5 ruthless business lessons from one week in NYC

okay i just got back from new york i was there for a week it was probably the most fun business trip of my life and i wrote down five bullet points i have here that i think we could dive into and the first one i wanna dive into is i feel like got could rude to where i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never when was last time you've been in new york city oh dude it's been like ten years since i've into new like i just don't really go well you had a great time that's good whenever people come here i feel like i wanna be a steward where i wanna be like look it's not that crazy to live here and it could be awesome and it's exciting and i'm am not like one of these guys that's it like i'm not a knicks fan i'm not like a new yorker i just live here so i don't wanna like pretend that i'm like a you know that type of person but i felt proud to show you around yeah and you did also i think a lot of people had that in new because there'd be like hey we're going to hang out with this person and it would be half hang half city tour because there's a there's a lot going on and b i think there's a lot of pride in in like knowing the city and being a part of the city and bringing friends from other places to the city which i think is is pretty cool up so one is trust trust as a service the next one is marketing third one proximity fourth is citi brands and the fifth is what is it really okay so those are the those are my five my five key phrases you which one you wanna start with number three proximity yeah we use that word all the time proximity so what i mean by proxy proximity is being closely together so i wanna read you some notes from one of my one of my hangout so i hung out with with the comedian hudson min h and he's been on the pod before he's listed to the pod sometimes we've we've gotten to become friends from a afar but and i got to go to his office and hang out and meet his team and see how they work i'm a big fan of watching how different people work you know go to their office that sort of thing he saw that me and ben were together now ben lives in austin i live in san francisco bay area so we're we're not to get we don't work together in the same office but him and his team do in new york city he commute in from like wherever connecticut or something like that to the city to work it's his main job his podcast i don't know if i i i don't think he would say that i think his main job is just being being a creative of which a podcast takes up maybe behalf of his pie chart and the other half of his movies and and his tours and things like that so it's like netflix specials those sorts things so he said this thing he goes as soon as you walk into a creative office and there's the hot secretary in the all glass windows and the fancy matcha in the in the kitchen he goes you've already lost the plot you've already forgotten what it's all about and so he was like he he took he's like he's like it's not about all that stuff it's not about the the glass and the in the hot secretary and the matcha it's not about any of that it's about this and he handles the me the yellow legal pad where he's handwriting his his script and he's like it's about these sticky notes on this wall and it's not even enough space but we gotta figure out act one act two act three this is the work and he goes i wanted it to be tight i wanted us to have close proximity he's like it's a c bond and he was talking about the power of proximity he goes you know what i even take it further he goes whenever anyone's in new york you're in new york right now come to the office come hang come a part of this you need to work for a day here come work right here oh you're shooting this movie you need a place for hair and makeup do it right over there he goes because it's when you're here and we're just doing things you know where we we get to sort of bump into each other like you know our atoms get to bump to each other good things happen i pick up a little bit of what going on in your world i figure out a way to help you you figure out a way to help me and that proximity i realize is something i really miss you get it a lot in san francisco in the tech world new york i would say is even a level above that because it's even denser everything feels very high proximity like we did a different thing every hour i would say like we were hanging with somebody you know for probably ninety minutes at a time and then we would go to do something else there was no more than like ten minutes of transit time between anything that we were doing it was insane we're just hopping from one thing to the next and so i thought his note on proximity proximity with your coworkers proximity with peers who you think are interesting and remembering like what is it all about is it about the space and the gloss and the remote work and and all that stuff or is it about the sticky notes and the close proximity and spelling smelling each other's you know deodorant yes but also like the time that you were here you're were going going going you got nothing done you you know i think that you were educated you were inspired you which is important and also if i'm hassan and i'm writing all the time which i kind of ant for this podcast like two hours for this podcast i need quiet time no one talked to me i'm in a room by myself so he actually gave me some good inspiration for that too so he goes i'm here you know whatever couple days a week and we stack it because i i met up with him i think i went to his office like ten right yeah yeah i was like i was with you at dinner and i was like hey we gotta go meet someone like what and we went i think i got to his office of nine thirty or ten was it people were there him and his whole team was there i thought he was just maybe hanging out for us no they he was in a meeting we waited for him for you know twenty thirty minutes and then we we hung out for another two three hours then he took to train home was it was insane he goes down no these days i stack them i tell my and tell my person like you know top to bottom meetings meeting meetings like that's where we're talking it goes because in the next three days it's quite time and he said awesome i think i think what he did was he like he's like i rented a office space above and dunkin and donuts like the smallest little writers room you can imagine he's like can i go there when it's writing time the other thing we said he said was he goes we were talking about like maker's time versus manager's time like the program essay and you gotta know which which schedule you're supposed to be on are you on a manager your schedule will every thirty minutes back to back to back your you know your context switching you're meeting a different group you're making decisions or on maker's time where you need long blocks of uninterrupted creative time that's might feel unproductive for an hour of it but you needed that time to kinda get in the groove and then then you get it flow state and you start start working and he goes i told my team like i need to be above this duncan i need to be in that room alone no wifi f no nothing not just me in the legal pad don't even i didn't take a laptop because i could produce pages what i produce pages it's like a magic trick money rains from the sky when i do that so you gotta give me time to generate these pages is no i took a lot of inspiration when you meet someone who's a a creative and an artist at the top of their field it is feels very different than just meeting an entrepreneur you know there's a couple different like inspiring versions of this like if you walk into like you know elon factory where he's building things right or when we did the mister beast toys like this is the largest sounds stage in america that guy's trapped in that room for a year and we're building this set over here an athlete or when he talk to an athlete and you can see their schedule and you see how they think about all these little things how how seriously they take their body their recovery forget the workout the recovery is impressive and so there's so these these little pockets of like world class people when they make you realize like oh that's what it looks like when you dial up to twelve whether it's athletic whether it's building or in this case it's about the creative process creative work and so that was that was pretty inspiring so you have i went to your office too and got to see you know you built basically a place for proximity in what ways do people underrated it in what ways does they unlock you give me give me something on it yeah so i need i have a a door right