on this guy on twitter i don't know i think his name is zach prod so zach is this guy who's like he's like a two ten pound beef cake he's a big guy which means like if you look like a donkey you're not exactly gonna think like this guy's gonna be a good long distance runner but turns out he likes running and he's run the marathon now under three hours which is like really fast particularly for someone who's that huge and he's got this whole stick called the year of obsession and the all he does is tweet out he goes it he goes if like if i could i would just run and lift weights twenty four hours a day i'm so sad i have to sleep like he tweets like crazy things out like that and it is a little cringe but i i think it's more inspiring to be honest than it is cringe i think i actually think it's quite awesome i do think that crazy people like that are are pretty cool but he that's what your life needs to be over the next year the year of obsession paint the windows black maybe and his whole thing is he does a running club in new york city every monday at seven all these people meet and go for runs with them and he goes here's the rules you're gonna be at this place at seven we're gonna run this many miles and then we're gonna sprint afterwards and you must wear black and so his whole thing is everyone who's following him or who's sick into this they put like a little black emoji next to their name i think it's awesome that's what that's what you need to you already wear the black t shirt now you gotta pin the windows black and you're gonna write the sylvester alone story yeah that's we good by the way you said this thing run club what's the deal with run clubs i feel like i'm getting get my seinfeld filled on what's the deal with run clubs nowadays this is i saw this take tiktok that really spoke to it this guy posts and he goes was there like a thing like did i miss something maybe the pandemic was pretty you know a pretty crazy time i was inside for a lot like did something happen where everybody started running he's like everybody i know runs now and that's cool running could where why did ever decide to start running and like why are the run run clubs are like an insane thing now have you been paying attention to this yeah i have and i'll i'll explain to what i think happened so basically there's a guy nick bear we had nick bear on the podcast i don't think you've ever made it with nick have you yeah i mean i did one with them yeah but then i tried to leave you know it's kinda like when you roommate hangs of sock on the door i was like okay let me leave sam alone with deep things like you guys can you guys could admire each other's nipples for the next an hour and a half that's cool i'll i'll just take the dent take the pot off nick bae is a beef kick amongst beef cakes nick bae is he looks like a he looks like if you like do it the wag you version of the obsession guy yeah if you were like take a greek statue and put it into a a a white guy who's rated it's in the midwest that it would look like nick bae so nick bears this he owns bear it's a it's a supplement company but he has this stick called the hybrid athlete and the hybrid athlete basically means someone who likes to lift weights and run because typically runners look like not great they look very skinny you could be skinny fat and a great runner his whole deal was like i'm gonna lift weights while i run he's been doing this for many many many years now at this point he's got one or two million followers on youtube and i think he helped popular this thing and so now a lot of these young men who like to live weights they're saying i actually wanna go running as well and so they've made it popular to go running and it's also a very social thing so in austin run clubs have been getting very very popular and so on the trail that i will go and walk on or ride my bike or run you see tons of groups of runners and it's very popular and you're starting to see pop up in other cities in fact the woman who runs my little project sam's she used to work for a company that was trying to make money on run clubs i think that's a stupid idea because i think it's incredibly challenging to make money off that but it's a cool idea that they exist cool guys start running right influencers so have you seen this one in austin called the rad dog run club no that sounds awesome the branding is it's a run club beautifully done the branding is amazing so go to instagram dot com slash raw dog da a w g here's the profile raw ugg austin texas sexy faces at sexy paces saturdays at eight am location post weekly open all just show up i've seen this guy yeah look at the photos the photos of this it's coachella it's la palo it's every festival you've ever seen but they're just running instead of you know drinking and listening to music they made it really fun they made it sexy i i love the branding of this this is kinda like the pink window washing like branding level thing i've never done this and i would never do this because hey hate running but i really respect the way these guys are building the community and the brand around this if you wanna go down a kind of interesting branding and community rabbit hole study these guys i think they're doing a lot of things right go look at their tiktok go look at their instagram go look at their website go look at everything that they're doing and i think that they are doing a lot of things well i also think that if i'm one of these influencers like cody c or whoever i would one hundred percent lean into making a national like run club you know the way we're doing our m meetups which like to be honest we didn't do anything so we should take zero credit for this but the way that the community started self organizing m meetups so that a bunch of like like minded dreamers and schemes get together in some city and they hang out they get to learn about each other's businesses and it has nothing to do with us but like we were the we were the reason that they got together that they found each other but then from there on they have their own little community we great by the way we should shout i don't know what's the euro for that it's like get river dot com recently something i don't know if you wanna go to a meetup should do it i think that is one of not get river dot com for sure that is something else altogether what is that it's called the get river dot io o i