How fortnite made me a millionaire

i made my first million when i turned thirty years old but i'm gonna walk you through every single business i tried before i've made something that worked and sam you can roast me for how bad my ideas were i feel like i could rude where to i know i could be what i want to upper from at all in in like a day's off on a less traveler alright look you so i did this previously you totally went up to me by having a presentation so that's a little unfair but it's like in mean girls where she shows up to the halloween party and she doesn't know that just was to dress flooding and she dresses this scary that's kinda how i feel right now but that's okay i'm incredibly excited to see what what you have to do business number one i tried to create the chipotle of sushi so this was my first big hair brain idea it was called sa sushi and we even though i didn't know anything about sushi i had just tried sushi for the first time of month prior i just thought this is it this is the big idea i can create the chipotle sushi we partnered with a food network chef we launched the thing i learned how to make you know spicy tuna and like all kinds of stuff and that was the guy who what was your brother's name who bought the bag company dan yeah so if you've seen the episode with dan who dan the bag man where he bought a a paper bag company now and is thriving he was right next to me in the sushi trenches okay so you just kind of the summary of that whole venture restaurants suck as a business you know ten percent operating margins you're working morning afternoon a night you're open on weekends there's no let up hand smelled like to all the time it was just a a brutal business to be in and we literally did every dumb thing you could possibly think of i sort of took a buffet tour of all the possible mistakes you could make in doing a business and then oh my grade for this by the way a for effort but this business was an f and i think in the end we made something like twenty thousand dollars of profit before we voluntarily shut down the business because it was so brutal but if you to look at that in terms of the one year of full time effort that it took us i was making a dollar eighty two an hour so that was my big big profit out of that business how much did it cost to start we got lucky it was gonna cost half a million dollars to build out the restaurant that was a combination of signing the lease and with a personal guarantee by the way which is bad because restaurants fail and you had nothing to guarantee and i had nothing to back it up so it was like you'll be on the hook for this for ten years unless you declare personal bankruptcy and did you have to buy all the equipment you're gotta do the build out all the shit we hired the fancy oh we hired this architect who built the val fedora he was the architect of the vita fedora in vegas and again every dumb mistake you but we thought oh wow he's the best so he should design our restaurant and he came up with this plan that was gonna cost us half a million dollars to build out but i mean that's pretty ridiculous that's like having like the guy who like developed the world trade center to like make your kids background plays that go later like my play structure exactly but we were yeah was so sick we were really we're really just changing the game out here did did you tell that was your bitch we were crossing our areas and dot our ts but that's not what you're supposed to do that's not how those letters look so yeah we were doing everything wrong in in with maximal effort so how much would it cost we ended up luckily this beautiful beautiful man with a beautiful set of hair named john print grass met us and i was like hey guys maybe test your concept before you commit ten years and a personal guarantee to this thing and we were like how do you test a restaurant and so he convinced us to basically do a delivery only restaurant out of a comm kitchen what today is called a cloud kitchen yeah it's very fancy today back then there was no uber eats it's no door ash and we just looked like bombs who couldn't afford a restaurant and so we tested it that way that's why it actually cost us almost nothing to start and we made twenty thousand dollars of profit and like i don't know one or two months but we also were like this is a trap every day that this succeeds is another day we're gonna be in this business and i just went out i'm only twenty one years old it's not too late i'm still a minor and i don't need to have a life sentence in this business give me out of here alright which we we have to say this really quick every so you gave yourself an f and you said it horrible and you wanna escape we can give examples of every for every type of business and probably everything you're gonna mention i don't you actually did it so for example the chicken tenders guy todd graves who's now like you know the t of americans and it sounds awesome obviously it sounds awesome because it's successful but yeah i'm sure jimmy john's is not like regretting it you know i mean cool he likes it yeah but for us it was not the right business to be so you know i'm giving you a little bit of wisdom so here we go sean the elder now that went with my elder wisdom sean elder says lesson number one your first business is your worst business and that's okay the most important thing of this entire business was just that i started and i kinda got the itch and i kinda got some momentum and i saw man if i can make that much progress with something i knew nothing about then you know the next thing didn't scare me so i think that was the only good thing out of this business which is that you know all success requires a start and it was a start alright number two number two i tried selling bands online then there down that man lives strong i saw the lives strong band trend which for those who don't know lance arm armstrong had these yellow wrist wristband that were like all the rage so what happened everything i did wrong in the first business i was like jerry i'm doing the opposite now and i basically we we well here's what we did we said a forty eight hour time constraint so we said last time we spent nine months planning and researching and planning and researching and no action this time it's all action and so we gave ourselves forty eight hours and i said look i feel like we've been playing dress up as entrepreneurs or just playing in house like my daughter does and instead what we need to do is like do the real thing so i said the rule is i don't care what business we do we gotta launch it and we gotta make a dollar of revenue from a real customer in forty eight hours and that constraint was actually pretty amazing so what did we do we were too dumb to really like do anything fancy online but we're like it's make something online no physical location and i had just discovered alibaba this was now in back in like twenty eleven i was like wow it's amazing you know all the shit we buy comes from china there's a website where the factory is just like online you could go talk to the factory and they will they'll just ship it straight to the customer you don't even need to buy the inventory and basically i stumbled into what is now obviously drop shipping so we did this drop shipping business and in forty eight hours this one is actually a pretty cool idea the the as you can see my website here it says the fat band dot com that was our our website and then it says one inch silicon wristband free shipping as seen on tv so i was just lying this is the huge liar already as i don't even know what tv this would have been on at that time but we we went with as seen on tv and and then we had and this is what was pot at the time you can see what was locked by the the free examples the london twenty twelve olympics were coming up so we thought maybe maybe people wanna wear that and we don't have the license but let's just again if we're already lying why not also steal the next thing was gt do you even know what that is g t l no is it like good get to it or i don't know good fucking mocha i'll give you a guess go ahead go ahead just make something up g t l i god to love i i don't know like this is g t l if you remember the hottest show in the world back in twenty eleven was the jersey shore and they used to say jeep japan laundry oh we were like oh yeah dude jim tan laundry that's the thing and there's a another one them here that says bieber fever something detected you did jim you were tan and you definitely