over here and it has a recording light on there so no one people know not to come in here right now and i keep that on a lot even when i'm not recording but then every probably forty minutes i quit what i'm doing and i just walk around and people get mad at me at my office because they're like you're just staring at me and i'm like no i just wanna like pop in on different conversations and listen and i do that all the time i think that there's a phrase what's it called like managing by wandering where it's like you know like the ceo would like walk around like the factory floor with zero intention other than just to learn and see what's going on and occasionally find a problem and help solve it and so i do that all the time and i love it it makes me happy and so there's a joke where you can kind of see it we have like frosted glass now because they say that i would just like stare at people in in the office but like i i sort love your complaints yeah sometimes they'll i'll just like pop into meetings and i'll just sit and i won't say a word and then i'll walk out and i love doing that because it helps me learn what's going on and how people feel and what people's opinions are and i frankly love doing this but i do require like lots and lots of quiet time it's like a barbell strategy right you wanna have extreme high contact ground truth close proximity ser interactions and then you wanna have structured isolated thinking time working time that's like highly secluded and that seems to be the optimal is to be able to have the ability to go far in either direction and not just stay in like kind of like weak middle words like a lot of zoom calls and you know some slack messages and a bunch of light touches but never really going deep on anything at any in with any people or any work and i also hired a a cheap designer my office isn't particularly fancy but wanted it to look like aesthetically pleasing because i to be here so i i took a little bit of a different route than him what's the what are the other few alright so i had alright so this episode is all about excellence a while back i shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life and the team at hubspot turned it into a thirty day operating system that you can check out right now it breaks down the systems that have took me ten years to figure out and shows how exactly i use them day to day these are systems that genuinely changed my life so if you wanna build a good life scan the qr code or click the link in the description now let's get back to the show i had marketing i had trust i had city brands and i had what does it really mean what's it really mean okay so this has been a long recurring theme what i mean by that is everybody's typically looking for some new insight i actually value a repetitive insight because it means there's more learn it means there's probably higher signal like if i hear if the same lesson comes up three or four times in a in a two year span i add more weight to it whereas i think most people yeah yeah yeah i know i think that's how most people treat things that they've heard before so i've i think on this podcast i mentioned a couple years ago i was at an event with the guys from tiny andrew and his business partner chris who's much less well known and was sitting at dinner and this guy was talking about a business he had failed in and he said the thing that everett y'all you know but but i learned so much and then chris goes what did you learned and then the guy like oh so much he goes so what's the main thing you learned and then the guy was like he's fumbling his stumbling he couldn't really figure out what to say then he said something that was like i don't remember the specific example now but it would be like if i if if i had started a restaurant and my restaurant failed and then i was like i learned you shouldn't start a business when it's rainy season it's like that's what you learned and it was like that you didn't even learn the right lesson and chris basically pointed this out he goes i've talked to so many entrepreneurs he goes very rarely do i feel like somebody actually learned the right lesson from the thing and this kept coming up you know this has come up for me many times and so what does it really mean i think it is is is it very important question i i don't think people sit with enough and so let me give you maybe a couple of examples so we've met up with gary v right hand man nick deal who we've talked about on this podcast for a very unique job so gary v big public persona he can't be everywhere at once so he's got this guy nick who's his right hand man and he's basically an extension of gary nick will host dinners for people that people in the gary orbit who thinks are cool and they just they pay the bill they bring cool people together gary is not even there he met up with us he's like i just got off a flight from the con what does it con film festival and he was there on week in paris and then was like you guys gotta come next year and gary gary tell everyone that he went to con oh i think gary was there in this case but it's like they needed more manpower and so we were talking to him and i was like i think the the simple explanation that everybody you know i kinda asked i was like what does everybody think you do he's like oh everybody thinks i basically just go party and like you know a drink a dime wine and dine with like you know gary i so what do you so what do you really do and it's very interesting when you ask somebody what do you really do and he goes that's a great he goes you know most people don't really ask that but you know i think you're genuinely asking so i'll tell you and he gave me two stories that i thought were pretty dope the first thing he said was he goes he goes every room that you're ever in socially there's some slack this the room is slack in some way so he goes there's there's a social slack that nobody can really put their finger on but maybe the music's is too loud maybe it's a little too cold maybe that guy doesn't know who to talk to maybe the drinks are maybe maybe there's no drinks we all need some drinks maybe it's there's two groups that don't really know each other they haven't bridged the gap yet in the in this room maybe they will in three hours but can i do it in the first thirty minutes because it'll change the way the night goes he goes there's always the social slack in the room and what i'm really great at is identifying that social slack and picking it up finding a way to like stir the drink so that it tastes better of every room that i'm in and people don't really even necessarily notice what i did but it's it the goal is to elevate the experience for everybody in the room but they benefit from it in some capacity and what's an example yeah exactly so he gave a couple of examples so i don't know if you saw when the knicks won the the championship the there was a viral clip of of ja b toasting in the small restaurant and he he basically was like f webb mb and then they somebody had record he didn't mean for it but somebody had recorded it and it leaked and it like got out and it it went mc mega viral well that was happening they the knicks after their championship game they went to gary's social club his place fly fish and they were getting in the room we were in where they have this like casa sushi room and that's he's like dude that was the chair right there look watch the video this is this this is the exact spot and so he's like you know through the relationship building i had done when they decided hey we want a cool place to celebrate they decided to come here that's obviously very good for the brand of like if that's where the mix celebrate the first championship in fifty years it's obviously gonna be very good for our restaurant chain now for our concept right that's pretty cool and it's good for our members club so that's like one example he gave another example of like being very intentional so he's like if gary starts to get into street wear and new fashion then he's like my he's like then i basically go and i try to meet the hundred fifty most interesting people doing interesting things in street in fashion i go into them with no agenda i'm just trying to meet them understand them help them do whatever i can with them but now they're part of our network and then sure enough like one of them is raising money we invested in and boom it's this like you know this hit product that that comes out of he's like we didn't know going in that would be the win who knows it could've have been something else completely but we don't we don't have to know where we know we have like five touch