EPISODE

Wordle Copycat Loses It All, Introducing Milk Road, and Guru Shaan on Finding Your Next Project

Feb 08, 2022·56:00·Sam & Shaan·with Ben Levy, Ben Wilson·Listen·AppleSpotify
0:0028:0056:00
16 moments · 178 paragraphs · synced to the second

Yeah, so got a crazy story for you guys. So you might have seen the app Wordle recently. Have you guys seen it?

SAM

Yeah. New York Times bought it.

SHAAN

You play?

Yeah. So New York Times just bought it. But about 2 weeks ago, one of my friends, he's a great mobile app developer, bootstrapper. He basically was like, oh, Wordle is going viral. And there's no mobile app that everyone's using. So like the Wordle guy had put out this crazy story. He put out this story about how he was peer. He didn't want to monetize it. It was just a toy for his girlfriend. It went viral out of nowhere, which I don't know if I believe because he works at Mischief and like, I'm not sure I totally buy that story. But that was his story to the media. So my friend was like, holy shit, there's a huge opportunity for someone to build the mobile app. This guy doesn't own the trademark of the name. It's kind of like riffed off an old game show. So my friend built an app over the weekend, called it Wordle the App, went viral. So basically like over the weekend got like 30,000 organic downloads, was top of the App Store. And my friend's one of these guys who likes to build in public. So he tweets everything he always has. He used to like put his portfolio up so you could see everything he's doing.

SHAAN

And what is that, by the way? This is, this is going to support your build in public thesis, by the way. This is like the perfect case study of why— of how you feel about build in public, which is I like it in theory. It's like the face tattoo thing, right? I like that other people do it. I don't want to do it, and here's why. Here's the cautionary tale. Like when, you know, when the D.A.R.E. officer brings like, you know, someone who's like been in jail for drugs to the class.

SAM

It's like a before and after of meth. Yeah, like it's like very rocky. But Sean, explain what Wordle is because all I know— I don't play word games. I play real sports. And so I'm not trying— I don't waste my time with that. So when, when people are, what, what is this game?

SHAAN

It's a game. Okay. So this, it's a simple game. You, you literally, if you just, the way I get to it, you just Google Wordle, first link, you click it and it's just 5, um, empty like letters, like 5 squares where you gotta guess, guess a word. There's no clues. It's not like a crossword. It's literally just like guess a, guess a word. So you type in a word, you might type in, like I always start with irate cuz Dharmesh from HubSpot, said the word irate has 3 vowels plus the letter T plus the letter R. So you're getting a lot of common letters there. So it's a great start word. So you type that word in and then it'll tell you either it'll either show up gray, which means the letter's not in the word, yellow, which means it's in the word, but you got it in the wrong spot, or green, which is this is the right letter in the right spot. And then you have, I think, 5 or 6 guesses to be able to, um, to get the word in the end. And then the, the beauty of it is at the end, it's like you got it. You feel the sense of accomplishment. The whole thing takes you like 2 minutes to play the game. So it's like really easy to play in that sense. And then if you get it right, it lets you share that you got it right, but it doesn't share what the word was. It shares like the, like, imagine what you're looking at now, which is like the word and all these colors, but take the letters off. It just shows the colors. So it'll show somebody else Oh man, I started off not having any of the letters, then I got the T at the end, and then I got one letter at the end. So that's— that's like the fourth one I got it right. So that's why you see that grid of green, uh, squares posted on Twitter, and it started going viral on Twitter.

SAM

And what— what's like the score? Okay, so I'm—

SHAAN

I just got it. Moist. Did you really just play that, or are you watching a video?

I think this morning I was trying to just do like an illustration, you know, just trying to do some accurate B-roll.

SHAAN

All right.

SAM

So I understand. So people have been sharing this like crazy. And Dharmesh, the founder of HubSpot, he plays it daily and he even built a competitor to it as well. And so your buddy Ben Levy, what's, what's this guy's name?

His name's Zach Shaqed.

SAM

And what's the name of the app?

It was called Wordle, the app. So part of the story, basically. So he goes and builds this app. He tweets like, holy shit, this is the fastest growing app I've ever built. You know, I've built 10 other businesses. They've all done really well. But this is the only one that's like growing organically like crazy. And he basically— the Wordle creator sees it and he's like, yo, he gets on the phone with him, he calls him and he's like, hey, this just doesn't feel right.

SHAAN

By the way, this whole thing's just happening in a Twitter thread. Ben sends me the first tweet. He's like, yo, Zach's— because I've met Zach through Ben. He's like, yo, Zach actually cloned Wordle. Next tweet, look at this shit. He's tweeted out a graph. It's going crazy. Third tweet, um, someone, someone says, dude, you just ripped off Wordle, like you're gonna get whatever, sued or something, and you know what, you don't own the trademark for this. He goes, what trademark? And so I'm seeing the tweet play out in real time and he's bragging, he's bragging about how good it's doing and he's like, ha, like there was no app, now I'm dominating this, I'm getting all these free, free downloads, this is amazing. And he's just tweeting update after update. Okay, so Ben, pick it back up.

So then somehow The Wordle guy gets in touch with the Wordle guy, DMs him, and he's like, yo, let's get on the phone. And my friend Zach is like, hey, like, you don't own the trademark. I know nobody owns it. There's a bunch of other apps called Wordle before this, but like, let's partner or something. And the guy's like, I don't like— you know, he basically said some version of like, I don't do this for money. This is just fun. You know, ironically, he sells the New York Times like a week later, but that's separate. So my friend gets off the phone with him. And he's like, all right, I'm going to talk to a lawyer. I'm going to figure out what I should do. Like, clearly there's no ability for us to work together here. And then like 20 minutes later, some big tech reporter dunks on him pretty aggressively and he's like—

SAM

Dunks on who? Your buddy or the original creator?

Dunks on Zach, my friend. And he's like, he basically says something like, wow, like app developer has no ethics, clones Wordle, bragging about how he's at the top of the App Store. And then, you know, when that happens, everyone goes and looks at Zack's past tweets. And he ironically had two tweets. So like 6 months ago, he tweeted, I hate app clones. Like someone's cloning my app and I'm going to like, you know, he basically like disputed every app that was cloning his old app and posted a big thread about how app clones are the shittiest people.

SHAAN

Didn't he call them like scumbags or something?

Yeah, he was like, scum of the earth, that you're copying my app. And then he also—

SAM

you said, you said the word ironic. So was he being serious?

No, he was being serious. It was ironic that he tweeted that and then he was doing, you know, and then he was being opportunistic. And then he also tweeted like at the beginning of the year, I have two goals for 2022. It's like be more vulgar and make $10 million this year. So he just gets like proceeded to get dunked on really aggressively and people start buying his domain and they're like, you know, I'm going to start like I'm going to dispute every app you've ever made. I'm like, going to make sure that everyone knows you're the worst of the worst. And like, so basically that's what happens. Apple ends up pulling down every single Wordle app.