probably weren't doing laundry over three but here's the good news i give this business an a because in the forty eight hours we actually got two orders we made seven hundred and fifty dollars i learned how to make a website i learned how to take payments online learned how to use alibaba and we did it like way faster than everything we had done before so it was like actually way better of a business in two days than the previous year had been for me so i give it an a although i'm pretty sure one of the orders like i did this was my buddy trevor i think he was just like hooking up with one of the girls who ordered and she wanted to like get back together with him or something but hey like a dub a dub would take what we can get you know beg gonna be choo so sean the elder says he who studies success learns little hue studies failure learns truth i think the real lesson out of this one was basically creativity loves constraints the power of setting a time box constraint if we had said this will be our next big business we would have again spent six months planning it was when we said come hell or high water we're doing it for real we're gonna get revenue in forty eight hours all our ideas then had to like fit in that box and so there's this lie in creativity which is you wanna think outside the box no no what the pro's do is you put yourself in a tight box and then watch how you guy your way out and so that's really what this business grows 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 and really a lot of people who are listening they have a full time job and they wanna start something on the side a side hustle 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 are in luck so my old company the hustle they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it 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 alright next alright i tried to start a biotech company with this billionaire in australia wait how old are you i was twenty two twenty one years old twenty two years old at the time was he like a criminal no he was not a criminal stand up guy not a elizabeth holmes type of person no no he was super legit he had just he wasn't a billionaire actually he had just sold his company for four hundred fifty million dollars and he had a non so he had a lot of money it was his parents company originally so he had a chip on his shoulder he wanted to prove that he could do it so guy had cash a chip on his shoulder and he was non competed out of the business he knew so he had to do something new and biotech sounded really interesting and you were and i was i'm making it sound like you're a dummy but you actually graduated from duke and you were really major yeah you're okay okay it's not like you're just like a dumb commerce bro you i think there was some stupidity in this so i thought i'm a bio major i should do something in bio honestly what you studied in college means very little here it's not like i truly had a passion yeah but you like took a class at least yeah i i i used the wrong heuristic what i really should've have done which was smart was i got around smart people so this guy was a really smart guy and working with him was actually really cool so like that was actually much more important than the biotech link now what did we try to do we tried to create a biotech company where you could take coal that was too deep to mine un mina coal i don't know if you know like ninety percent of the world's coal is un mina too deep too une economic to mine so the idea was there was little microbes that would go down and eat the coal down there and they would like basically far out natural gas you could just collect the gas without mining cool kind of cool idea unproven if it could actually worked i got this opportunity because he was reading our blog he he read our he met my dad and my he asked my dad what he what your kids do and he went and checked out our blog and thought it was cool he thought it was our hustle was cool and it was come the first time that content or building in public like doing a portfolio mattered more than a resume mh and that is now become like very true in twenty twenty five back then like i didn't intentionally do that but it really worked i failed forward in that way and i used content to kinda create opportunities the second thing that happened was when i got there i realized oh wow i don't know anything about oil and gas industry i don't have no experience and at first i tried to like catch up but how are you gonna catch up to like twenty years of this guy's experience very hard to do and so i had a different idea which was instead of being the worst in the room at the thing they're all good at how do i become the best in the room at something they don't know how to do and so we started me and my buddy trevor we started learning to animate videos to take their ideas and turn it into like a one minute video that they could show their you know investors or their prospects or whatever and they loved it the owner was like oh my video guys yes like because you're making me look cool you have a new power you're got you guys are good with computers and shit so like we found a way to like bring something to the table so rather than like focusing on our disadvantage we try to figure out what's our advantage so i was like a lesson that i you know took forward from that but overall i give this business a see because it didn't really work the business didn't really work and you know i made like a hundred and twenty grand a year as like a job essentially doing this where's he he's still in australia still doing anything thing i haven't talked him like in a long time but i hope he's is doing well lesson earn your spot at the table kinda of the the thing i just said alright making the next billion dollar app so i tried to basically this was a period of life where i tried to make the next billion dollar app and so i was like twelve different apps i tried i tried we made this like club house style app where people would get on and hang out in these rooms and talk all night and it got to four million users and we thought we were doing it this is the next big thing but we couldn't grow from there it just kept it just stayed at four million four million is a big number but a social lap needs like a hundred million so we were playing this like very difficult game and it wasn't really working so i used to use lab and for those listening this was back when martin sc was like in his first up and coming scandal no no he had just gotten out of jail hat i thought no he was on trial because i remember he did lab from the courthouse back home and like in the courthouse he had plea plead the fifth but then he got on lab and just started talking shit and we were like this this was like yeah this was pre prison and he was basically on the up rise in terms of notary notoriety speak as farmer bro that was when the photo of him like sitting back like smoke at a cigar and you could just hop on and talk to him and it was kind of funny it was kinda like the beginning of cell culture a little bit my legacy bobby wasn't it what it was you're right i also tried to build a a beer app or you would check in new beers this is a giant mistake because a i i i didn't even care about craft beer so why am i trying to build something for other people who i even really not like scratching my own itch we built a messaging app that got to number three in the worldwide charts i remember above facebook which was kind of incredible but had no retention incredibly viral but no retention i think we got a million users in the first week or something like that and then a month later we had like i don't know ten thousand users like they're were all gone basically what was that one called that was called be messenger so this business i would give a b and our profit was minus eight million dollars of investor capital so we basically were burning something like a million and a half dollars maybe two million dollars for four or five years and that was called was this all under the umbrella of monkey inferno yes so this was you know playing the wrong playing a very hard game i felt like i was running around with a bottle trying to catch lightning since then i have done the exact opposite i now look for the most straightforward businesses that are you know still fun to do but i think have a high high shot of success because i was so scarred from this it's pretty magical experience so you you met we met so many i mean i met them via you but you met