Can I show you the highest value comment on hacker news that I've ever seen? Yeah, that has a lot of weight. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I can be what I want to. I put my law in it like a day.
So I'll throw this travel. This is from like years and years ago, but it's this comment about sales because hacker news is full of engineers and they're like, Hey, like, you know, I suck at sales. Anybody can help me get better at this. And this guy wrote seven points and I just nodded my head so vigorously that my C4C5 is a little sore. So let me just give you this here.
He said the guy goes, yeah, there's tons of resources to help you with sales, but I'll start with, I'll try to offer some simple tips. Number one, sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated that it's almost impossible or you can simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading sales orders for about 20 years. My advice is to walk up and hit the ball.
Number two, sales about people and it's about problem solving. It's not about tech or solutions or chemicals or lines of code or artichokes. It's about people. It's about solving problems. Number three, people buy four things and four things only ever.
Those four things are time, money, sex, and approval or peace of mind. If you try to sell anything other than those four things, you will fail. Number four, people buy aspirin always. They'll buy vitamins sometimes, but it will be unpredictable. Sell aspirin.
Number five, I say in every talk that I give that all things being equal, people will buy from their friends, so make everything else equal and then go make a lot of friends. Number six, being valuable and useful is all you'll ever need to sell things, help people out, send them interesting posts, write birthday cards, record videos, be sharing your ideas of how they could grow their business, introduce them to people who would benefit from knowing each other and get out of the way, expect nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically and people will find ways to give you money. I promise. Number seven, no one cares about your quota, your payroll, your objects or burn rate, no one.
They care about the problem, you're selling for them. There are more than $100 trillion in the economy just waiting for you to breathe it in. Good luck. Who is this God of Hacker News? Are you reading any books?
I am reading influence again by Robert Chilini. Why are you reading Robert Chantini's influence? Because as the great Buddhist proverb says, no man steps in the same river twice, but he is not the same man and the river is not the same river. Oh my God. How long have you waited to use that one?
You start reading books and you start turning into a quote machine. No, but really, I think reading the best books again at different times in your life. It's a totally different book. You think you've read it. And what I found is you remember shockingly little of books.
And so going back and reading great books is like, you know, but it keeps giving in that sense. So that's what I'm doing. Did you ever read the blog post that I wrote about influence his book? No, in 2014, I had just read his book and I wanted to implement what he talked about. And he has this rule called the rule of reciprocity, which basically just says, let's say that neighbor one goes to neighbor two, let's say I go to Sean and I say, Hey, can I borrow a cup of sugar and you say, yeah, I got you the next day.
If you come to me and say, Hey, can I borrow your car for the day? Even though even though those two asks aren't even remotely equal, I because of the rule of reciprocity am very likely to lend you my car because the rule of reciprocity states that if you do something nice for someone, they are they have a high chance of doing something nice in exchange to you, even if they aren't equal. And that's like how society is built, one could say is like based out the rule of reciprocity. So when I was a kid, I was 24 years old, there was a motorcycle for sale, I think for $1,800 and I went to buy it and I took photos and documented all of this as I went. And I was like, Hey, you have the motorcycle for $1,800, let me check it out.
Awesome. Oh, by the way, I'm really sorry. I'm late. I just I wanted to stop and get a coke because it was kind of a hot out. I got one for you if you want one. Do you want one? And he goes, Yeah, sure.
Thanks. And then I started talking to him and I'm like, Look, I love this motorcycle. Like I'm a young guy. I don't have a lot of money. I know you're asking for 18. Could could you do 14? And he goes, you know, you brought me
the coke. He seemed like a nice kid. Yeah, I guess I can do that. And so like, there's a blog post where I took photos of myself, like what he was, what he was like turned around, like signing the paperwork, like took the photo. But anyway, the rule reciprocity is pretty amazing.
So let me tell you a funny follow up story to that. I remember you telling the story about the Diet Coke and the negotiation and how you always bring two Diet Cokes to negotiation, correct? You've told me this before, like and you're trying to bring a gift. Yeah, I'm trying to bring something. Well, I took it as a Diet Coke. So here's what happened. I recently, I was coaching
this high school basketball team, as you know, and anytime I'm doing a project, I want to try to make it as interesting as cool as possible. And what I do, sometimes I do things that are maybe like not the default way of doing things. So I was trying to create content for the team so that the team would have like really cool, like media going with it. And so the principal and the AD did not like it. Are you talking about the post that you made about your doing being a coach?
Being a coach. Yeah. And how we were going to try to have this check is underdog team and try to get them to be state champions. And that was, we're going to record the vlog along the way. So post the vlog, it gets 20,000 views in the first 24 hours.
