The 2024 Milly Awards
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Ladies and gentlemen, here we are, four years in a row, the end of year Millie Awards, where we get together and we recap the year. We make up a bunch of categories, we make up a bunch of answers, and we reflect on how the year has gone with our awards ceremony. So, Sam, are you ready? Yeah!

I'm ready. I like your jacket. Are you going to start wearing this stuff more often? It feels like a little suit of armor.

Yeah, I already got a compliment this morning inside the house. So I think maybe I should start dressing well. Maybe that's going to be my change of the year. We'll see. It's December 26. You got a compliment this year. Probably the only compliment you got all year. Yeah, the only looks compliment for sure. Men don't get compliments. So you should wear jackets for.

All right. So when I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like 2 million subscribers and we made money through advertising. We didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising in general is kind of a crappy business model. And so I remember sitting down and I'm like, what are all the different ways that I can make money off The Hustle that aren't advertising? And so to make sure that you don't make this mistake,

Sean, me, and the HubSpot team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business. And we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with our research. And we call it, very appropriately, we call it the Business Monetization Playbook. Go to the description of this episode and you're going to see a link to that Business Monetization Playbook. It's completely free. You just click the link and you can see it back to the episode. All right, where do we want to start?

All right, we're going to start category. We have 11 awards to give out. We're going to start with number one, best investment of the year. And these are personal, by the way. These are our personal best investments, worst investments, that sort of thing. So Sam, what was your best investment of the year? What do you think I'm going to say?

The S&P 500. The S&P 500. Up 28%. But that one's boring. I don't want to just say that. The best investment we had this year... Do you remember Jason Cohen we had on the pod? Jason Cohen started...

What's it called? WP Engine. WP Engine. Love that guy. No, I just can't remember the company. Anyway, he made a comment, I think after the pod, where he talked about tipping. And I was like, I like to tip. I was like, I just hand out fives. And he goes, fives? You should be handing out 20s. He goes, I tip like crazy. And I started doing that after the pod. And so I carry around a

about $1,000 of 20s at any given point. And I am just dishing that shit out like crazy. And if you want to know something, it's made me so happy. And so that's been a great investment. And I wanted to bring that up because my investment strategies are pretty boring. But man, I'll tell you what, I'll go to a restaurant and it'll be like $60 because we don't drink and it's like cheap dates.

I'll easily leave a hundred bucks. And then you stick around to wait for the reaction too. You're like, did you see that? I just want to make sure you get this right under there. Listen, I thought it was tacky to do that, but I say screw them. I'm doing something nice. I want a compliment. It makes me feel good too. I'm doing this for selfish reasons. It makes me feel good. So I don't mind it. As long as I'm not filming it, it's okay. That's what I think.

Do you guys share these or is that all yours right there? No, but seriously, tipping has made me happier. But investment, it's hard for me to say best investment because I am so boring. Although I do have one angel investment and figure that's going to pay a lot of money so far on paper. Okay, so Sam's favorite ice cream is vanilla. All right, here we go. What do you want me to say? Am I supposed to make something up? All right, I will make up for your boring answer with

I have two answers. I'll give you the first one. Okay, so Sam, best investment. When I think of the perfect investment, right? What's my type? My type would be, you know, some people like blondes, some people like brunettes. Here's my type. My type is a passive investment that is tax advantaged, that beats market returns, that is uncorrelated to the rest of my portfolio, tech, crypto, has low downside, and I'm betting on a beast of an operator who has an unfair advantage. It sounds like you're trying to sell me a timeshare.

Close. It's real estate. You got it. And so I, for the first time, made some serious investment. I invested a few million dollars into real estate this year. And it was great. For a long time, I had thought I should probably be doing real estate. I should probably take this magic internet money, put it in real estate so that I have kind of both. I have real world tangible assets that pay cash flow. And then I have this like kind of crazy upside tech stuff.

And I never could figure out the way to do it. I was like, do I buy my own and manage it? That seems like a pain. Do I use one of these kind of like funds or whatever, but they're all just fee monsters. And, uh, the answer was sitting in my, in my own wheelhouse. My brother-in-law is an amazing real estate operator. The guy's built like a billion dollar real estate portfolio for himself. And so I just started giving him money. And, um,

It's been amazing. I don't lift a finger and I'm getting like, you know, 30, 40% returns with all the tax advantages. So that was my best investment and I'll be doubling down there, but I have a bonus answer for you. The bonus answer is I made a couple of stock trades. I know you don't approve, not supposed to buy individual stocks, but I did, but I did it in a very specific way that I think you might dig, which was, I just have been trading against the all-in podcast for like two years now. Are you kidding me? And it has been phenomenal. Yeah.

Give me an example. And also, is this casino gambling money? In my opinion, anything above...

$100,000 is like legitimate. Okay, so real bets then. Okay, so these are big bets, but I just viewed them as safe. Like they're not like obscure penny stocks. Like Amazon or something. So what will happen is, all in podcast, love listening to it, very entertaining guys, very smart guys. I just don't think they're right a lot. And they're not right in one specific, they have one specific leak, which is that they have like an agenda, which is obviously,

often you know either talking their own their own book or it's anti-woke anti-left anti-big money tech i make money no they're not like the big money part no anti-getting good gains so like you know jason calcanis goes out and he says the most likely case is bitcoin zero and he tweets this out and then on the all-in podcast they're talking about crypto and all the problems with it

Well, guess what? I decided to buy Bitcoin that day. And then Google releases its new AI model, and it has this problem where you say, show me a picture of George Washington, and it shows you a black guy. And they're like, Google's so woke. It's going down the drain. Well, your year-to-date on Google is 41%. Yeah, exactly. So easiest money to make was just to trade against the OLED podcast. So here's an example. Chamath tweets out the growing short case against Facebook and...

And he says regulation is a problem. Tax is a problem. Antitrust is a problem. All this stuff. I bet on Facebook I'm up 5x. So I made 500% on that trade. And so basically they went anti-Bitcoin for a period of time and then they swung back. They went anti-meta and they made this case why Zuck was being an idiot. He was investing way too much CapEx into AR and VR. More money than had ever been invested in the development of the iPhone. It all sounds very, very smart.

But my little simpleton brain went back to like, nah, I think Zuck's the man. I know I spend a shit, like I have an e-commerce business. Every dollar I can spend on the Facebook ad engine, I spend. Yeah, you're like begging them to take more money. Yeah, oh, iOS 14 was a problem? No, no, I still spend more than I spent before that. And there's no better place to spend a dollar in advertising than on Facebook. The close second was Google, right? So when they went anti-Google for being woke,

I bought Google when they went anti-Facebook. I bought Facebook with anti-Bitcoin. I bought Bitcoin. And it's just been very, very profitable for me to do this. That's amazing. That's really funny. It's sort of like the inverse Kramer or inverse Galloway indexes where they just literally whatever this popular...

popular figurehead says they just bet the opposite. I've basically been doing that for about two and a half years against the all-in podcast. Only now was I willing to say it. Dude, by the way, we had this guy on the pod who'd become a great friend of mine named Val. Him and I, he was the main guy. I was a very small investor. We bought a building in Brooklyn. I killed it on that. I think I had a 28% annual return, not including the tax stuff. But my worst investment this year...

Do you remember how I said I was... Remember how I bought a ranch? Right. I sold it this year. So stupid. Maybe I lost money because I could have used that money to invest in something that made a lot more. But I basically kind of broke even. So it wasn't that huge of a loss. But it was so stressful. And my learning is that...

I had this issue where I sold a company, I made money, and I thought I was on top of the world. And I thought I could buy... So I fully bought three different pieces of real estate intending to turn into projects. Not one of them was great. Two were bad. One was breakeven. And that's been my biggest failure is thinking hubris and thinking that I'm amazing. And also, buying real estate that you have to operate, it's just like starting a small business that you have to work 10 hours a week on. It sucks. It's hard. Right.