points it's like maybe that they're gonna come on the podcast maybe it's gonna be an investment maybe they're gonna be friends maybe they're really insightful they'll teach us something maybe it's that who knows what it is i don't need to know what it is front i'll go in with no agenda and pick it up on the other side alright everyone i'm gonna make this quick so if you're og g listener of my first million then you might remember a guy named ben wilson ben wilson was sean and i's producer early on in the podcast he also has his own amazing podcast called how to take over the world which we love and he's been battling cancer and he just announced it we've known about it for a little while but he just announced it on twitter the other day and the reason i'm talking about it here is because when he made his announcement he did say that he had to go fund me that you should check out you should look them up on twitter and he linked to that but he also explained that he had stage four high grade neuro endo which i don't know too much about that but he said that his brains his bones his lungs and his liver and he's trying to get hold of a very specific and uncommon type of drug called tar lat i'm sorry i can't pronounce these things but it's it's it's a it's a very specific thing and so if you have ever gotten value from my first million and also if you are in this world we're just trying to raise awareness for what ben's going through then you can look up ben wilson on twitter he has a six teen minute video that's quite inspiring where he addresses his his diagnosis and what he's facing and he is i find it actually quite inspiring he's got this amazing line where he's like you should live like you're living not live like you're dying and so you should watch that but also if you do wanna support him via his go fund me and also he leaves his contact information so if you're in this world where you could help him in any way his information is all there so look him up ben wilson on twitter we'll also link to this in spotify itunes and youtube gary's easy to make fun of because first of all i love him i think he's awesome i'm not making fun of him but people give them a hard time online because he's like loud and he's been in content he and he says silly fun stuff and this is another thing where people would maybe mock like oh he just hires this gotta go party form and so i wanna acknowledge that but i think this is awesome i think that gary has done so many things that have been a bit ahead when and he and he makes a ton of predictions and he's not a right all the time but like the fact that he's like been doing social media like he's been doing for forever and he was totally right and then just like having this i'm like this sounds like ridiculous and awesome and it could be very beneficial yeah yeah exactly i think it's it i i told him i said this is the equivalent of if you ever hear that stat and lebron james spends a million dollars a year his body and it's like whoa that's a lot like you know is see crazy it's like no are you crazy lebron james his body is the product of course he's gonna what an incredible return on investment he's now playing in year twenty three in the nba like i think that million dollars just unlocked another forty million dollar contract twice like are you joking that that's obvious so what is the equivalent in in your niche is a very good it's one of my favorite like kind of thought experiments questions like what would be the equivalent of spending a million dollars year on your body for for whatever you do i i i've told this story about like my executive coach he spent a million dollars of his own money learning from the best coaches of all the different modalities like if somebody's really good in like whatever somatic therapy i don't even know what that is but like whatever he'll go find the best in the world he'll approach them and be like hey is there any way i get kind of two weeks of immersive one on one training in this name your price and he did that with like you know fifteen of the best coaches in the world over a period of two years and like spent a million dollars and because of it he's like hey what a cool experience and b like i made myself more valuable as a coach because i now like i'm well versed in in different different domains that i got and i i started with a deep dive with the world's best then i continued for years after that of my own self practice alright go to number four i think it was york brands yeah city brands so i think it's really interesting how there's only a few cities in the world that have brands like new york has a brand new york has a look it has a feel it has a sound it has an attitude it has an aura it has a reason to go there it has like any great brand it has loyal who swear by it it has haters like i grew up in houston houston has no brand got a lot of people got a good sized economy what's the brand like it's like yeah it was kind of a gas town kind of what does that even mean it's it just said it's kinda new like oil and gas is like a relatively new thing it's only many i mean it's many decades but yeah it's kinda new but like detroit you know has one i think new york has well but yeah a lot of places don't las vegas has a brand san francisco la have a brand new york as right there's not that many place that have brands and i think this a it's kind of a miss you know like i think if you're if you're actually like trying to make a city attractive you wanna have a brand and be intentional about it i actually think i told this to a an nba team owner too very few nba teams have a brand now when you're not a brand your commodity you're basically saying coming and playing here is just the same as coming and playing somewhere else now there's a couple teams that i have a brand maybe because the city they're in right miami la new york the brand is really the city not the team but there's one there's been there's been a couple examples of teams that have brands i'm not a a basketball guy at all but like i know that like was it the seventy six or the pistons who was the tough guy the the bad boys the bad boys the bad boy pistons is an example of a brand they gave it a name it was cool they made merch they brought players in that reinforced the brand it became a thing it embodied it stood for something some people hated it they thought they were dirty other people loved it they said they were tough or the fab five in in michigan i think fab five was an exact exactly five five was another one they wore all black socks baggy shorts that right what does a brand do it has a look at and this aesthetic an icon a visual a brand a logo and so the the same thing right now the only team i would say that truly has a kind of a brand is the miami heat they has this thing that every reference is called heat culture aesthetic as they are well there's heat culture and he culture is basically like we they don't it's kinda like navy seals like when you come you get weighed in every day with your hip weight your body fat and you have to be under a certain body fat or you don't get to play and like a lot of other nba teams cater to their stars and you know they don't really they don't wanna like rock the boat whereas miami he's like no this is heat culture this part of heat culture if you come here you should know what heat culture is all about if you think about the best companies the best cities they have a culture they have a brand and then the people who get there's people who get attracted of that who come there for that and when even people who aren't didn't come there for that they will change their behavior to fit the culture to fit the brand if i know that this place only rewards and respects people who are bold people who take action people who do x y z then i'm gonna bring that version of myself to the party that's pretty cool that's a good observation i think you can't had that because that's saw the sixty minutes guy or the coach on sixty minutes was like people are like well winning is and everything he's like our culture winning is everything like we're here to win and then i think s has one s has one i would say it's a little less intentional and it's not really it's like there's the tech scene in s f and then there's s f s f kinda hates the tech scene yeah despite it being the driver of growth in s f and then there's the which has its own little brand but it it just kind of like stood out to me that like i i think it's hard because there's nobody who like it's not a company right there's not like a yeah but the mayor has four years to kinda like something yeah and but like you know who's the mayor