But one of those views was the principal or the AD, they call me, they're like, Hey, you need to take this down. So we'll take it down. And he says, I want to be in my office Monday. Call the principal. So here I am. I thought I was past this on my late 30s and I'm going,
I'm nervous. I'm going to the principal office and I bring, so we're recording a vlog of the thing. I'm telling the vlog. I said, you know, my friend Sam taught me this, this trip, this little, little, little, little all of us are processing. Like, let me put you guys on some game. You know, people have this really high likelihood
to return the favor. If you do a small favor for them, I said, watch, I'm gonna be late to this meeting. I'm gonna stop and get this Diet Coke, because it's the most important part of the meeting. And I'm like, follow me. The vlog camera follows me and we get two Diet Cokes and we go and I'm so ready for this. And I get to the meeting and
we sit down and I'm like, I don't fully remember the line that you said about like, how to do it. I think there's actually a really specific way in the book that obviously describes it, which is two people are doing a psych study. The guy walks out and he comes back and he says, Hey, I asked the guy if I could have a Coke. He said, Yes, I brought you one too. So it kind of sounds like very like thoughtful and passing and you said a similar thing. And so I walk in and I just go, he's like, Hey,
guys, and I go, you want to Diet Coke? And he just goes, no, thanks. And now I have two Diet Cokes. I have two. I have two. And he goes, I'm all set. And then I, and the vlog
camera is on me. It's like the office I look at the camera and it's like, this is not going as planned. I'm Michael Scotting this. And then I open up the Diet Coke almost explodes because I've been like nervous. Well, I'm luckily doesn't totally foam over. And I proceed to drink two
Diet Cokes while this guy absolutely shuts down my program. And so that's the law of reciprocity going wrong. That is so funny. That is so funny. That is so good.
All right, I have a story for you. Everyone really quick. If you're enjoying this episode on CEO stuff, so delegating, having hard conversations with your team, hiring, then I've got something for you. So the team at HubSpot, they actually went and put together a bunch of best practices that Sean and I use in our own companies. And they put it together and something that's really easy to read and understand. And so if you want to just save yourself 10 years of headache and heartache,
then you should check it out. I wish we had this one time ago, would help me a lot. But there should be a QR code on your screen that you can scan or a link in the description. So check it out. It's totally free and totally awesome. So I told you the other day how I like, for the first time ever,
I went out to dinner with someone and I was like such a home buddy. Well, my friend. What you talking about? I visited New York. You literally walk around New York with a briefcase and like, you know, business cards and altoids in your pocket, trying to meet people right in the subway. You're, you're, I'm trying to take my stick. I'm the only one. You're the guy who's out there.
But go ahead. I just carry the briefcase. My wife's like, why do you have this? I'm like, to do business. Yeah. And cosplay is a businessman in New York City. I'm doing business, Sarah. I need
the case. It's got the crayons and the snacks. Get off my back. When you said, I was like, okay, that's enough. So I've been hanging out with this guy named Mark. Have you heard of GLG?
Yeah, the expert network. So you know, you want to find out whether NVIDIA chips are going to go up or down. Maybe we call someone in the, in one of the buyers who's like an expert buyer who gives you insights about the industry. Huge business. Yeah. And I've become good buddies with him. I've hung
out with him a bunch because he lives in my neighborhood. And basically GLG, like you just explained huge business. They filed to go public at one point. And so some of the numbers are public. It does something like over $100 million a year in profit and cash flow. Very amazing company. And we were just hanging
out. He owns another business in the community space now that he loves. And he sits down and he starts telling me, I'm like, what are your hobbies? What else are you into? And he told me this crazy story. So I want you to Google something. Google, it's called United Hot Salah. I found it. Okay.
Equipment aid looks like a charity of some kind, volunteer medical emergency services. Exactly. So listen to this story. So he tells me the story. So Mark, he started GLG when he was only like 23, 24, pretty young guy. When he's something like 27, 28, he meets this guy named Ellie. Ellie was either an
ambulance driver or was at the scene where this happened. But basically a kid was choking on his food. And they called it ambulance. The ambulance didn't make it there in time. And the kid died. And he was
like, it really sat with him. He was really bothered by that because they come to find out that there actually was a doctor like next door or like down the block or something like that within like a pretty close vicinity. And he's like, it really stinks that this ambulance took 15 or however many minutes to get here. When there was a guy right here that could have like shared this kid and he didn't have to die. And so Ellie ends up starting this very small thing with only like six or 12 people where they basically self-organize and they train themselves on how to do very simple things like CPR, the Heimlich maneuver. And they train themselves on that. And then eventually went to like they could
even like do like an emergency baby delivery. And he had started a nonprofit where he would actually give out these like 40 pound backpacks that had like very a small amount of oxygen, a baby kit system. So a baby delivery kit. So you can like deliver a baby in case of an emergency like these like really essential supplies. And he starts telling Mark about how he's got the things going and Mark's like, that's awesome. This thing could be it. This could be like a really big thing. And Mark gives
him $18,000 because Mark was just getting successful. But he's like, I have 18 grand. I can give you, but I can be your co-founder and I can help commercialize this thing and make this a huge thing. And so it's been around since for the last 18 years. And at this point, they have 18,000 volunteers in Israel. It's mostly, it's only in Israel. They answer something like 2,000 calls a day. And the
mission statement is very simple. They say that on average, it takes something like 12 or 10 minutes for an ambulance to arrive to you. Our goal is to get there 90 seconds anywhere in Israel. And right now, I think they do it in like two minutes. And Mark was telling me he's like, basically right now, we are him and I went out to eat. He was like, if you were a member, you would tear your bag with
you at all times. And if somebody 10 floors down got sick or something happened where they had calling the ambulance, you would be alerted because you were nearby and you could run down and give them some type of need until the ambulance got to them. And they could actually do the real stuff. But at least you could be like a lifesaving thing. And because of this, this company, it's a nonprofit. They have saved potentially millions of people because they've done this
in the last 18 years. And what's interesting is they started this before iPhones, before GPS. And when they started it, they actually just gave out these like walkie talkies, like these radios. And now it's gotten quite sophisticated. So the entire foundation runs off of donations.
