# The 5 Levels of Making Money ft. Sam Parr

Channel: Grant Owen
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWzn8ZyRBE
Duration: 1 hr 38 min
Language: English
Words: 22428
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/itWzn8ZyRBE

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[0:00] getting to like 3 4 5 million is a pretty straightforward path. Getting past 5 6 7 million that requires uh when you're starting something you have the same fear whether you're incredibly successful or [music] you're still brand new. It's like getting into a cold plunge or something like that. It it hurts no matter what. The only difference is is that when I've done it a bunch of times I know that it's [music] normal to be nervous, but I still move forward anyway. This is the Grant Owen podcast and this is Sam Par's five levels of making money. How can I

[0:26] make $10,000? Does it have to be online? No. The first $10,000, this doesn't sound like a lot if I'm saying it to like someone who's doesn't have a lot of money, but the first 10,000 is quite easy. It's probably the easiest way to do it is a service. So, you do something for someone. And it would probably be finding two or three companies that need a service, doing it to them for free, asking for a testimonial, and getting proof, and then

[0:52] going and charging for that service. That's probably the easiest way to do it if you are willing to do labor. I've never been into that. I prefer making products. And I made my first $10,000 as an entrepreneur uh online selling an info product. I made my first $10,000 on my own as a hot dog vendor. I had a hot dog stand and that's how I made my first

[1:13] $10,000. Tell me about the hot dog stand. It was called Southern Sam's Wiiers as big as a baby's arm. And I had Did you have to trademark that? No. I didn't even know what that meant. This was when I was 21 years old, 20 years old. And I wanted a job that I could be outside and drink beer while I was doing it. I didn't have a lot of money to start. I only had $500. I knew a guy who had a hot dog stand that he

[1:33] let me use. He had it like in storage. And then I got to pay him his monthly rent at the end of the month. So I had like $500 for supplies and that's all I needed. I got the days worth of supplies. Sold out. Next day I could actually go to the store and buy stuff.

[1:45] That's how I made my first $10,000. Did it feel rich at the time? Did you feel wealthy? No, not with 10 grand. M uh not when I was doing a service for it. Now when I created a product and I made money, that's when I felt rich. When I was doing a service and working for it, I

[2:02] did not feel rich. What's like a common mistake that you see people making when it comes to like there's a lot of trepidation people feel before they start. So I've made um maybe a 100 million plus um in revenue on on the internet or on companies. I would have to do the math, but tens many many tens of millions for sure. The first dollar is always so exciting. It

[2:25] doesn't matter how much money you have. The first is always incredibly exciting. That rush never goes away. Um, and I think that when you're starting something, you have the same fear whether you're incredibly successful or you're still brand new. It's like getting into a cold plunge or something like that. It it hurts no matter what. The only difference is is that when I've done it a bunch of times, I know that it's normal to be nervous and it's normal that I feel that scared, but I still move forward anyway. What's the

[2:47] thing I have to overcome in that? Asking. So, a lot of times when people like present their service or their product to someone, they're nervous to ask. Like just they're so you a lot of times what they'll do is they'll ask like they'll say the the pitch and they'll say, "Uh, okay, cool. How much does that cost?" And they'll say, "It costs $10,000." And then the buyer will kind of sit quietly and think and then they'll be well or you know, I could uh you just have to sit in that. And it sounds like a crazy ass to ask someone for $10,000, but for a lot of businesses

[3:16] it that's nothing. And so you just have to ask and you probably have to charge more than you think. And I would say it's probably almost easier a lot of times to make more than $10,000 than it is to make less than $10,000. Meaning if like your goal is like I'm going to build a business that does a million in revenue in the next 6 months. That's probably almost just as easy. It probably is just as easy as making

[3:34] $10,000. It's just as easy to make 100 million is to make $10,000. I don't know about 100 million, but in my experience, getting to like 3, four, 5 million is a pretty straightforward path. Getting past five, six, seven million, that requires uh teams and systems and leadership and that is challenging. But getting to like three or four or five million in revenue, I've

[3:54] done that like seven or eight times. It's pretty straightforward. So, answer me this. Uh I think something that we kind of breezed over is who to sell to. So, you just talked about and said the easiest way to go about this and make this is to sell to companies. The average person doesn't know companies. How would I go about the process of finding out what service I should sell to what people? How do I think about the

[4:15] person I'm trying to sell to? Well, I think of Eeky Guy. Have you heard of Eeky Guy? Yeah. It's this concept of like what the world wants, what they want to pay for, what you're good at, and what you care about. If your goal is to make millions and millions of dollars and build a company, you have to be passionate. You have to actually care about what you do. You could say, "Yeah, you'll be passionate once you start succeeding in it." I believe that to be true. But if I'm trying to figure out like what to sell, I have to first ask myself, what am I

[4:37] skilled at? And so if it depends what you're skilled at, but like I can find customers anyway. For me, I got on the internet, I got my first customers on forums, like message boards and Reddit because I knew how to write. If I was like a service provider, I would use Yelp and I would just I could just call people on Yelp and I could be smooth enough to like convince them to give me a shot. If I called 100 people, I'm going to get two people that are

[4:56] interested. So, it all depends on what your skill set is. What's the most valuable skill set to have? Oh, copyrightiting in my opinion without a doubt. For this for this amount of money? For any for any amount of money? Yes. Why? Because copywriting is the act of figuring out how to get what's in my brain into your brain and figuring out how to get you to do what I want you to do. And so with copywriting, I can write my sales script and I could just call you and say it, but copywriting is just sales. That's all it is. And I think

[5:23] copywriting is 100% the most important. We're all selling something. Whether I'm trying to sell someone to go on a date with me, I'm trying to convince someone to come work for me, I'm trying to raise money, I'm trying to We're all We sell stuff every time. If I'm MLK and I'm giving a speech, I'm trying to convince you to feel a certain way. It's all writing. It's all storytelling and so copyrightiting is just a systematic structure and it's a way to like get

[5:40] someone to do what you want them to do. So I think it's without a doubt the most important thing. If I'm scared of people, will it be infinitely harder for me to make money? No, that's why the internet's awesome. You could do everything behind a keyboard if you wanted to. I don't have to put my face out there. It's more so if I I just get skilled at the process of writing and understanding

[5:54] people. It's way easier if you put your face out there. But no, I mean there's I in my company Hampton, we have over a thousand members. I've met so many people that are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year and you have no idea they ex exist. M the uh how what's like what's a book that you would recommend if someone is wanting to get skilled in

[6:11] copyrightiting? Ogalian advertising is probably my favorite one or Joe Sugarman has this book called the ad a week guide to copyrightiting. It's like amazing. So basically like in the 1930s 40s50s and60s before the internet was around. Do you know how like what do you know what direct response marketing it is? Yeah. So they would like mail, if you want to sell vacuums, they would be like, "All right, give me a million housewives in America that have like income between, you know, they're middle class and I'm going to like send them these letters." And it was really expensive to do that. So you had to get really good at writing like a

[6:39] typewriter's worth of notes to mail to someone. So good that they didn't meet you. They don't know who you are, but they're willing to pull out a check, write the check, put the stamp on it, take it to the mailbox, and send it back to you. And so these guys got ma were masters at like convincing people to via irresistible copy to get you to do certain stuff. And so I love studying those guys. Pre- internet guys like old

[6:59] stuff. It's the best. What do you think about the book influence? It's amazing. Robert Chowini save my uh changed my life. Did he actually? Oh yeah, for sure. In what way? Dude, it's like the greatest tactics ever. Like really simple like the rule of reciprocity. So I've used that before. I've bought like a car before and when I go and buy the car, I bought a motorcycle once. The guy on Craigslist asked for $2,000. I showed up uh 10 minutes early. I go, "Hey, I brought you an extra Coca-Cola." I was at the store and I just thought, "Hey, maybe this guy might want a Coke." And so he gave me

[7:26] $500 off when he he said he wanted he he asked for two grand. I said, "Look, man. I'll give you 1,500." He goes, "Well, you're a nice guy. He brought me this Coke." That's the rule of reciprocity. That's rule number one. And in Robert's book of uh influence, like there's like very specific tactics on on what you can

[7:40] get people to do. I think what what was it that in his process, he bought the person a Coke and he was what was his he did it within a a classroom, right? Right. And he was like he tested buying someone a Coke in how many days you'd have to buy them a Coke before you can ask them to do something

[7:52] big and crazy. Yeah. Well, no, I'm not I don't remember exactly that story, but the rule of reciprocity states if I do something for you, you feel in debt to me and you'll do whatever it takes to get even. And it doesn't matter if it's like something that's crazy crazy uneven. So, for example, if I go to your home and I say, "Can I borrow a cup of sugar?" And you give me the cup of sugar. The next day

[8:10] you say, "Hey, can I borrow your car?" I'll give you my car. Even though a sugar and loaning a car are not the same, we will do it just to be even. That's just how humans are. And there's like a a ton of principles just like that. And with copyrighting, you can like implement all of that. What's a way that someone can implement that kind of tactic in the process of

[8:29] making their first dollar? So the first let let me give you a story. The first one of the first times I I don't remember if it was the first that I made $10,000 online. [snorts] I moved to San Francisco and I started a company uh it was like a roommate matching app. And the way that we would get customers is the idea of it was I would find a three and fourbedroom apartment which let's just say hypothetically cost four grand. I would call the landlord. I would say hey could I help you lease out this apartment? I'm going to host a party, but I'm going to

[8:59] put on Craigslist that each bedroom is only 1,000. And we're going to get like 50 people who are interested in this place. We're going to host a party and we're going to fill this apartment and then any other apartment you want by matching up single people who are in the city by themselves into their own like two, three, and four bedroom, you know, instead of getting like a onebedroom, which they probably couldn't afford. And so I would get all of these emails on Craigslist about these people who wanted

[9:18] this apartment and they were horrible. Everyone had the exact same email. You know, one apartment would get like 50 applicants and the emails were awful. And so I created a guide that says, "Here's how you stick out in the inbox of a Craigslist recip uh a Craigslist apartment." And the most niche topic ever. I made this guide. It was called the Miracle Craigslist template. It was making something like $2 or $3,000 a month when I was 21 years old or 22 years old maybe because a local blog I convinced them. They had a if you Googled how to find an apartment in San Francisco, they showed up number one and

[9:51] then the one who came up number two and the one who came up number three. I said, "Hey, I'll give you half of the sales from this Craigslist miracle guide that I made." And they took it. And so I was killing it. It's just like it was I just made this over, you know, over a weekend and this consistently has made uh, you know, two or three grand for like three years. And that's how I made like my first like I made it once, I sold many times, $10,000. M what uh what $10,000 experience did you

[10:18] have that was the most fulfilling? When I sold my first advertisement in the hustle my so I used to have this daily newsletter and wealthfront you know Wealthfront they bought like eight or $9,000 in advertise in advertisements like to put in my newsletter and I thought that was crazy. I was like I was blogging and I built this newsletter and now someone's paying me money to like put their ad in this. That's insane. And I think at the time I maybe had 50,000 subscribers. And I was doing the math and or I I don't remember exactly 50 or 100,000. And I was doing the math and I

[10:52] was like, I think this newsletter can get to like one or two or three million people. And I was like doing the math and I was like, if I did that with 50,000, this is going to make me $100 million a year. I remember like doing that math. I was like, that was like how I was like extrapolating it. And that was the most exciting. I cold emailed

[11:10] someone at Wealthfront uh Wealthfront. His name was Chris Martinez or something like that. I still remember his name and he I convinced him to pay me like a cold email. Oh yeah. Yeah. Cold email. I built my life on cold email. Really? Yeah. Five out of the six best men in my wedding were I met them via cold email.