many amazing people in silicon valley like you know we told story ten thousand a times to calm at founders were at your office all the time yeah mo and and and ryan hoover and sierra like it was amazing people met amazing people and learned a lot so i my lesson here from shawn elder is i asked the right question i said where can i go that will give me twenty years of experience in the next four i basically took my twenties as a period for adventure and learning and not earning money i remember when i got this job they told me how many shares had they're were like oh yeah you got i think i was making a hundred and twenty k a year when i joined and then they said and it was something like forty thousand a year of stock in the monkey inferno like portfolio and he was about to tell he's like that represents he was about to tell me what percent that was and i had already seen like kind of like i've seen in the tech industry if you join a startup you might earn like one percent or less of the you don't you don't get more than one you get like point four percent point five percent point six percent point two percent of the company and that just sounds like a minute minuscule number but i wanted to go there and treat this like it was my own startup so i remember telling him on the phone i did the like finger to the lips and i was like don't tell me out of how many shares i'd rather not know i wanna work like this is my company i own a hundred percent of this that's how much i'm gonna care and he was like good answer the the benefit that came out of the kinda of the takeaway was i never went and asked for actually that's why i asked one time but i i didn't really go back and ask for more for a while and if you pick the right people to work with they will reward you based on what you're what what value you're actually creating but without you needing to ask and so i went from it turns out i had point four percent at the time then he bought me to ten percent and then over time i got to twenty percent i own twenty percent of the company by the by the end of the of the deal or sorry of that of the thing it didn't end up matter in because of the way the structure of how we sold the company but i did take away that of like you know what just go there try to learn do as best work as you can and like let the chips fall where they may i think that was the right approach alright what do you got now the last business before this is the one where ended up you know actually making money which was that at some point we were like fortnite had just come out and we were like we should write a wave of something that's popular so we took fortnite which was popular and we had this idea which was hey you know how there's youth sports you you know little league baseball youth soccer stuff like that like you know more people play fortnite than play basketball right i was like wow that's kinda crazy it's like so why isn't there like la league you can join as a as a teenager to play this with other people and have it live streamed and all that stuff like it should be just like youth sports and so we created like our version of youth sports basically and it was an app and then that was and we built the largest high school fortnite league in the country and then we got acquired by twitch and that was the kind of the big win the i turned thirty may you know crossed the million dollar mark made a few million dollars and was like yay this is amazing that ten years of sucking was was worth it and so that's my that's my story there you had so many more interesting like near near misses or near hits so the stripe one was crazy when i was running so i i had a i had a thing a startup up that wasn't working and then we ended up getting like hired and when it wasn't working i went i went and applied to jobs i applied uber i i applied at google and shockingly got like an interview i got one interview i applied it at facebook obviously they didn't call me back i applied at a zero cater an easy catered do you remember those companies yeah they were hot those are really hot at the time these are all the high companies i wanted to be an uber launcher it was called like you go to city city did you would have been so good at that that was a miss on their part yeah screwed yeah the google facebook one i'm like bill i think maybe the the the recruiter did well to like kind of like i don't think you were the fit for that but dude if you worked at uber and you were like a city launcher you would have crushed i think so and so it was it's fun to look back at like all the i i actually the way jack smith one of my best friends i applied at v that's why i met jack i applied at his company and they didn't he didn't hire me the constellation was he's like i'll be your friend yeah we became friends but you didn't hire me so you're an idiot you're good hang wait did jack say why he didn't hire you by the way dude his c cofounder was in charge his c cofounder was like i was like this all knowing kinda sm guy who's not my friend who's his saying but he was like so you think you're good at sales go around the office right now leave our little room right now and i want you to go and talk to every single person in that room right now and convince them why we should hire you and it was so d meaning and i did it and i did not get it i did i guess i did not convince i had to do the same thing at monkey inferno to get the job today ever tell you this no so they were like okay you clearly don't know anything about technology you're not an engineer you're not a designer you've never worked in tech so like we really like you but we don't really know what the hell you'll do and we all just keep saying like yeah he's it's a real hustle and so can you do some hustle like how would you hustle today to add value to what we're doing so now they're like can you show me that hustle thing and i was like was just sitting in a conference room and i was yeah i got you i was like hey you have this app that you're working on i'm gonna go get your customer feedback like now and they're like hey how are you gonna that was like on my way in i'd flown into san francisco before this but i i was killing time before the interview and there was a burlington c factory if you remember right next to our office and next to next to that was the west field mall i was like there's a mall right they're yeah i was like i'm gonna go to mall so i go to the mall and the guy comes with me and he's like i'm gonna observe and i was like oh my god was this michael does paul waited now the the cto came with me so like the most introverted engineer was like let's see what this guy could do and so i go and i've never done this i'm like i'm can't i don't have a product to sell was like i'm gonna get like feedback i guess and so i was like i'm gonna cold approach like a pickup artist at the mall random people and try to get them to come over this table and give feedback on our app i was how the hell am gotta do this and then i realized the easiest hack i just went to them and i hey i'm a job interview right now and yeah i get the job if i can get people to come over this desk and just give five minutes of feedback would you do that so i get this job and they're like yeah no problem i was that was sucks i was like this is so much better because the first three people i i was like hey have you ever been have you ever had to plan a party and needed to use an online e bike planner like i have a new one coming out in six months and i would love your feedback and they're were like you'd literally get away from me they like give me like aunt annie like a rapper kirito so away please exactly i should have been like the guy in the bathroom who like pulls the paper towel out and hand it to people i would even got me more success than what i was trying so just switching to like dude there's like a camera following me right now and i'm screwed if i don't do this whenever i see reality tv i'm like just say that that works way better and what's my point being my point being is for a lot of people in these situations where the things just not working going to ask for a job a it's normal b it's incredibly modifying because you're like shit supposed to be this guy who has his business i put all my identity into it now i'm applying it feels weird it feels i'm comfortable but we've all done it and you did it in one company that well it just adds the list of screw ups so in twenty eleven or twelve before the monkey for everything i only applied to one