How to Interact with Famous People, The In-Person Event Playbook, and More

And it's genius. And, um, I've been a part of one or two of those types of conversations and I was like, oh wow, these guys are like vaults filled with gold.

I met a famous person this weekend. Um, I went and saw Jimmy, uh, is it Yang or Wang? Um, the comedian, uh, I think Jimmy O.

Yang or something.

Oh yeah, well, it's Jimmy O. I forget his last name, but he's, uh, what was his character in Silicon Valley? Jing Yang.

Jing Yang, yeah.

And he's a comedian and he was an awesome guy. And my friend is dating him, Bree.

And, uh, funny in person or not?

Yeah, he's awesome. He was awesome.

Like, comedian funny? Like, you just talk to him? Were you like, were you like Wow, this person should be a comedian if they weren't.

No, he was just really insightful and he had like really good, strong opinions and he told stories well. I mean, I think you could actually do it if you were to sit down and write a bit. I actually think that you have the same traits. But no, he was just a really nice, thoughtful guy. But he was like legit famous to where everywhere we went, people would talk to him and it was pretty, pretty cool to see. And I imagine quite annoying for him. Because the people who are fans of him, because he doesn't actually talk like that, you know, he's American, right? Right, right.

And but they're fans of him. They're fans of Jin Yang.

Yeah. Well, they are fans of him, particularly the Asian community. They love him because, well, he's just like, he's like representing nicely. But basically they come up to like, like a white guy came up to him and kind of said something a little inappropriate. And it was like rooted in like the Silicon Valley show. Right. And like they think that he has an accent and things like that. And that's super annoying. Particularly in Austin where there's tons of like white bros. So I imagine that could be annoying, but he was legit famous and it was kind of cool to see.

When you're around people who are like, you know, famous in their world, uh, do you, how do you act? Do you like, do you go door A, treat them like a normal person? In fact, almost disregard their fame. B, nerd out about, you know, asking them a zillion questions about, you know, the show and what blah, blah, blah. Like, You know, basically to ask them all the questions they probably heard before, but with enthusiasm or C, something else. What do you do, dude?

So I do, I do B, but I do it in a very direct way, kind of like the podcast where, where it could tell that I'm like really confident, but I'm asking questions that everyone wants to know. So I'm like, so what are you like kind of nagging them? Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, so what's it like? Here's a tiny example. I've got a friend of a friend who had cancer and he lost his leg. And when I first saw him, I was like, what's going on, man? Are you crushing it at pull-ups because you're lighter now? Like, how many pounds did you lose off that leg? And he like really quickly opened up because he was like, oh, you just got that out. You got it. We got it out of the way.

You're not acting like it's not here, but you're also not making a huge deal out of it.

You're like, you're better looking in person. I watch the show.

Yeah, yeah. You're way taller than I thought. Yeah. You're not nearly as slight of build as I was expecting.

Yeah. Anyway, you're actually funny.

Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah.

You're— it's like You know, I don't care what people say. I think you're great.

You ever, uh, have you ever been to a restaurant and the owner walks around just greeting people and asking how things are?

Of course.

How's it going? What are you doing here? Yeah.

And I would just, and I had that energy and I was able to meet so many people with that energy.

Restaurant owner energy, dude. That's so good.

It's a good one. And so I like at HustleCon when we're hosted HustleCon or when you and I are hosting one of our events, like you, you kind of know everyone knows who you are and, and so you kind of know that you have the feeling where you can just walk up and talk to anyone and they'll know what's up, right? You have that energy when you're trying to meet girls and it's the best.

Dude, that's so good. Like, I'm just going to start wearing like a small dish towel on my waist and go to restaurants and then just, yeah, just, just walk around, just have a drink and just be walking around, you know, greeting each table, making sure everything's going smoothly for them. Yeah.

You're not, and you're not lying.

You're not telling them. I never said it. I never said it. You assumed. Based on my big restaurant energy here.

All right, bro, I got a few interesting things to run by you. Do you have a— did you have a lot left over from last time?

Yeah, I kind of did. Can I tell you about one?

Yeah.

I don't know, like business slash idea, this niche that's like got my attention right now. So, I— did I talk about this the other day? How I went to that, the Blippi show? Did I tell you about this? No. All right. So, so do you know who Blippi is? Have you ever heard of Blippi?

I don't know what that is.