and are they the kinda of world class leader that can build this and then can you kinda hand it off from one person the next it's it's a really tough thing but man when you have it what an what a competitive advantage because right like you recruit you move there and so did our other friends that well we all visited they all moved there it not like they were born and raised in manhattan you know it's it attracts talent and when you attract talent you track certain type of people you you tracked earning power you tracked all kinds of things and then you know if there's a flywheel that that's spins hey let's take a quick break you know that feeling when strategy is done the brief is written everyone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content that someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow well the breeze assistant from hubspot can help it works right inside hubspot you can draft campaign copy blog posts emails all in your brand voice all using your actual customer data so you don't create just content you create content that converts check out hubspot dot com the agent customer platform for growing businesses what about the number one thing what was number one trust okay so one person i bumped into at gary v club or whatever was this instagram or career called jack's dining club do you know that jack he's the he's the hottest thing what is the exact diners he's like i follow him i think he's twenty two or twenty three and he has tens of millions of followers alright jack's dining room is the is the name and then he's got this brand called yes chef so but met this guy jack and you ben was like dude i love your video i was like i love your video videos i i was out of the loop i didn't really know any of his content but i started i grabbed ben phone i started watching some of his content pretty fascinating what this guy's doing the core video hook of what he's doing is we're here at the best sandwich place in paris this is a and then he's like he's got a sandwich what he's like this is a cheese and mayo dijon sam whatever and he's like the croissant and he's like dude this thing is a and he takes a bite he loves it and this guy's brand is pretty incredible like either he has these things he does now i've ever seen his like reserve club no but i he has a whole suite of brands called chef go to his instagram and watch one of the reserve videos if you can see it basically it's these like you pay like a thousand or more than a thousand dollar like you know say thousands of dollars to go as a group of like let's say ten on like an unreal culinary experience like we get on a private jet we fly to this place on the jet there's a the the best su sushi chef is making yeah you know omaha on the on the plane and then we land we get the champagne it's just like some overly indulge like like a dinner on the sand in a fancy beach yeah but like lucas who's there like machines like kelly we these are like fans of his content they're like i've seen your videos i actually tried that restaurant because i saw that you you had you said they had the best chicken sandwich in la i drove an hour to go get there and he's like wow that's incredible leonardo d cap thank you for thank you for saying that duty and then it says like if you go to his instagram it goes to yes chef guides yes chef festival yes chef reserve yes chef supply yes chef run club yes chef group he has a whole like thing around the ecosystem going alright so so so what was i thought really interesting about this was just the idea of trust so when we were when we were in new york there was these every place we went to it was like this is the hottest the hottest steak steakhouse in new york the hottest su i was like you gotta you gotta stop saying that these can't all be the hottest restaurant how many how many hottest restaurants in new york are there it's just kinda of word mounting thing and and one thing i thought about was like man there's brand if you think about this the general idea of if i really wanted to have great food who do i trust to tell me where the great food is in any city just like a yeah i don't know a smart friend but well smart friend but that smart friend has to be like well traveled well versed like you know who and that hat the this guy's job jack he's basically your boy who knows the spot in every city and i thought man he's kinda sitting on a gold mine of trust i think trust is gonna be the thing that is in lowest supply over the next ten years like dude to every video i see on instagram i'm like is this fake you know whenever whenever i see like a an ad i'm like okay that's an ad then i see a normal funny video my god might have been a deep fake yesterday i saw this insane thing where you can create like a a u character so it says a new era of influencing right so like check this out see this girl okay so it's a a pretty they're all pretty like in super flu realistic i don't know if can see the detail like hyper realistic looking person right this is ai generator person but then it's like it will we can keep the character exactly the same so the face the eyes the jewelry the style the hair and so you have one character and it says one character endless content so like this is like catfish heaven right like i'm gonna be able to make this character that i'm gonna be able to put her in every scene she can be the face of my brand she could just be an influencer on her own she could do videos she could do anything and you're just gonna be able to create a hyper realistic looking person post content for them and no one will ever know that this entire thing is fake and like even if this is only mildly impressive this is very impressive to me but if this is mildly impressive do cool fast forward twelve months like we're going into like peak fake ness around the world and what happens when everything is easy to fake trust becomes incredibly important that's crazy i i think podcast was like us are are well positioned because people know where real human beings and like in a flood of endless content you're just gonna gravitate towards people you trust i think this guy jack is sitting on a gold miner trust so so where do you get food recommended today yelp yelp is the the default answer and it's like dude yelp sucks i've never seen anyone be like god i'm i love yelp so much like you know i trust yelp so much yelp yelp always knows the best place to go when i want ramen in my city and so was like this guy and i pitched them this idea like i look you're selling hats wonderful you're selling these like thousand dollar you know fun private jet i'm i'm sure that's blast but it it's it's obviously not that scalable as a business i was like you should create jack's list as yelp you should try to compete with you yelp you should create an app that i just say i want the best burger the best pizza the best of taco the best ramen in any city and you better have it and it's your pick it's like here's number one maybe number two or three and that's it that's the whole app and i was like that is what you should do with this trust is you should go after yelp it's he gonna do it and then him and his business ar never like yeah but blah i was like i was so convinced i was i was like actually you know what you're right how about i just build it and you just let me use your name and face alright you just give me you just give me the i'll give you you don't believe in it great i'll give you ten twenty percent like let me build us because i'm was so bullish on this idea that like he should create this as the how do you do like a a huge swing like five hundred million you know to two billion dollar swing as a creator like every video you have gets a hundred thousand likes of people who are like wishing that they could go to this place that's incredible that's like you know that that's an the unbelievable you know ten million people are watching you eat this fro in vermont if that's really the best fro in vermont like you should just create your list and curate it and have it be the trusted place way more trusted than yelp i think trust is sort of like you know gold right now i've been what's the thing called so what's the the music one what's sun i bought a subscription to there a while back and like i taught my daughter how to pee on the potty because we have a song we made this artist called noah fl you know he's kinda like no noah con he but he's like i don't know the cheap we call it noah fl and it we have a song called let it flow and it's him singing like what's the elsa song let it go let it go and it and you know it goes let it it flow let it flow let the p fall from your body let