The Wild Story of Mike Lynch’s Rise From Janitor to Tech Billionaire

i have a different billionaire story that's kinda crazy i wanna tell you about so what check this out this is this is a wild story i'm just gonna brace yourself i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a days off on a road less child okay let's start with this i'm gonna read you a snippet from an article first so in july in early twenty twenty two the court ruled that this person mike lynch owed four billion in damages that are still pending okay so court rules that mike lynch owes four billion dollars next line at the same time the us tried to extra egg lynch he was a uk the us says no no we're gonna come try you over here they bring him over and he arrives in san francisco in may of twenty twenty three and he's released on a hundred million dollar bail and cons confined to house arrest in a rental home with cameras installed in every room two armed guards on duty on duty around the clock now what's interesting about this is that that rental home with cameras assault in every room and armed guards on two to round the clock is my dad's house i don't know if you know this that guy stayed at my dad's a airbnb b when he was on trial your dad owns an air like a home in my actual house he'll will airbnb out for periods of time he'll go if he gets to booking that's at the right price point they'll go get he'll go to like a hotel at our the hotel like in you know fremont or something like that go stay there for the night and then he'll be like so happy that he made some money but my dad didn't know this he gets a bookings man this guy wants this guy just booked three months and three months by the way the max you can even do when you're air airbnb being in your own house since san francisco it's like that you have ninety days so he's like wow i got the whole year from one guy this is great so he's like where am gonna go for three months and he's figuring it out go travel whatever and then he text me and he's like hey can you check the ring camera real quick and i checked the ring and there's these bodyguard standing outside the house what what's going on and so he text the guy and he's like hey mike hope you got into the house okay from the lock box curious what are these guards doing outside the house and he says oh i'm actually on house arrest i'm awaiting my trial and for the duration of this i can't leave the house you know that's why i wanted airbnb everybody you have this nice backyard hard to get a nice backyard in san francisco so and my dad's like what the hell so he starts googling the case we all start googling the case and this guy story is fascinating and is this for autonomy yeah so i'll give you the end of the story which is which is kinda interesting right i don't know if you've have you heard the latest update on this no but not the latest but i know that it's weird there's a lot of weird stuff going on so i'll i'll start with the end then we'll go back to the beginning the end of the story is at some point my dad's like hey i gotta go back to living on my house your trial is not over the guy's like okay okay i'll ask the judge if i can move so he moves airbnb he the trial he's acquitted on all charges he's a free man to celebrate him his family his lawyers they all get on a yacht he owns this thirty million dollar yacht and this person that i used to work with the guy who was his character witness his lawyer his wife the lawyers wife they all get on this boat and they start sailing and mysteriously two months after being acquitted of all charges is a freak yacht accident and he dies he he's killed on this boat at the same time forty eight hours later the other guy in the case his c founder who was also quit on the same day of all the charges is going for a run and gets hit by car and also dies and so it's kinda strange that this guy who was in this multi billion dollar fraud suit the day you know forty eight hours apart just a couple months after being acquitted him and the founder both killed and freak accidents yeah alright so now let's go back to the beginning i googled guy so this guy story is actually pretty fascinating and he is called the british bill gates and the reason he's called the british bill gates is that this guy was brilliant so he grew up super poor basically he's he's so poor but he's he's a hard worker he's smart and he ends up getting a scholarship to go to school because he and he said this he goes there was a guy like a a a lord in the sixteen hundreds but when he died he left his wealth specifically one purpose for the education of poor boys and he's like i was a poor boy and i got to have the scholarship which let me go to a school and so when he's eleven he gets into a private school he starts working really hard at sixteen he becomes a jan at a hospital and he's mop the floors and during the trial he's talking about his his childhood are growing up and they he's like at sixteen i used to work in this hospital mop the floors i was i was and actually i still am i'm a i'm a demon mop so i could do that and the lawyer goes your credibility is on the line here doctor lynch and he goes throw me a mop i'll show you right now and the whole audience that the the courthouse starts laughing he tells a story at the at the hospital he's working his way up so he goes from jan mop the floors to porter which he's he's wheel the people from room to room he's moving the beds around finally he gets the prestigious job of serving tea and sandwiches and he says this most important thing that happened in my life was age sixteen and i spent a lot of time with people who are ninety five year old basically people on the way out and i used to sit with them and i to serve them tea and sandwiches and these people had nobody to talk to and at the end of their life and they opened up to me about their life and about things that they've never told anybody and he goes at sixteen i thought that life is i'm in in life you know life seems like it's forever when you're sixteen and he's every day i was reminded life is really i wanna really make something of my life then he says i get he gets into cambridge he goes into cambridge and he gets a phd in neural networks a artificial intelligence and neural networks and this is he's on so this is this is way before ai neural networks we're a thing so let's fast forward he starts this company called autonomy and autonomy was basically like one of these like machine learning big data take take a bunch of data find patterns that the human eye is not gonna be able to see and they sell this to both companies as well as governments and agencies sort of like a pal es company so he starts his company he ends up selling it to hp for eleven billion dollars oh so he packard who who's like a hardware company