GTA 6 Goldrush, TBPN's $100M OpenAI Deal, The OG Clickbait King Who Burned $4B/Year

00:00:00Very important question is where isthere opportunity?>> Wait, I want to do an Ows Perlman style.I'm going to write something down andwe'll see if I'm right.>> Let's see.All right, do you write it down?Tell me when it's done.All right, it's done.So obviously there's big opportunity inAI right now. Obviously there's a bigopportunity in peptides or like uhbiology with AI, something like that.What I'm going to about to talk aboutis

00:00:28I did not write that down.All right, carry on then.I I was looking at like where um whereis there opportunity right now?And um What what do you open yourlaptop? Like what is your to-do listsay?Scheme?>> Yeah, that's not even a laptop. It'slike a notepad. It's the hotel notepad.I don't think most people actually askthemselves this very important question.Where is the opportunity right now?That's like like you know, I was sittingthere as a 14-year-old.How do I have sex?Like No, that's literally what youshould be thinking. You should bethinking as a 14-year-old or like whichgirl's going to kiss me? Where are thegirls that might kiss me and how do Iget them to kiss me? Right? That's likeactually what you should be thinkingabout.I think entrepreneurs need to think likethat. It's like sounds caveman, soundsstupid, but like it's actually thething. Where is the opportunity rightnow?You you met me back in I don't know 2013, 14, something like that.Do you remember what I was working onback then? Like the types of stuff I wasworking on? Yeah, it was auhthe first it was a Bebo which was like aapast its heyday social

00:01:43media network andthen that pivoted into a Twitchstreaming competitor or a plugin forTwitch streaming. I don't think you evertold fully figured it out.So early on I I working on like like yousaid like messaging apps, social mediaapps, basically.And um hey, guess when all the socialmedia apps were made?Between 2004 and 2012.And then I'm you know, so soI'm 10 years late to the party and I'mstarting to think about like, hey,what if I what if I made like a placewhere you could post photos and sendvideos to each other? It's like, yeah,it's called Snapchat. Uh like hey, whatif we made a way for you to messagesomeone? Like, yeah, it's calledWhatsApp. It was actually created in,you know, whatever, 2007. And so thethings I was working on was the lastwave's opportunity.Now, that sounds stupid. Why would youwould do last wave's opportunity? Well,the answer is it's prettyunderstandable.Because that's proven to workand I'm trying to I'm so insecure andlike have so so such a lack of a spinethat I'm just going to go towards what Ithink might actually work. And I'm usingwhat has already worked. But the problemwith what has already worked is inbusiness, what has already worked is isnow done in the game of>> No, that's not true.>> winner take all.>> talked about Groons.No, no, but I'm saying what

00:02:59I wasworking on, like social media, like likeventure tech is winner take all. It'sthere's you know, you don't work onAirbnb 5 years after Airbnb has beenproven to be successful and you're goingto be like another Airbnb. There's notgoing to because these are networkeffect businesses. The winners havethese like runaway escape velocity.That's why they get so big. That was thegame I was playing. So I was in theventure game, right? Doing venturetechnology companies. And in that I wasdoing the venture technology companiesof the last 10 years.Pretty stupid. So and what what should Ihave been doing during that period?Well, likeduring that kind of like 2012 to 20, youknow,18 range, like the most interestingthings were basically anything incrypto, which by the way, it's not likeit was invisible to us. Like people inour office loved crypto and you weretalking about crypto. I was buyingcrypto. We just didn't We didn't thinkof it as like We didn't put two and twotogether. Everyone has to Google thisthat if you Google Sean Perry, there'san article from an Indian newspaper thatsays famous entrepreneur Sean Perry puts25% of net worth into Bitcoin. And Ithink this was any pre-acquisition. Ithink this was pre-wealth. So, likeAnd what's 25% of $300?Um, so yeah, crypto was an is was aninteresting space to play. The other onewas basically like anything in machinelearning

00:04:14or you know, big data. Andlastly was like different like newmobile mobile apps. We had one mobileand we had one iPhone engineer in ourcompany when I joined in 2012. TheiPhone came out I think like 4 yearsbefore that or something. So, like youknow, we were we were just not even onForget about like we weren't surfing thewave. We were in the lazy river and thenthe ocean is over there. And we werejust going in circles in the lazy riverlike idiots. And so, I think the veryimportant question is where is thereopportunity? Wait, I want to do I wantto do a an Os Perlman style. I'm goingto write something down and we'll see ifI'm right. How's it How was that? Thereis 0% chance you're going to get rightwhat I'm about to say cuz it is sorandom. In fact, you're going to laughwhen I say what I'm going to say becauseyou're going to be like after that hugeramble about big opportunities, this isthe thing you just told me? Okay. Goahead.>> All right, do you write it down? Yeah.Yeah, let's talk about dog walking.>> to close my eyes. You show the camera.You show the camera. I'm going to closemy eyes.Tell me when it's done.All right, it's done. I showed it.>> So, obviously there's big opportunity inAI right now.Obviously there's a big opportunity inpeptides or like biology with AI,something like that. I don't know ifthose are the ones you were thinkingabout.What I'm going about about to talk about

00:05:31is Grand Theft Auto 6.I did not write that down. Did you getthat right, Os?What did What did you write down?GPUs and power plants. Okay, these arealso good. These There By by way,there's not one answer to where is thereopportunity. I thought that's what youwere going to say based off of thingsthat we had seen on Twitter. But I amhearing about uh, there was someone justdid a big stick on on Grand Theft Auto,didn't they? Well, the important thingis the new one is coming out. Um, is thebig deal. So,I don't know if let me just do a quicklittle I'll I'll do the personal storyand I'll do the primer on GTA. Okay, sothe personal story is this.I have this friend who I don't I don'tknow if he wants me to say his name ornot, so I won't say his name just rightnow, but I have this friend who was youknow him as well. He was one of thefirst guys to convince me that I neededto put a huge chunk of my net worth intocrypto early on and he was basicallysaying like, why aren't you 80% incrypto? And I was like, 80% is insaneand he's like, no, this is obvious.>> Yeah, he's like, this is obvious. Whatare you He's like, what are you talkingabout? This is what it's going to be,blah blah blah. So, he's been early on afew different calls with me in my lifeto the point where now when he sayssomething that I find outlandish,I have learned through trauma of missingout on his prior prior not not fullybacking his prior things,

00:06:46that I shouldreally pay attention. So, he came to myhouseabout a year agoand he was like, yeah, I'm thinkingabout putting together a hostiletakeoverof Take-Two Interactive. I'm like,Take-Two Interactive? What is that? Isthat the Do they make video games? He'slike, yeah, they make NBA 2K and theymake Grand Theft Auto.And I was like, hostile take Do you knowanything about a What is a hostiletakeover? We don't even do that. He'slike, yeah, I will This will be myfirst. And I was like, you're insane.All right, so a lot of people watch andlisten to the show because they want tohear us just tell them exactly what todo when it comes to starting or growinga business. Now, a lot of people messageSean and I and they say, all right, Iwant to start something on the side. Isthis a good idea? Is that a good idea?And again, what they're really justsaying is just give me the ideas. Well,my friends,you're in luck. So, my old company, TheHustle, they put together a hundreddifferent side hustle ideas and theyhave appropriately called it the sidehustle idea database. It's a list of 100pretty good ideas, frankly. I wentthrough them. They're awesome. And itgives you how to start them, how to growthem, things like that. Gives you alittle bit of inspiration. So, check itout. It's called the side hustle ideadatabase. It's in the description below.You'll see the link. Click it. Check itout. Let me know the comments what youthink.Dude,

00:08:01I saw the uh the CEO of uhTake-Two. I'veI've had some interactions with. He umis a New York City guy, ripped. Have youseen him?Zelnick, right? Dude, Google him and theword shirtless.Oh my god. No, seriously. This isn'tlike uh Sam being weird. Like this ishis schtick, is that he's uh>> It's not? Are you sure?This this is not me being cute. Thisseriously, he people do stories on howripped he is. He is absolutely ripped.See, this is what I'm saying. This isnot like me just like commenting onmen's bodies. This is He's like 60 yearsold and he's>> No, he's No, he's almost 70. He's almost70. Okay, yeah, cuz this article's from2018. Yeah, you're right. Good luckhustle.Take over these.