it flow let it flow pee into the pod let it and it's like this like folk song and it's so whatever on your phone play yeah let me see hold on bathroom quick way listen all those pants right down and your feet is take a breath relax from here head it flow right what hit shit okay miss rachel to be fuck so i i created noah a fl because i'll be like hey you know i could tell you she has goes to potty and i'd be like hey do wanna let it flow at know fly and like well you know we'll sing and so i'm creating i'm creating a series of songs for like i use pseudo all behaviors for like all behaviors and like because i hate listening to like the same moan song over and over again i i like like folk music i'm like i'm gonna just get big something that i think you might like it and i will like and so now we sing like let it flow let flow a great so prompt word by the way because if you say folk it becomes almost two of too bulky i'm american connor just use the word american connor it's a come look it'll add a little bit of that edge you want and it well now i have no fun like he's like a saved character and so i like i made a youtube page for it i'm like uploading his songs and and so anyway like ai has been awesome i know that we can hate on it but like that's i'm not real artist but i'm tell you what we love noah we say go apply got what was the start you know the word's it's going and starts like pull your pants down it's like well what's going on well we have this there's this company called live live love every you know love every yeah like the toy company yeah yeah it's like a toy company look and they like send these books and they they we gotta we bought a book for them on potty training and like they tell a story about a kid going poop and like he's like oh i ate these pancakes my stomach is growing and then they show them on the toilet and then they actually showed the poop and i'm like that's disgusting and it totally worked it totally helped her and so what i'm learning is that when you like have to like teach children things you need to be pretty explicit and the stuff that like a grown up doesn't don't necessarily wanna talk about i talk about it anyway and it like goes into like detail like you have to push and it falls out of your body like these things actually helped her and it's pretty freaking gross but like yeah that's what i'm doing no flu by the way i was i was very touched and impressed by seeing you as a dad in new york i also just wanna give you a shout out you're a great dad thank you i don't know if you know you're good i think you do i you actually do know i worked really hard at it i tried really hard at it i i i tried so hard it i i think i told you when we i had kids i was like i finally have found my mission in life i work really hard at being a good dad yeah you were like what'd you say you learned for your mom you said talk to them like their adults and feed them like their adults and yeah you know at dinner i was sitting next to your daughter and she was like past the green beans i was like what happening me i was so stunned i didn't do and like green beans and then i gave it her well i just remember like going up and seeing people and i'm like why does the kid menu exist like i'm just gonna give the same like we're just do the same thing yeah you're a great dad thank you alright so what was my other one okay marketing there were some great one liners that the marketing nerd in mead loved i just wanna say so we were at this what was the name of that like fancy steak something it had the number eighty six in the title yeah yeah like the v eighty six or whatever this is some some restaurant really hard to get into great at restaurant great restaurant great food and they waiter brings out a box like a treasure chest and he's like gentlemen have we dine here before and we're like no not really and he's like well you're in for a treat and he opens up he he starts to open the treasure just doesn't open it just yet hey he's like can i tell you the story of you know and we're like yeah please and he's like so we and he tells a story about how this restaurant which is in new york owns a farm in like melbourne or something in australia and they source their own wagyu beef they raised them they you know they only feed them you know probiotics and skittles or whatever the team was like it was kinda funny he goes about three weeks before we take their life we feed them mac academia nuts and butter and that this really tops it off he's like he's like and so the meat the steak just so you guys know almost like a warning he's was like just so you guys know when the steak comes gotta be incredibly soft you can eat it with a spoon and like whoa steak so soft you could eat it with a spoon i was like damn that was a bar i just started writing down like no i just i wrote that one down i thought that's a that's a market and kill shot right there i i kinda love that idea because again how do you say in five words what somebody else could try to convince you of in five hundred and still not succeed at he did the same thing with the knives so he opened it up because you see these steak knives these aren't normal steak knives these steak knives are from nineteen thirty which is the era that we this building was created teddy roosevelt steak period a capo he ate here he this was is nice like it might be some blood on that one still yeah it was it was great and then we were like but what about the spoon part was that a was that a figure speech okay so so that was one another one again in the restaurant space because again the restaurant marketing is is off the hook here this one restaurant claim to fame they go three different people told me the same thing about this restaurant separately they go taylor came here twice in a row i was like and that's so they make you have taylor two nights in a row that's the line taylor taylor came here two nights in a row and i was like dan that's another kill shot like that this see if tell you this place is great is taylor came here two nights in a row i thought wow okay that's in the pant on of like great you know one liners that said that says a lot another another one you gave me this one i was i was asking about your denim collection try i was like so what why why the denim thing and you were like just like you started to talking about you go it's like history you can wear and i go is that their slogan he go no i just said that i was like that should be there slogan i thought that was an incredible line for whoever's the you know the higher the who's the power power that be in the in the denim world but they need to they need to give you a little royalty and take that line yeah like levi's could make like you know instead of saying we make it like they used to make it it's like you know wear history like yeah i think it's a it's actually a golden one and then i was talking to somebody else who has been incredibly successful at marketing and i go what's the what's the truth what's the trick for what you're doing how how'd you pull this off and he goes everybody wants something you just have to figure out what it is the rich wants status and praise the rich and unknown want fame the fame famous on privacy he goes so i just figured out how to create products for for each of those use cases so he's like for the famous people i gave them privacy for the rich but unknown i gave them a pathway to fame for the the successful person who's got it all they still want access into the right rooms and they want praise and he he's like you just gotta know who you're selling to because it'll tell you how to sell it and i thought okay that's that's pretty good and i've heard this before in other other versions it's like you sell a mom safety you sell you know you sell the the busy parents time you sell the woman youth you sell the male you know power you basically you gotta know kinda like what's the what's the one word you're ultimately selling to a person right like the one word of this podcast that we try to sell is inspiration and so we're gonna talk about hundreds of different people hundreds of different cool things they've built hundreds different ways to be successful hopefully so that you are ultimately inspired to do some badass ass shit yourself like this is just a pot podcast will res out out people doing things that we think are pretty bad and therefore hopefully inspire somebody to do a bad thing in their own their own version of their life i i know i have felt this way and i still feel this way even though i know it's wrong that branding and and and marketing but not marketing i think everyone understands direct response