A hangout with the whole team (Sam, Shaan, Ari & Cassie)

Transcript

Okay, so this was supposed to be private, but we decided to do it in public as any good influencer would do. We said, "Hey, why do this if we're not gonna have the camera on?" So the setup here is me and Sam are on camera, but you'll also see Ari and Cassie. Cassie's the new girl on the team, and she came on and we were supposed to do a strategy meeting like, "Oh, what are you here to help with the podcast? What are we trying to do again? What's the strategy?" And we said, "Why don't we actually just record it and we'll just do it live and see what comes out of this session?" So that's what I'm here to do. Sam, did I—is that what you are expecting here? [SPEAKER_03] Yes, and we all filled out something in advance. You are the only one who did not submit yours already. Well, okay, yeah, that's right. I did, but I'm the collator. What I like to do in these situations, and I think anybody should steal this—I stole this from Amazon when we got acquired there. I learned this method: you send a little bit of pre-work in advance and it makes the meeting so much more interesting and valuable because some people are fantastic at thinking on the spot and coming up with insightful, accurate, true, honest things on the spot in front of a large group of people, but that's one percent of people. Most people don't think very well that way. So if you actually want to get to the right answer, a really good thing to do is send out some questions or have people write in advance what they're thinking. Then one person is the gatherer—you gather all the materials together and use that to have a good discussion. So I asked you guys ten or so questions like, "What's working really well with the podcast right now? What's not working? What's your biggest pet peeve? What's something we're stupid for not doing right now?" Very simple questions. I gathered all that and we're not going to use all of it, but I wanted to share some of the most interesting findings. Can we just start with the most interesting findings? The first one is Sam, you had a bit on almost the virtue of selfishness. You were basically like, "I want to do the selfish thing," and I went with the podcast because there's one way to look at this, which is, "It's all about what should we be doing to be more successful? How do we make this external thing work?" And you were just like, "I want to do the selfish thing and have fun and learn and improve myself. I think others will enjoy that a lot more than us trying to appeal to them in an inauthentic way." And it reminded me of the Rick Rubin quote: the best way to serve your audience is to ignore them completely. [SPEAKER_03] I actually think I was nervous to even put that on there because I'm like, "Oh, we're going to do a podcast on this, and I'm just going to tell the audience to...uh." I just think that originally, you started this podcast, then I came on, and for the first three years, I don't think you and I ever looked at the data. I couldn't even tell you a bunch of the numbers. Frankly, I still don't really look at the numbers, but every once in a while I get drawn and sucked into this thing where I look at the YouTube numbers because those are the most public. And I started thinking in headlines. I started thinking about what can get the highest click-through rates. And then occasionally I suggest we do some of those episodes and we do do some of those episodes. And I noticed the night before I get the Sunday scaries on a Tuesday night because we record on Wednesdays. I noticed that I dislike those the most. And then I noticed there are so many times like when you will tell me a story or we will have a guest like Graham Weaver—I think Graham Weaver is popular, so it's maybe not the best example—or Sarah Moore, who you did a podcast with. We do these podcasts and I leave with more energy than I came in with. And almost always that happens when it's not data-driven and it's simply, "What am I curious about?" Or if I read a book and I'm excited to tell Sean about this, or Sean goes and visits Austin and I just want to hear his opinion of who he met and what was cool about it, I am more excited and energized at the end of those than I am at the things where I've done based on a headline that I think will be popular. Right, that's so true. And I think we should actually set the stage. I forgot to do this. Set the stage on where we're at. So for those who don't know, I started this podcast six years ago. We're 822 episodes in. I think we've done something like 115 million downloads of the podcast. And the entire podcast is based off a shtick which is four words: "Dude, have you seen this?" And that's it. Then it's basically Sam saying that to me, and I'm like, "No, what is it?" And he tells me something that makes me get excited, blows my mind, and then I try to do the same for them. It's a giving contest where me and you sit here and try to do that. That's how I see it. Six years into having a podcast, we are basically a media company. We have never had a social media person. I didn't even know that we had social media. You don't know how many times somebody from HubSpot has asked me, "Hey, does anybody have the Twitter login? Hey, can you...?" Cassie yesterday was asking, "Hey, there's a LinkedIn page. Do you know who made that?" I was like, "I have no idea. Didn't even know it existed." We've got an Instagram account that for years nobody had the password to. We had to request a reset. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, we're pretty comically bad at some of these things. [SPEAKER_02] So when I was prepping for this meeting, I put all of our MFM numbers, our competitors, our goals into a Claude prompt and it gave me a sixty-day action plan for growing our channels. I want to give it away to you as well. So if you head to the show notes below and drop your email, we'll send you the prompt that you can use to grow your platforms as well. Sean, what do you want to do? Are there any new initiatives that you want to do this year, in the next twelve months? Is there anything you want to do? You don't want to do? I think most of the things are things I don't want to do, meaning I could come up with a list of thirty possible things, but I think the real question is, "What are the one or two things that might actually change things for the better?" The one I wrote right now is I think our core product is actually pretty good. I think, you know, I would like listening to this podcast, and that's a good test. I don't know if I would listen to the podcast by default because I might not even know it exists or know what's in it. What would hook me in to doing it in the first place? And ironically, some of the things that would hook me in might be a bigger name guest that I'm curious to hear what this person has... [SPEAKER_04] Most of the things are things I don't want to do, meaning I could come up with a list of 30 possible things, but I think the real question is what are the one or two things that might actually change things for the better. The one I wrote right now is I think our core product is actually pretty good. I would listen to this podcast and that's a good test. I don't know if I would listen to the podcast by default because I might not even know it exists or know what's in it. What would hook me in to doing it in the first place? And ironically, some of the things that would hook me in might be a bigger name guest that I'm curious to hear what this person has to say about this, or there's an interview with this person I haven't seen what that person's saying, or the topic they say is going to be interesting. But that isn't exactly what the main podcast is, or it doesn't give me a feel for what the next episode might be. It seems totally different than what that one was. For example, it seems like the main way that podcasts work today is you have the loyal listeners and then you have the samplers. The samplers are basically clips that you put in places where people already are that give somebody a bite-sized taste of what the real podcast is like. So for example, I love this podcast Basement Yard. I've never even listened to a full episode of it, but I've watched probably 200 clips. If you tell me what do you think about that podcast, I'd say oh my god, I love those guys. That podcast is amazing. I've never even listened to it. But I've listened to so many clips that I feel like I know those guys. I feel like I know the show. Every one of the clips gives me the same feeling. Most importantly, it's not like one is a really deep intellectual thing and the other one's funny. No, every clip is hilarious. I think those guys are hilarious. They seem super likable. Those guys are awesome. That show is funny. If I ever wanted a funny show, that's where I would go. And so I don't think we're doing a good job of giving out the samples of what's in MFM to give people that frame break or give people that inspiration or give people that story or the banter, whatever, in a good enough way where people already are. So on, I think a lot of our communities on X, for example, and they can do amazing things. [SPEAKER_03] Like I was on Christmas. What do you want? You want 10 or 20 clips a day, which is fine. That sounds combative. I don't think that's probably too high. Let's take a normal episode in an hour. The challenge would be how do you take three to four moments from that podcast that are MFM in a shot version and give that to people? And architect those clips in a way that you, me, and you would want to share because oh yeah, that was a great bit that we talked about. It's edited tightly enough where people would understand what it is right away and they would be hooked and they would get the payoff. If we do that and we share it where people already are consistently, I think that's the number one thing that we don't do a good job of. That seems to be the smart thing that every other podcaster does. I was on Chris Williamson's podcast. We did an episode I thought the episode was fine, you know. If you looked at his YouTube channel it wasn't like a 10x outlier. It was probably on the lower side of his normal episodes. But for three weeks his team has just been clipping from that episode—little stories, little nuggets from that episode. He put one up on X and Elon replied to some story I told on there. That same thing could have happened maybe 20 times from MFM and it doesn't happen. You just, it's like the dog's not barking. We don't know what we're missing because it's not obvious. It's invisible to us. Okay, that sounds good. That's a great idea. Awesome. Clips posted on social media where people already are—Instagram, yeah, TikTok, and X and LinkedIn, sure. Is this the My First Million? First the fire alarm going off. Wow, he's pretty quick to act there. The dad instincts. How do we go viral? What if Sam's apartment catches fire during the episode and he saves— [SPEAKER_01] I think we should make this more of a meeting. What do you think, Sean? You're saying it's boring as an episode or what are you saying? You're so different in strategy meetings. I'm being different now. You're being podcast Sean. I wasn't aware of that, but you're probably right. [SPEAKER_01] What's the main difference? You're more, you're not harsher, but you're just more blunt and—wait, hang on. This is more of a dick. Leave this in, dude. This is okay. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, just make it more how we talk when we're talking. All right, can you do an impression of how I am off podcast? When we're doing strategy, whenever we're talking about what we should do or not do. All right, what's not working? Why are we doing this? This is stupid. Yeah, someone can we do something that doesn't suck? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, we're doing three things. Why aren't we doing that? [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, Sean chastised someone on the team and he gave his answer. He goes, "That's a stupid answer. Give a better answer." Okay, but his last point is good. Basically we do need more clips. We need them to be on X and we need to be on Instagram. You know what's one of the things that we grew most from? We made this bounty where we just said we're going to give five grand to the person who clips the most that we like, and we got 20 million impressions in one month. The first month. Which interestingly, there's all these things called clipper armies now. Yeah, that was like one of the first examples of doing that. We didn't even know what we were doing and it was incredibly successful. We stumbled ass backwards into that where we were just like, "Hey, what if—" Honestly, the reason we did that, we didn't trust ourselves to be doing a good job of this. I don't think our own team's going to do a good job of this. How about the crowd? Anybody who does this, we'll give you a prize. And two very interesting things happened. First, it was awesome. We got so much spread from it. Second, the guy who had the most viral clips ended up creating a company doing short form content, sold it to Morning Brew. You know how successful a business came out of the whole thing. And then, by the way, in hilarious news, we then immediately stopped doing what was working, forgot about it, and haven't talked about it since then. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, so my opinion is we should a, on our internal team, we should post way more on all platforms. And b, we should do another one of those things. We can either do the exact same thing or we could just pay a CPM. So for example, if you have a video that gets a hundred thousand views, you get, I don't know what the going rates are, but I think it's cheap. I think it's like a dollar per thousand views, something like that. But basically it's like, all right, you got a hundred thousand views, you get a grand. Or I can't do the math, but you guys understand what I'm saying. So Ari told me that I should be more blunt and direct as I am in not this podcast format, so I'll do that. Cassie, welcome to the team. [SPEAKER_03] We should do another one of those things and we can either do the exact same thing or we could just pay a CPM. So for example, if you have a video that gets a hundred thousand views, you get—I don't know what the going rates are, but I think it's cheap. I think it's like a dollar per thousand views, something like that. But it's like all right, you got a hundred thousand views, you get a grand or—I can't do the math, but you guys understand what I'm saying. So Ari told me that I should be more blunt and direct as I am in—not this podcast format. So I'll do that. Cassie, welcome to the team. You have lots of good ideas about community and this and that. Here's what we want to do in the next 90 days: I need you to raise a clipper army, get this going, and we should—you have 24 hours to basically set a target that makes sense. You pick your goal, but what we fundamentally are trying to do is copy a working playbook that has worked for everyone from Andrew Tate to whoever else on the clipping side. And we want to use money to incentivize these 16 to 22 year old kids who are awesome at editing and making clips to post clips about our stuff on social, not on our own brand account necessarily. We'll take the best and we'll put it there. A lot of money to do, but we want to set a very aggressive stretch goal and aggressively raise this army of clippers. And we'll do that for 90 days and then we'll check in. At the end of the 90 days, we'll decide whether we continue or not. But you could be basically stupidly aggressive for 90 days so we get a clear answer versus tiptoeing into it. And then we won't really know in 90 days because we're just getting started, we haven't really found out yet. Go all out, spend more money than you think you need. Be a little bit looser with the controls about it and go for more scale. And let's see what happens. [SPEAKER_03] Okay, so in my opinion, let's make a list of only one or two things that we want to do more on. Big rock one: clipper army. Okay, let me give you a couple. One thing that I don't know 100 percent, Sean, if I want to do it, but we should consider it—we've been talking about events forever. I think I would be open to a two or three venue tour. I would want it to make—I would have to figure out if family can come or not and if we can make that happen. But I would be open. But the shtick that we have needs to be easy because, and I don't mean easy in a lazy way, but easy where we could kick ass at it. Because performing in front of 2,000 people like we have before—it's hard to make it entertaining. I've been to a lot of live podcast tapings with a lot of people. Almost all of them suck. So we would have to really hone in on a format. So I would say I would be open to an event, but let me give you a few more ideas. [SPEAKER_01] Wait, before we do that, let's stick to events. Like, what would you do if you could? If it was worth driving an hour for, what would you do? I think okay, here's what my interest in an event is: I don't want to do an event for money. I don't want to do an event for the ego hit. I got that, just for the record. You would like to get paid for it? Sure. Making money's fine, but that wouldn't be the motivation to do it. Same thing with like, it's awesome to walk into a theater or an arena or whatever the thing is and be like, wow, all these people are here for us. This is awesome. And there's a line of people trying to take selfies and showing my wife like, look, it's real. This is a thing. And my kids do—you, is this—am I cool to you yet? And they're like, no, can we go? So that wouldn't be the main motivation. My only motivation with an event is I want to know who the top one percent of MFM listeners are, and this is an extremely selfish request. Which is, over time, actually not through me but through my business partner Ben Levy—people go to Ben and they're just like, dude, I love MFM. So he'll be like, oh, you know the founder of that really cool thing? We eat at that place, we go to that product we use. Yeah, he loves MFM. And then I get to meet him on text. I'm like, it's insane that we don't know who the most interesting listeners are. That's who I want to do the event with and for, and just purely out of selfishness because I want to meet them. And also, it'd be cool, I think, if they met each other. And I think that would just be the fun version of doing an event that I'm most interested in. So if we could figure out what I call the MFM one percent event, that's what I want to do. [SPEAKER_03] Okay, got it. So one percent means like a one-percenter? And that most interesting? [SPEAKER_03] So that means curated. Curated. That means okay, so you're thinking curated like hundred or hundreds or a hundred, 150 curated people? [SPEAKER_04] And let's make it an awesome retreat hangout, whatever. Let's invite some friends of the pod who are guests like Andrew and Steph Smith. Let's get other people that they would also want to meet. Okay, but again, if you curate it to me, that's a room I want to be in because I know I would have a fun time. I could in one day meet a bunch of awesome people who are like-minded, who are fans of the show. That would be the no stress versus get on stage, travel somewhere—already bad—get on stage, have to perform some live show for—what do I want out of that? I don't really want anything out of that. Here's another version that I find interesting. So I'm always brainstorming like what's the opposite. So what's the opposite of the live tour, the big show? And my brain went to tiny desk. So you know, like the NPR tiny desk series that they created on YouTube? The vibe is immaculate. It's cool because it's kind of small and intimate rather than mega mega, and you get to see the artist cook. And so I've actually be curious if we did our version of tiny desk. So you've seen like Hormozy does a lot of these where he's doing his workshops and somebody stands up and says, I have this problem, I'm this guy, you know, here's my business, here's what I do, blah blah blah. He's supposed to give him the right answer as the kind of guru on the stage. And it's good, but it's very sterile. The vibe of it is like we're in a cold conference room and we're here for some tactics. Whereas tiny desk has a different aura to it, a different vibe to it. And so if we had a cool venue that was almost compact and we had 20 people who are entrepreneurs, people who listen to the podcast who are entrepreneurial, and then we just kind of spitball with them—I think both me and you were pretty good at doing this with people. I've done this at a couple of events where I got paid to go do this talk, and I threw—just on the drive there, I just threw out my deck, and I was like, you— [SPEAKER_04] Very a bit sterile right. The vibe of it is we're in a cold conference room and we're here for some tactics, whereas Tiny Desk has a different aura to it, a different vibe to it. So if we had a cool venue that was compact and we had 20 people who are entrepreneurs, whatever people who listen to the podcast who are entrepreneurial, and then we just spitball with them, I think both me and you were pretty good at doing this with people. I've done this at a couple of events where I got paid to go do this talk and I threw out my deck on the drive there. I was like, you know what, I'm going to do this. I'm just going to stand up and be like, who's got a business? You're here to get better and improve your business, but you want some value out of this. Tell me what you're doing. Tell me your biggest problem. Let me try to help you right here on the spot. I did that with 20 people and I felt like a magician because you get to do a magic trick of getting them unstuck. Which talk are you referring to? The Mercury one? [SPEAKER_04] The Mercury one, yeah. Because I watched it. That was good. So you and you doing that together, I think would be pretty fire. [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, I agree. That could be cool. We could have a cool set. We do one in New York, we do one in San Francisco, we do one in wherever else and we take our family and hang. It's a curated event, but that becomes the trick. The live event is an experience, but really it's the content you create off that. What Hormozi is doing is pretty smart, right? He chops that up into a thousand question and answer clips where somebody has a problem and then he helps them solve it and then they're like, wow, thank you so much. That becomes good clip content. So I think for us we could do that and I think it would be pretty interesting, pretty easy for us to do, much easier than going on stage and performing comedy or essentially live entertainment. I'm more interested in that than hanging out with really successful people. For some reason I don't love hanging out with ballers in these types of settings because a) I don't feel like googling everyone in advance seeing if they're on the Epstein list, but also it just feels like a pissing match, and I just like being with the nobodies. [SPEAKER_04] Okay, Bernie Sanders of business over here. I'm like, who's the guy, Mitt Romney, who was like, I don't like poor people? Whatever you're saying. Okay, so maybe we do different events. You do the everybody event in venue A and I'll be with all the cool successful people in venue B. It's been great. So something I want to do less of. A few things I want to do less of. Do you like doing solo episodes? [SPEAKER_04] I hate doing solo episodes. I hate recording too and looking at a bare screen. Do you? [SPEAKER_04] I don't mind it. Sometimes I like to teach if I have something to teach, but there's two types of solo. One is solo just talking to the camera. The other is when