Yeah. My rule is if it's active, it has to generate more than 50%. The bar is way different. If it's passive, it could be 7%. It's fine. But if it's active, it's got to be more than 50% if it's active investment. And so that's why I gave you the traits. I said passive tax advantage beats the market, right? Like I had this list. If I could ever find an investment that does that and finally found one. I thought it would be cool to like, you know, that's like every, you know, like

that's like one of the five things that men love is like they always say they want to own a lot of land and i did it and i hated it like dude listen to this like i would drive up to i had a tesla at the time i would be in the country and i would have these like workers come to like decide uh to put in a bid to pave the driveway i would get a seventy thousand dollar quote and a three thousand dollar quote like that's that was the delta and it was all because of the way i looked and they're like this guy doesn't know shit you know like

It was crazy. I got taken advantage of so many times. It sucked. So I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon. And for that reason, I'm out. All right. What about worst investment? That was my worst investment was any fully owned real estate. Any real estate that I was an investor in, I loved it. Anything that I fully owned and wanted to make it my thing because of pride, I failed miserably.

All right. My worst investment. This was a little bit hard. I did well this year, but I would say if I had to stretch back a couple of years and say, what was the first worst over the last couple of years? And I would say I made a general rookie mistake, which was.

I would buy on the upswing and I would sell during the panic times, meaning I would try to hedge bets or try to time markets. So when COVID happened, I thought, oh my God, the whole economy is going to shut down. And I was right for a month. And then right after that, stocks exploded. And I was sitting on the sidelines where the stocks that I already owned started soaring and I had to buy back in at higher prices.

Crypto crashed with FTX and other things. And when morale was at its lowest, my conviction was at its lowest. I behaved...

I behave like a pleb. I'm not proud to say it. I'm ashamed to say it. I behave like a pleb. When things were bad, my conviction went low. When things were good, my conviction went high. This is the opposite way to make money. I kind of knew this. But in the moment, it was a lot harder than I expected to actually master my own psychology as an investor. What is the word pleb? Are you thinking that means plebe?

I say pleb. You say pleb. Which one of us is wrong? I don't know which one, though. I don't have enough conviction, but you might have taken another L there. Exactly. Such a pleb, I don't even know how to say it. Yeah, it sucks to be doing things that you know you would advise people not to do.

In the moment. In the moment, by the way. This is why information is not power. Knowledge is not power. So when COVID happened, I think it was February in San Francisco. And, you know, we were all in our apartments thinking the world was literally going to end. And I remember, it's the only time I've ever done this.

The market dropped, I think, 30%. Literally, the day it was its lowest, I sold 100% of everything I owned. Exactly. I thought bodies are going to pile up in New York. I thought the world's ending. And I had friends who did the opposite of me. And our returns were drastically different.

Right.

100%. Also, during that time, I was picking, I remember, between two stocks. I was like, okay, I think the future is some version of AI, but also potentially VR and AR. And I plowed a bunch of money into Unity instead of NVIDIA. I was looking at the two and I was like, is it Unity or NVIDIA? And I should have just bet on both. But instead, I picked Unity and Unity has done nothing and NVIDIA became the most valuable company in the world. So, you know, sometimes you do that too. That's also a way to lose. What did Unity become? Yeah.

I've lost like 60% of my investment on Unity. Unity's gone nowhere. Is there like a threshold of like for your, what's your lowest trade dollar amount? Is it like $1,000 or always above 100,000? More like 100,000. Got it. So I don't have like an actual minimum, but I wouldn't.

I'd be going to put in $1,000. It's not really that exciting. It's kind of a waste of time, right? It depends how you look at it. For example, I think stock picking is stupid. But I think that you're like, well, I spend five grand over the couple months just going to the casino. This could be an exciting thing. I remember when the AMC shit was going crazy. I thought it'd be fun if I was like, all right, I'll do the thing and I'll put only a grand in just to play the game. And maybe I'll talk about it on here. And it was dumb. It was stupid. Yeah.

It wasn't even fun. Yeah, I've done that with like Dogecoin and stuff like that. But yeah, that's the true gambling budget. All right, let's do the next one. Biggest L you took personally this year? Dude, so my daughter was born 15 months ago and I gave myself four months to like just be kind of lazy and not be on top of like my time management. And that like, you know, like on Thanksgiving, you're like, yes, the night before, like the cookies are being made. I could just, it's kind of the same day as Thanksgiving. It's okay if I splurge.

But then Friday happens and you're like, well, they're leftovers. I got to eat them. And then by Sunday, you're still kind of picking out a little bit. I basically did that for six months where I was pretty horrible with my time. And I wasted so much time this year. And it really bothered me. And so this year, I've made some changes that I'll talk about when we get to that category of changes we're making next year.

But I wasted so much time when my daughter was born. And this isn't like people listening being like, well, you should have downtime to hang out with her. It's like, yeah, I did that. I was totally present. But six months down the line when she's at their nanny and I'm still kind of like moving slow and like, you know what I mean? It was kind of... So what do you mean by wasting time? What are we talking about here? I'll give you an example. So I would shift my schedule, like my workout schedule, so I could be with her in the morning.

But and that actually meant that she actually wouldn't get out of bed until seven. The nanny would come at nine. And so between seven and nine, I would hang out at home and then work out from nine to 1030, which is like a pretty lazy morning for me versus working out what I used to do at 730. And so the nanny now comes at eight. And I like, dude, I should have just switched to like

I can now start my day a little bit earlier, but I didn't. So I was still going to the gym later and just lounging around the house for hours, things like that. But like there was five things where it's like accumulated was like, dude, four hours, five hours a day was just wasted. It sounds like you've been hard on yourself, but OK, I'll I'll accept your L.

Each man's L is his own to carry. It's a burden he carries. You didn't have that where you wasted time when you had your kid? It's okay, I think, to be lazy for a while. I think what you just described as your unproductive day was sort of my productive day. So I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, oh, wait. So you took care of your kid and worked out in the morning? That sounds great. It sounds like a great morning. I don't know what you're talking about. It was just like, I didn't get after it at all. And I found myself to be like... And also, when you have a kid, I experienced this where I'm like, oh, nothing else matters.

But you should still kind of pretend it does so you could like kind of be productive. And I kind of like acted like nothing else mattered.

All right. The biggest L I took, there were so many to choose from, to be honest, from forgetting our anniversary and then trying to recover and guessing the date wrong. That was not great. And by the way, she didn't even care, which was like, oh, damn, I've lowered expectations to that level. Okay, gotcha. So that was a quick L I took. The whole, I don't know if you guys... Wait, can you solve this for me? Should anniversaries be the first time you dated or when you got married?

And once you get married, it switches to the marriage anniversary is my official stance. I have been trying to say that it should be dating the whole time. Because, you know what I mean? Like, sometimes it's a date for five years. But then you could do nothing for the marriage? Fuck that. It should be when you start... It should be your first date. That's what an anniversary should be, in my opinion. The first time we kissed with tongue. That's it. All right. So...

So then another L I took was I was collateral damage to this whole, I don't know if you know about the elf in the shelf fucking insanity. Like I lost my wife this month and I went to like a window thing and they were like, what? And I was like, no, no, I just lost her to elf on the shelf. Like this has been crazy. She's up every night for four hours preparing this elaborate elf setup. And then she has to sleep during the day. And I don't know what's happening. I don't know who tricked her.

women in america into doing this but it is um it's like doing 75 hard except for you wake up at two in the morning to do it and you do it for 30 days what is it so it's like a doll that stares on the shelves and like is omnipresent and watches your children so you could scare them into not doing bad stuff so okay so i think their original theory was like you get a elf comes to your house and it sits on a shelf and in the morning it moves and you're like oh my god it moved how what's up with that

But women on the internet have taken this to a whole new level. It doesn't just move. It creates movement.

and plots and tricks and treats. Like, you know, my kids wake up, they come downstairs, the entire living room has been turned into the floor is lava. There's fire on the ground everywhere. The tree is covered. It looks like a volcano now. The elves are hanging from the chandelier doing crazy stuff or they take all of the underwear that was in all of the drawers of all of the house and they put it all over the roof of the house and you gotta go outside and be like, oh my God, what did they do? So every night they create

We had to get our toilet replaced because they turned our toilet into a cereal bowl. And then somebody flushed. And now we use Froot Loops, just clog the toilet. Wait, you just break your shit? Yeah, you just do crazy stuff. Every night you come up with like a giant episode of Punk'd by Ashton Kutcher. A huge prank occurs. And that you have to come up with every night. And you buy...

thousands of dollars of materials because the elves have their own sized stuff that you're like... Dude, if somebody had a knowing rodent in their home causing havoc, they wouldn't put it on the shelf and say hi to it. They would kill it. What? Exactly. And so if you don't know about this, you're just like, what are you talking about? This is weird, strange behavior. But if you're in it, there's guys out there right now that are sort of like...