other job and it was this company called stripe that i thought was gonna be maybe a good company maybe a good startup and i think it was maybe valued a hundred million or less at the time oh my god it's now almost i don't know what it is now it's hundred million a hundred billion so so you know i did the math a few years ago and i was like wow my entry level sales type of job would have made me like twenty million dollars if i held and that was then has probably doubled since then so i did what you did i applied to the job i didn't know how to do it was my first job interview ever did not how to do it and i i had a lay up dude because my mentor that guy john turner i mentioned from the sushi thing he was the mentor of the guy hiring me so i asked them i was like y can he put in a word he put it's the strongest word he was like y this guy this kid's amazing yeah hi this kid he's an entrepreneur you're lucky he's even applying for a job he gave me like such a strong and i remember what it was but it was i remember thinking like like lay up like this is like so easy oh my god and that bit me in the ass that attitudes because i got on the call and the guy was like hey you he says great things but i just wanna you know ask you a few questions and i just started bombing the interview and to the point where he gave me the the sort of cell this pan exercise and brother i did not sell that pen you didn't buy that pen that pen stayed in my pocket it did not fly off the shelf what would your answer have what if you look i'm sure you like replayed it in your head at ten thousand times how would you of no i was so traumatized you know i'm like i'm a student of the game of life i love to learn not this one dude i just bury that shit deep down and moved on with life i was like sometimes you just take the l on your soul and you just move on do so i was thinking about this of the day do do you agree with this where you know we we just summarized ten years of your life in thirty eight minutes and we laughed about it but a it's not funny when you're going through it incredibly funny you it feels like you the worst part is you're comparing yourself your friends right and you're like why is this so much easier for them why are they getting this and that and and that like eats you that like you turn green with envy but the second thing is like you do it for ten years and then all of a sudden and like the tenth eleventh to twelfth year you look back and you're like oh it's kinda working and then it feels like slow progress slow progress a little bit better progress than all of a sudden you snap your fingers and it's like holy moly like i've have just grown so much it's it's like i don't know if you ever like when you when you've been getting fit where it's like i feel nothing i feel feel nothing i feel nothing and then eight weeks pass and finally you're like oh man i think i i feel my stomach it definitely feels different today and that's a new baseline and so and so it's guess what i'm getting is it's months or years of hard work at an overnight you feel progress yeah slowly and then out and then all at once so i just gave you i just gave you ten years and i think in truth because i i fast forwarded it through some of the apps we tried to we tried many apps in that like app phase so i i think i did twelve different failed companies in the ten years so over twelve ten years brutal in the i'm thirty seven now in the seven years sense i think i've gone like five for five everything has worked right away and i don't know the portfolio of the companies where i own either majority or or a just a huge chunk is probably close to a hundred million in revenue now and i think it's seventy five million in revenue and the feeling is so different not just because it's successful but because like you just it's like a route you know how to drive you just know what potholes to avoid much better still hit some right like it's not like you're your full foolproof but like man the hit rate going from o for twelve to five for five in the last few years is so different it's unbelievable what allowed you to go from five to five and seventy five million in revenue so project selection is the first one alright because i a little think about what i tried a restaurant this like innovative biotechnology that's like a science project i tried creating the next hit app the next billion dollar app the next twitter the next youtube the next facebook like we launched a messenger we launched like a social network we like those are just one in a million type of success ideas so the odds were against me even if i was good at executing and i wasn't i was like bad at executing and then trying these like moonshot things that i really didn't understand what the hell i was getting myself into whereas since then i chose projects that were like way less risky you know like i kind of understood how to do them a high hit rate i just need to execute you know so did an e commerce company i did you know a services business i did it you know we have somewhere dot com it's like a overseas staffing business like every company needs to hire people and i in my own businesses was hiring a ton of people overseas i was like no brainer it was or it was a business i was already working i bought into it and helped grow it right like that's just like a much more proof way to do things so i a project selection was number one stop chasing these like moonshot that if they work you pick a trillion dollars and you get to have a movie about you but most likely are not gonna work so i stop doing that i stop playing to like silicon valley dream the second thing was more action less planning so understanding like what amount of research and planning is helpful and at what point you need action because action produces information and i told you kind of in the first start spent nine months basically in the planning phase and that was a huge mistake we didn't confront reality of the business i remember when you started hampton before you ever announced it you showed me your calendar and we called it the zebra calendar because it was just twenty minute stripes on the on your calendar on your day and it was just calls with founders and you were like personally selling you could have offload loaded that you could have launched the business you could've have done any a number of things but you were like hand to hand combat selling to try to figure out like you know does this is this something people want and what message what version of this what message of this actually like gets me that kinda like real quick yes reaction versus like people just being polite to me so going for action rather than planning and knowing knowing when to use which gear with that second thing and third was just like pay attention to what works get around really smart people and pay attention to what works because success leaves clues do you think okay so you're thirty seven now first of all would you have predicted when did you sell lab vivo twenty nineteen something like that so that was six years twenty maybe six years ago so thirty one ish so let's just say that was six years ago let's round up to forty seven well first of all at thirty or thirty did you think you're gonna be here where you are at thirty seven no way where did you think you're were going to be i thought alright i'm gonna earn out this deal you know i get every year we've we vest i was like i'm gonna do two years of that deal which is what i did i did two years of the deal and then i'm gonna go start another company and this time i'm gonna start like you know if this one sold for tens of millions the next one i'm gonna do is it's gonna be a hundreds of millions or billion dollar company i still didn't really understand what to do but the beauty of the situation was because i was earning out my deal i couldn't go start another tech company it would be like they look me mean like what the hell are you doing so i was forced to do things that were dead didn't look competitive that didn't they i i was forced out of my comfort zone so like all i knew was start a tech company raise venture capital type of type of deal and go for the big shot when i was earning out the deal at twitch i couldn't do that so i started this podcast i was like i'll do this for fun and his podcast has turned into a phenomenal business and open up all these doors then doing the podcast taught me about all these other types of businesses that i then went and was able to be like oh that's a great and