We hosted a slumber party with 12 billionaires (our minds are blown)
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All right, Sam, we just had an insane weekend together. We got to talk about it. We just lived in a house for a weekend with 25 other founder entrepreneur types, probably five to 10 of them were billionaires. A bunch of others were close and we didn't just like talk or hang out. We literally like slept under one roof and

uh sat in saunas together played basketball together went to walmart together a bunch of times my airbnb had bunk beds so we we bunked we bunk bed together it's as close as two men can get so yeah so we had an experience and i have in front of me several sticky notes of golden lessons learned and i phrased each of them i don't know if you do this but i phrased each of them

to make it fun because nobody wants to hear your vacation story. That's one of the great rules of storytelling is just never tell a vacation story because it's so fun for you, but they weren't there. Nobody cares. But I think we should tell the biggest lessons learned with the story that backs them up. So it's real, not just a generic lesson.

And I phrased all of mine like it's Confucius, like, you know, Bruce Lee whispered this into your ear. Yeah, I dig that. And to give the background, basically, I think like three years ago, you tweeted out, I want to play basketball with interesting people. I think Mr. Beast like DM'd you and you're like, wait, is this real? You ended up phoning him and he was like, yeah, come to my place. I want to meet interesting people. The first year,

It was like you and Ben organized it. It was like 19 of us in an Airbnb. And we're like, what are we going to do? So we play basketball the second year. You organized it a little bit more and you had like an itinerary this year. You guys killed it. It was awesome. It was an amazing event.

I do like meeting interesting people when I go to conferences or events. I just hate conferences or events. Like I get a pit in my stomach when I have to go and I know it's good for me. And I know in the end, I'll meet some cool people. I just hate the format. I hate the structure. So it was like, well, what's, you know, instead of just complaining about it, what's the structure I would like? It's like, well, I don't know. What if it was just doing the thing I love was playing basketball and

with those people. We basically play ball all day and then we talk at night. And that was the core idea is to use basketball as the icebreaker. And you broke your knee in the first two hours. Yeah. Yeah. So this was an event where you could tear, you could tear up your knee and be done in the first hour. And I still had a good time. That means it must've been a good event because

Normally, that's pretty brutal. I did have a little pity party for myself, but I feel better now. Are we allowed to say who was there? Yeah, I think we could say some of the people that were there. Yeah, let's go for it. So Mr. Beast, who like, you know, everyone knows him as the guy on YouTube with hundreds of millions of subscribers. I think he's a paper billionaire. I think that's public. Yeah, he's one of the youngest billionaires in the world. I think he's 26 years old and he's worth a few billion dollars. He's one of the most famous people also in the world, one of the most recognized entertainers in the world.

And when you hang out with him, he's also one of the most intense, fun to be around, just wants to play all in. Somebody said this once about Elon. They go, he's playing life as if the simulation theory is true. Elon has a simulation theory. He's got to just be one of many simulations.

And so he therefore just goes all in because, okay, whatever, let's make this the most entertaining version of that simulation. I think that's how Jimmy plays life too. So we are with him. It was one of the founders of Airbnb who like on paper, like according to Forbes is like the hundredth or 90th richest person in the world. It was another billionaire who was one of the first investors in Tesla and SpaceX. It was the founder of Reddit. It was Jesse Itzler who's on the podcast. You, me, Al Doan who runs like a,

quilting company that does nine figures a year. - Tons of people. - David Perel, Nick Huber, it was awesome. All right, so when I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like two 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. You want to start first?

Yeah, let's do it. All right. I got one for you. Here's one of the lessons I picked up. And this is about the business ideas that these guys were thinking about. So if you're out there and you're wondering kind of like, where's the opportunity? What should I be working on? Here's what I picked up from some of the most successful people in America. And it says, fish where the fish swim, not where the fishermen stand. Confucius, aka me. Did you just make that up?

You saw me writing these five minutes before we went live. Well, I thought you had heard that. Did you hear that somewhere else? There's a scratch out on it, right? But did you get like Chinese food last week and that was like a fortune cookie? Dude, I've had my share of Kung Pao Chicken. All right, let me just tell you some of the ideas that I heard from people who were at this event. So you mentioned Jesse Itzler and I think one of the public things that he's done is

He got really into racing, like running endurance races. So he just followed his curiosity. 100 mile races. 100 mile races. He started doing 100 mile races. While he's doing 100 mile races, he notices that the runners that are trying to do these amazing physical feats are drinking coconut water. And coconut water was a big, like a big part of that niche, super niche community.

And he became a believer and spent time hunting down what he thought would be the best coconut water company. Ends up finding Zico Coconut Water, partners with them. And Zico now is a big success. They ended up selling, I think, to Coke. And they're in Whole Foods. It's one of the big coconut water brands. And he found it when he was small and just exploring these uncharted territories. So here's some other ones that I heard.

There was somebody there who's making hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling board games. I've never even had that on my bingo card. I didn't even know that was an option. I did not even know that you could do that. There was somebody there that was investing millions of dollars into women's sports, like, you know, not even just women's sports. Like they're trying to do things now where you just buy a piece of a college program. I don't even know you could do that. Like that's for sale.