SHAAN

He calls you right somewhere in the middle here. He calls you for some advice, right?

Yeah. So he calls me in the middle of this and he goes, hey, this is crazy. Like, app is doing really well. I think this is a big business. Like, you know, I know, I know how much these apps convert, like free to paid. This is just growing organically. This is a $10 to $100 million mobile app here. What would you do? And I was like, well, I think, you know, ethically, I'm not sure. I think you did kind of copy him, but I get that like this is version 1 and you're going to make it better. Like, I could buy that. But right now you're probably stuck. Like, the mob has you. But he's like, well, maybe there's a Trumpian version to this where, like, you know, I kind of own that. Like, this is my approach and like, I'm doing it. There is no trade-off.

SHAAN

Apologize, apologize, put up the white flag, take it away. Right. These are options on the table. Right. I can just say, sorry, I did wrong. I could say, you know, sorry I said what I said and I'm going to make these— I'm going to change the name, I'm going to make some concessions. And then there was go full Trump and full Trump was like, just lean into it.

SAM

And yeah, but you could do that and not back down in a non-douche way. What you could say is, yeah, like, look, we're not claiming to be innovators here, but we are— we're executors. And so we find things that are great and we make them available for the masses. Sue me. Like, you know, that's like the way that you could take this. That's what, that's what Rocket Internet says. They go, we're not innovators, we're executors, we're operators.

SHAAN

So how did the conversation go, Ben, when you guys talked about these options?

Yeah. So basically I was like, you know, I think those three options are on the table. And he was like, yeah, but I don't think, you know, I don't think we're really doing anything wrong. Like, you know, yeah, there is no mobile app. So like, while people can think that, I think it's fine. So he basically is like, I'm going to double down, you know.

SHAAN

By the way, this other guy didn't create Wordle. There was a— you're saying there was a game show back in the day that was the same game. He created a web version of it. Is that right? Because I think that changes it too, which is— yeah, this guy also copied this show, right?

SAM

Like, and it looks like this guy, Zach, did he redo the app but call it Word Love?

Well, that's later in the story. That's like after Wordle got shut down in the App Store. He recreated a new, you know, another word game.

SHAAN

So Apple literally just shut down all the clones?

Or just him? Yeah, they shut down everyone that was using the name Wordle after that. Uh, and to clarify, yeah, there was a game show that Wordle was based on, and I think the guy's story was like, I did this for my girlfriend, it wasn't for profit, so he didn't get crucified for it.

SHAAN

I see. So, and what did Apple say? Why did they say they could just take down all these things? Or you don't know why they just took them down?

There was no statement. They just took down every Wordle app and said, you know, you don't own this trademark, like, you're being taken down because we decide what we do with the app.

SAM

Yeah, so I'm not a lawyer here, obviously, but I have done some trademarky stuff, and I'm almost positive that— someone's going to correct me— but I'm almost positive that even if you don't own the trademark, if you're like— and you can make the argument— if you're like the first or the most popular, and if there's like a general consensus that like, yes, when people think of this name, they think of you, and these other clones or these other people are trying to like steal, you know, like, uh, act like they're you, the courts tend to favor your side even if you don't own the trademark. Yeah, so like, yeah, just because they don't literally have that trademark, there is probably some— like, you know, you would probably win.

Yeah, I think, I think that's probably true. And like, he, he knew that, uh, like there was some argument that there's been other apps called Wordle, but it was pretty clear that like they would have a good case So he proceeds to kind of double down on it, gets dunked on aggressively. Like basically, you know, he doubles down a little bit, like says like, no, like this is based on the game show. You don't own a trademark. I'm looking at it now, versions of that. And then it goes completely viral, like 10,000, you know, it gets like 10,000 people in the tech Twitter circle are dunking on him.

SHAAN

There's already— we stopped for a second. Why? Why was his goal be more vulgar for 2022? Why was that a goal? That's such a random— you said that. My mind is still wondering why was that? Does that mean like Be more aggressive.

I think he meant like be more aggressive, like when he sees opportunities, be more assertive and like, you know, be as aggressive as possible when opportunities present themselves. Okay. Which clearly was what this was. So he went— he went hard. He got dunked on. And basically what happened was people bought his domain. People squatted on his name, ZachShaked.com. They were like, we're going to go vote down every single app you own. We're just basically going to attack you.

SAM

Oh, and so how's this? What happened? How's this end?

So, I mean, basically it ended with him shutting the app down, as you'd expect. And now he's like making a new word game because he likes the word game space. But I think his— like when I was talking to him about it earlier, he was like, you know, the biggest thing for me is building in public is not always good. You know, like the fact, you know, by building in public, like I just assumed, you know, this was great for me. And this is the really dark side of me building in public.

SHAAN

Well, dude, let's be more specific. He had $10 million in his hands and decided that the tweet love for talking about what he was doing was, was worth that. Because if he just stayed as an anonymous developer, he just put it under some shell company developer name, left it in the store, didn't brag about it, it wouldn't have got picked up by journalists as like— the story isn't that other people— there are apps in the store called Wordle that are owned by different people. That's not the story. The story is, look at this guy cloning this thing, ripping it off, bragging about it, and then getting shit on on Twitter. That's the story. So if he just didn't do that, then that doesn't get to Apple. Like, I think there's a pretty good chance he gets away with it because I know there's a— the App Store is full of clones. Like, Flappy Bird had tons of clones. Every slot machine game— there's— people don't know this, like random apps like slot machine apps are what like produces the most revenue in the, in the App Store. And, um, and you know, nobody really cares about it. They're under these like random holding company names. You don't talk about it.

SAM

You shut up.

SHAAN

Yeah, it's when you're not crushing it that you want to talk about it. As soon as you start crushing it, zip.

SAM

Yes, when you're doing well, you only talk about it when you're not doing that well, or when you are doing so well that you think that like You know, you can't catch up.

SHAAN

That's why people are always like, why don't you talk about your e-commerce thing? Like, why? It's working. What do I need? What do I need to tell you guys about it for?

SAM

Yeah.

SHAAN

And I also think that transparency, like, yeah, cool. I, I favor transparency, uh, with people I trust, not strangers on the internet.

SAM

Like, I don't value transparency.

SHAAN

Well, it's like, if it's my wife or my family or my coworkers, all right, I'll give you transparency. I don't owe you, my Twitter follower, or even my podcast listener, to tell you my every detail. I'll be very honest with you. I tell people things when it's beneficial to me and I don't when I don't. And I actually recommend that strategy to anybody. There is no like, uh, force that is— there's nobody forcing you to tell everybody everything, uh, when there's no gain to be had for you.

