I was sometimes like, look, it's 1 million dollars. Just like this. Hey, guys, you wanted to pretend to be demon. I should be patient. But my spa OS head monitors I've got a good idea of isolated patients, I don't buy the, I don't pay for the information, but you know, like it gives you the preview and then it starts to Face you're saying by the way the information.com yeah, and it fades it extraordinarily gets you hooked It gets me hooked, but I'm reading the fading part and as it's fading away
There's a line that just caught my attention. It goes it's like Residents of the small town in Idaho were complaining because suddenly Dozens if you know like you know dozens of private jets were suddenly flying into this private airport And you know like basically like armored vehicles were showing up and they're wondering what is going on They called the mayor and they're like did something happen and they're like oh
It's just Thomas toll who's that exactly who's that and then it faded out. I was like oh I have to ask my friend who's got an information account to bootleg me a copy of this story and so he did All right a quick message from our sponsor, which is of course hub spot now look growing a business is tough And it's tough because a lot of times you have to duct tape a ton of software together to make it work I've been there and it's a pain in the butt
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So this guy is I think kind of a legend. He is a stealthy billionaire He starts off his career in laundromats shout out to Cody Sanchez The then shifts to auto repair shops then shifts to Uh buying small accounting practices and does it basically a roll-up and ends up with 500 worldwide locations for his accounting thing They put I put it all under one banner like American financial services or some shit like that and no like private equity background
Just like a blue collar. He had he had worked he he first was blue collar then at some point he gets I don't know he did have a like a stint in private equity learned a little bit about private equity business Either as an internship or something else um, but I'm pretty sure he quit college or just like was moonlighting while he's at college doing the laundromat thing Uh, you know grows up single mom, uh, you know doesn't have a lot of money. So he's he's basically like I need to fill a need
So he's like, okay, uh start with laundromats. Okay, this is not a very good business But like gets me going and he's the whole time he's kind of a data nerd. So even with the laundromat business he Start starts buying these washing machines that can do surge pricing So it's like when there's more demand the cost goes up. He's like why wouldn't it do that?
All the rush comes in at one period of time That's why I need to make money and so you know He's a little bit of a data nerd and he ends up becoming famous because he takes that same data Philosophy and he applies it to a business that never had it which is the movie business
And so he does what's called money ball for movies so the money ball strategy that was Famous for uh in baseball to find undervalued assets and to build a team Construct a team with like you know sort of the using data as an edge rather than these old school scouts that are you know Spitt and sunflower seeds looking at a prospect and being like I like his ass, you know like let's he's gonna
He's got something. I always trust a guy with a big ass, you know like it's like what are you talking about? He's like you see he gets on base a lot Like nice to fat never never will never make it. They're like I don't know. It seems like you got some strong lines Yeah, or be like he's got a strong jaw
I think he's got star potential. It's like okay. He'll be a leader in the clubhouse All right, great And so money ball was basically like forget that side of thing the qualitative Focus on the quantitative so this guy does that for movies and he creates Legendary entertainment Which is the movie production company the movie financing company that financed and produced movies like the Batman series So the dark night all that stuff Batman begins 300 the hangover on and on and on now recently dune
And so he builds this thing up sells it for $3.5 billion to the richest man in China and This guy's just like fascinating So like the whole journey from laundromats otter pair shops tax firms Then has a dinner with a guy who's like I think he's a movie exactly. He's complaining about film financing
And he's like how does it work there? And it was basically like the old you know the baseball scouting thing like oh this actor um, you know, we like this plot of a blah And he's like what do you guys do any like data analysis? And he's he realized like they don't have the moneyball side, but they also don't have just private equity And he's like move the movie business as the largest industry that doesn't really have like a private equity focused firm
And that's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna bring the capital. I'm not gonna be the I'm not gonna Have the full production system. I'm not gonna have the distribution rights. I'll just bring the capital And so what he did was he partnered with Warner Brothers So he to start this business he raises 500 million dollars, which he's like this is the hardest thing I've ever done
Was raising 500 million dollars for this thing And he's he goes in and he partners with Warner Brothers He cuts a deal like we're gonna co-finance 30 movies with you But here's the deal we're gonna basically build up a data team That's going to figure out which movies we should bet on and which ones we shouldn't Um and more importantly how we promote them So I thought this was interesting because In most of the articles I read about this guy they're just like it's like the hand-wave thing
It's like and then he started legendary entertainment sells it for four billion dollars like what How did this guy with no background in the movie business create this company? How do they produce these hits? And like what was he doing differently and do you know what he was doing differently? No, no keep going so there was two or three insights. So the first insight he had was Bigger is actually better So there's this romantic idea in the movie business about like indie indie films
And like let's go back to quality. It's just like real Just genuine scripts and all this stuff and he's like Hmm most of the movies that fail are these like mid-market movies that kind of cost like a medium amount of money But they don't have like
guaranteed slam dunk people will watch for this one reason like it's got the superhero It's got this a list actor whatever and he's like they're making the plot too complicated that it only appeals to like an intellectual person is like we need to have movies that have like commercial Appeal it should still be elevated like he did inception and he did dark night like there's still great movies but like Dark night is still like that man and
Inception still has Leonardo DiCaprio, right? So he's like he's like yeah, I'm gonna have some things that I could take to the bank To actually underwrite these films better. So that was the first thing was like they need I need to go for bigger budget films that Have like a headline reason that people will have to go and pay for to go watch this movie
So he leaned heavily into IP. So like licensed IP Um, he also leaned heavily into like mainstream actors and directors and he did a ton of great stuff straight out of Compton The but would do in one and two inception Uh, the hangover, which is huge watch my dark night Just by the way great movies still a hard business. I think they they only they've only ever had two consecutive years of profitability or something like that like
In the like 10-year run. It's not like every year just year after year they're hitting head and bangers But the movie business it's a hit business. So when they hit they hit really big one in those years that they hit and other years They might lose 50 or a hundred million dollars But then when they hit they hit 500 million or a billion dollars of net gain and so you know
Anyway sells the business one of his first movies was uh was beer fast. You're telling me that one to hit Yeah So uh, you know the big thing was they they they found Christopher Nolan pretty or like he turned out to be like one of the best directors Period and like he was kind of unproven at the time So you know, it's not all not all easy. The second thing he did though was he's like China How do we make movies that have international appeals specifically appeal in China?
