From selling ACs to becoming the tourism king of Jamaica

you're like me you're gonna get inspired by the story white dude from jamaica who built an incredible you know multi billion dollar business and lived life on his own terms that's the headline i feel like i could rude world to know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a goal less travel ever this is my billy of the week so this is a guy who created something called sandals now let me tell you let me tell you the story first which gotta look at this picture because i'll be damned if this doesn't look like a young sam par look at this guy this not you yeah guys you it's he actually he's jamaican so he he lived in jamaica okay so here's here's the story so his name's gordon stewart and he's born in jamaica white kid born in jamaica his mom calls him butch because he was chu so he becomes known as butch for the rest of his life which is amazing as a young kid he does all kinds of odd job little hustle so he's like help out the fishermen that he buys a boat then he starts making money boating the fishermen around and repairing boats and he would skip school together he was like he's like i just wanna be on the water and he goes he he said later i didn't wanna be a businessman i wanna be a fisherman man just a rich fisherman man and that led him into business so i love this guy so he's like along the way he's living in jamaica obviously jamaica super hot and he realizes as air conditioning becomes a bigger and bigger thing that you air conditioning is gonna be huge in in the caribbean you know things take time to diffuse right from different different places and so maybe it was normal in the states but it wasn't as normal in the caribbean yet and so he saves up three thousand dollars and he starts a company called appliance traders limited and the idea is he's gonna import ac from the us ac units and he's gonna go door to door selling them himself and he decides i'm gonna do this b2b i'm gonna convince business owners that they should have ac because for them it's not just about their own comfort but like they're gonna have more sales if their store has ac and the other store doesn't customers are gonna wanna spend time in their stores so great idea now he's like how do i differentiate myself so he tries selling door door so he's he makes some progress just hustling and he hires some other island boys to come like help sell but he's going up against general electric right so he's going up against like west house he's going up against these huge companies that i have much bigger sales forces than him so he's like he asked himself a better question instead of how do i out compete them on sales where they're excellent and have more resources how do i do something they would not dare to do so he goes what what can the big guy not do speed and what does the big company not care about service so he decides to differentiate his offering so he says if you call me i'll have ac installed within eight hours it just starts with that vision and he's like works backwards to figure out operations like how what would how can i possibly do that well i guess i'd need boys over here i need a call dispatcher i need to prioritize the the most recent call not the oldest call and deliver this eight hour service and then the second thing he says is look these ac acs they break they're running them all the time here's the deal we will fix all the ac acs no extra charge like if it breaks we fix it and we fix it fast and nobody else is gonna offer you this and because of these two things speed and service he dominates the caribbean market he takes over jamaica he builds a powerhouse and so out of this he makes you know that's his first kind of fortune that he makes how much did it make i don't know what his network worth at this time but it's enough where he could go to monte bay and buy a rundown hotel that everybody else ignored and so nineteen eighty one he buys this resort called bay and at the time people think he's crazy because tourism is not that popular in jamaica at the time crime was super high the this hotel was run rundown had a bad rep and so he was buying kind of like a rundown distressed asset but he has his vision so he's like i love it here i think people will love it here i just have to find a positioning for this and this is where butch the marketing genius starts to inspire me what's monte bay i i'm not i mean it's a city in jamaica i think it's a city it's a it's an area i don't know if it's city or town or whatever you call it but yeah my sister got married there i should probably know this but it's jamaica it's a jamaica thing got okay so he has his vision he's like i wanna give americans a care free luxury caribbean vacation and so he's like what's the worst thing about like a vacation he's like you know you you don't know where to go you don't know what you're gonna get and then you sort of the cost add up and you get nickel and dime and people feel like they may not be able to afford it and that will stop some people from coming so he's like let me do it instead this way upfront you get one price and everything is included and i'm gonna standardize luxury so he's like there wasn't luxury in this area so first thing he does he re rebranded the bay sandals because he's like that already sandals like em body's relaxation and like being on the beach then he goes and he starts studying so he's a he's a a shameless copycat so he's like i'm gonna go study all the other hotels in this area plus other other islands i'm gonna steal the best ideas from me so he goes and he sees club med and he's like it's good but it's a little too spartan i like i feel like i'm gonna like make a mess here and i'm in trouble if i do that so like i want luxury but still you should feel like you're here you can have a good time here and then he's like oh i like the way they serve this champagne oh what is this thing a whirlpool we're gonna get one of those over here so he starts importing innovation from all these different places wait really quick have you seen that meme where it's like you know if you're going up against a deal or you know if you're going up against this guy in a deal you're gonna get screwed and it's like a for with a fat wallet wearing like you know wrangler blue jeans and he's got a fat and shelby with a fat watch you know what that meme and yeah you new balance of bush stewart looks like this guy and i could see him like doing research where he's like at a bar and he see something interesting