think i just opened up like only fans basically so it's get river dot io o and then if you go to the the website you'll see i think we're on the front page so you'll see it august first there's meetups ups in san francisco barry river right so the getting people together in real life for real life experience off of your online community even though you're not there as the creator i think is a really smart move for whoever does that and whoever like you know if i'm nick or if i'm c if i'm one of these you guys i'm gonna lean into that because it deepens people's kind of connection relationship with you and it creates this kind of grassroots movement and if you end up you and you could end up building a business around that right because you could sell you know those products that people have what what are those things like goo and like what else like yeah all the runner products right or the electro electrolyte drinks by the way so the club that you're referring to raw dog they're base in austin the guy who started it is they're all young kids so it look like they're twenty three twenty four twenty five he actually works for nick bear and so and he's a former professional body builder and so the it is sort of rooted in that in in this like twenty people who have kinda started this thing there's another good example so we talked to jesse it's he didn't tell us too much information but do you know this thing called jesse it's started a company with this other guy and the other guy recently joined hampton and that's how i got to talk to him it's the the name of the business is the height of mount everest so twenty nine twenty nine thousand twenty nine i don't know if you pronounce two nine zero two nine i don't know how you exactly pronounce it but it's a they do eight figures a year in revenue and what they do is they have got these events all over the country and they pick a really tall hill or mountain and you climb up that short mountain as many times as it takes to equal mount everest and so it's like all stick is like you can climb out everest or at least the height without actually having to go to asia and do that and it's a great company these guys do really well and they have i think they have hundreds for sure dozens of events throughout the year and it's one of the events that i've seen that's killed it and i've always been interested in these racing events and so like for example ironman right before covid happened ironman was a was acquired by a chinese billionaire and they've tried to make make it significantly larger and i think they've done a good job of the of that and so some of these events are actually really fascinating have you heard of this other one called the i think it's called the country marathon have you ever no no sorry maybe it's called the rock and roll marathon but anyway what it was is in nashville they had this where for twenty six miles every mile they had a band play and so it was called like it's it called like the rock and roll rock rock and roll running series i see yeah and i believe that business was acquired for nine figures and it started as a kinda small niche thing where they had music every every mile and so there are actually some of these a really interesting of endurance events businesses where they just have one cute stick on it and that makes it kinda cool there's another one called the speed project have you seen the speed project so the speed project they don't listen to this the speed project doesn't have a website you can find it on instagram but it's invite only and so the race has i think only one rule or two rules the race has two rules they start at the santa monica pier and you either you by yourself or you with a four person crew have to make it to las vegas and the rules are basically you can go there way you want but you have to be running so you can't get a car you have to run the whole time and number two you just gotta get there and so you could take any route there's and and there's no website other than you have to be invited to do it they don't really really announce when it's gonna happen and it's gone whenever it happens every year it kinda goes viral where you see like a handful of influencers so you like they're like what is the speed project why are they there right it's super fascinating my friend did it and got second i have two things to say about this number one if you're the type of person that likes to do these and your like world class at organizing these hip up so sean at sc dot com i have a a small google doc of ideas i thought would make for a really awesome event that would be like just fun and awesome if it existed but i i will never do the work myself of organizing these the second thing is what is the pickle ball of running i'll let do on that so what i'm thinking about that is pickle ball took tennis made it faster cheaper smaller more accessible to all ages and all sizes of people right what who's gonna do that for running so who can make running less of a marathon or an iron ironman like literally the other direction who's gonna shrink it into like it might just be sprints like maybe there more like pickle i was a i was a sprinter in college there's no sprint events for a grown men and and reading is way better for you anyway answering insurance is needed for sure if you're gonna put adult like hey just come out my and sprint but i do think that there's gotta be something like this or i we made this joke on the on the pod where i was at of dinner and this guy goes yeah i he goes we he goes yeah every saturday morning we walk the trail we walk a mile we to our favorite like kind of brunch spot we drink a beer and then we play pickle ball for an hour or something like that he's like i call it the like the suburban the suburban the suburban iron man and i was like holy shit he's got something here with this branding of like the bourbon like the the suburban you know dad dad bought version of a of a fitness competition where it's more about the fun and just getting out there and doing something because i think in the jobs to be done of what's going on in these races you have many things that are being bundled you have the fitness component you have the social component i think a lot of these run clubs by the way have a big dating component because i think you wanna meet people in a context where everybody's you know swipe you know sweaty it's sexy