there's a guest in New York and it makes sense for you to hang out with them in person and do the in-person pod and I'm not there, or vice versa. I'm not into those either. I find those to be way less fun because it feels like work. But when we do them together it feels more fun, way more fun, because it's whenever you're around brothers and they egg each other on. I love the egg each other on mentality. I don't love solo interviews. Or occasionally if it's someone who I know that you don't like or you don't care about their topic, but it's super interesting to me, I'm like, all right, I would like the solo time just to go really deep on this one thing. But in general, I prefer duo versus solo for both interviews and talking about stuff. [SPEAKER_04] Me too. The only caveat would be there is something cool about in person. You pick up so much more than just doing a remote podcast where they pop on, they pop off at the end of the hour, and there's not a lot in between. So I think hanging out in person is pretty cool, and I think the production value I do like. I prefer to watch podcasts that are like that, when people are together, versus when they're doing a Zoom. And lastly, sometimes you know, I like that you were pretty sacred about what times you're going to record, whereas I'm like, you know, Ari, if you ask me, hey, this person wants to record on the moon at 2 a.m., I'm like, yeah, that's cool. Have I ever said no? I'm basically like, yeah, sure. What does it matter to me if it's 9 a.m. or 9 p.m.? I don't really care, whereas I think Sam for you, you're like, that throws my whole day off. I have a more structured day. Yeah. I think that's the only other times where we do solo is where you can't make it. [SPEAKER_02] What do you guys feel about newsletter? I know, Sean, you both Sean and Sam have experience in this realm, but curious what your thoughts are on a brand and newsletter too. There has to be some type of way where it doesn't become a liability and it only becomes an asset, or at least is a liability a small amount of times. The problem with, because neither of us have time to write it, the problem with saying yes to that is you're going to say something dumb, you're going to say something that doesn't fit our taste, or it's just going to be factually incorrect. If one of those three things happens and it hurts our reputation, to me I go, never do it again. So as long as we could de-risk it, which it will never be 100 percent, but as long as there's some type of trust there, it is interesting. But that's a huge thing to solve for. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, well, what would be interesting to you guys? Like, what would you read or what newsletters do you currently read that you're like, hey, this is something we'd want to pull from or at least get inspired by? [SPEAKER_03] Just takeaways from our episodes. Like, I want that. Yeah, exactly. Just like, I don't want to watch and listen to everything. There's so many episodes that we have done where I'm like, I need a reminder of that. We have 850. Just pull out cool learnings. Yeah, I think basically if it's here's what we just did, here's who's coming up, and if they just did, you know, here's like the three or four most interesting stories just in plain speak. Like, oh, you know, he shared the numbers of how fast they grew. It turns out year one was this, year two was this, year three was no gatekeeping. Just here's the best stuff. If you don't have time, just great. Here's this. Here's a quick summary. But that would make me want to go listen or watch an episode. And then if I knew, oh, Thursday, they have this person coming on, that's cool. And then if there was a little bullet point section where we can be like, oh, yeah, check this out. Sam went viral. Yeah, I think if it's here's what we just did, here's who's coming up, and if they just did, here's the three or four most interesting stories just in plain speak like, "Oh, he shared the numbers of how fast they grew. It turns out year one was this, year two was this, year three was this." No gatekeeping, just here's the best stuff. If you don't have time, just great, here's this, here's a quick summary. But that would make me want to go listen or watch an episode. And then if I knew, "Oh, Thursday they have this person coming on, that's cool." And then if there was a little bullet point section where we can be like, "Oh yeah, check this out. Sam went viral for this. We're doing this thing. Check out this product we bought," whatever. I'm cool with a little bit of extra so it's not purely an AI summary of the episode. I think that would be great. And I would be happy to do the work on this and not write it myself. But Diego, who's my head of content, was my lead writer for Milk Road. I basically trained him how to write my style. He did it for two years for Milk Road and was excellent. He's really good at this. That's a lift that I think I could have Diego take on. That would be worth it if we could drive enough people to it. I think right now there's this conflict, which is we tell people, "Hey, go to HubSpot to get this offer." So then that's where they would go. So this would need to become the main place we're directing people to. And I think way more people would subscribe because they would know, "Oh, I'm just going to be getting value from this all the time." That's a great idea. That again, don't know if we want to do. Have you guys seen or Sam, do you remember when they were doing those River community meetup type things? Yes, so that was kind of cool for a little bit. People were going. And the reason I say it was cool is because when I met people who liked the podcast, they told me, "Oh, I'm part of the MFM Denver meetup," and I was like, "What?" And they're like, "Yeah, we meet up once a month, and it's nine of us, or 19 of us, whatever the number is." It's not a huge group, but they all got to know each other. And we were the common glue or bond. Well, that platform has pivoted to becoming a supper club, a dinner club. So it's a decentralized way to just have fans of the show opt in to going and getting dinner with six other people who also like the show. And this selfishly does nothing for us in terms of growth hacks, money, or any of those things. We're not even going to be there. It's the barbell approach. There's some things that I want to do—things that reach everybody. And it's like, what are the things that would just change somebody's life because they would meet a co-founder or they would make a great connection or they would find friends in their city that they don't otherwise have that are at the unique level of business dork that they are? As I don't know if we should do this, there's a lot of liability. We're not in control, but we think, "Oh, this is just you opt in, and you"—it's not our experience. But I think fundamentally they'll attribute the experience to us. That's the downside. But the upside would be I think this would be really cool for people to meet other awesome people in their city, and that's good karma for the world. What do you guys think of this? We can call it just "The Other 99." [SPEAKER_01] You know, I love this idea personally. I think it's pretty cool. [SPEAKER_03] I think it's pretty cool. I didn't—I loved it, and then you were like, "Oh yeah, it is out of our control," and yet they'll blame us if it sucks. What I would be on board with is if we just said newsletter, clips, and meetups. If we just did those three things for the next six months, I'd probably be fine with that. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I love this idea. It would be cool too what if you guys showed up to one every once in a while and surprised? I did the dinner groups. Yeah, I've showed up every once in a while. It's great content too. I know it's a little different, but the Vayner ex-team was doing this with Gary V for a bit where they were doing these branded dinners in different cities and capturing content and just having these really organic conversations, and people loved it. Dude, what Vayner does is hilarious. One time Gary Vader, Chuck is his handle—he DM'd me, goes, "Hey Sam, haven't talked to you in forever." We're friendly but not like buddies. But he was like, "You want to come to dinner with me?" And I was like, "Yeah, that sounds cool." And I show up and there's like 50 other people there, and I was like, "Where's Gary?" And they're like, "Oh well, he doesn't actually come to these. It's just me, Nick. I host them on his behalf." Oh my god, really? Yeah, that's pretty funny. But yeah, we won't do that. We won't do that. Yeah, that sounds cool. Basically, the last thing I think that we should focus on guest-wise, Sean, is I think we should aim higher. I think our guests should probably be super mega popular people, and we get them to talk about new stuff that they've not talked about—like ideas or someone no one knows, like my mother-in-law, like Sarah More, like a bunch of different people. But it should be almost a little barbell, where we should—because I don't think we've done a good job of going after the one out of ten popular person. And I don't like having those people just because they're popular. But I do like having them if they talk about something new. And then also I loved having someone where I was like, "This was a nobody, and they're the most insightful person we've ever talked to." [SPEAKER_04] So is the thing you're saying we should aim higher, or are you saying, "Hey, we do a lot of these ones in the middle, and let's stop doing those"? Is that what you're saying? Like, are you saying, "Hey, let's invest more on the ends," or are you saying, "Let's avoid the middle"? [SPEAKER_03] I'm mostly saying the first thing that you just said. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, another one of those memorable episodes is when Sean brought his former—he's your former chief of staff, Ishan. Yeah, when he was like 22. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, yeah yeah, and that felt totally unique like no other podcast was going to have him on. [SPEAKER_01] It's like Theo Von bringing on the Amish kid trash man. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, yeah, it was my favorite episode. I love the Amish kid. So I would like to go a little bit higher and lower. I think I take a lot of pride that I am like this and our podcast is like this, where I enjoy hanging out with world leaders and movers and shakers, and also I equally enjoy hanging out with someone who has done something not impressive at all but is very insightful and has some wisdom that I want to learn from and is interesting. Related to that, what I have noticed I have found I get the [SPEAKER_01] felt like yeah it was totally unique like no other podcast was going to have him on. [SPEAKER_03] Theo Von bringing on the Amish kid trash man. Yeah, yeah, it was my favorite episode. I love the Amish kid. So I would like to go a little bit higher and lower. I think I take a lot of pride that I am like this and our podcast is like this where I enjoy hanging out with world leaders and movers and shakers and also I equally enjoy hanging out with someone who has done something not impressive at all but is very insightful and has some wisdom that I want to learn from and interesting related to that what I have noticed I get the most joy out of is when we have old people. I don't know a better way to say that but I love having old people on. I'm talking like 70 year plus. I have loved learning from those types of people. [SPEAKER_04] I like it. We've done so many different episode types. Is there one type we should be doing a lot more of? Is there one type we should be doing less of? Is there a new type you're itching to do? Does anyone have ideas on content types that we want to double down, abandon, or try? I think I'm a much softer person than you and I enjoy sometimes less hard hitting stuff. But let's just say we talked about raising children or finding your passion or finding happiness which is like Arthur Brooks, or parenting which I don't think we've ever talked about here. Does that stuff interest you, Sean? [SPEAKER_04] On learning those things for sure. For sure. I think we should do more of those because when we had Graham Weaver on we do pretty much none of that. We only do it when it's inadvertent but Graham Weaver was a good example of that where to me he's an inspirational guy who has all these cool ways to live a wonderful life and it just so happens to be that he was really successful at business but I think that we could for sure have some of these. I don't know what else to describe it as but I've listened to Arthur Brooks. You know who that is? Yeah. I would love to talk to people like that but also there's a variety of people in that category. Some of them are totally unknown but they've done some cool research paper or some data-driven way to raise better children or be happier or find your passion or die thinking I lived a full life and I'm happy. Things like that. [SPEAKER_01] Okay, down for that for sure. A format I love is you guys are constantly consuming interesting things. Sean not so much books for you but we're working on that. Hey, hey, and then you're turned to new leaf. You're also everywhere. Yeah. But you haven't turned to new pages. Debunked. And you're professional explainers and it's if my best friend can explain a book he or she has read in 20 minutes, that's way more. That's just a much more fun way of getting the information. [SPEAKER_01] Sam, I wanted to hear what you thought about this because you read a lot. You read a lot more than me. You read different stuff than me. So I don't know exactly how this works. I'm not trying to create a book club but I do want to find excuses where the reading I'm doing coincides with my MFM prep. Two for one. So is there a format where we could both either read the same book and we break it down or we each bring a book and I tell you what you would get out of it? I basically tell you what's in it, you tell me what's in this and we kind of rate it ourselves so we know which books to skip, which books to definitely go check out. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I think it should be quarterly. So the things that shaped my quarter. I'm reading Maverick. I'm almost finished with it. It's about a Brazilian business guy who runs his business via democracy which is strange. It didn't hook me right away. Did that one hook you? [SPEAKER_03] No. But because I've only, it's highly recommended so I just, it's in that weird category of like it's probably good but I don't like it. I'm still judging my opinion on it. I just finished Barack Obama's biography. The biggest takeaway is that he seems like a nice guy but total psychopath just like every other president. He was telling Michelle like hey I'm gonna run for president and she was like honey please don't do this. We're happy. I don't want this and he goes you're gonna not only go along with it but I'm putting you on stage and you're gonna start traveling and you're gonna campaign for me and she was like please don't do this and he goes look Michelle and then he turns it on and he goes for every young brown kid out there I could be the beacon of hope. I can let them know that they can do anything they set their mind to and she was like you fine. That was my big takeaway. That story was my favorite part from this book and then I'm reading an informal guy guide to workwear which is a style of clothing. So long story short I love reading lots of books and I can for sure come with stories once a quarter on books that I've read and what the big stories and takeaways are that I've learned. Patrick O'Shaughnessy does this great thing at the end of every episode where you ask them what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done to you and it's this softening question for every successful person where they give a heart story. I love that. Either we steal that exact question or we come up with our version of those questions. I think one tradition or ritual question would be great and it's such a small thing but would add to what we do. Diary of a CEO he did a similar thing where at the end of every episode he would have the guest write a question for the next guest and then he would tell them hey we have a guest. I said you know Barack Obama was here last week and he wrote this question for you and it's just this cool mechanic. So I think one ritualistic question would be awesome. So Ari, I don't know if you have ideas but I kind of want to put that in your court and I feel like you might help us come up with something there. The other one I was thinking about like Acquired but for every man businesses. So I get really into studying the backstories of random products that I see, little businesses. So you know that sauce Bitchin' Sauce that's in Whole Foods? There's got to be a story behind some sauce called Bitchin' Sauce that ended up on the shelf of a Whole Foods in the last five years. Part of me is like would it be interesting if we picked these businesses that everybody knows them but you don't know the story of them? You don't know how they really took off and we already do this during episodes where it's like oh dude do you know the real story behind the Stanley mug? It used to be for construction workers and then it died pretty much and then these moms in Utah picked it up and they it was all about moms staying hydrated and it became the A, whatever, it's some sauce brand called Bitchin Sauce. It's like there's got to be a story behind some sauce called Bitchin Sauce that ended up on the shelf of a Whole Foods in the last five years. Part of me is like, would it be interesting if we picked these businesses that everybody knows them but you don't know the story of them, you don't know how they really took off. And we already do this during episodes where it's like, oh dude, do you know the real story behind like the Stanley mug? It used to be for construction workers and then it died pretty much. And then these moms in Utah picked it up and it was all about moms staying hydrated and it became a status symbol and blah blah blah. And like the guy who used to run Crocs now runs Stanley and he's using the Crocs playbook there. There's interesting stuff there. So I wonder if we did a, like the Acquired thing where we both pick a business and nerd out on one business. It's kind of like How I Built This but it's just Sam and John riffing on what we thought was cool from the story for recognizable everyday businesses that we think have cool backstories. [SPEAKER_03] That sounds great. I just think that we do that. I don't think we do it in a way that would be a standalone package. So what would the standalone package be? Okay, so the package would be like the title and thumbnail basically make you a promise that you're going to learn this. And then we both have studied it enough versus today, typically one of us knows a lot more about it than the other, which is okay. But then we start the episode and we end the episode and we've delivered on that promise that you're going to hear about this thing and we're going to tell you the story, the ups, the downs, how they made it happen. The coolest stuff from this brand. [SPEAKER_03] Okay, yeah, I think that's great. I just don't know how to make it actionable but that sounds awesome like what you'd want to do. I think maybe for now we just put it on our radar so that the next time you or I thinks of a business like that or we see one or we start to hear the backstory of it we say, "Hey, let's try that thing." And then we use the authentic interest in that thing that in the moment before it perishes and we decide to try this like a focused episode on that one thing. What can we call it so we can reference this? So CNBC does this thing on YouTube that's called Make It. I love it, dude. I love it. And they do an amazing job of these. So they'll do one on like a popular one. They did one on the Yeezys and it's like the story of how Kanye built Yeezy, right? And it's like, all right, so that's like Yeezy. I'm, you know, maybe I see somebody wearing the slides. I'm like, what the hell was the actual story? And by the way, I think I actually recently heard there's a very interesting story about this. There's a guy who built or bought the factory first and had this game plan and then went to Kanye and then figured it out from there. I don't know the full story but it sounds like there was something interesting there. It didn't start from Kanye. It actually started from some guy who bought a shoe factory. So maybe we can as a code name for ourselves call it these, like a Make It style episode. [SPEAKER_03] Do you like when we do screen shares? Yes, in theory. I love to see when somebody pops up on screen. It's exciting. I want to do more artifact episodes or something like that where they share their screen. It could be if this would only work if the person was particularly interesting but it could be like if we're talking about someone's day, it's like show me your calendar right now. Or if we're talking about a question that you asked or I asked once and you stole it, how do you invest your money? Like show me a pie chart right now, dude. We should do that with guests before. In the pre-prep we should have them send us a screenshot of their calendar, maybe their home screen of their phone, like what apps they have on their phone. Yes, yes. And maybe or what Chrome plugins they use. [SPEAKER_03] For example, no, I'm being serious. I love looking at people's Chrome plugins. Or I love looking like, is their desktop clean or dirty? And how do they organize it, right? I love that. They can just tell me how you organize your workflows. It could be from Chrome plugins to the website that you use on a regular basis. I love that stuff because I'm looking for every bit of alpha. So it's like, oh, you use this Chrome plugin, or you used to, or remind you of your goals? But I'm like, show me that. Yeah, I like it. I also just think even if it's not alpha, it's just that it takes them out of whatever routine they were in and we're going to find something personal that nobody's ever asked them about or said. Something that's idiosyncratic to them, right? Like how they roll. You know, if I see somebody's desk I learn a lot. I remember sitting in Monisha's house and I'm doing the episode with him and on his desk he's got this sign that says "Trouble is Opportunity" and it's like, wow, there's got to be a story behind that. That didn't just land there by default. That's a philosophy. That's a story that's important to you. If you look at Warren Buffett's desk he has a box called the Too Hard Pile. It's like, what's the Too Hard Pile? And then you wouldn't otherwise know those things. I think if we can get like, whether it's their calendar or their desk or their iPhone home screen, something like that, I think it will unlock a different angle with guests than anybody else is doing. [SPEAKER_03] And then the last thing that I want to bring up there. We have this, and it's only happened a handful of times, but one thing that we have to try to do, and I think Ari, this is going to fall on you, is making sure that whenever we have someone on who has a checkered past, for example Martin Shkreli, I do feel a sense of responsibility that we have to ask him about his behavior. And with him it was okay but there's been times where I didn't know someone had a checkered past and I'm like, oh, I don't feel like becoming a show that confronts people. I don't want that energy right now. But it's like I both feel if we have that person on, I have to mention it. And also I don't want to be doing that. There's a responsibility and also this is not what I want to be doing. So you want me to pop in in the recording and confront what were you asking? Are you asking me... [SPEAKER_03] Like somehow you have to make sure that there's nothing crazy that we are aware that we are aware. For example, we had the guy who dealt in... [SPEAKER_03] behavior and with him it was okay but there's been times where I didn't know someone had a checkered past and I'm like, oh, I don't feel like becoming a show that confronts people. I don't want that energy right now. But it's like I both feel if we have that person on, I'm like, we have to mention it. And also I don't want to. There's a responsibility and then also this is not what I want to be doing. [SPEAKER_01] So you want me to pop in in the recording and confront? What were you asking? Are you there? [SPEAKER_03] What was the request to Ari? Oh, somehow you have to make sure that there's nothing crazy that you are aware that we are aware. For example, we had the guy who dealt with the guy in Italy, Thomas, and his story was amazing. And then out of nowhere we found out that he got in trouble for fraud. I'm like, you looked up the headline mid-recording and you were just like, it's not good. I was like, I have to call this out. I don't want to. We were getting along so well, but you have to say something. And I just want to minimize that amount, or it has to be worth it. Where I think Martin Squarely is worth it. I think he's an interesting person and he's done stuff I don't like, and we will say you have done stuff we don't like and also you're interesting. So it just has to be worth it. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, because I don't think the answer is we don't have anyone on who has no. That's not what I'm saying. It's just like you have to mention it or ask about it, and we have to make sure that that is worth it. [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. I just want to know what the solution you're suggesting really is. What do you want to change? Is there a change you want, or you just want us to know how you feel? Because that's also okay. [SPEAKER_03] Well, a little bit, yeah. I'm covering my ass. No, it's mostly just like, Ari, just like in the way that Ari protects us. For example, she'll be like, hey, you said something here and that came off really bad. One time I made fun of Simone Biles or something and she was like, that joke didn't land. [SPEAKER_01] Like when you said John Morgan was smoking weed? Which I don't think he said he did. [SPEAKER_03] He did, yeah. I'm going to double-check it, by the way. It's really funny. Ninety-nine percent of the time, or he's like, hey, yeah, that part we should take that out, right? And Sam's like, what? No, that was awesome. You almost never strike it. And I'm like, dude, are you sure that was fine? That was funny. I guess I don't know. Just keep an eye out is all I'm saying. I don't think I have anything else to say. But basically, the takeaway for me is like, newsletters? Cool, I'm on board. Clips? On board. Meetups? On board. And talking about happiness and parenting and some of that other stuff? We're open to. Yeah, so I think if we were going to say what are the three things we're going to do? Here's the rocks. I see Cassie's going to raise a clipper army, and Cassie, I'm specifically saying this to you as a challenge. You're joining the team. You're here to kick butt. This is the butt we want kicked. And to the extent that we learn how much of a butt-kicker you are will be judged on how good you do at this one thing, even if you did five other really fantastic, wonderful other things. This is the thing we're asking you to do because we think this is the biggest thing. And it's not easy either to do this. This takes some figuring out. This takes some cleverness. You're going to have to get in some Discords and have some conversations with people to figure out how all this stuff works. So that's the clipper army. That's number one. Then in terms of guests, I think Sam, you brought up like go higher, go unknown, and go into the areas of life that are important to us but we traditionally haven't done on the podcast, which is sometimes it's kids, raising kids, it's happiness, it's whatever topics that are about the human condition. Did I miss anything? [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, what is there anything, Sean, that you want to add to that? I think there's probably just going to be some others that come up when they come up. I would say actually investing probably started in that category, right? Like we were talking about business ideas. Then you and I both also want to become smarter as investors, so we started asking questions there. Well, now we're dads. We want to get better at that, and not in the boring, cliché way, but like what's the non-obvious stuff that matters. By the way, I also think we should ask our guests who've got kids like, what's something parenting-wise you do that's pretty atypical or non-traditional that you believe in? For example, a bunch of entrepreneurs I know have told me the same exact thing, which is they take a one-on-one trip with each kid when they become like six, seven, eight years old, and that becomes a sacred core memory with them and that kid. It's a totally different dynamic because you're always with the full group and the dynamic changes when you go one-on-one. I've heard that like seven times. I gotta be a dummy at some point not to just go do that if they all keep saying it. But you know, you wouldn't know otherwise unless you ask that question. Let's add a third one. A third rock, which is these guest prep and other angles. So we talked about asking them for screenshots of their space, their desk, their computer, whatever, as well as asking them questions, maybe our version of "what's the kindest thing anyone has ever done to you?" Like a great closer question that we can do ritualistically and build a tradition off that. I would say for now we don't also try to add meetups. I think we should do this and spend ninety days actually doing these things and then come up for air. And if we've actually done these well, then we've earned the right to try new, more things. [SPEAKER_03] Awesome. No comment. I think yes. I think that was great. Okay. Great. Thanks for agreeing to do that in public, guys, and for people who listen to that, I don't know, hopefully that was interesting for you guys. We thought we would do it in public. Maybe you get to see how the sausage is made a little bit. All right, Sam, send them away. [SPEAKER_03] All right. God bless. That's the part. Wait, no, what did I say last time? God. Okay. Oh, you're a blessing. [SPEAKER_00] You. a great idea awesome clips posted on social media where people already are instagram yeah tick tock and an x and linkedin sure is this the my first million first the fire alarm going off wow he's pretty quick to act there the dad instincts how do we go viral what if sam's apartment catches fire during the episode and he saves i think we should make this more meeting like what do you think sean you're saying it's boring as an episode or what are you saying you're so different in strategy meetings i'm being different now you're being you're being podcast sean i wasn't aware of that but you're probably right what's the main difference you're more um you're not harsher but you're just more like blunt and wait hang on hang on this is more of a dick leave this in dude this is okay um yeah just make it more how we talk when we're talking and all right can you do an impression of how i am off off podcast when we're doing strategy whenever we're talking about what we should do or not do all right what's not working why are we doing this this is stupid yeah someone someone can we do something that doesn't suck yeah we're doing three things like why aren't we doing that yeah sean chastised someone on the team and he gave his answer he goes that's a stupid answer uh give a better answer okay but his his last point is good basically we do need more clips we need them to be on x and we need to be on instagram you know what's one of the things that we grew most from was when we made this bounty where we just said we're gonna give five grand to the person who clips the most that we like and we got 20 million impressions in one month the first month which interestingly there's all these like things called clipper armies now yeah that was like doing that was like one of the first examples of doing that we didn't even know what we were doing and it was incredibly successful we stumbled ass backwards into that where we were just like hey what if we honestly by the way the reason we did that we didn't trust ourselves to be doing a good job of this is like i don't think our own team's gonna do a good job of this how about the crowd anybody who does this will give you a prize and two two very interesting things happened first it was awesome we got so much spread from it the second the guy who had the most viral clips ended up creating a company doing short form content sold it to morning brew and like you know how to sort of successful business come out of the whole thing and then by the way in hilarious news we then immediately stopped doing what was working forgot about it and uh haven't talked about it since since then yeah so my opinion is we should a on our internal team we should post way more on all platforms and b we should do another one of those things and we can either do the exact same thing or we could just pay a cpm so for example if you have a video that gets a hundred thousand views you get i don't know what the going rates are but i think it's cheap i think it's like a dollar per thousand views um something like that but basically it's like all right you got you got a hundred thousand views you get a grand or i can't do the math but you guys understand what i'm saying so ari told me that i should be more blunt and direct as i am uh in not this podcast format so i'll do that cassie welcome to the team you have lots of good ideas about community and this and that here's what we want to do in the next 90 days i need you to raise a clipper army get this going and we should you know you have 24 hours to basically set a target that makes sense like you pick you pick your goal but what we fundamentally are trying to do is copy a working playbook that you know has worked for everyone from andrew tate to you know whoever else you know on the clipping side and we want to use money to incentivize these like 16 to 22 year old kids who are just awesome at editing and making clips to post clips about our stuff on social not on our own brand account necessarily we'll take the best and we'll put it there a lot of money to do but we want to set a very aggressive stretch goal and aggressively raise this army of clippers and we'll do that for 90 days and then we'll check in and at the end of the 90 days and decide whether we continue or not but you could be basically stupidly aggressive for 90 days so we get a clear answer versus tiptoeing into it and then we won't really know in 90 days because oh we're just we're just getting started we haven't really found out yet like go go all out spend more money than you think you need um be a little bit looser with the controls about it and go you know go for more scale uh and let's see what happens okay so in my opinion let's make a list of only like one or two things that we want to do more on big rock one clipper army um uh okay let me let me give you a couple um one thing that i don't know 100 sean if i want to do it but we should consider it we've been talking about events for forever i think i would be open to like a two or three venue tour um i would want it to make i would have to figure out if family can come or not and if we can make that happen but i would be open but the shtick that we have needs to be easy because and i don't mean easy like in a lazy way but easy where we could kick ass at it because performing