00:08:46My point is he was telling me he waslike he's like I think Grand Theft Autois an incredible asset. He basicallymade this case like Warren Buffettdescribing a business with incrediblemoats. So, he's like here you have aproduct that's uh you know, the last onewhen they released it, it blew away allthe analysts' expectations. They did abillion dollars in sales in 3 days. It'sbigger than any movie ever created. It'sbigger than any video game ever created.By the way, the video game industry isthree times bigger than Hollywood. Thisis the most defensible product in theworld. 10 years later, it's stillselling 500 million dollars a yearannually. It's not like a thing you buyonce. They figured out how to make it arecurring revenue business.And there's there's no substitution. So,there's not a second place thing thatyou go buy instead of uh Grand TheftAuto if it was $90 instead of $80 or$110 instead of $80. It's not like yougo buy uh Pepsi instead of Coke. Thereis no Pepsi. It There's only Coke. Andso he gave me this impassionedinvestment case for why this is such animportant asset. So just like some ofthe numbers.They've sold almost 500 million copiesof the game. So you know, 20 billion inlifetime revenue. You know, it's one ofthe top grossing entertainmentfranchises period like all media Pokémon

00:10:02and Harry Potter and other It's up It'slike at that level. It's in the upperupper upper pantheon of all IP evercreated. And it's the fastest fastestentertainment product ever hit a billiondollars. 12 years later still doing 500million a year. Now a lot of theirrevenue comes from GTA online. So theyfigured how to make it a recurringrevenue business. The new game whichwe've been waiting for for you know, 10plus yearsisalmost ready. Whenever some of thesegames like I'm a I like Call of Duty. Idon't play any video games except I likedoing career mode on Call of Dutybecause it's like a war movie. Like it'slike a movie. Career mode? I didn't evenknow they have that. That's like theonly one I like. Okay. Infantry youknow, like a lower tier guy or what? Youlike you know, it's like James Bondcareer mode. You remember like you likehit complete missions. Butthese things are like movies. And solike I don't even own an Xbox. I buy anXbox to For the game.>> play the game and then I like it sitsthere for 3 years. I never touch it everagain and it gets old and so now when GTwhat Grand Theft Auto comes out,I'm going to have to like buy a thingjust to play it that for 6 hours andthen I'll never touch it again.So yeah, I exactly. And then And it'sactually worth it because these areincredible products. I mean they spent abillion dollars just developing theproduct like just on the actual likedevelopment time. So the you know, theprojection

00:11:18predictions now are like inyear one they'll do like 3 billion ofsales. They'll probably do a billiondollars of pre-orders before they evenlaunch. Wow.>> Which is bananas.But you know, there's there's a wholeeconomy around this. And soI just wanted to bring this up not cuzit's the biggest opportunity. Obviously,if you're saying what's the biggestopportunity, go do AI. Got you, right?Like if you want to What's the biggestopportunity? Great, go into energy, gointo biology, you know, go into drugdevelopment using AI. Yes. But what'sfun to talk about on this podcast isthis little economy around GTA 6. By theway, I think we have I think we haveMark Is it Marcus or Mark Pinkus, thefounder of Zynga? I think we have himwith him coming on soon, and they'reowned by Take-Two. So, he could give ushis take on this. Uh the hostile I mean,hostile takeover is that By the way, thehostile takeover has been shelved now.The stock went up too much, so like Idon't know if you know how a hostiletakeover works, but you have to buy Youhave to kind of acquire like I don'tknow, like 5% of the company silently,and then like announce your bid, andthen and you you really want it whenit's like Snapchat right now when thestock is just going down down down downdown, and you can rally support that achange needs to be made. Can this guycome up with a billion dollars?So, he was raising Yeah, he was raisingyou know, 3 400 million dollars to dothis, but the stock went up. And so,then there was noOnce the stock

00:12:33popped, then there waslike not going to be enough enthusiasm,and the price went up, and you know, thevalue the the return would go down onthe activity. So,there's a whole economy around this. So,there's people who do content aroundthis. There's people who create likemods and tools and data scrapers andguides, and then there's people who whosell things in the game. And like wedon't know exactly how the game's goingto work, but the game might work likesome of these other video games nowwhere you can buy and sell in-gameitems. Like outfits or something? Yeah,like skins, guns, outfits, whatever.Like the different different aspects ofthe game. And so, there's there's goingto be a lot of people who get wealthyoff this. There's you know, for example,in the last wave when GTA 5 came out,these guys made this thing calledNoPixel. So, they created their own likemod version of the game, and they endedup selling it back to the company afterit got really like mega popular. It gotmore popular than like the real game onon Twitch. So, I just think there'sgoing to be a lot of opportunity forlike if you're in this kind of13 to 25-year-old range,you know, you're you're fun employedbasically,there's going to be an interestingchance tohave fun, do something that's in yourcircle of competence, like in an areayou know about,and to actually like learn business bydoing a starter business in this littleGrand Theft Auto economy. I'm sayinglittle, but like

00:13:49it's probablythe game is obviously like a, you know,tens of billions, but the economy aroundit is probably going to be in thehundreds of millions. And it's thisweird thing where you know it's coming,but it's not out yet.And so there's no like nobody has a headstart necessarily in in doing this. Andso whoever moves fast, whoever buildsinteresting things, whoever createsinteresting content is going to benefitfrom this.Did you, when you were doing this, youwere in the video game world, who whatwere some examples of shockingly largebusinesses that were like accessoryaccessory businesses for games? So, uhwell, I'll say for gaming. So, likethere was this company I rememberdiscovering called G Fuel. And like Ihad never heard of G Fuel. Did you Doyou know what G Fuel is? No. It's kindof like a energy drink type of type ofdeal. They might be a little shady. Theproduct might not be good for you. I'mnot saying any of that stuff. As abusiness, I thought it was very smartwhat they did.You are saying that.No, no, no.It's like Red Bull. Is Red Bull good foryou? No, it's not. Red Bull's not goodfor you. But like Red Bull can be youcan admire Red Bull as a brand and abusiness. Well, one of their energydrinks>> should drink this. One of their energydrinks is called "Fuck [ __ ] UpCollector's Box".So. Yeah, got three of my home.I don't think that's shady.

00:15:06I don't see any red flags. What are youtalking about?It's like the red flag is wrapped aroundmy eyes.But they did something really smart.They they figured out that Twitchstreamers were undervalued assets. Thatum people were going for influencersbased off of their like following size.And so as like a following size, the theTwitch streamers on Twitch, they didn'thave huge numbers. But they realizedlike the depth of trust was insane cuzwhen you watch somebody on Twitch,you're watching them live for 8 hours aday, these games had a lot of influenceand the influence was disconnected fromtheir price sheet. And so what G Fueldid was it went to all of them and itran basically the Nike playbook withstreamers. So they would go to thepopular streamers, they'd say, "Hey, wewant to develop a flavor just for you, ashaker bottle that's your colors, yourbranding. And you're going to get a cutof the affiliate revenue." And theypartnered with all the top streamers,which was not that hard to do at thetime. Even though these guys were reallypopular, traditional brands weren'tcoming to them at the time. And so theywent zero to 100 million in sales.And like guys like you and I never heardof them cuz they did it just within thisgaming bubble using just the gaminginfluencers. And so they did that.There's obviously like Elgato whichsells accessories for streaming that nowhas become even more popular with uh youknow, podcasting as well. Like they

00:16:21gotthey got both of those waves. And soElgato is a is another company thatsells like picks and shovels to thestreaming industry. Wait, can I ask youa question about streaming? I actuallylike don't play video games at all, butI do occasionally will watch clips oflike gamers cuz like it's for somereason it's like fun. I don't I I I hateI can't figure out why. But thesestreamers like um what's the guy's name?Clavicle Clavicle Clavicular?Clavicular, whatever his name is. Butare they when people watch them, is itmostly from clips which I do see andfind them funny or is someone literallywatching them on their TV like justwalking around goofing around?Both. But they're just like so they haveto be funny or cute like all the time.Um no, they don't have to be funny allthe time. In fact, they're not they'renot that funny. They do they do do crazystuff. So like yeah, you're right. LikeSo right now if I go to Twitch, the topcategory is called just chatting. Thetop the top category is people notplaying video games, just chatting. Thesecond the third top category right nowwith 45,000 live people watching is IRL,which is basically them streaming. So,you can watch right now, I will do crazystunts. I will risk being in trouble. Iwill go meet these people. I will travelthe world and you from the comfort ofyour, you know, your bed can kind oflikewatch me do it.