What is that for sale? Where is this listed? I went to a talk recently with this billionaire who owned the Timberwolves, Mark Lazzari or something, and he was talking about the Bucs. And he was talking about how he's trying to buy college. Do you buy the rights? They're going to the University of Alabama or whatever, and they're just like, cool, we'll give you $500 million for the Alabama sports program, and we want to own 51%. Do they buy the future earnings? Is that what it is?

They're basically, I think what's going to happen is, again, it's uncharted territory. You don't know exactly how this is going to play out. But I think the short version is the college will spin out the program, their athletics program as its own business entity. They'll sell equity in it. They'll use that equity to finance all of their sports, like women's lacrosse, like things that aren't going to be the big revenue generators. So they use it to fund all their programs and maybe even school stuff.

And then those, and then, and the costs now are, are born by the private equity person. But now it's this asset that didn't even exist before. Like these college programs can make a lot of money, media rights and all this stuff, but they weren't even for sale. Somebody was doing that. There was some, there's somebody there that was like, yeah, seven years ago, I just got really obsessed with water. I'm like, yeah, me too. I thought my whole life is like, no, no, no. Like I got really obsessed. Like,

Do you know what kind of water you're drinking? And I was like, no, like, is this bad with microplastics? What's going on? And he was just like, yeah, like I got obsessed. And so I just started studying where's the cleanest water from? Where's the healthiest water from? And I realized that water was going to become like oil, that people were going to more and more be drinking, not tap water, but they wanted, they're going to want basically bottled water, canned water, things like that.

And that water is going to have to come from somewhere. And I wanted to find the best sources of water. And so I went to West Virginia and I bought this aquifer. This is the spring. I bought this giant water source. And he was like, you see that drink you're drinking right there? It's like some brand, like popular brand. And he's like, that's our water. They use our water. So that's good water.

And I was like, what? This was just a side quest that he went on. And again, it was curiosity driven. Was this one of the billionaires? Yeah. I mean, not billionaire, but yeah, like whatever. Close. Close enough. There's a guy there, Al, who started a quilting company with his mom in Missouri Star Quilt Company. And they sell fabrics for people who want to make quilts.

His co-founder is his mom. I have a planned vacation. So he owns this thing. The company is called Missouri Quilting Company. And he basically bought, he did a podcast three years ago with us where he explained where he bought a town. Is it Hamilton, Missouri? He bought like an 1800 person town where they own every building and they're building the Disneyland for quilting.

Just the thought of that. So first to go into quilting, smart guy, like, you know, could have done any business, goes into quilting. It's like, what are you doing, man? You're throwing it all the way on quilting? Does a business with his mom, right? Like again, independent thinking, not just following the herd. So then starts the business. His mom does the YouTube channel. He does the business side of it. Business keeps growing. And then it's like, you know what we could do?

we could create the Disneyland for quilting. And he literally goes and buys a town. Again, who's, is that for sale? Can you do that? How do you do that? And that just kept happening, which was like people who were playing games that didn't even seem popular. Another lesson there is there was a person there who had sold a piece of their company to Chernin. And Chernin is now kind of known. I first heard about it maybe like 10 years ago. And Chernin is this really interesting company

They're most famous for... PCG. Yeah, Peter Turen was the CEO of Fox. So he's like a big swinging dick. He's been a baller for years. But they're most famous amongst normal people because they bought Barstool when it was nothing and helped make it something. Correct. And they just had this, again, independent thinking where they were like, hey, I think these things that other people see as small kind of toys, things that aren't going to make a lot of money, media brands, blogs, YouTube channels...

I think these things are going to be big. I think basically, and they had this thesis, which was content to commerce. It's like, I think if you're kicking ass at content, you're going to be able to, instead of just making your money through ad revenue and sponsorships, you're going to be able to sell stuff to those people. And they had this content to commerce thesis and they go and they buy barstool content and ends up being this juggernaut with commerce. They buy, um,

They bought Exploding Kittens and they bought Meat Eater and they bought Surfline. All these niche content brands. We had a guy on the pod, the Plant Daddy. I met with them a couple times. There was like early discussions. Well, you know, three meetings that I had with The Hustle and I was like, what the fuck do you guys know? Didn't get that one right. Yeah.

Turns out they know a lot. They know a lot. Did he just like slide a P&L across the table and he's like, I'll leave you three minutes alone with this. Like they told me this story and I was like,

You're full of shit. You don't know what you're talking about. You're talking about my company, right? But they were right. I think the premise was correct. But yeah, I didn't have that confidence that we're talking about now. And dude, they made a fortune because the market overlooked these brands. These brands were not valued like high-flying tech companies, but they became...

you know, multi hundred million billion dollar brands. I really admire what TCG did because there's so many investors that all love to sound like they're smart and contrarian and they're all just, what's your thesis?

AI, you know, AI is going to be the future of everything, right? It's like, okay, you're not wrong in that. But like, there's something really impressive about somebody who looked at just like this magazine or this blog or this YouTube channel. They did it with Doug DeMauro, who was on our pod. We've had a bunch, we've actually probably had three or four people who sold their company on the pod to those guys.