that's a great way to do a business that require like getting super fucking lucky that doesn't require like being the most competitive you know like most hardcore person like you just do the obvious and it works so like that was one i did a e commerce business because i knew that that would not be seen as competitive you know by by people twitch twitter i was oh it's a there's a business like you know it's kind of like like cute little like physical products selling you know it's like i created a brand right and i don't talk too much about what that brand is on here yet i think i'll bought it probably by the way i i'll do the reveal of that maybe this year you sell prop prosthetic legs is that what it is yes something like that yeah so basically i started doing other types of business not by choice but out of force because i was earning out the deal and i i couldn't do another tech start at the time today's episode has brought you by health hubspot because you're using only twenty percent of your business data is like dating somebody who only text you in emojis first of all that's annoying and second you're missing a lot of the content but that's how most businesses are operators today they're only using twenty percent of their data unless you use hubspot that's when all your emails your call logs your chat messages just to turn into insights to help you grow your business because all that data makes all the difference learn more at hubspot dot com okay next question at forty seven what do you think what do you have you made predictions on where you'll be i think i'm just gonna be doing creative projects i think i'm gonna be writing books and making movies and doing this doing content and i'm gonna just be all in as a creative person and like business will be secondary to me when will that shift happen now was already happened it's already happened yeah so that's why i've doing the last year and so like that happened now i would say there's still like some vest of it because i still invest in businesses but i don't run them i don't start them and run them myself that shift is already happened so do you think you're done starting businesses i think so i mean so i've i basically only said like only if something like really just slaps me in the face something that like i can't like i'm not looking for a business to start has been the mode i was in for fifteen years and is that because you feel financially secure or because you feel emotionally secure i don't know like is it because you laid down on the couch for this part i know like no what it is like what i mean is like did you like discover this makes me happy this doesn't make me happy yeah yeah it's that this makes me happy i think i'm better at this i think i'm a b plus entrepreneur but i think i'm a plus at content so like why not i do your a plus thing i think doing content is now like an incredible way to make money so like you know like we make great money here like are you look at other content creators they make a ton of money so it's like you don't have to do a company and then do content on the side like you could just do content as your main thing and make you make all the money you want don't worry and the last thing is it's kinda like the test of what would twenty year old me think is dope but i remember thinking this at the time like i think a cool version of a career is like these five five year arc seven year arc type type of chapters where you just go do like really creative endeavors and you're like oh i'm gonna like i'm gonna go and try to like do stand up for a few years i'm gonna do i'm gonna go try to make a tv show that i think is cool that version of life if i look back at my resume i'm like either i just kept starting businesses like tech companies and our businesses and i already have more money than i need i made even more money that i didn't need versus like no i started going and trying to make dope stuff like i had the creative challenge of that yeah i actually made that show and i made this musical and i made this book and i that to me seems more of an interesting life and so i'm just more attracted to it i think every not every i think many entrepreneurs go through this period but i mean i've i've i'm i'm in the thing but to where you you you try to get paid you try to feel secure you try to feel accepted you get a little bit of that or maybe get a lot of that and then you go through the phase of what i call the second mountain which is like what else is there you know and that's when you see a lot of people get obsessed with like beautiful things or art in your case content which is basically art or i just like interesting ideas where before you're like ideas ideas are worthless and then you're like i don't know ma'am just talk about ideas that is actually exciting or being around like pretty things that's exciting can i give you an example of someone who i think is is a has dead did both so joe ga friend of the pod one of our one of our our our our guys that we were a big fan of so we started airbnb obviously colossal success you know like grand slam type of six he's the ninety six richest man in america yeah and household name blah blah blah great did that still pretty young right so he's like i you know i'm not like dead no what am gonna do what am i do now and so he was like what's the second mountain so i remember going out to dinner with him once and he was telling me about he was doing that do you even know what he did next after airbnb do you know the next thing he did was at the museum the architecture thing no no no he has a company he has another startup do you know what the ad thing exactly so he created this company i don't know even pronounce this sam or sam sa think sam tomorrow yeah it's basically there is forty million dollars and i believe what it is is you can spend fifty to a hundred thousand dollars and they will give you an ad meaning a guess house basically in the in your backyard backyard guest house in law unit eighty whatever you call it and beautifully designed because he's a designer so like you know a lot of times these eighty use look very cookie cutter cheap materials like poorly made he made like a really nice one like one you would like adds value to your house aside from whatever rental income you might be able to get it out of it so he creates this company and he's doing it and when we went to dinner i was like dude the product looks awesome i want one of these in my backyard but at the same time like dude why are you doing this you have all the money like you've all the money you'll ever need you made it like why do the grind again because he was like you know having to think about seo again and how do we how do how are we gonna grow this thing and was like oh dude all the pain of doing a company why are you doing that and you know he said something at the time he said you know he said he said a good answer but one the things he said was like you i wanna prove that it wasn't locked i wanna prove that i could do it and i remember in my head i didn't have the guts to say it but i was like man i what a dell answer like there's nobody out there who's like you know what joe you just got lucky and i'm like and even if there were people who said that who cares but do nobody thinks that everybody only thinks airbnb is incredible what you guys did is absolutely incredible but he had this kind of like maybe i need to prove it again because what else do i do innovation right i i dive totally i think most people have that feeling i have that feeling so i remember hearing that be like oh man like i wish i could like go into his brain and find that line of code and be like have a bug here let me just pick bug fix patch boom you're better now but i you know whatever so he but now what is he doing so he basically is so he did that and somewhere in the middle he got pretty inspired by dough she's friends with elon like all that stuff he goes and he joins the administration and he's he starts with a very simple project which was like the retirement process for government workers was like a six six month to know eighteen month process like you just you couldn't just retire get your papers and move on to life it was like hold on a guy needs to go into this cave and find your paperwork and like it'll be a year and we'll get back to you and so he was like i'm gonna just solve this problem and i'm gonna solve it well but a design a product i'm gonna make the government product stuff work well and somehow that's turned to