goes hey miss you know you've been a lovely waitress keep bringing over that tom bitch let me let me let me look at that margarita baker what is that tell me about that thing hey can you do me a favor doll go ahead and order to be about twenty of them will you please darling like exactly it's the famous sam walton story where sam walton did the same thing he would study every other retailer sam walton who created walmart of course but on the way on the rise what helped make walmart great is that he stole anything good any other retailer did he would steal it so there's this great story of sam walton in in brazil and someone is walking down the aisle of a store and they see a man dead on the ground and they were like oh my god it helps the guy's dead here he's just passed out on the ground and that man was sam walton and he was not dead he was measuring the distance between aisle using his body length too because he didn't have a like a ruler with them he's like i like i think this spacing what is this so he laid down and used his body hydrant bob from the shoulder to knee they didn't understand what he was doing and so so butch was basically doing this he decides to re brand it as couples only because one of the things he realizes is that like a lot of these resorts it's like you look around you see the people who are here the love birds who are here then you got the families who are here and they're kind of interrupting you know the the families don't wanna see these two make out and the make outs don't want the kids running around so he decides if i just made it instead of just okay for everybody what if i made it great for one one killer use case so he rebranded it as couples only it's adults it's romance it's no kids and this was a radical positioning at the time nobody was really doing this but it gave it a clear identity and and then he pours millions of dollars into advertising which again most people would not do he had not proven out the concept it's not like he was taking profits and reinvest them he was reinvest because he just had a belief well ahead had he raised money for this no this is the money he made from the ac company and so he's like spend bigger to earn bigger and later he had this great line which he goes because he built he ends up building i don't know thirty resorts or something like that in jamaica and he's done all you know he's you know millions of square feet and he says the most valuable real estate and the hardest real estate to build is the one in the consumer's mind and that's always where i start and i was like i love this guy just an old school ad man just a just a classic ad man like the type of guy he's like never read a book in his life on advertising but like listen to one ted talk and how he that's what he bases his entire education on yeah yeah exactly alright so a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they wanna hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business now a lot of people message sean and and they say alright i wanna start something on the side is this a good idea is that a good idea and again what they're really just say is just give me the ideas well my friends here in luck so my old company the hustle they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea database it's a list of a hundred pretty good ideas frankly i went through them they're awesome and it gives you how to start them how to grow them things like that gives you a little bit of inspiration so check it out it's called the side hustle idea database it's in the description below you'll see the link click it check it out let me know the comments what you think and the other thing the cool thing he does is he basically revitalize jamaica so he ends up employing like ten thousand jamaican he's like loved in jamaica for what he did for the local economy how he treated people there was a a a big change that happened when he brought tourism and so he goes on on a buying spree basically as as this happens and he starts buying more and more failing hotels across the caribbean he would be super hands on so we go stay there he'd eat the food he'd sleep in the bed he'd checked the pillows that he'd basically made detailed notes about anything that needed to change so like if a customer complained about the temperature of the champagne it wasn't chilled enough he would make sure by the next day like all the fridge are recalibrate to the right temperature and he would let the customer know like you know think we you know we changed it for you so he was always tweaking was and it was one of his core philosophies was like i'm not gonna get it right right away but i'm gonna tweak a tweak a tweak until i get it there and you know this kinda of works so hotels are known for their repeat rate so like you could tell the quality of hotel not by the the number of stars that it's rated but by how many guests come back and stay again and sandals would have like for decades like a fifty percent repeat rate which was like unheard of in the industry people loved going there and so this guy would just take all these crazy measures to make it to build this business so he would he's like i i after he ran out of buying the like distressed hotels that already existed he's like i need to buy new great properties on beach fronts and so one thing he realizes is that there's so many beaches that people don't even really know about so he would rent a helicopter and fly over the island and look for undiscovered beaches and then find them scout them by the land and then build the hotel on on that which is just like again just a sort of a brute force first principles a approach to building you know a luxury hotel and now his kids are running it so is it is it an independent business yeah he passed away in twenty twenty one i'm not just so sure what's going on with the business since then but yeah he he kinda left that that's his legacy basically in in jamaica and his kids like they said like you know all these wonderful things about them which is another great test you know how great of a man are you sort of like you know dear kids dear your kids wanna be around you what do they have to say about you and you know it seems like at least from the outside that he did a good job there he also did this crazy thing with the airlines you know the story well i honestly his wikipedia says that he owned jamaican air exactly so he realizes at a certain point he's like it's pretty he's like i'm telling you this is paradise but the experience to get