PTSD shakes are coming over their body because they've also been experiencing this. And I don't know if I'm in the minority. I don't know if I'm in the slight minority or the majority. I don't know. I don't know how many people do this. I just know that my wife and her friends, they do this. And she's in these Facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of women. And every morning they post the elaborate things that they set up. And then that spurs all of them to go even crazier with it. So I'm going to say that Elf on the Shelf was one of mine.

All right. So a while back, we had Gary Tan. He's the president of Y Combinator, which is the most successful incubator of all time. We had him on the podcast and he said that the future of businesses is creator-led. And that's why I'm interested in the podcast Creators Are Brands. Creators Are Brands explores how storytellers are building brands online. They're going to cover the entire creative process. They're going to talk about navigating brand partnerships. They're going to talk about what you need to know about growing your social media platforms. Everything you need to know on this topic.

Creators Are Brands is the pod. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Again, it's called Creators Are Brands with Tom Boyd. All right, back to the episode.

Do you want to do coolest moment? All right, you give me yours. This year, I had to go to LA for a Hampton thing where I had to interview Rob Dyrdek in front of a bunch of people. Very randomly, someone was like, hey, I'm going back home to LA. I'm in Austin right now. I'm going tonight. Someone mentioned that in the morning, you're going to LA. I'm with my wealthy, famous friend, who I'm not going to say. They actually have a jet and they're going to LA tonight.

And I got this text and I had committed to putting my baby to sleep. This was like in the first handful of months. And I was like, I'm going to be here every night. And I was like, dude, I don't want to sound like a douche. And I want, you know, that was, this is the, I'm so grateful you offered me, but I can't go because you want to leave at six. And I said, I'm going to be here till eight 30. And he was like, oh, we'll go at eight 30. And I was like, awesome. And I was like,

Shit. Again, I don't want to be a dick, but my friend Neville is coming with me tomorrow morning, which he was. And I was like, I could never bail on him. And he was like, great, we have room for him. And it totally accommodated me. And so my best friend Neville and I flew to LA on this plane.

very wealthy, famous person's private jet. And I got to spend like three hours like learning from this guy. It was so fun and so awesome. And that was like one of my, not just because we were flying private, it was just awesome that like I got to do this adventure with my friend. That was the best moment I had all year.

But if you flew Southwest, would it have been the coolest moment of the year? On the way back, because we had to change our flights, we flew Southwest next to the toilet. It was a very yin and yang situation, and it was still fantastic. Okay. That one didn't win the award, though. That one didn't win the award, but it was fun. It's like, you know that meme where there's a guy in the hoodie that says, nobody here knows, but I invested in Bitcoin in 2012. That's how I felt in line at Southwest. Yeah.

You know, like they should ask me. All the way here. How'd you get here? Hey, you want to know how I got here on the way here? That's how it felt. I was like, somebody asked me. Oh, this is so different for me. All right. Love that one. Okay, I'll do a quick one. I kind of struggled with this one. I guess I'll give you a quick one. So for Thanksgiving this year, we were going to host it. I decided to...

do a full family vacation. So kind of like, you know, how do I, okay, if we've done well, we've had some success, how do I make sure that that like,

you know, makes everybody have a great time and that I care about in my little economy. And so I rented out this really cool house in Tahoe. I brought my whole family up to Tahoe, hired a personal chef who would cook us the Thanksgiving meal live. And I just remember there was one morning where I woke up and it was just the best morning. Like I took my dog out in the snow. My dog was like mind blown at what snow is. So I took my dog for a walk early in the morning. It was crisp. I didn't have my phone. I

came inside. My kids were all playing with their cousins and that was so cool to see. Somebody was, you know, making breakfast in the other room and they could smell it. Me and my brother-in-law, we were playing, we played a game of like horse on the little Nerf hoop that was in the house. And I just had the best morning. And I just remember being like this is

This was bliss. Like if I could catch it, it ticked all my boxes, right? Like whole family living under one roof. Kids are having a blast. I'm playing a silly game on a Nerf hoop. There's not a worry in the world. We're not busy. We're not rushing. It was just a wonderful feeling. So I'm going to give my Tahoe morning my coolest moment of the year. The takeaway, by the way, I've done that for two years now. I did the first time, I think, last year. When I was doing best moments, I was like, it was either what I just said or this thing.

taking family and just paying for it. And it sounds like a ridiculous and it's very expensive and it's very challenging for a lot of people. But if you can pull it off, it is almost always one of the best moments. It feels if... And the second takeaway is the coolest moments that I think we've had for a lot of these things, it's always doing things that benefit other people somehow. Do you know what I mean? Like accommodating other people into our lives is the best feeling. It's usually not like some huge, like traditional career accomplishment. It's always like...

It's always doing something cool for other people. So I agree. That's a good one that you have. Although yours was somebody flying you private. The best part was doing it with my friend. The fact that we had this shared experience together. That was great. All right. I've got a quick one for Lifehack. Do you want to know my biggest Lifehack? Go for it. That I started doing. And this is so basic to people. But on Thursday, I do this on Thursday, not on Friday. I print out...

I print out everything that I have to do for the next week. And up top is my Q1 focus and goals. And that's like,

tell my wife how much I appreciate her every day, but also traditional business goals and also fitness goals. And then I have what I did last week and any reflections on it. And then I have a category that says how my assistant can help me. And my assistant, every morning, prints this off at my house. And so it's ready for me a Monday morning. And I carry this piece of paper with me around everywhere during the workday. And that's what I use to make sure I'm getting shit done. I don't use Notion. I don't use Asana. I don't use any of that crap.

And just having this printed out has been so much more helpful for me than any type of digital complicated shit.

Totally. I have one over here on the ground. It's like I bought these. If you go buy like sketch pads, like, you know, artists or architects have, it's really high quality paper, large pads with nice pens. Such an easy win to go analog instead of digital with that stuff. By the way, I think you should level it up and you'd need like a seal of some sort of coat of arms for your family. I feel like you would like that. And like either stamp, wax seal. I feel like if you just made it more prestigious online,

Honestly, it would be kind of amusing and it would be fun. And I think you should go there. Yeah, like a presidential briefing. I completely agree. Yeah, exactly. Like, just give it a little stamp and be like, hell yeah, that's me. That's how I roll. And like, this is us. I completely agree. So I want you to do that. That's a great idea. I actually completely agree. What's yours? Okay, life hack for me, the highs and lows channel. Have I told you about this? My highs and lows channel? Is that for work?

Yeah, kind of. I mean, it was for everything, but I have a Slack channel for every company. I have a Slack channel called highs and lows. And in it, anytime there's a high, high in the moment of that business or a low, low. So, you know, for example, on Christmas Eve, the Mexican government decided to ban all imports into Mexico of textiles, which effectively shut down my entire warehouse on Christmas Eve, which

And we can no longer like operate because our warehouse is in Mexico. Yeah, like two days ago. And so you're like, ah, here we are.

Business can now not, our e-commerce business has no inventory for the foreseeable future. And I've got millions of dollars of inventory sitting in a warehouse there that now is, you know, blockaded. Thank you, Mexican government. And thank you, new president of Mexico for this Christmas present. And so in the moment where I'm feeling a low, something bad happened, a lawsuit or a big client gets lost or someone key quits or whatever it is, right?

I go into that channel and I just type what happened. But the beautiful thing is instead of addressing the current problem or basking in the glory of the current high, when I go to the channel, I just see the last one that I had because it's right there scrolled up. And I just see, oh man, I had a huge low then. That feels like nothing now, right? Or I had a huge high before. That also feels like nothing now. And it is this stoic trick of the brain to basically...

Just write down, I'm having a high or I'm having a low right now, but in the place where I'm writing it, I see my last higher low and the one before that and the one before that. And it just like thermoregulates my brain. My brain says, oh, okay, it's not as bad as it seems, nor is it because it humbles me or it keeps my morale high, whatever I need in that moment. And it's so effective just to have this little simple channel.