Right, right. And they've been right. And they've been right in a very, very big way. So I'm very impressed by them. So to me, that's the principle. Fish where the fish swim. So fish where the real opportunity is, not where the fishermen are standing, not where all the entrepreneurs are huddled up. This fortune cookie says, man does not sell chocolate. He must become chocolate. Okay, so what does this mean? Three years ago, when we did the first version of this event,

Jimmy, aka Mr. Beast, had launched his chocolate brand, Feastables. And it was like, okay, selling chocolate to little kids. I had the opportunity to invest. I think I had a $40 million valuation was like the Series A. And I passed. In like the Beast empire or chocolate? No, in Feastables itself. So I kind of thought about it. I was like, I don't really get it. I didn't really know much about the chocolate industry. I thought his involvement was going to be like this. Normal influencer brand is Feastables.

I'm doing my thing. I create my content. Oh, my manager hands me this. Hey, buy this. Smile. Yeah. Put it down. Move on with life. So I thought he's just going to influence it. I thought he's just going to hold it up and buy it. I didn't what I didn't realize is that this guy was going to go so deep into the world of chocolate and end up knowing everything about chocolate and running this company that

like an absolute maniac founder. If I had known that, if I had known he was going to bring his full intensity at this, I probably would have thought about it differently. I thought he was just going to hold up the chocolate bar and see how many people click the link. I was dead wrong. So I want to tell a quick story. You were there for one of the Walmart runs, right? No, but I have a bunch of Walmart stories. So we're sitting there, we're about to record. He walks in, he's like, hey, before we do this, do you guys want to go to Walmart?

Which I realized, like, at the time sounded like sort of a strange request. Nobody's ever asked me on a mandate to Walmart. We walk in and he takes us to the chocolate aisle and basically gives a, like, 10-minute master class on the chocolate industry right there in the aisle. And while he's doing it, he's not just, like, explaining, like, well, this is how it works. This is how we do. This is our revenues. This is whatever.

He's also simultaneously restocking the entire aisle. Like he pulled the cartons up to the front because they were like three inches recessed. They were pushed back too far. Some of the bars had fallen over. They were crooked. He straightens every single one of them out. He puts the right flavors in the right spots. If a bar was crinkly or broken, he's like, he'd throw it to his chief of staff. Like, Hey, can you buy this? I want to have like, we should only have good bars, no broken bars up front. And

And he would basically restock the thing, but his hands were moving at a speed which showed you this is not the first time this guy's done this. So he restocks it. And one of the popular flavors was out. And so he takes out his phone and he's like, oh, I have a badge. And so he just badges into the back of Walmart and goes and gets the box himself and restocks it.

And I was like, does any vendor get to do that? And he's like, no, not exactly. But they know like, I just do this. I care. I really care. And two things stood out to me. The first was obvious, which was when high intensity obsessive people want to win, they do the same things that the rest of us do with the knob dialed up to 12. Like they just take the knob and they just crank it past even where you think it could go. And for example, he was like,

I think you were there. He was telling the story about like missing a flight or something like this. He like told a story about how apparently he flew to DC and had a connecting flight to North Carolina or something wherever he lived. And he was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm driving from DC to Greenville, North Carolina. It's normally like, I don't know, a three hour drive or something. But I noticed that there's 14 Walmarts in between on that route. I'm going to stop at

every single one of them to learn. And it turned like a three-hour drive into like, you know, a 20-hour drive. And he told me at one point, he goes, I have scanned... I guess he's got some app where you scan things in Walmart and it teaches you about each SKU. He said he scanned every single product in Walmart. And I don't know if he was... Like if someone said, oh no, I've scanned all of them, you'd be like, oh, so it's like saying it's a thousand degrees outside. You're just exaggerating. But with him, I was like...

Oh, I bet you, you literally have scanned every single one of them. In the podcast we did, he was like, yeah, like, you know, we want to do a thing where you buy every item in Walmart for somebody in a video. And he's like, you know, but it's $16.2 million. It's like he knew the actual cost of the total, total inventory. If you bought one of everything in Walmart, like what it costs, I forgot what the number was. But so, but I don't want to make this just a Jimmy love fest because there was another guy who was a top seller in Target.

Yeah, man, I heard him nerding out. It was wild. He took us to this shelf and he was like, this shelf right here. He's giving us a tour of Target and it shows you how the store works. He's like, this shelf right here is the most profitable shelf in Target, is the highest profit per square inch, which is how Target measures success. And he's giving us this Target masterclass. And we were like, are you also in Walmart? He's like, yeah, we're in Walmart, but we're not doing so well. And I asked him, what's exciting for you coming up?

And this guy runs a billion dollar plus company. I assumed he was just going to say, I've got some board meetings to line up. I'm going, I'm taking the family to Aspen. And he goes, actually, I'm working the next three weeks as a Walmart associate. I was like, what?