to paradise is hell right this is heaven well that's hell so he's like air jamaica was this failing airline the brand sucked the service sucked and so you know you you sign up for this vacation i give you these glossy ads was buying ads and playboy and cosmo and like anywhere that he could sell the idea that if you're in love you go to sandals so not just like it's a nice vacation it's a symbol of how much you love each other is that you do a sandals vacation and like you know the way that sort of diamonds or a girl's best friend are like diamonds are forever diamonds became the symbol for do you commit you know are you are you all in on this he did that with basically the vacation so he's doing this but he's like the airline experience sucks getting here and going home sucks that's kind of the first impression and the last impression that the consumer gonna have so what does he do he buys the airline takes full control like vertically integrates the experience and he's like look the airline was a tough business it's a bad business but he had an advantage which is he owned the resorts so he basically used the airline as a giant flying billboard to the resort and he's like i will just market my resorts i'll bundle the flights and hotels i will use it to advertise my resorts so that you wanna stay there i will do service and kinda like lose a little money or break even on the airline as long as i give you a first class experience down to my resorts where you're gonna spend a lot of money he's like if they get off the plain angry you know then it doesn't matter i've already lost the game before they step foot on the beach again i love this guy brian c my wife he's working airbnb brian c would give this talks about like i think he called it a ten star experience where he was like he has his famous like way of art yeah is it twelve star where he was like well what's like a one star experience one star experience is like you book you do a booking and we leave the key out of the map and it's just fine and there's rats and it doesn't look like the pictures yeah that's one star and a five stars like michelin and restaurant like style services like but what's six stars i'm like people start getting creative they're like you get picked up in a limo and whatever but what's eight stars what's ten stars he goes all the way up the twelve stars and for him it was it's a really exercise to think about what's like extreme hospitality and he made this argument and this was pre covid and it's covid changed everything on airbnb because had focus on different stuff because there were you know was an essential existential crisis but he to say that he wants to launch an airline and i was thinking i was like what could the tagline be for that and that it would be like when you fly with us the vacation starts at the airport right and i was like that's so interesting like we could actually make that a thing like like it's when you you're if you're were flat or he said that i said that not to him i was just like thinking in my that airbnb job off might come back around twenty years later that's a good right because i was thinking about like when you know if you fly first class or flying or go to the lounge you're like it's pretty cool the vacation started now so like i just got and if you sometimes to get there early and you gotta wait three or four hours because i'm a i'm a early early arrive at the airport like it's kinda like four hours early like three hours but like if there's a delay i no dude i get there early crazy what are you doing i've never missed a flight in my life the time with you was the closest i've ever gotten but no i don't miss flights how how early do you get there now i guess i get there i've have tsa kind of changed things but yeah i'm i'm always at at least a two hour early guy i like to slide in at fifty minutes before the flight and see if i can get the tsa in the next twenty to thirty and that leaves me another twenty to thirty to get on the plane easy but if i have lounge access i'm like look i'm just gonna eat there i'll eat my lunch or dinner there and then we'll get on the plane and so but that's my slogan the the the the the vacation should start at the airport alright we need to trademark we need a trademark that's pretty good right that's really good yeah that that that that has a ring to it i i enjoy bringing about hotel businesses you know there was a i i had a fling with my own little hospitality business it was called an airbnb that went horrible but i read a bunch of books on this have you ever heard about harris entertainment it was a it was a yeah harris was a a casino and this was like in vegas yeah so it was a casino but this was before like kinda casinos became hotels but i was reading this book called the caesar palace coup and in about two thousand and eighteen all these hedge funds had owned little bits and pieces of caesar palace which i think was the largest casino hotel management company in the world and it's about like the greed and all the stuff of like what it took to bike buy and how like the downfall of it but they talk about the founding of it and it was founded as harris entertainment and then there was another hotel they merged they created caesars entertainment but up until like the nineteen nineties or early two thousands hotels were just bay were like the hotel and casinos were just like really simple businesses but then harris and thus caesar when it merged hired a guy who was a forty year old mathematician from harvard he had no management experience no experience running a company his name is gary love and he comes in and he just makes us his math playground and he dials it in to the within two years of him being ceo they dial this in i think in like that your two thousand and one before the internet was like super popular to where when you call them book a hotel based on of all types of math and math they would know to offer you an upgrade or offer you fifty bucks in free gambling because there was all math to them and they knew that if they get you a free room they got you hooked on gambling it was all like a statistical thing and he basically invented this idea of of i actually don't know what the phrase would be but this idea of like using data in math like a money ball type of way for hotel guests dude this is sick i've never heard of this guy gary lu so he's after nine years at the faculty of hard business school he left to become ceo of harris then became ceo of caesars for twelve years that's crazy he owns a minorities he's minority owner of the boston celtic the use of analytics to influence customer behavior yeah up until him it had never been done but he was a famous faculty member at harvard and he would teach all this methodology and then one day harris was like hey we will like hook you up big time we'll give you access to the private jet so you could fly down on a monday come home on a friday you know we're gonna roll out the red carpet for you just do what you want and he did it what you wanted and eventually they go alright brother you're now ceo it works great and so he like it was crazy like within three months of him joining the company they saw massive improvements and then within like a year or two he implemented it was all data driven he's like cherries in the vodka we're gonna put cherries in vodka they're was like we we don't know the the data says but cherries in the vodka slot machine sales are gonna go up by three point three percent right like there i mean a casino is one of the most i can well optimized it's like you you are the sponge and the casino is ringing you out well he's the guy who did that and so now i think he's chairman or vp chairman something like that of ae one of the largest insurance companies in the world yeah perfect just what we need it's the same it's the same like math where it's like it's just a like if your goal is just maximize profits like you do this math equation this is like when i learned the tobacco companies like own kraft food or whatever it's like oh the children's food done by the cigarette company yeah like annie goldfish is owned by the same guy who's like making making the sig exactly today's episode is brought to you by hubspot did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book but then tearing out four fifth of the pages point is you miss a lot and unless you're using hubspot the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights that are trapped in emails call logs transcripts all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and so if you wanna read the whole book instead of just reading part of it visit hubspot dot com so the so this guy kind of a genius i wanna tell you about this genius thing that i've been thinking about okay not not in my idea you the idea of geniuses is let me just tell you a story here i'm gonna read from i think this is a financial times article but i'm gonna read you a couple of the intro here because it's amazing alright sam i want you to imagine you are stacy tang your a chinese woman like if i always wanted to be a manager at a pharmaceutical company in beijing and you receive a phone call on some squid game shit an unknown number calls you and says we like your son you have a fifteen year old son says we believe that he might be qualified for the genius program and we'd like to give him a test now it's also covid it's pete covid twenty twenty two people can't meet in person so they said stacy i know you might be concerned about covid you're you're a good mom fear not we're gonna put him in the back of this van and we're gonna drive around the city and he's gonna do math problems in the back of this van and we'll know by the end of the ride if he's qualified or not and we'll dump them off on the street if he's not and if he is you'll see him in a couple years and like stacy would feel you might be i would say what colors the van and what corner should i leave them at exactly that's exactly stacy thought she says i wasn't worried about an abduction plot in any other country i would but not here she goes i was not china i was mid cove not mid covid who full tray full trust in china mid covid i was weeping with joy and i sent my boy right away because i knew this one what i knew what this was a golden ticket the best educational resources of china so the stacy very is a very optimistic woman so stacy and her son we're part of this program that china's china is running right now where they have a hundred thousand kids that they've identified as like possible geniuses and they put them through what they call the genius program and what that they do is that at a young age they sort of identify certain aptitude for math for science etcetera and they say we'd like to invite you to the genius program the rs says yes or yes and then you go you said your kid and it's a few year intensive study program you get to skip all your normal school you could just skip the college entrance exams you don't have to take any of those but you're in basically math boot camp and you are gonna be studying with the brightest and the best and they are trying to produce incredible talent in china and so you might be wondering like how does that work is is it working right that's your question isn't it working san if you like tiktok genius program same ever heard about tao bow which is there you know essentially they're like paypal genius program have you heard about their group on genius program have you heard about their super app genius program have you heard about the brothers who were behind their big nvidia competitor genius program you ever heard of deep seek they were in the news recently created that big algorithm didn't even have access to the best chips and somehow outperformed all of the open models genius program it's like a teal fellowship room by the government exactly so china already has this incredible like population advantage where they produce five million graduates in math computer science and engineering compared to i think we have like half a million that are in technology the the technology and science fields in the us so ten to one already they're ten to one us just in in in normal college graduates but now they're looking for the cream of the crop and they are basically trying to create this talent pipeline homegrown talent pipeline of matt's geniuses computer science geniuses etcetera and it's working so they started this program many years ago and at the time china didn't have a very notable math or science like a achievement record in at the international level so there's these things called the math olympia and such sort like the olympics for math and so the first year they sent a team of three and they got like the bronze and they're like yes and then they next year they sent like six teams and they got two medals and now basically they just sweep all the medals every year they just dominate these programs they sent like the most they have the most players and the most wins and their ai program like you know if you go walk into an open