SAM

Yeah.

SHAAN

And there's actually clear downsides.

SAM

And this guy just totally screwed it up. If you— he should have shut up. You just gotta shut up sometimes. And that's really hard. This is the building in public thing, man. And also it impacted the Wordle guy. Now he got all this competition and he had a lot of stress. I think that like when you're doing well, you just shut up. You don't talk about it.

Yeah. And I think, you know, part of it becomes your identity. Like I'm the build in public guy, so like I do everything in public. Uh, and I think he was just like, you know, type of guy that's like, I'm really good at growth and I'm really good at building apps and wanted some love for it, you know?

SHAAN

And then by the way, I recommend this guy's blog or Substack, cuz he actually, uh, he does a good job of building in public. Like he, uh, Ben, what was the one that we were, we were reading? And I remember telling you, I was like, dude, this guy's stuff is actually really good. He had like no followers, but like, uh, or like, you know, not no followers, but he had a very small following. But I thought his content was actually really interesting. He would talk about like, all right, I'm gonna build this product because of this reason. So first thing I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go to, you know, Lean Domain Search. I'm gonna get a name generator for this. Okay. I got the name. Boom. Now I'm gonna go do this. Boom. Here's how I do this. Boom. All right. I'm gonna fire up some paid ads. Look, here's the dashboard. And like he was, actually making progress. So he wasn't just like, you know, stuck in, he wasn't just talking theory. Like he was actually getting users, getting revenue. And he was very, um, again, he was giving out a ton of value. And so I was like, oh cool, I like to learn all this stuff. Great. Uh, thank you very much. And, uh, at, in those projects, the trade probably worked, right? He got interest and respect and attention and he gave up, you know, just a little bit of knowledge. Uh, but in this case it did not pay off.

Yeah. And he like openly shares all of his app numbers like that link I just dropped, zach.so/dashboard. You can see all of his app numbers, all the churn. Uh, so it's a big part of his identity and he's really good at it, but you know, sometimes it doesn't always pay to be pub— to build in public.

SAM

Dude, cornrows and face tattoos. It's cool that other people do it, but not for me.

SHAAN

The, yeah. The other thing is like identity. Be real careful what your identity is because your identity comes with like, you know, some serious trade-offs. People have an identity and then they'll like, you know, they use it to build a little prison for themselves. Here's the, here's my walls and chains that I put on myself by like labeling myself in this way. I like to, I like, people will be like, oh, I thought you said this the other day. I'm like, yeah, changed my mind.

SAM

Speaking, well listen, you know, done. Speaking of prisoners and building an identity, I saw that someone did a survey, like a reputable source, but I forget who, did a survey and they asked, they did a survey and they asked, young folks, Gen Z, who they follow for crypto and NFT advice. And it was like, I think they surveyed hundreds of thousands of people. Pomp was number one for the most trusted person. Pomp is like our friend and started out like just a guy on Twitter. Now he's like pretty official. How on earth does this guy do so much? So he's got a 200,000-person email list who he talks to, I think, every day. Every day he's got a daily business show, and I think he has like multiple hours of YouTube.

SHAAN

3 hours. It's a professionally produced morning show, meaning like he's there on camera with his brothers. They got an agenda, a rundown of stories they're going to cover. It's like a news show, business news show. I think it's called The Business News Show or some shit like that.

SAM

Best Business Show.

SHAAN

Best Business Show. And he does it for multiple hours in the morning, every morning.

SAM

And I think I was with him and his wife a while ago, and she was joking. She's like, man, he writes all of it. I don't know how he does it, but he writes really fast. How on earth does this guy have this much output?

SHAAN

I, uh, I have a tremendous amount of respect for that because I know how hard that is. And I know there's not— there's not usually people I look at and I say, I can't— I couldn't do that. And I know when I look at that, I couldn't do that. Um, there's no way I could maintain that level of output Um, at the same time, I would not want to do that. That is not a— I don't want to do that. I want to build for myself.

SAM

I don't think he's going to be able to keep doing it. He won't be able to sustain that for more than 2 or 3 years.

SHAAN

Yeah. That's crazy.

SAM

His, he's got like an empire. What do you, what do you, how big is his empire? You think, you think he's making more money from selling stuff as opposed to actual Bitcoin?

SHAAN

We've speculated on this before, so let's, uh, I don't know if we, we've kind of done this before. You want to do it again?

SAM

Yeah.

SHAAN

Okay, okay, fair enough. So he's got a couple components, right? He's got the paid Substack. So he's got the free— there's like a free version of it, but the daily one I think goes to a paid group. Ben, do you know roughly what the paid size is? I think it's like— I think it's something like 70,000 people paying like $10 a month or something like that. I want to say it's like 70K-ish. So that would be what, 700,000? By the way, the, the, I don't do public math. That was stolen from Pump. Pump said that, uh, I thought it was fucking hilarious and stole it because I just think it's amazing. It's amazing rule to live by. So he's got about 200,000 people total on his list and he's got, I think, 70 that are in the paid group. So let's just call it that. Then he's got a job board. I think the job board we had heard, either heard or we had kind of investigated, looked like it was doing about $1 million a year. That's cryptojobs.com or something. So then he said, all right, you learn about crypto from me, you wanna work in crypto, boom. Uh, he also has sponsors on all the new— on all the newsletters. So at the end of every newsletter, it's like, thanks to these 10 companies, he like rolls the credits.

SAM

And if I had to guess, that would be— if he has 200,000 free subscribers, that'd be around between $100,000 to $200,000 a month in sponsor revenue.

SHAAN

So we're at, um, that— I think, I think what we've just added up to is about $2 to $2.5 million a year.

SAM

And then that stuff, the—

SHAAN

his videos courses, he does about $1 million a year on his Bitcoin course, which I don't think he even shows up for, or maybe he does, but like, I think, I think he's got teachers. It's like pretty automated. So let's add another million there. That's, let's say, 3, 3.5 million on the course. Then there's investing. So investing is probably where the real money is to be made. Very hard to say kind of what both crypto investing, so like buying Bitcoin and other tokens, as well as investing in companies that serve the crypto economy. That's kind of like— and he had a fund. The fund was pretty big. Ben, how big was the fund? Uh, but he closed it.

SAM

He returned hundreds of millions of dollars.

SHAAN

100? No, that was the fund he was at before this, right? Sorry. His personal fund, which is like the Pomp rolling fund or whatever. Oh yeah, I think was like $25 million a year or something like that, which is the equivalent of $100 million fund. Um, so I think he was doing $20 to $25 million a year. Again, these are all plus or minus. 50%.