it just you know everybody's is it's like a positive vibes community you gonna talk to anybody approach anybody i think there's a dating about it so you have the social you have the fitness you have the photo component which is how do i do something that i can brag about on social media right how can i go post something else media that makes me feel better than the average person and that's how tough mud and spartan race like that was huge for them so i think there's a bundle of things that you're getting out of these and then you know the last one is kind of like getting people out of the general feeling of softness in their life which is it just very real and i think only going more and more over time as we spend more and more time on our devices and ai goes in and and makes it our life even more you know everything you want at the touch of a button people still want something difficult physical to go do so i think you can un bundles part of that and make it maybe ramp up the social and put down the physical right or ramp up the photo and you know what whatever so i think you can un un bundle that in a way so let me tell you something really quick and then we'll wrap up on the segment but google hi i i think you pronounce it hi rocks so h y r o x don't go to the website just click images so this guy i think his name's christian he used to work for iron ironman the company iron ironman and about seven years ago he started this thing called high rocks and they have events throughout the year as well as a world championship the world championship just happened on saturday oh i saw i just saw this on twitter or somebody was like these hi scale and it was a like a photo that just looked massive in scale it's like a it's plain hanger or something what what is this thing so they rented out this year it was in brooklyn so i imagine they rented out like a whole pier and the way it works is i i i think the event changes every time but i'm not exactly sure but basically they rent out those huge area and you have to do a series of five exercises in a row and the first person that wins wins the whole thing and so the exercises are something like lunges with a weight on your back and then it's throwing a certain amount of meters and then it's running a certain amount of miles and then throwing like a a weighted ball in the air like you gotta like throw it in the air a bunch of times it's basically the my first muscle challenge but like real man and yeah and the winner did it in an hour which means i imagine the the race is an hour to three hours depending on the how slow you are and if you look at the photos it's all people wearing all black and they're all smoking hot like everyone who does this is good looking and so it's sort of like crossfit but crossfit kind of has a douche component to it this somehow tone it down and they added like a new york all black brooklyn like yeah swag to it and it's awesome so lance armstrong competed in it this this saturday literally the e version of crossfit it's the it's like e equifax it's nice of cross and i think they're killing it and this ken write out who was a guess in our podcast a few times or once he i hung out with him recently he was like hey i'm be in new i'm gonna do this race he got third or fourth or something like that and i went and looked at the instagram of the people who want it and it's their whole life so now they're like dedicating their life to this and so when you when i saw that i was like this business is gonna be huge if people are like it's like a lot of x a lot of x college athletes so we're like oh this is like interesting outlet where i can make a little bit of money and continue to train because i'm not good enough to like be professional at whatever sport i was doing i think this business is is killing it and i think we're we're gonna see a large exit from these guys very interesting man this is a it's a much bigger space than i would have guessed for sure and i think you're seeing a covid bounce so i don't know about you but as i work from home all day i'm normally i don't really like hanging out with people but i'm like i need someone to touch me like i just like i need a man to put his arm on my back and ask how i'm doing or like you know what i mean like i feel like like i need more touch and stuff and like dude if you're twenty two years old and you're working remotely i feel really sorry for you that you don't get to experience some of the that we got to experience and i feel sorry for myself frankly that i'm still not experiencing it and so as someone who doesn't like to go to these events i'm now i'm like i wanna go meet people i need to go do this stuff i need to find my tribe so i think that's what's happening that's very cool yeah this is a great great segment can i leave you with one interesting thing that happened to me in our catch up segment here i got a phone call the other day that kind of blows my mind and makes me i feel simultaneously grateful embarrassed and inspired and you might be wondering what could possibly make me grateful embarrassed and inspired at the same time here's what hap scott harrison calls me the other day and i see this voice mail from scott harrison scott harrison is the founder of charity water he's been on the pod once and he's an incredible guy i've told a story before but i'll i'll i'll leave that out for now he's definitely somebody in my like top five people i admire if you thought said which entrepreneurs you admire i'd be like scott harrison is up there the short version of why is the guy is using his entrepreneurial talents to kind of save the world in a way he's providing clean water to people who don't have it which once you see firsthand you feel like something's wrong in the world that people don't have clean water to to you know to drink or to bathe then or or sanitation all that he's been doing it for a long time he could be he could be making himself rich some other way if he wanted to but he decided to devote his lives with this and he didn't the best part of why my is because he didn't start that way right there's some people who they do amazing things and you're like they're just sort of born mother teresa this guy was like a party right party boy you know he was he's like i was living every deadly sin you could for a period of time for ten year period of my life and he turned it he sort of decided to make a