00:17:36Watch me make a fool ofmyself. There's one guy who's sellinghot dogs and he has 80 people on Twitchwatching him. But are they watching thison their like what Okay, so when peopledo podcasts, they're normally workingout or going to work. When people watchYouTube, it's usually on their phonewhen they're in public transport orthey're just goofing off on the couch orthey're watching it on their TV. Whenpeople watch Twitch or other livestreamers, are they Do they have it on aTV and then they're playing games ontheir phone? Do they just sit there withthe computer and watch the whole thinglike a movie? What are the What's theWhat's the consumer habit? Obviously,there's like because there's hundreds ofmillions of people, there's like alittle bit of everything, but the threemajor use cases areyoung people just on their phone cuztheir phone is their like personalentertainment device that they'll justwatch a stream in like on their phoneand it's the main thing they're payingattention to. Then there's like secondscreen background screen, which iseither you put it up on the TV whileyou're chilling on the couch. Yeah. Andor like what we saw a lot of at Twitchwas like second tab. So, like I'm aprogrammer. My main thing is like I I'mworking like all day, but while I'mdoing it, I have like a second monitoror I just put it in a background tab andI just have the audio going.>> Yeah, like waiting room noise. Myfavorite streamer hanging out.>> And I'm watching I I'll glance over whathe's doing it, but I don't have to payfull attention to it. So, that's likethe behavior with this stuff. But it'spretty insane the level of trust.

00:18:51Youknow, I was talking to aa guy who's 21, 22 years old and I askedhim, I go, you know, back in the daylike, you know, Logan Paul, Jake Paul,they were like popular YouTubers. Therewas Casey Neistat. There was, you know,Mr. Beast. I was like, who's I go, notwho is the most followers,but who has like the minds and hearts ofyoung people? Like who do all the youngpeople agree is like the [ __ ] Who dothey think is really cool?And soinstantly he was like, "Oh, Speed.Definitely Speed."And he was like, you know, Kai Cenat,Speed. Like these are They're the top.They're the the like both like the themultiplier of popularity times likeapproval rank approval rating or uh youknow, you think you kind of admire themin some way. And where does he stream?YouTube, Twitch. Some of the Some of theguys stream on Kick cuz that's like abig competitor that's owned by uh Stake,like the casino company. Okay. That'scrazy.>> you mentioned clips. We should talkabout this. So,our friendsfrom TBPN just had an incredibletwo-yearLess.Less.>> Less than two years. 18 months, right?All time.>> even 18 months? Is it 12? I don't knowwhat it is. Our friends at TBPN the So,the the story is TBPN,which is atech live show,uh just got acquired by OpenAI,

00:20:06themakers of ChatGPT, for an undisclosedsum of money. People rumored it to be100 million, maybe 200 million, which isbananas for not just any product that's12, 18 months old, but specifically apodcast or a show, specifically one thatdoesn't even get that much viewershipfor its actual flagship show. And Johnand Jordy are awesome. Um super happyfor them. Uh but we haven't had a chanceto talk about that. So, what was yourWhat was your reaction? Where were youand what was your reaction when youheard this? Where was I? It sounded like9/11. I don't remember where I was, butuh I think my reaction is amazing dealfor them. I would have taken that nineout of ten ten out of ten times. If it'sanything north of 100 million, take thatall day.Yeah, all day. And my second reaction isthey're going to win even bigger in twoyears when the board of directors ofOpenAI says,"Guys, we got to get We got to buckleour belts and and get profitable.We got to look at why do we own allthese things? Whose idea was it to buy amedia company? Can we please just saythat we're going to sell it back tothem? Just give it to them and we'll own5%?And they're going to own it again.So, okay, so that's the prediction. Notonly was this

00:21:21an incredible first deal,but there's going to be a a Barstoolstyle second deal on the other side ofthis. It was really dumb. I think it'sreally dumb for OpenAI. I think thatHubSpot bought a media company, my mediacompany, and it makes sense because theywere using it to sell $20,000 a yearsoftware and there's a directattribution. When HubSpot bought TheHustle, we had 90, I think or HubSpothad 90,000 users, I think something likethat. Now they have 200,000 users,something like that. I don't know, forjust look it up. And there's directattribution of where they get theircustomers and they could say, "We gotthis much revenue from these customers.It came from this podcast, thisnewsletter, whatever, this thing, thisthing." With OpenAI, they already have abillion users. I don't understand likehow there's like any growth related tothis other than it's just a cool thingto own.I do think it wasit was very interesting, right? Becausethey didn't really release any rationalefor it. There is no rationale other thanit's cool.And you know, after a couple weeksyou're like, "I guess if there was arationale, they would say it, right?"And I think they the closest thing thatthey mentioned was umI guess back in the day Apple boughtthis ad agency and um it was like,"Yeah, bringing that in-house was liketransformative for our marketing and wethink that like havingJohn and Jordie and TVPN in-house isgoing to But it's not trans They're

00:22:36alsosaying they're speaking out of bothsides of their mouth, right? Cuz they'relike"They have full editorial control. We'renot going to exert our influence overit. It's not going to become apropaganda tool for us. Like we're notgoing to use it.But we just paid $200 million for it or$100 million for it.So so which one is it?" Do you think itwas a good uh it's There's no debate. Itwas awesome for these two guys, right?Yeah,incredible, epic for for for the TVPNguys, for sure.>> Okay.>> Do you think this is a smart move forOpen AI?Let me make the case because I think onthe surface it's like, what? It's a headscratcher, right? You know, for example,ChatGPT hassomething like 900 million monthlyactive users.TPVN might have90,000 you know, viewers including, youknow, across their on their show andthen maybe if you include clips, it'slikea million people see a clip. I don'tknow. It's not going to move the needleMaybe likegetting an executive to buy Open AI is a200 200 million dollar deal.You get I mean, you'd have to get a lotof But again, who's already not I don'tknow. Like buyinglike it's not like an awareness play.Like normally it's like media hasattentionand you have lucrative product. So youuse media to

00:23:51get your lucrative productinto more people to to have moreattention. In this case, ChatGPT has somuch attention. I'm not sure what youget out of that. But I think you know,here's the case. Cuz I think we shouldyou should assume that these very smartpeople don't do very dumb things as adefault.You should try to figure out what theywhat they're telling themselves. Sookay, let's spitball real quick.Even if it's a hundred million dollars,what is thatwhat is a hundred millionout of 800 billion? Divided by 800billion, right? Because that's thepercent of the company they gave upassuming it's a like mostly stock deal.>> not how a disciplined company thinks, Iwould think. Well, let's start withthis. Like Cuz you cuz you might say ifI was to give up .001%of my stocktoa uniquely talented group of guyswho understand media and marketing andcommunication and like the modern mediaplaybook.And just having them in our office andhaving them be, you know, working on ourcomms or strategically guiding us.>> that could Is that is that going to makeour company .01 Whatever, right? I don'tknow the math. 0.01% more valuable.>> For sure, maybe just one ad campaign forsure maybe could pay for that. Yes.One insight

00:25:07into how we should be doingour comms differently. One insight intohow we should be positioning ourselvesbecause right now it's kind of crazy.America hates AI.Like I don't know if you've seen it. SamAltman has had two like attack likeassassination attempts>> just hate AI. I think they specificallyhate him. I think I think A, yes, hateAI and B, he And then he's the face he'sthe hateful face of AI for for forwhatever reason. Like he somebody wentdrove by his house and threw a Molotovcocktail like a week ago. And then wentto the office.>> And and then they No, then they drove byand shot like a bullet at his housealso. So in like 2 days later. And so>> No, but the same guy who the same guywho threw a Molotov cocktail, theyarrested him at the OpenAI office cuz hewas trying to do the same thing there.He was there too. Oh my god, that'sinsane. So literally like, you know,obviously there's a public perceptionobviously there's like a a public brandissue here with like why is AI so deeplyunpopular? Like I've I've seen somecharts where it's like it's moreunpopular than Trump. You know, it'slike wow, this is like it's not likeit's not like ait's extremely polarizing, you know,for AI. So people don't like AI. Theydon't like what's going on with that.I'm not sure exactly why. It might bebecause offear of job loss, data centers beingbuilt in my backyard, it's too powerful,

00:26:22the government's watching us. Like whatis it? Well, it's that, but also like II I'm on this weird feedwhere I'm I think I clicked one of themand I'm getting more. There's so manypeople who are doing these breakdownvideos where they're like, I work sohard. Iwork 60 hours a week. I don't have myparents to support me and yet I stillbarely have enough money every singlemonth to pay rent. I'm so angry that I'mI've been struggling for 8 years. I wentto college. I did what I thought I wassupposed to do and yet I'm stillstruggling and I feel like I'm alwaysone paycheck away which is a totallyfair sentiment. I 100% get that.>> say if my baseline state is a deep stateof dissatisfactionLike I'm already I'm already feelinglike I'm dying without AI. Yeah. And nowyou're telling me I can't get a job.You're telling me that I'm not going tohave a joband that my energy prices are going togo up my my electricity costs are goingto go up because they're building thislike megawatt data center and then Ihear that they're raising billions andbillions of dollars and individualpeople are getting paid a hundredmillion dollars to go do this and that.That's what you think is the the kind ofthe main All after I've spent a decadedoing what I thought I was told I had todo. It's okay to get debt to go to thiscollege because it's going to be worthit. I'm going to get a good lawyer oraccounting job that pays me enough