wants to go to software and they get really hot and heavy and they the company was already public but they offered a sixty percent premium so they said well we'll give you sixty percent more than your stock price to take this deal he says alright you know he's like if i had not taken that deal my shareholders would have been you know would sounded like a heard of elephants stamped towards me why didn't you take this deal so of course i took the deal it takes the deal couple years later h hp ends up writing off eight eight and a half billion dollars of that acquisition and they say you guys cook the books so you you would inflated your revenues your profits or balance sheet so they suit him and in the suit the couple things happened the the cfo plead guilty for wire fraud so he's in jail for out don't know five seven years or something like that the the cofounder volunteers to work with them and he gets a pretty light sentence and this guy mike avoids he tries to avoid being in court with these guys so he's trying to avoid extradition all the stuff for like a period of time finally they get him and what's like the what's the he says she says like so hp says your revenue wasn't what what it really was or you bill people wrong what what's it's a very complicated so they said that hey what you mis misrepresented your revenues and the profitability profile of this business and something on the balance sheet but he said she said so during the court case they asked him about this and he says if you take a microscope into any kitchen even the cleanest ones you will find bacteria okay which is great analogy but look the most guilty shit i've ever heard so that sounds horrible so i don't know all the details at at during the court case they had fifteen million financial documents that they had submitted as exhibits and it was so complicated that during this case one juror kept falling asleep and the lawyer looks over at and he goes i know this is not fascinating but you gotta tell me can you stay awake for the next eight weeks of this trial the jury goes that's a negative i can't get to like and so he ends up getting a acquitted which is amazing and by the way him testifying and telling that story about him and the jan and them they think it helped him and it was very rare most people do not testify yeah for their own defense they tell he don't don't go on the stage so basically he he has charisma yeah some charisma exactly so he gets on the stage out here anyways he gets acquitted now this this death has all these weird circumstances so first when i heard this it just sounded like some real epstein stuff right was like wait these two people get acquitted on the fraud case and then both die within you know forty eight hours of each other in these quote unquote freak accident yeah and like the accident that they described it was like basically if i remember correctly like a water tornado they're like he was sailing and there was like a tornado that like tipped over this huge sailboat well the crazy thing is yeah so then you read about it so i'm on this is me last night there's swing as i reading the details of this case so on one hand okay i sounded like he got killed now we think it killed the boat sank and the boat sank due to this like natural disaster okay that sounds pretty what are you gonna say somebody caused a water potato and a bunch of people survived it and people survived exactly so he could've have just as he described on the other hand there's stuff that came out that was like they didn't secure like the sort of the the the ship in the right way as you would when you have that forecast so like why didn't they do that that's a little bit strange also the guy who got hit by the car the other guy running for it to happen in that time span and they've and the lady who hit him she just forty nine year old woman who hit him with the car she was like i couldn't see and it was like wow okay she's cooperating with forty she doesn't look like a hit hitman and then if you go in the subreddit at the or you know the conspiracy subreddit it's like of course they made it look like that that's exactly how this works they make it they look for a weather pattern that's could be could be believed and then they'll sink the boat and then you it seems like the boat sank due to natural or they find these people who don't look like it man but they're hit and it's like alright i don't know what to believe in all this conspiracy aside incredibly wild story that this is how this all played out and by the way during this time so he sells autonomy in twenty eleven something like that twenty thirteen he starts a new company dark trace and dark trace is this cybersecurity company the the this name does not help this whole conspiracy that's what i'm saying that there's there's more to it so if you look up what dark trace does dark trace i think was started back when wikileaks leaks happened and the idea was we're gonna go to like government agencies and when snowed in and the wikileaks stuff to start happening it was basically i'll make sure wikileaks and the snowed and leaks never happened to you and so they were working with all kinds of you know secret agencies to try to prevent that from being possible and that's what dark is the dark trace was also a five billion dollar company that was quiet was acquired for five billion dollars so the guy was like really prolific as an entrepreneur at the same time in this incredible you know either tragedy conspiracy or freak accent it's it's hard to say but isn't that wild that this guy was just living in my dad's house how much is your debt okay i don't know the answer of this could be i don't wanna give too much information my father but let's just presume that this guy mike lynch is worth billions how much do you think he was paying per month for so that's actually a funny thing except my dad's normal rate i think a normal rate on his area like seven hundred fifty bucks a night something like that it's just at a house with multiple rooms so it's like it's cheaper than it would be if you're were if you're a group by the way by my dad super desperate so he'll he'll put it up for seven fifty someone comes in for five he's like us still five fox great yeah you know that's a a lot of money i gotta say yes this and we're always telling him we're like dude like you're like you're old now don't inconvenience your life like this and he's he'll do it whatever so when this happened of course my first instinct is hey maybe you don't want whatever or this seems like a pretty tense situation we don't know we don't have a lot of information here there's somebody who's like you know on trials is like a criminal living in your house what's going on maybe you should ask him to leave and but dad's like yeah gonna do that calls the guy he calls me back like said what happened is he agreed to leave like are you gonna have to refund him or what he's like no he's paying triple now and i was like what anybody was like yeah i was gonna ask him to leave and then i just told him like this is really stressing me out like i don't know what to do can you just like this is gonna cost more and he's like sure what do you want he's like how about triple he's like okay no problem listen so my dad was over the moon about this whole situation most indian thing i've ever heard that's first of all that's insane by the way i have a friend who just rented out their home for a netflix show and they were spent they the home was worth like five million dollars and the netflix crew to be there and all this they were spending i believe two hundred thousand dollars a month that was the rental price for three months that's right which it's like freaking save and so your dad was almost getting yeah he's getting that reality tv money and it was just one guy sitting in the house all day it's kind of amazing wow first of all there's so many there's so many weird things about the story with when you looked into it what do you think happened well i was i was i'm talking telling you i was really thinking conspiracy and then i go into the subreddit and the top comment was so funny it goes i'm sorry but if you hit packard arranged the hit they'd still be waiting for the correct driver to be installed and know that's true this hp is not ordering a hit so okay i don't i don't believe that's the case i have studied history for a long time i'm in all the stuff a conspiracy theories are always fun to read about here's my takeaway with conspiracies one they do exist sometimes so for example do you remember the o j simpson trial and how there was mark form he was the one of these police officers who planted the glove there yeah that's is that's an example of a conspiracy that i believe like was true the problem with conspiracies there's two problems with them one secrets are really hard to keep you know what i mean like if so if fifty people know that they had to work together to do x y and z it's really hard particularly over decades to keep that a secret you know what i mean that's a that's a huge challenge and the second thing is that when you have to hire people to do these things they're typically lower income like for example someone who works at a security as a security prisoner or a corrections facility they're probably like they don't have that many options they don't make a lot of money and comme this person just shut up for fifty years that's really fucking hard it's just it's like logistically through the pull off a conspiracy like that is effective it's really really hard or like let's say you're doing it with like a bunch of military people so like a hundred just infantry people or you think they're gonna be able to keep their mouth shut it's just challenging but it it does happen it and also with like for example the epstein thing is like oh and then the camera stopped working that day it's like alright this seems extremely suspect it's like the guards happened to leave and the camera shut off and he got his hands on a rope or whatever i don't know the details but like some of these they make you they make you do this the the goatee pitch what's going on here well and then but there's there's a lot of times there's re have you heard of the kennedy curse about how they all die no you know there's like joe kennedy with the patriarchy had nine kids and roughly six of them died and then like the grandkids they all died like early you mean died early yeah for example assassination died plane crashes and then you like look at like the story of each one and you're like oh this isn't a curse you guys are just risk takers like this guy was flying a plane when he just got his pilot license and he was flying like a jet when he should have been flying like a much slower plane or this person he got assassinated because he was president and like ten percent of all presidents have been assassinated a bit assassinated you know what i mean like there's like there's oftentimes there's a story where it like each one individually can kind of make sense added up together it may seem too good to be true but do they're actually things make sense when you look down so anyway that's my opinion on conspiracies but this story is so fascinating i i remember reading about michael lynch and this is a crazy state at your dad's house and b i i also i kinda don't know how i feel about the story i don't know what happened yeah i neither do way by the way for conspiracies i it's like for most things in life you just either choose to believe or you choose not to believe right is a choice whether you believe in something and some things when you choose to believe them they believe in them like luck like i'm a lucky person i believe that because i believe that i'm gonna do different things than somebody who believes they're an unlucky person will do and so it's actually less important to figure out what's true and what's not as it is to figure out what's useful to believe and what's not useful to believe in life and so something like for example conspiracy are useful believe only for their entertainment value more so than anything else or to say i'm not gonna take everything at face value i understand that there isn't just like there's an error rate in every prediction or poll just like there's an error rate in every scientific process there is a conspiracy rate in every you know a series of historical events where some number between you know point one and five percent of all things that have a conspiracy are actually true so choosing to believe for entertainment value is kinda where i land on it single engine airplanes or helicopters and boats like huge yachts two things i i'll don't touch them i think those things are so i'm so afraid of those things have you ever been on a cruise like a big ship like it's like it's it's frightening do you know how to be able to die on cruises every year like a huge amount because they jump off like you know what i mean like they they get lost at etsy they jump off oh like they're just gone first swim him yeah are they're door they're drunk and they fall over the side like there's like this website called like missing at etsy i forgot what it was and it was like all the people who go missing from cruise ships every year it's it's like there's like a it's a huge number the a bad version of facebook those like it's it's like people that are missing at etsy yeah i it's like a pretty disgusting thing like i'm not doing that i i can't stand cruises so but this this story is pretty wild this is this is a wild story that's wild state at your dad's place alright why do i go from here alright so for the last fifteen years you and i have studied like making money would you agree like that's been like the ninety percent of our waking time i have agree i would agree with that that's cool that's great and everything but i think that i have kinda have i've learned how to do it would you agree that you kinda understand like intellectually how it's done i understand intellectually yes like it it's it's hard but well there's like three phases there's understanding intellectually realizing you thought you understood it intellectually and then now you actually know intellectually and then there's doing it i think i finally got past the third stage and now i think the fourth stage is either is being done with it being getting over it or being less interested in it as you go yeah for sure but which by the way like i i actually think that that's a great like arc and something that like i've always loved about studying making money is the idea of nothing to something and it just so happened to that capitalism and making money that is a very practical way of nothing to something like it's a very straightforward way an and we've study that a new thing that i'm being a little bit obsessed with about how someone goes from nothing to something is politics and not that like i actually care i don't ever wanna like become political i don't wanna become the president or pivoting to the all in podcast no i i don't wanna do any of that it doesn't actually interest interest me but like when trump became president i was like you know and that insane that like in his head i think he was like this is just like a bit and that it but it kinda like came to fruition that like you like became powerful and i'm like that's like it's insane how that happens so someone goes from nothing to something particularly in the political arena and so i moved to this small town and i thought you know don't like it's only a thirty thousand percent town i'm gonna email the mayor and i just wanna become friends with her and just like learn about how she became mayor so i i emailed there and i just said like hey my is sam i'm i have this podcast i have this internet company that i started and i'm basically just saying this to impress you but can i come in and just it introduced myself and she did she said yeah and so i met went met with her and i thought it'd be funny i i could just like do a little recap of this meeting but i said a few things that i looked back and i like what the hell why would i ever say that oh at the scene you go to her office you guys go out to lunch you go for a stroll what are you doing she's like you know come over we we'll go out to lunch i'm like i wanna go for i wanna like come your office like i wanna see like i wanna see where the sausage is made my friend like i wanna see it so i get there at like eight forty five she's walking in right about then for our nine o'clock so we just start talking we sit down she's nice her named jennifer tu she introduced herself as jen so i guess i'll i'll call her that or friends now and i just start talking to it and i kinda got nervous you know like i i got did do you ever have to do a thing where you get married and you have to meet like with the priests in advance yeah dude like wait because this got cancel our marriage right now if i say the wrong thing i i it was the exact safe that the guys like you guys go to church and i'm like dude i go to church like every day easily every day you know what i mean i had that like same energy you're part of the bible oh so many to choose of them hard yeah it it was like the same thing where i'm like just impress but i've i've said shoot like how do you like the town and i was like you know warren buffett says this amazing thing where he's like you gotta build the business so good that a dummy can run it because eventually a dummy will i kinda feel like this town is like that like it's so perfect like there's nothing more played it and like eddie idiot can run it and i was like shit not that you're an idiot it's just you know what i mean it's but you said that or she said that i said that no you said the buffet quote about an idiot or yes i was like wait i'm sorry i didn't i was like i bet this in a nice way the town is like perfect like there's nothing to complain about and so i put my sw foot my mouth there she was like oh you know that's funny i used to work for warren buffett and i like tell me about that i would he awesome i heard he's a real cheap ass and and i like sorry i don't i don't know why like duck like this and i it'll be and so she starts to telling stories about that and i i'm like it seems like if you wish for warren buffett as an executive like you must have been like pretty rich why would you quit that and take this crappy job and like again kinda like laughed but like i was saying things at the ten seconds after i said it i'm like what am i doing right now if she laughed at all of them and so it was really kind of funny to like see like she my first interaction reaction should quit horribly but she was into it remind me before you finish your story so my daughter is she just turned five so she she just started going to school for the first time like she's going to to to tee k transitional kindergarten and as a parent you're like helpless because you don't know what your kids like you kinda give her advice but that she crosses the gate she goes into the class and you're like remember like big friends ask people questions they like that and like know i'm trying to give it a way to socialize because she's smart she's fine in the school bar but at the beginning she was super uncomfortable with kids and she started to do and so but i didn't know at a parent you never really know how they're behaving and so we would run into these scenarios we'd be at a coffee shop and then there's a kid who would be like hi like say her name i'm like oh do you know him is that like a kid from your school i get really excited and then she would do what you just did which is she would just suddenly start saying and doing the funniest things he's like we'll be standing there and i'll be like like she won't say anything first i'm like say something is he in your class yeah okay like who's this kid and then i'll be like hey i like your watch like your shoes man's spider man cool and then she's not saying it and then she'll just go why am i so tired i was like and then she goes i need to go to sleep and then she lay down on the sidewalk and like pretended to go to sleep in front me and now i'm just talking to this kid and so this happened three different times with really why am i so tired and you just would say this thing out of nowhere it's like a panic response and i feel like you just had your panic response in front of the mayor where you're like warren buffett says earned some shitty buff quote i'm like don't even like buffett what why am i bringing this up and i just called her an idiot it's like you taken exit off the highway and you're like this is not my destination but now i'm stuck here and then she was like she was like she told me what her politics was i guess she's like she's like i'm a republican but like i'm just barely right of center and most of our town is democrat and i was like yeah but that that doesn't really matter all you do is like phil potholes and make sure the beach is make sure the beach is clean like why are your politics matter what do what beliefs have to do with this yeah i'm like about and then i one of those things were just ten seconds if i said that i was like shit i'm i'm blown this like i just the mid insulting you constantly i'm i'm not meaning to you're you're like how long have i been on twitter like i just been on the internet for too long i can't like function in society anymore yeah and so anyway i i just thought it was like a for a bowl meeting that i blew but she she she handled it well by the way the last time i met with a mayor it was in san francisco and so i met with london breed i'm she was just a a console person whatever district i don't even know what it was called literally eight hours later i met with her at like five pm that night ed died and she became mayor and so i told this woman as i was leaving i was okay last time last time i met with a last time i met with a mayor this woman london became mayor because the real mayor died and i was like shit which means you're either gonna die or and i was like forget i said that it's i just i blew like the men in black pan at the end to just flash her memory and just erased the entire conversation yeah oh man it was horrible but anyway i thought it was fun have you have you been interested in politics at all or are you just totally on the sideline i'm only interested in politics from a marketing point of view meaning it's like something you watch in a movie it's like when you watch the hunger games and you're like that's ridiculous i it's so great like this concept is so ridiculous people just sort of like fighting for the death for the amusement of others and then i watch like you have c three zero six the next next day i'm like i guess that's kinda similar or there'll be like a politician who's kind of like you know actually catering to the rich but just trying to keep the the poor like the masses you know like just subdued enough so they they don't revolt and then you see kind of what some of the politicians do it's interesting to me that this is real life that this is actually how things go like i watched the full trump rally the other day like end to end i know if you ever seen one these but like i started where before anyone's on stage and i'm like what's the set list like who's the dj of this because it's it goes macho man so was like macho man this is like nobody on the stage in the whole crowd is sitting there they're all enjoying it and i was like there's like thirty minutes of just like a set and the whole does that musical set playlist should be on spotify it was macho man the song that was the song that he came out to no that was the one like the the warm up the crowd one before he comes out was is funny by because macho man is by the village people which is like a a gay band yeah but they they played them all why they put all the hits actually another village yeah and then you see the the sun comes out the daughter comes at whatever anyways there's a whole so i am interested only in the like a theater of the whole thing alright let me tell you what other quick story i met i met ed one time the guy i was working for michael bur he got invited into this thing and he was like i don't wanna go to this political thing you should go in my as of my proxy ed being the mayor of san francisco up until like eighteen or twenty or something yeah so so this was when he was the mayor and the room was ron conway who is like a big shot big shot super super angel investor invested in like pretty much every hits silicon valley start probably the most respected angel investor silicon valley and mark pink the guy who created z jeremy stop who created yelp and it's basically like eight of those people and then me and they were they just assumed i was like you know describe who's there to write meeting notes and that's kind what i actually was how old are you i'm twenty five years old maybe he's twenty six years old at the time but it's pretty fascinating to see what happens to these views i thought it's just kinda gonna be a luncheon in we sam which is some small talk whatever and a couple things stood out one ron conway is famous for taking notes i don't know if you've heard this before but he carries with them a giant yellow legal pad and basically everywhere he goes he's just like furiously taking notes and he's taking notes often for like he's actually like very quick with people meaning if you'd hey ron i just wanted to introduce myself he's like what can do for you man and then you're like i just need an introduction to this person he's like tell me about your business real quick and you tell him and he's like cool i'll make the intro and he just like moves on like he's very quick because he's a lot of people want his time but he's just furiously taking notes at all time that was the first thing that stood out second thing was pink his and jeremy's s basically just ripped ed a new one to his face which thought was pretty amazing what is this they were like how do you expect us to run a business here they were like it's so expensive none of my employees can live in the city on top of that if they did live in the city there's just like incredible homelessness and like you know drugs and open air drug markets in the middle of the city and what are you doing what is this like and they you know they were not as hostile as that but they were very pointed and then i got to watch you know a politician do what a politician does where they say a lot of words that don't meet a whole lot and is that what he did i was like okay cool so i see that even in the private off air supposed to be productive meeting like what is he gonna do this guy's not gonna he's not gonna actually say anything of substance nor is he gonna do anything of substance and that was kind of my takeaway from the meeting horrible takeaway i mean i mean like right i don't mean like i don't think you had any my intentions it was just like these are hard problems to solve in the first place figuring out the solution and then actually being able to do anything about the solution would take like so much it's how i felt when i was in a big company so you would see something and you're like we should not do that we should do something about we should do this better and then you might even try a little bit and then the forces of bureaucracy are just weighing down on you at all times so it's just a lot easier to just like say f and move on yeah you're like well my computer battery just is on low battery and that email might take longer than this computer battery has so we'll just forget about it you know what do remember we did a episode really early on the podcast back when we used to record in your office in that tiny room with a table and one microphone in between us two of us and we had daniel gross come by and then i became three three studios on three stool sitting around one table and one thing he said he got acquired by apple his company got acquired by apple when he was really young i don't know how twenty two years old or something like that and he got advice from somebody i forgot who was like some super so what can valley person he's like hey we just got acquired by apple what what's your advice for me when i'm there and he was like the guy told him he goes don't give yourself brain damage he goes what he goes you're gonna be in this company and you're gonna see so many things that could be so much better and you're gonna try to do them and for the first year you're gonna try to do me mirror you're actually gonna make a little bit of headway but you're not gonna actually get the results that you want and it's still gonna be slow he's like basically you're gonna just keep blaming your head against the wall trying to change this giant enormous company don't give yourself brain damage like find a way to enjoy your time there meet cool people like you know who learn from them pick up the technologies but don't try to change don't try to turn the direction of the ship and then he goes and then i did exactly i i made that exact mistake i went and tried to like turn it around and like changed the way we did things and all that he's like that person was right i shouldn't have given myself brain damage and that that he was a kid when we talked to him i think he was twenty five or twenty six or something he's amazing by the way that was he was amazing then too yeah that he was one of those good finds early on can i tell you about something that i read this week so i read about this in i think the atlantic but have you ever heard of this podcast called this this is what it's going well you texted it just before this and i checked it out but i never heard of it alright so let me tell you this story this is pretty amazing and there's a takeaway in this article that is a little bit different but his name stephen west and he's the he's the host of this podcast and the podcast talks about like different philosophies and things like that because the thing about philosophy is like even if it's interesting it's pretty academic and like it's not exactly applicable to like real life and it's also sn and there's a lot of people talking about ideas that don't really change my day to day and he has his podcast that does the opposite of that like it's fairly applicable it's fun to listen to do whatever now the thing about that's interesting about this guy is that he was actually in his i think he got take it away from his parents at the age of nine and he was like homeless often and on for a little while and then left high school at the age of sixteen and then starting in two thousand thirteen he started stocking shelves instead of a girl grocery store like it was a pretty crappy job but he was able to like find meaning in these books he would listen to an audiobook book he said seven hours a day he goes i was listen to it an audio books on philosophy seven hours a day and the last hour of the day i would do just a silly podcast it was manual physical labor but i loved it because was able to listen to these books all the time and so by the time like a few years a few years had passed but he had listened to so many of these audiobooks books that he kinda was like i devoured western philosophy and like i felt like i knew all about it and i loved it and so he read tim embarrass his four hour work book about life design do you remember like the concept of life life design which is like you can build any life that you wanna build you know but you have to map out like what does my day look like how much money do i think i need what does this all look like and he got really in inspired by that which is kinda funny that this like deep philosophy nerd got into like tim ferris and so he launched this podcast called this it it kinda took off and so this podcast now has like two or three million monthly downloads the youtube has a hundred and fifty thousand subscribers but steven west the guy who is the host there's not too much information out there on him like i think he has a twitter but he basically just tweets out when there's a new episode but what interested me a ton is that the article said the article was written about this author who's like her father was in a philosophy but he was kind of unsuccessful like he just like studied all day and how the idea of a podcasting being being possible right now someone like steven west he's able to make a full time living doing this now based off of like just a hobby and there's this quote there that says steven doesn't pre or preach or teach he just talks to you like a smart curious adult and i read that line and that reminded me of something do remember what the old pitch for was the at the hustle yeah you're smart no bullshit friend right or something like that yeah you're smart no no bullshit friend telling you what you need to know about the world of tech and business news right and that was also the line for the milk road it was like your smart no nonsense friend telling you about all the news that's going on in the crypto world no coincidence yes no coincidence fully inspired by the hustle heavily inspired but there's like now that line is used a ton and i'm sure i stole that from someone else as well and i read this biography about gideon gardner he's the guy who started gardner which is a research firm that is worth publicly traded forty billion dollars does billions z in revenue his whole stick early on was i wanna i wanna treat my customers like their adults and i'm just gonna talk to them in a fun way but in a professional way and we're gonna keep things short and the idea is we're gonna treat you just like a smart adult and where you're friend that's kind of like an interesting takeaway because in business there's like you can come up with the new technology or whatever that takes off you can come up with better product but one way i think to stick out is branding and branding is kind of a ne less thing where it's like it's kind of challenging what's a good brand and this whole idea of we're just gonna treat our customers like smart adults and we're gonna gonna be casual about them that is a stick that i have seen work in so many different industries and it has worked consistently he does that wonderfully you and i do that wonderfully that podcast founders which i love does that wonderfully there's so many different content niches that do that wonderfully but there's so many different brands i do that with this idea of like we're gonna be cool but not like actual cool but more like casual we're gonna be a friend do you know what i mean dude the when i went to austin to record all those podcasts i had a list of of people that were doing the podcast with and i was supposed to be excited about them i was like i'm gonna do podcast at tim ferris and with money b right then there was all these meetings in between and then there was one meeting that came up with the last second that i got super excited about and i was to meet tim urban tim urban to the guy who writes wait but why wrote a bunch of books now and so he's got this blog that i love so we go and we meet with tim urban and i'm like dude i go isn't it insane that you have this little blog on the internet you used to just write whatever was interesting to you and then one day the richest greatest entrepreneur in the world slid into your dms and was i like your stuff and like you wanna hang out and then and you're referring to elon musk is a huge fan of like hey this is awesome you're awesome this is awesome i'd love to meet in the background being tim urban runs a blog called wait but why which when you and i were in our twenties it was the hottest thing going and it's still popular but it's like an intellectual blog but silly it's kind of the same description what you said right yeah it's a it's a guy who's smart he's writing about the stuff that's on his mind and he's honest the way he writes it and he he he treats you well whatever so he was like yeah was crazy then elon meets him and elon basically says i would love for you to write i i i he's like a bunch of people wanna interview me you know they want me on sixty minutes they want me on this they want me on that but i actually want you to write about what we're doing with ai with neuro link with tesla with spacex like all of these things i'd love and you you could write whatever you want i'm not saying write something positive but i like you your writing i'd like you right so then he wrote these series with elon basically he wrote a neuro link series he wrote like a ai series he wrote like all these things they were super popular i was like how crazy is that could you have imagine that when you started just writing on your random blog that one day the richest most powerful entrepreneur in the world will just slide into your dms and just say that to you he's like no he's like no i obviously i couldn't have imagined that but he goes i did always have a rule which is my rule when i write is right for equals and i said right for equals i i immediately i was like i love that what is that and he goes is a big temptation on the internet which is to create content that you think is for the masses let me tell you about how this all works i know you don't know i'll dump this down i'll sort of water this down i'll shave off some of the edges i won't tell you about anything of the unknown i'll tell you all the known stuff because that's what you want because you need a lunch and you want your cracker and your cheese and then you want your your your ham and then you're gonna put those three together and that's your that's what you're gonna give for lunch and he goes i also don't wanna go the other way which is i'm trying to impress all these people and therefore i'm gonna act out of character trying to write to impress people who i think are more advanced than me and i'm gonna you know fluff up my language use all this jargon and try to make it sound smarter than it really is instead i just sit down i just try to write for equals and he goes the beautiful thing he didn't say all this but the the beautiful thing of that is when you actually put yourself out there you will attract by definition like minded people you will attract the the people who like what you do will be the people who like you and then you could just keep being you which is a lot easier than trying to guess what other people might like and so there's like this flywheel that starts and i would say this probably the most common mistake that i've made every contact creator makes is this this feeling that maybe i should bend our my content to the masses or maybe i should bend it to impress these folks rather than just a simple right for equals three words i thought it was wonderful but my in my point bringing this up is that this goes beyond content this is about running your company a certain way and till in for fort tito you know he's this guy who what does he own he owns land injuries and a bunch of restaurant chains that are popular a ton of restaurant steak houses and stuff i read his biography any and he and he told the story he's like let me explain like a little bit about my philosophy and he apparently it was like eleven thirty or something at one of his restaurants and some ordered an omelette and the rule was like breakfast ends at eleven or ten thirty or something and they like turn the customer down and he heard he goes was dude the eggs are right there just say like i'm gonna go scramble and leave you some eggs like i got you let me take care and it's just this idea of like following rules versus treating someone like a human and it's like a huge deal and it's real and what i'm saying is so simple but it's actually hard at hampton we only have twenty employees but i still have to remind people i go act like we're a mom and pop business like treat people a certain way where you're like they're just like you know you own like a corner bode day and you see the same people every day like oh you want the usual like i got you and that's actually really hard to do it's hard to teach people how to do that because they wanna act it way but here's a certain here's another good example a non our friend of non who runs a company called cb insights i don't know how big they are but they're around the idea they're around let's say one hundred million a year in revenue and so cb insights makes a very professional enterprise level business that calls a hundred thousand dollars a year their website up until recently the homepage said without data you're just an idiot with an opinion and they have a newsletter that he sent once a week to all their customers as well as their potential clients and at the end of the email he signs it with i love you ana not or like they would say things like please buy a subscription because i owe people money around like they would use like a lot of money yeah and he would like use these funny things and i would see that and i'm like not everyone stick is to be funny but everyone's stick should be like to not change necessarily from just treating people like a human and so when i saw this line about philosophy which is like a very like lame thing like i've tried to learn about it and it's like they have like like they don't want you to to like approach this topic because it's very guarded and i love that this guy's doing this and it reminded me that we should be doing this with a lot of different things there's also another angle of this which is a lot of people when they go into a business will start thinking about what industry do i like what product do i like and they when you're told to kinda like follow what you like you sort of typically think oh i'm interested in health care or you know i really like media and you just pick pick at this i really like nine thousand foot level and a different way to do it is work backwards from your customers so which customers do you respect which customers do you love which customers do you want to understand that which customers would you wanna hang out with right so pick your customer and then work backwards from that so instead of picking an industry and trying to find a business you could pick a customer and try to find a pain point that could become your business i think with hampton did good job with this which is you wanna hang out with all of your customers they're cool people those are the type of people you like to hang out with you know business owners and people who are somewhat successful and trying to do interesting things in their life so you picked a business where you like understand and are attracted to that customer and therefore you'll always sort of stay in love with that business another version of that that i i found for myself is most of the time for any business you're not building product most of the time actually as an entrepreneur like when you sign up to start a business you're actually signing up to try to grow a thing that you're selling most of the time you're selling most of the time program wrote blog post startups equals growth like what is the differentiator between a small business and a startup it's that a startup is designed to grow fast and a small business is might be like a barber shop or nail salon doesn't have to grow fast and so if you're gonna be focused on growth ninety percent of your brain and that therefore selling then it actually makes sense to work bankers from what is the type of sale i will need to do to make this successful so for example i've had ideas where i'm like oh that would be a great product i would love to make that product and companies would benefit from that product but the problem is to do that product to make that product grow i would need to do enterprise sales something i do not know anything about nor would i want to know anything about i'm not curious about that right and so actually that business is not that product it's enterprise sales and do i wanna do enterprise sales every day for the next seven years do i wanna build a team that's really good at doing enterprise sales for the next seven years i found for myself for example i love earning ads like for the first time i started doing an e commerce business and i was like wow i can just set up this one ad and this dude money machine it's a money machine he works all night i don't even have to think about this business my calendar doesn't need to be booked with calls don't need to send cold emails every day this ad will just keep hustling out that i'm sending out these armies to the corners and they're selling for me right and all i need to do like talk to the ad like okay like hey three how how are you see i ads i thank so much you take this tiny commission the small cpm fee and in exchange you can sell twenty four seven around the clock to every single city in every single country and all around the world you are an amazing employee to add and so i work backwards some ad companies or content right i love creating content so if the main way to grow this business content then don't i wanna do that so picking your business based on what is the sales method is a far better way to build a business that you love and that will actually succeed than to pick the product or the industry that you think you're that you think you like yeah i completely agree you said something earlier you said you you start studying how you make money and then you realize you don't know shit and then you kinda learn it and then you start like alright i know it i just gotta give myself ten years and then i care less about it than i thought are you in that stage in and out so i think by way everything goes to that stage i wanna know it i know it oh shit i thought i do it i didn't know it at all and then you finally get to the point where you actually know it but you only know it in your head you don't know it in your hands you don't know how to actually do it right that example i gave one time of the podcast of i watched this guy make this amazing like you know scrambled egg and it was fluffy and it was perfect and it had chives and it was just looked so good and watching that i was like i i know step by step what he did because he showed me step by step what he did with the camera with the audio with the instruction on the screen but if i went and tried to make that egg right now i'd make a horrible mess everywhere and so first you go from i i i intellectually know the blueprint and i know it in my head then i know it in my hands and then at a certain point you still enjoy maybe the craftsmanship of doing it but the novelty of figuring out how to do it of solving the puzzle that goes away because you kinda solve the puzzle more and more and i think a good thing in life is to to sort of seeking new puzzle so right now for example the puzzles i'm seeking the things i'm more fascinated about rather than how did this business get to five million arr with sixty percent eb margins is the creative process how do the most creative people in in the world who create dope shit how do they live their life what do they do how do they think how do they what is the conversation they have in their head which is the same thing i used to ask about entrepreneurs i just find myself more g towards creative people who are living maybe a unique life or an artist based life and then what are they doing and that's where my current fascination is you're drifting towards these beat nick artists i'm i'm i'm wondering how the politicians gain all this power golly lee we are sellout out aren't we no we're not sellout out for we're grown ups alright where do we wanna go from here i guess that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a travel never looking back