No. All right. So like, remember, like back there we had Barney or like, you know, like Pee-wee Herman or whatever. He's like, it's like it's a dude. So he kind of looks like Pee-wee Herman or whatever, but he's more like a Barney or, you know, Sesame Street style show. So basically there's a guy who went on YouTube, created this brand called Blippi, and he, he's entertaining. So he'd be like, oh, and by the way, the funny thing that he does is there's no like set. He just goes into like, hey, we're at the aquarium, but they just go in like after 9 PM. It's like closed down. And so it's just, they have it all to themselves, like, hey, we're here in Las Vegas at this rock climbing studio. And so he just uses that to film his thing, but he gives it a shout out at the beginning of the video. The video gets like 40 million views, so it's like, uh, well, you know, it's worth it to let these guys film there. And he just like goes around and he'll basically just play with toys. He'll be like, I'm at an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese, and he'll go play with a bunch of toys, and there's like music and whatever overlaid.

And it's the same guy. I'm looking at him now. It's the same guy every single time.

It is, except for as he blew up and got famous, then they switched him out with just a stunt double for a bit. And so like that guy's like a substitute teacher sometimes. And then sometimes Blippi comes back. Uh, but like the main guy is the main guy and he wears his outfits like this blue outfit with his orange glasses. He like always looks the same. So anyways, my daughter loved Blippi. We used to watch a ton of Blippi and all of a sudden we see this ad that says, um, Blippi, like the live show is coming to Oakland. And so we were like, oh shit. And so instantly my wife buys tickets for, for all of us in the family. We go to this thing last weekend and it's, it's at the same place you did HustleCon. So it's at the Paramount Theater and it is packed. Like, you know, HustleCon was like, you know, sold out-ish. This was like sold out, sold out. Like all the, even the back shitty seat is like sold out and it's full of parents and their kids. And then there's this like They basically just created like a little play, like a little mini musical, 1 hour, because kids don't have that long of an attention span. And it's just kind of like music and like, you know, lights and colors. And he's, oh, dinosaurs, oh, rocks.

Oh, how much should it cost?

So every ticket, I want to say, was—

that venue seats maybe like $60 a seat, something like that. So that venue seats between 2,500 and 3,000, I believe.

Yeah. So I think there was 2,000 there. And I believe the tickets were something like, something like $50, $60, $70, something like that.

So we're in like $120,000.

And so, uh, and Blippi's just a guy with a guitar, right? Or were there more instruments?

No guitar. He's just, just him.

He just walks around. So were there any instruments or was it just like a soundtrack?

Just soundtrack and like lights and like, uh, stage props.

So like, wow. So he, he only had like a piano.

Like, you know, if they came out as sharks, like a bunch of like little backup dancers came out as sharks and then they whatever. Like that's awesome. Mini theater show, right? And so VStar Entertainment, they do another brand that you've probably heard of, or you may have heard of, called Paw Patrol. It's basically another kids cartoon. So guess how much— this is my like kind of triangulation— guess how much they sold in Paw Patrol tickets last year? Just take a, take a guess.

$20, $20 mil?

$40 million in event tickets?

In event tickets for— and that's just the tickets, not the merch.

That was just last year in '22.

But that must have been years ago.

This was in the like 1980s, something like that. Yeah. And then, um, this other guy was doing it. They merged and then that whole thing gets bought by Cirque du Soleil last year. Is it Cirque du Soleil, by the way? Like, guess how much Cirque du Soleil revenue was? Have you ever been to a Cirque show?

No, I've not. But I do know that the guy who started it, uh, is a Canadian guy. He's a billionaire. I read Dan Blazerian's book. And they talk about that guy a lot. I think he's like, I mean, he started a circus, so he's like Liberty or whatever. Yeah, he's really eccentric and wild and everything. So it made him a billionaire. How much revenue does it make?

Is that what's that at Cirque? Is that the Is that like the name?

Well, they have like 10 shows, right? It'll be like they have— oh, and then they have Zoomanity, and they have like whatever.

And the Beatles. I— yeah, I know all about it, and I'm, I'm into it. And it's publicly traded, or at least it was before it was acquired by private equity, right?

Private equity owns it now. And, um, and it's a pretty badass business. The idea was do a circus but no animals, so it was like only human performers. And to do that, they did like crazy acrobats and like great costumes.

It's basically its own genre at this point though.

Yeah. I, and I think that, so then I started thinking like, what are the other opportunities? And so I think A, you could just like go compete with these guys on like either the same brands or other brands. So like what they did was the V-Star guy took TV IP, turned it into a live show. The Blippi, what the Blippi guy is doing is taking YouTube IP and turning it into a live show. And I think you could just even do this for more. So like, I think you could even do like, we've talked about religion, which is the greatest free IP in the world. So I think if somebody could do this for religion, which is make an extremely kid-friendly, in fact kid-focused, like Christianity show basically. I think you could do this for dinosaurs or science as a generic genre. Cause like if kids love trucks and dinosaurs or whatever, and you could just basically create the, like the, the show, you know, A Day with Dinosaurs or something like that. And once you get like, if you have a certain level of quality, moms will spread this and they will talk about it and they will, like, in their mommy groups, they will help you sell these tickets. And, um, and I just feel like there's a, like, it's not that hard. Like, you build one show and then you sell that one show 1,000 times, right? Like, the show goes on tour. Mamma Mia has made, like, I don't know, some stupid amount of money just being the same show on tour with replacing the, the low-cost actors over time.

Right.

Yeah.

That's pretty good for a tech bro. A tech bro business. Like, you were running one of the best, like, women's entrepreneurship events.

Yeah.

You got labeled wrong, dude.

I did. Yeah. I'm like an onion, man. There's layers. So, but basically, like, we used to do this thing called Pizza in Forties. Where we would do a meetup and, uh, I would interview someone and they would drink a 40-ounce. And when the 40-ounce beer was done, the talk was done. But then like women were like, this is like, there's all dudes here. And so we created like a, like a wine version and that had like way better, it was like called like Cheese and Wine. I don't even remember, but that had way better engagement. And so we're like, oh, like let's pursue this vein. Like this, there's clearly an opportunity here. And so we created 2X, which, uh, comes, it's, it's like 2X chromosomes, which I thought was clever. I stole it from Reddit. But anyway, we would do— I think we did 10 or 12 in one year, and every single time it was like $20,000 and $30,000. And the cost— the cost was nothing. The cost was renting the venue, which cost like $3,000, and we would make like $20,000.

But you also— you had readers in every city, right? So that's how you sold the tickets.

And you weren't making the money off the tickets, you're making enough sponsors really anyway.

That's dope. Um, all right. What else we got?

Um, all right. Uh, let me, uh, I just got kicked out of the document.

All right.

I got it. So. One thing, tell me what you think about this. One thing that I've been doing as I'm now starting to like get back into the game, uh, or thinking about it. So I've been setting up calls with bankers. So bankers, which I didn't even know what those were. Bankers, when someone's, when like Sarah, my wife went to Penn and she was at a bank. Yeah. And she would, like, I would always make her friends for like, yeah, like I, uh, I, you know, I'm a banker. I work at a bank. I'm like, oh, which branch? Uh, and so bankers are basically people who help people sell companies and help people buy companies. And when you sell a company for like anything north of probably $50 million, they likely have a banker. And I've been contacting bankers and my pitch to them is this, hey, I'm thinking about starting a company in this space. You've sold a few companies in this space. Tell me everything about why the, this company was bought, as well as what the opportunities are that the buyer, what they were looking for. And, uh, maybe in 5 or 10 years I'll let you sell my company. And I've been able to line up meetings doing this.

And it's genius. And, um, I've been a part of one or two of those types of conversations and I was like, oh wow, these guys are like vaults filled with gold. Why don't bankers need podcasts? Like, why are they, why are these guys not talking?

Well, they can't.

So much info. No, but they can talk like Generally speaking, they don't, they can't talk about any specific deal, but like, they know a lot, dude. They know everything. It's like your accountant. It's like accountants and bankers. They know everything. Yeah.

They know everything. And they've been telling me so much information. So I like, they'll like, basically they'll say, here's why this company was doing well. Here's why it was succeeding. Here's why they bought it. And I'm like, all right, great. What, uh, what other companies was that buyer trying to buy and why? And they're like, well, they always struggled with blank. And I'm like, Boom. Thank you. Right. And then I'll say like, um, you sold 3 businesses in the same space. Which one was more fun to run? And so like, for example, I'll give you, I'll give you a concrete example. The business that I'm interested in now, we've talked about a, a bunch. It's like Vistage. So, which is basically a peer group. So companies that it's like a group of 10 or 40 people who all have a similar job title and they meet together and they discuss their problems. And it's like a safe space to discuss shit you can't talk about on the internet. And some of them do huge. One of them, I can't say which, does over $100 million in profit a year, and they're just like meetups in real life. And I'll just be like, well, what job titles was, uh, Gartner or whoever buys these companies, what job titles are they trying to get to and they're really struggling to, uh, to, to reach? And they'll just tell me. I'm like, oh great, I can create a community around that. And I think I could build it to sell it, which what I wanna know from your perspective, is that even a good plan building to sell? So part of me is like, yes, it's clear path to make money. Another part is like, it's kind of lame though.

Um, you attract competitive because nobody else, no, not every Joe is going to try to, you know, do it. Like, you know, going and trying to, you know, start a, a railroad business or whatever versus an FBA business. It's like, well, they're both going to take all your time, so that's equal.

Money—

well, you're going to go have to go raise money from investors. One will let you just raise— you're still going to get the money you need from investors. Just one, you maybe raise more at a higher valuation, and the other one you'll raise less at a lower valuation, right?

Like, but did you agree? Do you agree with him?

I, I do agree with him, and I've thought this for a very long time. I remember Uh, back in the day, did you ever hear about this thing called the Unreasonable Institute? I don't even think this is around anymore.

That's a great name.

It's sort of like the same guys who did Summit. It's not, it's not actually the same guys, but it's the same. It was like the same idea. It was like, right, the Unreasonable Institute was basically this, like, it was based on this one word, unreasonable, in the way that the Hustle's built on this one word, hustle, and, uh, Trends is built on one word, trends. And so the Unreasonable Institute was exactly that. It was like, it's gonna take unreasonable people to do unreasonable things for the world to move forward. And it was like very inspiring. And then they met with all bunch of people, you know, a bunch of people who did that, the sort of Elon Musk types who went and did unreasonable things. And then you start to look at it and you're like, you know, all things equal, um, you know, I guess like your inputs are sort of the same. It's just your time and energy.

And then like the outputs can be very, very different because the, the, the inputs aren't the same because it is possible to build something pretty cool and not work that hard, but it's kind of impossible to build something huge and not work very hard.

All right, who do we know? And I, let's do real examples. I'm not saying it's not true, but let's, who do we know that's building successful, awesome businesses without working too hard?

Well, how about Suli? I actually don't know. What's his schedule? Does he grind constantly?

Uh, he works hard. Yes, he, he works hard.

So then no one, you don't, we don't know anyone, but You and me, like, maybe I'll give you one nuance on it.

He got there faster than the normal person. So it looked like it came easier, but that's just because he was better. It wasn't because he worked like he wasn't putting in a tenth of the hours. He was putting in the same number of hours and getting there 10 times faster, which is—

I just think that like there's a world where you have Business A and it doesn't grow nearly as fast and you're working 40 hours a week. And then you have Business B that's growing significantly faster and you have to work 100 hours a week. Like that. That is a reality. Yes, that's true. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about like very little. I'm talking about normal versus not normal.

There's also things like this podcast or like people who have like newsletters or blogs or something like that where it's like, or they teach a course. It's like, you know, like, like let's take your buddy Neville, right?

So Neville, I don't think you and me.

Well, but I'm doing multiple things, right? So it's like on each one, I'm not putting in as much time.. But like overall I'm working harder and if I didn't do those other things, that one thing would just expand in time.

I would just do more. I would spend— wait, how often are you working now? A day? Normal work hours?

Uh, not normal hours, but I work like a, the equivalent of 8 hours a day.

Got it.

Just not all together. Not, not all continuously.

All right. But back to what was the original point?

So my, my, my point was like, uh, is it, Is this really true that you can kind of like chill and win?

And like, no, I didn't mean— I didn't mean chill, but I mean chill less, or sorry, chill more, work less.

Yeah, okay.

So then, bro, if you agree with Friedberg, which I think I do, why are you not going after like one big grand thing? Like, I started a newsletter, that's not exactly like You know, that's not like world-changing entirely. It's neat, but I would, I would put it on a 6 out of 10 in terms of like maybe a 5 in terms of like big ideas.

Right. Yeah. I agree with you. The reason why is because to me, it's not a bigness contest. It's a, do I have a clear picture of what I want to like my life to be? And then can I like, do I have a crystal clear picture? And then can I make that happen? And it's like knowing what I want and then getting what I want. And so what I wanted was not to work the 100 hours, right? Even though I, even though I agree, like, that's cool, it's fun. And if I did do it, I do think there's all these extra benefits. You would get amazing talent to come join you. You'd make a bunch of money. You'd have a bunch of fun. Like, there's, there's great benefits if I did the big one, the big, big, big one. But I decided that, like, What I wanted more.

That's not what you wanted. Yeah.

Yeah. What I wanted more was more like the 40 hours a week, but hours spent on doing these types of things. Like I love teaching. Teaching's not the most, it's not the most like world-changing Unreasonable Institute style, you know, like let's go land a rocket on Mars type of idea, but I have the most fun doing it. So I'm just optimizing for like a different thing rather than bigness. I'm optimizing for like, you know, my own enjoyment. And so that's why I'm not going after that. So I need things that are sufficiently interesting so that I'm interested and big enough so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time, but like it's not maximally big, right?

I feel you. Well, to wrap up the bank thing, I think it's, it was, it's been kind of interesting. I'm going to continue doing it. Maybe I'll, uh, I didn't ask these people who I spoke with today if I could talk about what we discussed, so I'm not going to bring it up. But, uh, very useful. I sent you the notes. They were cool.

They're great. And also this technique, um, whether it's a specific technique or a similar technique, it's like there are people who just know a lot of things. Um, you know, people who invest other people's money, uh, accountants, bankers, people like, um, you know, VCs are like this. They see, they see hundreds and hundreds of businesses a year.. And so it's like those people, if you want to like speed dial your learning, you can go to them and you can get basically free learning off of, off of them. All right. That's it. That's the episode.