And he's like China's a big market and there's like a lack there's like a lot of demand There's not a lot of supply of American films that can cross over And so he's like we're gonna be international and that's gonna be one of our edges So he's like all right, I'm gonna I need a simple minded plot
So I need a it could be well done, but the plot needs to be simple good guy bad guy, right Um, he's like for most of these I need something that will transfer into China Past the language barrier and just have like simple appeal like Batman Has simple appeal and so and then he's a partner with the Chinese company to join venture with China film Which is like a government-owned Public-state company for films and he's like we're gonna bring the movies and we'll do a 50 50 JB with you over there
And so he cuts the right deal there and it has the right distribution there then So that was the second good thing it did the third is the data analysis the moneyball side of things So I didn't fully realize this but in both video games and movies You might if it says like you know this movie had a 200 million dollar budget That's the that's the amount they might have spent on um making the film But then guess how much they'll spend on marketing the film I have no idea
I know that 30% more another 100% more 150% more so if they spend 150 million on the movie They'll spend another 150 million or 200 million on the marketing of the movie So each movie each movie is like a like a meaningful size company that lasts for Three years Well sometimes longer right if you get syndicated if it has like long-term like it's good I mean the actual work the work of making it and then marketing I mean someone's it's like a presidential election
Same thing with grand theft auto they'll spend like 500 million dollars marketing graph that huh grand theft auto That's insane. He's crazy. That's insane. It's a big video game A AAA like video games they'll spend hundreds of millions on their market Um, so they'll usually like double the the amount they spent on making the thing And so you know what else spends that much money on marketing
Every DDC brand and what he realized in the same way that like what DDC brands did was they took the moneyball approach and said Hmm if a proctor and gambles just like doing these like random like Just sponsor the Super Bowl and like let's just take tide and then or let's take you know Whatever old spikes and we'll just run funny TV commercials and like is it working? I don't know right the old adage with TV commercials was
Half my budget does nothing and half performs problems. I don't I don't know which half and You know that's how brand advertising worked and then what happened is that guys like Moise came in and built native deodorant And they're like fuck the old spice model. I don't have enough money to do TV anyways
I have to do the moneyball approach. I need performance marketing right can measure every dollar and attribute every single purchase to which ad I ran and how much I spent on that ad and that will tell me if I should do more of that ad or less of that ad or tweaking And then that's how he builds you know Really fast growing deodorant company on the back of Facebook and so what Thomas did was the same thing with movie marketing
What's a direct response a version for a movie? That's what these guys do they run Facebook ads They run YouTube ads they run to buy tickets to the movie To get you to well not exactly like go online and buy the ticket right away But to get you to be like oh, yeah, I heard that movie's coming out. Oh, it looked good So they'll do shit here. Let me just tell you some of the shit that they do so
I thought this was pretty cool. They'll take trailers. So they're like the trailer is the ad creative right the trailer is the thing that needs to get you to say Oh, I want to see that that movie looks really good
And so they'll do like a bit test. They'll do like 50 versions of a trailer and they'll do they'll take an audience of you know They'll take a hundred people to put them in a movie theater to play the trailer and they have a scanner on the seat in front of you They'll take like a facial biometric reading of you and they have a you they have you wearing a a heart rate monitor
And they're trying to see like in a movie or a trailer or whatever. Yeah, like they're trying to see like do you react and what part do you react to?
Does your heart rate elevate does it quick now? I don't know if this is just PR by because the guy who was talking about this was their head of analytics Um, and they basically coach this guy So there's some guy that was he built a sports analytics company in the moneyball era sold it And then he gets a call from Thomas and says hey, do you want to do moneyball for movies?
He's like I'm in and so he became the head of analytics and he's like We have a 50 person applied analytics team like applied sciences team He goes that's 49 more than every other movie producer He's like he's like we have like 50 engineers data scientists like the all of these people are like hardcore Data computer science engineering type folks is I nobody else even has this department
He's like or at least they didn't learn when we started do you think they make movies to pet like you know how sometimes when we create content We think headline first or thumbnail first or whatever do you think they think of the trailer as What's a good movie that could be an awesome trailer?
I think 100% they do in fact one of the films that flopped was this thing called the great wall or something of that I don't know I never saw it, but it's like they did the joint venture with the Chinese company and they're like oh Let's let's make a American movie But it's about the great wall. It's like imagine if the great wall was actually built to keep aliens out And that's what they discovered the purpose was something like that Matt Damon's in it and
Movie flops China didn't love it American in love. It was like kind of neither it was trying to make something for everybody It didn't work. It was something for nobody and What he said there? Look guys like gonna die on this hill. He's like He's like, I don't know man the data showed that Matt Damon was uh He's like we're we're under indexed on Matt Damon in China I don't even know what that means but he's like the price for Matt Damon versus the
Cache Matt Damon has with that audience. It was a good train And he's like now I was a good train and people like the movie flop dude. He's like alright, but that was right that one part was right Which is insane and so why does he have why is he showing up to Idaho with armored vehicles?