marketing like i put this much money in i just do the thing that gets the highest click click through rate and i click it that's sort of like that's fine and everything but i think that like the great people understand that branding and marketing when i say marketing i mean like brand marketing it's not sticky and then i remember thinking like well mark zuckerberg wears a hoodie that's not branding of course obviously it it is branding but i was like he's he it's all about utility and then i read peter till book what's it called zero to one zero to one and he talks about secrets and he talks about like what's your special sauce and it's so funny that peter t he did two things that were interesting he said branding is a moat branding is a secret that you can know and then he goes unfortunately it's not a secret that i know so i'm not even gonna to write about it that's like do you remember that part of the book he's like yeah he he acknowledges he's like i underestimated it now i've come to appreciate it i still don't know it or how to do it can't tell you about it yeah he's like i don't know anything to think about it but i know it's real and then we had aaron levy on the podcast aaron is a ceo of a company called box which makes enterprise cloud software i you could dismiss that as being boring whatever but he's immensely successful and we asked him what books he likes to read he was like if you're gonna read any business books just read these four or something like that and he listed off four books he's like if you read those you'll you're gonna be amazing and the first book that he said was a book called positioning by this guy named a trout i think his name mh i think he also wrote the twenty two immutable laws of marketing of which tim ferris that's like one of the only three books that he always says like just read this one and i just have noticed that when you're telling these stories i am in my head i'm like i i'm taking notes right now where i'm like my a and jack trout sorry jack out outreach my big the takeaway that i've that you said you like repetition a a a repetitive thing that i find myself is getting into the day to day we of of my business and thinking well what's the ad click rate okay what if we just point you a red arrow at this guy's face it's gonna get a higher click through rate what if we did this but it's somewhat it's these things that appear to be irrational that aren't in irrational at all that you have the biggest needle moving difference so making your brand associate with one word in the same way that volvo does with safety or labor lamborghini would do it with like flashy or ferrari with fast whatever or these other things that don't have an roi right away like taking someone and saying here's the stake you see this stake right here and then telling the story you say that into in a meeting where people only care about numbers and they're like but just just just make a cheaper stake and just sell it at higher margin please right and i just i i just think that when i'm hearing you tell the story it's a reminder that i need to care about these things significantly more than i do and i think probably everyone should it's incredibly hard to do and it takes a long time and it takes faith and it takes a leader who i think has that core insight remember that kind of the to back to my point of like what does it really mean what is it really like what is it really what is apple really why do we buy apple right because we're buying some version of design or simplicity right that's the the positioning apple still has over everybody is that they make simple beautiful products so i think that you have to really like dis to dis dis dis distilled dis distilled dis still i remember i was talking to her and i go what's your brand and he goes oh my brand business and i laughed and i was like businesses and a brand like i was like that's just dope that's just a word he goes i wanna own the word business he goes and then you know he said that this i don't don't know if i agree with this but he's like crank card owns real estate i wanna own business i think came out meant matt was like on the in the world of like youtube and content i wanna be the guy when when you think of business and right wrong i thought there's incredible power in the focus and simplicity of trying to own a single word and you know you could disagree and say why no i we really that doesn't capture everything that we do and no no we wanna it's more nuanced than that and it's like yeah but you don't really achieve anything when you try to spread it all out too thin right when you do the peanut butter strategy just spreading all across the bread and so i think there is a lot of value and trying to say well if it was a word what would the word be and if it was a word is that the word other people would associate with us right now is that just what we say internally and if that was a word like are we doing that everywhere or are we only doing it in this one area and unfortunately you don't usually like the answers to that stuff there's like that quadrant of like urgently needed or not urgent and then above it it's like impact versus low impact and like there's this quadrant of like it's not urgent but it's very impactful and that's like the thing where you probably should spend time on but you don't this is like one of those things right right those are all the mark actually there was one more marketing one i think it's it's pretty cool to too i'll give you this one too so we had a dinner at probably the best indian restaurant i've ever been to if you've ever heard of jim khan jim con is like this really famous michelin star restaurant in london they have a sister restaurant in new york called ambassador club house i think we went there with with our friend who who runs there he doesn't run the restaurant group but they they've launched a sauce line so like you know how like car started as a famous restaurant or ra their sauces rails learned it's not ra it's rails they did the same thing and so this guy's doing it with indian sauces and so great dude great dinner we hung out and you know he was telling me about the business and i had actually passed on investing on this early on for one reason which was i was like i don't know how many people cook indian food at home like i get why pasta sauce is gonna sell a lot of units because people make a lot of pasta at home but how did you how did you come across this one because this isn't that's not in your wheelhouse a friend had invested in it and sent it to me and i should've pay i should've have dug in more but i also didn't really respect the story of this restaurant so again story comes before the sauce and what's the story here so same sort of taylor came here two nights in a row type of story like oh you know x y z celebrities are here the restaurant i think has a hundred thousand person waitlist list like this is an insane number like giving a reservation there as is like impossible the the story of the group think there basically it was like one guy he partnered with a chef and russia restaurant wasn't doing so hot and so he decides even though he's got no culinary experience stunt he's not a trained chef he fires the chef goes into the kitchen and takes over the kitchen it's like we're gonna figure this out nine months later they had a michelin star which is unbelievable that's like if i decided to play in the nba and in nine months i was like or like you the world cup and i'm playing in the world cup next next next cycle like it's insane to be able to do that and so they they pulled this off yes i've seen this oh my god it looks amazing and so foods my foods on really chef and go so i was talking about the sauce i was yeah i was i just didn't think people were cooking and indian food that frequently at home and he goes oh no this is where ro really helped us out so this there's a guy who came on our podcast ro he's a guy you might have seen on shark tank i think we were the only podcast he's ever done and it took a took a lot of like twist his arm to get him on but he was amazing he started you know he was involved in making smart water success vitamin water a success poppy soda which i have right here on my desk and i pop a success so he's been just a killer with brands tons of wow those are only like three of like a dozen brands that you'll find in grocery stores that this guy been like you know early and and big on and i think rose is incredibly gifted when it comes to to like what is it really right because when he talk when he you talked about this poppy thing it was like i think he when they started it was like apple cider vinegar as a as a drink supplement and he was like a mother's miracle or something or he was we need to make clean soda he's like i grew up in zambia drinking coke and fan and soda he's like we need this to taste like a fan but be good for you and he's like i think that's where the where the market is it's similarly which jim connor he goes we're gonna make chicken great again he's like close like what you goes it's not about use this when you're gonna cook indian food once in a blue moon at home it's of people who eat meat eighty five percent of their meals at home or chicken yeah and what we need is for our sauce to make your chicken taste good and be less boring because it does you add this sauce our to your chicken your chicken's gonna taste phenomenal so it's not about the one day you're gonna decide to make indian food for for all your friends and host an indian food like who does that that's pretty tough it's pretty high risk what we need to do is make chicken gravy again and i was like it's that sort of marketing genius that you need that can be the difference between this being a really niche fringe thing to being worth you know three billion dollars you know in five years it's like that insight executed well a lot of investors say they add value that guy added value by like giving you like the the the point of highest leverage to refocus the entire company around this is awesome i'm looking at their website by the way that's like something that you'd make fun of like with the guy like giving a ted talk it's like we didn't stop there you see we moved the office and like put the couch here to here it's like what do we have in common with our ancestors yeah the cave then to make this make what but it makes sense okay and i'm like because what's funny is like when you're copywriting you wanna use such detail that the person feels it in their bone so for example if you're selling like a weight loss thing or a gym product to a woman who's a little overweight you're like i know why you always offer to take the photo when you're with your friends oh that's a good one i know how you feel it's like you wanna go after these thoughts where they're not always loud but they exist and they're silent enough that when you someone that says that you think to yourself i don't know other people thought that other an incredible example the quiet thoughts set out loud so true people wanna feel seen and understood and some of the great marketers they describe this they say if you could describe the problem in such great detail that the person feels completely understood yeah they will trust you fully that whatever solution you speak next because you understood the problem so well they now believe that you understand the solution equally well or everybody else just sells the solution yeah so you have to think you have like this is the point when you're when you're copywriting an interesting idea there's this thing called like general knowledge and then there's specific knowledge and general knowledge when you're doing copywriting is when you spend weeks just learning all about the industry all about like my stuff that may not even apply to it exactly and then specific knowledge when you learn about exactly how the product works but you need that general knowledge to understand a vague idea so for example if you're doing like gym work or like a weight loss supplement you know eventually you'll get to the specific knowledge or you're like okay so like the body loses weight by doing next y and z and this product helps you by doing whatever but the general knowledge is just talking to women and being like so how do you feel like i feel like fat or whatever like you're alright but tell me more tell me more tell me more and that's how you come up with these ideas where you're like she said this but this was below the iceberg so i had a dig deep and i've noticed that this is like a common thread therefore that's a perfect thing that i can use in my marketing so when you said that you need to make chicken great again okay that's that doesn't mean anything but when you said everyone wants to eat chicken wings that's healthier but it's so boring and bland you need a good sauce for it that like hits because i eat chicken it all the time i'm like i'm so boring of this shit i don't wanna eat this anymore and so this is like a classic copywriting marketing stick of like yep general knowledge and learning how to talk how to in positioning so literally the positioning extends because it's you know what what his gradient was actually a strategy it's not the marketing it's the strategy and the strategy basically then just is is pair with the positioning which is is this a sauce for cooking indian food at home or is this a sauce for having really flavorful delicious chicken two totally different positions and then that extends which aisle would you be in in the supermarket because there's aisle for pasta sauces and asian ethnic sauces and then there's there's aisle for topper you know marinade sauces things that you put on meat and that's where you see like that bunch like japanese barbecue sauce or whatever it's an example where we're like i don't think a lot of people were really that into i'd like to just put i i'm really looking for whatever this umami savory japanese sauces but if i'm looking for some barb you know some some kind of asian barbecue sauce put on my food my on my chicken that sounds pretty good and it it's in the right aisle and so the positioning literally becomes physical in the aisle and then you then you get down to like the actual actual marketing and then you say oh well we should probably market to people who are eating a lot of chicken maybe that's people who are trying to be healthy right now but you know the seven days a week of plain chicken you know chicken breast is getting pretty old for them what if one day a week they were able to add our marinade or add our sauce on top and actually only adds a hundred calories but damn that thing changes the whole meal all of a sudden popping and off and so you then becomes an actual marketing strategy i did this with hampton a bunch where i was like what what do people fear about building a company and it took me forever and i like i'm still working on it but one of the the emotions that i'm trying to get at is when you're building a company the biggest fear oftentimes is not like once you have a business at already is a couple million in revenue it's not like is this gonna fail it's like i started at thirty two am i gonna be forty two years old and be like this thing barely grew and i just wasted a decade on something where i could've have been working on a different opportunity and i just blew it all and like that is like the fear for where like i'm thinking about for some of our marketing of like well everyone has that fear and you don't talk about it out loud but you like fear like i should do this other thing and this other thing and i'm always fearful of that and so hampton helps by giving you a room of peers who could help you make big fifty million dollar decisions not by yourself and so you actually have like peers around you but like i spent i spent a lot of time thinking about like these phrases and words that you can use that aren't spoken often but when they are people just jump well i like to phrase fifty million dollar decisions just as of that had resonance for me let me give you one other example that's kind of in this like quiet thoughts set out loud so right now we're in a big like decluttering mode in our house that we're just like getting oh you had a great line you you had a great line for that by the way you made a joke you're like i'd rather move and declutter this place yeah yeah exactly i we almost are like we just need a new house we need to start over like it's that bad everyone feels that way it's like i'd read that's a really good one i would if i was like a moving company or a cleaning company well my my wife has started she goes because i was like what's gotten into you like you're every day you're like just i i used to really struggle to be like hey let's get rid of this this is junk we don't need this and i used to do that and then she would hang on to it either for sentimental value no we do need it once in a while no we paid a lot for that and like i'll sell it i'll get gonna do something with it i don't wanna just throw it away all these reasons for hoarding right and so and she didn't view it as hoarding and then she didn't like when i called it right and that was like our we were in a stalemate we're like nothing was really moving all of a sudden things changed i was like i didn't do anything what can you tell me what the answer was because i surely didn't have it and she goes well i started following these women on instagram i just changed my feed she's like i just decided i'm gonna follow like twenty of these people un followed a bunch of like parenting and like fitness stuff to like get my feed to be just brainwashing of the right flavor and she goes because i she i saw this one thing that really resonated was i was was it and so there's these decluttering coaches on instagram i don't if you've seen this they have millions of followers i love other women that are just helping other women like kind of figure out how to like think about decluttering their house it's not even strategy right because the answer's is obvious put the shit in a bag and get rid of it it's mostly personal it's like how to feel about like saying goodbye to something that like your baby used to play with exactly or you spend money on it and now you feel like it's wasteful to get rid of it it's sort of like a personal finance is more personal than finance it's like cleaning is more like dealing with the inside you know what is season the dog trainer said he goes i trained the human and we rehab the dog yeah exactly that is this so true and so she was talking about like there was one instagram real she saw where the woman was walking around the house and she goes you know i've been keeping all this stuff for my kids because i want them to i'm trying to like make sure they have everything they might need but they don't have me anymore because now when i walk around i just see i my brain is just thinking oh i pick those up i need to put that away i really wanna reorganize the shelf i've been meaning to get to this like oh my god and then she's like another one was are you ashamed like do you do does panic come inside you when somebody offers to like come over to a play like the idea of having guests over does it trigger panic in you like that's not what your home is supposed to feel like so whatever upside you thought this is giving you that's a great one think about the panic that you feel as and my wife is like dude every time like when we go to school drop off we have the tesla with like the the wings and so when you open the door it's like such a it's like so open house that's for like our car and our cars like there's goldfish and cheetos and four soccer balls and nineteen shoes in the back of the car right like it's just like we have three kids three car seats it's a it's a mad house back there and so she's like let's drop off over here at the corner i'm like what the hell why she's like because i don't want anyone to kids get out the other door so nobody sees window window the window the when the creators on instagram started to speak to those moments and those fears which is the equivalent of you volunteering to take the photo so that you're not in it then all of a sudden it like the flip switched and was like i could see the power of like the right sentence that just hits the nerve that literally just rewire someone's behavior that's a great story i'll be eager to see how long that lasts because that potentially could be life changing yeah hopefully it is because it's it's pretty trauma to be like i did this like we this is hilarious we've been like house hunting like we're seeing all these really nice houses that are like staged and every time we go and i'm like yeah but you gotta remember we're gonna ruin all this we don't live like this like this is like a perfectly staged minimal house with when you go like shopping for clothes you're like picture that with a mustard state on it do you still like it do you have mannequins with bell because i'd like to see what this looks like and so so with with r house i looked up our old like this is like zillow photos of when the house right this same house we're in before we moved in and i was like what do you of this house and it looks amazing oh that's so funny we ruined this this already was epic we we we messed it up and so you know you have to a salt reality yeah i i it's a near and dear to my heart this whole clutter thing i argue with my wife about that stuff all the time too and it's one of the reasons i like living in new york because i make the excuse i i've got a small apartment you guys can't get me anything right and it's like not that small but dude the the clutter thing bothers me it it kills me like when walked into my house like the entry and you opened the door it's like whatever thirty foot sales it should be so beautiful instead we had a giant pink like u see octagon tram just in the middle of the house and the kids did love it it was pretty fun but like damn man like we where where do we go wrong like it's it's amazon man but being bias shit so easily online i think that like if i was i don't think this would land as well but if i was like an influencer in this space it would be about like consumerism and like and like showing people like for example if i was to get you if i was gonna show you why you should eat healthier you could do a bunch of like visualizations but like i could just show you like look when you go to the movies and you get popcorn i could just i could tell you that they put a hundred grams of butter on it or i could just show you a block of fat and like that's one hundred grams right and that is what is on here for this i could be like here's your bill like here's the money that you would have saved not buying the stuff you know what i mean like right that wouldn't land as good but that's how i think about i'm like oh my god it's so much waste or i'll be like a kid in china made this it flew over on an airplane it got into this factory it went to this ups like that's where it hurts me i'm like all this energy it's just wasted it i hate the waste and so that's what lands at me when i think of like the waste but that's that's a significantly less popular emotion right right but this is stuff it's fun if you wanna learn more about this stuff my favorite book on this topic is made to stick by chip heath it's two brothers from stanford and they do it the best job of showing like five ways that you can make ideas stick with people and i and i'm kind of like thinking i'm gonna reread that i've read that and i've positioning by the way even though they come highly recommended i actually did not think either was great there's some books you read and you're like holy shit every page is like you wanna frame it that's not how i felt at all about those books also they're pretty old so the examples they'll give are not as relevant i think this is something you just have to like actually study the ground truth ads and you have to notice what resonates see have to start paying attention or you start to start collecting for yourself big books can provide some you know some general frameworks but i i personally didn't think that either of them was like good enough to like to feel like i i actually understood it okay well we're agree to disagree screen i no do both right you're you have a pretty strong swipe file and the yeah no for this sort of thing you know you doing that for fifteen twenty years now i thought made to stick was cool because it just put frameworks but like there's like classic ones that you see and some of them are funny where it's like this person is this rich it's like well what does a trillion mean well it's an and then you do like the second thing i think i i told you a story where like a million is like seventy two hours a billion is like eighty two weeks and then a trillion is thirty two years like there's like ways like break things down that are far more tangible and that's what i learned from what's it called made a stick didn't stick almost almost almost lost that one that's like my joke when it's like that's a dad joke we'll give us a i'll say they could tell i've got bad hearing and go do you a bad hearing i go it's never funny no one has ever left i i'll give it to alright that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rude world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a road less travel never looking back alright let's take a quick break let's talk about a podcast because if you're listening to this you like podcast and what's better than one podcast another podcast and let me tell you another podcast you should check out it's called success story if you like hearing about different success stories and hearing q and a sessions with successful business leaders or hearing keynote presentations or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics is a great podcast for you so check it out wherever you get your podcast