SAM

And then his YouTube got 4 million views in the last 30 days, and then his podcast, I bet, is around where we are.

SHAAN

But dude, YouTube at 4 million views, that's like $4,000 or something. YouTube pays like nothing on just the views, but maybe his sponsors— his probably— because I think his Best Business Show has a main sponsor that's like—

SAM

yeah, it's SoFi. Because one time I got in trouble because I disrespected them when they were—

SHAAN

they— well, they're not a sponsor anymore, right? So can you tell the story?

SAM

Yeah, so basically one time The Hustle wrote an article about SoFi's CEO getting in trouble for— I don't remember what it was. It sexual— was it a sexual thing or was it fraud? Something like that. And he— in the headline we wrote, SoFi, more like so fucked. And they bailed as a sponsor. And I told that story on his podcast and he got really— he wasn't mad, but uncomfortable. Yeah. I was like, well, you just tell him I said it. You know, you didn't say it. I said it. So SoFi can't—

SHAAN

you're like a menace. Yeah. So far, like, marketing team, they're like, God, everywhere we go, this guy comes in and hits the same SoFi, so fuck you.

SAM

It's a good joke. It's a good joke. And so anyway, I would get— I would— so at this point, I would say he's in the huge range of $5 and $7 million a year just off like pump.

SHAAN

That's income, right? Then not even counting the sort of equity value that's— because there's also Bitcoin Pizza, which was his like ghost kitchen he launched. What else is there, Ben? He's got merch. Is he a merch? I think he's got merch.

Yeah, he's got merch.

SHAAN

What are the other part of his empire, of his, uh, his pomp empire? He's got his brothers. So he's— that I really respect that anybody who takes, you know, anybody who's got the, uh, when I eat we all eat mentality, I respect that. And he brought his brothers along. So one brother, Joe, he does awesome content about the, uh, the business of sports. His other brothers are his co-hosts for The Best Business Show. Because when I asked him, I was like, dude, why are you signing up to do this morning show? Like, that's so much work to do a YouTube show every day for multiple hours. He's like, yeah, but I'm just like, it's me hanging out with my brothers, shooting shit, busting each other's balls and talking business. Like, that's kind of what I would— if I just said, what's my ideal life? It's like, I'll just hang out with my brothers and like, you know, I mean, I get it. I can do that.

SAM

The problem is, is like, let's say you want to take like a 3-week vacation, you know?

SHAAN

Yeah, there's a difference between, uh, I like to do it and I have to do it, right? And he's in— he's gonna have to do it, it seems like right now, with where, uh, you know, you're committed to a schedule.

SAM

Um, all right, you want me to tell you about an interesting company?

SHAAN

Yeah, actually one plug there. So while Ben's here, so we, uh, uh, I don't know when we're gonna talk about the Milk Road. I wanna talk about my new, new, new project that me and Ben have launched, a new company. Uh, but there is a version of this, which is the, the one we were like, all right, this is a great idea, but there's one drawback, which is you have to write this email every day. And it's the same thing. It's a prison. It's like, and we, we were very conscious about it. It's like, Ben, you want to sign up for this? This is the prison we're going to choose to be in. Like, if this is, if this is what we choose, fine. But let's not get here and be surprised because, because that's the commitment we got to make. We are every night. And so, Ben, at midnight after the babies are asleep or whatever, it's like, you know, he's like, hey, here's the draft for tomorrow morning's email. And then I, I was up till 2 a.m. last night editing the thing. And so there's definitely a pain in the ass component to it. That's, you know, that I'm experiencing, which is 1/10 of what Pomph does, but it's more than enough for me.

SAM

And you did the same thing with us, man. It's hard. I like, I loved it. I mean, it, to me, it, it's like, I think I told you, it's almost like running a marathon or like being in a fight or something. It's like you're scared to do it, you do it and you get in the thick of it and you like kind of enjoy it. And then you get, you get to a point where you can take a break and you're like, this is horrible. I never want to do this again, which is how I felt like last year. And then you get like 6 months out and you're like, fuck, I missed the, I missed the action. I need to get, I need to get into it. And so it's really hard to, to write a newsletter every single day, to do any type of content creation every single day for more than a year is very, very, very hard.

SHAAN

Really tough. Uh, and we're only what, less than a month into it. Ben, what's the, uh, where are you at in the grind? Like, I think we're, we're giving it a year. For like how long you could tolerate this and sustain this pace. Where are you at right now? You're only in month 1.

I'm at the still exciting, still fun to research and write, but I am at the holy shit, Sean's a way better writer than I am point. But I'm still— it's still fun.

SHAAN

Yeah. Sometimes I, I go into edit, I'm like, oh, let me just touch up this little wordsmith. And then like, I overhaul the whole thing because I'm like, oh no, I think this could be better., and I'm like, actually, it was fine before, but I just can't help myself. Last night, actually, this is an interesting point to talk about at S-Nam, actually. So we should say two things. We'll talk about what this company is and why we started it. Basically, every year, me and Ben have started one company. Last year's company was the e-commerce company, and we grew that from zero to about $10 million in revenue profitably. And to do that, never had done a physical product before, never like, never knew how to get things manufactured and all that. Never had been spending like, you know, $200,000 a month on Facebook ads and being responsible for that return and making sure you don't grow broke. So, uh, so that was the adventure last year. This year we were like, what do we wanna do? And we basically were like, whatever it is, it's gotta be in either crypto or like kind of like teaching slash audience building. That's the stuff I like to do. Crypto's like the topic me and Ben obsessed with. And that's why we came up with this thing called the Milk Road, which is basically, it's an email you get every day and we just say, it's kind of like, um, it's the way I got, it's the way I got good at crypto, which was my buddy Furkan, who's way smarter than me. Um, he was like, he, you know, he bought Ethereum in the crowd sale. He bought, he was mining Bitcoin back in the day. Like this guy's just been ahead of the curve on stuff. He's a, he's an engineer. And every day he basically just sends me like 3 links He's like, yo, check this out. You seen this? I'm always like, no, I haven't seen it. And then I'm always like, wait, what is this? Why is this interesting? And he's like, oh, so the reason this is cool is because ABC, and he just breaks it down super simple for like a dumbass like me. And I was like, dude, if I could just take that idea and provide that like as a newsletter, like Furkan doesn't care. He's never gonna create a Substack or a newsletter. He's like too smart and too cool for all that shit. But I was like, if I could take that idea of like a smart friend just showing you 1 or 2 cool things a day that's going on in crypto and explaining it in simple plain Jane English, I think that that would actually be useful.

SAM

How many subscribers do you guys have?

SAM

What, what was the cause?

SHAAN

Two things. We turned on, uh, paid ads And so you referred or you have, you know, a guy who is good with this stuff. He's been helping us out. He's really good, actually. Like, wait, I've tried like 5 agencies for Facebook ads. This guy's like better than all of them.