00:27:38tojust live amazing life in a vicinity ofa city that I want to live in and yet Ican't have kids I can't afford them. I'msingle because a lot of them are singlenow and I'm still struggling even thoughI'm putting the effort in. Why? Why isthis broken? That's the sentiment. Andthen why the hate of Sam and ChatGPT? Isit just the winner's curse? You you hatethe Yankees, you hate Duke cuz they'rewinning. Is that why or is theresomething else to it? And also I thinkpeople when they see him talk one of thebig sins that anyone who's a publicfigure can make is being inauthentic andbeing inauthentic is what he screamsbecause what he screams is I'm justsaying what you want me to what you wantheard. That's one of the reasons whypeople like Elon even though he's an[ __ ] he's very authentic. With Samit definitely feels you are just tellingme what I want to hear. That's theperception.Yeah. Which he admits to by the way. Hesays I'm horrible at confrontation andsometimes I'll just say things that Ithink you want me to hear.

00:28:33Yeah, but I think he's saying it aslightly different way.I mean I think ChatGPT is an amazingproduct. I think that what the TBP andguys did what John and Jordi did I thinkisnothing short of incredible and that'sputting aside this exit. If they hadnever exited, we were saying this beforelike I think what they built as a just abrand It's awesome. And the the fun theyhad, the brand they built, the way theycaptured uh people's minds. And I wouldsay like the way they broke the rightrules. Like what's the um what's thatphrase where it's like, you know,amateurs don't know the rules, pros prosknow the rules, and the masters knowwhich when to break the rules?If you look at a couple of the thingsthey did, it is kind of incredible. So,first, they changed the uh the theplaybook for for put the podcast. It waslikenobody's watching the show. We don'tcare.We produce the show. The show's purp thefunctionality of the show was to produceclips. So, what everybody else is doingin the industry waslet's post clips to promote to and theclip's job is to promote the the realshow, the long-form show.And I think they inverted that. Um Idon't they didn't say this. I'm puttingwords in their mouth, but let mespeculate for a second. I believe whatthey found was that it's not that theclip's job the clips are there topromote the live show. It's that thelive show is there to produce the clips.And the clips is

00:29:48the product. And we dothis 4-hour live stream as a farmingexercise to just farm 20 great clips aday. And if we do 20 great clips a day,and we're on your feed where you'realready browsing and where you'rehanging out, and we give you 10 seconds,15 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds ofentertainment, of insight, of a greatsound bite, well, that we've done ourjob. That's the show. The show is thisdistributed thing, not one central longlong-form thing. All right? Like the waywe and most podcasters think of our showis what we do is like the podcast.Listening to the hour-long thing is thething.And we're going to use social media tohopefully draw you into the main thing.They did it the exact opposite way.They're like, we'll sit here for for for4 hours and talk.The product is the clip. And you know,that's the end product uh that we'reactually trying to create. So, I thinkthat was great. I think going all in onTwitter was smart and interesting whennobody else was doing that. I agree.>> I think, you know, they they Hey,>> for the record, I made a prediction uh 3years ago. Do you remember Do youremember the prediction? Yeah, you werelike, um, every social media platformhas like their star creator, somebodywho was born on the platform, becomessuper famous and super, you know,successful and wealthyfrom the platform. Instagram had it,YouTube had it, Vine had it, all theplatforms. And you were like,

00:31:03"TwitterWho is that on Twitter?" We were like,kind ofcouldn't think of who's who's thatperson, that Twitter star.And that your prediction wasthat there will be I don't know theexact prediction, but it was somethinglike>> Well, I said that there's an opportunityto do that, somebody's going to do it,and they're going to, you know, make abillion dollars doing this, essentially.>> Yeah, so it it and it wasn't totallywrong, and it wasn't a brilliantprediction, but it was just anobservation. But that, uh, I still thinkit can happen. I think that there'slike, by the way, TP-TBPwas tiny even on Twitter. Like, it'sonly in a very niche of niche onTwitter. I still think that there'sthat. For example, I think that it's notin my world, but like sports Twitter isawesome.I think, uh, political Twitter Twitteris I I I don't I don't like it, but it'san awesome category to be in. Like,there's>> You mean Twitter is awesome, yeah. Yeah,like there's still like those thosecategories.Can I give you two lock-in stories thatI think anybody can take, cuz, you know,we we like to nerd out about media, butmost people don't care about media.Yeah. UmCan I just tell you two John stories?So, I I don't know Jordi as well as Iknow John.So, II was in a mastermind group. I created alittle mastermind group for media, like,guys like me who are like contentcreators. And we had this text group,and we would do these calls, and at thetime John was doing a YouTube channelwhere he would do, like,

00:32:19umuh, explanation, you know, the historyof Donald Trump, the history of XiJinping. Pretty pretty good stuff.High quality, um, and it was actuallygetting like a lot of views. Like, hisvideos could get like a million views or200,000 views, 2 million views. So, hewas like doing well, too. He was likesuccessful at it. We had him on MFMduring that point.>> But he wasn't likewasn't married to it. It wasn't likethis is my thing. I'm going to do thisforever. He was exploring. And so I waskind of helping him and talking throughlike what are you thinking about? He waslike, "I'm going to think about this andthis and this." And he tried severalexperiments before he landed on TBPN. Sothe first thing wasmassive credit for walking awayfrom the metrics. So like how manysubscribers does he have on YouTube? 450450,000 and his last video did nearly 1million views. And it was people stilldon't under It was about Visa. So a apretty nerdy topic, but he did a goodjob. But that's like a high-qualityaudience. This is I would say imaginefinancially I'm sure this could havebeen a huge success and he had half amillion subscribers. That's a lot. So soyou had half a million subscribers. Hewas doing videos working a millionviews, but it wasn't what he wanted as aas a creator. As like the artist in himwas not like this is it. This is thething I want to do for the next 10years. And he walked away. And I justwant to point that out because walkingaway from

00:33:34that and then not just walkingaway from that and trying to build backup to that, but like when you're doingTBPN and you'regoing live every morning and you don'tget to go on vacation cuz you got to belive every morning and you're you'redressing up in your suit, you're showingup at the studio, you're preparing,you're doing 16 interviews in a row,you're uh you know, you're then goingand cutting the clips, you're preparingfor the next day. And you look at thatnumber on your live stream and you'vegot3,000 people watch today.Do you know how hard that is mentally asa creator who was just seeing that samenumber on YouTube be 1 million Did hesay anything about that?>> 2,000 and show up with enthusiasm thenext day? He I mean I didn't bring it uplike this with him, but like I can tellyou why.Because when you're doing the thing thatyou actually enjoy doing, you'll sustaineven in the face of bad results, right?It's like for him, I think talking toJordy is fun as hell. Talking aboutventure tech was more fun than talkingabout like the history of Xi Jinping. Ithink he's like more in that the sceneof like true tech. And then think havingthe creative freedom to like build thebrand and the show the way they wantedit, I think was fun for him. And so likeI think the fun sustained him when thenumbers would have been discouraging tothe average person. That's the firstpart of like massive credit cuz as acreator I know how hard that is. I knowhow

00:34:49hard it is to go like Naval hastalked about this that the hardest thetrue masters are people who can go backdown the mountain and start again andtake a new path. Because going back downthe mountain once you've climbed up onceis like you know how exhausting it is.You actually know what goes into it. Andit's so hard to give up the vantagepoint you have to go back to being abeginner again and and seeing where thatnew road might take you. The second one,I invited John toour basketball camp. People don't knowthis. John's like freaking like 6'8" orsomething like that. He's huge. He'slike the tallest guy in the techindustry. And I was like, "Oh dude, youshould come to our camp. It's amazing.We got all these amazing the founder ofAirbnb and Reddit and you know Mr. Beastand then this famous guy this famous guythis famous guy likeyou should come man. We we want you tocome this year. We'd love we'd love tohave you. And he's like, "Oh that'samazing." He's like, "I just got tofigure it out with TBP and I was like,"Dude, it's two days. It's over the youknow it's like just like Thursday,Friday. You'll be back. It'll be fine."Also, who cares? TBP and it's nothingyet. It's just a baby. Right? It wasat that time they weren't even doing thelive show. But wasn't this like twomonths ago? No, no. This was the thiswas the entire year.>> Oh got it. And so at the time all theywere doing was replying to tweets. Theydidn't even have their show yet. It wasliterally a a Twitter account where theywould reply to a tweet with them in