he's now the chief design officer of the united states of america and i'm like wow what a inspired second mountain like creative endeavor has an impact grand scale so cool like you created a role that didn't even exist but it's so perfect for you you know like he's proud and he's he wants to serve he's proud and he's extremely talented design i'm like that's the type of second mountain that's awesome i think his ad company is cool will be successful i want one of them in my backyard but i just felt like more inspired personally by the kind of the new thing that he's doing more so than when i heard i'm just doing gonna do another business and try to create another billion dollar company yeah well the other thing that he did was there's these famous designers charles and ray ames or ea is it ea you know they make the famous chair the ea james yeah it was a husband and wife couple and they were prolific designers and i think they lived in arizona and they had like their home which was famous and it was full of like their prototype furniture and things like that and i think he also bought all of it and restored it just as a preservation thing and so he's done a he's done a bunch of stuff i i i don't call me i so you guys don't have to google this to get everything right but something like that where he's like preserving history of these two designers and so he's done a bunch of this like second mountain stuff that i think really i i admire i i'm i'm a a very thoughtful guy i really admire like a lot of the way he approaches work and life he's he's a very kind of like principled and thoughtful person and i think i like that because i i find that i'm less principled and thoughtful than i i wish i was and so when you see somebody who's like very on that end of the spectrum it stands out this is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue because around this point that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company and you realize two things one you've done something great but you're still a long way from your final destination and two you look around and you realize i am all alone i've out run my peers which means you're now making ten million dollar decisions alone by yourself and that is when mediocrity can creep in my company hampton we solve this problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are gonna hold you accountable call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way because the fact is is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there and they're hard to find the biggest risk is not failing you have a company and it's working you're gonna be fine but the biggest risk is waking up ten years from now and saying shit i barely grew in business and in life and for people like you who ambitious wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid we have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members and i know this stuff actually works it can change your life to change mind and i know it will change yours so check out join hampton dot com i think that this is i personally am i'm quite inspired by this thing that you're saying now i will be extra inspired if you actually follow through on this for a a couple of years because it because it sounds like amazing now and if you follow through on this you will be my hero and the idea being you're kind of in other words saying you're retiring a little bit from business and focused on purely on creative which not entirely true because the creative things you do will make money but you're not like seeking money for money money sake which is what most people do when to go into business and i think that that's really really cool i think it's inspiring and when you say these things you sound a more confident and b more happy than you have in the past does that sound right hundred percent i i have this framework called your last dollar have i told you this is that the one where you have that really cool line of you've already earned the last dollar that you're gonna spend yeah you've already earned the last dollar you're ever you're ever gonna spend so there comes a point because people about these ideas like wanna be rich how rich what's rich what's risk to you i wanna be wealthy what's wealthy i wanna be i wanna be financially free free to do what what do you not free to do today maybe you could actually do a lot of those things today so i think people are money's is this like very big motivator you're ashamed to talk about it and then you actually don't put a lot of thought into it and man that's what shame because it's driving a lot of your decisions i'm gonna ask you a question and you don't don't say a number you only say what you're covered with but like for example for me is i did define it as two ways one your your ability to spend three percent of your liquid net worth so if you have ten million dollars you could spend three hundred thousand dollars a year another way i define rich is your passive income so just from your investments pays for your life so do you have a definition for yourself on what rich is yeah similar so basically i said if i wanna spend half a million dollars a year burn rate which i wasn't when i came up with this number i was spending maybe five times less than that but i was just like i talked to talk to another what do you spend what do you spend what's kinda like if i went crazy okay no i i don't care about boats and plants so don't worry about that side of thing you know but just like give me a sense like i do care about this type of shit and i don't wanna have to worry about this and like for go to disneyland wanna what's that thing you do where you don't have to wait in line i like that i wanna go to the you know like i just wanna be able to do all that and i don't care about some of these other things for now let's just assume that to be true and i wanted to live california so i rounded all the way up and i said if i'm spending half million dollars years as my like personal life burn rate what do i need to be making in passive income or the passive gains of my investments to where that's like not an issue at all like as long as my passive earnings are higher than my active burn i'm free yeah i don't have to i don't have to prioritize money and then you apply even some factor on top of that of like safety at cushion big swings whatever and i i came up with a number i was like cool that's the last dollar i ever need to make and actually this came because i met you know other people i an episode of this podcast with my brother love you can go see at s chop he's a a real estate guy and he's done incredibly well i'm i was sitting in his like vegas like mega type of thing and you know he had just come home from driving to go see a property he owns and like idaho or something and he drove back and he got back at eleven and then he was like up at six am the next day to like take his kids to school and i was like dude you're really like grinding and he he had this goal of like i wanna you know make all this money and i wanna be able to buy the raiders i wanna do all this these cool dreams right but i was like the truth is and and at one he was talking about i wanna leave me know my my dad didn't kinda leave me he didn't support me when i wanted to go do this i wanna leave each of my kids like i think he said some crazy like twenty million dollars and i was like dude your kids don't need twenty million dollars when they're twenty one years old to go start a business you'll actually like poison their entrepreneurial career if you do that but like i get the ethos you wanna support your kids i like that okay i i i totally give what you're saying and he wasn't like it's not like he was fixed on those these are just things that were bubbling up in his thoughts and i just remember telling him dude you've already earned the last dollar you're ever gonna spend and your kids are ever gonna spend so you're now throwing good hours after bad dollars and that still not good i was like because i'm trading good hours i'm trading energy yeah life energy right i'm trading good hours for bad dollars so i don't need that dollar has zero utility in my life at this point and so that thoughts there now am i perfect am i a monk have i like do i just not invest in things do i not have the itch sometimes like oh we could make this no i have that i have that thought i do make investments but so far so good as far as like i'm gonna do projects now where the main criteria cannot be because i think it will be