SAM

So how much are you spending to acquire an email?

SHAAN

Right. I don't want to say that right now, but it's in the good range. Remember when you were like, dude, back in the day it used to be X, now it's Y. We're getting it for X still, but we also aren't spending a ton. So maybe as we spend more, that's going to go down. But honestly, there's such a big appetite for learning crypto 'cause people know, people kind of know, all right, this seems like the next big wave. Like, you know, there was the internet, there was mobile phones, there was iPhone, and now like crypto seems to be the big wave. Super hard to keep up with. And I know there's money to be made. So I think the appetite is there where I think we're gonna keep getting subscribers for pretty cheap because the appetite, I've never seen an appetite for content like this in my life. 'Cause I've been trying to make content that people want and I'm always talking about shit I'm into. And like, you know, it's often like lukewarm.

SAM

I think the name is good. I think the name's pretty good. And you're using that platform Beehive Is that any good?

SHAAN

Beehive's pretty good. It's pretty new. So like there's a lot of features we need where we're like, yo, we need to be able to, for example, if I, um, do a partnership with somebody or what, or somebody plugs us in their newsletter and we may, or let's say Facebook ads, we pay for Facebook ads. I need to know if that subscriber like worth the same as an organic subscriber. Like, are they still opening it 20 days later? You know, I need to know like based on where they came from, are they still opening it to know where I should put my energy spreading the word. And so they don't have features like that yet, but we're kind of working with them to be like, yo, help us. Like, good. We need X. Can you build it? We'll be your best customer if you can kind of like help us, uh, get what we need.

SAM

Sick. I think it's, I, I think it's gonna work. It just, um, I think that you'll start seeing, well, you've already seen progress after 1 year. You're gonna see a lot of progress. And then if you continue to do it for 3 years, then shit really starts to accumulate. The media really does compound. I didn't believe that it did compound because I'm like, well, it's not like subscription revenue necessarily. But then I realized, like, yeah, but if I like just continue doing this and like get known, you like, it becomes, it compounds in terms of cultural relevance. And that usually translates to revenue.

SHAAN

That's a good point. And I've always said this, uh, and I've always fucked this up. That's the reason I keep saying it is mostly as a reminder myself. Like the best advice I get, the advice I give the most to others is the advice that I've had this, the lesson I've had to relearn 5 times, cuz I just can't like get it through my thick head. Uh, and that's that what you work on and who you work with matters way more than how hard you work. And to put that another way is the most important decision you make is what project to work on. And so like, I'll, I'll tell you, like I've worked on some really shitty projects. Like, uh, we did a hackathon and we built this app called Beer Hunt and it was like every time you drink a beer, you like take a picture of it, you check it in.

SAM

You're gonna get points. Yeah. But you don't give a shit about that.

SHAAN

And it's like, and people got excited. Why? Because, oh, beer, everybody loves to— like, it would get a big reaction anytime we told somebody about it. They'd laugh and they'd, they'd be like, oh, that's cool, I'll send it to my buddy, or whatever. And so people liked it who were especially craft beer types, but I wasn't a craft beer type. And also, like, I didn't have the filter of like, dude, if I'm gonna do anything, it's gonna basically take up all my time for like 3 years minimum. Is this the one, right? And I was treating it like a hookup and I should have been treating it like marriage 'cause projects are more like marriage really when they, like once you decide to do 'em, you're gonna do 'em for multiple years, right? And so I've chosen a bunch, I did a sushi restaurant, horrible project, beer app, horrible project, tried to build the next big social network and messaging app, worked so hard, built cool shit, but like the fucking hardest industry to like, you know, you're just running around with a bottle trying to catch lightning. So my project selection has been horrible to date. The best project I ever selected was this podcast. And then the, you know, the e-commerce one was okay. Not, not great. It like, it's successful, but it's more successful just 'cause I got better at business. It's still a really hard business to be in and kind of a, a roll up your sleeves type of business to do. I think this is probably the, the next best, like I think I finally did project selection right. And the reason why is I think that crypto is as important as like, you know, mobile apps and iPhone was in kind of like 2009, 2008, um, 2010 maybe. And as important as like the internet was back in like 1999. I think that's true. And when there's a huge wave happening, it kind of doesn't matter exactly what you do. You just need to make sure you're out in the water paddling with your board.. And I had been kind of like, I had been investing and thinking about it, but like it wasn't my job. It wasn't my job to think about it every single day. What this newsletter does, like, I don't know if the news, I don't know if the media business is gonna be amazing. I think it could be, but even if it's not, the fact that my job is that every day I have to learn two amazing things, like two interesting things about crypto and be able to explain it to tens of thousands of people. That is like, that is a job that I think is going to pay off in weird ways. I could think of, I think we're going to get into good investments because people are gonna be like, oh cool, yeah, you guys got that big distribution. Yeah, we want you in this project.

SAM

Yeah. I mean, that's what happened with The Hustle.

SHAAN

Right. And it's like, I'm going to find cool projects because I'm literally, I have to say something interesting tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM when this email goes out. Uh, I'm not going to say something boring. So that means I got to learn something every day. So that means I'm turning myself into kind of like a learning machine. So that is why I think this is the right project. And the reason I share this is because I think it's the most important decision you make in any project you do, in any endeavor you do, is just at the beginning what project you decided to go, go for.

SAM

Dude, I, I, I, that's wonderful. I'm reading 3, 2, 2 books on this topic. The first is called Wanting, um, which is, uh, Andrew suggested it. That's why I bought it. He suggested it on this pod. It's called Wanting and it's about mesmic desire. Mimetic. Sorry, mimetic desire. And the second one is The Daily Laws. And this, it's this daily, it's about the 48 Laws of Power and Mastery and all these great books by this guy named Robert Greene. But you read just one page a day. And the whole first section that I'm continuing reading is like, how do you find what you care about? And it's really great because the, the, the thing is, is you want to find, you want to find stuff where you are able to, when you get into it, you actually get more energized. And I've done a lot of stuff like, uh, copywriting stuff, which I think is fun sometimes, but when I do it, I'm like, ugh, I gotta like, I'm like, I'll be like, fine, I'm gonna get this done by 1 o'clock on Monday. I gotta get this done. And then I realized one time a couple years ago, I moved apartments and I remember the mover coming and I planned for a week. So I was like, all right, we're gonna get all these boxes. We're gonna stack these boxes here. This is how we're gonna move it. The mover's gonna come at 8 o'clock. I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna lift this up. And then I was— I got up at 5 a.m. because I couldn't go to— I couldn't sleep. I was like, I'm so excited to move and to like physically move these things and set up the new place. And I was thinking about that when I was figuring out what I'm going to do next. And that's one of the reasons why I'm getting into short-term rentals right now is because I just got it. And I think that the point I'm trying to make is when you're thinking about what gives you energy, it doesn't have to be— you said it, but I don't actually think you meant this this way. You said I think this is a big deal. And I don't think that's why it excites you. It excites you just because the, the, I don't know why it excites you, but like the, um, literally just like it's a new money. That's kind of interesting. I don't think it would matter if like everyone's talking about it or not. Like, I, I don't know if you, if that's what excites you. What excites you is like literally the tiny minute details for some reason. It's, it's, it just, if maybe the math, maybe like you're overthrowing the system. Something about that is really interesting to you. Right. And so for me, I was like, I just love moving these fucking boxes and moving into a new apartment. I don't know why I love doing that, but like, I love going out on the street and hunting for places and talking to the guy at the bar, like, what do you think about this neighborhood? Are all the hipsters moving here? Like, I love it. I get obsessed with it. And like, I— what I was trying to do, what I should do next is I was thinking about what do I just get so much energy of? And I remember I cannot sleep the day before I've got to move because I'm so excited.