shift and and ended doing this anyway here's the story because scott calls me i missed the call i call him back what's up do you need something is there something i can help with for charity water what's going on he's said hey man i'm listening the podcast and i had some feedback for you i'm just unsolicited feedback it says sure hit me he said you wanna do this right like you really like doing this yeah i love doing this and this is like your thing right you wanna make this your thing absolutely i think i can be great at this you gotta say like less oh and i was like what here there you heard it again so i'm i tell him what do you mean because said i was listening to this episode that you guys did great episode but i think you said like seven hundred times and i'm like oh no he's right and he's like you know i used to do the same thing it's hard to get rid of but you can get rid it and i wanted to tell you that i think you do it too much it doesn't add to what you're doing i think you could fix it and you will be better if you fix it and i just wanted to tell you that and i was like man i had two thoughts i said first how do you hear rid of this how do i improve that is it like you said that you improved it how did you do it was there some technique you did did you hire a coach what'd you do and he's like don't worry about that it's just once it's in your awareness you'll fix it you're like i i am worried about it basically the answer was pay attention to it and you will obviously start to to start to reduce it and you'll will you'll work on it that's all it'll just take reps the second thing i felt was dude thank you i'm not that close with scott harrison i like him i would consider him a friend but this is the first phone call at five years let's say right we don't talk that often so for him to do that the the courage and the care that it takes to call somebody and be like y some feedback for you i thought that was an incredible friend moment and i was again simultaneously grateful embarrassed and inspired by it and since then i've been thinking about this how can i just call and insult people call people and just ruin their day no i'm fine but like hey bitch i've been thinking about you you're you're only five five we gotta add a few inches of that do radical can out by you're welcome seriously that this is a gift he gave me a gift and i just thinking about this how many of those gifts have i giving people very few very few i think it takes a lot of the guts to do that i think it takes a lot of care to do that there's different ways to show somebody you care there's different ways to give you know active service for somebody and i was like this is one i can do and for the people in my life that i know like me would take it as a gift i'm gonna do that of course i'm sure that it i can go the other way where some people do not take it well dude neville neville my best buddy neville does that to me all the time like he'll be like hey could you come over for a few minutes yeah sure and i'll go over and he goes hey so last friday like do you need something he's like no you do come over well like he goes last friday night i had a party over and this one woman brought her parents there and you did not let the mom talk nearly enough you're you're you're kinda talking over her and i think it made you look really dumb and i don't think you are dumb he has done that to me so many times that's one example another example i stayed his house and i didn't make his bed right goes let me show you how to be a better guest in someone's home did you see how i had that bed made because scott i really care i need you to make it this way come let's make it together and gonna show you how to do it and that's what i explain you he does it all the time that is amazing also kinda kinda big dodge there i like that but he's me he is kinda like a older brother to me i've always looked up to him but he's done like when i was like twenty five i think i had a ton he stayed at my house and i had a towel that smelled like mildew and it goes and i gave it to him to use and he goes come here sam let me show you something this is that how you treat guests or like anyway it's always really helpful he's always sent it to me i think it's great but i will say i know you say like a lot i kinda like it to be honest oh no i'm getting feedback whiplash out wait my thing maybe it's my thing we should do a charity thing with him we should do we should do something did thing you weren't on that podcast when we did on so we did one no but we should do like a proper campaign like this the way we did my first muscle we should do something whether it's that one anyway we should when we did we've done a few things where we were kind of charitable but not really and whenever we do those it's the right thing to do and it feels good we we gotta do we gotta do a little a little give back there and i'll post an update of the one that we already did which was it went to the campaign went to india so we provided clean water wells to to people in india and i think we raised like something like fifty thousand so i wanna provide an update of like what happened with that the pack which is what one of the key innovations that scott had with his charity he was like no he was not like he decided to change the way the charity he's like i give to i give money to charities but i never hear back from like i don't know what happens with with the money and then they just come back again in the next year and this it can give have more money he wanted to have like a closed loop so that when you donate it you actually get to see where the money goes what impact it had you get to see the photos he literally installed like little google donated these like iot devices these flow meters so that you can see that the well you help build you can go in the app and you can literally see how much water is flowing through that well right now and so he did a lot of experiments like that to like change the feeling people get when they give where they actually get to feel the impact because his belief was if people could see how much good it does they they would do more and he was totally right that's just why charity waters raised so much money alright is that the pod that's the pod i feel like i could rule to word i know i could be what i want to put at all in and like a day's off on a travel never looking back