[11:26] Are you serious? Swear to God. Five out of six of your best friends at that time. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. My best friend Neville, who was the best man. Uh I loved his blog. I cold emailed him and I convinced him to become my friend and became best friends. That was, you know, 15 years ago. Um, another guy cold emailed me. Actually, we became best buddies. Another guy, I had a book club and I wanted him to attend and I just emailed him. Yeah, this is a little bit tangential, but what what's something to to do to stick

[11:52] out in a cold email to you? You follow this uh thing called ADA. Have you heard of ADA? It stands for attention, interest, desire, action. So, a I get your attention and I say something that like cuts like cuts to past you a little bit. So, it's like I know and it could be subtle. It could be like crazy or it could be really subtle like yes this is a cold email and it's

[12:10] totally out of the blue but hear me out. That's how you get someone's interest and uh sorry get someone's attention. I you get them interested. I'm emailing because you say something that like is very specific to them. I'm emailing because 15 years ago you wrote this blog post that I know no one ever reads, but I read it because I'm trying to get your attention. I want to prove to you how much research I did. And you talked about how you love hot wings and how it's your favorite food. There's this amazing restaurant in New York City called this that no one ever goes to. I

[12:39] just researched it and I went to test it. It's called this. Anyway, listen. Here's the deal. And then you say desire. So you get you get them to desire what um uh whatever you have to offer. And then a you give them action a very specific actions on what to do next step. So it could be like email me back if you're interested. And if you're not, it's all good. Just say f off and I'll never talk to you again. But I promise you I can make this worth your time. All you have to do is say yes and I'll

[13:03] do this, this, and that. Yep. What's interesting is what you just detailed is not only like the skill set required for this amount of money, but also a few things very tactically about how to acquire it. And like to be honest, I think the the biggest thing that someone has to solve is understanding from a Nikki guy perspective what they actually are good at. For example, uh some people might think that they're very analytical and they might say, "I really want to run this type of business or start this type of hustle doing X." When in reality, you can say to them, "Hey, you're actually incredible at sales and the way you're

[13:36] communicating is actually like higher level." What's a way to identify that type of skill set where you're learning about it in your free time and you're seeking out opportunities to improve consistently over a long period of time. That's probably the easiest way I would think. And then identifying, okay, if it's not copyrightiting, whatever the skill set

[13:55] is, how can I attach that to a service? It's not that hard to find problems, I think, to make $10,000. If you're selling to a business, it's just how do I make or save you money? How does my skill set do that? I just find that to be very straightforward. I just think that people don't understand, this sounds callous, how little $10,000 is and how like if someone just works really hard, they 100% can save that

[14:21] save me that money. Like they could hustle for $10,000. It's very straightforward. How do I get myself within those circles to sell to those types of people? Cold emailing. I'm telling you, that's like I've I've cold emailed hundreds of people at my conferences. I've had hundreds of speakers, billionaires, like famous people, everyone. Like, and and by the way, when it comes to cold emailing,

[14:42] it's not just one email. Like, it's 27. So, I had this guy named Tim Westeron. He was the founder of Pandora. He came and spoke at one of my events. And I am not exaggerating. I emailed him 52 times. And on the 52nd one, he was like, "Yeah, sure." And I was like, "Why didn't you email me back on the other times?" And

[14:57] he was like, "I just didn't see him." Like, I like it's it's I my phrase that I tell people, I go, "Follow up or die." Yeah. Did you Did you perceive the 51 emails as rejection? No. I just thought he hadn't seen it yet or I haven't [laughter] con No. No. What do you No. No. No. Cuz I I think the way that you're It sounds like the way that you operate is

[15:18] like uh you're very okay with rejection. Yeah. Yeah. Be uh I looked like Napoleon Dynamite when I was 18 and I wanted to meet girls. It was like impossible. Okay. I got used to it. [laughter] And so yeah, if you if you're okay with rejection and you're willing to hustle, then the cold outbound approach attached to a service might be the easiest way to

[15:39] make this matter. Do you know when you go do do you own a website? Yeah. Do you sell something online? Uh I I do service based, but no. What percentages of your website visitors either like do whatever you want them to do like buy your service? None. Like like none, right? Like none. Yeah. Like if your websites kick ass, it's

[15:55] like 2%. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I've always known that. So then just you know if you need you know six sales then I'm going to talk to you know uh 600 time you know what I mean like I'm going to talk to 300 people. Yeah. Like it's just a it's just a numbers game. Like have you are you are you

[16:11] Mormon? No. Do you know any friends that are Mormon? Uh I do have friends that are Mormon. Okay. You know what their job is for two years on a mission. They knock on doors and convince someone to change their entire life and convert to their religion. Yeah. I got a bunch of Mormon friends and I've had a bunch of Mormon buddies work for me and they're like, "Oh, I just have to sell this software and it's got a two or three conversion rate. I knocked on 10,000 doors and I got one guy to like come to one of our like religious

[16:31] events. This is easy. Yeah, it's just a numbers game. Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, because at the end of the day is everything is just sales 100%. Okay, this episode is brought to you by me. I have no sponsors for this podcast. This is entirely self-funded and all I ask is that you please support the channel by hitting that subscribe button. I put over a hundred hours and thousands of dollars into every single episode because I'm committed to making the best thing possible so that it's worth your time. My hope is that this is worth every second of energy that you give to it. And all I ask of you is that

[17:03] you hit the like and you hit the subscribe. Thank you. Now, let's get back to the episode. I want to make $100,000. I've accomplished the the task of making 10,000. I've sold a service. And so, the issue here is now I'm struggling with scaling. and the idea of how do I make this my actual life? What would you recommend if my goal is

[17:24] to make $100,000 a year consistently? $100,000 isn't scaling. And the reason I purposely say that, not to disrespect $100,000, but because you could still just blunt force your way to $100,000. You can be a sledgehammer. You don't need to be like precision knife. You can like, you know, chop down a tree with a sledgehammer if you swing enough times and hard enough. You can do that for

[17:43] $100,000. Yeah. Even the wrong tree. I mean like I guess what I mean is like don't start thinking too hard. The difference between 10,000 and 100,000 is just you just do the same thing a handful of more times. So I wouldn't say that getting to 100 grand don't think. Like I think that typically when you're building a business until you get to like honestly two or three million you put your head down and you don't look up. You you don't think what do I do now? You just do the exact same thing over and over and over again. What would be a mistake

[18:16] that some someone makes in this range? So like let's say that they don't have the perception that $2 to $3 million is achievable in their eyes. You're wrong. I would just say you're wrong. I would say there's 350 million people in America. You're wrong. Virtually 100 I would probably say literally every business can get to 10 million in revenue and almost every business can get to 100 million in revenue. The problem is is that it may take a long time and you're not willing to wait that long or you might have to change the model and you're a little bit unwilling to. But pretty much every in

[18:47] fact I will say every single business or service or product can get to 10 million in revenue. What would be the difference if my goal is let's say like I'd like to achieve $100,000 in a month. Yeah, that's when it starts getting interesting. Um you probably have to learn how to buy ads. Really? Yeah. Do you agree with the the approach that you should do everything from a cold audience perspective first no

[19:10] matter what? No, you should you you have to have distribution. So to get to uh 100,000 a month, you need some type of distribution. So you need and this we're not talking about like content influencer stuff. Although that falls within that category, but you have to have some way of getting customers. That's what I call distribution. So you need uh some type of audience. You need to know how to buy ads. You need to know how to cold call really well. You need

[19:29] to know how to cold email really well. You need how to knock on doors, go to conferences, and meet people and network. But to get to 100,000 a month, you definitely have to start worrying about distribution. Is it uh easier to make $100,000 working with a slew of clients or focusing on high ticket? Well, it depends. Like for example, Palunteer, their average contract might be $20 million a year or 50 million. I

[19:50] mean, I have a friend who works there. He sold a $50 million deal a year deal. Now, the thing is is in order to get to a product that you could sell for $20 million a year, it took them 10 years or probably a billion or two billion dollars of R&D to like actually make it

[20:04] happen. Yeah. I think that a lot of times selling things for the higher end of what your range is in your target industry is equally as challenging as selling things on the lower end. So, it's a very I mean, I still struggle with this as well, but selling things for more expensive than you feel comfortable with

[20:24] is typically the way to go. What did it feel like to you when you made your first like high ticket sale, let's say like the experience you had when you uh sold out that event? Yeah. So, I had a conference the first tickets were $250 because I didn't I at that when I started my conference, I think I had 30 or $50,000 to my name. I don't remember exactly. And I started this conference and the first tickets were $250 or $300 and then just to mess around I put like a VIP ticket for two grand and I forgot what you get but like you didn't even get anything that

[20:58] special but someone bought it and I was like how does someone have $2,000 to spend for a conference now? We send our team to conferences now like all the time and it's like two three four $5,000 and it's nothing. But I just didn't put myself in like the buyer's shoes and like understand like how much money a company has and how $2,000 is potentially nothing to them. But I remember thinking like who on earth

[21:19] would be insane enough to spend $2,000. I specifically remember I told someone when I was 25, I'm never going to spend more than $10,000 at a car. How foolish. So like it it just you know that was small small thinking and I lived in a a bubble of people who didn't have a lot of money. When someone paid that amount of money, how much did you make for that

[21:38] total event? That summer, I think I made something like 50 grand in profit in six weeks. I had the I had an idea for an event. I hosted the event, sold tickets and sponsorships, and I made something like $50,000. And then I went and rode my motorcycle for six weeks around the [laughter] country.