And he goes, yeah, I'm going to be, he goes, our sales in Walmart are not the same as in Target. And I've been trying to figure out why. What I found remarkable is that you expect the people who are the most busy, the most accomplished, the most high net worth to be above these tasks. Jimmy restocking the SKUs himself. This other guy going to be a Walmart associate for three weeks. You know, they don't have to do any of this, but they're going to do it anyways. They're not just doing it now, now that they're successful. That's how they got here.

And so that was the first really big takeaway from this whole thing was the intensity with which certain people play the game of business and how that leads to success. That guy who you're referring to was the quietest person there or one of. And there was a point where I was hanging out with him. He goes, can I get your guys's opinion?

I'm thinking about potentially making some type of business move which would value us at this valuation. And we were like, what valuation? And it was in the billions. And we were like, do you know who we are? Why are you asking us this question? What are you talking about, man? You...

I don't know who you asked this question to, but he was the most humble person there. And he was crazy successful. It was pretty wild, that guy who you're talking about. All right, I have one. Confidence beats IQ. So there are a lot of really successful people out there. When I read Warren Buffett's biography...

He does the opposite where he is like, oh, you know, I'm just this guy. It's like, dude, you're a bona fide... Aw shucks, downplaying them. Yeah, it's like, you're a baby genius. Like he was like, when he was like four, he was like making 10 grand a month selling Pepsi. But in general, the group of people who we had there, there were some people for sure who are genius. I think Jimmy is one of them, actually. I think when you talk to him, you know, he's like brilliant. But...

And like Mario from Oscar was one of them. Mario co-founded a company called Oscar, which is a health insurance company, which is one of the hardest things ever to do. It's worth publicly traded $4 billion. So he's like the man. And he doesn't even speak English or he does. That's a second language.

So like, you know, he's from Germany. He's a genius. Dude, imagine going to Germany and revolutionizing the German healthcare market. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty wild. Extra degree of difficulty. Yeah. Just go to someone else's motherland and fix their shit. Yeah, which is wild. But, you know, he was a genius. But in general, dude, the wealthiest people there, I noticed, were not even close to the smartest. And here's an example.

One of the billion guys was there. He goes, man, AI is just going to change the world. I don't think you guys get it. I use it every day. And I was like, how do you use it? He goes, I could show you right now. And he pulls out his phone and he talks to ChatGBT and he goes, hey, ChatGBT, I have a question. And he starts reading a question to it. And then he's like, now watch how amazing it is. And it repeats the answer. And I'm like...

Oh, so you're saying that you just use ChatGBT all the time. Yeah. And I was like, well, have you trained it? He goes...

You could trade it? Like, he didn't know that you could do these things. And this particular guy ran a company doing billions a year in revenue. I guess what I mean is like the percentage of intelligence greater than me or you or someone else there versus impact or net worth was not like that. It wasn't... Totally. Totally agree with that, which is that when you sit in a room like this, two things happen. One, you just get to sample like it's Costco and it's noon at Costco and you're just getting to sample...

Oh, what do you do? Oh, wow. You seem kind of stressed out. Gotcha. Like not interested in going down that aisle. Yeah. You seem like you're having a lot of fun. What do you do? How do you think about this? You got kids too. How are you doing both? Right. And you get to sample people's lifestyle when you hang out with them like this for like, you know, 48 hours straight.

Um, on top of that, you also get to do the measuring stick thing, which kind of sucks because you're measuring yourself against like some of the most creative, successful, ambitious people in the world. But a big part of it is you're trying to figure out the diff, right? It's like those, those little children's games is two pictures. What's the difference between these two pictures? And on one side is me and the other side is them. And I'm always looking at what's the difference. And sometimes if it's like a Mario or whatever, it's like, oh, cool. Like

His brain has an extra library in it. There's an extra wing that somebody donated to that brain. All right, cool. Like I can, I can live with that. I can sleep easy. But there were other people where it was like, oh, it just seems like they didn't limit themselves. That's what I mean. They just kind of went for it or they have their courage was just a little bit higher supply than mine. And you're right that when you look at the diff very, very rarely was the diff. These people are smarter than me.

Or they had some advantages I didn't have coming up. Right? In fact, it was usually the opposite. It's like, damn, they had this huge chip on their shoulder because their dad wasn't around. And because of this happened and they were dyslexic. There's a bunch of people over there that are dyslexic. Dude, I wish I was dyslexic. Yeah, I know. I thought autistic was the goal. It's dyslexic. Dude, every dyslexic guy there somehow was a good freestyle rapper.

Did you know that? Like not only rich, but also cool in a group of men huddled around together, right? Yeah. I wish I was charismatic like a dyslexic guy. Like that's crazy. It's like if you're blind, you're a good piano player. And if you're dyslexic, you're like the most charismatic guy on earth. Yeah, exactly.

All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you about a friend of the pod who's got their own podcast. If you know Steph Smith, she is a legend. She's been on MFM many times and she's got her own podcast called the A16C Podcast.

And it's all about technology. If you think about it, technology has evolved like crazy. I mean, I grew up in the 90s. I had CDs. Phones had cords. You couldn't use the Internet if your mom was on the phone. And now there's like 3D printers and there's rockets that could go up into space. AI. There's so much crazy stuff going on. And you got to have a place that helps you stay ahead of the curve. And that's what the A6Z podcast is trying to do.

It's a podcast from the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and it's trying to give you an inside look at the trends that are shaping our future. They've had guests like Mark Cuban and Neil Stevenson on, and they talk about topics like deep fakes or the science behind GLP-1s or autonomous drones. No small boy stuff at all. Steph is the host. She's awesome. I think you'll enjoy the podcast. So check it out. It is the A16Z podcast, and I like this tagline. They say, it's like eavesdropping on the future. That's pretty cool. That's a good tagline. So check it out. The A16Z podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

I have a related point, which is I just wrote these two words. I don't know if you can read this. I am. I am. So my trainer has a, like a clothing brand that he creates. It's called Superconscious Goat. So one of the shirts he gave me from Superconscious Goat, my favorite shirt is,

It just on the side, it just says, I am. And then it's after and underneath it says, the two most important words in the English language for whatever comes after them will define your life. If you think you are destined for greatness, if you think you belong at that table, you will make different decisions along the way. And then it becomes sort of self-fulfilling, right? You'll work at a different speed. You'll take different risks. You will go for it in a different way. Several conversations I had at this event where I realized, damn, a lot of the people

A lot of the downstream decisions start with the little voice in your head, the little director of your movie who's deciding like,

What kind of movie is this? Is this like an indie budget? Is this a tragedy? Is this a comedy? Are you a joke? Or is this a Marvel movie? Are you the hero saving the world, right? And I'm not saying one is better than the other, but you get to decide what that little voice in your head is going to tell you. Because the director says, what happens in the story, where you stand, what you say, all of those things. And I thought,

Damn, a lot of what I'm seeing in how people are living their lives and what they're doing differently comes from the little voice in their head just has a different script in mind for what their life is all about. The I am statement. Or like, here's a small example. How about Jesse bringing his sauna? Jesse Isler brought his sauna and he had two guys and I was like, what do you guys do? He's like, oh, we...

bring these saunas like whenever he wants to go to sauna hot yeah he's like whenever we go when he wants to go to like a conference or something like this sauna is like a really cool way to like create a bonding experience which it was by the way just chilling in the sauna was freaking awesome and i was like wait jesse you got these two guys who's just like job is like trail around this like sauna like across the country to bring to events that's the coolest thing i've ever heard of he's like yeah isn't it great we get to hang in the sauna i was like yes and that's like another example of like intensity but like on a more relatable scale

Right. All right. I have one. You could take your billions and shove it up your ass. The Seneca? Yeah. Put that on one of those inspirational posters that you see in your office. There is this one guy who was one of the first investors in a variety of Elon companies.

And presumably a billionaire, like, you know, investing in Tesla at a $60 million valuation or $100 million valuation. You know, I don't know what that is. Is that like 100,000 times? So something like that. We don't do public math. Yeah, like a lot. It's now a trillion dollar company. Yeah. So it's a big deal. Yeah.

There was this funny story where this guy was telling a story about working really hard. He was grinding and his kid was sick. He's like, I had to take a week off to go and help my kid. That was a big deal because I was working so hard. Then this other guy came and he goes, you know how you guys are all talking about working 16 hours a day on your company's

Right now, I'm doing that as well, but my company is my family. And I have retired from business and I work 16 hours a day as the CEO of my family. And when he said that, I was like,

this is awesome um and i imagine he was exaggerating a little bit because i imagine he still does some type of uh deal making or something like that um you know i don't know him well enough to know but i thought it was so cool when he said that and i thought like you have it figured out same with jesse itzler these two guys who i don't want i can't say the first guy's name but jesse also had the same energy where i was like this is this is the way and

This is all personal preference. Jimmy wanted to be Elon. Cool. Go do that. But when I heard this other way of talking, I was like... This is easy to say because everyone was wealthy. But after some number, I don't know what that number is, 10, 20, 30, some millions of numbers, not a lot of it really matters. And just having a good time with your family is something I really admired. And I thought it was really cool that that guy said that. And it made me

realized that I was getting sucked in this vortex of like money, money, money and achievement, achievement, whatever. But when I saw these guys talk and their energy, I was more drawn to that than anyone else there. Do you agree? Yeah, 100%. I think when I go to events like this, my instinct is to figure out, oh, how do you win? Oh, how do you win? How do you win? What tactics, what techniques, what strategies, what approaches work? And instead, the better question almost every single time is what game are you even playing?

And picking the right game matters way more than figuring out how to win the wrong game.

Dude, there was people there who were like mini Genghis Khans, where it's like they want to dominate. They get joy out of war and domination. They want to build cities. They want to dominate industries. They want to do that. That's one game you could play. And by the way, no judgment. Great. Do whatever game you want to play. I just want to know what the games are so I can pick. And then other people were like, I want to be CEO of my family full time. And I'm like, I've done a four hour stretch with my kids. Like,

I think I'm more of a 45 minutes a day, 45 minutes at a time, four times a day. That's, that's my ideal. So, okay. I'm not going to be CEO of my family because I would actually be miserable if I was a full-time stay at home dad personally, but I, but okay. That's a game I could play. Then I talked to Jesse and I was like, Jesse, what do you do? Like, what do you do every day? Now I'm training for races and I'm coaching my kids sports things. I do public speaking. Cause I feel like it keeps me sharp and I get excited to get up on stage and say some shit that lights people up. He's like, I'm selling calendars.