successful or it'll make money it's like i'm only gonna do it because i think it's fun and interesting and a challenge to do if i'm actively the one building it working on it that i think that's a massive turn that you've made because i think that like i've known you for this whole time and there was this period of like you wanting to be the man which we all wanted to be the man you know in silicon valley that was like the point of us being there it was like going to hollywood wouldn't seem like who's gonna get a role right right and then there was the period of like okay i like have a hit but like i still don't necessarily feel not why am i not prominent like you know like why like i i've gotten some wealth but why am not king you know or you also see that there's so many more levels and you get on this treadmill which i i think i compare myself to others way more than new and so i'm far more guilty of this of like more more more you know if someone says i think it was in the movie wall street where they're like how much is enough and and the guy's like oh i know how much is enough it's more that's how much that's how much it's enough but then you come with the other side of it where you're like nope it is i know what it is is enough and i have enough and now i need to pursue like truth and happiness and all this wonderful stuff and i think that's like a beautiful message i think that's an amazing message and i think frankly i think i need to hear it and i think if i need to hear i think so many other people do need to hear because i think i'm far more norm in terms of self comparison or comparison to others and jealousy and all that stuff and so it's very refreshing to hear you say that and you sort of i think your uncle sean s is kinda lame but in this case you are my uncle sean like this is the this is the straight to the heart you're you're thirty six you're thirty seven years old but you gotta be at least forty five to be at goal okay like you're i'm trying to grow this gray beard no you're you're thirty seven you're still like like you're still like a child too old to be a hot guy i'm too young to be a cool old uncle you're not at what am i supposed to be doing right now yeah you're you're you're in the the awkward middle but in this case i do feel like you are like frankly teaching me i feel i feel like this is a bit of a mentor situation and and for that i'm i'm very thankful because i do think this is quite magical i if you're listening to this and i think if you're twenty four years old you think sean you're an idiot what do you know i need to get rich i need to do this you're so fortunate that you get to do this like what the hell and to that i say go and find it out for yourself but i do think that i have seen you know both of us have seen a lot of wealthy people a lot of successful people what you are saying is one hundred percent the best path of like get what you can and then reflect on do you actually need more and pursue what truly makes you happy versus more more and more and more and more because i'm telling you for a fact that virtually one hundred percent of the people that go down that that route are unhappy things that i'm sure of and things that i'm not sure of here's my list things i'm sure of in your twenties if you're smart and ambitious just prioritize getting around the smartest and most ambitious people you can that you like to hang out with right you're like them to prioritize things that sound more interesting rather than things that sound more likely to succeed and be cool if something gives you a lot of learning and not a lot of earning because don't worry you got time that's one that's one thing i know about my twenties is i that i think is pretty universal advice it wasn't just for me another piece of universal advice i think that's in your you know the early entrepreneur phases is like dude if it it's okay if it takes ten years because you only gotta get rich once and at the time sure i dude i wish it happened earlier and i did not enjoy going over twelve and i did not enjoy that it took ten years but like that's fine to give rich to t actually it was like no problem i actually that that works really well and it's you're very it's very hard to predict if you're gonna get your first business idea to work or get rich in when you're twenty four years old but if you commit and you're gonna iterate and you're gonna be good at learning you will probably get there you you flip your odds from like ten percent chances of success to eighty ninety percent chance of success which is as good as you're gonna get yeah love the timeline is is long enough at least ten years at work exactly so i'm pretty sure of those two things i'm also pretty sure that you should be more thoughtful and more honest with yourself about money and what you're actually gonna prioritize and where if there is ever a stopping point or not a stopping point where you just stop trying stop making money but you stop prioritizing that as like the decision making thing of what what what you're gonna do next with your time and energy so i think people should definitely think more about it i find very few people that are actually thoughtful about this and have done the kind of like the asking themselves enough questions to be clear now will everybody land at the same answer as me no i think there's tons of people who actually want more they're gonna affect change they do wanna own the raiders they do wanna like be a titan and that is the thing that's gonna make them happiest it's just not what it was gonna make me the happiest i had to ask myself like it's like i had been ordering this burger and it was like y like do i even like pickles like why do i keep ordering this burger with pickles like i actually don't like pickles get this stuff off and so i had kind of like kinda just borrowed off the shelf goals and getting more clear but like we what actually would be a dope life to me and for me it's this like every five seven years i do a bunch of creative endeavors i make shit i'm gonna go try to like succeed in these different areas the variety is the spice of life type of shit that's me but like that wouldn't be it for someone else so i that part is not universal and like making art is not universal so like you know that part i i wouldn't really put on anybody else i kinda feel bad that i gave you a hard time with like s i didn't mean that way i was only teasing but i thought i i wanna because because don't worry no offense the the reason i wanna take that i'm mickey mouse shirt bro no the let me let me here i i wanna be serious the reason i wanna take that back is basically if you wanna get rich gold and sean's previous episode that was titled how to get rich without getting lucky that's virtually perfect for everyone who has less than a million dollars but if you have more than let's say five hundred thousand dollars if you make more than terrific thousand dollars a year and you wanna be happy the last the second half of this episode is the number one thing you have to listen to because i'm am going through exactly what you were discussing now and this made me feel better and this has inspired me and so the second half of this episode is probably one of the best things that i think you've said all all year and i i don't know if you made up the second mountain thing or that's a book or something like that i think i've been feeling that way and i heard it via i heard that phrase i think via a book i think there's a book called second mountain which everyone has said is great yeah so i think what what me and you were talking about is like second mountain stuff this wouldn't have been the right message for us when we were on our first mountain like you're saying so when i was twenty three it was how do i make two thousand dollars per month that's all i need just tell me what to do you know i saw you come to my office and you did a copywriting one day workshop with neville and you guys made ten thousand dollars and i thought i just watched oceans thirteen i thought i saw a man rob the bank and i could not believe what just happened in front of me and i felt like such a loser that sunday that i was like did that guy just came in here and just talked to like thirty people about copywriting it was cool they were happy and he made ten grand for that this saturday and i just looked at myself like you're a little piece of shit if you what are you doing you don't even have then i went he how to do it and taught a copywriting course and