[21:55] Cuz you're like, I did all the work. I thought I was I I was a $50,000 millionaire. I might as well have been a millionaire. That's so cool. Yeah. So, what's the difference between something like that and that type of accomplishment? Did that wake you up to say like, "Oh, I'm addicted to the feeling of making this." Or I was never addicted to making money. I never like I I've never truly cared about money. I don't like spending money. I'm pretty frugal, I think, for uh I I live below my means. No, I've not been driven by money. I'm driven by This sounds cheesy, but I would joke like I

[22:22] like using the word manifest cowboys. That was like a phrase I made up where I was like I I just love being like a guy who like has an idea for something and I can turn it into reality really quickly. Yeah. But uh I'm not motivated by money at all. Because of that, you still got to a point though where like, okay, you made $50,000 in a six week period. You felt like you were a millionaire in that season. What unlocked for you to say like, okay, I'm just going to do this from now on. I'm just going to run these

[22:46] events. The thing that changed early on right after that 50,000 was, I'm going to use this money to hire people. I've always defaulted to the second I could potentially afford something, I'm going to hire people and I'm willing to make significantly less pro profit. And what I've noticed with hiring is when you hire someone who specifically focuses on one thing and you focus on another thing and then you keep on doing that and eventually you get people who are more talented you or a specialist at a thing, it tends to just be the highest form of

[23:12] leverage for an entrepreneur is hiring. Um the profit doesn't come right away but in the long run it's so much better. There's a lot of people in the internet right now, a lot of my friends and I've done this as well of like one person businesses. It's so much better to hire. I think John Rockefeller, who's one of my heroes, he said something like, "I would rather have 1% of 100 people than 100% of my own effort." I completely

[23:32] agree with that. What's the first person you should hire? Well, the thing you suck at. In most cases, startup founders are the sales and marketing people, and they probably should keep doing that. Once your company gets to like 5 or 10 million in revenue, I think like a CEO's job is probably make sure you don't run out of money, recruit amazing people, and pay attention to sales and marketing. And so I've always hired like nerds like like like [laughter] operating types of people like people who are organized uh people who just like keep the trains running on time. Like those are incredibly important. Uh and I'm not

[24:08] good at it. So I've always hired like straightedge kind of nerds who just like pay attention to the details. At this level, does it make sense to hire like the concept of like a virtual assistant? I think there's something magical about being in real life with a co-orker. So yeah, you could like you can get a pretty amazing like we have uh virtual like um overseas people at my companies and um they're equally talented as any American um and I have just as good of a relationship with them. But there is something special about kind of being bellyto belly with someone. Yeah. And uh

[24:38] like coming up with an idea. So the first hire it'd probably be like whatever you're doing at $100,000 a month that is driving sales. hire people to do everything else. So like fulfill the order or something like that. Yep. Typically until you get to like 5 million in sales, you are the seller and you are the marketer. And I think that's

[25:01] fine. How many people should aspire to just do the one person scale? It sounds like you're saying it's very very possible. It's super possible to make $100,000 just by yourself and not have anybody else. Dude, I I own a product called Copy That. Copy that.com. It's like a copywriting course. It makes six figures a year. I have not logged into it in

[25:18] eight months. It does that. It's And by the way, that's awesome. Yeah, that I don't find that fulfilling. Yeah, you know, I find relationships and people significantly more fulfilling, but it's also a lot easier to be fulfilled on those things when I know that my necessities are taken care of. So, I think you should get after it and get do what you need to do to make sure you're taken care of. I just don't find

[25:37] it like fulfilling in the long run. What time horizon would you look at and say like, "Hey, here's a good window of time to try to accomplish these levels of goals." So like for example, it doesn't come across as a callous. It comes across as someone that has accomplished this and so they're looking at this step and they're saying, "Yep, I've been there. I've accomplished that

[25:54] a bunch of times." Just for the record, this step I am still fearful of. I am still excited about I still feel doubt and uncertainty. I feel the exact same thing that anyone who has ever done before feels. The difference is is that I know it's normal to feel that and I keep on pushing. like a professional runner. It doesn't matter if you're running 205 in the marathon or 505, 5 hours to 5 minutes or you're running 205 and you're going to you're on track to win the gold medal. It hurts probably equally the same. Just the professional is used to that pain and knows how to

[26:22] handle it. You know what I mean? I feel the exact same way. I So, I still have all these nerves. I look at uh sounds it's going to be random, but I love the Hot Ones guy cuz Yeah, he's cool. Cuz he at the end of the day, Sean is like no matter what he has to eat those wings every single time. It sucks. And it's probably sucks every It's not like he likes winks. It's like you're not like gonna go to the bar and enjoy winks. But every single time he's like, I want to do this interview. They're gonna be miserable. I have to be miserable with

[26:47] them in that same process. Have you ever done a cold punch? No. I used to cold punch like every day. I loved it. It was the same time I said, "This sucks. Why am I doing this? I hate this." Have you like ran a race? Like it's the same thing. Why? What am I doing? Why am I doing this? This is

[27:01] horrible. I hate this. You know, you feel the same thing all the time. You just know that's normal. I need to get past it. What What's like something you'd recommend to get over that fear and trepidation other than just the confidence that other people have done it before you? Without a doubt, surround yourself with other people who are either doing the same or have already done it. There's no question. The best way to do it, have

[27:20] you have a brother? Uh, no. I have three sisters. Okay. So, the best like you ever known like these siblings like a brother who like they egg each other on? Yes. That's like the best. That's the best. You have to have that. You know, like I was reading about this like study that was done in the 1970s and they studied like 20,000 um people over the course of a decade and they found out basically like if you were raised around obese people, you became obese. If you were raised around unhappy people, you were more likely to be unhappy. If you were raised around people who were ambitious

[27:45] and more successful, surprise, you were going to be like that. And um Mr. Beast also he like told this story when he was like 14 years old. He was like me and these three other guys, we wanted to get good at YouTube so bad. So, we would talk for hours every single day and show share all these tests that we were doing on how to get big on YouTube. It took eight years, but we all got big on YouTube. They said that Malcolm Glad Gladwell, he has this like $10,000 hour rule. Well, it was me and my other two buddies. We must have had the $30,000

[28:10] rule because we were sharing all of our stuff and learned from all uh from each other. And the best way without a doubt is to copy that and to find other people who are like in there. And and at Hampton, we have the three C's, confidentiality, commitment, and cander. So you just have like a a pact where it's like we are going to push each

[28:25] other forward no matter what. And having like a group of of buddies like that without a doubt is the best thing to do. What's more valuable having peers at that level or having mentors? Uh you don't need a mentor. You just you could read a book. Yeah. You need a peer. [laughter] You need people like at the same level

[28:42] as you that are as intense as you. Yeah. I mean a mentor is cool. Like I've had a couple of them but like mentor that's kind of silly to me. It's like I don't like go to a guy be like will you mentor me? Like I'll be at your house from 9:00 and then we'll talk until 10 and then I'll take notes and then like I'll like make sure like your bath is ready. Like you know what I mean? That's like weird to me. Like just read a book,

[28:59] read read learn from dead people. Yeah. I love that. And so uh how do I know if the path I've taken to do this is actually not scalable? I was talking to someone and they everything is scalable. Well, I I talked to someone and uh Grant Cardone and Alex Herozi actually said um like some cars are only meant to go a

[29:17] million miles. That's true. But every if you tinker enough everything can be scalable. Like what isn't what what's not scalable? An agency because I know agencies that have tens of thousands of employees and they make billions of years of revenue. That seems scalable to me. Like I don't know what isn't scalable. Now I think that

[29:34] like an individual's time. That's true. But that's why you hire people. I think that like some like for example I lived in San Francisco for 10 years and I every I've never raised venture capital but all my friends did and they were building rocket ships. And the thing about VC is it's fuel. It's rocket fuel for a rocket ship. I was building a cool ass car, a car that was fast, that was cool, that I loved. That was my media company. And it grew 75% a year and it did its job. It made me wealthy and I had a lot of fun doing it. A lot

[30:01] of my friends who created rocket ships, of the 30 that did, about two of them, if it worked, it was amazing. The rest they crashed and that did its job. And so there's some businesses that they are meant to be rockets. Now there they can still crash and burn and they are likely to. And there are some that are just going to be a little bit slower, but if you give it enough time and focus for

[30:20] long enough, it will 100% be successful. But I think everything to a degree is scalable. I just think that's a a bull crap excuse. Do you think that people think too little if they perceive $100,000 as a lot of money? No. I understand how that feels. I was 21 and broke. I mean, no. I No, I think you should like, you know, you you could Let's put it this way. Everything that I say I joke it comes back to like meeting women because that was like so important to my life when I was like 16 to like 20. I was like the nerdiest guy ever and

[30:50] I was like desperate to like meet a girlfriend. You don't put him on a pedestal. You respect them and you show love and respect to other human beings but you are not greater than me. You know that's how I feel about like $100,000 of money. It's like you'll be mine and also I respect you. [laughter]

[31:11] That makes sense. I love that. We are equals. Yeah. I think that Well, because I because I think the the something I perceive in a lot of people is you say something like that and to be honest, I think the people that get it get it, but I think the majority of people online are looking for some silver bullet or some like answer um because they

[31:28] perceive that first step. Dude, I had this kid who worked for me, this intern, and he was asking me all these questions about starting a business. And then a few years later, he started a business and it crushed it and he made uh he's making like $3 million a year right now and he's probably paying himself a million dollars. I go, "Ryan, what? How'd you change?" He goes, "You you told me what to do." I was like, "What?" He goes, "Yeah, I was telling you about my business. I know it was

[31:51] hard and you gave me the best advice." And I was like, "What advice?" Well, you don't remember. You You told me to quit being such a [laughter] And I was like, "What?" He goes, "Yeah, I was complaining. You told me stop being such a and like get after it." and like, "Stop complaining and just do it." [laughter] And I was like, "That's hilarious. I don't remember

[32:08] that, but I'm so thankful." Accurate. Yeah. And [laughter] I this one guy, he calls me every he's he's a he's a peer, but he's a couple steps ahead of me. And uh he's a he's in the he's like in the Jeremy Haynes circle. And uh he calls me once every month, once every like 30, 40 days. And basically, he just calls me and just say like, "Hey, Grant, you're just I just want to remind you you're a little Like every single month, [laughter] just like you're just like your reason you're not doing that is because you're a little the reason you're not doing this because I

[32:34] was like, "Hey, well, you're accurate." And just for the record, I suffer from all this as well. Like, it's easy to give advice. It's always like, you know, it's it's hard to give yourself advice. Um, so I say that to him because that's how he was acting. And also, I act like that all the time. And I'm thankful I have people who call me out as well. But I think the biggest thing to identify within this that is extremely accurate is if you're surrounded by people that think $10,000 is a lot or think that $100,000 is a lot, then you will think that. Versus if you surround yourself

[32:59] with people that are saying, "My goal is to make a million plus." then these types of accomplishments don't seem as insurmountable. I think you have to regular or normalize success. Explain that. I used to run track and field and there was this kid uh from Kenya that was uh on my team in in college and he was this amazing runner and I was I remember asking him about like how are you so fast? He was a he was a sub4 mileer and he was like we are all fast. And I was like, "Well,

[33:31] cuz are you like genetically better? Like what's the deal?" He's like, "No, like all the countries around us are probably just as good as well, but we were just raised where they just said like you are going to run and you're going to be the best. You were born to run." And I just have that attitude. And I was like, "Well, but surely you're like physically superior. Like I mean like the greatest athletes have something above everyone else. Like how are you so special?" He was like, "Dude, I'm telling you, all of my friends, like like growing up, like we were told that we were going to be great at this and we

[34:00] told that this was like our life's purpose was to be amazing runners so we can get into college." And like it was just like I was just told that like this is what was expected of me. And I loved that attitude, like this idea of like I'm just going to be great. Uh, and I remember like surrounding myself in with a bunch of other young guys in San Francisco when we were 21, 22, 23. And it was like it sounds like weird when you're trying to do this stuff. When you're trying to do some something scary, you do have like guys around you like egging each other like you can do

[34:25] this, you got this, you're the best. And this like selft talk and all this stuff like it really matters. I do think that like telling someone in your community, your tribe like you got this, you're the best, you're born to do this. Like it does help and you do like manifest this stuff. Uh I have a question on that. Uh, I've I've noticed that a lot of people have a lot of friends, but the difference between like a a friend and a great friend is I think a friend wants to see you win and a great friend wants to see you win more than them. And I'm curious

[34:54] like how do you go about finding the great friends that actually want to be your partners in that peer process? The best time that I've had like the best peers I've had for this is when we're explicit and you say we are opting into this relationship. So a lot of friendships are accidental. Like you just start hanging out and then like I have friendships where I say I'm like, "Hey, I just want you to know like I have a circle of like four or five best friends. You're in that circle. I want to live life together and do life together and my expectations of you are