in front of 2 000 people like we have before it's kind of hard to make it entertaining and i've been to a lot of live podcast tapings with a lot of people almost all of them suck and so we would have to like really hone in on a format so i would say i would be open to an event but let me give you a few more uh ideas wait before we do that let's stick to events like what would sean what would you do if you could if it was worth driving an hour for what would you do i think okay here's what here's my interest in an event i don't want to do an event for money i don't want to do an event for the ego hit i got that just for the record you would like to get paid for it sure sure making money's fine but that wouldn't be the motivation to do it same thing with like it's awesome to walk into like a theater or an arena or whatever the thing is and be like wow all these people are here for us this is awesome and like there's a line of people trying to take selfies and like showing my wife like look it's real like this is a thing and like yeah like you know my kids do you is this am i cool to you yet and they're like no can we go um so so that wouldn't be the main motivation the my only motivation with an event is i want to know who the top one percent of mfm listeners are and this is an extremely selfish request which is over time actually not through me but through my business partner ben levy people go to ben and they're just like dude i love mfm and so he'll be like oh you know this the founder of that really cool thing we we eat that that place we go that product we use yeah he loves mfm and then i get to meet him on text i'm like i'm like it's insane that we don't know who the most interesting listeners are that's who i want to do the event with and for and just purely out of selfishness because i want to meet them and also it'd be cool i think if they met each other and i think that would just be the fun version of doing an event that i'm most interested so if we could figure out what i call the mfm one percent event that's what i want to do okay got it so one percent means like a one percenter and that most interesting so that means curated curated that means okay so you're thinking cure like hundred or hundreds or hundred 150 curated people and let's make it an awesome retreat hangout whatever let's invite some friends of the pod who are guests like let's get andrew and steph smith let's get other people that they they would also want to meet okay but again like if you if you curate it to me that's a room i want to be in because i know i would have a fun time i would go meet i could in one day meet a bunch of awesome people who are like-minded who are fans of the show that would be the no stress versus get on stage like travel somewhere already bad get on stage have to perform like some live show for what you know i'm sure what what do i want out of that i don't really want anything out of that here's another version that i find interesting so i i like always brainstorming like what's the opposite so what's the opposite of the live tour the big show and my brain went to tiny desk so you know like the npr tiny desk series that they created on youtube like the vibe is immaculate it it's cool because it's kind of small and intimate rather than mega mega and you get to see the artist cook and so i've actually would be curious like if we did our version of tiny desk so so you've seen like hormozy does a lot of these where he's he's doing his like workshops and somebody stands up and says i have this problem i'm this guy you know here's my business here's what i do blah blah blah he's supposed to give him the right answer as the kind of guru on the stage and it's it's good but it's very like a bit sterile right like the vibe of it is like we're in a cold conference room and um you know we're here for for some some tactics whereas tiny desk has like a different aura to it a different vibe to it and so i if we had a cool venue that was like almost like compact and we had 20 people who are you know entrepreneurs entrepreneurs whatever people who listen to the podcast who are entrepreneurial and then we just kind of spit spitball with them like i think both me and you were pretty good at doing this with people like i've done this at a couple of events where i got paid to go do this talk and i threw just on the drive there i just threw out my deck and i was like you know what i'm gonna do i'm just gonna stand up and be like who's got a business you're here for you're here to get better and improve your business but you want some value out of this tell me what you're doing tell me your biggest problem let me try to help you right here on the spot and i did that with like 20 people and i felt like a magician because you get to do a magic trick of like they're stuck and you get them unstuck which talk are you referring to the mercury one the mercury one yeah because i watched it that was good okay so you and you doing that together i think would be pretty fire yeah i agree that could be cool we could have like a cool set we do one in new york we do one in san francisco we do one in wherever else and we take our family we hang and you know it's it's like a curated event but that becomes the trick is the live event is a experience but really it's the content you create off that meaning like you shit like what hormosi is doing is pretty smart right like he chops that up into a thousand question and answer clips um where somebody has a problem and then he helps them solve it and then they're like wow thank you so much like oh my god yeah you're right that becomes like good clip content and so i think for us we could do that and i think it would be very interested pretty easy for us to do much easier than like going on stage and like performing comedy or essentially like live entertainment i'm more interested in that than like hanging out with really successful people like for some reason i don't love like hanging out with like like ballers in these type of settings because a i don't feel like googling everyone in advance is seeing if they're on the epstein list but also uh it just feels like a it just feels like a pissy match uh and i and i just like being with like the nobodies but uh yeah i'm interested in that okay bernie sanders of business over here i'm like who's the guy mit romney who was like i don't like poor people whatever you're saying okay so maybe we do different events you do the everybody event in in venue a and i'll be with all the cool successful people in venue b it's been great it's something for everyone uh something i want to do less of um a few things i want to do less of do you like doing solo episodes i hate doing solo episodes i hate recording too and like looking at a bare screen do you i i don't mind it i sometimes i like to teach if i have something but um well there's two types of solo one is solo just talking to the camera the other is like when there's a guest in new york and it makes sense for you to hang out with them in person and do the in-person pod and i'm not there or vice versa i'm not like those either i i find those to be way less fun because i'm like oh okay this feels a little bit like work but when we do them together it feels more fun it feels way more fun because it feels like because it's sort of like whenever you're around brothers and they egg each other on i love the egg each other on mentality i don't love solo interviews or occasionally if it's someone who i know that you don't like or you don't care about their topic but it's super interesting to me i'm like all right i would like the solo time just to go really deep on this one thing but in general i prefer duo versus solo for both interviews and talking about stuff me too the only caveat would be there is something cool about in person you pick up so much more than just doing a remote podcast where they pop on they pop off at the end of the hour and there's not a lot in between so so i think hanging out in person is pretty cool and i think the production value i do like i i i i prefer to watch podcasts that are like that when people are together versus when they're doing a zoom and then lastly like sometimes you know i like you you were pretty sacred about like what times you're going to record whereas i'm like you know ari if you ask me like hey this person wants to record on the moon at 2 a.m i'm like yeah that's cool like right like have i ever said no i'm basically like yeah sure what does it matter to me if it's 9 a.m or 9 p.m like i don't really care whereas i think sam for you you're like that throws my whole day off i have a more structured day yeah i think that's the only other times where we where we do solo is where you can't make it what do you guys feel about newsletter i know sean you you both sean and sam have experience in this realm but curious what your thoughts are on a brand and newsletter too there has to be some type of way yes interesting there has to be some type of way where it never become where it doesn't become a liability and it only becomes an asset or at least is a liability a small amount of times because the problem with because neither of us have time to write it the problem with saying yes to that is you're going to say something dumb you're going to say something it doesn't fit our taste or it's just going to be factually incorrect and if one of those three things happens and it hurts our reputation to me i go never do it again and so as long as we could de-risk it which it will never be 100 but as long as there's some type of trust there it is interesting but that's a huge thing to solve for right yeah well what what to you guys would be interesting too like what would you read or what newsletters do you currently read that you're like hey this is something we'd want to pull from or at least get inspired by just takeaways from our episodes like i want that yeah exactly just like i don't want to watch listen to everything like there's so many episodes that we have done where i'm like i need a reminder of that we have 850 just pull out like cool learnings yeah i think basically if it's here's what we just did here's who's coming up and if they just did you know here's like the three or four most interesting stories just in plain speak like oh you know he shared the numbers of how fast they grew it turns out year one was this year two was this year three was no gatekeeping like just here's the best stuff if you don't have time like just great here's this here's a quick summary but like that would make me want to go listen or watch an episode and then if i knew oh thursday they have this person coming on that's cool and then if there was like a little just kind of bullet point section where we can be like oh yeah like check this out sam uh went viral for this we're doing this thing uh check out this product we bought like you know whatever i'm cool with like a little bit of extra so it's not purely an ai summary of like the episode i think that would be great and i would be happy to like do the work on this and not write it myself but like diego who's my head of content was my lead writer for milk road so like you know i basically trained him how to write my style he did it for two years for milk road and was excellent you know he's really really good at this that's a lift that like i think i could have diego take on that would be worth it if we could drive enough people to it i think right now there's this conflict which is we tell people hey go to hubspot to go get this like offer so then that's where they would go so this would need to become the main place we're directing people to and i think by the way like way more people would subscribe because they would know like oh i'm just going to be getting value from this all the time that's that's great idea that again don't know if we want to do um have you guys seen or sam do you remember when they were doing