And they are spending many tens of millions of dollars a year. And what they have noticed is like, for example, through 18 years of data, they know that heart attacks are more likely to happen in the morning, which means people are probably in their home versus the office. And so they know that they need to recruit volunteers who are on call and ready and they're prepared for a potential heart attack within these areas. And they actually did a YouTube video on it. They have this entire like AI set up that they know where to predict that something bad potentially might happen and to have their 8,000 person volunteer force to do it to be ready. And there's a few interesting things
here about this one. There's this thing called like it's called Good Samaritan Laws. We have it in America. They have in Israel, which basically just says like when you're on an airplane and the captain goes like, is there a doctor on board? Can someone help me? As long as that doctor acts in good
faith, they can't be sued by the person. You know, it's a good summation law in words. So, but if you are on there for pay, meaning if you are a professional, like I'm paying you money, there's exchange of goods for you to do a service, you could potentially be sued. So Mark was like, this thing, it needs to strictly be a nonprofit. He said the second thing, he was like, in Israel, what's cool about this, he's like, we have super Orthodox Jews who are doing it. We have non-secular Jews who are doing it. We have
Arabs, we have Muslims, we have Christians. He was like, I've noticed that what has brought us together is not just us sitting around talking, but I can get all groups of people to come and work together on something and get their hands dirty. And it really brought us all together. And he was explaining this in a very altruistic way. And I totally got bought into it. And I was like, why aren't you in America?
He's like, well, we actually did try to, but we started in 2019 or 2020, like right before COVID, and it was a false start. So we just haven't, we just haven't made it here. But he's like, this 100% could work in virtually every city in America. And he was like, it didn't even work in rural areas. He's like, in rural areas, they have volunteer firefighters, but it was really fascinating to hear all about this stuff, because I think that, you know, we talk about money and for profit stuff.
But if you are like a social entrepreneur, something like that, this is a really interesting opportunity. And hearing him describe this, it was amazing. Dude, so cool. I mean, as reading this that's about just now, it says, they basically handle one call every 45 seconds. Crazy, right? The scale of that's crazy. There's only there's only like 8,000
volunteers and 9,000 volunteers. So that's a lot of coverage. I mean, 2000 calls a day, and you only have 9,000 volunteers. Everybody's busy. Like, people, it's not like a once in a blue moon, you know, thing, this is this is wild. Average response time is three minutes. The goal is 90 seconds.
That's nationwide. And 24 seven coverage, which is pretty incredible. It kind of makes sense in a way, right? Because I mean, what a cool, like you asked him what your hobbies and he told you this story, which is hilarious because you're probably like, he's like, what are you? You're like skateboarding.
But like for people, I mean, to be able to be like, yeah, I saved a life today or this is your purpose, right? I mean, what, yeah, like what else can you get that? That would be actually really meaningful for people if they felt like they could join something where they could actually do that. Well, think about the people who have like crappy jobs that they're not particularly motivated by. Like this is something where you're like, yeah, I can do that non motivating thing. That piece of
bills. I'm so thankful I have this. Yeah, like I have this thing that like I'm needed and I actually have a literally a life changing impact on people. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. I thought you were going to
say in the US, they just pivoted to door dash. If I can door dash. Well, I thought this was awesome. And I was pretty inspired. Like hearing, I think he said that he goes, we have 8,000 people who are part of the network. And he's like, we're growing. He's like,
we're going to keep on growing. And he's like, um, and he's like one doctor who is probably doing okay, but he's not well, he gave us $4,000. And he's like, I got this line where I tell him this because I believe it to be true. He was like, you giving us $4,000. It's the best donation we've ever received.
Like the fact that you are willing to do this, it is so important to us. And that's how they've grown to be able to spend tens of millions of dollars a year. Very cool. Very cool. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written,
everyone's aligned and you realize someone still lets us down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow. Well, the breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content, you create content
that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agent customer platform for growing businesses. Let's see, you want to lightweight? You want something quick and fun? You want something a little more getting fun deep? Did you see this amazing? It's a master class of PR by Bernard Arnau.