SHAAN

That's so funny. But I think most people hate that, but you love it, which is why it's even more valuable when the thing you get energy from is things that drain other people's energy. Like, bingo, you're gonna outcompete everybody because for them it's gonna be work and for you it's gonna be play. Like, my coworker, this guy Paul Gebheim, told me this once. He goes, he was like, I hadn't really thought about this. I was really young at the time. I was like maybe 24, 25. And he goes, yeah, so you should go talk at this event. And I was like, why? Is it gonna like, give growth to the, to our app? Or like, are we gonna recruit people? He's like, no, you should go talk cuz you love talking, right? Like, he's like, talking gives you energy, so you're gonna love it. And I go, what? He goes, he goes, yeah, it's like, um, you know, for most people, if they had to go give a talk in front of a bunch of people, they would like, they'd be drained by the time they even get up on the stage. And then afterwards there'd just be like, finally some relief from the anxiety I've been feeling. He's like, you're the opposite. He's like, I noticed that. He goes, he goes, yeah, it's like easy. He goes, he goes, it's like going to the gym. You know, you go to the gym and like, if you just look at the math, it's like, well, there's a lot of energy expended working out, but how do you feel after you work out? You feel, yeah, you feel physically a bit tired, but you feel like your actual spirit feels energized. Like you go give energy and somehow you get energy in that moment. And he's like, so, you know, there's some stuff that's energy drains. And even though it's not that taxing, it's like just thinking about your, think about filing your taxes for like the next 20 minutes. Watch, you'll feel fucking awful. By the end of it, you'll go need a nap or a drink. Um, and it's like, on the other hand, if you do stuff that gives you energy, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, you can audit your calendar and say, I'm gonna highlight in green the things that I do that give me energy and put in red the things that, that suck my soul. And, um, and you know, if I wanna have a better life, I should probably just do more of the green shit.

SAM

I think that's, that's great. I think that my, my, I, I've talking to a ton of people right now who are mess— they're like, you know, I've, I've made a little bit of a name for myself.

SHAAN

What should I do?

SAM

Yeah. By my career. But like, I don't even like it. What the fuck do I do? And I'm like, oh yeah, it's tough, but you got to find where— where you have to find what gives you energy. That doesn't necessarily mean what makes you happy, by the way, but what gives you energy.

SHAAN

Totally. Because it can be really challenging and frustrating at times. And, you know, it'll have highs and lows. In fact, I add this channel to every Slack that I do. So like, I just put it in our e-commerce one because we just had like a big low. Where we got effed over by this like crazy unforeseen circumstance. It's like, oh, well here's another one. And so, you know, my team, they get so bogged down by these highs and lows. And I was like, guys, remember like we, we stood in line to get on a roller coaster. Why are we surprised when there's highs and lows? That's what a roller coaster does. Like if you didn't want the thrill, like, you know, we can go sit in the grass over there. We don't have to be on a roller coaster.

SAM

That's a good line. I'm stealing that.

SHAAN

And it's like, you know, so I create a Slack channel called Highs and Lows and I say, Well, now we have a place to put it, which is in itself like therapy. It's like, ah, dude, this is gonna be an epic low that I put in there. And we went and we wrote the low and then we started writing some highs that we've had. And like, it just, it's what you should expect. Don't be surprised when the roller coaster goes up and down. When you, you stood in line to get on a roller coaster, you were excited about going on this roller coaster. Um, you know, that's, that's what you wanted. You wanted the adventure. And so, um, and so, you know, that's how that, I think that's like a good tip for really any business. That's a great line with the Milk Road, which Milk Road's the name of the, the, the crypto email that me and Ben send out every day. Um, and like you, you go to milkroad.com. I bought the domain, by the way, for $2,000. I think it's a pretty good, pretty good buy, right?

SAM

That's a good buy. 2 grand for milkroad.com. That's a great buy. I'm, I would, I would've thought you had to get the .co.

SHAAN

We had milkroad.xyz and it was like just such bullshit. Like people couldn't even, like the thing wouldn't even load. I don't know why, but like milkroad.com. So when we started writing this, I was like, all right, I found my thing. Now, I found my thing when I was probably like 32 or something like that, right? So it took me 12 years maybe to figure out what's the thing that gives me energy. And mine was, I just want to get paid to be curious. And it's like, what does that mean? It's like, I don't know, like, every— like, every day I hear about different stuff, I'm reading about things, I'm talking to people. Wouldn't it be great if just like going and learning that thing was somehow how I got rich and fam— rich and famous? Like, wouldn't that be dope? And like, the podcast does that. It lets me just be curious. I could be like, oh, someone's making a bunch of money selling turnkey tailgates to universities. How does the economics of that work?

SAM

Right?

SHAAN

Like, that shouldn't be something I'm— I get to— I give the license to go spend 3 hours figuring out, but the podcast gives me that license. I'm cool. It, it gives me money and fame for, for doing it. I get power and influence. Great. Uh, as a byproduct. Then the second thing, the e-commerce one, for example, does not give me this. And that's why I don't think long, long term, right? It's, for me because it's not me being professionally curious. It's like more of an opportunistic thing. Milk Road is that because every day I'm like, I like, for example, yesterday this guy came out with this thing that I think you'll find interesting. So most of the time people talk about the prices. People tell us, spend a lot of time talking about price of crypto, which is kind of annoying once you stay in it for a while. But like, let's say the price of Ethereum right now is about $2,600 per, per ETH. And, um, was that the anywhere it says it should be $5,000? Yeah, people, people come out and they should be— they're like, oh, like, ETH is going to $5,000, ETH is going to $10,000, ETH to the moon. And like, 9 times out of 10, this is, you know, either hopes and dreams, uh, or it's like just clickbait. Like, if I say I think Bitcoin's going to $5 million a coin, guess what? That's going to get covered by a bunch of people, and like, a bunch of people are going to share it because it's outlandish. Uh, and hey, you know, please don't hold me to it. What are you gonna do? I'm just making some far-fetched prediction about the future. Um, and the last one is they are like using some weak-ass logic. Like, like people do this with Bitcoin all the time. They're like, there are 55 million millionaires in the world and there's only 21 million Bitcoin. There's not enough Bitcoin for the millionaires to all have one, so price is going to go way, way up. And it's like, okay, like I understand the general idea of what you're saying, but like that's so unsophisticated compared to— and this is why like Warren Buffett comes out and says Bitcoin is rat poison or it's pure speculation, there's no fundamentals. That was like the, that's the common narrative. So what I thought was kind of cool was, was that, by the way, Ben just linked an article in the chat where I did the clickbait thing where I said I'm putting 25% of my net worth into Bitcoin. This is like, you know, a year and a half ago or something like that. And I was like, because there's a, there's a wave of institutional capital coming in, I'm gonna front run the wave. And it just sounds great. And guess what? Like, you know, these, these news, news websites, you know, look at this, like, cringy picture of my face with a Bitcoin.

SAM

What was the thing that happened?

SHAAN

All right, so this guy came out, he's a, he's like a kind of like a crypto quant, uh, investor. He's got like his own fund or whatever. And he said, you know, I actually think that there's a way to value Ethereum like you would value any stock, uh, any stock of a company. He goes, so how do you value a company? You value a company based on its cash flows. Well, guess what? Ethereum has revenue. So what's the revenue of Ethereum? Ethereum has revenue because there's transaction fees. And, um, you know, people— this is not new, but there's something new of like Ethereum changed what it does with the transaction fees. So now you can value it. So for example, Bitcoin has transaction fees, but the transaction fees get paid to miners. So as a Bitcoin holder, you don't get that revenue. And the miners all have different expenses. One guy's in Greenland, his expenses are low cuz the electricity's cheap there, whatever. So you could never really get the profits the net profits of Bitcoin transactions or the Bitcoin network, cuz it really wasn't, that's not an, it wasn't, it was apples to oranges. But Ethereum has changed what it does with the fees, which now lets you create a valuation model. So what happens? All right. Uh, Ethereum transaction happens. Let's say it's $100 for the transaction fee. Um, 70% of that, it's called the base fee. And do you know what they do with the base fee? You know where that goes?

SAM

No, I don't know anything what you're talking about, to be honest.

SHAAN

Okay, so you— okay, well, I'll explain in the most simple terms. When there's an Ethereum trade, when there's a transaction in Ethereum, there's a fee, right? That's cool. Visa, MasterCard, everybody has a fee when you do a transaction. The Ethereum fee gets broken into two parts. There's the base fee, which is just burned. So they take 70% of the transaction fee and they just get rid of it. Why would you do that? Well, this is like when a, when a company buys back stock. It's a share buyback. They basically buy stock on the open market and just get rid of it. What does that do? It makes— it shrinks the supply of the stock, which makes the price go up, right? There's less supply, but there's the same demand, so price goes up. So the— so Ethereum started doing this thing last year where it takes the fee and it just buys back Ethereum and gets rid of it, which drives the price of— it drives the supply down, price up. Okay, cool. That's the first bit. The second bit is there's like a tip that's 30% of the fee, uh, today that goes to miners, but there's a like the way Ethereum, there's like Ethereum 2.0 coming out. When it does that, that's gonna go to the holders of Ethereum, to the long-term holders of Ethereum. So that's like a dividend being issued out. So now you have, now Ethereum has revenue, which last month that was $1.3 billion in fees. So real significant revenue. And we know that that accrues, the value accrues to the, to holders of Ethereum.

SAM

So what price target did, did he put on it?

SHAAN

So he does a model, he does a discounted cash flow model. And he basically says, based on this revenue, based on this multiple, and based on the dis— this discount rate, the price target for Ethereum right now, right now, the present value of Ethereum according to, according to this model is $10,000 per ETH. ETH is trading at $2,600, you know, $2.6K. If you believe this guy's model, he's undervalued currently by about 4x. And he put the model out there so anybody can go change it.

SAM

You could say, uh, his name is, uh, what do I Google to read it?

SHAAN

What was the name?

Ryan Ellis.

SHAAN

Ryan Ellis. And, and so you could say, okay, maybe he's got really like aggressive assumptions in his model. Well, actually, he just used the average price-to-earnings multiple of the S&P 500 and he assumed 25% annual growth for the Ethereum network for the next 20 years, which is not like super aggressive, right? It grew like 1,000% last year, 400% this year, like You know, it's growing much faster than that right now. So you use pretty conservative estimates. Now there's always risks, right? Any— I have this phrase I put in my— I put in the newsletter this morning, which is that, you know, more fiction gets written in Excel than in books, um, you know, because, uh, you can make an Excel model dance and make it look great just by tweaking two little variables. So you always have to be careful with this stuff. You got to do your own homework. But I found this to be really interesting because the common narrative is, oh, it's all speculation, it's got no intrinsic value, there's no fundamentals, there's no analysis you can do on it. You're just guessing what the next guy is going to buy. And that actually is true for most coins. And it was true for Ethereum until now. And one of the best things you can do as an investor is spot when something— a common narrative is now no longer true. Those are usually pretty big opportunities. So anyways, that was— I'm up till 3 a.m. last night because I'm learning what this guy's model looked like. I'm kind of checking it for myself. Does this make sense to me? And I'm putting that in the newsletter. It's like, hey, let me make this simple for you to understand. Like, this is kind of cool. And so even though that's a lot of work, that's a prison of my own making that I'm happy to do because I— I would rather be—

SAM

you're going to be into this though for years. I think you will be.

SHAAN

That's the big TBD.

SAM

But that's the— that's the— I think you will.

SHAAN

For now I'm into it. I'm providing a fuck ton of value. 9 months from now, 28 months from now, am I going to feel the same? I don't know. But hopefully we can hire a writer who does feel the same.

SAM

I think with most people, even the shit they love, it does get boring sometimes. And then what you do is you walk away, or you chill, and then you, you fall in love again. I mean, I have to imagine that even Steven Spielberg is like, I don't want to make a movie this year, right? You know what I mean? I think— is that how they feel? I wonder what, like, Nadal, or what's the tennis player, or the, uh, Rafael Nadal? Yeah, I wonder like what he thinks about like tennis or something like that. I mean, I like— Usain Bolt was like, I don't even like training, man. I'm just doing this because I'm good at it, and it like— I like winning, but I don't really love— I'm not in love with this right now.

SHAAN

And like, that's normal. I think that's natural.

SAM

And you see even like fighters like Dustin Poirier, when he beat Conor McGregor, he was like, man, I'm over this.

SHAAN

I don't want to do this anymore.

SAM

I don't even like this anymore.

SHAAN

Tom Brady just retired yesterday, right? And he's like, basically he's, he's what, he's 44 now? So he's been doing this for like, you know, 20+ years professionally. And he was like, football is— he's like, I still love the games, but football is a 365 days a year commitment for me. I don't know if you know about Tom Brady, but he like sleeps every day at like 8 PM.

SAM

The guy who started like the T12 or whatever his thing is called, the T-Body or whatever his thing is called, wanted to come on the pod.

SHAAN

Oh really? His, his trainer?

SAM

Yeah.

SHAAN

That guy Alex?

SAM

I don't know if it's trainer or business partner, but like he branded himself as the guy who started it.

SHAAN

TB2, the TB12 method. Um, so, uh, yeah, I think people do get burnt out. Tony Robbins has this thing he says, which he goes, people's number one need in life is certainty. So you need to know where your next meal's coming, if you got a roof over your head, where you're gonna sleep. That's why we love relationships, 'cause we love the certainty and comfort of knowing who's gonna be there, who you talk to, what you do every day. We love routines. He goes, but God in her infinite wisdom made it so that the second biggest need we have is uncertainty, which is variety, which is, it's like a seesaw. What do you do as soon as the thing is balanced? You start jumping around to mess it up, right? And you got to know that about your nature. And there's like, it's completely normal to enjoy a structured routine and then at the same time crave variation. Doesn't mean you don't like the thing or it's not cool anymore. It's just that that's how humans are wired.

SAM

All right, sick. Let's wrap up here because I've got some stuff that I wanted to cover, but we didn't get to it today. And so we'll save that for Monday, right?

Monday.

SHAAN

Okay, cool. Producer Ben, what'd you think of the app?

Good episode. Uh, uh, good episode. Ben Levy, good addition, good story. Uh, yeah, solid episode.

SHAAN

Ben, your, your meme was amazing. He did this meme which is like, walks into Sean's office for interview. Is your name Ben? Yes. You're hired.

We're putting together a team. If your name's Ben and you're talented, get it, get at us.

SAM

We're— how's your, uh, what were your, what was your numbers in January? Ben?

Oh, I need to look it up. It was, uh, it didn't beat my best month, which was, um, like just below 100. My best month was 97 or something like that. And this was just below that.

SHAAN

Come on. What's the latest, uh, who are you profiling right now? What story are you telling?

Uh, Walt— I'm still in the middle of Walt Disney. I haven't put out part 2 yet. Um, so I'm in the middle of that. I'm a bigamist. I'm a cheater when it comes to research. So I'm also doing a little research on other stuff too.

SHAAN

Yeah. So I know a fair bit about Walt Disney. What's like, give me one tidbit that's like, bet you didn't know this, or this is super what I found super fascinating. Give me one. I haven't listened to the episode.

SAM

He's optimistic and he went broke and bankrupt a few times, right?

Yeah. I mean, that was the most amazing thing to me. Um, actually the tidbit that like has blown my mind the most, um, is there's this story where basically they're inventing cartoons with sound and like they're showing it to this audience. Audience is going crazy, right? So they keep showing it to him again and again and again. And finally, a couple of his animators are like, we can't do this. It's 6 hours they've been showing it to him. It's 2 in the morning. So they just like go outside of the theater a little bit and are like smoking and talking. And he comes out and he goes, 'Yeah, what are you guys gonna do? You stand out here talking about babies or you're gonna come inside and change the world?' And it blew my mind because I was like, if you just told me that, that quote out of context, I would have told you it was Steve Jobs. Like, it was— it's so similar. And then I just like started putting it—

SHAAN

I would have thought of Sam Parr when he said, uh, 'Do you want your kids to have braces?' And so those are just like two stories that I'm breaking this down now in the second episode.

The similarities between their stories are actually like kind of uncanny. They have a lot of weird similarities.

SAM

Yeah. Isn't it? I've always thought that like you could with all types of people that you could basically, there's like, I was always trying to think how many categories are there of people? Cause I remember meeting some people. I'm like, oh, you are this, you are exactly this human being. And after listening to your podcast, I remember listening to Edison and I'm like, oh, Elon is exactly like that. And if I study Edison, I bet you I can like make sense of a lot of what Elon's doing and help predict what he might do. And I wonder if you could do the same for like a Jobs and a, uh, uh, a Walt Disney where you just put 'em in the same category. You're like, I bet I can understand a lot of stuff because of Ben.

SHAAN

This is perfect for your, your, uh, consulting business that you, that you've created off the pod. You know those DISC personality surveys where it's like you're a dominant, you know, indifferent or whatever, you know, like some bullshit like that. You're a red, blue, and you can get along with greens. Uh, you just need to do that with like great, great people in history. It's like, You're 42% Jobs, and actually, like, you know, you're 42% Jobs and you're 60%, um, you know, like, whatever, uh, you know, Walt Disney. And it's like, what does that mean? It's like, well, you're like Jobs in this way. And everybody just gets a compliment. It's like, oh yeah, I'm, I'm 82% Edison, actually, and I don't work well with Disneys. I'm 32% Wozniaks. I need to find my job.

SAM

Yeah.

SHAAN

Yeah.

Do some like Myers-Briggs over the top of it. I like that.

SAM

Yeah. Um, all right.

SHAAN

I'm all about making up fake personality, uh, quizzes. I think that's great.

SAM

I gotta run. I gotta go get my workout in. It's about to snow and get freezing in Austin, like the first time in a long time.

SHAAN

So I gotta get— doesn't Austin like shut down when it snows?

SAM

Yeah. It's stupid. Like last year we were shut down for like a week, but I didn't have power and water for 6 days and it was like 20 degrees. So it was kind of warranted.

SHAAN

By the way, speaking of one-liners, you said an amazing one after we recorded last week. Uh, the, like, like he was just saying that Walt Disney quote. What was the one that you said that our, our buddy said? He goes, uh, I remembered the line.

SAM

He, he goes, and this guy's like worth $100+ million. He said, um, people hate on get rich quick schemes. Are they crazy? Getting rich quick is the best way to get rich. Why would anyone hate on that? I love get rich quick schemes.

SHAAN

I only, I only wanna get rich quick.

SAM

Yeah. He goes, you got a good get rich quick scheme for me. I love that. And this guy like sold his company in like 2 years. So like it was a get-rich-quick scheme.

SHAAN

It worked. Uh, so funny.

SAM

All right, see you guys.