He's like, I'm not making a fortune. These guys, they'll do that in a day or a week or we'll do in a year, but I don't know. I like doing it. I'm doing what I want to be doing. And he was very at ease with that. He's at peace with that. And I think obviously some of that comes from maturity, but a lot of it comes from

It's easy to be at peace when you're actually doing the thing that puts you at peace, when you're doing the thing you like. And if you're kind of, I don't know, like masquerading around trying to just do what you think you should be doing, I think that becomes very exhausting. And so I'm with you that figuring out what game to play seems like the much more important question at every phase of your life. And the game I wanted to play in my 20s is different than the one I'm playing currently in my 30s. It's probably going to be different than what I play in my 40s and 50s.

And I just got to kind of reinvent myself. Dude, there was one guy there who said he worked with Elon and apparently he had to do a meeting or something with Elon. And like the secretary told him like, all right, you're going to do this meeting, but I need you to know that Elon makes his companies make $20 million every one hour. So this better be a $20 million meeting. I heard a similar thing from a guy who worked with him that he was like, Elon would have a meeting, but he would

There would be like 40 or 50 people in the meeting. And the reason why was not because that makes for a more effective meeting, but because it was like, if the right, if the person who we need to talk to is not in this room, it's such a colossal waste of his time that we'll just fly everybody here.

And we're going to have this, you know, 45 minute block. And that way everybody's here because all of your time collectively is not worth as much as his hour. It's just like such a, such an absurd power play. Like it's hard to, it's hard to fathom this. Let me tell you a really quick one, which is hard work amongst this group, not universal.

So there was one guy, you weren't there. Sean busted his knee in the second hour or something like that and had to stay at home for this one whole session. And there was this guy there who was explaining how hard he grinds. And then there was this other guy who was one of the more successful guys there. He was like, I work 20 hours a week. He's like, once my company's got to be some type of predictable, stable, like, all right, if we just keep doing this for 10 years, we're going to grow...

50% a year, hopefully, like it's going to whatever. He was like, I started working 20 hours a week. And he's like, I wouldn't work Fridays. And it was really interesting to see that not everyone worked hard. Did you get that sense from people? The thing I pulled from it was some people were basically operating like monopolies and other people were not. Meaning there were some people playing a game where the competition is so vicious. Like an easy example is YouTube.

If you stop uploading, the game stops, the music stops. There's literally a million other businesses in that same exact space doing the same exact thing who are ready to eat lunch. And every idea you put out there in a video, somebody else is going to copy. And a lot of people do copy the exact videos that he does and the exact script. It's all public information. It's all super competitive. There's no gatekeeping. And then there's other people who were like, yeah, all we had to do was get to this. Like we just had to get this shelf space. Like it was one guy who was showing us a shelf at Target

And he was like, basically seven years of the company was just dedicated, was just like hard work dedicated to getting on the shelf. But once you're on the shelf, it's almost impossible for anybody else to get on the shelf. All we have to do now is stay on the shelf. By the way, this shelf right here, like this little rack you're looking at, this is $300 million a year.

And you're just looking at it. You're like, oh, damn. Like, wow, one shelf in Walmart, one shelf in Target is like the entire revenue streams of like these online only companies. But you're extremely defensible compared to other businesses where the moment you take a break, you have the entire internet competing with you on that same thing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. That was an interesting thing. Do you have... I have a quick one.

Health is wealth. In a room full of very wealthy people, how many fancy clothes did you see? How many fancy watches did you see? How many

How many fancy cars did you hear people bragging about? Everyone but Joe Gebbia looks schleppy. Joe Gebbia looked great, even in workout gear. He was wearing some nice shit. Dude, he looks like he should be in a Taylor Sheridan show. If he made an appearance on Landman, I wouldn't even blink. Everyone besides him... Dude, do you know he's on the board of Tesla? I didn't know that either. He does a lot of interesting stuff. Everyone besides him looked like we were at a slumber party.

Well, we were also. Yeah, but during the day. Yeah, that should be the title of Slumber Party with Billionaires. Hey, can I tell you a Steve Jobs story real quick? So Jobs once said that design is not just how something looks, it's how it works. And a great example of that is my new partner, Mercury. Mercury has made a banking product that just works beautifully. I use it for not just one, but all six of my companies right now. It is my default. If I start a company, it's a no brainer. I go and I open up a Mercury account.

The design is great. It's got all the features that you need. And you can just tell it was made by a founder like me, not a banker somewhere who hired a consultant in an agency to try to make some tool. So if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, head over to mercury.com and open up account in minutes. And here's the fine print. 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.