[35:21] this and that and what you can expect of me is this and that." Like I know it sounds weird. I have these like explicit conversations with my buddies and I do that with like my peer group as well. I like I literally say like my goal in five and 10 years to do this. Help me get there. Tell me your goals. Okay,

[35:37] cool. I am like going to get you there and like we're going to help each other. Like I I actually think you have to have those conversations. Like weddings are always have that's kind of like I've always thought about weddings. Like that's like an interesting thing to me. And I remember at my wedding I got married here in New York and all these people flew in. I'm like all these people have like opted in to coming to my wedding and I have just pronounced in front of all of them that I'm going to be with my my wife until we

[36:00] die. Like they have invested in me. Like they are here for this. I remember like I was like this is like magic. like this is like a huge thing and like I distinctly remember I was like I'm going to do that with my other friends. I'm going to let them know I'm investing in you and be explicit about it because I actually think that going through that like I've always been like envious of like um religions and cultures that have this like um uh this thing where the boy

[36:21] becomes a man or a girl becomes a woman. I' I've love I love a right of passage. I love those. I love those things where it's no longer like oh you just happen to do it. It's like no you are officially a woman. You are officially a man. I love that. And so you have to be explicit in my opinion with a lot of

[36:36] these relationships. Uh this is a bigger thought and t like has nothing to do with business. Is that going to shape how you approach parenting? I mean I tell my kid all the time. I go raise your hand if you're tough. And she's raising her hand. I go raise your hand if you're smart. Yeah. Like I love

[36:50] like positive affirmation. Positive affirmation in terms of like just you're you're declaring what is about her. The attributes that Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not accomplishments but um like effort, things like that. Yeah. Because you're you're trying to you're trying to affirm like to be a par means you are this person. You will work hard. You will have high integrity. You will be respectful. Today

[37:09] she learned the word respect. Last week we taught the word education. I go, "Oh, you're going to read. You're getting educated." Yeah. I love those things. How old is she? She too. I think if you can teach your 2-year-old that, I think the average person can learn some of these principles. For sure. [laughter] That's awesome. All right, let's move to

[37:24] level three. This is a million dollars. And I think a lot of people struggle with the concept of thinking that they're worth a million dollars. I want to ask you, how many people have you interviewed that have made $1 million? Probably every guest. You know, we probably have had 300 guests or 200 probably all. Hampton the average revenue is like something like 20 million in revenue. So, I would presume that most are. How many have I met? I

[37:49] mean, I don't know, tens of thousands. What would you say if there was one trait that was a combining trait between all those 10,000 people? What's one trait of someone that that has made this amount of money in revenue? and revenue. Mhm. Overcoming fear. Yeah. Because like I was going to say like it could be boldness, but like I know a lot of not bold people who have great big companies. It could be patience. No, I know a lot of people who are incredibly impatient and have done really well. But probably just the ability to overcome

[38:20] fear and take that first step. What's the biggest weakness you see from people that get stuck here? inability to hire an inability to make systems. Do you have like an example of a story of someone that that had something of great potential but wasn't able to scale because of that? Yeah, dude. So many like I mean I've got a friend that's one of the most talented friends I know at at probably creating businesses and he is so impatient and so things will get to a million or two million in revenue and they very 100% could get to 10 or 100 million in revenue. 100%. I've seen him do it like

[38:55] four different times where he like built a business to like 800, 900 uh a million or um two or three million and then he gets bored after 3 years and then bails and starts over from scratch. That's like a very consistent habit of losers in my opinion. People who start something and then quit even if it's working and they don't have the patience to to keep on going. So I would say I

[39:14] would say that. Do you think that what you sell really matters if $1 million is the goal? Nope. I don't. Let me give you an example. my mother-in-law about five or six years ago. My mother-in-law, she's amazing. She's a Haitian immigrant. She raised my wife um and her sister and was a stay-at-home mom. And at the age of like 54 or 55, one day she took me, we my wife and I had been together for five or six years. She goes, "Hey, Sam, I want to drive you to the airport cuz for your flight instead of you taking a cab cuz I was visiting her." I go, "Okay,

[39:42] Smithy, that sounds strange. This is it's 2-hour drive, but okay." And she was like, "Uh, look, I'm thinking about starting a business." And I was like, "You? Okay, cool." And in my head, I was like, "This is just like every other conversation I've ever had if someone wanted to talk about this, but you know, I love her, so I'm going to like take her seriously." And she's like, "I want to start selling pillows." I was like, "Like Casper pillows?" And she was like, "No, like throw pillows." I was like, "I don't know what that is. Tell me what that is." She's like, "A decorative pillow." I said, "Okay." Um, she was

[40:07] like, "I know how to sew. I love sewing. I think I can do this." And I was like, "Okay, that sounds good. Maybe it can work. I have no idea, but here's like this thing called Shopify. There's this thing called Etsy." and and I'm not an e-commerce guy, but like I can tell you what these things are and I can tell you a little bit about copyrightiting, but honestly, just Google it. 2 weeks later, she sends me her website. And I was like, this person just like copied your idea. She's like, "No, no, no. That that's my website. I flew to North Carolina. I bought all the fabrics. I

[40:33] took all the photos of my sample pillows and I made this. You told me to do this. What now?" I was like, "Are you kidding me?" And that first year of business, she did, I think, something like two or 300,000 in revenue. This year she about four years later she broke a million in

[40:47] revenue. And here's her business. She sells pillows, throw pillows, virtually 100% of them on Etsy. And so if you Google like pink throw pillow, you're going to see Smithy Home Couture and it has five out of five stars. And it's sold she's sold like 20,000 pillows. All the stats are on on there online. It shows you. And first of all, never in a million years would I

[41:10] thought throw pillows was going to work. Like I you know who is she good at marketing? No. I mean yeah I don't know like go go go just whoever's watching Google Smithy Home Couture. I I don't I don't know. I mean she's fine. She doesn't have an Instagram following. It's not I mean it's not like she's famous. She's just stays on top of her stuff and customers email and she is respectful and she provides a great service and she's done it for 5 years. Now she's got four or five employees in New Jersey sewing pillows all day and she only works two or three days a week. if she want she I

[41:41] goes, "Smithy, are you how much are you spending on ads?" And she says, "Oh, like $100 a month." I was like, "Are you insane? Spend more. You're making this point." And she's like, "Well, but I want to be home with my grandkids on Wednesdays and Fridays." And I said, "All right, that sounds good to me." But my point is is that like you could do it any way you want. Like there's so many different ways to do it. This is why

[42:01] business is awesome. You just got to take the first steps and in most cases you have to be pretty patient. What would you say to someone that's extremely impatient? They say they want to start something this year and make a million dollars this year. That's possible. Get after it. It's definitely possible. My my my like I mean I don't know if Well, yeah. My uh with Hampton we I

[42:21] don't remember the revenue in year one. It was seven figures in year I mean we had we did seven figures in six months. I had a little bit of an audience. So I I have a huge unfair advantage and I had a reputation. But my first real company, the hustle, I think we did 350,000 in revenue in year one. Year two we did 2.2. Year three we did five. Year four, seven. Year five we did 12. And then the year we sold we were going to do 18 or 20. That was the progression. Knowing what I know now, I could get to 5 million in revenue in year one probably

[42:55] with that same business. Is knowledge the main gap? Overcoming fear the main gap? Like what do you think is the main gap of that? Just to get to a million. Yeah, it's fear. Yeah, you can just Google how to do all this stuff. It's pretty straightforward. No courses. Yeah, courses are great. Course, dude, I

[43:10] don't know why people on courses. I've taken so many courses that have changed my life. Yes, courses are awesome. I always get value from courses. What's a course that you'd highly recommend? Copyrightiting course. My friend Neville Madora, I he became my best friend. He was the best man at my wedding. It's because I took his course and I loved it so much. I cold emailed him and we became buddies. It changed my life. It was a course on copywriting. But there's been so many courses. My friend Noah Kagan had a course called Make Make Your

[43:30] First $1,000. I took his course and I created a product called Itch Juice. It was a poison ivy treatment and it made $2,000 a month for like three or four months before I shut it down. I love courses. Courses have changed my life. Do you think that with the accessibility via YouTube, the biggest objection is

[43:48] just that people are lazy? Yeah. Or unfocused. Unfocused. Yeah. What do you mean by unfocused? You just got to commit to something, man. Like there's like like there's too many decisions that you can possibly make of all these different routes. They're it doesn't really matter when you're just getting started. They're all going to lead to the same path and they're all going to suck more more likely than not. You just got to get started and you're going to figure it out as you go. I say ABC. You know, you think about the vision of Z on where you want to go in 10 or 20 years and and

[44:18] that keeps you motivated, but you worry about going to A and then going to B. You don't worry about C D. You don't don't worry about any of that crap in the middle. It's totally not important. just get A and then B and then you can dream about Z. From the people that have talked about their first million that they've made, what's the biggest complaint, the most

[44:34] common complaint that you've heard? Oh, that it it won't it's not going to solve like your emotional issues. They'll say like they've been dreaming of it and then they get there and they're like, "Oh, okay. That was not as exciting as I thought it was going to be." So, like in the sense that like they might if they're a broken person, they're still a broken person with a

[44:52] million dollars. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely think you'll be happier though, like like after a certain point it's um diminishing returns. Diminishing returns are still returns. So like I definitely think it could still help, but I mean there's still a lot of sad rich people out there. Like [laughter] what's probably the biggest misconception about a million dollars? I I I think that a lot of people don't understand what a million dollars net

[45:12] means versus a million dollars revenue. Well, you can make a million dollars in revenue and only and and make no I mean I I've got so many friends that have businesses that like I've got one buddy that was doing 18 million a year in revenue and I loaned him money because he only had $25,000 to his name. Like your revenue can be huge. Like particularly if you have an e-commerce business, you know, the faster you're growing, the more inventory you have to buy for the next season. So your cash flow is horrible when your revenue is

[45:38] great. So yeah, you could have a million in revenue and you're screwed. What are the businesses that you would say like if you were starting from scratch right now, you'd be like, "Yeah, I would want that that million dollar in revenue business." Something that you're willing to do for like 20 years. I mean, that just seems like the general thesis of the people who I admire most is they have a company that they love so much they don't want to sell or they don't want to retire from. The cool thing about business, I think, is that there's not many opportunities where you can decide where you live, who you work with, how you

[46:08] treat people, the culture that you create, the way you spend your time. And capitalism, like it or not, is probably the most practical way to like help shape reality. It doesn't matter if you're creating a $100,000 a year company or a hund00 million a year company. The dent that you can kick in the world, it doesn't matter if it's tiny or huge. You could do that with building a company or building a business. And I find that very just awesome. And it doesn't matter if it's huge or small. And I'm just like I'm very obsessed with people who are intentional about living life the way they want to. They could be like Elon

[46:40] Musk who I don't want Elon's life and I don't love how he lives his life but I love that he picked the path and he like relentlessly pursues it. I've got this friend named Isaac French. My friend um I met him because he um do you know who Isaac French is? Isaac French is one of my favorite people on earth. Isaac French is interesting. So the sounds in um he might be insulted by this but he's sort of like a Menanite. So, he's part of this religion um that I'm an outsider, so I don't know how to effectively describe it, but if you don't know what you're talking about,

[47:08] they would look like they're Menanites. I met Isaac because one time I I found this Airbnb or this um bedding breakfast for this website in Waco, Texas, cuz I used to live in Austin, Texas. And it was this beautiful property with a lake with six cabins on it. And I went to click the about us page and I saw this young kid who was only 23 with his wife and he said, "I am an artist, an accountant, and an entrepreneur." in the in that order. And I was like, that's the craziest thing I've ever read. Like

[47:33] that's just a ridiculous thing to say. Who is this guy? And I called him right there. I go, "Hey, dude. What's your story?" And we became really close. I've gone to I'm not a religious person. I've gone to mass at his Easter thing on his property. They live in like almost like a little bit of a commune.