Have you ever heard of negative visualization? Yeah, like sort of imagining what the worst that could happen is. Yeah. It's a tool that I think it was popularized by the famous Stoics. But basically, you sit down for about five minutes and instead of meditating, you just imagine the worst things on earth are true. Your kid is dying of cancer. Your wife has already died. You're broke. Like you're, you know, hurt, whatever. And then if you actually visualize that for like five or so minutes, it kind of almost feels weird. It's really strange. Yeah.

And then you wake up and you open your eyes and you go, oh, sick. None of that's true. How grateful I feel right now. And it's like a pretty useful tool. And what you're describing is very similar to that. Yeah, except for these were real moments that I remember and I have evidence of versus...

Trying to do this exercise. I mean, this is, I'm saving people thousands of dollars in therapy. If you just create a little highs and lows channel, you'll therapy yourself because you'll go in and it'll, you'll remember I've been high before I've been low before. And either way I walk out, I it's, it's that, that Richard Kipling poem. I treat triumph and disaster. I treat those two imposters the same. And this has been the fastest, most effective way to do it.

Dude, that reminds, you know, one of my, I think Conor McGregor has taken a fall from grace. I really don't like him anymore, but he has a lot of like amazing things that he says that I buy into. And he's got this one thing. Do you remember, have you ever seen what he says about having the same attitude in victory or defeat? Yeah, yeah, exactly. What is it? What does he say? Would you know the exact line? He basically says, I forgot what it was. It was like, you know, humble in victory and something, you know, something in defeat, which is,

By the way, not what he does at all anymore. But yeah, that was his original thesis. Look it up. Yeah, like I think last time he lost, in the octagon, he was telling the opponent... He just said, humble in victory, humble in defeat. And actually, last time he lost, he was screaming at his wife that she was cheating on him. Your wife is in my DMs. Your wife is in my DMs. So he says...

This is the full quote, though. He should learn from some Conor McGregor quotes.

I really want to create a compilation and just show it to him and be like, dude, you'll love this guy. And just see if I reach him. So this is McGregor back when we both loved him. I am cocky in prediction. I am confident in preparation, but I am always humble in victory or defeat. It's the best, right? There you go, right? So we did life act. Let's do now number eight, only four left. Number eight, Billy of the year. Who is our Billy of the year? We do this segment called Billy of the week where we've

profile, just a big baller shot caller, somebody who is either a billionaire or just making big moves. Who do you think was making the biggest of the big moves this year? So my pick is not going to sound sexy, but I'll make a case. Um,

Do you know, I don't know if this ever happened to you, but in high school, sophomore year, and everybody has their place in the social hierarchy. You know who the nerds are, you know who the jocks are, you know who the theater kids are, you know who's the glue guys that can fit in with everybody. And then you all leave for the summer. But then there's always that one kid who leaves for the summer and they get that little second puberty bump.

They get that extra, you know, four inches of height. They start growing a little facial hair. They start working out all summer because their cousin came into town and taught them how to work out. You know, they picked up a hobby. They learned the guitar or they start, you know, doing MMA or something like that. And then, and they start dressing differently. And you hear rumors that they hooked up with like a college girl during the summer and they had like a fling and then they come back and they're just a whole new guy. And there's like a conversation. She's like, is, is Greg cool now? Yeah. And undeniably Greg is cool. Yeah.

Mark Zuckerberg pulled a Greg this year. So here's the case for Zuck. His stock is up 500% in the last 24 months. He's gained $100 billion of net worth. He is now the third richest man in the world. But more than that, he's not just one of the rich guys, right? Because that criteria would apply to Elon, it'd apply to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates. There's other guys who are super rich, right?

He found a hobby that he loves and it got him into tremendous shape. Zuck started doing MMA, jujitsu, striking, and now Zuck is fit. He's ripped. He's got a hobby that he loves that takes his mind off of work.

He is playing the world's most competitive game, which is the AI game. And I don't know how much you followed this, but Zuck had a judo flip, basically. He had a differentiated way to win. Open AI was in front and Google had DeepMind. And Zuck came out and open sourced all of their models and created an open source competitor to basically compete in this market. And he's doing extremely well there.

He went from a robot to a cool guy. He's like dresses like a cool guy now and has like a cool guy haircut. So he did like a personal style upgrade. He, you know, he's not like, you know, Elon's on his, you know, third or fourth failed marriage, you know, 11 kids from three different women. Since college, Zuck's got his college sweetheart, got his daughters, you know, appears to be a really great dad by all accounts.

And I just respect that. I just respect that he's had this all-around game. Agreed. Right? He's just had this really strong floor game where he's just covered all the bases of what I consider to be a really good life. He's doing what he loves on and off the court and...

You know, it's just lame to say Mark Zuckerberg, but I got to say Mark Zuckerberg. He, uh, have you, like, you don't know about running, but he ran a 5K time. He ran a 5K recently, and he ran it in 19 minutes. That's really fit. He's, like, really fit. Did you see that post where he talked about his MRF? His MRF time? Yeah, the MRF. He did an insane MRF. Dude, it was really fast. He doesn't seem like he's, he's not like one of these, like,

You know, like Vince McMahon is like 80 years old, like weirdly like old jacked or like, you know, Joe Rogan has this too, where they have this like really weird body. Cause they're taking like TRT, like crazy. It's like, Oh, these people have these weird Ozempic bodies or TRT bodies. No, he's just like worked out a lot and ate good. Yeah. He like eats an apple and chicken. Like he, he looks great. You know what I mean? He looks great. Yeah. That's a great one. And he's, um, I really like his wife. She's turned into like this kind of, uh,

I don't know, like thought leader, Michelle Obama-y, like, you know, like she's kind of hip and cool and I care about her opinion a lot. Like she's kind of like a little bit of a tastemaker. How do you even know this? Because what I love about her is that she's not out there trying to get limelight. She's not doing anything that's public, right? She does a lot of stuff in private with their foundation, but... I've seen her talk at...

at conferences. And then I also... Zuck's been going to UFC, and they'll show her in the background. And then one of the fighters is like... Or she'll be like, hey, that choke was cool. And he'll be like, do you want to learn it? And she'll be like, yeah. And so she puts the guy in a choke. She's just kind of in it. And she just doesn't seem... You know how people love Princess Di because she was like...

you know, woman of the people. It's kind of has that vibe a little bit. And I, I appreciate that. I have not seen that, but I have seen like they, there was like an interview recently where somebody was like following him around for the day. And she was there and she was just so down to earth and cool and was like making fun of him. But in a, like, you know, like,

You know, when couples are together and it's like you could tell that they have fun together, but you could also tell that they don't hate each other. It's like you can make fun of somebody without being like really bitter on the inside. Yeah. I just thought like the vibe I got was great. A little clip. But the vibe I got was was great. So mine was. Do you remember meetup.com's founder, Scott? Is it Heiferman? Yeah.

The heifer. Heifer? Let's call him the heifer. So the short of it is the story is basically this guy named Scott. He started a digital ad company that he sold for like $15 million, enough to get very wealthy as a 28-year-old. He...

leaves tech and he goes and he joins McDonald's and he works at McDonald's as a cashier or something like that. And people actually noticed him and someone wrote, I think Fast Company wrote an article and they're like, what the hell are you doing? He's like, dude, I've been around ad executives for the last 10 years or five years. I've been around tech people.