So now he's shifted into so he sells legendary Uh to the richest man in China and then he he still owns I think like 10 or 20 percent Um, but like you can't own 10 or 20 percent of a Chinese company as an American like that that that's a big Chinese company And so he they give him like phantom stock so he gets like only a profit share Uh, he can't like own any equity in the thing But now what he does is he took that money and he's investing heavily in defense tech so he invested in and rural
Invested in some shield AI like a bunch of defense tech so that meeting was basically a meeting of the minds of Entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley who are building defense tech people from Washington who are like you know the lobbyists The people that they lobby they know the whoever the senators congressman whoever those people are and The generals and the defense contractor like a meeting of the minds of all those people and they were just like you know probably get together and be like
China we got to we got to stop these guys, you know like and basically he's got this flywheel right because the flywheel is so amazing the flywheel is You started defense company you then lobby and It a lobby for increased defense spending so they increased defense spending which goes to your companies So right and so like that flywheel of like whining and dining Washington while then funding the companies that will win the contracts is just a very very lucrative model
I'm not saying he's doing it in any any malicious or nefarious way Not I don't mean that at all. I just mean it's very it's interesting how that can work right it's smart if that's your model Which is you you can actually influence The spend through PR through whatnot. So you'll see like a guy like Joe Lonstale
And I think he believes this by the way. He's got defense tech companies, right? He started Palantir Um, he also started a company called Epirus He's starting some like you know underwater drone company like he's starting a bunch of deep tech defense tech companies
But then he also spends a lot of time building relationships with you know public officials and and those folks and He'll go on CNBC and he'll be like we got to stop tick to And like I don't I don't think he's doing it, but you know just for his
Dollar, I don't think that's why he's doing it. I think he's doing them all from a sense of purpose like he genuinely thinks That we shouldn't have tick tock kind of brainwashing the American like population while being owned controlled or the data Siphoned off to you know the CCP
So like I think he genuinely believes that but it also happens to be a very strong flywheel where If you could shift the public perception or the government the government's perception to increase the funding in this That will also benefit the companies that you started to serve that that need Dude in Thomas tall looks like a movie villain If you google and and look at he has a cameo and Batman
He is actually like in the owner's box. You know that scene where Bane like blows up the football stadium He's yeah, he's because he he owns a piece of the Pittsburgh Steelers too So the game the team playing in the movie is the Steelers. He's in the owner's box He is a partial owner and he gives himself a little campaign. This guy looks like a stealer. He's huge He's like a big guy. He was a former college football player. I think
This guy is impressive. Let me tell you a couple other random things one He's like I don't live in LA. He built a Hollywood company without living in LA. He's like He's like I don't he's at a great line. He's like I just want to make great movies Uh that people love I don't want to figure out you know that he's like I don't want to make sure I have a dinner table at Spago tonight Like he's like I don't want the Hollywood status stuff like I just want to make great movies
And so that's why I don't live there. I just do my thing from far away. Where's he based? Is it Pittsburgh is he basically so I'm not sure so at one point he bought like 150 acres of farmland and was like I'm gonna live off this land He's like and what he did was he's like I want to use this to learn All of the advanced farming robotics companies
I will use this land to try those and he's like I want to learn the tech and Try to see if we're rebuilding the future of food And I want to be living in a self-sustainable way and like I'm gonna try to I'm gonna try that for a period I don't know how long he lives there or if he does it full time
But you guys pretty fascinating man. He um, I don't know He's just done a lot of things in a lot of different places in the through line for all of it was this like Moneyball for X which I thought was pretty fascinating
Great fine. This was that was really good. This guy's so fascinating. We should get this guy on does he do Interviews or is he really tried but he's healthy but he went on Lex and he also went on farm street back in the day And so I'd love to have him on it to talk as you could tell he's like a you know like he's a business guy He's very like practical like he's just I don't know he's he comes across very real
I watch some of his interviews he comes across very real very straightforward. He's like well. I just I just thought you know like I just thought X like he is like that's it like and then I just did it and he's like well You know, for example, he invests in this I'm coming to doing gene tech editing and these guys like are trying to bring back the woolly mammoth
Have you heard about this? Yeah, I mean I've read about in headlines There's say they're there stated mission is to bring back the woolly mammoth I loved how we talked about him because it's very real and he was like which company what's that called? I don't remember their name like colossus. I think colossal or colossus something like that And so he's like they're like you invest in this company that's bringing back the woolly mammoth right?
It's like a very busy thing to talk about yeah And he's like well like he's like look I thought they were doing really interesting things with like setting you know the genome and gene editing CRISPR He's like I think the woolly mammoth thing makes for great PR like he's like
He basically just like I don't give a shit about bringing back the woolly mammoth is I'm not doing this as some like weird billionaire like fetish thing that billionaires do and they're just like oh, I need to like you know resurrect You know, I need to summon a god. He's like the woolly mammoth thing is interesting But it's like it's like a headline. He's like you know what I like is that he's like I met these scientists these guys and they're really smart
Scientists and I just thought these guys are so smart. I need to be around them and they're gonna do really interesting things
So I'll back them and if they want to work on this woolly mammoth thing though. Okay great He's like, but I just think the science they're doing is really fascinating and he goes also I like their ethics because he gives like when I the more I met with them It was clear that Okay, these guys are in the top point 1% of intelligence But there's people like that in China and all around the world He's like, but they don't all have the same ethical code that these guys do
We're like they're gonna use this for good and they're not just gonna like be cloning random shit or editing things Like it on a pretty reckless way and he's like so I just thought it was good these guys needed the backing because like I I fuck with their moral code basically and so I don't know I like this guy I always find it almost romantic but like very intoxicating when I read about people who don't have a ton of education But dominate a certain area so for him the fact that
I don't know what entirely what his background is so I could be off here But it seems like he's sort of a blue-collarie guy who kind of kicked ass at at finance and deal-making and But he doesn't have that traditional New York City, you know big big background He didn't buy auto repair shops because he's like oh, I can do a P you roll up and get leverage and raise prices and he was just like
He's like well, I live in Pittsburgh and I lived in a part of Pittsburgh. They didn't have a lot of money people aren't buying new cars So it's like you got a car if your car breaks you don't you can't really buy a new car So the auto shops were good bet because they were gonna try to fix it It's like if I can get like another year out of this beater. I'm gonna do it So he's like I just realized like auto repair is gonna like be a thing here because that's what the community needs
That's how we discovered the defense tech stuff. So he was like he was doing movies He's like oh dude I want the like the fight scenes and the military scenes to be realistic So he's like let's bring in Advisors from the actual military to tell us like what is the weaponry? What would what would be cool? What would be the the cutting-edge stuff that if we put in the movie that would be interesting?