00:36:04nicesuits recording a response to aninteresting tweet somebody had. So therewasn't even like we have to be live. Itwas just he was just like, "I gotmomentum." So first he asked me he goes,"Can Jordi come too?" And I was like,"Dude, we're super constrained on thethe like number of people." He's like,"Can we come and can we record fromthere?"And I was like, "I don't know man. I'mnot sure like>> Oh big miss. Well, there's no there's nomiss. I'm saying incredible for him atthat time to turn down that invite to belike, "No, even 48 hours,I got to just be locked in.I got to just like there's somethinghere. I just I don't want to lose anymomentum. And as a founder, as like a asa anybody who tries to like make aproject happen, the amount of likemanual cranking you have to do at thebeginningto get something off the ground is likeso underrated. And I know that me, Iwould have been like, "Ooh, I gotinvited to this cool event. Ooh, allthese cool people are going to be there.Oh, it's only a couple days. It won't bethat big of a distraction." Like,"Whatever, I can come back to this."Like, I would have done that.Prob- like mad props to him for beinglike, "No, no, no, I gotI got to stay with this." And so hestuck with it. He's he's So he didn'tcome.He stuck with it. And when I texted himabout this uhabout this outcome, about this likeincredible outcome, he goes, "It's atestament to the great lock-in."And I was like, "The great lock-in."That's what they really what they did.They just locked the in

00:37:20for 12 months. They're like, "Every daywe are going to be balls to the wallat doing this thing. And it doesn'tmatter if other people think this thingis important, we think it's important."It is a testament to the great lock-in.So I I give them all the credit. That'samazing. Have you seen this other drama?It's kind of cool. So Jason Lumpkin,friend of the pod, he said "Okay, it'sweird. Now I don't see TBPN on my P onmy feed as often I did a few weeks ago.Anyone else noticing the same?" Andthere's like tons of tons of people.Which Yeah. It could be conspiracytheory because that's usually how thingswork. Like you're like, "Oh, I don't seeit." And like dude, like like peopletell us>> the time they're like, "Oh, I don'tlisten to the podcast MFM anymore." I'mlike, "Well, our numbers are likethrough the roof high, so someone is."Umthat's a juicy story. So you're sayingElon, who's got a competitor to open AI,maybe uhhe would turn down that knob a littlebit. It doesn't seem crazy. Does it?Yeah.It doesn't because he did he It's beenproven he did that with Substack. Youknow you know the story? No. He tried tobuy Substack.They didn't cut the deal.Founder walks away. It's like, "Dude,total respect. You're Elon Musk. This isamazing. But like, we just we want to beindependent."And then the next like day,all traffic to Substack from X goes tozero, essentially. They basically

00:38:35shadowbanned Substack links. And then theybought Review. They launched theircompetitor of X articles. They like dida whole bunch of things. And then So, itis not beyond Mr. Free Speech uh ElonMusk to to put his uh you know um whatis it what do they say? Put his fingeron the scale put his thumb on the scalesto tilt, you know, to be competitivewith with other products. So, II would not be surprised if the TBPinvisibility going away is is not aconspiracy theory and then in fact is ais a fact. I wouldn't be surprised is iswhat I'm putting it.>> in 2 weeks so right now Elon and um SamAltman they're in in a lawsuit. And Ibelieve it goes to I don't I'm I don'twant to sound I'm I'm an idiot, just soyou guys know. Dep- deposition? Wait,should we set this up at the front?They're doing the dep- deep up. Like Idon't even know I don't know how courtswork, but like is it the deposition? Isthat the thing where they get the bestclips from when they're in like a smallroom and and they're going to ask himlike has he like what size is his penis?Like can you describe his penis? Andlike it's like going to be insulting.That's like what the best videos onlineare about. Uh but anyway, they're doingsomething uh that'ssomething happening is happening and itstarts next week. But I I do I thinkthatI think that starts in 2 weeks though.

00:39:50Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing howI know I have some friends that arebasically like they get sued.And then they won't uh they're like, "Wehave to settle this because we justdon't want to go to discov- we don'twant discovery cuz discovery is likeunearths a lot of stuff. And so like oneof my one of my absolutely favoriteaccounts is uh internal tech emails.Yeah.>> follow Do you follow this on Twitter?It's just like one of the best accounts.And it basically just nicely formattedIt and digs through all of the discoverythat happens in these like antitrustcases, and then you see, you know, MarkZuckerbergtexting his, you know, CFO about buyingInstagram versus Snapchat and how muchthey should offer and what if he saysthis and then let's No, let's try thisinstead. And you could basically piecethese together and see the internalthinking and conversations, the stuffthat's never public. This is the realstuff that goes into to the strategybehind a lot of these companies. Mysister's a corporate attorney and she'srepresented a lot of the guys you justmentioned and she always tells me don'ttext or write stuff because it's goingto get discovered. And so, one of myjokes is her and my wife and I are allin a group chat. I love to say the mostoffensive things that I'll say hello tothe person doing the discovery.

00:41:02Sir, it was humor.Like this is the top pin tweet right nowon internal taking emails. It's fromElon Musk. Subject, re honest thoughts.And this is his email to Sam Altman.Guys, I've had enough. This is the finalstraw. Either go do something on yourown or continue with OpenAI as anonprofit. I will no longer fund OpenAIuntil you have made a final commitmentto stay or I'm just being a fool who'sessentially providing free funding foryou to create a startup. Discussions areover.Right? Or the next one.Zuckerberg texting Elon Musk.Hey, quick heads up. We sent a letter totheCalifornia attorney general supportingyour lawsuit against OpenAI. Someone,not us, leaked the letter. It'll bepublic in the next hour. Wanted to makesure you heard this from me. Elon.Okay.Zuck. I have an idea to run by you. Noturgent, but let me know if there's agood time to call in the next few days.These are These are These are my Epsteinemails. This is This is This is what Ilove to love to read in my spare time.All right, I have a story that I thinkis going to be relevant. You're writinga book on this topic. So, have you heardof William Randolph Hearst? Do you knowwho that is? I've heard of like theHearst family. I feel like I've heardthat. Yeah, let me give you a little bitof background on this because I wentinto reading about the story because Iwanted to to about how to build acompany that can last 200 years, whichhe has almost done. But, you're going tolike it on how to manage creatives.That's like a big learning that I've had

00:42:17from this. So, check this out. So,William Randolph Hearst, I think he wasborn in something like 1860. I forgetthe exact year, but around there. Uh thereason I liked him at first was hisfather was a Missouri miner. He kind ofmoved out to San Francisco, where youlive, where we used where I used tolive, to kind of make it big in themining industry. And he had like aboomer bust type of um career, where hefound a little bit of gold when he waslike 40, and became quite wealthy, lostall the money, and then when he was 60,became the richest man in America. So,he basically like married this amazingyoung woman named Phoebe, got herpregnant, and basically only saw herlike once a year, plus the kid, but shelike was out in the mines up in likeYosemite Valley, like mining, and likehis kid and family, his wife, was downin San Francisco, just kind of livingtheir life. And the kid's name wasWilliam, William Randolph Hearst. Andthere's this amazing book called TheChief that I've been reading about it.Have you ever seen the Or have you everheard of the movie Citizen Kane? It'sregarded as one of the best movies ofall time, and the main character in themovie is based off of William RandolphHearst. William Randolph Hearst was alarger-than-life character. So, he wentto Harvard, and uh like kind of tookover the clubs system. Do you know whatthat is? Like basically, it was sort oflike frat>> and Bones? Yeah, like times 10. It waslike frats times 10. It was like uhwhere all the cool kids would go to. Andbut they

00:43:32like had a ranking system. Theyeven would rank like the best clubs. Andhe was like a very natural leader, andalso he was very rich. His parents gavehim like a lavish allowance, and he justlike spent and spent. But, generallyseemed like a good guy, and was verywell-liked. And so, he convinces hisfather, "Dad, I graduated college. Ineed something to do. Can we please buythe San Francisco Examiner?" Which whatthe time was one of the umI think it was an important newspaper inSan Francisco, but I don't think it wasthe biggest, but it was kind of likeimportant and in mismanage. And he waslike, "Uh let me buy it. Let me dothis." So, his dad's like, "All right,dude, fine." And his dad was actually onboard with this because his dad wantedto run for office and he was like,"William, run the newspaper, help getget it popular and then just likepromote me." And William did it and itworked. His dad became a senator ofCalifornia and it and it worked. It wasvery effective, but William ran offfirst. He realized that he lovednewspapers. He loved them like crazy andso he builds up the the Examiner alittle bit and what he did was sort ofwhat modern journalism and media istoday. Have you heard of this phrasecalled yellow journalism? No. Soundslike an insult. It's not Well, it's it'sit sounds racist which is what I heard.It's not racist.So basically up until like the early1900s, the newspapers were boring. Theywere just like facts. They were justlike sheets