I needed to get out of my bubble. And so I just went and worked at McDonald's and I learned it's really hard work and I'm so thankful that I am where I am and I'm going to go back to that. By the way, he didn't just do it for like a day. This wasn't like a field trip. Like he actually worked there for like months and months. Yeah, and he worked there and then he left and he started meetup.com, which I think eventually was worth

hundreds of millions of dollars, sold it. And as of late, if you go to his LinkedIn, he has not made an ordeal out of this. This is all other people like us talking about it and making an ordeal out of it. But now he's an Amazon warehouse worker.

and he's working in the amazon warehouse and he kind of is doing the exact same thing and i think that's so baller that he's doing that and so baller that he is not doing it for pr it's like some soul searching thing and i think it's fantastic i think it's pretty badass so he was kind of i don't he's not actually a billionaire but he's quite wealthy i would imagine it's that billy mindset it's that bill he's got that he's got b energy living life on your own terms he he is doing that um

Love it. Okay, that's a good one. That's a good poll. All right, what's next? Now, this one is frame-breaking person, so we should explain this one. So both you and I love one specific thing that I don't even think other people have a word for. We call it frame-breaking. It's somebody who breaks your frame. Scott is a great example of this. It's somebody who lives their life or acts in a way

that sort of defies your expectation, breaks your frame on what's either normal, what's acceptable, what's possible, what's cool. It's somebody who just lives differently in a way that just shatters your norm, your worldview norm. And I wanted to make a category for this because this is one of my favorite things when I meet somebody who's like this. So, frame-breaking person, who did you have this year? I'll say frame-breaking is this guy, Brian Johnson. So, Brian Johnson is the guy who wants to live forever guy. And

And he's frame breaking, not because he wants to live forever shit, which is definitely cool. But I hung out with him. And so for those who don't know, Brian Johnson is the guy who started a company that kind of turned into Venmo and a bunch of other things. He sold it for $500 million. And now he's spending a lot of money to try to live forever. And you see him on Instagram all the time. He said something to me. I was like, why are you doing this? You know, we were just talking about stuff. And he goes, you know,

I read this book on Magellan. And Magellan was a sailor and explorer in the 1500s or 1400s. And he basically sailed around the globe. And he proved all this amazing stuff. And I just thought it was so amazing. And I was starting to... And I made a list of the top 10, top 15 people to ever live and what their contributions were. The Wright brothers with flight, the person who invented electricity or discovered electricity, people like that. And he's

And he's like, none of them were rich. Money didn't impact people. It didn't impact the world as much. And I just thought that if I could solve a really hard problem and contribute to the world, I thought that that would be a life worth living. And I just decided that I'm going to try and do everything in my day to be renowned in the year 2500.

He's like, in 2,500, I hope to create and contribute to society in such a way that in 2,500, they talk about me. And I thought that was absolutely bananas. I don't know if I want to do that, but I thought it was so cool that he was like, I don't care about money because money... And I was like...

he's like that he's like who was the richest person 500 years ago i was like i don't i don't know he's like yeah that's my point but you've heard of magellan uh and so i thought it was such a frame-breaking moment um for me to to like hear his reasoning as to why he's trying to do what he's do which is prolong death or solve for death he's like if i solve that would you say that will i'll be remembered i was like yeah yeah you will and he's like that's how i want to spend my day that's an amazing answer um

I love that he did that. Just all the things you just said, making a list of the 15 most impactful or influential people ever.

What a list. I think I want to go do that just to even see what that was. He should publish that list, by the way. It was like Orville. It was the Wright Brothers. It was the Gutenberg Press. It was Magellan. There was like 10 of them. He was like, these changed the world forever. And he's like, do you know how many of them are rich people? None. They were just like inventors or something like that. I thought you were going to say Orville Redenbacher. And I was like, I'm not going to complain if he's on the list.

Okay, so my answer for frame-breaking person is Nick Gray. And this is going to be an answer, but

It's my true answer. This is my truth and I'm going to speak by truth. It's not Elon Musk. It's somebody I met, I hung out with. I had a flight, so I went and spoke at this event and they were like, hey, we'll fly you private. And I was like, okay, cool. And Nick was going to the same place as I was. He's like, hey, can I come with you? And I was like, yeah, no problem. That'd be great. Nick was the Sam in that situation. Yeah, exactly. So I was like one-on-one with him for like five hours or something. Which is...

That's a long conversation. That's more time than I spent talking to most people. And I walked away, and I'm just going to read you my text to my sister after I hung out with Nick. So I hung out with Nick. I tried to play cool. And afterwards, I get off the plane. I go, I just hung out with a guy who...

Has such a zest for life. I go, I've hung out with a lot of rich people, but this guy's rich in a different way. He is rich in social wealth. He's got tons of friends. He is rich in amusement. I feel like everything he does in a way, everything he does in a day amuses him and he's doing it on his own. I go, he is corny and totally himself in the best way possible. And I just want to tell you a couple of the things that just stood out to me, like prolific things this guy did this year.

So we've talked about the Tokyo blind date where he says, I want to go to Tokyo, but I don't want to go alone. Fill out this Google form and I want to take one person on a blind date with me to Tokyo. And he gets thousands of responses. He picks a girl. He almost falls in love on this day. He does the whole thing publicly and it goes viral.

This guy's having fun. The next thing he does, he goes to India and he stays in India for like a month. And I'm like, what are you doing in India? I'm Indian. I haven't been to India for a month in like 10 years. And he's like, oh, I just love the culture. I just wanted to go. I know I have a couple of friends that I've met in other travels. I just want to go visit their hometown. And so he goes to these like remote towns in India. He's learning their way of life and their foods and all this stuff. And he's blogging about it.

And he knows that in India, one of the ways that people like they don't have hinge or Tinder in the same way, like the old school way in India is you run what's called a matrimonial ad in the newspaper. So this is how my mom met my dad, which was my dad runs an ad. It says, you know, 21 years old, six feet tall, you know, have a bachelor's degree in engineering, you know, good head of hair, comes from a good family, that sort of thing.

and Nick finds this so amusing he's like I gotta do this so he runs a matrimony ad and actually he starts A-B testing different matrimony ads and he's showing them to me it's like 5'9 full set of teeth I don't know it's like you know like he has a blog at one point he was like how do I make sure that she's like fit and like not like crazy overweight and I was like we were like could you like put like

I have to be able to lift you on my, like, I want to be able to lift you on my shoulders. Like I'm not strong. Yeah, exactly. So such running these ads, but he's not running it like as a prank. He was genuinely curious and interested to see what, and he just, he just over and over again at these little life experiments and just followed. He just, I, the way I text my sister, I go, I feel like he's just taking the bounce of the ball of life and he's just going with it. So for example, I,

I'm like, dude, you should like start a YouTube channel or something. He goes, oh, I have one. I go, what? I've never seen it. And he shows me his YouTube channel. Do you know what his YouTube channel is?

I've watched the videos, but what do you mean what it is? It's reviews of cruise ships, of which bedrooms he likes on cruise ships, because he likes cruises. And guess what? All his followers are old people who retire and go on cruises, and they're like, thanks, I'm going on this cruise next year. I retired, I'm 74. I was wondering if the bathrooms come with a vanity kit. And sure enough, that's what... But he's so into it that he just...

I've always said the best product is you pushed out. And that to me is Nick Gray. Nick Gray, he just took himself and flipped himself inside out. He's pushing himself out in the world. And if you love it, if you hate it, he really could care less, it seems like. And I just found it, I don't know, very like eye opening to see somebody who is their own corny self on full blast. And I really admire that. For example, I'm interested in stocks, he's interested in stocks, but the way he's interested in stocks is different.

He is a huge fan of one stock. You know the one. Cloudflare. Cloudflare. He hosts his birthday party at Cloudflare. He creates a WhatsApp group of other Cloudflare believers. And every earnings call, he texts the group and he says like, you know, I hope the earnings gods are with us today. I'm feeling lucky. I'm wearing this. And I'm just, I'm ready for all that this Q2 call brings us. And he's got this whole group.

I met Nick Gray because we were all bloggers like 10 years ago. And there's like 30 of us friends who are bloggers. He went to each of us and he goes, I noticed your website is hosted on whatever, GoDaddy, this or that.

Would it be okay if my assistant transferred your account from GoDaddy to Cloudflare? We'll do it completely for free. And in fact, the hosting property or the hosting thing that you have, they're charging you $100 a month. Cloudflare is going to charge you $40 a month. I went and got a deal. I was like, why are you doing this? He goes, because I'm a shareholder of Cloudflare and I need you guys to start using it because I think you're going to love it even more. Dude, I swear to God, he switched my blog to Cloudflare for free. And now I'm saving...

$600 a year. He's like a shareholder of his own life in a way that I am not. He's like an activist shareholder. It's like he was like, what are the best gyms that have swimming pools and saunas in New York? And he found them and they were super busy. But what he realized was that all the gyms had poor SEO.