[47:48] Is it like an Amish? No, it's called Homestead Heritage. And they believe that you get closer to God by being cra by doing crafts and by doing um skills. So like anything that I could believe that. Yeah. like [laughter] any so for example they have they have like a 500 acre thing where they got 600 or sorry 60 families living there and they have a restaurant and they make their own ketchup with these tomatoes that they've grown right there but like I'm about that yes [laughter] and they're like they have artisan cheese and then when he looks at like he was like okay I want to

[48:15] build this air uh this bed and breakfast and I want it to be perfect well how do I make it perfect well I have to create an Instagram handle and the videos I'm like this like imagine like someone who looks like almost like a Menanite guy like mastering Instagram and the point being is that he's incred incredibly intentional. When my daughter was born, he sent me a sketch that he sketched this beautiful sketch of her like from a photo that we had sent her and that was his gift to me. Like, so my point being is that business is cool because you can see some of these

[48:44] obsessive or incredibly intentional personalities come out and that's what I love. It doesn't matter if it's a million dollar business or if it's$100 million or a billion dollar business. You know what I mean? The key is to be someone that's obsessive or find what you're obsessive about. Yeah, I love that so much because I mean let's let's frame that from the perspective of like if we think from the like you said like you previously said think through point A, B, C, like before you think to

[49:07] to Z. Yeah. I don't think about the middle. You don't think about the middle? No. But you think about the Z. Yeah. Cuz that inspires me. Like when you lay in bed in the middle of the night and you're like, wouldn't that be cool if this happens in 10 years? Like that's pretty valuable. How many people do you think build their business and they're halfway through it and they're at these accomplishments and they say, "Man, I really hate what I

[49:28] built." Well, I've been there. I think a lot of people Yeah, I think most people. Talk to me about when you were there. Like my last company, the hustle, I had the stupidest idea where I was like, would it be cool if I had 10,000 employees and I wanted to like hire like crazy and I just hired people that I didn't align with because when I started, I was like 24 25. And so the values that I thought I stood for, you know, by the time I was 28, 29, 30 and I'd grown a little bit as a man. I was like, I don't really align with that

[49:54] anymore. I've created my own prison. This is horrible. So I was like that for sure. So once you identified, I don't like this anymore. I sold it. You sold it? Yeah, I sold it. [laughter] Uh do you think that's why a lot of people sell their companies? No, I mean I didn't sell it just for that reason. I sold it because I wanted to like attain a certain financial barrier. But um

[50:15] what barrier? My goal when I started my company was to make $20 million by the time I was 30. Um I met a rich guy and you just told me that was a lot of money and I thought that would be a good number to hit. If I'm thinking with the end in mind and the concept of doing something that I'd want to do for the rest of my life, do you think that some people should make

[50:34] that million dollars first? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. the the the the reality is and you're going to find some people who have done it the opposite way, but the reality is is that the majority of times the first thing that you do, it might be successful, but it's not going to be like the thing.

[50:50] And that's okay. And so you get into it knowing this may not get like there's going to be more challenges than necessary or when people say like it's not scalable, it really is, but it's going to feel like it's not scalable. Yeah. your first thing is is almost always going to be kind of

[51:07] crappy, even if it's working. In this instance, what's that breaking point of identifying, hey, you should probably quit this and do something when you've identified you're actually passionate about this. Well, I tend to have a goal before I start. So, it's like, how do you define success? You know, like a lot of times with like investing, you will often times pick the price or the multiple or some type of number where you're like, "All right, I get out here." And you do that sort of ahead of time so you're not emotional when you're like making that decision. It's like going to the grocery store going hungry

[51:38] or being hungry. And so I tend to do things where I like say like success is defined as this. You seem to be someone that lives life in every capacity very intentionally. How does someone start that process and decide for themselves, okay, I'm going to be intentional about these decisions in this way? That's a good question. I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'll give you an example. I did this with

[52:01] both my business partner and my wife. With my wife, we were like six or eight months into dating and we were like, it just or I don't, you know, maybe maybe we're going to get married like aren't it seems like it's going really well. We love each other. Let's sit down and do this exercise where let's say we're married. What type of life do you want to have by the time you're 30 and 40 and 50? Like just out of curiosity. And the importance of doing that is so you can sort of say like here's the values that I stand for. Um, in our case, it was

[52:28] like, here's the life that we want. Each person would do this on their own. Here's the life that I want. Here's what I'm willing to do to get there. Here's what I'm unwilling to do to get there. And here's how I define success. And the reason we separately did that on our own, and it sounds very weird to do this with your spouse, but it's very important in my opinion because you come together like you're like, "Okay, well, here's what you want. Here's what I want. Here's where we align. Here's where we don't align. Are we willing to compromise?" And I acknowledge that we might change as we both go. And so this

[52:57] isn't like perfect, but at least we like understand how to have these conversations every 6 and 12 months to like say like are we happy with where we are in life? I did this with my business partner Joe. We did the exact same thing. We were working on a project together and like hey this is going really great. Do you want to get serious

[53:10] and start a company together? What do you you know what would you define success as? What are you willing to do? What are you unwilling to do? And what do you want your days to look like? We did the same exercise and we still do it every like 6 and 12 months. But anyway, having these like explicit conversations I think are super important. Most people just kind of go with the flow. inertia is how most people live and I just don't think that's the right way to do things. And so I started doing that with her and then she like I probably I think I read

[53:31] about this like in one of these self-help books which I've read like every single one like think and grow rich or something like that where it was like the difference between a man who achieves his goals and those who don't is that they the man who achieves it writes it down or like another line was like it's impossible to optimize something if you don't have a goal. And so I just got really into like writing down like here's where I want to go here's exactly what that looks like. And then when I started doing it with my wife, she kind of got addicted to that and you start like seeing progress and

[53:55] it gets really fun. I think you learn a lot of this in like the weight room or you know I like to lift weights or and I used to love to run. Running is really fun because you can like see progress like every month. You're like oh nice my average time is going down per mile or whatever and you like start getting addicted to the progress and it's very like it is addicting. And so that's why I love like being intentional. I love setting these goals and I love achieving them. So, the process of someone becoming someone who's intentional, someone that's setting goals, uh, do you think that

[54:22] it's important to do that with another person? Is it easier to do it with a partner? Well, I did it alone cuz it was embarrassing to tell anyone. I've been doing this since I was like 18. So, it's like really embarrassing. I'm not going to tell someone when I'm 18. Probably took me a little bit while it took me like till my 20s. I was comfortable enough to talk about it. But, yeah, it's way better to have like an accountability partner. That sounds kind

[54:40] of lame, but yeah. There's uh actually something I've noticed is like sometimes your goals become your identity. Um especially when you're starting out something because you I think changing your identity is great by the way. Have you read 48 laws of power? Yes. The like the third law is like ch recreate your identity every once in a while and become like for example I was like I used to be this like really good athlete and then I got fat and like uh like I stopped

[55:01] that became your identity. It became my identity. It was like the guy who just ate candy all the time and then I remember like six years ago I go I'm becoming a fitness influencer. Yeah. And like people would joke about me. I was like no I'm a fitness influencer now. And I got shredded. I got like so fit like this is my identity. So I think like telling yourself like Ralph, you know Ralph Lauren, I love

[55:19] Ralph Lauren. He's got this amazing story. He was like they're like why'd you get into clothes? He's like well I wanted to be an actor but I wasn't really good-looking enough or charismatic enough. But I noticed like I love these guys on shows like on TV and like they inspired me so much these actors. I loved Hollywood but I couldn't do that. But what I noticed is that when I would wear cowboy outfits I was a little bit more like a cowboy. a little bit more like wild. When I would wear like put these costumes on of like a military uniform, for some reason like I felt a little bit more tough or more

[55:50] brave. And with my clothing, I want to give people costumes because I've noticed that they just like become the people that they dress like and that gives me confidence. I want to make people feel like that. And I was like, that's amazing. He's he's helping people create like their own movies. And so I remember thinking that like like you just kind you can just kind of like become anything you want. And but you kind of had to like pretend that you're it and then you like morph into it if

[56:15] that makes sense. Yeah. There's a fake until you make it. What's the point that you actually recognize you made it? I don't know. I haven't found it yet. So I Yeah. I don't know. Do you think uh other people affirm you there? Yeah. I look for that's my love language is words of affirmation. I look for

[56:31] compliments all the time. Yeah. So it's like it's like uh if someone sees me the way I want to be seen, then therefore I am. Uh, I just know that like I constantly need compliments to keep me going. That's why I I've married a strong woman who's one to like compliment compliment me all the time because like there's been so many times where I lay on the kitchen floor,

[56:46] I'm like, I can't do this. Yeah. I want to ask you uh back to the concept of of specifically like a business making money. Is it easier to make a million dollars by yourself or with co-founders? I don't think it matters. It's e I think it's easier I've done it with like I have a co-founder now. It's way easier to get to 10 million in revenue or whatever like tens of millions in revenue with a co-founder in my opinion. Yeah, I mean it's pretty lonely. Uh so yeah, I I' I like having a partner. I think life's Yeah, I prefer

[57:16] having a business partner. What's the uh what's the benefit of each? So like if you give me like the the pros I mean it's fun to like do everything on your own or rather it's to do everything your own way. Like it's fun not to ask for permission and say this is what this is what I'm doing. I do think that like

[57:31] a great company is a dictatorship. Um, you should treat people nicely and you should listen to fine ideas, but at the end of the day, it should not be a democracy. You don't vote. You you someone dictates, but having a business partner is freaking awesome, man. Like, it's like, dude, I mean, I'm really emotional. I go up and down. And like, you need a partner that can level you

[57:49] out. Mhm. What's uh what's a characteristic I should look for if I'm looking for a co-founder? The um same values, but probably opposite personalities. So if you're very analytical, look for someone very outgoing or in or if you're really emotional, look for someone who's not. If you like sales, look for someone who doesn't. But you need to you need the same values and you

[58:08] want the same goals. Like if you guys start a band and one guy wants to be like Lady Gaga and like sell out Madison Square Garden, like take over the world, but the other guy wants to be some like indie rock band and not like make songs that people love, it's like well that ain't going to work. What do you think about like if you look at the Beatles like the concept of having a Paul McCartney like are you looking for a Ringo or you looking for a

[58:28] John Lennon? I mean I would want a John Lennon. Yeah. Yeah. All day. Someone that's in you because I would look at them and they're like they're pretty similar skill sets. No, no, no, no. You want someone you could respect. Like you know the greatest thing that like it's just the same thing as marriage. The best marriage is a a woman who you respect and who you admire. So no. You

[58:45] want someone who you admire. What's like the biggest misconception about how easy it is to actually make a million dollars? Well, I don't think it's that easy. I think it's simple, but I don't think it's easy. I guess in some hand I like you have to like acknowledge that like these these things are really important. It can change someone's life. You don't want to be too bad too much of a dbag about it, but at the same time, you also want to like not put it too high in the pedestal

[59:08] so you can make sure that's achievable. You almost have to change your perspective about how much money some money is. Yeah. You just just treat them mean, keep them keen. You got to you got to you got to treat the money keen uh mean a little bit. You know what I mean? [laughter] Respect it. Treat it mean. I love it. All right, let's go to the

[59:26] next level. So, this is level four and the goal here is making $10 million. What is something you found from the people that are successful at making $10 million and the people that ultimately fail after making $10 million? Systems. Yeah. At 10 million, it's people and systems. Getting the right people in the right seats and creating systems and checklists that the business can scale. My friend Jason Lumpkins is um really successful venture capitalist and he says if a company once it gets to 10 million it's inevitable that it gets to 100 million if they create the right

[59:55] systems. Inevitable. Yeah. If you create the right systems, granted, you have to have enough time. Some it could happen in a few years, some it will take two decades, but yeah, you're breaking my brain a little bit because I've I've always been stuck thinking that there's a certain it's similar like how there's a TAM for every single audience. Like there's only a certain total wrestle market. I think with a certain type of company or business, there's only a total addressable amount of people that you

[1:00:20] can sell to. Your offer is just packaged poorly. Like if you're selling something for $100, like what do you have to change about to sell for $10,000? I just think that in most cases, the TAM is big enough to make $10 million just about in any way possible. Like for example, if you had a a laundry mat, like maybe how would I get a laundry mat to $10 million? Well, like there's a handful of ways. Not all of them are the easiest ways and some are easier and better than others, but it could be like open a 100 locations. Like, will that get to 10 million? For sure. Or

[1:00:51] franchise. Can that do it? It probably. Maybe. It's going to be really hard, but like it probably could do it. or could you teach people how to make uh to to have a laundry mat and you license out your like I don't know lead getting system something like that which I I'll put all that into like the business of like so what I was saying is you're packaging the offer wrong or like you have to like pivot or whatever but like

[1:01:14] I think every business can get there. So is this a place where most people have a limiting belief? No, that happened way sooner. No, the the the shitty part about business is that like there's like these thresholds, you know? I've never built a business past 50 million yet. Um, this one will get there, but it's like I don't know, maybe a million, 10 million,

[1:01:34] and some number maybe at 30 or 50 maybe. And there's like every like challenge that you get to, it feels insurmountable, but it's definitely is overcomeable. Is there a part of you that wishes you just kept the newsletter? No, not No, not at all. Why? Cuz I wanted to sell and and hit a certain number. my business partner Joe now he was a person who I looked up to and he was my friend he told me that $20 million was a lot of money enough that you'll never have to work again and I was like all right I will try to make that happen because of the the the 3% and if you

[1:02:05] lived a minimal enough lifestyle you'll yeah so there was a handful of things that kind of worked out one my favorite book was this guy uh called Felix Dennis was how to get rich it's a horrible book title but he was an amazing person he started a magazine empire called Maxim magazine and a bunch of other stuff and he wrote this book, How to Get Rich, when he was dying. He was um was dying of cancer and he was worth almost a billion dollars. And he wrote this book saying like, "If I could do it all over Again, I would work as hard as I could

[1:02:31] to make $35 million or something like that or $20 million, I forget, at the age of 35." And he explained why, but he was like, "That would just make you comfortable and I wouldn't have to worry about all this stuff cuz I spent so much of my life in stress. Even when my companies were doing all this huge revenue, I never took any of the money out of the business and so I was stressed all the time." And I think that's it messed me up. And so I was like, "That's cool." And then my read this subreddit called Fatfire uh and all talked about that like premise. And then

[1:02:57] um I met my partner Joe and I was like learned about like the 3% rule and he was like, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." And I was like, "Okay, [laughter] I will try to do that." [clears throat] What did you feel after you achieved that goal? I felt amazing. Yeah, I felt amazing. It

[1:03:12] was awesome. Was it like everything you wanted it to feel like? I still felt like I hadn't accomplished a lot, oddly, but I felt happy. Like, dude, I've been super broke for a long period of time. Like, I used to sneak onto the bus. I would like put three slices of pizza into the Whole Foods box. I was only supposed to have one. So, I like get, you know, three for one. Like, you know, I like did a lot of

[1:03:32] like crazy stuff cuz I was super broke. So, it felt awesome not to be broke. It felt awesome to be able to provide for my family more than anything, to be honest. Tell me about that. So like at what point of building that company did you feel like okay sweet I'm thinking bigger than myself and it's not

[1:03:49] about just me making money for myself. It's about me providing the life that I want for the family I want to have. I think the whole time I didn't have kids but I had a girlfriend and we were going to get married and I was like I want to set us up like I'm always future thinking. It's usually in fiveyear increments but I was like I want our family to be at this point in 5 years. M and it was directly tied to how hard you

[1:04:11] were working on the business. Yeah. But you it's probably all like comes from like mommy and daddy issues. I mean like everyone like you know have you heard the phrase chips and shoulders but chips in pockets like uh but what does that mean? Uh it's like when you like have like rage and like uh you want like revenge for how you're treated as a kid like you're willing to do like a lot of stuff

[1:04:29] to make money. Yeah. I guess the thing I wanted to clarify in this is like you you mentioned how the people that achieve some of these levels of wealth, they don't feel the way they want to feel because they like recognize like, oh, I haven't actually fixed the problem of the internal. What are some traits that you've seen of people that have fixed the problem of the the internal? I mean, I fixed I've fixed a lot of problems, but like I had this lady named Ann who started a company called Solid Core on my podcast and she has $94 million in the bank or something like that. And she

[1:05:04] was like, I'm fearful of running out of money. And I was like, okay, you know, that's false, right? She's like, yeah, I can do the math. I'm good. Obviously, more than good. Way more than good. But I have spent so long like being fearful about this thing that I just can't turn it off. There's two typically two paths of entrepreneurs. There's like one entrepreneur who's like been paying themselves a lot of money as they go, so they got used to it. And there's the

[1:05:27] path I took, which is like I was broke. I pay myself 2,000 a month for like a long time and then like overnight you have something. And like usually those people are the more messed up ones. You look at the wire, it hits your bank account. Did it become real or did it feel real before then? No, it felt real before because what I did was I use this um I use this thing called Kuber now. I don't remember what I was using then, but let's say it was like mint. you can like put your like a bank account and stuff in there and they allow you to like add a manual account

[1:05:56] and I put like a lot of money in the manual account and so for like a year leading up to it I already thought that I was worth this much money. It was kind of funny. Did you do that in an effort to say like I am going to achieve this? Just manifesting it. Yeah. How active are you in writing down your goals and manifesting what you want to

[1:06:11] accomplish? Very. Yeah. Yeah. Like very Yeah. Give me like a couple examples. Like when I was 21, I like wrote this thing that I still looked at for years. It was like by 30, I want to own a ranch and this is how much money I need for it. I want to own a Rolex. This is how much money I need for it. I want to own this type of wardrobe, this type of property, I want this much in savings. And I looked at it when I was 31. I was like, sick, I nailed it. I got all those things. I hate the ranch. I sold it. I

[1:06:39] don't wear this Rolex. Got rid of it. Like I don't want any of this crap. But I'm so thankful that like I hit the goals. It just the goals were dumb. Some of some of them were, not all of them, but I hit the goals. How do I know if my goals are dumb? You don't. You should probably just You should probably just put your head down and achieve them and figure it out

[1:06:56] afterwards. [laughter] I just think that in most cases, it's better just to drive your car fast in a certain direction. And that's a lot better outcome than thinking. I forget which book this was in. Um but it was like you know one they did a study with like they took these two classes of pottery students uh all beginners and they go this class you have to um we're going to spend like the whole semester preparing for you to make this like one amazing pot and then this class you're going to make a hundred and like the hundth one might be your you know might be your one and like the one that was

[1:07:29] getting all the reps in it was like way better and they kind of figured it out as they went and I just I typically I think that's the right way to do things. Mhm. Where does ego come to play for people that are founders that have accomplished that level of goal? Do you find them to be highly egotistical people or not highly

[1:07:45] egotistical people? I don't know. Um I hang out with nerds. Like all of my friends are like computer nerds. Like I I'm like kind of tall and I like to like exercise and stuff. So I think like I don't particularly look like a nerd. Maybe I do. I think I talk like one, but all of my other friend like I don't hang out with like think like like they're all dorks. Like me and my buddies are all like nerds and

[1:08:06] everyone's really polite and kind. Yeah. I've got one of my best friends sold this company for $880 million when he was 29 years old. He's the most quiet, nerdiest guy ever. But then like you were just talking about some guy who I know that is probably kind of successful. He's super loud. I would never hang out with those

[1:08:23] people. I'm never around those guys. I'm I hang out with a bunch of autistic nerds. That I mean [laughter] that's who I hang that's who I love. So the people I hang out with are the sweetest guys ever. Yeah. And there's definitely some you go there, but like they will be in a room

[1:08:36] and they would be the quietest people. You won't even know who they are. Is there something interesting about the uh disconnect between like what wealth is perceived as versus what wealth actually is? Yeah, but I think you got to achieve it to make your own decision. It's pretty empty just to me for me to say it's

[1:08:53] different than what it is. Don't do it. I think you should decide after you do it. I think I talked to some people that have accomplished a lot of things. Uh, I think the coolest ones are the ones that are the most humble. They're the most curious. They're the most Well, I think that it's like the like I remember when I was getting going, I was like, "There is no such thing as luck. I create it all." And then I sold my company and like made a little something and I was like, "Oh my god, luck played like an 80% role in that." Like [laughter] it's so important. Like luck

[1:09:19] is I mean I think it's real. Yeah. Like there I think that um there are people that are just going to be a force of nature no matter what and they will achieve something. But in general, I think luck is way more important than anyone will will acknowledge. Like it could be like I was born in America during this year and like that worked out well or in my case like my company sold and like 3 days later the CEO of the buying company got into a life-threatening accident. Like I don't know would that have impacted the deal or COVID happened and that my business

[1:09:49] boomed. You know what I mean? It's like luck is 100% real. I think. Do you think that people should just set financial goals or do you think that they should No, I do um I do the fours. family, fitness, finance, fun. If you're religious, you can do faith. But no, I think you should have No, I I call it being the total man. You got to be a total man. You know, you got to like it should be family, how your body feels and your health. It should be are you taking care of your family financially and are you having a great

[1:10:12] time doing it? Can you give me like an example of the goals you've set for yourself? Like let's just say like like right now, what are some goals in those categories? So, when it comes to like fitness, like I'll do a fitness challenge most every quarter. I just had a kid um recently, so I've been kind of sticking on that goal. But normally I I do great. I nailed those um a few quarters ago. It was um be an average uh wide receiver in the NFL combine. So I trained for the bench press um for the hor horizontal broad jump, my 40 yard dash, and

[1:10:44] vertical leap. That's so cool. I I love that cuz you're because you have this there's a metric. I know exact I know exactly what I have to accomplish in order to achieve this metric. Last year it was run a 20 21 minute 5K and bench 300 lbs in the same hour. Before that it was do a 50 mile run. So like very specific. I like uh fitness