And he's talking to them and he's kind of like damn they really don't have like As much cutting-edge tech as I thought like the Navy and the Marines like they kind of wish that they could do xyz But they couldn't and that's when he started funding more defense tech
He's like sounds like there's actually just a need for this And so like you know obviously you don't know how much of this is like reverse PR where you go back and make about a nice Wholesome sounding story, but I don't know I bought it which I usually'm pretty skeptical about the stuff But I bought it here. I also like people and this is really easy to read about and to think about but basically
All right, so you explain his idea. I'm gonna do money ball for movies and you think about it and you go Okay, cool that I guess that makes sense even at the time you could be like that's neat That's interesting, but to have the courage to in confidence to believe that you are right even though you don't really know too much about something You're a total outsider to have the courage to do it and to go that big I find incredibly intoxicating and inspirational because you I mean
How many people do you think I've told him like you have no idea about this industry? We've done it this way for a hundred years. What are you talking about? That's not how it's done But just to be like look it makes sense that it's this this and this and this like Warren Buffett has that a lot of great I mean anyone who's great typically has that where it's like they believe in their own logic in their own reasoning and they believe that
Their decisions the right decision even though most everyone is like that's insane. I have so much
Love for people who are that courageous and confident in their own decisions. I think that's very admirable Yeah, conviction is attractive You know one of the things that they talked about with the date the money ball thing It's like cool like you can set you can read you can have an analogy like money ball for movies And then you sit down and you're like cool So what are we gonna money ball like in sports all of the data is public?
It's all there everyone's stats are there Everything is filmed on TV So even if you didn't have a stat you could go back and create it like what are you gonna do for the movies? It's like not the same thing and so what are you actually gonna do?
It's one of the things they did they were like the analyst guy had great statement goes I take this population of people He's like on the left side of the bell curves There's people who are never gonna watch the movie no matter what we do we don't want to spend a dollar marketing to them
That's my goal with that population is don't spend a one dollar on one impression for those people who are never gonna watch Is like then you have the people that are gonna watch no matter what I also don't want to spend a dollar on them Like they just they are doomed fanatics. They got a doomed poster in their in their bedroom
They grew up watching the reading the books. They're gonna watch doomed matter what I do So then there's the people in the middle and the people in the middle they're like our swing voters And they might watch it and I need to figure out then I start slicing and dicing that audience and I figure out
This mom is gonna watch because she loves that actor and this guy's gonna watch because he loves a badass action scene So we need two different trailers that we're gonna run in social ads at each of those is like and then we need a data set That tells us who actually goes to the movies and like basically need a map between the the email addresses that we're advertising to And the email addresses that are used to buy tickets and we need to
To call to create these clusters and try to figure out like what's actually converting movie folks weren't doing this I guess not not in a serious way. I don't know maybe maybe there's other producers that are like You know like kicking the wall right now being like god damn it. We all do this like that's not special I don't know I don't know the business well enough these guys told the story best better than anybody else so It's so worked
This is awesome. I mean the track records also there too, right? Like they had they just like I mean they built a really big thing And a really small amount of time coming in as a complete outsider. So you know, that's pretty pretty impressive This guy's fascinating. I want to learn more about this guy
Yeah, he's cool. I want one other point on this It's interesting to think about where else money ball for X could be implemented So I don't know if you've read about Obama's data team Well, I read about trumps Trump's I've read a lot about trumps and it is getting into election season coming up Uh, and I hate it because they they get I get so many texts and emails I mean they are intense about their marketing and I know that Jared Kushner kind of hired a bunch of tech guys and they crushed it
But even before Trump Obama raised something like a billion and a half dollars and they spent most of that I would imagine on marketing Uh, I mean what these what the politicians do and basically a year and a half it's pretty phenomenal in terms of like deploying money for marketing and their savage about it To the presidential election is a marketing contest between two agencies and they each get to pick their their frontman
And then they run a marketing blitz and they spend 500 million to a billion dollars
Marketing over the course in like eight months. Yeah, and and like that's it So it got to present the last two presidents elected was the money ball for X they used it in politics It helped the Red Sox win the world series I worked in baseball it built tons of D to C brands the money ball approach also is you know In finance with all the quants quant funds or hedge funds that are using using this or renaissance So it's pretty interesting to see
How you can use money ball in a in a in this any industry that is still like not data first So not data driven and if you asked, you know, how do you guys make decisions? And it's basically some version of gut uh gut eyeball, you know taste
There's probably a money ball like variant there. I know a guy who is doing it in with HVAC He has an HVAC business doing like a hundred fifty million year revenue And he tells me constantly all the data stuff that they're doing and he's like no one people don't do this In our industry no one is doing this where It's as simple as you know, we're looking at the data of what can we send and how many emails can we send to get more Google reviews
But they just like change their their data is it's like they're running at like a tech company a little bit where they have a small data analytics team And he says that Very rarely is anyone else in the HVAC industry doing something like this Dude uh Sam I got to ask you I already know the answer to this question, but I got to ask you
Did you watch you have C300 on Saturday the full five hours or six hours? Yeah, I said the whole time It was amazing Did you make like a seven layer nacho dip and just sit there for seven hours watching it?
I watched the entire thing I think it started at six o'clock and it ended at one o'clock my time So I want to talk about it because a we're both ufc fans, uh, and it was amazing, but b there's actually a great business CEO less than in it that I want to I want to go to but first can we just explain for for in maybe what max hollow I did because I think the max hollow I think you don't even watch the fights all you need to know that this happened
Well, let's explain you have c300 so you have seized bit around since the 90s Uh, they've done thousands of events, but the major events they number them ufc 12345 This past weekend was ufc 300
Typically what they do is a card has five main fights and then before the five main fights. There's ten Prelims which are no name fights that up are up and comers This time they didn't have they had 15 fights, but all of them were famous great people And so it created like five hours of epic fight cards, right?
Yeah, it was crazy and One of the fights was for a made up title called the bad mother effort belt the bmf title And it was two guys who are popular, but they're currently not at the tippy top of their thing So one guy is guys named max hollow a and he's fighting this guy Justin Keachy and they're fighting and Justin Keachy is a big favorite coming into the fight people think he's gonna win
Max Holloway has kind of gotten he's kind of looks like he's on the back end of his prime or maybe on the decline a little bit and So two things happen one max hollow he starts to win. Okay. That itself was cool remarkable But nothing compared to what happened at the end so the guy the way you've see fight works is five rounds Let's say and basically what happens is if you're winning you each round gets scored if you're winning each of the rounds
You have it locked up. So what happens is it let's say you're winning three rounds to two or four rounds to one Your corner tells you hey your way ahead just play it safe
Just the only way this other guy can win is if he knocks you out don't take it's play it smart, right? That's However This is fighting entertainment and some fighters understand that and some fighters don't max holloway understands that So what he did was he wins all five rounds So he's not even up three two or four one he wins all five rounds And at the end of the fifth round
And he's basically broken this guy's nose. He's got this guy kind of a batter and bruise the only thing this one guy can do And this guy's a power puncher the only thing this guy can do is knock him out Max holloway decides in the last ten seconds where most guys kind of just circle around raise their hands try to tell the judges They won it points to the middle of the ring It points down and he's like stand right here neither one of us backs down and just let's swing as hard as we can
And try to knock each other out for the last ten seconds. No, this sounds very savage Well, this actually is this is incredibly courageous and brave and entertaining and reckless and stupid all at the same time rolled into one And they both start just swinging absolute haymakers at each other and then he in the last second of the fight knocks the other guy out cold I feel like I can't even do it justice if you fought if you watched about you already know what happened if you don't want to fight
You probably don't care about this, but it was remarkable to watch It was probably the best UFC moment I've ever seen maybe You got for sure top for sure top three probably number one And I would actually say it was one of the best moments in sports that I've ever seen Yeah
It was like I felt so much adrenaline watching this I was like it was in the middle of the night my baby was sleeping and I yelled like as loud as I could I was in awe It was so adrenaline inducing it was amazing It would be like in basketball if LeBron James was about to win the NBA finals
And normally they're just trying to hold the ball, you know stall you'll let the clock run out And instead he handed the ball to his opponent said no come here cut you have the ball come to the middle of the court Everybody get off the court one-on-one right now for the game for the championship for the glory and And then somehow also if he risked getting knocked out in the process So pretty insane moment a barred like we're by the way was sitting ringside at every fighter would run up to him
It's our point Adam and talking to him. It was awesome. It was so exciting By the way, don't you think that Zuck should lean in more to this? I feel like this is the best PR that Mark Zuckerberg's ever had Yes his own his own You know he'll turn into becoming a fighter being at the UFC court ring side hanging out there and all the fighters really loving We're going into the tough man sport, right basically any it looks cool. He looked cool
He had like a little afro and he had a white t-shirt on like baggy white. He looked like a cool guy He did yeah, he has like the oversized tee now He got like he like went on tiktok shops and bought like the oversized tee from some like 18 year old who's doing a dance video And it's a wife looked cool too It's called mob chic what she was wearing it was like all black she looked cool. They both look cool I Google that I read a business inside her article. I learned that word mob chic
So you know what he should do by the way? This is a little PR lesson for him. I think that He should create his own Zuckerberg bonus. So you should have the zuck like that's a great idea the zuck 500 and he just gives 500,000
To whoever had the most badass performance. So it should have just been like max all the way it's like whoever Just really put it all on the line winner lose doesn't matter somebody who showed the most heart Like the underdog bonus and because these guys don't get paid and zuck has all of the money So if he just did that for every pay-per-view I feel like that would be its own storyline. He'd get so much good will that you literally like really gladiator stuff
You couldn't buy it. Yeah The by the way the singer sia sia she does this for survivor So the winner of survivor wins a million dollars and sia's a super fan of survivor And she just called into the reunion one time and was like hey, I just love that guy He didn't even come close to winning But I want to give him 50 grand and so it became the silly a sea of bonus of like whoever won her heart Gets like extra money at the end. It's pretty genius. Dude. That's so funny. That's awesome
Um, all right, and so max max max out the guy what happens? What what's the business angle here? The press conference at the end is is always entertaining Dana white is a very unfiltered guy
Dana, please come on the pod. He goes on the press conference and somebody asked them they were like Dana You know on a night like this you'll see through hundreds you try to build the car But after that it's out of your hands, you know then let's up to the fighters and like how happy are you that it's just turned out that way like such a moment Um, and such a great great overall night And Dana goes, you know people ask you what I do for a living
I don't he is like I don't organize fights I sell holy shit moments and tonight I sold a million some holy shit moments basically He's like I sold a holy shit moment to millions of people And I thought it's a great little lesson, which is what are you really selling? What are you really selling in your business? Is he selling uh mixed martial arts contests? Is he selling an event? Is he selling?
He says I'm selling holy shit moments And I thought about this and I you know marketers for a long time have known this which is There's levels to marketing and I want to give you my five levels to marketing based on the Dana white principle of selling holy shit moments Okay, ready for this Level one you sell a product and this is every shitty startup website you go to it and it just says we are a
Healthcare of CRM using AI. They're just describing some product And it's not compelling because I don't give a shit about your product I've given you shit about myself and your product is some abstract, you know, we're a blockchain based You know web three arcade side screular. It's like what? You know, and if you go to most product websites to be honest, they're just selling a product. That's level one
This is what failing companies do. Okay Level two level two is you don't sell a product you sell a solution And This is effective, but it's competitive. This is um like head and shoulders head and shoulders says Hey, you're tired of having that dandruff on your shoulder use head and shoulders and gets rid of the dandruff Okay, so selling a solution to a pain point and this is where I would say
Okay, if 50% of companies just do sell a product Another 45% are gonna sell the solution to a pain point Okay, now we get into the championship rounds where we're gonna have a more interesting ways of doing things So the next one level three you sell a lifestyle This is lululemon
This is slack. So if you ever if you don't believe me go read the Stewart Butterfield who's the CEO of slack go read his post called we don't sell saddles here And I'll spoil it for you, which is he says imagine you're a saddle company you make saddles We could just describe the product
The saddles we could describe some solution like oh your butt won't be sore on our saddle Or we could sell the lifestyle the joy of horseback riding and get people to want to be on horseback to feel free to have the wind blowing through their hair You make that lifestyle
aspirational and then when they're like I got to do that now They're super motivated and they say well, what do I need you're like you need a saddle and ours are the best And so he says that this is how the yoga companies lululemon and whatnot This is how they got popular too is they didn't say here we have the best yoga pants Which was a small market of people looking for yoga pants They got people into the idea of doing yoga and once you get into doing yoga and the benefits of yoga
You're going to want to invest in buying better gear as you go and lululemon will say well, we have the best gear And so you this is how you create a category or you just want to make your your ass look dope Yeah, the lifestyle of being a big booty queen and if that's a lifestyle you want to be far down
If we are the pants for you. Yeah The MF merch store will soon have So soon have fat margin bottoms and the real bottom lines That's pretty good All right and or five Four is where I thought we we stop there's actually five before is where I thought we stop
This is the day in a white level you sell a feeling And I'll tell you that that line that somebody told me once I hired this consultant and I was talking about my content I did the lamest thing I hired a consultant for my personal brand just to know what are these guys know
I didn't ever end up implementing really anything, but I did take away this one Thing he said he goes I go you've worked with all the big names you've worked with you know who I don't want to out of my guess But you've worked with a bunch of big names
I said what do they do different than what I'm doing and he goes You make content they give out a feeling I said what he goes as any content creator you are the merchant of feelings You get if you give someone a feeling More consistently and more powerfully than anybody else That's what makes you box office and I was like and I love using the word box office. That's great And this is what Dana White was saying right we sell holy shit moments
We give you that feeling that you can't really get anywhere else like in your life. Can you really get like there's a reason You love the UFC or my buddy Julian Shapiro loves you have seen like none other like he's like I can't watch other sports He's like I can't watch TV or movies. The UFC has ruined it for me. Well, Dana White said something amazing He goes he goes think about this you're at the you're at the super bowl
It's the final down. It's the greatest moment in in NFL history and a fight breaks out a few rows down for me What are you gonna do you're gonna stop what you're gonna stop watching football and you're gonna go and pay attention to the fight That's what people do and that's the business that I'm in that's why I knew this was gonna be the greatest sport ever Exactly and so the greatest brands let's say Disney Disney's amazing at this Disney doesn't say come to our theme park
Um, we have the fastest rides or we have the shortest lines no they say tell you about the magical family experience Right, this is gonna be a lifetime memory for you Um, this is gonna give your kids a magical feeling a magical moment All of their movies are the same way right you watch a Pixar movie because it's gonna give you this feel good moment Right, that's the if they give you feel good moments more consistently than anybody else
Um, so the best bands do this let me put on leave a ton gives you a feeling of status of importance You have see gives you the holy shit feeling Nike gives you a feeling that you know Uh, of the feeling of greatness when they advertise their shoes. They don't advertise the rubber shoes They basically show you someone's striving for greatness and it's that inspiration that motivation that they sell
Okay, so now level five level five. I realized is the highest one you didn't sell a product You didn't sell a solution you didn't sell a lifestyle you didn't sell a feeling you sell and identity And this is what the religions do this is what political parties do they basically give you a a tribe they give you a label They give you a purpose uh, they give you a sense of belonging
Um, it's almost like buying a subway franchise. They're like here where this uniform put this logo up Here's the packaging here's a here's a portrait of bread put that on your wall You now have an identity you gave you a brand for you to have because you didn't have one on your own We gave you a purpose we gave you something to do it's identity in a box I think that is the highest level of what um of what you can do is you sell an identity to people
First of all very good. I'm this you you this was a really good monologue You tied in some of my favorite stuff. Congratulations second of all where you just watching the UFC taking notes on this stuff And just like no, I heard him say that and the I heard him say that the press conference and I go that's exactly what he does That's why I watch Because I can't get that
Holy shit feeling from anything what else is as real as that and once you know the the stories of the fighters Right, that's really what works right if you're a personal investor and you understand the stakes you understand what's in it for each guy There's like you know, it's it's pretty hard to compare that to really into this board
Maybe boxing is the other one. No boxing doesn't even come close to what these guys do Like they're in a league of their own in terms of giving me a feeling like I wore I wore a heart rate monitor one time to see what would happen because I noticed going into the fight I was so anxious because I was so emotionally invested my heart rate went up like 20 beads per minute Like before this fight like it was insane I get so into this that I find myself like tired the next day
It's one of the very few times that I felt this in sports. It's the best I feel a little bit in the Olympics because I get into that but no I mean what he is done and what the UFC is done in terms of
What did you say selling emotions? It's the best. I mean if you go look go look at the old cigarette ads if you want to see this So if you go look at old cigarette ad, obviously not selling the product They're not selling a solution to a pain point They're not saying uh, hey your lungs need a little more tar and I'm you know like they're not doing that They it's all about a feeling and an identity right so they're giving you a feeling of
Of greater, you know self-importance a cool self-image right so all of the marketing around cigarettes was a cool self-image It's a cool guy and in this cool moment He takes out the sig and he lights it up or the woman doing the same thing that go watch the desecu's commercial right The most interesting man in the world sitting in a bar surrounded by women
But not paying them any attention looking at you dead in the camera making eye contact. He's a man's man. He's done this. He's done that. He's done this
And when he drinks beer he drinks those seconds right it's here. They're trying to give you a a cool self-image That's what a lot of luxury products and a lot of commodity products have to do And so once you realize that you're like oh, and I love this because in our world the tech world the business world most people are like absolute beginner rookie white belts at real marketing and And like even the best in class is just saying sell a solution to a pain point
Does that have the benefit not the feature and that's like level two and they just stop there Nobody really goes beyond that and And so I like taking what is what is the best in class look like when it comes to like you know marketing and brand and and actually doing something that gets people to move and take action Um, and you know, how do I bring that to our world because then you then you're you know, you have an unfair advantage And it's not always around violent
So if you're listening to this and you don't know anything about the UFC go to YouTube and type in UFC Rose I'm the best one of the best Moments from UFC is also this young woman named Rose Nama Unis and she's about to fight and she clearly is scared And you see her mouthing to herself. I'm the best. I'm the best I'm the best and I remember distinctly where I was she looks like your little sister and the person across the ring from her looks like
Determinator and so you can you can just put yourself in that person shoes. Oh my other better fight somebody who's clearly just bigger Stronger faster everything and she's mouthing to herself. I'm the best to kind of like
It's like she's walking into the lion's den and she's got to believe this otherwise. She doesn't stand a chance And she knocks her out she knocks her out in the first round or something like that and it was one of the it was another great sporting moment And so the two other moments first of all there is two Chinese women fighting Which is the first time that's ever happened for the championship and one of the ladies Chokes out another woman and she goes unconscious right when the bell rings
So she they're able to keep fighting she hasn't really wake up until she gets punched again on the second round Which was like just epic and then the third thing that happened was in the last fight Alex Pereira gets kicked in the growing the ref goes to stop it He waves him off and then 10 seconds later knocks out the other guy It was just full of badass moments where this whole thing it was just it was epic. It was an epic event And it's by the way, it's just tie this principle back by the way
I did this with the podcast. So I was like what is what are we really selling here on the podcast? Is it ideas to people show up because they want a business idea? That's kind of lame like sure. It's fun to hear ideas fun to talk about ideas But if you're really like you know what to be successful I'm going to go to this YouTube channel and find a business idea that these random guys are going to say a lot like That's like honestly, that's a bad plan
You like it might happen, but don't don't do it for that reason Um and the same reason like you know we might talk about the UFC or something else like that's probably not the most effective thing for you to do everything
So it's not our product. It's not a pain point So what one thing that I figured out was like I and when I talked to a bunch of people and I tweeted this out I go what is the what is something you remember and what's the reason you actually listen to the pod regularly like what what keep keeps you up
And the number one word that kept coming up was Oh, man, I feel so inspired after I listen and they're like not in a cheesy way But they're like literally if I'm driving and I'm listening I sometimes will pull over because I'm I got to write something down Right you guys said one phrase that really stuck with me and I was like oh that's going to be an unlock for me Either personally or in my marketing or whatever or it's I heard about this idea
I'm not going to go do that idea, but I'm inspired by that idea or you tell the story of some Billy of the week some guy He's really crushed it or some business that's under the radar that's crushing it And all of a sudden I feel like you know success is abundant I'm inspired to go go make my shit happen. I'm not gonna do what they did But I'm gonna go make my shit happen and so
We sell inspiration. That's the first thing. We actually have sell one secondary thing Which is have you ever seen that meme of the kid eating cereal next to his TV box And it's like three there's three friends on the TV box and it uses like cozy up next to it's like me and my four friends
But it's just like oh that's awesome the one to photo And it's basically like companionship and then people posted before like this is me when I listen to podcasts Like kind of like you're hanging out with your friends except for they're not there you're but it feels that way And so that's the other thing is like for a lot of people who listen what I learned was that Even more than the the inspiration the ones that are super sticky. It's a companionship It's basically my real life friends
Aren't as nerdy about businesses. I am or I live in the middle of nowhere Iowa or I'm in Belize or I'm in you know wherever and I don't know Six other people that I can hang out with twice a week and just nerd out about business with and so you guys are basically my substitute for what I What I don't have or don't have the time for in my my day-to-day life
This was an a plus segment good job. All right. I dig that let me tell you uh, let me tell you Yeah, let me tell you about something so I I launched something a couple weeks ago or a week ago And I think there's only a 30% chance of it working But I thought I could like reveal some of the numbers behind it
So I launched this thing called samsless it's samsless.co. Did you see when I when I shared that online the other day? Yeah, I did All right, so let me explain the background So I was at the airport in January and I had just gotten an email from my accountant And it pissed me off that they didn't catch an air that they I thought they should have caught it or caught And so I tweeted out who has an accountant that they love I got about 300 responses
And I noticed that tons of people were bookmarking that tweet as if they're gonna come back and hire an accountant Which was on the tweet And so I thought you know, I think I could make a thing out of this and so I hired a developer who works on bubble Do you know what bubble is I very used bubble? Yeah, the website builder
Yeah, man, it's awesome. It's like a whole app builder And so we built this website where we got it was basically I wanted to create like a yelp for accountants Like a place where you can identify an account and that's good based off your friends And I thought like this could be a good idea because when you hire an accountant You don't really have a place to see reviews you mostly hear about an account through word of mouth And if you hire the wrong accountant
It's basically like a year that you have to stay with them and before you find out that they kind of stink So I was like all right, I'm gonna create this thing called samsless. We're gonna build this out It's gonna be awesome. I spent about 15,000 dollars to build it out. And so here's what I did I got 300 replies to that tweet. I called all of them So I got most of them on the phone or some of them via email
And I asked them all types of questions. I asked them how much should they charge who the perfect client is Who's the not perfect client what services are their specialties things like that as if I was going to hire them I think you had told me one time when you went to hire an accountant You created like your own data room and you like sent it to people and you're like yeah
Who can handle this best? Well, I kind of did like a thing like that I put them all on this website on samsless and I it took me a few weeks to get it going and then I shared it and I want this thing to work. I don't think it's going to Why are you saying that is that like some weird humble like no? You're just doing some reverse thing where it's like if only The community would rally and they're like yeah, what are you doing here? Is this reverse psychology?
It's not reverse psychology. I'll explain why this will be hard to work
And so here was here. Here is my math my math was basically if I can get 5,000 people a month to come to this website 3% of them would Answer the or would contact an accountant somehow I could charge the account $100 per person I sent to them per lead that I sent to them and if that were the case That would be something like 1.5 million dollars a month in sales I figured that would take years to get to but like if I could get to that that's like an interesting thing
Well, I shared it online in the first week. I got 13,000 visits We made this really cool quiz there where you could like say like how much Revenue you have do you want this for your business or personal whatever and then we would recommend three or four accountants That you like or that could fit your needs we had 6,000 people answer the quiz um and we also created this feature where you could schedule a meeting right there on the website with that with those accountants that we referred you to
Very few people schedule appointments and very few people even submitted their information to the accounts. What's very few? So we had 6,000 people take the quiz in one week I think we had like 100 or 200 people like submit information to the account and But that's not the issue the issue isn't the user the issue is Accountants are not clamoring for these leads my like like my big learning was that there's a massive and this is for someone
Can go and solve this problem. There's a massive shortage of accountants. There's not a shortage of people looking for an account There's a huge shortage of people who are becoming accountants and not only that the people who are accountants They don't really want to like row their business to be that large And I thought that they'd be dying to get more customers They're really not which shocked me that was like a really big shocker
And when I launched this business I basically copied or I didn't copy I use have you heard a smart asset calm Mmm, no So smart asset calm. I bet you've seen them if you've googled like what's California's taxes or California tax calculator
Well, the reason why they have all that stuff is they're actually doing well. I'm doing what they're doing But they're doing what what I'm doing for CFA so certified financial planners Or advisors and what they do is you take this quiz and they tell you all like you answer all these questions about
You know how old you are if you're retired if you're not retired what you're trying to do it your money Are you trying to invest it or just live off it whatever and then they recommend like three or four people Who might fit your needs?
But what I found on that website is if you click around they have to tell you how much they're paying per person per lead And so they actually say if a person has between a million and five million in assets This advisor is paying seven hundred dollars per lead if it's over five million they're paying 250 just or it gives you like a range per like Uh per cost per lead per net worth and it like tells you all like how they do their business I thought I could just replicate it turns out
CPAs aren't like dying for business and so the it's the exact opposite. They're actually overwhelmed with business Um, and so that's why I don't think this is actually going to make a lot of money Uh, I think you're wrong. I think there's a need for this. I think that it will do well I also think you know that and I think you're no I don't I'm gonna show it. I think you're playing us Just just gonna put it out there. No. I'm gonna shut it down on May 30th. I can't pick
No, I went trough on your first second. I know it's good If it doesn't work if I'm losing money right now on this if it doesn't start working by May 30th I'm shutting it down like I'm not gonna invest more money on it
Don't just give it to me. I'll make this work. This is so easy Uh, you're just being impatient and it's gonna fail because you're you have a much better business that you're busy with Called Hampton and you should focus on that That's why this is gonna fail and that's why this is a bad idea
But otherwise, it's a good idea. Let me point out a couple of the product details that I like and I might tell you some of the things that you should do differently So, all right, let's re-enchair this All right, I love when I go to the site and it pops up the uh So I go to the site and it pops up and it basically is like normally where there's the email pop up But it's like no email no BS no something like let's go
I was like, okay, already. I think you should just actually call that out a little more and be like Well, you know, we want to help you we don't need your email address and then just have a button this as thank God And then you know, they hit thank God it takes them down the funnel You I love this part that you did where you read this first And you wrote I have this many for two of ours I asked if they have a CPA account if they that they love then I called all them
I asked them how much they charge blah blah blah why would I do this because I'm a nerd and I needed an accountant I thought well, how about I make this useful for others? Loveable. That's great. I love how you do that I love how you put everybody's Twitter profile attached to their name Nice touch Like your name here every accountant you can go see their Twitter which
For our market is actually a good idea. You know most people get to see their bio for us. It's cool um You should put the prices on the front thing because I think that's like Makes it a lot more value add to the person coming in is like oh good
These people already went and found what the rates are for these and you also said like I asked them who their sweet spot customer is and blah blah blah like what I can't tell is like you know when um, you know when you go to cars and bids and Doug de moro has the Doug speech bubble and Doug's like here's what I think
Um, I think you kind of need to lean into that. I agree. That's a good idea. I don't trust reviews I trust review and I really trust trust you and so the question is like can you you know, not just call them But call like you know ten of their clients and be like tell me everything and then end up with one speech bubble
That's Sam saying talk to them talk to their clients. Here's roughly what they charge and like you know This is like you know people are screaming endorsing or they're like yeah, it's pretty good And like you know, so I think they're solid and they seem to specifically help out this type of customer
I think that would make it better. I think that's a good idea The reason why we haven't I haven't done it yet is I would have to hire someone to help me call those people And I was like I need to figure out to this thing even make money in the first place in order to like justify all this work Feel dreams baby if you build it they will come
Did you see uh, so a few things the design? I liked our design. I just ripped it off It's we made it look like old Microsoft and then the image is I just copied clippy You remember clippy from Microsoft words? It's you just because it doesn't make any sense
It's AI and on the calculator face. It's only four digits. It's a two. It's a five. It's a nine and a queue Uh, yeah, putting the queue in as the last letter is the AI knows something we don't Yeah, it's so uh anyway, I thought I'd fill people in on this I
I think it's hard. I don't want to be in the business of selling leads to small accounts Get in having like hundreds and hundreds of different clients paying me versus I think in order to make this work You actually what you do is you get someone's information and then in order to do lead gen usually only have a small amount of very large companies Who pay you a large sum per month for a certain amount of leads versus one off you know what I mean
Um, so I'm still trying to figure this shit out, but uh, we'll see if it works out All right, uh, you got anything else? What we've done? No, I'm uh You did great you that was good to two bangers That's all my wife when I go downstairs. How was fun? Double banger double banger Yeah Um, all right, that's the pod I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like a day zone on a road. Let's travel never looking back