And when he was Googling for best gym and sauna, like nothing was really coming up. And so what he did was he started writing blogs about other gyms as if they had the best pool and sauna, not the one that was near him that actually did so that it would go down in the rankings and be less busy so that he would have it more to himself. And these are just like little life experiments he was doing. And he made millions of dollars doing this, too, because he loved museums.

So he created a business about renegade museum tours where he would take you on his own tour because museums are boring and he's not boring. And he would take you on his own tour unofficially, not a part of the museum, ended up selling that for millions of dollars. He like we did the thing about his gag at the party. We're on the way out. He's like, hey, Sean,

call my phone. I've got a gag. He's like, yeah, I have a gag. I want to do a little bit like a bit. Are you a comedian? What's going on? And then I call his phone and he whips out this phone case. That's it looks like a butcher's knife, like a machete. And he puts it up to his ear and goes, hello. And he just wanted to make us laugh. And I'm like,

This guy just goes through life trying to make himself laugh. The last text I sent my sister, I go, it's like he... You know the movie Limitless? It's like he took the Limitless pill, but instead of it getting... He didn't give him any superpowers. He just is using that pill to enjoy his life in a way that the rest of us are not. And so he broke my frame. Our friend Sahil, Sahil Bloom, he's got this new shtick where he shares like...

He's in these group chats, and I guess he'll say some inspirational shit. And then he'll tweet it out. He's like, here's what I shared with this chat. Like a realization this morning. First of all, I am my own biggest enemy. I have to say, I love Sahil. So I'm saying this with love. But he'll say some live, laugh, love for dudes type of shit. The thing about wisdom is that you only earn it through hardship. Whatever. And then some guy retweeted and he goes,

Bro, if a dude said this in my group chat, he's getting kicked out right away. And your sister's reply to that is like...

She went to his blog and was just like, he looks funny. And then moved on with life. I was like, I just typed you an essay about how this man changed my life. And she's like, I Googled him and searched him. You're like, dude, do you like Oprah? Because I'm doing some Oprah level shit right here. And she just dismissed you. That's pretty funny. Nick Ray is the man. Nick Ray is the man. Are we going to do favorite guests now? Yeah, let's do best guest. And then we'll do best business idea that we had on the podcast.

So I'm obsessed with being transparent about money, particularly with ultra high net worth people. The reason being is that there's not a lot of information on this demographic. And so because I own Hampton, which is a community for founders, I have access to thousands of young and incredibly high net worth people. We have people worth hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars inside of Hampton.

And so every year, we do this thing called the Hampton Wealth Report, where we survey over 1,000 entrepreneurs, and we ask them all types of information about their personal finances. We ask them about how they're investing their money, what their portfolio looks like. We ask them about their monthly spend habits. We ask them how they've set up their estate, how much money they're going to leave to charity, how much money they keep in cash.

How much money they're paying themselves from their businesses. Basically, every question that you want to ask a rich person, we went and we do it for you. And we do it with hundreds and hundreds of people. So if you want to check out the report, it's called the Hampton Wealth Report. Just go to joinhampton.com, click our menu, and you're going to see a section called reports. And you're going to see it all right there. It's very easy. So again, it's called the Hampton Wealth Report. Go to joinhampton.com, click the menu, and then click the report button. And let me know what you think. Thank you.

So let's do best guess first. Who you got? This is I worked really hard not to have recency bias, but I'm Jad from Replit. We barely even talked about like the financials of his business, but I'm pretty sure it's like a billion dollar company, right?

Yeah, last round was like right under a billion dollars. So he built this huge company. I think he's only 36 or 37. Crazy smart. His blog is so good. He's not just smart like you talk to him. He is prolific. He writes all this amazing stuff. He said one little small line that...

I could have dismissed as like a fortune cookie thing, but he was like telling how he makes the decisions based off of what will be a better movie. But he gave like eight examples of that. And I totally bought in and I thought that he was amazing. And one of the reasons was because of that, like Live Life to be a good movie. I thought it was fantastic.

Yeah, he said, whenever I'm at a fork in the road on a decision of what to do in life, I just ask, well, we'll make the better story. Yeah. And then I just do that one. It was great. He was so fascinating. That episode on YouTube, I think it has 200,000 views. It was a huge hit. And it was one of those things where we were recording it. And he's like, he's low energy. And oftentimes high energy people will do better because that's just whatever how people are. But, and I was like, I...

enthralled by this podcast. A lot of times, if you spend an hour and a half on Zoom, you get tired. I was totally excited at the end of that pod. And he was a very low-energy, mellow guy. And I was like, I don't know if this is going to hit or not, but I love it. And so it totally hit. So a lot of people thought he was amazing as well. Yeah, there's almost half a million downloads across YouTube and audio on that one. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah, it's at 330 on YouTube. All right, so mine, I have...

One is the highest viewed episode of the year, and one is the lowest viewed episode of the year. So I'll start with the obvious one, the highest viewed episode. This is the episode I did with Manish Pabrai. Does it have two million? I think it's at two and a half million on YouTube alone. Wow. So it's the first podcast episode. We've been doing this for four or five years now. First podcast episode that crossed...

like a million on, on YouTube. So that was cool to see. But in the moment I knew it was a banger. Like it was, I felt like it was the best, best, best podcast I've ever done. I remember preparing for it for two weeks. I flew out there. We hired a film crew. We went to his house. I went to his house the day before and hung out with him to like kind of warm up and prep him. Like I, I gave it my absolute all for that interview and it, and it paid off. He told, he said two things that are, there's three things that stood out to me about him. Uh,

Uh, he gave this story on the podcast about what I was like, so what, all right, you've told me about Buffett. You've told me about yourself. You told me about you, you know, your friendship with Charlie Munger, like what makes a great investor. And he basically was, he gave me the keys. He was like, um, you know, people think the money's made in the buyer buying and the selling it's made in the waiting.

And he basically told the story about, he goes, you ever watched Seinfeld? You know, that episode where Elaine goes on a, she gets this new boyfriend and it's going great. And Elaine loves this guy. And he seems so perfect. And,

And then they go on vacation together. And on the flight, she's got like snacks and a movie and like all this stuff to like entertain her. He just sits there. He's just staring at the seat in front of him, just raw dogging it. And she's like, are you sure you don't want like to watch this or read a book or do you want a snack? And he's like, no, I'm fine. And she's like, by the end of the flight, she's like, I got to break up with this guy. Like this guy's a maniac.

for just sitting there staring at the seat back in front of him. By the way, what a brilliant episode idea. I know, right? How do you come up with that? He's perfect, except he stares at the seat in front of him on a flight. Yeah, he's just like, I can't do it, I can't do it. And he's like, that guy would make a great investor. If you can have fun watching the paint dry, you can be a great investor. And

And my takeaway was like, I'm probably not going to be a great investor. Got it. Got it. It's not me. But at least I knew what the formula was. The other things were by the life hack of going to these people's houses for the podcast. Hold on. That was a really good comment. I know what the that ain't for me, but I know what the formula is. That's actually pretty cool. Yeah. You know the answer. Same thing with Amjad. Amjad goes, I've realized, you know, my advantage. My advantage is that I persist.

I can push the boulder up the mountain for a long time. Like I'm just willing to endure. And I was like, Oh, okay, cool. Not going to compete with you. I can't do that. You're like, I'm happy. I know what it takes and I'm happy to know I don't have it. Yeah, exactly. The girl. Oh, she's really into a guy who's, you know, got these traits. All right. That's not me. Nice to meet you. See you later. Um,

So going to these people's houses, I think is just this life hack where you pick up so much of their energy and their lifestyle and their way of being. Like I did Monish right before I did Joe Lonsdale. Joe Lonsdale, you go to his house. It's this elaborate mansion, beautiful, beautiful mansion, you know, backyard Olympic sized swimming pool with sunflowers.

statues that are shooting water out of their mouth. And, and he's got like an old gun from the Victorian age. And that's like what he's into. He's got a full staff that's serving us breakfast and just like full staff that just operates in his house. And he's like a high performance machine. And right after we left, Elon Musk was coming over for a lunch with the, you know, the senators of, of, of, of the area. And I was like, wow, this is a lifestyle that I just, you know, broke my frame.

Then I go to Manisha's house and we're like, hey, can we come over? He's like, yeah, sure. Stop by. I'm like, is it okay if we come between 4 and 4.20? He's like, come whenever you want. And we go over and he's hanging out. He's wearing basketball shorts and his flip flops. And he just took a nap, which he does every day. And he shows us his nap room. And he's like, yeah, like my whole job is to make, you know, a couple of great decisions a year. So I just read and I think, and I just try to have a great calm state of mind. And I meet interesting people and

That's all I do. I don't have to like, go, go, go, go, go. And I don't have to beat the senators and I don't have to have any shows me his library where we record the podcast. He's got thousands of books. He's read all of them. And it was just so interesting to see these different, these different ways to win. And then you see them up close in person. And that's just a very different style. That's shadowing them for a day. Like with Joe Lonsdale, I went in the morning at 8am and I did the morning workout with him. And then I had breakfast with him. Then we jumped to the cold plunge.

All of that before the podcast, hanging out with these people was the real win. The podcast was just a cherry on top. So that was my favorite. And I'll also give a shout out to the lowest viewed episode of the year that I thought was amazing, which was the episode I did with Mike Posner. Also went to his house. And they said the lowest views because he's a rapper, musician. Maybe it's not a fit with our audience.

I think this guy was amazing. He was an incredibly positive guy. And he had all these little micro lessons that were amazing. Two of them that stood out to me. One was he has this phrase where he was talking about how he made this hit song. His first song went like quadruple platinum.

And then he was always chasing that high in his twenties to do it again. And the next song went double platinum, but it felt like a failure to comparison. Next song, single platinum. Oh my God. He's on this downswing. And then the next one didn't even go platinum. And he's like, the mistake I was making was I would go to the studio, try to make a hit. And I went there to try to make a hit song. And that wasn't how I made my first hit song. First hit song. I just did what I thought was dope. And then, then I just started trying to play the game too much, trying to make hits. And I, all I succeeded was making something I hated and,

And I just thought this is such an applicable thing for business, especially for people out there who have not tasted their first big win. And all they want is a big win or they have a big win and that they need, they feel the need to top that with their next one. And they start going to the studio to try to make a hit. And he said, at the end of the day, I figured out,

I'm just going to make what's cool to me. And sometimes the whole world will agree. And I just thought that was such a dope philosophy as a creator to take, which is I'm just going to make what's dope for me. And then once in a while, the whole world will agree with me. Which by the way, like very meta example here, I don't know how the audio did, but the YouTube on this did 13,000. That's like,

one of the lower in the past year. I listened to it and I loved it. I thought it was so good. And then the comments are, this is the best episode ever. The second comment, this was the best episode, MFM episode ever. Like people loved it in the comments. And for some reason, it didn't get views. That's insane. It's also good not to chase those views, I think, because I thought it was fantastic. It's weird. Why do you think it didn't hit?

to take his approach. It doesn't matter. I just do what's cool to me. And sometimes the whole world agrees. And sometimes they don't. Most of the time they don't. That's okay. And so the two examples I gave and the Monish one, okay, it gets 3 million plays. In that case, the whole world agreed. But I felt the same way about the Mike Poser one. I'm proud of both of them the same because I thought they were both dope. All right. Last two categories. Best product. What do you have?

I have a lame answer. I'll go quick. It's just ChatGPT. Yeah, it's pretty dope. It's the same product I would have picked last year, but it got way better. Like the same product. It's the same name, but it's a totally better product. And I also have found new ways to use it. It's almost like

You got onto Hogwarts and you're learning new, like, oh, you're learning how to use your wand. It's like, oh, wow, I got, I could do that spell with it. I could do this with it. That's how AI feels to me. And I just wrote chat GPT as my quick way of saying it. Dude, I had a friend over, some family friends over yesterday for Christmas, and he's worked at OpenAI for four years.

I cornered him. Strapped him down. I just cornered him. And he's a lot smarter than me. And I had my hand on his shoulder. I was like, here you go. Have a seat. Have a seat. Sit down. Here's the computer. And here's a list of questions. You want to start from the top? Let's get after it. Yeah, we'll eat turkey later, but have a seat. It was just peppering him with questions. I think that was a good one. ChatGPT is a good one. What was yours? Best product. This thing.

It says, well, the focus is off. It's the brick. This is a $29 thing. It has some type of, I don't know, what is it called? The RFID, whatever. So for the audio listener, Sam's holding up a little tiny square. It's like, you know, one inch by one inch.

And this is a thing that just nukes your phone. It's basically, it's the size of an AirPod case. And it's a piece of plastic with some type of chip in there. You download their app. I think this thing is $25. Every morning when I'm getting ready to go to the gym, I walk by my door and I brick my phone, which means it's completely unusable other than making phone calls. So my wife can call me for an emergency, Spotify, and my workout app.

And so I will keep it like that until noon, usually. So I can't answer texts. I can't use Slack. Can't use email. No Wikipedia. No Chrome. All I could use is True Coach, which is where I have my workouts, a phone call for emergency, and Spotify. And it is awesome. It makes my life just a little bit better every morning. I'm a big fan of these guys. Have you ever used one?

I've not used it. Maybe I should. That's a good case. It's awesome, man. You can like I have like a workout setting and then you could have like a driving setting. So you could just make it like YouTube. And like I listen to podcasts on YouTube. So you have YouTube and maps available. Like that's it. And so it's pretty cool. And I can't unbrick my phone unless I come home and I scan it again. And so it's a it's pretty amazing.

So that's been my best product. And is there like an emergency or like, oh, for real, for real, I need Google Maps right now. Like, is there a way to override it if you needed to? Yeah, but I think you only get three times to do that. And the third time you do it, this brick that you've purchased, it's useless. And so it's just like, oh, but I bought that thing for $30. I want it to work like that type of like resistance is just enough.

Yeah, I don't know if I'm built for that level of self-discipline. You know, back in the day, I bought that wristband called Pavlok, which is basically like Pavlovian training for yourself. So it's a wristband where you electrocute yourself. You get a slight, you get a small electric shock, not actually that small, but you get an electric shock in your arm. It kind of hurt when you do something. It was like, but, you know, I was using it for my diet and it's like, okay, I'm going to eat this piece of pizza and then I got to like voluntarily push this button to like shock myself. Yeah.

And I just didn't. And instead, all I used it for was just a conversation piece. Like I'd be somewhere and be like, what's that? I'd be like, oh, try this on. Watch this. And it became my party trick to be cool instead of having anything to do. Check it out. I'm a freak. I'm unique. Yeah, exactly. Like, so you use it? I'm like, no, not at all. Does it work? I have no idea. Don't even try. Yeah.

what's um the hell if i know yeah you gotta you should try this it's pretty awesome and then the change that you're gonna make next year uh mine's mine's fast um

I'm getting an office. I'm sick of working from home all the time. It's cool a few days a week, I guess. It's cool when you have to do it. But yeah, we're getting an office. I'm getting an office. I need to be around people. Even when business is going well, you're like, yeah, let's get on a Zoom. But your company is remote, so you're going to get an office and then there's local people? We have 20 employees and 11 of them are in New York City.

So we have enough. But you're not in New York, so what are you going to do? I live an hour away, so I'll just go three days a week. Oh my God, what a horrible decision. Do I have to talk my friend out of signing up for a voluntary two hours of commuting a day? Do I need to show him the statistics that show how much...

You hate your life. Dude, but what's the, like the alternative is that I'm just like in my kitchen and it's like, I celebrate with an emoji, you know, like just lame. I let you break your phone. I let you care about dressing up. I let you do all these things that, you know, they're, they're self-harm, but I let you do it because there's some greater good.

Commuting two hours a day is a horrible idea. Dude, how often do you... When was the last time you saw a coworker? I guess you work with your wife. That doesn't count. Here's what I did, which is way more genius. Diego, who's on this call right now, who helps me with all my content,

He lived in Baltimore as of a month ago. And then I called Diego and I said, hey, Diego, how would you like to live within 10 minutes of me? And he's like, I'd be down. And I go, cool. How do we do that in the next two weeks? He's like, I guess I'd have to figure out a way to transport my dog. And then he...

Quit his job. His wife quit her job. He broke his lease. He rented an RV and drove across the country in seven days. And now he lives within 10 minutes of me. And we see each other every day. We transformed my garage into an office for ourselves. And it's great. And that's the way to do it. Wait, so...

Is the expectation that he's going to live in an RV for an extended period of time or is he going to rent a house? He got an apartment nearby and lives in a cool place. And I told him, I said, hey, you're moving to California. So here's a pay raise to cover the cost of your move and the higher cost of living out here. And come live in California. Who wants to be in Baltimore, bro? And come hang out with me. It's going to be way more fun. And we agreed to do it. Was it weird after not doing that for three years or whatever?

Well, the weird part is like, I realized how, how distracted my schedule is. Cause I he'll come over and we're supposed to work and then it'll be like, oh, but I gotta like go drop off my kid at school that I gotta come back. Then my trainer comes over and then I work again. And then like my kid wants to play like Jenga for a second. So like be right back. And I realized like, oh, you know, when somebody else is there, you're acutely aware that like, wait, hold on. I'm taking a break here and how many of those mini breaks I had. So I had to kind of rejigger that to be a little more focused time.

But honestly, it was like, well, it's just better. It's like all the times we would be doing calls, us being in person during those, even if it's not perfect. So, you know, for example, sometimes he just comes and works out of the office even before I'm there. I'm dropping my kids off, but he's just there. He just treats it like an office. And then we just happen to be there together a bunch of times. But the key for me is I don't have 20 people, right? So I could do this with...

Cause I have two people on my team and that's all I need. Yeah. Yeah. I, I might do it in Westport where I live, but I, uh, you know where I work out most days is the library. Dude, I'm in the library and it's just like me. And then like 16 year old girls exercise. No, like tat, like type on my computer. Like, it's like, I, I freaking love the library. I work out of the library all the time. And I'm like, I always have a great vibe, dude. It's so much better than like a coffee shop or a, we work, uh,

Libraries are great. You and I were in Entrepreneur Magazine last year, and they have a copy of it. They have a magazine section. I definitely move that magazine to the front, and every once in a while, I'll read it. But we're not on the cover, right? No. Are we on the inside? Do you have to open it up? I got to open it up. And when people walk by, I got to be like, who's that guy in the magazine? Is he right there? Oh, what? Yeah.

It's him from page 16. Oh, did you just ask me if I... Yeah, it is. No, I like the library. What's yours? Okay, the library is a great one. What category are we even on? Change you're making. Oh, change I'm making. This is going to sound stupid, but it's not for me. I'm all in on music this year. I decided that...

I want to be... I want to do more music stuff. And so I picked up piano again. Playing. And I hired... So I basically hired somebody to come teach me piano because I did it like in seventh grade and I can play like for a lease and that's it. How many lessons are you in? I'm starting next week. And the second one is I hired a guy because I've always...

Like you can now make like most music is now made on a computer. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I know computers, but I don't know how to make music on a computer. And I kind of want to see what's like the latest and greatest of that. So I hired somebody who's like, you know, those people that know how to like make songs on a computer. Are you talking about like beats or like you're going to like record a cover? You want to write or you want to cover?

Start with covers. Yeah, start with covers always. And then learn to make an original song. That'll be really fun. And so I... And the reason why is... Well, the reason why is because it's fun. But two, I...

two things are happening. One, AI is making it easier and easier to make art and software and things that were previously off limits or would take a lot of skill to be able to do something cool. Now, a little bit of coding skill lets you do a lot. And a little bit of music skill can do a lot using these new tools. But also, just like I have a gym I go to for my physical body, I want a creative gym. And I got this idea from Tim Ferriss. He was talking about how

one of the ways he keeps his mind right and stays in an awesome state of mind and is able to produce great content and be really creative, he works out his creativity. He's like, and it doesn't have to be in the thing I'm doing. So if I'm writing a book, it doesn't have to be that I have to just practice writing. He's like, I might paint or do drawing or calligraphy or archery or anything that is sort of like a,

a creative gym session. And I do that in the morning. And he's like, it's like when you go to the gym and then suddenly you have more energy and you're performing better at work. Why is that? Same thing with a creative gym session. So I liked that idea. And I thought, oh yeah, this is something I could see more people doing in the future. It makes sense to me. I'm going to start doing this just the way I go to the gym in the morning. I'm going to go to the creative gym, you know, two or three times a week.

and start doing something that's highly creative. Dude, that's so good. I think that's fantastic. You know, Sarah takes, my wife, she takes piano and singing classes, like lessons. She's on top of it. You guys can vibe out. But what I'm trying to encourage her to do is sign up for some type of open mic night or just like something where it's like you can have like a recital. Well, dude, I got inspired by my cousin. He did this. So I was like, oh, I'm going to do this.

And then it's so funny when you put it out there, people start just giving you clues on how to win. So my sister was like, oh yeah, do you know our cousin Neil? He does that. He's hired a piano coach. He's doing it all the time. And then he went to an old folks home and he performs there once a week as his recital. And it gives them so much joy. And I'm like, wow, what a great win. A low stakes way to,

to have a performance that brings other people joy and it's just like so wholesome. I was like, wow, what a great idea. Because you need like a... In my opinion, when you're doing these new things, you need like a capstone. You need like an essay. You need some type of...

beginning, middle, and end of like, all right, I have now achieved level one. It's like, that's kind of why karate is kind of cool because there's belts. Like you need some type of like... Because you break the wood board at the end. Well, there's like a belt where it's like, all right, I am working towards this. Nice. I crossed the threshold. Next. Right.

That framework is, I think, a very helpful... With writing, it's like, I want to publish a book. It is published. There's some type of destination. I think that that would be cool. That would be cool for you. And I think it's, by the way, great. You and other people tease me for, I like clothing. It's the same shit. It's just some type of creative...

There's no money. It's about the journey, that type of vibe. And it is exciting to like beauty and art. That shit feels good on the soul. I think it's great that you're doing this. I think that it would be really fun if you had some type of capstone project thing. Yeah, the other thing I'm doing is I'm taking the Jesse Itzler 2025, like how to plan your year. And I'm actually doing it. So like yesterday, I was doing his get light part where I'm cleaning out

I'm just getting rid of stuff. I'm getting light before the end of the year and closing out the year properly. I did my thanks stuff and I started writing my thank you notes. I'm buying in and I'm actually doing it. So if you want to hear it, go listen to the Jesse Yilter episode. I was pretty inspired by that. Same. We have the calendar. A good idea. We have the calendar. We use the calendar. So I sit in our little area where we have the calendar. I totally use it. I think it's fantastic. Isn't it crazy how...

Some of these things, maybe 26 and 27-year-old Sam and Sean would have made fun of these things as whack. 100%. And now it's sort of like even like you'd be like, what is this? This is stupid. It's awesome. It's awesome.

Isn't that funny how we're like... I'm like, going to bed early is so awesome. I used to tell myself all kinds of stories about why I was a night owl, how that was more fun, how it'd be lame to go to bed. If a friend was going to bed at 9.30, I'd be like, lame. Now I'm like jealous if I hear about my friend that goes to bed at 9.30. Fuck, how does he do that? I need to learn. This was a great pod. What do you think? I think it's great. It's one of my favorite traditions. Thank you, everybody, for listening.

Another great year in the books. The greatest podcast ever created. We did something. We had to do this ad for Spotify. And when we did it, Sean was like, you know, Spotify told us to thank you guys for

But in actuality, you should be thanking us because we're the ones who just did all the work to make this content for you. But I am pretty thankful of everyone who works on the pod. I'm also thankful for the people who actually listen to this shit. It shocks me sometimes when people come up to me still and they're like, yeah, you said this thing and this thing and it made a difference to me. And I feel so much gratitude when people do those things and I'm so happy that we're able to do this. All right. And on that note...

That's the pod. Hey, Sean here. I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvie story. One of the great ad men. He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. You wouldn't lie to your own wife. So don't lie to mine. And I love that. You guys, you're my family. You're like my wife and I won't lie to you either. So I'll tell you the truth.

for every company I own right now, six companies, I use Mercury for all of them. So I'm proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across my personal account, my business accounts, and anytime I start a new company, this is my first move, I go open up a Mercury account. I'm very confident in recommending it because I actually use it. I've used it for years. It is the best product on the market.

So, if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury.com and apply in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC. All right, back to the episode.