I didn't read it. What happened? I don't normally pay too much attention to this stuff, but check this out. I saw this from Lulu Chang. I don't know how you say it last time, Miss Hervey. She's like the
kind of Go Direct founder. She was doing PR at Andriel and now she has her own fund. Is she the one who has the handle where it's like, here's how you should and should not address like PR issues? Yeah, she's constantly giving founders advice. Her philosophy is Go Direct philosophy. So anyway, check this out. So this backstory is that Bernard Arnau, who you know
probably better than I do, he's the titan behind the luxury conglomerate, LVMH. And everyone's a while he's the richest man in the world. Yeah, he floats between number one and four and the richest man in the world. And he writes this post and it's just titled, Mercy, right? Thank you in French. And he basically says, so what happened was this publication in France
did this year-long sort of expose on his family and they tried to make it as juicy as possible. So they dropped a six-part investigative series called The Empire of Bernard Arnau, and it was talking about how it basically paints him as the last royal dynasty of France. And it describes like tension between his second wife and his son-in-law and how their Sunday family dinners are like, you know, palace intrigue type of thing and how they're, you know, they're trying to figure out, you know, the five heirs or five kids are sort of jocking for position because he's now close to 80, I think, of who's going to succeed, you know, it's like basically succession, but for real life. And so he, so they dropped this whole series and he goes, and he goes, here's a three page open letter that he basically posts and I just want to read you a little bit of this.
So he goes, thank you. That's how he starts it. Instead of being defensive, he starts with thank you. He goes, it seems I am the head of quote, the last royal family of France. I'm reading this between two cups of tea and my children who are alerted to this over WhatsApp.
I asked me if they should now curtsy in my presence. I told them hello, sir, would be sufficient. They burst out laughing. And you know, this has just been a wonderful week. And it says, it seems like Lamont has decided to roll out the heavy artillery six months of investigation two full-time journalists, blah blah blah. He basically like paints them as absolute
overkill for what they were trying to do. And this deserves a word in that word, Shelby. Thank you. You know, I haven't been granted this treatment since I took over the company in 1984, and at that time, they called me the Terminator. But I far preferred the last royal family. It's
former elegant and really good for sales at Dior. He continues on, he basically says, he goes on and he goes, apparently I'm the whisper into the ear of every president. Well, I plead guilty. And he starts naming the different presidents. And he says, oh, and by the way, it's not just the French, you know, president, it's also five American presidents. I've whispered
to three British prime ministers blah blah blah. It might understand that whispering into the only French whispers are scandalous that a group that earned 75% of its revenue outside of Europe should be sort of isolated and not be talking to leaders of these countries. And it basically just addresses point by point the accusations in the article, but does it in such a smooth, non-defensive French way where he basically turned a diss track into a giant compliment for himself. And you know, he addresses each term I want to give you one more. He's known as a lover of arts and tax breaks. And he's like, I contributed 200 million euros to the reconstruction of Notre
Dame. I fund to the 250 million mathematics research at the school. You know, I pay this much in taxes every single year. We employ 220,000 employees, 40,000 of them who work in France itself. Yeah, like I'm sure you forgot to mention that in the research, but I'm happy to help. I'm happy to help
you here. And so he calls out like the wording, you know, that they use for the different things, just making them seem a little bit ridiculous. And he ends with rest assured I will keep doing the mon crossword, which I which that I must say is excellent. Compliment in the crossword and basically inadvertently dishing the article. And I just thought, damn, this guy, this was like such a perfect takedown where you normally see CEOs get really flustered to either ignore, they deny, they go start to complain and say they're biased and they're hit piece and you know, play the victim. And instead just so smooth, I thought there's a lot
that that American CEOs can learn from this. Do you know the biggest thing is to use humor, bring to bring it back to Robert Chaudhini. He says the role like ability, how do you more like well, one of the easiest ways I don't know if he actually said it this way, but an easy way to be more likable is to be humorous. Like, yeah, it's to make people laugh and smile and like make people laugh about the silly stuff. And like if I heard about someone doing an article, if I was in this guy's shoes and he was doing an article about my family, I would be livid, right? I wouldn't
want to laugh about this. I'd be so angry. And the fact that he could do that is awesome. And it makes him 100% more like, well, I didn't know anything about him other than like, he's a business like Tycoon. But now I'm like, oh, I'm kind of a fan of you. Yeah, exactly. You know, I wasn't going to read
their annual letter this year, but this basically he used the intrigue of gossip, that attention, that spotlight to say something very different, which I would say, obviously, if you just hate the guy, you're gonna still hate the guy. If you love the guy, you're still gonna love the guy. But the sort of the mass in the middle, which is folks like you and I who don't really care, aren't really paying attention, it's just one little nugget where you're like, I like that guy. Couldn't tell you exactly what he said, but I like his approach. And if you're not a pro as well, Genes Equa.
Yeah, that Genes Equa, you know what I mean? And people have studied this with like presidential debates and whatnot. It's like, after the fact, you know, whether it's two hours later or two weeks later, you rarely can remember anything that was said. But you do remember how that person came across and the level of like sort of inadvertent trust and like ability that you felt in the moment. So your impression lasts, although your memory for the specifics does not do what's crazy is I'm not aligned with Mamdani's beliefs. Mamdani, the mayor of New York, I'm not aligned with a lot of his
beliefs. I'm not aligned with a lot of his ideas for policies. I see him talk on the internet and I'm like, Oh my God, you've got this dialed in. You know how to be likable. It is just insane. Have you
ever watched any of his videos? Oh, yeah. Same exact reaction. Oh my God. Like he just has it dialed in perfectly. I went to out here in New York City, there was the National Track and
Field Meat for like the professionals and he popped in to say hi. And like it got more cheers than the actual race did. And like I really disagree with virtually everything he's about. But he just who's the cares the charisma. It was crazy. It was just absolutely crazy. He's just been on all the time.