So the, but the health is well thing was very real. There was a lot of flexing on stuff you're doing for your health, what you're eating and not eating, how much, who's your doctor, who's your, what's your protocol? No one was like that jacked or ripped or anything. Were they other than Joe?

Uh, yeah, I thought people were in pretty good shape. If you go to other industries, non kind of like tech internet, not our bubble. Right. But like go to like a conference with the wealthiest people in finance or oil or whatever, like pick any industry.

Their body shape looks a lot different. No, everyone, they looked like a healthy 55 year old dude. After basically our day was go play basketball for three hours, like an intense basketball game. Come home, go into a 250 degree sauna. Then when you're tired of the sauna, go into this pond that was like freezing cold in North Carolina and go plunge for three minutes. So then go back into the sauna, then go back into the plunge.

Then there's like a masseuse doing body work and myofascial release for you. Then you're eating and everybody's eating clean. Every single person's eating clean while we're there, right? It's like, dude, that was the norm. That is not normal. If you were drinking something out of a plastic bottle, it's like basically doing heroin at this event. Dude, me and Nick Huber got Taco Bell at midnight.

It's secrecy. Yeah. Like we didn't want to tell anyone. Secrecy. Dude, I took like a feastable bar in my, like, I like hid it in my hoodie and it crutched over to my bedroom and ate it like in shame over there because what am I going to do? Sit here and eat a chocolate bar in front of these men? He's just 52 years old and ripped. Yeah. I was like, wow, this guy is, you know, on the Forbes, you know, self-made billionaires list.

And also just ripped for fun as a side quest. Dude, yeah. I mean, he looked great. Jesse's 56 and runs 100-mile races. How many 50-year-olds are ripped and run 100-mile races? Nobody does that shit. Especially successful guys. Jimmy wanted to do a taste test. He had everyone gather around to do a taste test of Hershey's versus his stuff. And I pretended like, oh, wow, Jimmy, your stuff is great. I've never had this before. But at every Airbnb...

In the kitchen. Did you see this? At every Airbnb, it was like literally 100 candy bars. And...

I literally had 2,000 calories per night of his candy. I ate so much of it. I could tell you about all of it. I didn't need a taste test. I'm already an expert on... I could tell you about all the flavors, the peanut butter ones, the dark chocolate ones. You don't have to lick the wrapper for the taste test. No, no, no. This is just how... I'm thorough. I've already... I'm like Jimmy. I already know. I've eaten...

all of them and I had M&M's and Hershey bars on the plate on the way here like I can tell you the hilarious thing is when he's when he's like hanging out with like the like the the upper echelon of the group he's just like just try a piece of this one you don't have to eat the whole thing but like you know it's more for younger people but like whatever that's what he's going to do because it's for kids it's for kids and he's like he'll give you like the dark chocolate flavor yeah and I'm sitting there with like cookies and cream all over my face and I'm like I like it I like the cookies and cream one yeah

It's like my daughter just learned. That was my favorite, Jimmy. You have more of this one? Yeah, my daughter just learned how to say more, but I feel like this, more, more. More, more, more, more, more. I was doing this all the time. More, more, more. Can I give you some of the negative ones? How about the guy who goes, at that point, I was broke. I think I only had like $20 million. Yeah.

Yeah, he's telling some story. Well, there was a hilarious conversation about prenups, which is...

You know, nothing more can be said except for there was an incredible conversation about prenups. I was about to go outside. Me and someone else were going to go outside of the sauna. And someone said, hey, can I ask you guys about prenup? And we were like, oh, let's just sit right here. I just want to listen. Let's just listen. That next three hours was one of the most entertaining three hours of my life. I don't think I've laughed that hard in five, ten years. I was literally belly laugh crying. Some shocking moments.

set setups. People are billionaires are not like you and me. If you're listening to this, billionaires exist and they're not like you. They're not like you. I would say is the midwit meme was in full effect. I'll give you one example. So the way we played our basketball tournament was three teams and we played and then it was supposed to be the, you know, the top two teams play for the finals, but ever, but all the teams finished the same record. One, like we all had one win, one loss after everybody played each other.

So I was like, okay, well, which two teams advance to the finals? And so I, but everybody's getting tired. So I had to make something up. So I was like, all right, we're going to do a, like a penalty kick shootout. So what's the most exciting, you know, like thing in sports is in hockey or soccer where they do the shootout. And it's not going to take up a bunch of energy because like we're old guys and people are getting hurt. We got to like, we can't play an extra game to figure out who's going to go. So we said, all right, everybody step up to pick every team, each team, pick five guys. They're going to shoot a free throw. And then,

The team that makes the least like pressures on everybody's watching you. So it was interesting. One team, my team was like, this is a dictatorship. Like y'all are the five best to the other guys. They're, they're better than you. These five are shooting. Who was the dictator? What? I was a dictator. I didn't even think there was another way. I was like, of course, we're just going to pick our five best and do this. Like, honestly, I didn't even consider another method. And I was the coach of my team because I had gotten injured. I'm on crutches. So I was like doing that.