those like river community meetup type things yes so like that was kind of cool for a little bit people were going uh and the reason i say it was cool is because when i met people who liked the podcast they told me like oh i'm part of the mfm denver meetup and i'm like what and they're like yeah we meet up once a month and it's like nine of us and whatever 19 of us whatever the number is it's not like a huge group but they all got to know each other and like we were the common like glue or bond well that platform has pivoted to becoming like a supper club like a dinner club and so it's like a decentralized way to just have like fans of the show opt in to going and getting dinner with like six other people who also like the show and you know this selfishly does nothing for us in terms of like i'm not you know there's no growth hack it's not money it's not any of those things we're not even going to be there it's kind of the the barbell approach right there's some things that i want to get i want to do things that reach everybody and it's like what are the things that would just change somebody's life because they would meet a co-founder or they would make a great connection or they would find like friends in their city that they don't otherwise have that are like the unique level of business dork that they are as a i don't know if we should do this there's like a lot of liability of like we're we're not in our heads we're like oh this is just you opt in and you it's not our experience but i think fundamentally they'll attribute the experience to us that's the downside but the upside would be i think this would be really cool for people to meet other awesome people in their city and that would good karma for the world what do you guys think of this we can call it just the other 99 you know i love this idea personally i think it's pretty cool i think it's pretty cool i i didn't i loved it and then you were like oh yeah it is not out of our it is out of our control and yet they'll blame us if it sucks i i what i would be on board with is if we just said newsletter clips and meetups if we just did those three things for the next six months i'd probably be fine with that yeah i i love this idea it would be cool too what if you guys like showed up to one every once in a while and surprised i did the dinner groups yeah i have i've showed up every once in a while it's great content too i know it's a little different but uh the vayner ex team was doing this with gary v for a bit where they were doing these branded dinners in different cities and capturing content and just having these really organic conversations and people loved it dude what vayner does is hilarious one time gary vader chuck his handle he dm'd me goes hey sam haven't talked to you in forever which we are friendly but not like buddies but he was like you want to come to dinner with me and i was like yeah that sounds cool and i show up and there's like 50 other people there and i was like where's gary and they're like oh well he doesn't actually come to these it's just me nick i host them on his behalf oh my god really uh so uh that's pretty funny but yeah well we won't do that we won't do that um yeah that sounds cool basically the and the last thing i think that we should focus on guest wise sean is i think that we should i think we don't aim high enough i think that our guests should probably be super mega popular people and we get them to talk about new stuff that they've not talked about like ideas or someone no one knows so like my mother-in-law like sarah more like um a bunch of different people but it should be almost a little barbelly where we should because i don't think we've done a good job of going after the one out of ten like popular person and i don't like having those people just because they're popular but i do like having them and if they talk about something new and then also i loved i've loved having someone who i like this was a nobody and they're the the most insightful person we've i've ever talked to so is the thing you're saying we should aim higher or or are you saying hey we do a lot of these ones in the middle and let's stop doing those is that what you're saying like are you just saying hey let's invest more on the ends or are you saying let's avoid the middle i'm mostly saying the first thing that you just said yeah another one of those memorable episodes is when sean brought his former he's your former chief of staff who ishan yeah when he was like 22. yeah yeah yeah and that felt like yeah it was like uh totally unique like no other podcast was going to have him on it's like theo von bringing on like the amish kid trash man yeah yeah it was my favorite episode i love the amish kid so i would like to go a little bit uh higher and lower you know like um i think i take a lot of pride that i am like this and our podcast is like this where i enjoy hanging out with the with you know world leaders and movers and shakers and also i i enjoy equally enjoy hanging out with someone who has done something not impressive at all but is very insightful and has some wisdom that i want to learn from um and interesting related to that what i have noticed i have found i get the most joy out of is when we have old people i don't know a better way to say that but i love having old people on i'm talking like 70 year plus i have loved learning from those types of people i like it um we've done so many different episode types is there one type we should be doing a lot more of is there one type we should be doing less of is there a new type you're itching to do like does anyone have ideas on content types that we want to double down abandon or try for some reason i'm i think i'm a i think i'm a much softer person than you and i like i i enjoy some sometimes less hard hitting stuff but let's just say we talked about like raise uh raising children or like finding your passion or b or finding happiness which is like arthur brooks um or parenting which i don't think we've ever talked about here does that stuff interest you sean on learning those things for sure for sure i think we should do more of those because when we had graham weaver on we do pretty much none of that right we do well it we only do it when it's inadvertent but graham weaver was a good example of that where to me he's an inspirational guy who has all these cool ways to live a wonderful life and it just so happens to be that he was really successful at business but i think that we could for sure have some of these i don't know what else to describe it but like i i've listened to arthur brooks you know who that is yeah like i would love to talk to people like that but also there's like a variety of people in that category some of them are totally unknown but like they've done some cool research paper or some like data-driven way to like raise better children or be happier or find your passion or die thinking i lived a full life and i'm happy like things like that right uh okay down for that for sure um a format i love is you guys are constantly consuming interesting things sean not so much books for you but we're working we're working on that hey hey and then you're turned to new leaf you're also everywhere yeah but but you haven't turned to new pages debunked um and you're professional explainers and it's like basically like if my best friend can explain like this book he or she has read in like 20 minutes like that's way more that's just a much more fun way of getting the information sam i wanted to hear what you thought about this because you read a lot you read a lot more than me uh you read different stuff than me so i don't know exactly how this works i'm not trying to create a book club but i do want to find excuses where the reading i'm doing coincides with my mfm prep right like two for one and so is there a format where we could both like either whether we read the same book and we break it down or we each bring a book and like i tell you what you would get out of like i basically tell you what's in it you tell me what's in this and we kind of like rate it ourselves and so we know which books to skip which books to definitely go go check out um are you interested in that yeah i think it should be quarterly so like the the the things that shaped my quarter like i'm reading of like i'm reading this maverick i almost am finished with this it's about a brazilian business guy who like runs his business via democracy which is strange didn't hook me right away did that one hook you no but because i've only it's highly recommended so i just it's in that weird category of like it's probably good but i don't like it i'm still judging my opinion on it i just finished barack obama's biography uh the biggest takeaway is that he seems like a nice guy but total psychopath just like every other president he was like uh really telling he was telling michelle like hey i'm gonna run for president and she was like honey please don't do this we're happy i don't want this and he goes you're gonna not only go along with it but i'm putting you on stage and you're gonna start traveling and you're gonna campaign for me and she was like please don't do this and he goes look michelle and then he turns it on and he goes for every young brown kid out there i could be the beacon of hope i can let them know that they can do anything they they set their mind to and she was like you fine that was my big takeaway that story that was my favorite part from this book and then i'm reading an informal guy guide to workwear which is a style of clothing so long story short i love reading lots of books and i can for sure come with stories once a quarter on books that i and like what the big stories and takeaways are that i've learned patrick o'shaughnessy does this great thing at the end of every episode where you ask them what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done to you and it's like this softening question for every successful person where they give a i love heart story um like either we steal that exact question or we come up with our version of those questions i think one like tradition or ritual question would be great and like such a small thing but would add to what we do uh diary of a ceo he did a similar thing where at the end of every episode he would have the guest write a question for the next guest and then he would tell them hey we have a guest i said you know barack obama was here last week and he wrote this question for you and it's just like this cool mechanic so i think one ritualistic question would be awesome so like ari i don't know if you have ideas but like i kind of want to like put that in your court and i feel like you might help us come up with something there the other one i was thinking about like acquired but for every man businesses so i get really into studying the backstories of random products that i see little businesses so it's like you know that sauce bitchin sauce that's like in whole foods it's like a whatever it's some sauce brand called bitchin sauce it's like you know there's got to be a story behind some sauce called bitchin sauce that ended up on the shelf of a whole foods in the last five years part of me is like would it be interesting if we picked these like businesses that are in everybody knows them but you don't know the story of them you don't know how they really took off and we we already do this during episodes where it's like oh dude i do you know the real story behind like the stanley mug it used to be for construction workers and then like it died pretty much and then these moms in utah picked it up and they it was all about like mom staying hydrated and it became the status symbol and blah blah blah blah blah blah and like the guy who used to run crocs now runs stanley and he's using the crocs playbook there right like there's like interesting stuff there and so i wonder if we did a like kind of the