Yeah. Yeah. He kind of ran like a social media masterclass, right? Like just figuring out little memorable, likable things to do along the way, whether it was the speech at the mix or talking about like, Oh, like the whole all food trucks is $14 now for a plate of chicken. What's going on?
You know, just rather than like boring people with, with, you know, political jargon. Okay. So you've probably have heard this on the podcast, but if you're running a company, I think that the number one attribute that would determine if you were going to succeed in business is how fast you can learn from others specifically how fast you can learn from other entrepreneurs. But there's a problem with that. I have this problem. And in fact, you probably have it too.
That's one of the reasons why you listen to my first million in the first place. The problem is that finding other successful entrepreneurs to learn from. It's a pain in the butt. And so that's why a few years ago, I started a company called Hampton. You can check it out at joinhampton.com. We have thousands of members and they exist for this exact reason. So here's how it
works. If you're a founder that does at least three million in revenue and you make it through our incredibly thorough vetting process, we then match you and put you in a group with nine other entrepreneurs. You meet in real life in your city once a month and it becomes your peer group that will frankly change your entire life. It's changed mine. I'm in the group as well. And so if you're a founder that
does at least three million in revenue, check out joinhampton.com. Again, the URL is joinhampton.com. What's the second thing? All right. Let me tell you about, let me talk about this company. So I want to
tell you about a company that is I had written off. I just thought it's sort of like, I don't know, some archaic company. And then I saw some news recently that kind of blew my mind to numbers and it led me down a rabbit hole. And it's the business of magic, the gathering, the nerdy business of magic, the gathering. And I wasn't interested in this at the beginning. Let me just start with that.
If you said, Hey, would you like to know about the business of magic, the gathering, I would have just, you know, moved on to the next stall. I was not paying too much attention to it. But I should think if you think someone would be talking to you, would you guys were like, you're a urinal? Yeah, exactly. You like magic? Do you like to hear about the economics?
I just feel like I wouldn't have paid attention to this. And I'm telling you, it's very, very interesting. Okay, so the way I noticed this was Diego was telling me, he's like, Oh, Hasbro stock popped. And he's been going to these card collectors conventions every weekend. So he's been telling me about the Pokemon scene. And he's just been getting into that like subculture. He doesn't really buy
any stuff himself. I don't think, but he, he's like, interested in the obsession and the fanaticism and like the subculture that that exists, because he's like invisible to you unless you're in one of these conventions. So he's like, yeah, Hasbro stock just popped. And it was because magic just hit like an all time high magic gathering like magic gathering. Isn't this like 20 years old? And it's true.
Magic the gathering has been compounding 17% of your on average for 17 straight years. And so it's just been this like incredible compounding machine, this franchise, which sounds like, you know, it might be like a quick fad, like beanie, baby, baby, it is. So like I had the cards on this kid, but I don't even know if it was a game or not. Yeah, so it's a game you can play to people can sit down and you can kind of like have a duel. So it's like a card game. But
and this is kind of the genius of it. A lot of the fun isn't even playing the game against you. They're like Pokemon. It's about collecting. And so how did they do this? And so the backstory is
pretty fascinating. So first of all, Hasbro is this company that owns Monopoly, they own Nerf guns, they own, like, they're a bunch of stuff. But like every, you know, of every dollar that comes in, one out of every three is driven by magic. It's like, it is their cash cow. Magic will do, you know, two billion this year in revenue. It's been just cranking along. This was like, you know, an all-time
best quarter. So you'd think like, is this old IP not like fizzling out? No, no, it's like having its best quarter ever. If you read the true backstory, you realize one thing, which is what true sort of tinkering, the power of tinkering. So this guy starts with this, he's making this game called five magics. And five magics is a game he makes doesn't go anywhere, but he puts a lot of heart and
soul and sweat into it. And he puts it on the shelf because who cares. And then he goes along and he's working a job. But then he creates this, he has this other idea for this like more advanced game, like Robos something where you like kind of like build robots in a board game or you're actually like building a robot. And then he pitches it to this guy who's doing this wizards game. And that
guy's like, dude, this is too hard to build. Can you build something that's like more like kind of, you know, this sort of sci-fi lore type of game, you know, this wizarding lore fantasy stuff and make it like something simple, not that like you have to build a robot, but like just like a card game or something. So he goes back and he's thinking, he's on a hike one day and he has this sort of eureka moment. He's like, oh, I could take five magics, but I could change it. And he has this really good insight, which is most games like chess or checkers, at the time we're all like fixed games, meaning you open the box and the pieces are all what they are monopoly, like the pieces are exactly what you think they are. And I'm going to play with you. And then we're done with the box, you know,
close the lid on the box and the game stays in the box. And when Richard was growing up, he had a very unique upbringing. And this is very, this is a fascinating part of this, how these like, this like butterfly effect. So his dad moved them when he was very young to like Bangladesh and Nepal, these countries that you know, totally fish out of water didn't speak the language. And so to make friends, really, the only thing he could do was play games because he didn't, he didn't know how to talk. So they had to use the shared language of a game that he knew that they knew. And that
game for him was marbles. And so he would go and play marbles in marbles is a very unique game where you don't go and open a box and play marbles. Each kid brings their own marble set to the game and you play and you can win other people's marbles, you can trade marbles, and you have your own ever growing collection of marbles. And sometimes you run into a kid, he's got a marble you never seen before and it made you just want to go find your own version of that marble. You didn't even know it existed.
And so that was part of the allure of the whole thing. And so he has this idea of like, hey, what if I take that mechanic from marbles where it's this like infinite set of possible, so you have your own collection, you bring the pieces to the game. It's not a game where the pieces are already inside the box. And that was the core insight from Magic the Gathering and why 20 years later, it's printing, you know, $500 million this quarter off of that single insight about like, what if the players had their own collection that they would bring to the game, rather than like a fixed set of pieces. It's right now, it's doing two billion a year in revenue.
It's on picture that this year. Yeah. Last year or two billion this year. And so he's, by the way, he's the great, great grandson of James Garfield. Kind of cool.
President, exactly. Yeah. So he was like doing this. Did he sell it or what did he do? Yeah. So he sells it about, I don't know, I don't know, six, nine years and something like that.
He sells it to Hasbro for 300 something million is the reported price they had to earn out that took it up to almost 500 million. So he was only five years or seven years into this when he sold it. Something like that. He was very smart. So he was building this game. And I'll tell you kind
of like how we got it off the ground. I'll tell you how he the very smart thing he did right before he sold it. And then why this is so great as a business model. So so first how he got it off the ground. He has the idea, he starts tinkering with it. And he's a total like game design nerd.
He's been focused on game mechanics and game design for a long time. In fact, when I told you he like grew up in like Bangladesh and Nepal and he was playing these games, he actually got into Dungeons and Dragons, but he didn't know the rules. It didn't come with the rules set. So he had the pieces, but he didn't know how to play. So he was inventing his own rule set, which again is like, if you look through, you know, great inventions, it always comes with this weird constraint or this irritation. That sounds like a total problem. But if they turned it into actually like the
irritation drove the innovation. So him not knowing the rules led him to experiment with all different types of rule, game design and rule design. And he would play it. And later in life, he actually found the official rule set. It was almost like bummed out. Like, oh, that's how you play? I'd
been inventing all these other like versions of this that were really interesting. So he had been studying game mechanics for a long time. And so even with magic, he was play testing like crazy, and he would do things that others weren't doing. So he would find he would say, okay, who would be the best play testers for this? I can take guys who play these card games or these like board games, but he also went into baseball. He's like, you know, who really loves studying
that the statistical aspects of games was Stratomatic, which is this like baseball simulation game that like uber statistical nerds who love baseball would get really into Stratomatic. So we'd find the best Stratomatic players get them to test this. Because he knew if you get the game design wrong, the game fizzles out. He's like, you could have the rich kid problem, which is just, it's all about going and buying the best cards and once you have the best cards, you can't be beaten. So I can't have that problem. And I can't have this problem. I can't have this problem. He's finding all the bugs
before he ever got to launch it by the time he gets to launch, he doesn't just try to launch this widely or just like launch it to his friends. He goes and he drives basically like down the coast. And he's going from like Comic Con to like trading card conventions to board game conventions. And he's finding like a white-hot center of who should love this game. And it should be basically like board game nerds. And he would go and he would demo it to like very small groups of people,
but he would influence the influencers. He would get the guys who own the shops. He would get the guys who write the magazine articles. He would get the guys who were the pro players of other games. He would win them over. And once he won them over, they would then be his sales engine
explaining it to the next people. And so he would just like, you know, kind of like traveling in his game and his trunk, go and win over like hand-to-hand combat. He says he launches in 93, so he was doing the 80s. Well, that was kind of his launch strategy. And then right away, it's sold out. He sold like
hundreds of thousands of cards like in the first four days. And then he reprinted, he had sold 10 million within the first like year or something like that. It was just a great movie. Like the like early 90s, late 80s, San Diego, LA, like that is like a really cool setting. And then like a guy like going through all this like, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. Oh, it might work a
little bit. It's not going to work. Okay, it really works. Like that type of movie. Turn into like boons. Right. So he runs out. It sells so fast. He has no cards. He can't print any
more cards. It takes time to do a print run. But the scarcity of there being no more cards and people going into shops being like, Hey, do you have any magic? And the owners being like, what's magic? And then they would have to go figure out why are people walking to our door like hunting for this thing. I've never seen this level of passion. So the scarcity drove the like economy of the game.