The second guy, the second team did it merit-based. And the third was like kind of like a volunteer voting system or whatever. And in the merit-based thing, a funny thing that happened was one of the guys was probably less good at basketball overall, made it in the practice shot. And one of the guys who was one of their better players on his team just happened to miss. So I was like, damn, are y'all really going to

not have one of your best players shoot and have this other guy shoot. I was just watching. I'm like, I just want to see what happens here. I want to see what happened with the egos. I just need to know. I need to see this. The guy was like, you sure you want to do it? He's like, no, no, you should do it. You made it. If you want to, I'll do it. And then the guy's like, no, I mean, I don't know. I think I'm going to do it. He's like, okay, go ahead and do it. So, so the guy steps up and he shoots the

And he makes it the guy who's probably like, you know, the weaker basketball players makes it clutched it up and has this awesome moment and his team advances to the finals. And I feel so happy for this guy. And I'm like, that was amazing. I'm like, I'm glad that they kind of really moment. He had his Rudy moment. He honored it. He made it good for him. That was awesome. Under pressure. I love I wanted everybody have like gold moments during the during the event.

But then after the final and their team goes on, wins the finals, happy, they're holding the trophy. It's all good. Afterwards, we're all like packing up to leave. And he's like, he goes up to that guy, the other guy who sat out. He's like, hey, I want, can you and me go shoot free throws? I want to know if that was the correct like EV decision statistically. And the guy's like, oh man, you already made it. Like you already made it. We already won. Like you're good, dude. You did it. He's like, no, no, no. I need to know. I need to know.

And he's like, no, like it's like, honestly, it's done. I'm glad you did it. You made it. He's like, I need to know. And he's like, all right. So they go and they shoot. And of course the guy who's played basketball his whole life makes more of the free throws in like the, with the larger sample size. And then the other guy was like, kind of head down for like, he's kind of bummed out about it for a second. And I was like,

What an intelligently stupid thing to do, right? Like he wanted to know, like, was this a positive EV decision? Was this statistically the correct move? What does EV mean? Expected value. It's like if you're playing poker, you bet your chips. And even if you lose, you're still happy because you made the right decision, even if the result didn't pan out. That's so funny. There's chances. And so I was like, way to snatch...

like way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And there was so many of these little moments where like, there's this guy there who's like, he's a total catch. He's like smart. He's good looking. He's ripped. He's successful, all these things. And he, I just thought a guy like this could walk into a coffee shop and like the cute barista would want him to talk to her. There's a, I've always wanted to be that guy. You know, like this guy could have been that guy. He could have been, it could be so easy for him to just meet someone amazing. Yeah.

And instead, do you want to describe? So, all right. I think what he did was did he scrape? He built a program that scraped LinkedIn. Start with the desired result. He's like, I want a beautiful, intelligent,

woman or something like that. I wasn't there for the whole thing. Someone who fit his like heritage. And so he was like, cool. So he built an AI bot to crawl LinkedIn to then scrape all the like successful, beautiful, but like trained on images of women that he thought were beautiful. Like every woman who was like of a certain like look in New York, uh,

who was between, you know, whatever, 22 and 30 or whatever. He had like a database. He had binders of women. Yeah, he had binders of women. It was hilarious. And then he had this whole system for how he could reach out to them. It was amazing. I don't want to go into all the details, but like... Dude, he had a dedicated iPhone there. He goes, this is my iPhone. And I...

He goes, I have two full-time engineers who have built this program that auto DMs them, this particular DM on Instagram. Let me send her a voice note. I go, you send her voice notes? He goes, I have found that voice notes convert better. And he showed me the voice note. As he told this whole system, it's like, what's that thing called? The Rorschach test or whatever, where you see the blot and it's like you either see a killer or an angel or whatever. It was like some people were like, this is the most impressive thing I've ever seen.

And then some people like the married guys who are like, you know, 50, 40s and 50s were like, brother, you're, you're, it's too much. You're doing too much here. You got to just like, just see a cute girl and go talk to her. It's okay. Let it, let it roll organically, baby. It's going to work better that way. And I just thought it was hilarious. I'm really late. I got to go. I'm supposed to be speaking at something right now. I got to, I got to jet. I just realized I'm way over. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

Hey, Sean here. A quick break to tell you an Ev Williams story. He started Twitter and before that he sold a company to Google for $100 million. And somebody asked him, they said, Ev, what's the secret, man? How do you create these huge businesses, billion dollar businesses? And he says, well, I think the answer is that you take a human desire, preferably one that's been around for thousands of years, and then you just use modern technology to take out steps. Just remove the friction that exists between people getting what they want and

And that is what my partner Mercury does. They took one of the most basic needs any entrepreneur has, managing your money and being able to do your finance or operations. And they've removed all the friction that has existed for decades. No more clunky interfaces, no more 10 tabs to get something done, no more having to drive to a bank, get out of your car just to send a wire transfer. They made it fast. They made it easy. You can actually just get back to running your business. You don't have to worry about the rest of it.

I use it for not one, not two, but six of my companies right now. And it's used by also 200,000 other ambitious founders. So if you want to be like me, head to mercury.com, open an account 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.