acquired thing where we both pick a business nerd out on it's just that one business uh it's kind of like how i built this but it's just sam and john riffing on what we thought was cool from the story for recognizable everyday businesses that we think have cool backstories that sounds great i just think that we do that i don't think we do it in a way that would be a standalone package so what would the standalone package uh uh okay so the package would be like the title and thumbnail basically make you a promise that like you're going to learn this and then we both have studied it enough versus today typically one of us knows a lot more about it than the other which is okay it's okay to do that but like uh and then we start the episode and we end the episode and we've delivered on that promise that like you're going to hear about this thing and we're going to tell you the story the ups the downs the how they how they how they made it happen um the coolest stuff from this brand okay yeah i think that's great i just i don't know how to make it um actionable but that sounds awesome like what you'd want to do i think maybe for now we just put our put it on our radar so that the next time you or i thinks of a business like that or we see one or we start to hear the backstory of it we say hey hey let's try that thing and then we like use the the authentic uh interest in that thing that like in the moment before it perishes and we decide to like try this like a focused episode on that one thing and it's like what can we call it so we so we like what can we reference this uh so cnbc does this thing on youtube that's called like make it it's like their make it i love it dude i love it and they do an amazing job of these right so like uh so they're they'll do one on like what's a what's a popular one they did like they did one on the yeezys and it's like uh the story of how kanye built yeezy right and it's like all right so that's like yeezy i'm you know maybe i see somebody wearing the slides i'm like what the hell was actual story and by the way i think i actually recently heard there's a very interesting story about this the there's a guy who built who built or bought the factory first and had this game plan and then went to kanye and then like you know figured it out from there i don't know the full story but like sounds like there was something interesting there that it didn't start from kanye it actually started from some guy who bought a shoe factory you know so okay well i don't know maybe we so we maybe we can as code name for ourselves call it these like make it like a make it style episode do you want to do you like when we do screen chairs yes in theory like i love to see when somebody pops up in a screen show it's sort of exciting like somebody took their shirt off or something i want to do more artifact episodes or something like that where they like share their screen it could be if this would only work if the person was particularly interesting but it could be like if we're talking about someone's day it's like show me your calendar right now or if we're talking about a question that you ask or i you asked once and i stole it uh is how do you invest your money of like show me let's do a pie chart right now dude we should do that with guests before in the pre prep we should have them send us a screenshot of their calendar maybe they're like home screen of their phone like what apps they have on their phone yes yes and um like maybe or what chrome plugins they use like for example no i'm being serious i love looking at people's chrome plugins or i love looking like is their desktop clean or dirty and like how do they organize it right like i love like they can just like tell me how you organize your workflows it could be from chrome plugins to the website that that that you use on a regular basis i love that stuff because i'm just looking for i hate using this word but every bit of alpha so it's like oh you use this like you sean use a chrome plugin or used to or remind you of your goals but i'm like show me that yeah i like it i also just think even if it's not like alpha it's just like takes them out of whatever routine they were in and we get we're going to find something personal that nobody's ever asked them about or said you know something that's idiosyncratic to them right like how they how they roll you know if you if i see somebody's desk i learn a lot you know what i mean like i remember sitting in monisha's house and i'm doing the episode with him and on his desk he's got this name just like this sign that says trouble is opportunity and it's like wow there's got to be a story behind that that didn't just land there by default that's a philosophy that's a story that's important to you if you look at warren buffett's desk he has a box called the too hard pile it's like what's that warm what is the too hard pile and then you know you wouldn't otherwise know those things i think if we can get like whether it's their calendar or their desk or their iphone home screen something like that i think will unlock a different angle with guests than anybody else is doing and then the last thing that i want to bring up there we have this has only happened a handful of times but one thing that we have to try to do and i think ari this is going to fall on you is making sure so whenever we have someone on who has a checkered pass for example martin screlli i do feel a sense of responsibility that we have to ask him about his behavior and with him it was okay but there's been times where i didn't know someone had a checkered pass and i'm like oh i don't feel like becoming a show that confronts people i don't want that energy right now but it's like i both i feel if we have that person on i'm like uh i have we have to mention it and also i don't wanna yeah there's a responsibility and then also this is not what i want to be doing so you want me to pop in in the recording and confront what were you asking are you there what was the request to ari oh like somehow you have to like just make sure that there's nothing like crazy that you are aware that we that we are aware like for example we had the guy who dealt in with um uh the guy in italy thomas and his story was amazing and then out of nowhere we found out that he was got in trouble for fraud and i'm like you looked up the headline like mid recording and you were just like it's not good i was like uh i have to call this out i don't want to i don't want to we were getting along so well but you have to you have to say something and i just want to minimize that amount or it has to be worth it where um like i think martin squarely is worth it i think he's an interesting person and he's done stuff i don't like and we will say you have done stuff we don't like and also you're interesting so it just has to be worth it yeah because i don't think the answer is we don't have anyone on who has no that's not what i'm saying it's just like it's just like you have to mention it or ask about it and we have to make sure that that is the the it's worth it yeah i just know what the solution you're suggesting really is like what do you want to change is there a change you want or you just want us to know how you feel because that's also okay well a little bit is yeah i'm covering my ass no uh it's mostly just like ari just like in the way in the same way that ari protects us like for example she'll be like hey you said something here and that came off really bad you like like one time i made front of simone biles or something and she was like uh that joke didn't land like when you said john morgan was smoking weed which i don't think he said he did he did yeah i'm gonna double check it out by the way it's really funny 99 of the time or he's like hey yeah that part we should take that out right and sam's like what no that was awesome you almost never strike it and i'm like dude are you sure that was fine that was funny i guess i don't know just like keep an eye out is all i'm saying um i don't think i have anything else to say but basically like sean the takeaway for me is like newsletters cool i'm on board clips on board meetups on board and talking about like happiness and parenting and some of that other stuff we're open to yeah so i think if we were going to say what are the three we're going to do here's the rocks i see cassie's going to raise a clipper army and cassie i'm specifically saying this to you as a challenge which is like you're joining the team you're here to kick butt this is the butt you we want kicked and to the extent that we learn how much of a butt kicker you are will be you'll be judged on how good you do at doing this one thing even if you did five other really fantastic wonderful other things this is the thing we're asking you to do because we think this is the biggest thing and is it's not easy either to do this like this takes some figuring out this takes some cleverness this takes some like you know you're gonna have to i don't know get in some discords and you know go have some conversations with people to figure out how the hell this all this stuff works so that's the clipper army that's number one then in terms of guests i think sam you brought up like go higher go unknown and go into the areas of life that we are important to us but we traditionally haven't done on the podcast which is sometimes it's kids like you know raising kids it's happiness it's like you know whatever topics that are about the human condition did i miss anything yeah like what is there anything sean that you want to add to that i think there's probably just going to be some others that come up when they come up like i would say actually investing has fall investing probably started in that category right like we were talking about business ideas and whatnot then like you and i both also want to become smarter as investors so we started asking questions there well now we're dads we want to get better at that and like not in the boring sort of cliche way but like what's the non-obvious stuff that matters by the way i also think we should ask our guests who've got kids like what's something parenting wise you do that's pretty like atypical or non-traditional that you believe in for example a bunch of entrepreneurs i know have told me the same exact thing which is they take a one-on-one trip with each kid um when they become like six seven eight years old and that becomes like a sacred like core memory with them and that kid and it's a totally different dynamic because you're always with the full group and the dynamic change when you go one-on-one i've heard that like seven times okay i gotta be a dummy at some point not to just go do that um if they all keep saying it but you know you wouldn't know otherwise unless you ask that question let's pair let's add a third one a third third rock which is these like guest prep other angles so we talked about asking them for their their their screenshots of their their space their desk their computer whatever as well as like asking them questions you know maybe our version of the what's the kindest thing anyone has ever done to you like a great closer question that we can just do ritualistically and build a tradition off that i would say for now we don't also try to add meetups like i think we should do this and like spend 90 days like actually doing these things and then come up for air and if we've actually done these well then we've earned the right to go try new more things awesome uh no comment um i think yes i think that was great okay um great thanks for agreeing to do that in public guys and uh for people who listen to that i don't know hopefully that was interesting for you guys we thought we would do it in public maybe you get to see how the sausage is made a little bit all right sam send them away all right god bless that's the part wait no what did i say last time god okay oh you're a blessing you