[1:11:05] challenges. It could be a body fat percentage. It could be just like exercise three days a week and don't get hurt. Some of these some of these things like for example when it comes to business you can always set like a revenue goal. You can set a profit goal. You can set a money like whatever it is. You can set a there's so many specific metrics you can look at. I find that with like family, it's hard to

[1:11:24] set those types of goals. Yeah. But I can put the input I can do input. So like for me like this podcast we're recording, this is like 11:00 p.m. right now because I am I put my daughter to sleep every night. I do not travel. My that's my goal. I I haven't been on a plane since they've been I don't know if I've slept away from my

[1:11:41] home since they've been born. I just refuse. That's my goal. H. So you could have like I could I could do my input like my input is I will I will I will not travel therefore I will be there. Can I ask questions on that? Yeah. I would argue that you've probably lost out of money opportunities because you're setting these limits because of the person you want to be. Is that

[1:12:02] accurate? Yeah. I would be significantly wealthier if I was worked harder. Yeah. I don't work that hard. I work 40 or 50 hours a week. It just feels like the right thing to do. I think that like raising an emotionally stable and healthy child is like the ultimate mission. How many people that are successful

[1:12:20] financially are awful parents? I mean, I live in Manhattan. Like, how much time you got? Like, I don't know. Like, there's people in my building who like I I know the six nannies and I know the four kids they have. I don't know the mom and dad. Uh, I never see them. I mean, like, yeah. I mean, there's so many. I think they're fools. But like also like there could be a story like it could be like for example if you're like a single mom like you're not going to see your kid because you're you're you're paying the ultimate sacrifice. So I can't I don't know their whole story. So it's kind of

[1:12:53] a pain in the ass or that's not very fair of me to judge. But there are some people you can judge. I find myself not respecting guys that don't want to be good dads. Yeah. Like for example, if I have a friend who cheats on his wife, they aren't my friends anymore. Do you know what I mean? like or if it's just a girlfriend or if I see them steal from a store, I'm like, "Oh, we're not going to

[1:13:10] be friends anymore." Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, I care about this stuff. Do you hold the same standard? So, like, for example, uh what would your friends say to you if they saw that you were traveling to Saudi Arabia to do this crazy thing, they're going to give you $300 million um because you were traveling to them and doing open up, you know, sandpar land. Uh is your type of relation with your friends that they would say like, "San, that's not in your

[1:13:32] character." I think that would be worth it. by the way, like we're talking $300 million. Uh, [laughter] but like I don't like I haven't had like I haven't had like a $300 million decision, but it's like go and meet this person or go and do this event and like it would make my business better, but I just I don't

[1:13:47] care. I'm not going to do it. Uh, if it's $300 million, like we're all going together. [laughter] I uh the reason I ask these questions is because I find it so interesting that like I think someone that's so goal oriented I find it refreshing that you hold boundaries because I think the reality is a lot of people that achieve certain levels of wealth and certain levels of entrepreneurial success. They reach a point where they're obsessive to the fault and you end up missing out on the actual important things in life. And so it's very rare to talk to someone

[1:14:17] that's like measured. Yeah. Look, it's still it's still a struggle. Like I have to like I have this thing called a brick where it like bricks my phone so I can't use it. Um but like I still like am like grabbing my phone all the time and you know I still it's not like I mean I'm very

[1:14:33] imperfect. Yeah. Um but at the same time I guess but I try really hard. Yeah. I think there's a lot of guys that don't. I'm not trying to say that as like a negative thing but like I think like for whatever reason valid reasons invalid reasons or just like that's their choice. That's the choice they're making. I I look at it and I think like the fact that you have categories that are broad or saying like I want to be a measured person this way. The fact that you'd hold a boundary and say like I want to shoot a podcast at 8:30 at night on a Friday because that's when I could

[1:15:02] value this and nothing else is going to come within these boundaries. That's like insanely refreshing. That's cool. Well, thank you. I just would ask like how does someone achieve certain levels of wealth and goals financially while not forsaking that aspect of their character? My answer I don't like this answer because I don't want anyone to feel bad. But the fact is is that it was way easier for me to do that because I didn't have kids and I had a wife that was down with me working all the time and we worked together and she would

[1:15:34] come to my office all the time. Mhm. If I had children, I think it would be significantly harder. And frankly, I don't know if I could have done that. And I don't love saying that because I don't want someone to feel bad. That said, I can show you one million examples of people who have many kids and have accomplished so much more than I ever had, but it was so much easier that I was

[1:15:54] just a guy. Yeah. How can I build a business that accomplishes money that I don't hate? I feel like you again like you talked to some people and it's like sometimes they hate it and they want to sell it but we've talked a lot about building something with the Z in mind the end in mind like I want to do this for a long

[1:16:12] period of time. I've talked to like so many successful people like you always hate it sometimes like is I don't love it all the time but like I've talked to like like Jason Frerieded. You know who Jason Freed is? He's one of my favorite entrepreneurs. He started this thing called basecamp andhay.com. I've only known him through the podcast and I've only talked to him a couple times, not on the podcast, but like I sense frustr

[1:16:45] for forever. But there's times that I know that I've talked to him on the pod where I could tell he wants to just throw this thing in the dumpster and never see it again. Like I think you feel that way no matter what. So I don't think like the goal is like I don't think love means like you

[1:16:59] Like I still hate it sometimes. I can imagine it's almost like parenting where it's like it's always fulfilling. You always But you're angry. You're But it's like I I I'm angry at my office all the time. I'm angry. I run angry 12 hours a day. Yeah. Like I didn't want to get puked on. You just don't want to. You're like I

[1:17:18] just don't want to experience that. So I don't think like anyone loves it all the time. But the cool thing is is that you can like change it. Most decisions in business, not all but most are reversible. You open this saying like systems are the most important thing. How do I identify talent that aligns? Like what values are non-negotiables that I should

[1:17:36] have? Well, that's up to you. But typically there's a feeling where it's like if this person quits like will I say like goodbye, have a nice day or would I say like please don't go, I need you so much. Like if you have the second feeling then you have like a plus talent. How many of

[1:17:54] those people have you hired? The amount of people have worked at like a company I've owned collectively is in the mid hundreds. Hundreds probably. And I would say I have found probably I don't know eight or 10 like just total killers. What's a what's a trait of a killer? They alert me of problems that I didn't even know existed after they've solved them in ways that I

[1:18:22] didn't even know were possible. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. They they they communicated to you about the solution when you didn't realize. Yeah. They say this is the pro this was the problem. I fix it by doing X, Y, and Z. And I'm like I didn't I didn't even know that was possible. Thank you.

[1:18:42] What would you like now? Yeah. What What can I do for you, ma'am? Like, would you like lunch? Yeah. Uh, do you think that people should hire more women? My company's like only women. Yeah. Why? I guess this whole thing that Scott Galloway says about men being left behind. It might be true. I don't know. I'm not There's just not The majority of people I find, the most the best people I find so far have been a lot of women. I only hire people who I think are great and it just has turned

[1:19:14] out so far. It's been a lot of women. That's awesome. Yeah, that's really incredible. This is $100 million. I think uh there's not a single person in the world that doesn't look at that amount of money and say, "That's ridiculous." What is the biggest difference between the person that gets stuck at 10 million and the person that

[1:19:30] gets to 100 million and succeeds that? I've never done it, so I'm trying to figure that out, too. Um, but I know a lot of people who have and I think the answer is time. I mean, that's what I'm betting that it's time. I think that the shitty part about a lot of amazing stuff is it just takes a long time. Takes longer than you think. I've learned that in my career consistently. Things take a

[1:19:52] lot more time than you think. Give me an example. Like for for example, for podcasting, I have so much to learn from you from a podcasting perspective. Yeah. I mean, that's that. So, we've done 750 episodes. I remember when we started I was like by month six we're going to be at 100,000 downloads per episode. That took four years. Like it took [laughter] it took I I thought it was going to take six months. It took maybe it took three years. I forget. But like it took forever or it felt like

[1:20:16] forever. I record I don't remember how we did at how many we did at first, but like like two to three a week for a period of time and then now two a week for five years so far. And like it took a long time to get to 100,000. I thought it was going to take 6 months.

[1:20:33] Mhm. How many times did you feel like you wanted to quit the podcast or any I mean I feel like I want to Yeah. Like all the time like like all the Yeah. All the time. Like I feel like I want to quit all stuff all the time. [laughter] I don't ever like do it.

[1:20:48] Yeah. But you feel like it. I guess I have done I sold my company but and I will quit eventually, right? Like I'm gonna be out someday. Uh but no, I feel like it all the time. How do you keep yourself going when you feel that? I usually just like put myself in positions where I can't bail like I I you know I like burning burning the boats. Have you heard that phrase burning the boats? Do you know what

[1:21:12] that's from? Yes. Uh it's from uh Isn't that from when they discovered is Columbus discovering? Yeah. I don't know if it's a true story, but I think it was like Cornado when he like discovered like you know I I forget where but when they came to America with the Kquisidors and they're like we're going to take this

[1:21:27] over. Yes. light the boats on fire. Now we can't go home, you know what I mean? Yeah. Uh I like that attitude. So, but I don't do it really extreme anymore. But um but I did. But I used to, but I don't anymore. But um yeah, I like just like putting myself in systems where like you you have to show up. So like that's why I like hiring people. When you hire people, you kind of work for them where it's like I have to do this thing to like make these

[1:21:51] people feel proud. you have to build a vision that they can fit theirs inside of or like no it's like I um like for example like with MFM like we have this amazing producer Ari who I love and like if we don't do the podcast I don't know if she would have this job like it feels good like you know what I mean um to like show up and do a good job for her sake although I don't know if that's reality maybe maybe they would she would do something else but like you know it feels like that like I have this person at least at the very least

[1:22:18] they're relying on me to show up at this meeting every you know Monday and Wednesday at noon and do a good job. Yeah. So, uh for you and the people like what are you learning from the people that have accomplished the 100 million? So, there are these like freaks that have done it in like a very short amount of time like 5 years and they just picked like a wicked market like just the best market where you know a lot of times with business like feels like you're pushing a rock up a hill. But occasionally you do pick markets where it's like the the ball's rolling down

[1:22:47] the mountain and you just got to like figure out how to hold on. Like I have seen that firsthand. I don't think I've I've I've never done that. Um but I've seen it. It's pretty wild. And a lot of those times it's just they picked the right market and it just worked out and then the other people who have done it they just have done it for a long

[1:23:07] time. Is there a way to like escape time? Like is there a way to to do it where like are there certain types of inputs that Yeah, you could raise a lot of capital. I mean just amazing capital and good people and solid execution. Mark Lori, he's this guy. He's a multi-billionaire. He owns I think the Timberwolves or something like that. He was on our podcast a bunch of times. And um he started this thing called diapers.com that he sold for many hundreds of millions of dollars. I think he was only in his 30s. He did this in like the '90s. He sold it to Amazon. Then he

[1:23:34] started jet.com that he you know made it huge successful for a couple billion dollars. And he was like, I'm just amazing at raising money. Like I I like it wasn't that good of an idea to like start jet.com or diapers.com. It was a fine idea, but I just raised crazy amounts of money and I afforded that. I afforded the ability to hire the best

[1:23:54] people and we just got after it. Something you said earlier, which is like in the process of making even $10,000 or $100,000 or especially a million dollars, the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. Uh how much more so is it important when you're trying to do ridiculous goals? Like if you're trying to make a lot of money, how much more so is important to to inspect your peer group? It's just so much e like haven't you ever hung out with like someone who's like just really amazing and you leave like on a high. Like for example, my friend David Senra, he has this thing

[1:24:24] called Founders. It's a podcast. Yeah. And like I did a podcast with him the other day and he had these like four like amazing cameras. I I don't know much about cameras, but I had a guest. It was like six figures in cameras. And I was like, "David, like does the difference between the cameras and the DSLRs that you have, does it actually make a difference? Does it really matter?" and he goes like without skipping a beat, he looked at me, he goes, "I'm trying to be the best in the world. Everything matters." And then he

[1:24:47] starts like continuing like tinkering. And um I left like on a high and I still feel that where I'm like, "Excellence, excellence in everything. Everything matters." Being around people like that definitely makes you better and achieve more in business when you're around other people who are who are accomplishing this type of stuff. Obsessive, intentional, obsessive. Yeah. So, for example, if someone's looking to access people that are as obsessive as they are, what's the first step? Like I actually I like I find myself like I want to interact with more obsessive people. I find myself like quickly outgrowing the

[1:25:20] people. Yeah. Look, my company Hampton, that's what we do. Yeah. You know, we have over a thousand members and people pay uh $15,000 a year and we vet you and you have to prove your financials in order to like make sure company's big enough. and we put you in these groups of eight people who you meet with monthly when we have a a moderator who we pay and train to be there and lead these like

[1:25:38] breakthrough conversations. That's one example. But like we copied the business from YPO which has existed since the 1950s before YPO. There's millions. I mean just it's just called an organ. It was just an association. There's like so many associations that you can join and like be around other people who have similar interests as you do. So yeah, it's paying is great. Like a country club, you could find wonderful

[1:26:01] people there. Yeah. If someone is looking to scale their company, what's a question that you've heard asked that you're like, "That's a really, really insightful question. That person's likely going to be successful." What did you learn from this lesson? So, I remember I was talking to this guy named Chris who um runs a company that does like hundreds of millions in revenue and I like told him what I got, what something bad happened. Um like let's just say for example, I um changed something on my website. I was like, "Yeah, what I learned was that like changing this copy to this like doesn't work." He was like, "Are you sure you

[1:26:34] learned the right lesson?" And I was like, "What do you mean?" And he's like, "Maybe that copy could work, but like maybe the lesson could have been like why' you even tinker tinker with that in the first place when all these other things are important." And he was making the point he was like whenever you try like have a company and you like do a new initiative like initially like the whole company's productivity goes down and like you're if it goes down I think Herozi says this he's like if it goes down 20% that means it's got to back up to the baseline and then it has to be

[1:27:01] significantly greater than the 20% decrease that caused this new initiative or this new initiative cost if you know what I mean. And he was like the lesson that you should have learned is like you shouldn't have done that in the first place. Not because it was a bad idea but because you guys are always already working on this one thing. You should just keep focusing and double down there. And so him saying like, "Are you sure that's the right lesson to learn here?" Like I ask myself that all the

[1:27:21] time when I make dumb decisions. Like what's truly the lesson that I can learn here? What's something you found as a a great characteristic of an amazing founder? So like beyond the resilience, but like let's talk about like leadership, like a leadership skill set. Have you noticed something that's different about the good leaders versus the ones that are just kind of money

[1:27:42] hungry? In my experience, there are some exceptions, but in general, the people who I know who are super successful are very high integrity. I've seen some amazingly big deals happen on handshakes or just text messages. In general, keeping your word is a commonality of the people who are incredibly successful. Not always. I do know some, but in general, high integrity is something that people have. So, for example, my business partner Joe, he sold his first company for 24 at when he was 24 years old for $114 million. Very

[1:28:19] successful. He has this habit where let's say that we use a lawyer to do something and we have a net 90 terms. The second that lawyer law bill comes in, we pay it the second we get it. Or um like with a lot of free freelancers, like if we if we if he sees it in time, he'll try to pay that bill the day it comes in just cuz he wants the people to know like we treat you right. We do what's what we do the right thing. We have this value at our company called pride where it's like we we show pride in the way that we

[1:28:46] treat people. So like if we're going to fire someone, we're going to go above and beyond for severance or if we get these invoices and if we can afford it, we'll pay it fast. And in general, the people I know are like that where they're very uh super high integrity and if you and if you agree to something, it will happen. M though I do know some people who are successful and honestly that's what probably holds them back from being even more successful is they're just

[1:29:13] they blow it through integrity reasons. Hm. Yeah, I have a perception that you might be breaking, which is that like I find that uh I guess again I probably have a frame of like I think about the I make content for people and so I see the behind the scenes and so I see someone say something on camera and then I see them behind the scenes operate in a completely different way and I'm like okay that is not in alignment with who you are. And that goes so far to be like uh the people that are very successful, they tend to have a lot of enemies. They

[1:29:47] tend to have a lot of people that uh they've screwed over or that they for whatever reason had some vendetta against and they operated with high integrity in the situations that it made them financial sense and then not in high integrity in other situations. And I'm not I'm not going to share any stories of that, but I I think something you're like a barrier breaking for me is like it sounds like you know a lot of successful people that are just

[1:30:15] genuinely good people. Yeah. I'm just I'm not friends with bad guys. I I just don't associate with that. Maybe they Yeah, they just don't exist in my world. I I I'm surrounded by a lot of like really high integrity people. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Have you heard

[1:30:32] that phrase? But yeah, I I I think that like if you achieve a lot, there are people that dislike you. Like if like someone may think that like I did them the wrong way, but like in general the intention is always good and like um I hope they can never say like you went against your word. Talk to me about the vetting process for Hampton. So like how do you vet whether someone is a person of high integrity or

[1:31:02] not? So uh it's systematic. So you apply to get in. You have to have at least 3 million in revenue, 3 million in funding or 10 million was your last exit for your business. If you pass that threshold, then we invite you to interview. Once you interview our manage management membership team, membership management team gives you a thumbs up or thumbs down. And then me and my co-founder Joe actually watch all the interviews that make it past that. We [clears throat] give you a thumbs up or thumbs down. And then the community sees your application and they have to give you a thumbs up. And if they give you a

[1:31:31] thumbs down, you can't get in. Um, so that's the vetting process. There's like four steps to it. So there's people that are in there that are saying, "Oh no, this guy screwed me over or this person." Yeah. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen. How many people have you rejected? Well, we get thousands of applications a

[1:31:46] month. And we don't Yeah. I mean, it's like a 3% rate of acceptance. And is the importance of that to keep the integrity of the community? Yeah. Because if in order for the business to be massive, I want it to be massive, you have to grow through retention. So like our churn is like really low. Uh uh and so like you it can it'll be a huge company but you just got to give it time and like let it

[1:32:09] compound. But if you're constantly getting new customers to replace the ones who have turnurning it will never work. What uh what made you decide to go hyper niche, hyper specific, hyper high ticket beyond broad? That's so funny. I don't think that it's any of those things. I don't think that it's high ticket. I guess high ticket for that demographic, but in the world of info marketing, anything beyond like for example like 8,000 would be

[1:32:33] considered high ticket. And I don't think it's hyper niche. So like one company called Vistage, they do like something like seven or $800 million a year in revenue doing very similar business. I know a handful of others that are doing nine figures a year in profit. It's I don't know if it's that niche. I guess it is niche, but I just felt like it could be awesome. Uh that's why I it was like my eeky guy. It felt like a little bit like a calling. I just think that it's a perfect alignment. Things kick ass. I think there's also a lot of non-serious operators in the space and hopefully we

[1:33:04] can take it serious and I think that people think that it's like a little bit of a joke like it's not that it can't be that big of a business and it'll be really fun to like build a huge company in front of everyone. What's a failure that a lot of people make that is very easy to overcome? It might feel insurmountable, but for example, like one example could be a really bad hire at a really high level

[1:33:25] position. Besides giving away equity to the wrong people or raising money, 100% of decisions, I think in business are reversible, for example, Tylenol, huge, you know, company. And I forget when it was, I think it was in the '9s. Do you remember like the Tylenol thing where someone, I think it was a worker, poisoned a couple bottles of Tylenol pills? They put cyanide, I believe, in a handful of the bottles and like six or four people, something like that, died in Chicago and they traced it back to this like

[1:34:01] tainted Tylenol. They recalled all the Tylenol and they crushed it on a brand. They go, "Here's what happened. Here's what we're doing to fix this." and they created this seal and they did this and people it took time but they trusted them again. It cost them billions of dollars but it worked out. You would think that would just ruin a brand but there's like so many examples of that where like your brand can get ruined or when you make a hire and you're like this person was not the right fit. I spent so much money, so much time trying to find them. In general, most problems other than cap

[1:34:33] table stuff are reversible. Sometimes that even that's reversible, but sometimes that's like impossible to fix. You seem to be someone that cares a lot about people associating you with high integrity and high trust. How could I live as someone in high integrity um but not be crippled by the fear of how people perceive me? I I saw this this bodybuilder tell this story where he was getting popular on YouTube and someone was like or he was like there was two types of criticism. there was like criticism like you're not working out hard enough or I think your videos like are the worst and he was like well

[1:35:08] I just don't like listen to those because I don't care because like I know I'm working out really hard and that's okay if this person doesn't like me and then the other type of criticism was like your mic sucks you should shut down your channel or like the lighting's horrible and he's like okay that was actually constructive feedback I should listen to those and I think that there's like a difference in like feedback and hate where some hate is actually good and you have to figure out which one it is. So like for me it was like like for my podcast if someone's like you look

[1:35:36] fat I'll be like well do I look fat? I kind of do. That could be useful. I should lose weight. You know what I mean? Or if it's like you interrupt too much and I'll listen. I'm like they're right. I did. And so it's important to like figure out which feedback you should actually listen to. But there is really good feedback amongst the hate. I guess

[1:35:57] my this my last question. Do you think that someone should get set a goal to make $100 million? No. I mean, maybe they could, but no. I mean, like, should someone set a goal to like run a marathon at 230? Like, no. I mean, it just only if that fits their if their desire, if they think that that will somehow make them happy or if they think that like the journey will be exciting and worth their time. But no, like I don't that's not like inherently

[1:36:26] good to me. What's the thing that they should actually set a goal in? I don't care. I they should do what makes them happy. I think that um yeah, it doesn't matter to me. I think that I hope that they just people just pick what they want and then and pursue it relentlessly and it makes them happy. Do you think that people should be

[1:36:44] obsessive as a trait no matter what? No, I don't I don't I don't think that drive is like inherently good. Um, and so I love driven and obsessed people, but I've got family members who aren't, and I think they're wonderful people. So, no, I don't think you need No, I don't I think the world would be

[1:37:03] obnoxious if it was a bunch of crazies. Uh, I so appreciate you. It's what is uh very apparent to me is that you are someone that is inquisitive. You're someone that's analytical. You're someone that's thoughtful. and you're someone that is determined to do things the right way. Um, and I I think that all those things packaged together is a rarity. And I just want to say I have a lot of respect for you and I appreciate you. And I think what I hope comes across in this episode is that um it's very attainable to set goals and achieve them, but at the same time, it's really

[1:37:41] worth it to assess what are your goals in the first place. I think that's a great takeaway. Thank you. So, thanks for doing this. Really appreciate you. Hell yeah, brother. Yeah.

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