And so he and again, the business model, the genius of the business model, so normal board game will sell for like whatever 20 bucks, let's call it. Well, the average magic player is spending 100 bucks a year for like eight or nine years of their hobby. So the average player is spending like $1,000. And obviously there's extreme collectors who are spending hundreds of thousands of schedules who fade out right away. But if you just do the math, like the LTV per customer is in the thousands of dollars per player, you can never get somebody to buy a board game for $1,000. But by doing this kind of drip drip
mechanism where you get into the game, but then you want your collection to become better so that you show up with like the ace up your sleeve and you have social status because you have cool cards. And then you can trade or sell those cards. So it's an investment. It's not spending. And that's what Pokemon did that afterwards. Hearthstone did that afterwards. And now like a lot of the like
sports card stuff have really taken that model and run with it. But you know, magic was really one of the OGs who did it. So I thought that was pretty amazing. The other cool thing he did was he bought Dungeons and Dragons. So he wanted to IPO the company. He realized like if I'm just one
piece of IP, I'm going to be seen as inherently risky. And so Dungeons and Dragons had been out beforehand and it had like 40 million in revenue, but it had like 30 million in debt. And it was doing really they stopped printing cards because they just had too much debt. They owed a bunch of money. They scattered their business too much. So he bought the company nobody knows exactly how much but like it was
like 30, 40 million maybe. And he just took care of their debts. And in doing so, he had a more diversified, you know, ram portfolio of like another franchise that had millions of players and had been around for a while. And so he's you buy it for 30 million. But then your eventual exit is for you know, 300 to 500 million to Hasbro because you were more defensible. So that was actually pretty brilliant as
well. If you go on eBay and type in Magic the Gathering and sort by most expensive, there's cards on here that are hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is wild. I think the most Pokemon cards sold for like 10 million or something. Yeah, you know the gooch. You remember the gooch?
Sorry, not the gooch. Much. He's not the gooch. He's the much. He's the much. His kid bought it from Logan Paul for like 10 or
17 million dollars. Right. What's the good? You don't want to know. But did he raise funding?
No, this is like a good trap thing. What did he sell it? I think he sold it late 90s is my guess. But it was like, you know, it was like eight years in the making before he even launched the game because he's been, I mean, really had been thinking about this stuff since he was a child. I think there's a belief in entrepreneurship that these ideas just sort of exist. You just have to
sort of find one and make one and or you sort of get to be the one who gets the winning lottery ticket. And then you read about stories like this. You read about the story of how the UFC almost from Bank of America really like Dana White and the Fertitas, you know, built that thing brick by brick against pretty much every headwind you could have being outlawed by by states losing money. Nobody would put them on TV like just every headwind you could have they faced and still built them all together. We're still doing it today even after cashing out. And I think there are actually
many businesses that were only going to be built by one person. It was either going to be built by that person or it wasn't going to exist. And I don't think that's a popular belief. But when you hear these stories, you just can't imagine. Would there really have been another person who had this combination of the background, the hustle, the insight, the personality, the force of will, like the combination of factors that it takes to make it happen. The other time I felt this was when we were
talking to Joe Gebia from Airbnb and he was telling the true founding story of Airbnb and all of the headaches that they faced along the way and, you know, just being shut down and being sued and being this and being that and it was like being copied by these like much bigger, more well-funded competitors and just the number of times they escaped death in the first two years. It's like a dozen deaths that they escape. You know, they're out of funding and then they create a cereal box for John McCain and Barack Obama and they sell that at the conventions and they get just enough money to continue their business. It's like, the hell is going on? And so, you know, those are businesses that it's like, oh, Airbnb was not meant to survive. It broke the rules. It was supposed to die 12 times. And finally,
the universe gave in was like fine. Go ahead and exist. It was not like, just anybody was going to make that happen. It was not going to happen that way. It's so good. There's a scene that in the movie
Rudy. Have you seen the football show or the film of the Rudy? Yeah. Like Rudy's like talking to a priest and the priest is like Rudy. I've been a priest now for this long and there's only two things that I realize I believe in. There is a God and I ain't him. And whatever I hear stories
of like Dana White, what do we say? We are paraphrasing someone else but it was like make sure your passion burns so bright that everyone will come into like watch you burn something like that. When I hear stories like this, that's what I'm envious of. I'm like, I wish I cared about Eddie Figg as much as this guy cared about a stupid card game. Yeah, that's exactly right. When you hear
the stories of like these kind of like singular force of will, creativity, you know, like the guy who was the guy who credit Minecraft, one guy. Not the whole thing himself. I mean, I have a friend who's a very, very smart venture capitalist. This guy's like back to some of the biggest winners. And he said something to me once about I remember when esports was like on trend, people were investing a lot of esports and overwatch franchises were selling for 20 million a pop because they were trying to make it the next NBA and he wasn't buying any of it.
And I'm like, but this is kind of your thing. You like these like weird, missed things that could be huge, but they're kind of written off and now they're starting to pick up steam like I'm surprised you're out. He goes, esports needs it's data white. And he was like, I don't know who that person is, but he goes, anybody could have told you that like fighting martial arts, like it was a thing for sure. But the guy who was going to make it the worldwide thing, it took a very special like batch of entrepreneurial energy to do that. And somebody who was going to
just break through walls for 20 years. And so he's like, you just need to, because I'm just waiting, I'm just waiting till esports has that. He's like, I don't think esports is not going to be a thing, but I also don't think it's a thing. It's going to be a thing right now because I don't see who that person is yet. And you see this with other things right now, longevity is obviously a huge trend.