made a decade money you know took ten years but yeah later i was like oh yeah that's a substantial amount more in a weekend so it kinda like became full circle but like you're right the first mountain mindset is so different right and it should be it's supposed to be i think oh can i ask you about have you ever met a young person that tries to do all the wise like yoda shit the like i'm already passed success and money and status and i'm like on this and it honestly kinda disgust me i'm like no i'm like can you go get drunk and try to pick up a girl exactly like penny dues you know don't just get you just get to skip all that stuff and be enlightened like you know that comes later you i have this there's a kid who i know that like i like the kid he's awesome and it's i don't know why it's probably a good thing that he's already like wise up but there's something about it that like pisses me off inside and i can't i'm just like dude you can't skip that go be stupid you can't be smart before you're stupid you gotta be stupid before you're smart like there's an order of the universe here and i feel like he's like kind of spitting on that order that way of doing things yeah ma'am i i do meet people like that can we before we leave can i create a new segment real quick called life happens yeah what is it so i wanted to know what you did for halloween did you i just wanted was quick life quarter i was just thinking did you do halloween and did you dress up and this year and then i also wanted to know i just have this hunch that you are great at halloween and that you've had some epic halloween either traditions or costumes in the past and i just needed to answer that question so what did you do for this halloween this halloween i have a two the a material than a three week old kid and we went to my mother law's apartment building in new york city they probably have four hundred units in the apartment building i wore suspended indoor trick or treating dude it was the bass you go from florida to floor literally we you could hit four hundred houses you know what i mean well fashion and it's like halloween meant to be and it's a very fancy it's a very fancy building and i didn't even have bars hi well yeah it was it was lovely and i didn't have to buy costume i just wore my overalls but no shirt and one one of my cowboy thought you bought that for halloween owned like i already owned it i wore my overalls but no shirt with cowboy how get how'd did you get it to look so used so pre free warren and my little girl was a mermaid and we went from door to door and it just looked fantastic do you have a a philosophy of framework of halloween like for example i have one which is like halloween is about looking cute not looking at realistic so you know i remember one time somebody dressed up when we were twenty one like we went on a booze cruise rally and they dressed up as a bush of grapes and there were it was a great costume looked super realistic they had balloons all over their body but it was they had such a bad time and i remember just learning that lesson like never never try to be realistic we're gonna be our future it was hard this year because my wife had just given them birth and so she wasn't like we're not gonna like to do a bunch of creative stuff but our future costumes are gonna be group costumes and so my wife has big hair and so next year she said to be slash and i'll be axle rose and like my kids will look like little rock stars nice but no we're gonna do we do we're gonna do themes because i think they're just darling and we trick or treat it in new york city that's how new york kids do it building the building which is absolutely insane do you remember growing up as a kid watching movies of like twelve year olds like richie or whatever like in the inner city and like they think like oh my god it's crazy i was around those kids it was awesome and my kid is gonna be one of those kids which is crazy what did you do we dressed up we were astronauts which is the first first good good year in a while because my wife does the matching thing and she always like stiff me with like you're yeah my daughter wants to be elsa so you're like kristoff off i'm like who the hell is kristoff or like you know you're like you're all off but i'm just a giant like snowman it's saying i wanna do all this so so i've been getting screwed lately this year was better but i i dodged a bullet i gotta i lie dodge bullet so i was gonna come over the costume and i was like you know what maybe i'll do fire man this year my kid loves fire trucks he wanted to be a truck so i was like oh you could be the truck and i'll be the you know semi sexy fire and i was like i'm gonna do that and i'm so glad i didn't do it because you know why when we were out we bumped into by kids friends from soccer and their dads are one dad is a fire man and then the other kid's dad is a police officer actually and they wore cut their suits no but but like he he was he wasn't even dressed up because he's like a man i don't do this and i was like if i had dressed up as a little goofy fire man and i met this real fire man who's a friend i was like that's like the biggest l i could've have took just man man that's the biggest l you could take i gonna dress up as like the loser version of you the w version of you i saw it's like if he dressed up as a podcast and jumped and met bumped into me i'd be like that's cool it's i saw this was the pod by way i hope here's this dude also that guy you may be a cop and thanks for your service you may be a minute thank you for your service but if you don't address up come on bro like that's lame i saw the video or i saw a photo of what your wife gave to your children like a gift basket like like they woke up one morning they had like presents she's a good mom great he goes over the top man she's on top of it that was wild yeah does she she does that for every holiday doesn't she yeah she does which that looks like it took like eight hours yeah she like just sacrifices like full nights to sleep like pulls an all night and gives them something and her you know she loves arts and crafts anyways it's like you know sounds like it's terrible for her but she wants them to have these like kinda like magical moments and like like the spirit of holidays which growing up i didn't have which kind of explains why i also don't feel the same way she does about holidays so and your eldest is just now old the where she's probably oh no your your your middle is old enough now he's probably like understanding traditions oh yeah yeah they they they they get it they like it they anticipated it they're excited for it so it's it works that's awesome alright well great a wholesome an episode oh by the way we're about to enter elf in the shelf season so like which is it's like what's the thing called for navy seal buds this is like my wife's version of buds training what buds hell week the a hell month for her i will never do elf on the shelf i i it's so we are wise and smart you're telling me and of course it's is easy for me to say now let's see if i actually stick with it but you're telling me that this elf is supposed to be watching the children at all times big brother you know let's just call it pound here that's what it's gonna be i'm just gonna scarf on the shelf yeah carpet the shelf peter tails in the house he knows exactly what you did better be contra in this year yeah fuck on the elf on the she contributor consensus is the new naughty nice i just want a little like a little dollar of of peter t and it just you click a button and it like says well well like it comes with the authentic starter and that's incredible well well you yeah alright that's it that's the problem i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal travel never looking back hey let's take a quick break i wanna tell you about a podcast that you could check out it is called the science of scaling by mark robe he was the founding ceo of hubspot and he's a guest lecturer at harvard business school the guy smart and he sits down every week with different sales leaders from cool companies like cla y and van and open ai and he's asking about their strategies their tactics and how they're growing their companies as you know head of sales or chief revenue officer if you're looking at to scale company if you're a cro or a head of sales just look at to level up in your career i think a podcast like this could be great for you listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast