We decoded the business behind this influencer’s perfect life

When I was at the Tony Robbins event, he was like, you think I just woke up like this? I created this Tony Robbins motherfucker. I decided that that's who I needed to be. And then I created him. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel.

All right. I've got something that every woman listening to this is going to be saying to themselves, no duh. But I think it might be interesting to you. There's a chance that your wife has already indoctrinated you on this. But have you heard of this thing called Ballerina Farms?

Why does that sound familiar? But what is it? What's Ballerina Farms?

Awesome. I love that you don't know this. All right, so check this out. So there's this woman named Hannah Neelman, and I started following her on Instagram along with like 20 million other people. She's got 20 million followers across all of her platforms. So definitely was not an early adopter.

You discovered her.

Yeah. So yeah, you're welcome. But basically her content is like these like warmly lit videos where it's sort of a little Martha Stewart-y and it's her on her farm talking about how she's making like sourdough bread and she's making like, she's making her own, getting her own milk from the cows and making like different recipes and all this amazing stuff. And it's blown up and it's this whole category of influencer called the tradwife. Have you heard that term tradwife?

I've definitely heard tradwife. Definitely seen the TikToks, which are like somebody churning their own butter.

So when you say lifestyle, I almost think— I'm not even sure if that's the right word. It's either— the word I would have used is either aesthetic or escape. So I noticed this with, you know, my wife and my mom. They love to watch Bridgerton and it's The Crown. And there's this fascination with like this kind of royal England lifestyle or Bridgerton, which is like this fantasized version of that. And I think that in the same way that dudes will get really into sci-fi or Game of Thrones or different sort of era— Gladiator, there's like, you know, the whole meme around guys fantasizing about the Roman Empire. I think that there's a handful of these kind of escape aesthetics.

And if you position your, your products as part of that escape aesthetic, I think that you differentiate from the— you could sell the same commodity product but differentiate it. And what I would want to see is instead of people doing it for apparel, which is where this is most common, right? Apparel is the classic way that people do this. You'll find apparel brands that are golf brands and people wear who don't play golf. People buy running shoes, they don't run. And people will buy, you know, aesthetics that are, you know, summer in the Hamptons or whatever it is. And I think that it would be really interesting for people to do this with, like, dental care, for people to do this with supplements, to do this in categories that you wouldn't expect it in. I think it would work. I think that if you created the same same, you know, whether it's like creatine, collagen type of supplement brand, but instead of just looking like every other supplement brand, you look like you were part of a different aesthetic. Or same thing on any sort of everyday staples, consumables. I wonder what would happen. I'm not sure it would work, but I really wonder what would happen. Milk. You take a milk, you create a milk brand, but the milk brand looks like way further down the spectrum of like, you know, whether it's farm or even, you know, maybe a different, less expected direction. What do you think about that?

Well, what I'm describing is basically when I say lifestyle, I'm putting an emphasis on life. And what I mean by that is I have invested in a couple companies as well as I'm just a fan of certain bits of content where the person goes all in and they live a certain life and they bring me along with them. And I find that fascinating. And this woman, Hannah, gets a lot of hate because her husband, his father founded JetBlue. So he's, if he's not a billionaire, he's, whatever, he's up there, he's very rich. And so there's a lot of like, well, you can— it's easy for you, this and that, you know, which I think is nonsense. But what I've noticed is that I've started following these people on Instagram. Like, there's this one kid who you actually showed me, and he was like, the opening line for his Instagram was, I just graduated college and I had barely any money, but I've decided to move to rural Virginia and open up an Airbnb. And like, like there's this shtick where people actually live the life that they are wanting to live, and then they happen to sell a product that goes along with that life. And what I'm— the point I want to make is that I think that that is super underrated and not enough people do it, and brands could benefit from doing it a lot more than they currently are. So I used to work for this guy named Mike Wolfe. Mike was the star of the show called American Pickers, which when it was on the— on TV, or it still is on TV, but it's prime. It was like the second most popular show on TV. I think that they would get like 6 or 7 million viewers a week, whereas David Letterman was getting like 1 or 2 million. And the way that Mike got the show popular was he actually, and this was in early 2000s, this might, it might've been in the late '90s, where Mike's job was he would drive around the country and go to old barns, find interesting stuff and meet the people and find the stories of the people and the objects that he was buying. And he would— Yeah. Bring like a literal camcorder. This was before smartphones and it got picked up and it became this whole lifestyle. It was called picking. And there was this small niche that was quite large of people who identified with being pickers. They love collecting, antiquing. I also, I'm an investor of this thing called— All right, so this episode is all about excellence. A while back I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life and the team at HubSpot turned it into a 30-day operating system that you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems that have took me 10 years to figure out and shows how exactly I use them day to day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So if you want to build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show. There's this guy named Brent. Brent was partners with Ryan Holiday. And do you remember years ago, I think in 2014 or '13, there was an old abandoned mine town that was for sale for like $2 million. It was 500 acres.

You remember that? In California or Utah?

Colostrum.

Oh, that's cool.

Um, and he would, he didn't say like, I want to see what can happen. He was like, I will make it. It was very like manifestation oriented. Like I'm doing this. And so the haters loved it in the comments, but then there were some people who were pretty inspired by like what he was doing and like, hey, that's actually not bad. He actually is looking way more fit. Hey, actually he does have pretty good touch. Uh, you know, he's not bad. And so he started, uh, doing this and he actually like, you know, he kind of made it. Pretty far. So he got in legitimately great shape. If you go look at his videos, we put him on the screen here. He got really, he got pretty good at soccer. Like if for a guy who never touched a soccer ball. And then he started getting like all these like brand deals and opportunities to play on these like small, like 3-on-3, 7-on-7, the Adidas Cup. And so all this like kind of amazing stuff happened. Like, no, he didn't make it onto the US, you know, national team, but—

You don't have to.

He transformed his life. You don't have to. I bet his videos get more views than 8 of the 11 guys on those, the starting team on the actual World Cup team. And so in a way, he like, yes, he didn't make it, make it, but the man, that's pretty impressive how far he got. This guy changed his own life just with doing what I call like man on a mission content. So I have these like different content buckets in my head. One is called man on a mission. Another one is called, is like you said, like the sort of escape lifestyle where you say, oh, this is just how I live. Like I'm just the type of person who does this. There's this woman who goes viral on Twitter. Because she just walks every day and eats like natural food. So she'll just post a tweet. I think we talked about her before. She posts a tweet and the tweet's basically like, "Walked, you know, 6.5 miles and ate a chocolate cake." And it'll just be pictures of like the scenery where she walked and a giant chocolate cake that looks really great. It'll have like 10,000 likes on that one picture. And she just posts the same thing every day. That's the whole content shtick. And I think it's kind of amazing.

This idea of like, you can make this decision to become this person. You don't have to be the person at first. So for example, one of the reasons I love the man, the entrepreneur Ralph Lauren, is because he had this great line where he was like, you know, some people— He's like, I'm a Jewish guy from like New York City, and yet I sell like Western wear. Sometimes people would criticize me, but the fact is, is I would want to be more brave. And so I would sometimes wear like vintage military gear, or I would want to be like a little more adventurous and I would dress like a cowboy. Cowboy. And you could kind of tease me for being cosplaying, but the fact is, is then I eventually like would go on a farm and I would dress like this and you become this thing. Like I make a decision to become a little bit of a farmer and I own a ranch now. The point that I want to make to the listener is, and also to myself, I'm learning about this as well and I'm being inspired by it, is you can sort of just change who you are publicly and you don't need to start at all. In fact, probably you could— it's a better story to start at a horrible place where you're nothing like the person who you want to be or the aesthetic that you want to be. And I just think that it's a) more fun to do it and b) it will increase the odds that you will succeed. There's a guy who I'm going to talk with on Thursday. His name's Mark O'Brien. So check this guy out. So his old photos, when I used to look at him, he was a normal looking real estate guy in New York City and he wore a suit. But—

This guy AI? He looks like AI.

No, but this guy has a really striking look. And now on all of his more more recent photos, he's wearing like a white t-shirt and he's doing manly stuff like restoring townhomes. And his whole shtick, which from an outside— I'm gonna talk to him on, on Thursday, so I'll get a better sense of it— is he finds old brownstones in Brooklyn and you literally will see him bring a sledgehammer and start like renovating it, like breaking the stuff and explaining the story behind it. And this guy, if you look at his old photos, was wearing a suit and he just looked like this normal real estate guy. And he kind of like leaned into this like you know, this lifestyle to where now I think he actually is that person. And it's— I've been enamored by, by following his journey, and I'm just realizing how powerful it is. There's this other company called— I think it's called Maui Nui. They make beef jerky made out of the venison in Maui. You know what I'm talking about?

Right.

Yeah. And if you— and if you go to their Instagram handle, it doesn't say anything about how they're actually like making the stuff. Or how, like, you know, like for hunters and things like that, you could actually show them like doing the hunt, setting it up and how they're doing it ethically and why this is better. I just don't think that there's enough brands who are doing a good enough job of bringing you along because it's scary. It seems stupid at first. You might look dumb. And I just think that it's far more compelling and more people should do it. I think you can like figure out what are the innate feelings that we all have right now. I think that there's this innate feeling. I think there's categories of like cleanliness. Both in terms of the food that you eat, but your home of like feeling clean and feeling tidy. I think there's this whole mother category of how do you care and protect your children the best? I think there's another category of people who want to master something and be craftsmen and be great at stuff. And I just think there's this massive opportunity. It's always existed, though, to look at what popular shows and content existed in the '90s and 2000s and just redo that with your phone and bring people along with you. You know, you could be like the Anthony Bourdain where you look at restaurants and you could start selling products. And I just think that it's— well, people will often say, well, there's so many other people doing this. Well, there's always room for more. There's always room for better. And it's just an underrated tool to go all in on a lifestyle and then eventually sell a product.

Yeah. On one hand, what you're saying sounds like you're saying there's this great opportunity, which I think makes most people think there's this new opportunity.

No, it's not new.

And I think in this situation it's— no, what you're saying is not new. It's being done, it's been done, and it will always be done.

And what you're saying— But it is easier than ever.

Exactly.

The power to reinvent yourself, to dramatically do it, and to never bore the audience. Have you ever heard of a guy named Anthony I think his name is Anthony Mihaljevic. You know this guy?

No, no. What's he do?

Well, Anthony J. Mihaljevic, born into a family that had a lot of trouble, blah, blah, blah. He ended up reinventing himself as a guy you might know named Tony Robbins.

Oh.

And I think there's a lot of power by labeling yourself. So like you wake up the next day. I remember when I, I was like mildly fit and I woke up the next day and I was like, I'm an athlete. And I used to joke with you and, but it wasn't a joke. I was like, I'm a fitness influencer now.

You said it with a smile, but you weren't joking.

No, I was like, and I, and I think that like you can tease me and make fun of me and all you want, and I think I deserve it. But like there is power to like labeling yourself as something and you are that, not I'm working to become this.

There's this old school book. It's, it's impossible to read. It's like so dense at this point, but the title itself actually tells you everything you need to know. It's called Your Word is Your Wand. I think it's by Florence Scovel.

That's a great title.

And the basic idea is that the words that come outta your mouth are like spells that you cast. You cast on yourself, you put yourself in a trance, as well as others around you. And so be very careful the words that come out of your mouth. My trainer always says this. He goes, when I say something differently than I used to say it, you know, one day I'm going to versus I am, or, or I do, or I haven't done this yet. The word yet is actually a very powerful word. It implies that it is inevitable. For example, my, my company that I named 10+ years ago, before I had any, anybody, before I made my first million, my LLC was called Inevitable Outcomes. And I basically thought it was, it's an inevitable outcome that I will be successful and I'm gonna invest in other things that I view to be inevitable as well, that they will be successful. You know, my, my trainer made these, this shirt that said I am, and it said the two most important words in the English language are I am, because whatever comes after it defi— you know, defines your destiny, just decides your fate. Just take it as a test. Just try to word, like, riff off top of your head. I'm the kind of guy who, what comes out after that? Is it, I'm the kind of guy who, you know, when things get tough, I fold. And then you could define like whatever you say is true, right? It will be true. It will always be true. And so, you know, I think one of my superpowers is that I'm a pretty analytical guy by nature, by training. And if you can marry that with a little bit of the soft stuff, right? Not just EQ of how you deal with people, but the sort of, you know, the sort of manifestation world that sounds like total hocus pocus. But when you start to realize like, Actually, the way you think will shape the actions you take, right? What you believe will change what you do, and what you do changes your results. Once you realize that, you will approach things somewhat differently. I think being willing to go kind of Eastern/Western in that way, I think it can take you very far.

My most annoying trait, according to my wife and probably everyone who knows me, is I'm like a stickler for words. So when people say like, well, it's just semantics, I'm like, yeah, it is just semantics, and it's just really important. We are purposely using certain words. So like, for example, I'll say to someone like, well, what do you think about, what do you think about this? They'll say, I don't know. It's like, well, I didn't ask what you know. I said, what do you think? So, man, what's the point of words? What's the point of words if we're not going to use the right words?

That's right. I was, I remember being at Twitch after we got acquired and on the 9th floor at Twitch was the, the, the main meeting room. And that's where the CEO Emmett would sit and the COO at the time, Sarah, she would sit, they'd sit at the head of the table and then basically every 30 to 45 minutes, a new team would come in. So then the trust and safety team comes in, the growth team comes in, the mobile team comes in, the international team comes in, and they basically come and they just dump their problems on the table. And then the CEO and the COO would try to help them, you know, work through it. And I remember sitting at a bunch of these tense meetings and I thought for, at the beginning I thought, man, this Emmett guy's kind of a genius, but he's an idiot. Like he's really smart, but man, he gets focused. He gets hung up on the dumbest things because he would always get hung up on words. And you could tell that the teams hated it, that he would get into these what he would call the Socratic debates about things, and he would just be debating the team endlessly about the most, like, minor-sounding things. And over time, I came to appreciate that, well, there were some times that he took it too far. There's a cost to doing it, but there was a great benefit in doing it too. I remember in one meeting, uh, he was talking to the team that decides the homepage, and they said something like, Oh yeah, but that's algorithmic versus editorial. And he just like got hung up on this. He's like, what's edit— what does editorial mean? And then they like laughed and he's like, no, what's the de— what do you mean when you say the word editorial? And they're like, well, there's like editors who pick it, so it's editorial. He goes, and who are these editors and how do they pick it? And he didn't— it's not like he had some destination in mind that he was leading them into some trap. He literally wanted to understand the specific meaning of the words that were coming out of their mouth. And get a shared understanding of what each of the words mean. Because in his view, in his view, it was like, we will never get to the right solution if you say words that mean one thing and I say those same words and they mean another thing, we are screwed. And so he would always go to this painstaking, like, semantical debates with people that for a while seemed like, are we just going in circles here? Like, what does this really matter? And, um, you know, there was a bit of a method to his madness that you saw play out, you know, maybe not in that first meeting, but 3 weeks from then or 4 weeks from then or 7 weeks from then when the teams and then realized they had to be really precise in their language and they had to really know the details of their shit because it would be tested. And even just knowing that he might ask made sure that they came in knowing everything about what they were going to say and being way more precise about their thinking, their level of clarity on their thinking.

Well, I've heard of MP Materials. I didn't know the backstory of Mountain Pass Mine. How have you heard of that?

Hedge fund guys.

Well, it went public. It was like a SPAC, right? It was like a Chamath SPAC, I'm pretty sure, or something like that.

He did it?

Uh, either he did or he did the pipe or something like that. I'd heard of it at that point. It was like a rare earth company and I was like, what are rare earths anyways? And how does this work? So yeah, I've looked at it, you know, just kind of in passing that way, but I didn't know, didn't know the backstory. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze Assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Another kind of World Cup thing that's going on right now, you've probably seen this, is all of the, international tourists that are coming to America for the World Cup and discovering America for the first time. And it's sort of like when a friend goes into town and suddenly you're like, okay, yeah, let's go to Alcatraz. And you've been living here for 5 years. You've never been to Alcatraz, but because somebody's visiting, you suddenly will go that week. Right now on, on social media, there's a whole swath of people. Have you seen these that are going viral? So Freddy LA is one of them. But basically this guy like comes to America for the World Cup and he's just touring through America, kind of like you did when you, Rode your motorcycle around America. And, um, he's also like this one, for example, we found another surreal, surreal place on our way. I know some people will say I'm too positive about everything, but this place is crazy. And he's at an out— like a Bass Pro Shop Outdoor World. And it's just pictures of like, you know, there's just the, the enormity of this place. There's a giant fish tank. He's like, there's a shooting range inside the store. He's like, they're literally selling rifles in here. And so he's just been stopping at like Buc-ee's and he's been stopping at like You know, we found this river in Chattanooga, and we're in a tube, and the guy said this, and, you know, at the airport, we asked this, and the guy just gave us a ride. It was incredible. And so he's just like— you know when you have kids and you get to, like, rediscover the world again because your kids are discovering the world? And it's like, yeah, you know what? If you take, like, a straw and you, like, squish the paper down, and then you drop a piece of— a drop of water on it, it expands like a snake. And you're like— And their mind is blown. And you remember when your mind was blown when you were 7 and that happened, but you just, you know, took it for granted, forgot about it, and just throw away all your, your straw paper now. And so this guy basically, there's this group of, of guys on, on Twitter and Instagram that are coming to America that are just posting all these things that are very like run-of-the-mill American things, but they're amazed by it. And it totally like makes you proud to be an American in a way and like rediscover like, yeah, do you know what? Like America's pretty awesome actually. And we have these kind of amazing things. And actually, have you guys been to Waffle House? No. I can't wait for Freddy to go to Waffle House, right? You want him to go to the next sort of like part of real America. It's like more entertaining than the World Cup to me.

Look at the title. German tourist Freddy is going viral as he visits Louisiana on the way to World Cup. That's awesome.

Exactly.

There's this great book. I'm sharing it now. I don't know how to pronounce her name, but it's Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip. I read this a few years ago. It's so good. So basically, and it has very few reviews on, on Amazon. It has 40 reviews and paperback copy is $400. And so in 1935, well into the era of Soviet communist Russia, two Russians came over and they took a road trip throughout America and they describe what they're seeing. And this book is one of my favorites. It's so good to hear the history of America from people and like what they're seeing. And it's very similar to what you're— what people would experience now, just like It's huge and everything's big and like there's processed food everywhere. It's funny, the same stuff in 1935 people would say today.

Yeah, I'm into this. So let me, let me show you this one. So this is this Japanese guy and he goes, USA, a Mexican restaurant. We have not ordered anything yet and yet the food is already arriving. Chips, salsa, unrequested, free. I stopped the waiter. We have not earned these. They just come with the table. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation. Weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with with an interest of feeling. Here the gift arrives before you have even proven you could pay for dinner. It is not an appetizer. It is a declaration. We trust you. Eat. I eat with the gravity the moment deserved. And then I must report calmly, this basket is empty. A new one appears. Did we refill? It's bottomless. Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined. My friend warned me, don't fill up on chips, dude. Too late. I had accepted 3 baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished. An unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not uncomfortable. I had been defeated by courtesy. Generosity arrives before the request can be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I made peace with my basket. One basket. Two at most. Who am I deceiving? There's no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

That's beautiful. There's no way that's real. Is that real?

I don't think it's real, but it's hilarious. So I don't know if it's real or not, but have you seen the, the, all the Japanese like lore that's just being honored in America for the World Cup? Have you seen what's going on?

No, man, you're, you're World Cup deep. I'm in New York City. I just got done like burning down a bus because of the Knicks.

It's like, you know, one time I went to this basketball game and I was in the owner's suite and there was just all these like Instagram hoes basically there and they all had their phone out and I was like, wow, they're so like, they're so into capturing like the second quarter of this game. And I realized all the phones are pointed at them, not at the game. And that's me with the World Cup right now. I'm the hoe where I don't watch the game. I only watch the crowd. And there's this incredible thing with the Japanese crowd where they're all waving these blue— what looks like blue, like kind of like— is it flags? What is that? No, it's a trash bag. And so they use trash bags to cheer. And at the game, it's kind of like their version of carrying a sign or waving a foam finger or a flag. And they were like, "Why are they all waving trash bags?" Like, "Oh, because then we can cheer. It makes sound. It has a color. But then we can just clean up after ourselves on the way out." And they clean up their whole section using the trash bags at the end. And they showed the locker room of the Japanese national team, and every single item was folded properly in the middle. The locker room is pristine. And that's how the Japanese soccer team is leaving the locker rooms. And I'm like, "God." Yeah. If Japan couldn't go any higher on my list of like incredible cultures and people that, you know, you sort of have to see it to believe it. They're just— the stock continues to go up. It's, it's untethered with reality.

Before UFC was a thing, there was called Strikeforce and it was a Japanese fighting league or whatever. And it's— they're the best videos to watch because in the crowd they're silent. And then you hear, you hear the punches and it's really hard to watch almost. And they only cheer on like the epic big punches. And it's like very strange and awesome at the same time. You know, I think a guy who we both admire, I think he's one of your heroes, definitely one of mine, is Jesse Itzler. And it's this idea of like buying into the lifestyle. And I think that in particular right now we're in this phase where people are trying to balance like, how do I work hard in my job? And particularly women, how do I work hard at my job and be a good mother? But same thing for fathers. How do I work hard and be a family person while also being fit. Like I see everyone—

Did you see, did you see Jesse's story on Instagram the other day?

I just know that right now he's like, he's like Uncle Rico. Jesse wrote the song for Go New York Knicks, you know, Go New York. And whenever the Knicks start playing again, that's his, that's his story that it brings up. And I love it. I'm, I'm not sick of it.

So he, he was at Madison Square Garden when they won, I think Game 4 maybe. And he leaves and he sees this guy who's giving like rickshaw rides or whatever. What do they call it in New York where it's like the guy's biking and you sit in the carriage behind it, whatever that's called.

Yeah.

Like, so he hops in as billionaires do. And he was like, and that guy's playing the Go New York, Go New York, Go. And he's like, that's my song. And the guy's like, no. And he's like, what's your name? And he like looks it up. He's like, that's your song. And he's like, I gotta give you a ride around town. So he just rode around all of New York with this guy and he just posted it. And there's, there's a small set of people that I feel like they, they don't have any more time than the rest of us, but they seem to be getting a lot more out of their time. And there's something to be studied and learned. And there's a reason that I get interested in these folks. Nick Gray is one of these people. I think Jesse's one of these people. There's a handful of these people that seem to kind of go with the whatever way the ball of life is bouncing. They seem to just experience more and have a sort of like tap dancing through life sort of experience. Even when they, even when they do hard things, it just seems like, you know, enjoyable in this way because they're like surrendered into it. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but that's something I think the art of living well is, is not well understood. And, you know, for me, it's a, it's a bit of a mission to understand what gets you more out of the hours rather than like always feeling like if only I had more time, then I'd get more. And it's like, actually, I think kind of bullshit. I think, A, you're wasting a ton of time either doing fake busy work or just on social media. And two, even if I gave you an extra 4 hours, I don't think you'd get any more out of life. I think you'd just fill it with more of the same. More of the same feelings you currently are having, whether they're stress or anxiety or any of the others.

I've been meeting these people. So I, I live in a building in Manhattan and there's rich people and there's poor people in this building. And I really like that. And you, we were contemplating getting a big, we got a great place, but we were, we were like, oh, should we get more space for more kids and all this stuff? And then I met this family that has, uh, it's a family of 4, uh, husband and wife and 2 girls, twins. And the girls are now 18 or 19 or something like that. And they've lived in the same one-bedroom apartment for 30 years. So the mom and dad live there. And I was like, how do you guys like, what's your sleeping arrangement? And they're like, well, mom and dad get the bedroom and we just, we have like this Murphy bed that we sleep in the living room. And part of me was like, obviously it's like, ooh, I don't want that. But then the other part, they start telling me these stories and I actually go to their apartment and we all hang out and I'm like, there's a lot of inconveniences here, but there's a lot of conveniences here at the same time, which is you guys are all together at the same time. And it's kind of nice. And I think that like, like, we are looking at this other place and I'm like, there's two living rooms. Why? I don't want two living rooms. I want one living room. I want everyone to be in the same room at the same time all the time. And I think that like there is this inherent want that many of us have, myself included, of more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger. And I just don't think that that is oftentimes the answer to creating a memorable life. And—

There's an amazing post that's kind of gone a little bit viral. You might have read it, um, by Julie Zhao.

Yeah, I read your comment on it.

So the blog post is called— yeah, Julie, um, the blog post is called "To All the Folks Who Are About to Be Rich," and it was released the day before the SpaceX IPO. And she basically starts with like, you did it, congrats, like all the hard work, blah, blah, blah. You've led you to this day. Your stock is about to be liquid. You're about to be rich. And she, I think when she was at Facebook, when Facebook IPO'd, and so she was kind of like telling a bit of the, like, almost like your older sibling, like, hey, like, you're gonna go to college, like, guess what? It's gonna be crazy a little bit, and here's some things that are gonna happen. And so she's almost describing, like, what happens from here. And there were so many incredible one-liners, uh, in this. And, you know, part of it is like, you know, scientific studies say that, like, you know, blah, blah, blah.

After one year, lottery winners default to the same happiness that they were before.

Yeah, exactly. And so there's, there's one line I love. She talked, she talked about like the 3 groups of people from when she saw the, the Facebook thing. Some of my former colleagues slipped away from tech like aquarium fish being flushed out into the ocean, off to find their true homes. Engineers who decided they're not gonna code anymore. Uh, I saw people become chefs, hoteliers, artists, therapists, writers, teachers, parents. These groups always fascinated me because I was watching some sort of Cinderella transformation. Who would you bloom into? Once you were given the gift of true freedom. So that's like group 1, she calls the fish. And then group 2, she calls the leisure class, which basically people who say, oh, I'm going to pursue this lifestyle of leisure. So I'm going to travel to all these wonderful places, Michelin-star restaurants, have a sleek new home with all the fancy furniture. Forget, forget IKEA. I'm going to do the Disneyland VIP tour, Coachella. I'm going to buy a $500 hoodie from Japan. And then she's like, and then there's the others who continued on the same track in tech. They become VCs or founders and they continue to march to try to get a higher high for the next few years. They're chasing the thrill of the climb. And she's not really saying one is better than the other, but she, she does sort of have her own take. But she says, I saw it play out in all three groups. I know, I know people for whom the money simply let them check off some goals like paying off their parents' house or having enough for retirement. Maybe they upgrade their car or their house, and largely they stop. They didn't change how they carried themselves. They didn't change who they hung out with. They didn't— they did not take up The Game of More. And so she talks about this idea of the game of more. And she was, I think the way she said it was like, there is a game and that game is called more. And once the money lands, a question will be waiting for you to think, think deeply. Am I still playing? And I just thought like, if you just take this idea of there is a game and a game called more, but it's more of what? What do you want more of? Do you want more leisure? Do you want more travel? Do you want more challenge? Do you want more impact? Do you want more authenticity to who you are? Do you want more joy? Do you want more kids? Like, what do you want more of? And I think this is a very powerful question of if you assume for a second that everybody is playing some game of more, right? We've not renounced our desires. We all wake up today, we're going to go do some shit, but in the name of what? And I just think it's actually pretty powerful to put a name on like, what is the, what is the game of more that you're playing right now? I think it's actually a really, really hard question. I think you might be embarrassed by the answer to those questions if you if you looked at your actions and you said, what is this action in the game, in the seek, uh, what am I seeking more of? You know, if I'm gonna post a story of my vacation right now on Instagram, what am I seeking more of? I'm playing the game of more, and that's a game of more validation, more status, more prestige. Um, you know, I, I like that I don't post stories because I've opted out of that, but like I have opted into a game of more in other flavors. And so I just think this is a really, really powerful idea. I don't know what you think about that.

Well, I want to know, did she say which one she has found people to be most happy in? And amongst your friend group, I believe she's mostly referring to people who overnight are now liquid, which is a very interesting phenomenon. I've seen it happen many times.

Not rich to super rich.

Yeah. So versus like someone who has been a lawyer for a long time and they've like made money throughout their career. I was in the category of I wasn't and then I was all of a sudden. I think you have been like accumulating along as you've gone. And but we know a bunch of people who have overnight made it. Have you noticed any similarities or commonalities of who ends up in a place that more people would desire to be in that place?

Yeah, I mean, this is probably the thing I'm figuring out the most. So I have some thoughts, but I bet in 5, 10 years I will have a much simpler, wiser perspective on this than I do today. Is your question of what's the right answer or what's your question really?

Well, there's no right answer, but I'm just saying, like, can you stereotype each bucket of what you've noticed? I only have maybe one friend who has done the first one where he's opted out.

So here's, here's a couple of observations. I think there is actually a better and worse, even if there's not a right answer. And I would say the leisure path doesn't seem to result in anything good.

Uh, you know, I completely agree.

Sure, sure. Take it, take it, take a few trips. Sure. You could upgrade your car or your house, whatever. That's fine. But the diminishing returns are, are very real and very dramatic in that path. And the people who seem to do that and seem to wander, they sort of lose themselves in a way that like every, you know, everybody sort of looks back. It's almost like funeral-esque when people talk about them at, at some point because they're sort of seeking something, but they're in the wrong place, right? It's like searching for your keys, but this is not where you drop them. And so, uh, that path actually does genuinely seem to be worse. I would say, um, very few people can do what I call slay the money monster. So very, very, very, very, very few people can actually achieve financial independence by my definition. So most people feel that financial independence is the ability to buy whatever you want. You have the freedom to buy, to do, to go, to fly, to, to whatever. And it's actually freedom from that you want. Financial independence to me is not the ability to buy whatever you want. It's that you make decisions not based on money. So sometimes that's about buying what you want, right? You might order a certain dish or buy organic or whatever. You might buy things because you're choosing what you want and not based on the pricing. But for the most part, it's you choose to, whatever your next project is, you didn't do it because this could be a 10x or this could whatever, right? So freedom from, I think, is very, very rare. The second thing I would say is very, very rare. It seems valuable when you have it. And by the way, like Jesse, we've talked about earlier, Jesse's a great example of this. Like, I've talked to him on the phone about ideas that could make a ton of money that we're like, yeah, that would make— we could be making $20 million a year if we just did this. And then we're both like, I don't know, man. He goes— and I was like, what do you really want to do, Jesse? He's like, I think I just like to ride my bike. He's like, I want to go do these races and triathlons and Ironmans. He's like, I think I just like riding my bike, actually. And because we both agree, like, money at a certain point has very little utility to you. So at the beginning of your money curve, when you're, let's say, in debt, money has a tremendous amount of utility. When you have no savings and no safety net, money has tremendous amount of utility. And then as you get to be comfortable, money has less utility, but it can— if it buys you back your time, you don't have to work, you get way more utility. At a certain point, you're trading very valuable hours of life energy for useless dollars that you have no ability to even spend to improve your life. And I find that vast majority of our friends who have achieved that, they still make that horrible trade of valuable life hours for useless dollars. And so I think that that's like the, probably the most common observation is, man, that must be really hard to kick, that most people can't do that. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. Uh, they make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe 7 or 8 businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? Uh, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like, very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards. Uh, one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com/personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and ColumNA, members FDIC. The other observation I have is that you have— like, man needs a quest, man needs a project, but you got to choose what is the quest and what is the project that is going to light you up. And I don't think very many people are able to, to do a very good job of that because we are incredibly mimetic creatures. So if all our friends are starting companies, we start companies. If all our friends are investing, we start investing. And we rarely ask ourselves, what do I really want? You know, there's this idea of like memetic, which is René Girard and Peter Thiel have like really, really popularized this idea around what we want, what we want because other people want it. And so I think a very valuable trait in humans that I've sort of started to observe is people who are anti-memetic, meaning people who seem to want things from their own internal volition and not because other people want those same things.

Tell me examples of people you know who fit in that category.

Nick Gray is incredibly anti-mimetic. He is surrounded by goofballs like us that are always on to the next company and the next investment and the next this and the next that. And Nick Gray was like, I'm gonna prioritize hosting cocktail parties. I'm gonna prioritize, you know, writing my blog. I'm gonna prioritize going and traveling to India and living like a villager in India. He wants what he wants and he wants it because he wants it. And you could tell because he's very lit up while doing it. And you could tell the people who don't because they have everything and they're still not lit up. Why? Because they're choosing things that, that other people want. Tony Robbins had told a story once at his event where he, he was talking about eating dinner with his wife and she said this thing where she was like, you know, the waitress brings out her burger and it's a burger with, you know, pickles and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they were talking about this idea of like, are you even doing what you really want or are you just sort of still programmed and conditioned? By your upbringing, by society, by your friends, by whatever. And she's like, whose burger is this? Like, why do I even order with pickles? I don't even like pickles that much. Maybe I should start ordering differently, right? Like, and I think that that metaphor applies to a lot of life. Like a lot of what's around you is a burger you ordered that's like, is this even how I like my burgers? Maybe I like my burgers, you know, medium or rare. You know, maybe I like this, maybe I like that. And so once you sort of become alert to it, you might start to observe examples of people who, who operate this way. Like, I think Palmer Luckey is incredibly anti-mimetic. Um, you know, he was doing everything— every project he's picked is incredibly unpopular when he picked it. This is sort of the, the test, right? Like, how popular is the thing you're doing amongst the people who you associate with or want to be like? And, you know, doing virtual reality goggles when he was 19, living in a trailer park, you know, he was not like keeping up with the Joneses, you know? And then even afterwards when it happened, he's— he stayed wearing his Hawaiian shirts and his jorts and his flip-flops. He didn't suddenly start wearing, you know, designer clothes and this and that. He didn't become a venture capitalist. He didn't start worrying about his summer vacations. He then went and worked in the defense industry, started building weapons when that was incredibly unpopular to do in Silicon Valley. You were seen as sort of a black sheep for doing that. It was hard to get funding for doing something like that because it was incredibly unpopular. So you look for people who do unpopular things because to them it's what they want.

There's this book I read last year called Status and Culture, and it was this like idea of what does high status mean and how does that impact trends, whether it be fashion or whatever. And the book's author, his one of his points was to be inauthentic is the lowest status thing. And if you look at all the people who you admire, they're truly— whether they've become that person or they're born that way, both are fine. They are truly authentic. And if you look at like who we admire, for example, I was just reading about this mathematician. Have you heard of this guy? His name's Grigori Perelman.

No. Who's that?

Well, he's one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize.— or sorry, the Nobel Prize for math, I guess, or was it economics? I forget. I think it was— there's a math one. And he turned it down. And he's like, I'm not— I'm not about this. I didn't do this for this reason. And then like someone calls him to like say, hey, you won the prize. And his— his famous quote was, you're disturbing me from picking mushrooms. And he hung up and he never collected the prize.

He never collected the prize. Yeah, exactly.

And you hear about these guys that are rebellious like this and And what I've noticed is that the worst thing that you can do if you're going to be someone like, for example, I think I've fallen partially in two of the categories of the three that you've mentioned, and I've been a little bit half pregnant with them. And I think the worst thing that you could do is to be unbalanced about where you fall and to go all in on which type of person you want to be and to not half-ass it and to go all in.

Not half.

Yeah, it's a very scary— it's a very scary feeling. But if you do go all in, so for example, I don't like everything Palmer Luckey does or says, But I respect the hell of the fact that he seems authentic and he does believe the way that he acts and says. But if you look at other people, for example, some of the times you'll hear Elon say something and you're like, dude, that's cringe. Why is that cringe? It's like, well, it's cringe because I don't think that you truly feel that way and you're just doing this for laughs. And like, that's like the, the idea of authenticity.

Yeah, exactly. Look at an example of somebody who's incredibly anti-mimetic. Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett became at one point the richest man in the world. He lived in the same house in Omaha. He drove the same car. He liked his breakfast from McDonald's. He liked to drink Coke. You know, he, he loved to read. So he read. He resisted basically every, every fad and trend. He did not participate in the tech bubble. Basically, he did not participate in tech altogether because he didn't understand it. And he stayed true to his principles, right? Loved to read, so he read. He loved to play bridge, so he played bridge. He had certain small set of friends. He stayed with them. He closed down his fund at one point because he was like, I just don't see good opportunities. He goes, I think every— what everybody's doing in the market right now seems crazy. I can't understand it. And the fools are getting rich. So I just, I'd rather not play than play their way. This is literally like the definition of anti-money. He literally closed down the Buffett partnership after like he had run it up to like $100 million. He'd gone from like a couple hundred thousand to like—

Yeah, in the '60s.

To 100 million in the '60s or '70s, something like that. And I'm like, damn, that's incredible. And so, and then I think, you know, practically speaking, it's kind of like, you know, when you want to get fit, like if you were to advise me, you're like, all right, Sean, you've been talking about getting fit. Let's get real. All right. You want to get fit? Here's the first thing you need to do. Here's the second thing you do. What would be in the top 3 of things you need to do if you're, if you're real about getting fit?

Probably eat your body weight in grams of protein.

So you pick one metric that you're going to optimize for that, like, is a non-negotiable daily set point that you're trying to hit. Okay.

Max? I would say probably walk 10,000 steps while lifting weights 3 days a week.

And what's usually the leak for somebody who's, who's trying to get fit, but they keep snacking or they're eating late? What's the solve for that? Because that's the, that's the problem. How do you solve that?

You remove barriers. So, for example, the day you say you want to get fit, you immediately go to the gym and buy a 1-year membership, or the day you want to eat better, you immediately throw everything away that you think is bad. You have to remove all—

Just don't have it in the house. And so that— I think there's— what's the equivalent of that in terms of living life well or living this sort of anti-mimetic life where you actually— if we take this train of logic, which is that you will be most lit up and happiest when you're living authentically and in line with what you really want and living in line with your own values, To me, it's basically like you— if you spend all day, you spend 3 hours a day looking at other people on Instagram and TikTok and the way they're living their life, I think you're basically— it's the equivalent of having like a free vending machine of snacks in every bedroom of your house.

Yes. Immersion. Total immersion.

To dress better, I unfollowed everyone. I only followed people I wanted to dress like.

Did I tell you the story of when we were hanging out with, uh, MrBeast and he told me the story about getting fit?

Well, I know that he painted a thing on his wall, which you'd explain. You gotta explain what that, what he painted.

So I was hanging out with him. I was every, we see him every year, once a year. So I was like, dude, you got, in incredible shape. You know, congrats, man. Like, how'd you do it? What was the, what was the thing? And he goes, you see that really jacked dude right there? And he points over at like a guy who thought was like his bodyguard or something. He's like, that's my trainer. He's just with me everywhere I go. He's watching everything I eat, everything I do. And I just hang out with him a lot. He goes, then I told all my friends, like, you know, his boys that he's grown up with, that he does, you know, all his videos with. And he's like, hey, I'm getting fit and this is going to be a lot easier for me if you get fit too. And you have to be as committed as I am. Otherwise, I'm not gonna be able to hang out with you. He's like, 'Cause if I'm hanging out with you and you're eating pizza, that's too hard for me. I'm gonna have to suddenly resist pizza. So like, how about we just all do this? Or if you're gonna be the guy eating pizza, just know that I'm not gonna be hanging out with you as much because like, I just can't do that. I'm, this is my priority, so I'm gonna do this. And basically like changing your peer group, what usually means is like you go join a different set of peers. You move to a city. Of really ambitious people if you want to, you know, go start a company or move to Hollywood if you want to be an actor, or you, you know, start to go to the gym with people who go to the gym every day because it'll become a part of your lifestyle. Well, he was like, for his own friends, he's like, you need to change your lifestyle because I'm changing mine. And otherwise this is not going to work. We're not going to be hanging out very much. And I just thought that's actually like, again, a very direct path to the outcome. You brainwash yourself. —But you use your lizard brain or your monkey brain to your own benefit rather than having it used against you all the time.

I'm just going to steal this word for word as some of our ad copy for Hampton. Thank you.

All right, man. Well, good talking to you on this podcast.

Mahalo, dog.

Not in Hawaii. Actually, that's good. That's good. That's a good cover story. Bye. All right. See ya. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back. All right. Let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast. Cause if you're listening to this, you like podcasts and what's better than one podcast, another podcast. And let me tell you another podcast you should check out. It's called Success Story. If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing Q&A sessions with successful business leaders, or hearing keynote presentations, or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, this is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.