00:44:48of paper with like blacktext with the headlines were notsignificantly larger than the text. Andif you go and look at old New York Timesarticlesor like if you've ever seen like archiveNew York Times, you'll kind of noticethis. There weren't photos at the time,but this was a big deal because radioand movies weren't a thing. And sonewspapers were how everyone got theirinformation on a daily and weekly basis.And so the news industry was had thismassive TAM, but like it wasn't like themost exciting thing. And so WilliamRandolph Hearst who's this youngcharismatic guy, he was like, "Make theheadlines bigger, add photos." And thenthe phrase if it bleeds it leads, itcame from that era and he was the guy.So there was basically him and this guynamed Joseph Pulitzer. You've heard thePulitzer Prize, right?Joseph Pulitzer, another St. Louis guy,he started the St. Louis Post-Dispatchand then eventually bought othernewspapers because newspapers were kindof like software companies except localsoftware companies. You start one in onemarket, then you go start one in anothermarket, another market, and anothermarket and they're subscription basedand people will stay for decades. Soit's a very good business and it's likea land and expand type of businessmodel. Well, anyway, it was JosephPulitzer who's like the man and thenthis up and coming young Hearst who'sfunded by his dad. They go back andforth for years and years and one of theways they go back forth is through thisthing called yellow journalism.Basically the the was they put cartoonsin their

00:46:03newspapers, and one day Hearstmade the cartoon like a yellow guy, likehe wore like a yellow shirt in theyellow background, and he had these hugeheadlines. Like, for example, one time aUS Navy ship was bombed, and we weren'teven sure if it was the Spanish who didit, but he was like, "The Spanish werethe ones who bombed this thing." Andthat is one of the reasons why theSpanish-American War started was becauseHearst riled up all these people usingthis like>> the yellow thing means it says a styleof reporting that prioritizeseye-catching headlines, scandals,emotional narratives over factual newsto boost circulation. It started likeyou said, Spanish-American War withPulitzer and Hearst.Yeah, so kind of interesting stuff,right? Now,he was a he was a crazy man, Hearst. Hewas sober, he didn't party, but he lovedwomen, and he loved spending. So, at thepeak of his uh the Hearst media empire,at this point like decades down the lineof doing it, he owned so many differentnewspapers that something like 20% ofAmerica got their news from Hearst.He was spending the equivalent of $20million every single month just to live.And a handful of ti- There was>> What?Yeah. The a handful of years he spenttwo to four billion dollars buildinghomes. So,

00:47:18Ernest Hemingway, you know,what I think it was Ernest Hemingway oror another like reputable author waslike, "If God were to come down toAmerica and build a home, it would looklike one of Hearst's homes." So, he wasfamous for just being a insane spender.So, at one like>> buil- he's a spending in the buildingcase, right? He's he's just uh he'sdoing it as a business, he's selling thehomes, or no, he's just building them tohave them? To have them. So, his empire,he was amazing at building companies,and he was amazing at spending all ofthe money. He was famous for telling hisaccountants, "Just find out where themoney is from." And he was also famousfor collecting, and which is what I'mgoing to talk about. He used to tojournalists. That was one of his skillset. He would find talented people. TheThe thing is is he he collectedeverything. So, he collected homes. Hewould collect rare coins. He collectedcars. He collected exotic animals. Hecollected everything. Have you heard ofthe Hearst Castle?No. The Hearst Castle, Google HearstCastle. So, it was a 40,000 acre estatein middle of California, not quitemiddle, but like a little bit outside ofLA, on the water of the ocean. And hehad this thing called Hearst Castle, andhe had zebras and camels and polarbears. He had a zoo there. This was hispersonal home. And it was so big thatwhen he died, he was like, "I can't givethis to anyone cuz it costs too much to

00:48:33run it. I'm just going to give I'm justgoing to give it to the Californiagovernment, and they're going to turn itinto a museum." And that's what HearstCastle is. But, okay, these numbersyou're saying are kind of crazy. So, yousaid 20 million a month, 2 to 4 billionannually of spending. The best way todescribe this is Imagine Imagine this.Imagine the I>> numbers don't even work. 20 20 million amonth is 240 million a year, but theseare 2 billion. Give me Give me I can'texplain these numbers because What whatI said was he he he was quoted as sayingon average he spends X amount a month,which is the equivalent of 20 million amonth, but there was occasional yearswhere it was up to 2 to 4 billion whenhe had huge projects like the HearstCastle.>> money all came from the paper empire orfrom>> all came from the paper empire. So, heused the company like his piggy bank,which wasn't wrong because he owned 100%of the business. So, he's able to dothat. The problem is Imagine this.ImagineSo, at the time he was actually grew tobe one of the top 10 richest men in theworld, which let's say it's Jeff Bezos.Imagine the government saying, "Jeff,you owe a lot of people a lot of money.We have to put Amazon underreceivership. So, like the bank is goingto like run it for a couple years or youcould still run it, but like we we haveto like step in here and get Everyone'sgot to get paid." And that happened

00:49:49multiple times. So, imagine that one ofthe largest companies in the world,when Hearst is in the in his 60s and 70syears old for multiple times for 2 to 3years in a row, the government wouldstep in and being like, "Dude, you gotto pay these people." So, like, we'rewe're going to put you on an allowance,cuz that's how big of a fish he was. Andthat happened multiple times.I'm just looking I'm looking at alltheseI'm just I got seven tabs open rightnow, cuz I got to see what this guy'sdoing. Google Hearst Mansion, SantaMonica. This is just like the photo isjust going to be insane. So, he It's nolonger there, but he literally had amansion. It's hard to even fathom, butliterally on the sand to where you walkout the front door and your feet are inthe water.>> like a It looks like a resort hotelfirst, cuz it's on It's like on a beach.And it's as big as a hotel. So, he haddozens of these homes. But not onlythat, he had the most expensive artcollection on Earth. He had the best carcollection on Earth. He had everything.He loved collecting people.>> let's review. What do we love? Highcharisma at a young age, leader of men,took over the Harvard social scene. Welike that. The second thing you like island and expand newspaper monopoly.Third thing we like, media innovator.

00:51:05Decides, ah,"Why are we just doing transactionalinformational news? Let's sell stories,baby. Let's sell emotion." Creates thisyellow journalism. Triggers some wars.Ah, it's okay. Whatever. So, that's thethird interesting piece. Then the fourthis lavish extravagant spending man oftaste, collecting cars, animals,clothes, jewelry, homes, all the thingsthat we like. So, there's a lot we like.There's a lot of things that likeif it his Tinder profile matches ourwhat we like here over here on MFM. So,so far So far, so good. Well, we haven'teven got to the part you mentioned,which was about like creatives. And Idon't want to We don't have to dwell onthis, but I don't I can't give him apass.He didn't like the Jews. So, JosephPulitzer,he used to call him Joseph Pulitzer.Like he and he also he also had hitbefore Hitler was umbefore the 1940s happened, Hitler waslike a leader of Germany who likerevitalized Germany. And he had Hitleras a columnist and everyone knew Hitlerwas anti-Semitic but they didn't knowthat he waslike killing Jews.So anyway, he doesn't get a pass. So hedid a lot of bad stuff there.But you know, we're going to talk abouta whole man. Soand so at last I'll tell you what whatHearst is today and then we'll get toget into good stuff. So Hearst now

00:52:20um they are a media company but it'sstill family owned. I believe it's 100%family owned. I believe it's the they dosomething like15 billion dollars a year in revenue.And what's interesting is when he died,he set up this amazing trust and I thinkit's the largest trust in America that'slike this where the trust runs thecompany. And basically the trusthassixnon-family members, six family memberson it and those are the ones who vote onthe company. And it appears to be quitewell run. So Hearst now owns Cosmo Cosmomagazine which you know, they own Ithink they own GQ and a bunch of othermagazines. But they also own 20% ofESPN. Huh. Yeah. That's worth like 20billion dollars. They own half of A&E.They own like a lot of local newsstations. They own Fitch ratings whichyou probably don't care about but it'slike a B2B boring thing. They still owna ton of stuff including the originalnewspaper in SF that he bought. So it'sstill prolific company. And interestingstory, they tried they didn't try to buythe Hustle but when we were selling theHustle, we met with them and my wife,her mom and dad lived next door to theHearst Tower. So they own this beautifultower in midtown Manhattan and I sleptat her mom and dad's house when I hadthe meeting and the next day I go to themeeting and they're like where did youstay? And I was like look out thatwindow. That's literally the bedroomthat I

00:53:35slept in last night. Like I havemy right That's the power tower you'relooking at.So so uh you mentioned two things. Onewas managing creatives. I'm curiousabout that and then I have a differentquestion after that about you said youwanted to build like a 200-year companyand I want to ask you some questionsabout that, too. So, first give me thecreative part and then we'll go theother way. So, here's what made himinteresting. So, Hearst was um hediscovered so much talent. He was famousfor hiring the best people and at onepoint there was even in like um acongressional hearing of like, "Shouldwe Is there like a monopoly for creativetalent?" Like is that like a thing? Andso like people actually like questionedif that was a thing because he wasfamous for hiring the best people. And acouple of people who you'll recognizeare Mark Twain, so he was very early inbeing one of Mark Twain's firstemployers or first like promoters, JackLondon, uh famous writer, and a bunch oflike these really great people. Andthere's a a whole bunch of others thataren't particularly relevant to everyonenow, but they were relevant then. And hewas famous for basically personallyrecruiting these people, paying themmore money. How was he finding them? Cuzthere's no social media back in the day.There's no portfolios. How does he evenfiguring out who's the diamond in therough? What did What did What would helook at? So, this is where it'sinteresting. And

00:54:50I think that both youand I can identify with this a littlebit. Even though he was like a clickbaitguy and he would sensationalize stuff,he still loved words and he loved likebeautiful prose. And so he was a very uhit was like adichotomy where he like was like allabout like building big and like flashyheadlines and also like beautiful likeisn't this beautiful? Look at thissentence this this author wrote. And sohe would find like for example there's astory where he was based in SF. He founda little pamphlet that this one like23-year-old journalist in Oakland wroteand he wrote he like read it and heimmediately went to Oakland and hepersonally recruited the guy. And whathe was famous for was A personallyshowing up. So, at the time imagine umimagine you know, I think Phoebe Gatesis like in the news now for being astartup founder. Imagine Phoebe Gatesknocking on Shawn's door like 1 year or6 months into MFM and being like

00:55:43And and her saying like you got it. Yougot what it takes. And he did that. Hewas famous for that. He would personallyfind these people. So he actually caredabout that. And two, he paid reallywell. Uh he was famous for like he'slike my philosophy which I think is agood takeaway. We see this time and timeagain. We're seeing this with Facebooksuper intelligence and that's to a waybigger extreme of like getting the bestpeople under one roof even if it meansthat your profits are going to be reallytiny or break even or at a loss. Itnormally tends to work out. And that'swhat he did. And so his newsroom wasfamous amongst the guys who loved actualnews as being the best talent and he'dlet them do what they want.Additionally, what he was really good atis he would take cover for them. So forexampleUm let's just say that like or for likeyou and I, right? We work with HubSpoton this. There's been multiple timeswhere where we maybe have done somethinga little bit um controversial. And likeif HubSpot were to be like, "Dude, Idon't like what you said but I got yourback. It's cool for you to say likewhatever you want." Or imagine likeHoward Stern and Sirius Radio and HowardStern saying something crazy. Thatthat's what uh he did all the time. Sothere'd be times where they would saysomething shitty about the sittingpresident and Hersh would be like, "It'scool, dude. You're You're safe to saythat. I got you." And so he got like hedid that all the time. So he was um hegot loyalty that way. And

00:56:59yeah, that'skind of what I wanted to talk to youabout because I know you're writing abook on creativity. And so I I I'm thereason I'm interested in Hersh wasbecause the legacy thing but alsobecause managing creatives because I'mmanaging creatives now at my company andI have set these like hard deadlines andthese rewards for them. And I'm learningwhen I'm learning about managing acreative team, that's the exact oppositeof what I should be doing.And so that's why I was like learningabout rent rent up Hersh. So my rant alittle bit on him is done. Well, I thinkcollecting talent I think managingcreatives is different than collectingtalent. I think collecting talent isactually the the more important part ofof the equation and the part that Ithink everybody wants to do. Let me askyou. You started this by saying, "I'minterested in these likemulti-hundred-yearkind of companies cuz I want to makeHampton that." Whatdid you take away from that side of it?Well, I think that when when I tend tocare about things, I care about a tonand also I care about it not at all. So,like Do you say also or either or? Also.So, it's like I care I care about it. Ireally want it to happen. I love it. Butlike if it doesn't happen, I'm like,"Nah, you know." Right. By the way,that's the perfect disposition for anentrepreneur.Like yeah, so it's like>> A deep desire for the outcome and then acomplete

00:58:14detachment from the outcome aswell. Yeah, so that's sort of So, it's Ithat's sometimes hard for me to explainto people, but that's how I feel whereI'm like, "I want this so bad." And thenif like it rains that day, I'm like,"Ah, I was looking forward to playbaseball, but video games are fun." Youknow what I mean? Like it doesn'tmatter. Um but anyway, I'm interested init just because I think it's A fun tosurround myself with people and I thinkhaving a company is a great way todecide who I spend my days with and B Ido want like my family to be proud of meand I would love to have something thatI can bring them into the fold and wehave an excuse to work together. So, forexample, uh Hearst Jr. was anentrepreneur. His father was anentrepreneur. There was some bondingthat they had where it's like even ifthey weren't in the same company, theywere still in the same family and theyboth had overlapping companies. Therewas like this really coolrelationship that they had that I thinkis great. So, that's one of the reasonswhy I'm interested in it.I've told my kids umthatwe're going to work together, but in thereverse. So, I think most people who,you know, build business and they becomesuccessful, they want to you know, theywant their kids to inherit the business,to take over the business. That's the Iwould say default.That's not my plan.Other people want to leave money and belike, "You start your own thing, but Iwill like this will enable you to chaseyour dreams."That's also not what I'm going to do.I'm more of

00:59:29a believer in the WarrenBuffett money, which is Warren Buffettphilosophy, which is you give your kidsEnough to do anything, but not enough todo everything. To not enough to donothing. Oh, sorry. Sorry.So so you so that I believe in.Uh but the but the what I've beentelling them cuz I for my son anddaughter who are old enough to kind ofunderstand they I'm like, "Yeah, youguys you guys can go do whatever youwant. You can make movies. You can buildthings. You can do whatever you want todo.It'd be cool if you guys work together,but like you know, whatever. We'll see."But I was like, "I'm going to work foryou." I was like, "When I retire, mygoal like I want to be I'm going to workon whatever you're I'll be your intern,basically." And they're like, "Butyou're going to have to pay me." And I'mlike, "Okay, I guess I'll pay you then.I will pay you." How much you want topay? They're like, "You have to pay me10 10 dollar bucks." Which is what theycall money. And I'm like, "All right,I'll pay you 10 dollar bucks, but I'mgoing to come work for you." And I thinkthis is actually a better plan thanbeing like, "I will have this empire andyou will someday run this empire,Simba.">> I'm open I'm open to that as well. Youknow,you know, whatever. Just as long as wecan be together, right?>> Exactly.Exactly. And I figured the best way tobe together is for me to be theirvoluntary like intern of whatever thewhatever they're trying to do in life isgoing to end up being better for me. Sothat that's a I just wanted to throwthat out there as like an alternate viewto the traditional to traditional

01:00:44path.I just want to ask you one question cuzyou're learning about all thiscreativity stuff. So Sean's writing abook on create the creative process.That's cool. But tell me about managingcreative people. Are there any tips onthat?Well, most of what I've been studying isthe individual. So how do you how do youreach your max potential of being ableto make dope [ __ ] So like anybody inany endeavor doesn't actually matterwhat what endeavor you're in. Like wethink of artists as like whateverpainter, musician, whatever. Andobviously that's true. That's likeyou know, 100% of their value and andsort of output is going to be based ontheir creative work. Um but you know,even if you're a CEO or an entrepreneur,you're creating a company, you'recreating products.Honestly, even if you're a dentist andyou have a dental practice, like you'regoing to either you're going to beundifferentiated or you're going to bedifferentiated. Like it's the it's thegame of standout. And so, do you careabout standing out? Do you care aboutdoing something that isbeyond normal? And if you do, like youprobably want to untap as much of yourpotential as you can. So, I've beenfirst studying how do you get yourselfto do it? Which is like, I would say 80%of the battle.Then the second is group dynamics. So,how do you in a creative How does acreative team workto make this work? Which is kind of likewhen Pixar makes movies

01:02:00and they havethe brain trust and the directors allhave to learn how to actually givefeedback to each other. And how do youshow somebody something at a raw stage?And how how do you bring it up and howdo they interact with you so that 1 + 1= 3? So that the product gets betterversus your ego getting bruised or themtaking it in a different direction oryou feeling shut down or some somethinglike that from raw early work, which isusually not great. I haven't evenworried about the other side, which iskind of what you're talking about, whichis how do you hire and manage thattalent? Because that's not like been thefocus for for what I'm looking at. So, Idon't have a lot to share there. Iactually think there is an interesting,you know, just to props to you. I feellike with the hustle,you spotted a couple of people, right?Like a lot of people now have seen StephSmith on our podcast a bunch or Trunghas become a famous person on Twitter.And like you found these people asdiamonds in the rough. You brought themin, you empowered them.>> you're forgetting one of the morepopular ones.Who am I forgetting? You.Bro. Bro.Bro, I came to you. I came to you readybaked. I was a DoorDash delivery on yourdoorstep.And someone has to open the door.

01:03:09Um, yeah, sure. Fair enough. Okay, youcan you can have that. We'll give youthat. What if it helps you?But I think you've done a good job ofthat. Like identifying what is A+talent. And I would say like the biggestthingwhen you said that stood out to me whenyou were talking was you talked aboutpaying people more.Andthis is like one of the great asymmetricarbitrages that exist, which is thatthe person who is truly greatis worth somewhere between 10 and 100times the average person. But they'llnever cost 10 to 100 times. Only onlymaybe now with AI researcher thing withAI researchers are making like hundredsof millions of dollars a year, maybe nowthey're getting paid their actual worth,but like, you know, in every otherindustry in all of history, it's likethe A+ personversus the B+ personis getting paid10% more, 30% more, 50% more, even a150% more max, but they're generating,you know, 1,000% more uh uh of of returnof work. And so thethe the mindset shift has to be there oflike the whole game is find the bestpeople.I'll give you a little story. So, I wasbefore this podcast, I was telling Ben,cuz I've been hanging out with I'm inAustin, I was hanging out with Ben.

01:04:24And I just said I said, "Hey, what ofour what of our conversation in the last24 hours do you think would make like beuseful for people on MFM?"Um not just entertaining, but useful.And he goes, "Oh, the thing you saidaboutum one of our companies." So, in one ofour companies,we kind of hit a plateau. So, we gotinto the like 20 million plus plus rangeof revenue, which is great cuz we weregrowing 50% a year, but then weplateaued.And I had stepped out of the companyabout 2 years ago.And so, the question is like, what'swhat do we do? And I had told Ben, I waslike, "We're in a little bit of a picklebecauseto be great in that type of a company,let's just take let's just use theanalogy you were doing of Hearst, right?To be great in the newspaper business,you have to make the most compellingmedia, right? So, you got to havestories that hook people, that getpeople to become daily readers. If youdon't do that, it's pretty hard likewhat are you doing? That's the mainthing.And so, identify the main thing and theneither the person who's doing it has tobe like the world-class figure-it-outerof that. So, it's like, you know, youwere this with The Hustle, I feel,initially, which was with The Hustlelike I remember you wrote this stylethis writing style guide

01:05:40and you'relike, "This is how we write. This iswhat we write about. This is what's agood story versus a a story we don't dothat other people might think is good,but we don't think it's good. This iswhat a good headline looks like. This iswhat a bad headline looks like. And youwere the figure-outer of the main thingthat you needed to get right in orderfor that business to work. In, let'ssay, e-commerce, like I don't know ifyou saw that Grüns just sold the likegummies company or whatever and theysold for a billion dollars. And what wasit like it's like they just picked theright category with the right model?Obviously, a bunch of things have to goright when you get a billion-dollar exitin 3 years. So, I'm not going to say youisolate it to one thing. What were themain variables? The main variables werelike yes, they were in a great categorylike supplements are a great category.And then secondly, they were in like athey were on trend with like greensbasically. So, like you have AthleticGreens, but then you have greens asgummies.Um and yeah, the product as a gummy isgood and differentiated. But like look,a lot of people were basically sayinglikethe genius of Grüns was that they turnedAthletic Greens into a gummy.And like guess what? Like a lot ofpeople can do that, would do that. Ifthat's all it took, they would be copiedlike that. You know, it would be itwould be trivial for somebody else tocreate a gummy a product equivalent ofof their product. The thing that wasreally hard to copy

01:06:55was their marketingexcellence. And basically the dirtysecret of all e-commerce and D2Cbusinesses is that they are world-classat just marketing funnels. It's likethey're world-class at the Facebook,TikTok, Google ad game, going to alanding page, getting you to buy athing, and then emailing youincessantly, and texting you non-stopuntil you buy again. They were good atthat? They're not just good. They'reThey're They're world-class at that. Andso, anyways, back to the kind of likethe useful lesson. The useful lesson isfigure out what the main thing you'regoing to have to get right that's goingto be like 70% of of the of the battle,and then either the founder has to be soworld-class at it that they're going todo all the hard figuring out, and thenthey're going to like delegate toanybody else like to do the work, butthey're going to do the figuring out ateach at each step. So, for example,people don't know this, but at theHustle, when you started um you know,you started with the event. And then youhad to figure out how to What was themain thing for the event? It was likeget speakersthat I can use to sell the tickets. Andyou were just constantly playing thisgame of like, can I get a badassspeaker, and then can I tell the worldthat this speaker's going to be here,and that they have to come and buy thisticket to this event? And then when youstarted before you started thenewsletter, you were blogging. And itwas like, we have to have these articlesthat go viral. And being great at goingviral is going to be the thing that iseither going to make this

01:08:10companysuccessful or not successful.Right? And then you had to go figure outthen when you switch to newsletter, it'sa different thing. But, let's just takethe going viral part. You got to beworld-class at that, or you're going tohave to learn how to recruit world-classpeople at doing that thing. There's onlytwo ways to win. You are the world-classperson doing the figuring out, or you'reworld world-class recruiter to get thepeople who are going to do the figuringout. There's really only two things tobe great at with that. And so, in termsof like your question about First ofall, like what what stands out to me isit sounds like he was a world-classrecruiter of the great people.And we often hear about companies thatare the opposite where it's just, youknow, the the the the person is thegenius, the product genius, or whatever.But like, you go look at Apple or any ofthe great companies that do things overtime, or like I just read the Elonbiography, same thing. Like, yeah, he'sspectacularly smart, no doubt.But, it's the legions of reallyworld-class people that he's able torecruit, bring in that are actuallygoing to be able to you know, developthe breakthroughs. You know, that's theother skill. So, what we just did anexample of a podcast alley-oop. So, Idid a good job dribbling down the courtand just lobbing the ball up in the airand you just slam dunked that [ __ ]brought it home. That was a very goodjob.All right, is this it? Is that the pod?Dude, I had a I had a midlife

01:09:25crisisyesterday. I was we were at the I'm asI'm staying at this like nice hotel andwe were at the pool and there was a girlthere who was just her friend It was herand a friend and her she just was liketo clearly taking like Instagram likeinfluencer pics. It's like pretendingshe's having a good time. She wasn'thaving a good time, but she's likepretending she's like posing as if likea really fun thing was happening and herfriend was like getting the right shotand then they would like quickly likedrop the drink and then you know, belike, "Okay, all right, next we need toOkay, come over here. Make it look likeI'm doing this." And that was happeningright next to me.And I was laughing at her, mocking herand judging her and then I was like,"I guess it's not so different what I doas I like my vlogger is like right overthere for my YouTube channel. I guess Iguess it's not that different what I'mdoing." I just posted a a video on mynew YouTube channel of me like workingout. It's not It's not that different, Iguess.Dude, the worst is now that I am anInstagram superstar is when I'm walkingon the street and I'm talking to the>> is the worst part of now being anInstagram superstar? Is walking on thestreet and talking to a camera. And thenthe worst part is the people if I'maround the same person and they hear medo a second take and so they know for afact that I'm not on a FaceTime. Uh thatis the worst part.

01:10:40That's the cuz>> And they know for a fact that I'm notgood enough to do it in one take.>> Oh my god, that's the worst part.>> a fact that I'm self-conscious about itand felt like what I said was a littlebit wrong and that I'm insecure and Iwanted to do it better and do do tryagain.Like honest question, is the is theloss of self-respect worth gain ofinfluence and money?Yeah.All right, carry on then.What are you talking about?Is that the stupidest question ever?That's it. That's the pod.