office you're gonna see tons of chinese phd ai researchers who now work in the us but there's for everyone that you see here you know there's a hundred that are still in china working at the chinese companies and the chinese labs and i was just pretty inspired by this whole thing they there's one anecdote in the in the story where it says that like if you go into a normal chinese public school there's a blunt slogan on the wall this does not even the genius program there's just a normal elementary school public school and it's a reminder for the teachers and staff there and it just says produced talent quickly and early and i thought about that because i send mike kids to school and the teachers in this staff do not have a philosophy about producing talent quickly and early it what's our slogan no child left behind right that was the the famous education program that we launched i don't know tent when bush was president or something like that the exact opposite it's the exact opposite it's about don't discriminate don't make anyone feel left out in in san francisco they were doing this thing they were getting rid of the gifted and honors programs because it was like made the other people feel bad and we basically are taking the exact opposite with the sort of inclusion focus and the like no child left behind focus whereas if other countries are taking this idea of like your job is to produce talent quickly and early and that like it's the the goal is greatness and let's be competitive about it like what's gonna happen over twenty year arc right you're gonna get more and more it's they're gonna win and so i just thought this was pretty interesting i wanted to hear your thoughts on this it kinda begs a question like why doesn't facebook have like what's it called what's what's it yes but what's it called the d leak with for nba yeah the g league or what's like the the minor leagues like you know triple baseball yeah yeah like why doesn't google and facebook and the top two hundred schools have like a farm team where they identify fourteen year olds that are promising and they go hey would you like to come to school here forever or for free and you can choose to work at us we're at our company afterwards but just so you know you have like job here if you choose to and we will educate you and get you up to date up to speed on all the stuff totally i actually when i first moved to san francisco this was the thing i was pitching investors i was like i think i should go create google you and my dream would be to be the dean of google you i was like i can't i think it's crazy that i these giant companies don't have their own talent farms right why wouldn't they try to produce talent we we wrote a story at the hustle about this day michael praise michael if you hear this what's up and he was like a fifteen year old who had this rag to a story where he somehow got mark zuckerberg attention at the age of fourteen because he wrote like a viral app and he made the news because z was like hey do you wanna like an internship here and then that led to a full time job when he was only sixteen and now i think he's doing i think he's on the the ai what's it called the super team the super intelligence facebook team which is like the hundred million dollar year salaries and insane stuff and it was like we wrote a story because how remarkable it was that facebook hired a high school kid we need more du house or shit right like why don't we do where's your competitiveness so you have the teal fellowship shit right that's like a thing and obviously there's like little programs all around dude i remember when i was in seventh grade duke university did what i didn't realize was essentially just a marketing campaign but they created something called the duke tip program and it was called the talent identification program and i didn't i lived in texas and suddenly duke university do this thing where my school in texas had us all go to the cafeteria and take a little test and then you got like a little merch bag with it of like duke gear and then the results came back it was like we think you're talented and bro that i think i rode that for like seven years and then i went to duke yeah think really influenced me in some weird subliminal way that like maybe i am special and maybe i can do this and maybe i should go pay duke two hundred thousand dollars to go to school there and i did all those things and i i'm surprised that more of that shit doesn't exist i kinda wanna create something like this because i think it actually creates inflection now the china one is more like boarding school right and there's been other countries that do that but like i feel like we need our own versions of these like where what is the what is the american talent pipeline look like and where are we identifying the best and the brightest on some end games shit and inviting them to the academy and then letting them you know duel and compete in like a pretty hardcore way because look hardcore not for everybody but there's some people that only thrive on hardcore situations they want to play the game at the competitive level basically what we do with like youth sports with au you and travel ball and shit like that but do that for the genius kids do that for the makers right like i think that is maybe it exists i i'm just not aware of it but have you heard of birthright right i love birthright crazy so those listening i well i learned about it because i was dating a girl who went on birthright i don't remember what age i was like twenty one years old do you remember when she told you about it did want your reaction you're like what yeah and she wasn't even jewish like she was like ethnically jewish i guess but like basically birthright is a program it's funded i think it's funded a little bit by the government but a lot of it is wealthy jewish people but also i think a lot of wealthy christian people who believe that when the end of the world according to the bible when the end of the world happens the jews need to rise first then the christians go behind them that's like what the book of revelation says and so they believe for a variety of reasons that we need to keep israel strong i don't care about the politics i'm just telling you guys the facts and so a lot of christians i think but also like bernie made was a huge fund a lot of people are fund it says sixty seven percent of the funding for individuals thirty twenty seven percent is the government and then there's like a couple percent of other things and it's basically a free trip to anyone who could prove you'll have to tell me the exact measurement but i think it's like if you have like a great grandpa great grandparent who's jewish so you could be like not jewish at all does it say what the requirements are well i just asked does it account if i have a jewish friend and it said no that that's not gonna get me there like do you identify as jewish but basically it's like a very small percentage and they bring you on something like us to re week all paid expenses trip all expenses paid trip and they basically at least one jewish birth parent or a recognized conversion okay so just a just a parent they bring you for like two or three weeks i forget how long it is but they like this yeah but they give you a tour and you see all the type of stuff but they basically like i remember when she was when i was dating this girl we broke up afterwards but she was like they introduced us to all these israeli soldiers and like and i was like alright like this guy's really ripped why did you take a shirt off like you know like why do you have photo anyway and like it like a small percentage of them then you know become like a good buddy see about like become more in touch with a judaism days and in touch with israel and thus support israel more yeah it's how culture lasts through generations right is cultural experiences and exposure any culture can do this they've just system it in this really like cool like opportunity for people yeah it's awesome and like it's pretty great like i would because i think you have to be like eighteen between it's there's an age limit i think it's like eighteen to twenty five if we forget get what it is when you're like primed to like wanna go on a free trip you're like yeah fuck i'll go and then you like it's free trip hell yeah and then you get there and you're like okay i actually do like this or like this right so it's pretty cool and i think that's kind of a good example world's best times share presentation yeah and i think that's like a really good way and this sounds bad i don't mean a bad to ind someone into like a cause and get them long term bought in and it is kind of like an interesting model yeah i love that what do you do with the money once you've already made it this is a question sean and i ask our successful guests all the time and the reason we ask it is because if you are if you do have a little bit of money information on how to spend or invest your money it's actually really hard to come by and i know this because instead of hampton which is my community founders people ask this question all the time people have made ten or fifty million dollars how do you spend it how you invest it and so to help solve this problem and answer this question i actually interviewed eighty plus founders guys like scott gallo alex from mo brian johnson people who are worth fifty a hundred even billions of dollars and we got them to reveal everything so their net worth how much they pay themselves their monthly expenses their portfolio things like that and we turn these eighty interviews into one document and i don't think you can find this type of information literally anywhere on the internet and it's completely free so if you wanna see behind the net worth of people who are worth billions of dollars and their portfolios or expenses everything you go to join hampton dot com slash reveal again join hampton dot com slash reveal check it out so what do you say we need our own birth rate what what where you going with that well no what what i'm saying is two i actually do think that america should have mandatory i think scott said agree with this for a long time should have mandatory service for american military i think that would be great but number two i think that's a really good example of how you have like whatever we're calling this like a farm leak of like getting in with people at a young age like it is i wonder like it worked really well with duke and you i mean i didn't go to a good school i was from missouri i didn't go to get college but like it is interesting why you aren't promoted to a little bit earlier on to like buy into like a certain movement like going to a good university or joining like an interesting company well we're kinda saying three different ways that you can produce this like talent farm so the first one was the china one which is you identify promise and potential early then you invest in that and they do deliberate intensive practice and you know you the those people who had potential they build the skills in a more intense way in a more hardcore environment okay that's one way you could do things second thing we talked about let's say the duke example is sometimes just creating a test or something like that just to do talent identification if nothing else makes people feel like they're special and that the talented and literally that self belief is worth something it's not the same value as going to an intense boot camp and capitalizing on it but it's not nothing either and then the third one is how do you get that sense of pride cultural like ties and enthusiasm and one idea is like you know birthright or something like that so there's like all these different ways you could do it i i was started studying i was like who else has done things like this and so there's the have you seen the story of the soviet like or have you are you familiar with the story of like the soviet olympic program basically how they did this yeah and how they are just like the shit and both they also like drug them that's why they like won all the like a ton of the women track and field records are from the ussr in the eighties like still it's like the longest standing records so so the i didn't i didn't know the whole story so was kinda looking into this it's pretty interesting so soviets were kinda of famously independent they were kinda like we don't need to be part of the so they actually had their own kinda like fitness games they had they had what they called physical culture which is like fit cult and then they had their own thing called like sparta something sparta hiatus that was like their olympics but a certain point it was kind of like the olympics had the network effect it had the brand it had the prestige so even if we were winning our local thing it kinda didn't hold we couldn't do this and so they basically built a machine so they decide alright we're gonna enter the olympics but the way they did it was just so russian so incredible they built an incredible machine and so that i i respect so what they did they did same thing talent identification so they go at age six to ten they start measuring how long are your arms how big is your your wings span you what's your reaction time what does your body composition look like what's your flexibility like for gymnastics and they basically didn't wait for greatness to appear they went on a talent search and they searched for greatness and once they did that they they basically hacked the system so at the time i think until like nineteen eighty eight or something i eighty six or something like that the olympic charter said that you couldn't be a professional athlete one of our past topics g pre font was one of the biggest advocates to abolish that okay great so so the the russians basically just worked around it so they're like this gym she's a student this guy this hockey player he's a officer and like you know they had these job titles that were only on paper but actually there's training full time for this whereas the us would be like i'm juggling school and my training and obviously somebody who's only training is gonna get further ahead well you remember mir crow cup the one of the best yeah yeah he was supposed to be an ex police officer that was like the s was that he was but he was really trained i think as in crow i forget where a former ussr state as a fighter that's train full time he's like i'm the canned man is anybody can get it right now that's very funny different boxer that alright so so they so they do that then they start drug right so they're like okay what else can we do pet so that became obviously a thing they also did like world class in you know i guess like progress and innovation in calisthenics and training programs and regimen that were like progressive loads and d loads and how do you peak at the right time stuff that's they standardized they invented and and like kinda created then we had to go steal it from them basically of like how are they doing this in running there's called period prioritization which is like you start with heavy miles and then you slowly taper off where you go to speed if they helped invent that they also helped invent the idea of training lifting weight in cold atmos with the ac down to like sixty and fifty five what does that do it just makes you stronger i i don't know the science behind it but that was like one of their theories i love how i ask as if that's my problem alright been the temperature of this whole time no they just like came up with like all these like really weird i mean they were lab rats and so they came up like a bunch of stuff are like volume training for weight lifting like they were the best weight lifters and so like a lot of the best they're now old guys but a lot of the fathers of like body building in the nineties and three thousands they're on their eighties now were ussr guys right and so they they ended up dominating the they were either you know first or second in metal count and then you know the it just sort of like there was a period of time where they really dominated and it was also cool like why did they care so much and it was basically send a message it's like physical dominance was like a signal for dominance and other things so this is why i thought the china thing is so interesting because because it's the exact opposite it's it's brain it's brain dominance but even even more there's more stakes like this was symbolic it's like we'll show the world what we're capable of and there's always been the symbolic victories like the first to climb everest or the north pole or the south pole things were there's objectively no value to be gained by being the first guys to reach the south pole aside from bragging rights and countries care a lot about these bragging rights and now with the ai thing think it's like it's not just a symbolic victory it's actual like total domination of the world's most powerful technology and we'll probably create the next global power so it's like all of the same national pride bra stuff from the olympics multiplied by actual real world tangible benefits and dominance dude i think it's great like like blue angels bra stuff like this is like the group like the greatest thing ever like i think it's john sam all in humber bra nevada well i just think that like having a common enemy is really good for bringing people together like i i remember post nine eleven like i remember like there wasn't a lot of remember i distinctly remember the week after i remember walking around the street and i was like there's something about this and i just feel like a bond with strangers do you remember that feeling well a little different as i but yeah yeah you actually had the exact opposite of experience but i forgot about that like a common enemy you are the enemy you were the other i think great yeah yeah i you i was the austin and knew of them have you heard of this thing this is related to what you're were saying about planting a seed and someone that they're have you heard this thing called them the michel angelo effect michel angelo effect it's this like psychological phenomenon where basically it's there's been a bunch of test that proven be true and we use this phrase with hampton all the time it's like a gift from the gods this this phrase so the michel effect it basically just says that if you have two roman romantic partners or a peer group or friend group they if they as long as they affirm each other and plant the seed in you like for example if i'm like sean like you are the man you will be fit you will achieve this you will do it whatever you want and we keep affirming each other every time you say that to one another it's as if when michel was doing the statue of david someone said how did you make this amazing statue he says the statue was there i just chipped away at all the stuff covering that beautiful statue and so it's as if like the greatness is in you because i have put that label on you and each time i affirm or congratulate or say how you're amazing i'm chipping away at the stone that's going to unveil this beautiful like thing inside of you which is whatever the goal is that you want to become and they have found that basically like if you are raised around fat people you are more likely to be fat if you are raised around depressed people you are more likely to be depressed you raised around rich people you're more likely be rich it's not just because of like you know what your parents do it's just like you become what you are affirmed and what you were told and it's called the michael angelo effect and it's a really cool idea and like this has been studied by psychologist like there was a but they looked at like a a group of fifty thousand people and they were like what words are you using to to talk to this person and how do they end up and where do they become and it's like really telling and so it's a really cool idea that if i tell you at a young age that you are special that you work hard that you're gonna be great that you belong in this category you are more likely to actually become that simply of me like telling you that you are that's amazing my dad told me the story about some of his dad for him that's always stuck with me and so this is a little dead dad not gonna go to pay forward so i don't wanna cry not not emotional it's not that emotional but maybe you're in that phase where you know the hormones par that be have little girls man i feel like i wanna like tear up all the time so my dad was telling me so my dad grows up in india right like and if you look at you know today he lives in san francisco and he's had this great life but like know it's kind of unheard of from a village in india right it's like hard to imagine starting there and ending here in one lifetime so he he tells me the story and he's like he's like you know there's one thing my dad always did for me and he goes my dad always he's like he planted the seed in me that i was special that i was different that i was gonna go do great things and he goes it didn't make any sense because i was not doing anything i lived in this little dirt village right we'd nobody in our family had ever done anything so his dad worked at a factory and he told me the story how his his dad would bring him to the factory and the boss would be there like oh hey kiddo like you know who's the kid you know and he put a hard hat on him and be like you know one day like you can you know you can be here with us you know when you grow up and that his dad to his boss was like it kidding me he's like no this boy this boy special this boy is not gonna be here he would take the hat off the hard hat off of him but he's not gonna be here he's not gonna be in a factory he's gonna be america this boy special you don't know this guy is really special he's really smart he's really special he's gonna do something amazing in america and he told him that since he was like age four five years old six years old seven years old he's like he put this in me that like i was special i was gonna do something i was gonna go to america he's like my dad did had never been to america he doesn't even know what america is at the time he never been on a flight never been on an airplane but he had this idea and he put it he just said it so matter of fact and he said it in front of other people to his boss he's like i i just had to take that as like this must be serious he wasn't even telling me i just overheard it i used dropped on that and i thought that was great and i was like i rid that for my kids how great is that is that the best that's the best i do that make case all the time but we do daily affirmations at the morning we say i'm bold i'm tough i'm smart yeah we we do this i'm brave i'm strong i'm happy i could do anything yeah it's we we we've run that all the time i'd tell you about the tennis little ahead with my my last son when he would go into new classes he would always get scared to like new soccer class new tennis anything and as a parent is very frustrating right you pay you drive through traffic you go there and then your kid doesn't go in and then in front of you all the other kids are like doing it happily blah i'm like barter and b and threatening and then ignoring and then trying again and then i'll going with you and then i'll do the i'll jump on the tram like let me let's do this together and then the teacher teacher's like hey can you leave like your parents aren't really allowed to be in here so there's been the situation over and over and over again so we go to a tennis class new tennis class and sure enough doesn't wanna go in and like okay i decide i'm gonna try this little differently so we just we hanging out and we're talk we're just talking i decide we're gonna stay here we're not not gonna try to force you to go in we're just gonna sit here and talk and i start telling i'm like you know you know i get i get pretty afraid at doing new things too actually so i totally get that and you know i realized that it's other people aren't it's not that the other people aren't afraid like they have the scared they have the scared in them too right here right in your chest and i was like but you get to decide like does this scared win i was sometimes the scared wins and like today the scared one but it doesn't always have to sometimes you get to win does i tell him this i forget about it he doesn't really even really give you kids don't always like verbally affirm like yeah know he's what a wonderful lesson like he's just like you know looking at his like car that he's playing with or whatever so three weeks later we go and we go to class and my wife takes him and he goes in so she's was like okay went into tennis no problem this time after you know three weeks and then afterwards is like you know what what good job like know so proud you how'd you do it and he was like didn't wanna let the scared win today and i was like yes total and complete victory in life i did it i did it have not a terrible dad i i i actually taught him something so it was like this huge like you know great moment of my life that that was just hearing that that that little seed watered enough like eventually did blu bloom in his own words and i'd actually forgotten about that whole thing and he remembered it go a wholesome episode right that fires me beyond because thank for dead corner i wanna go and hug my my kids alright that's it that's the pod i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal less travel never look back alright my friends i have a new podcast for you guys to check out it's called content is profit and it's hosted by luis and ph ka after years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like red bull and orange theory fitness luis and fans are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue in each episode you're gonna hear from top entrepreneurs and creators and you're gonna hear him share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit so you can check out content is profit wherever you get your podcast