Wellness, longevity, it's kind of replaced health and fitness as like the way people want to optimize. And Brian Johnson, I think was the Dana white of that industry. I think Brian Johnson was willing to do things no one else would do in a way in a combination of like skills and personal sacrifice that very few people were ever going to do. And he had that special combination. I think he's going to do it for a long enough time that it's going to be a really broken mainstream, but I think it's going to just keep going. And he, you know, in his case, he's not creating like
the one company necessarily that would be the winner in the way that like the UFC was. But I think he made it happen in a way that no doctor, no scientist, no fitness athlete was ever going to do. Yeah, man. I remember when we first came across and we were like, there's this guy, he's got a blog and he's like just writing about his blood levels. But look how he does it. Look
how nerdy he is. Well, what were the factors, right? He had to have first personal wealth to start spending millions of dollars. There's no investor would have funded that. Right? Hey, I'm going to
go raise money to inject myself with crazy shit, measure every organ in my body individually at first aging speed. Because I want to know that my left ear lobe is aging differently than my kidney. And I'm going to do that for years. And like, you know, somehow that's going to work, right? Like, you need a personal wealth, then how many wealthy guys would want to like donate their body to science while they're still alive? Well, he needs someone who's basically like a little bit autistic
and a lot ranks high on disagreeableness. And he admitted himself, he was depressed and you know, suicidal. And so he had nothing to lose. He's like, well, being rich isn't making me happy. So let's spend the money and doing something else that will give me some sense of purpose and something that will take me out of this funk. Then you needed somebody who had the unique,
quirky personality to be loved by some hated by many and watched by all. And so you know, his look, his personality, his combination of scientific intelligence, business acumen, and then like, willingness to look like a fool on social media, right? Like, I actually believe that Brian Johnson is the greatest social media marketer in the world. And so like, if you see him now, you know, he's like, I'm gonna live stream myself taking taking DMT or whatever, like, what's the thing, like a toad pissed in my mouth and I'm gonna hallucinate, whatever it is, like, he's doing that type of stuff on a live stream. You're like, Oh my God, who would think to do this? Like,
he's got like Jake Paul's social media instincts packaged in Elon Musk's wealth and, you know, Huberman scientific, right? Like, he's got like elements of each one of those, not at each one's level, but like that combination is just a very rare skill stack. Have you seen his YouTube videos? They're great. They're so good. They're not at all like anyone else's stuff. They're so good.
And I'm not saying I agree with everything he's saying. I'm not saying any of that stuff. All I'm saying is he undeniably broke through the noise and broke through the barriers and brought so much attention to this entire like way of living that it just seems like who else was going to do that? He told me his motivation. He was like, I can't tell you who the 70th or 50th or 100th richest person was in 1975. But I can tell you who Galileo is. I can tell you what the Wright brothers did.
There's about five to 10 people who I could tell you what they invented and how they impact society. And none of them does it really around money. And so that's when I realized that going after just business and making more money was not the answer to my question of how do I be somebody that other people remember in 500 years? Because that's my motivation. Dude, when you hear stuff like that, it's like such an amazing one line kill shot because you know, five seconds earlier, it's like, you'd be crazy to do that. And then he says one thing
like, I guess you'd be crazy not to do that. That's how effective that is. It's like, yeah, you're right. Like what is the money for? Nobody cares that you sold brain tree slash Venmo for $700 million. And then what are you going to live the rest of your life? Sipping Peanut
Coladas like, you know, on Islands, you own like, yeah, you could do that. Or you could be a man of history and like, yeah, you could do this. Okay, you can help people live forever. That, I guess that isn't crazy. I guess that actually sounds way better than the alternative. Do you ever watch
the Grammys where they do like the, or like the Oscars, I forget where they do the segment where they remember the people who died that year? It's like a constant of like, oh, he died? Or like, like, oh, I remember that guy. And like, you maybe are thinking back to a time when you did remember because that movie that person in was like your favorite movie when you're a kid. And you're like, he was the man. I love that guy. Okay. Like it's just like, index and whatever, whatever that
segment exists. I'm like, the vast majority of a large percentage of the people who they're talking about are probably significantly more successful and impactful than I am. And all they're going to get from me and millions of other people is a, Oh, okay. Yeah. And like, in some hand, I'm always like, that's a bummer. And then on the other side, I'm like, that's kind of freeing, right? Like,
just do whatever you want then. And so those segments always remind me of what Brian Johnson said. So much of the worst things of our living life are caring about what other people might think of us while we're alive. If you stacked onto that and you knew everybody would care about you and think about you when you were dead, anyway, I think it'd be negative. Right? Like, it's a good thing.
We don't all have these insane legacies that everybody knows about because it's freeing to let you actually just live your life on your own terms for what, you know, because nobody's thinking about you anyways. I don't even know how we got onto this. Magic the gathering? Oh, magic the gathering. What's the guy doing now? That's the true magic of magic the gathering brings us together.
All right. Is that it? That's it. That's the part. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
Put my law in it like a day zone. Let's travel never looking back. All right. Let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about marketing school. It is a podcast
that's part of the HubSpot Podcast Network and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Su. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics for practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcast.