This Entrepreneur Makes $100M+ With A Portfolio Of 10 Businesses

Shaan Puri 0:00 You own a holdco, I think Girdley Enterprise is the name of it. Within it, you have a bunch of different things. So you own stuff as funky as like a fireworks company called Alamo Fireworks. You own like a software roll-up called Dura Software. Um, you have like a coffee chain I think. Is that right?

Michael Girdley 0:19 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 0:19 You have like a drive-through coffee chain that's got like three or four locations or something like that. Um, and then you incubate a couple f- a couple projects, one of a, one, one of which I used actually recently. [upbeat music]

Michael Girdley 0:33 [laughs]

Sam Parr 0:34 Uh, Michael, what up, dog? Shaan, where are you? Are you in Tahoe?

Shaan Puri 0:38 I'm in Lake Tahoe, yeah.

Sam Parr 0:40 How is it?

Shaan Puri 0:42 It is amazing. Yeah, this place is great.

Sam Parr 0:44 Is it just a getaway from crypto?

Shaan Puri 0:45 [laughs] No, it was a Father's Day trip, so, uh, you know, came out here with my wife's family, and, uh, yeah, it's been cool. Just been like at the lake, in the pool, all that good stuff.

Sam Parr 0:58 That's awesome. Who, who... So you, Shaan, you wanna introduce this guy?

Shaan Puri 1:02 Yeah. Okay, great. So we got Michael Girdley. Is that the way you say it?

Michael Girdley 1:06 Yep.

Shaan Puri 1:07 Yeah, Michael's here. I've been following you on Twitter for a while, and, uh, and I think you almost wa- you almost bought our NFT for the five minutes of fame, but, uh, you got outbid at the last minute. Is that right?

Michael Girdley 1:21 Yes. Yeah. I had a whole plan about it. I was actually gonna shard it and then try to make profit from it and sell it in 15-second increments, but some really rich crypto person came in and swooped it out from under me, so.

Shaan Puri 1:33 Right. Sam loves sharding, so.

Michael Girdley 1:34 I had a huge plan. I had a huge plan.

Shaan Puri 1:36 [laughs] Uh, and, and, but you, but it worked anyways. You got on the pod anyways without it. [laughs] Because, uh, you're a pretty interesting dude. I've been following you on Twitter mostly 'cause you tweet about Chili's a lot, and I'm a big Chili's guy, huge Chili's fan. Um, but you also, you kind of fit into this sort of like Andrew Wilkinson-y bucket, which is like you run a holdco, and you run like a, a pretty big holdco. And so let's just give people kind of like your, your rundown. Here's what I know about you. Um, you own a holdco. I think Girdley Enterprise is the name of it. Within it, you have a bunch of different things. So you own stuff as funky as like a fireworks company called Alamo Fireworks. You own like a software roll-up called Dura Software. Um, you have like a coffee chain I think. Is that right?

Michael Girdley 2:26 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 2:27 You have like a drive-through coffee chain that's got like three or four locations or something like that. Um, and then you incubate a couple p- uh, a couple projects, one of a, o- one of which I used actually recently called Near, which is like a way, a easy way to hire people in, in Latin America, and I found this awesome dude, uh, you know, not a plug for Near necessarily, but it, it did work, it did work exactly as intended. I found this awesome operations guy for my e-commerce business there, Nico. Um, so, so yeah, so that's what you do, and, um, I don't know, Sam, where do you wanna start? We can, we can go into, into kind of high level, or we can dive into any of the details. Where do you wanna start?

Sam Parr 3:02 He put together this really good document that explains all the different businesses, but to summarize, it looks like it's like eight or nine or 10 of them, and so, so I understand the size. It's over 100 million in revenue, right? And over 750 employees for all eight or 10 of these?

Michael Girdley 3:18 Yes.

Shaan Puri 3:18 Whenever I hear people be like, "Okay, yeah, my, my kind of the accumulation of the businesses that I own, some percentage ownership stake in is worth over $100 million," or like a real estate guy will be like, "You know, I have a billion-dollar real estate portfolio," in my head, and I'm, I'm sure there's a bunch of listeners who are like this too, they're like, "So what does that mean? Are you a bil- Like, are you, are you super loaded? Is this a..." Like, what, how do I think about that number, right?

Michael Girdley 3:40 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 3:40 'Cause like, you know, [laughs] if I get a salary, that's the money I keep. If I run a business and I say top line revenue, that's not the money I get to keep. So when you own a, you own 100% of your holdco, and your holdco owns businesses that add up to over 100 million in revenue, does that mean you're just big ball of shot calling? Are you paying yourself like $10 million a year or more out of, out of the profits of these businesses, or what does that really mean?

Michael Girdley 4:03 Yeah. Well, I mean, part of the way I've set up the structure is like I wanted to be very flexible in terms of strategy. So there's some stuff in here that's just like compounders. Like, um, Dura, for example, like we wanna be the next Constellation Software someday. So like I don't... That's just compounding. The money I put into that and the effort and time and, I put into it, like I don't, I don't get cash flow from that stuff. Um, but that's by design. Like, I'm just a long-term player and a long-term person on all this stuff. You know, the things we went through, just kind of the 10 big holdings that I have, those are all things that I have 50, 60, 30, 40% of the company. So it's not like I, I to- I totally am with you. Like, I've, I, you know, I, I felt stressed being like, "Okay, well, I don't wanna be the guy coming in and bullshitting about a bunch of numbers," but also, like, I'm from Texas and like, like I have a hard time like bragging and being like, "Well, okay, here's some, here's what my net worth is, and here's how much money I make," and all that kind of stuff. So I'm trying to balance it out to where we can actually get there, uh, without getting past my comfort zone, so.

Sam Parr 4:56 How do we... Let's, let's not balance that out. Let's just go to the other end and make you incredibly uncomfortable.

Michael Girdley 5:02 [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:03 Tell me how, uh, well, your net worth, your checking account number, and what it felt like when you lost your virginity. You can pick one. Go now.

Michael Girdley 5:11 [laughs] Uh, really drunk, four, and, uh, yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:17 [laughs] Yeah. Let's, let's, let's really get into it. And it's like, oh, you don't wanna revea- you don't wanna rev- reveal your penis size? That's fine. Just tell me about your net worth then. We'll settle for that.

Shaan Puri 5:27 [laughs] But it, it's seriously, it's, there's like a, a mental model for these businesses, right? Like, some businesses, like you called it a compounder, right? It's like, uh, if you go into a business like this, you're gonna put up e- it only takes X dollars to start, and then it takes Y years to kinda get to some good outcome. Like, like I'll just give you like a venture startup, right? Like, I come from the Silicon Valley venture world. Silicon Valley venture world is you put $0 of your own money up, but you're gonna raise likely somewhere between 3 and 300 million from venture capitalists over time. Uh, you shouldn't expect to see any big money until you exit, which is on average seven to 10 years. And so like that's the profile of that versus my e-commerce business. Took, I don't know, I put in 600K to start it. Uh, like that was my first kind of year, uh, commitment that I had to put in. Um, but we can take quarterly profits now. You know, at year two we could take quarterly profits if we wanted to. We decided to roll that into growth. But we think that by the year three or four, we should be seeing pretty healthy, you know, quarterly profits that will pay for a, a sweet lifestyle, right? So that's like just to d- paint a picture of what type of business you're getting into. Most people don't know how the holdco business works, so give me those sorts of like what does it take to start? How long do you have to wait to get a payday? How big are those payd- you know, are you playing a software game, like a, a VC software game? You could make a billion dollars. E-commerce, unlikely to happen, but you can pretty safely make tens of millions of dollars if you do it right.

Michael Girdley 6:53 Yeah. Well, I mean, I think my theory on stuff is it's been incredibly difficult to find good opportunities over the past five years. So I've structured stuff that I wanna be able to do any opportunity that comes through the door, right? And so, like, so, so the danger is, say for example, I run across a fun idea to work on that, you know, maybe is in the roll-up space. Well, like, like, uh, that's gonna require outside capital, right? Dura required outside capital. My partner and I who started the business, he's former head of support for Rackspace. He's the CEO of the business now. We put up our own money to do the first acquisition, and then we started ... When we ran out of money right after a couple million dollars, um, we had to go out and raise money. And so that's playing that kind of VC compounding game that I talked about. You know, other stuff like the coding bootcamp that we start, like that pays me money every month. It's, it's similar to what you're talking about. Um, so you know, those, the thing I like about those kinda cash flow-y LLCs and stuff like that is like, you know, the upside isn't as good. Like you can't have a billion-dollar exit in that stuff 20 years from now, but you could start cash flowing really quickly. Um, so I like to have a blend-

Shaan Puri 7:56 So you've got-

Michael Girdley 7:56 ... of all those things 'cause you can't, you can't live on appreciation.

Sam Parr 7:59 How much pro- how much profit does the 100 million make? Or I think you, you said over 100 million, but we- let's just say it's 100 million. How much profit does it actually make? And-

Michael Girdley 8:07 Yeah

Sam Parr 8:07 ... of let's say that you own 30% of one company that makes 10 million in profit, do you, do you say like, "All right, we're gonna take, of that 10 million, we're gonna, uh, take out 3 million in profit. We own 30%, we get one million"?

Michael Girdley 8:20 Yeah. Well, I, i-i- typically the stuff in a portfolio for small businesses like this, um, is gonna end up around 15 to 20%, you know, EBITDA margins. So then you do a calculus and say, "Okay, well based on that, like free cash flow potential margins," like, okay, you gotta pay off debt service and all that kinda stuff if you have it, and then is it better for you to take the money out or should you reinvest it inside the business? Um, and by and large most of these things are reinvesting because I don't have better places to put the money than reinvesting in assets and new acquisitions and all that kinda stuff.

Shaan Puri 8:53 Wh- which business is the best cash cow? Is it like, you know, the, the fireworks company where it's like, well-

Michael Girdley 8:58 Yeah

Shaan Puri 8:58 ... it's open like three months a year and it just prints ca- it prints profits for three months [laughs] and then we like don't have to think about it-

Michael Girdley 9:04 Yeah

Shaan Puri 9:04 ... for the other nine? Like, I-

Michael Girdley 9:06 Yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 9:06 ... don't know if that's true. I'm just saying that out loud.

Sam Parr 9:08 Which business is the best one, and why is it fireworks?

Michael Girdley 9:11 [laughs] Dude, fireworks - here's why I love fireworks. It was the first business that started my whole platform, and I was the CEO of it, and it is the hardest business in the world to run. Like it, the cash flow sucks. Like we, we aren't even open yet for 4th of July. We open in two more days, and we've been spending money to get ready for it all the way through the, through, uh, since January the 2nd. Uh, and you have to predict what's gonna happen six to 12 months ahead of time, and then you have to put up all the cash for it, buy all the fireworks, get all the locations out of ... We have 200 locations across the state of Texas.

Shaan Puri 9:43 Wow.

Michael Girdley 9:43 And then open them all up. Uh, and then we really don't break even until about 7:00 or 8:00 PM on the night of the 4th of July. So it is ... When I ran that business, that was where I cut my teeth as a CEO. Like it was the hardest business to run, to where I went to these other businesses and people would like pay you before you delivered the service or like, like [laughs] when we started the, the coding bootcamp was the second business and I was like, "You mean they pay us before we teach them the classes? Like, this is amazing." I thought it was the greatest thing ever. So every other business feels like it-

Sam Parr 10:11 How much revenue does the fire one do? Fireworks.

Michael Girdley 10:14 Uh, it's multiple tens of millions. Yeah.

Sam Parr 10:16 No shit. That makes, let's say 20, 30, $40 million selling fireworks for two weeks?

Michael Girdley 10:23 Uh, we do it twice a year. Uh, fourth, for the 4th of July, and then we do it again for New Year's. In Texas it's warm enough that actually New Year's is more pleasant than anyplace else.

Sam Parr 10:32 Golly, that's amazing. And that's g- and that's quite profitable if you do well for the, the, the-

Michael Girdley 10:37 [laughs]

Sam Parr 10:37 ... like the, the remaining like three hours. In that three hours you make all your profit.

Michael Girdley 10:41 Your ... All your profit 'cause everybody shows up at the last minute. That's the other part I didn't tell you. Yeah, nobody buys anything until the last day 'cause consumers have this habit of not doing things ahead of time.

Shaan Puri 10:52 So that, that business is actually kind of an ugly business then, um, 'cause it's like you have to predict things and then, I don't know, the world is very unpredictable the last few years. Uh, so you have to predict demand. You have to operate really well in a very tight time crunch. Like all your demand gets squeezed into this tiny pipe. Um, you're putting up all the cash up front, so you're taking some, some, some risk there. Did you ... You're a clever guy. Did you come up with any clever operating hacks to like make that business suck less that other firework people don't really do?

Michael Girdley 11:21 Uh, yes, we have a bunch of those. I didn't come up with any of them. Uh, the thing I realized, and this was about 14, 15 years ago, I actually really suck at optimizations. Like I wanna live at like 80,000 feet with i- big ideas and strategy and do what we're doing right here, right? Like, I wanna live in an idea space, and what I realized about six years into running that business was I am precisely the wrong person to run this business. 'Cause what you're talking about is this like game of inches where you have to be like optimizing stuff all the time, and like I find that incredibly boring. Like that is the mo- like that and accounting and HR are like the three most boring things you'd ask me to do in my life. And what we've done is a ton of those kind of optimizations. Like that business has exploded in the past five years, no pun intended, um, through just getting the right people on the field. And it means me not doing it because I'm absolutely in the wrong, perfect wrong person to run that business. Um, but we do a bunch of different stuff. Like we brought, um, digital point of sale to that business. It used to be handwritten for a long number of years. Um, so some pretty basic stuff that you're like, "Really? It took that long?" But yeah, we, we've done all that kinda stuff. But the w- It's the royal we. It's not me.

Sam Parr 12:28 How much money did you ... You said you started this thing with $2 million of you and your partner's money, and then is the rest like a fund that you raised?

Michael Girdley 12:35 So, um, so Dura was something I started, we started with our own money. Uh, the fireworks business, I got that the old fashion way. I- it's a family business. I inherited it. So that's why you're like, "How'd this guy end up with a fireworks business?" I, I was told I have a fireworks business now. And [laughs] it's great.

Sam Parr 12:53 What about the other things? Did you have to ra-

Michael Girdley 12:56 Gosh

Sam Parr 12:56 ... so it's like, is, i- is each one like its own, you raise money for each one if you need to raise money, or you just use your own money?

Michael Girdley 13:03 Yep. Just, uh, if, if I need to syndicate the deal, I syndicate the deal with other people. Um, you know, what I've learned and I only do, is I hate raising money for stuff unless I'm putting my own money in it. So I'll put a substantial amount of my net worth in new stuff, and then when I go out to raise money I feel like not yucky. Otherwise I feel yucky. But yeah.

Shaan Puri 13:24 Now, which of the business ... Okay, so we thought maybe the fireworks business is the best one. It turns out that's kind of a, a, a pretty, pretty gnarly business. What, which of your businesses would you say is like the most c- in the cash flow category? Like, it's just so beautiful because it works. It's just, it just worked right away, didn't take a ton of money. It's, uh, you know, it's profitable. It's not like this brutal business to operate. Which, which one do you like the best?

Michael Girdley 13:49 Yeah. Uh, the coding bootcamp is the best one. It's all services, low cap ex. Um, and then, I mean, the thing I like the most about it, like it, it actually like helps people. Like, it changes their lives, and, uh, that's not bullshit by the way. Like, y- you'll notice a theme. Like, on all this stuff I really like enjoy helping people, and it, it's a life transformation thing when people go through that and get a better job.

Sam Parr 14:10 Clearly you've never had a bottle rocket fight, man.

Michael Girdley 14:12 [laughs]

Sam Parr 14:13 'Cause those are pretty amazing too.

Shaan Puri 14:14 [laughs]

Michael Girdley 14:16 [laughs]

Sam Parr 14:18 How, uh, how big is the-

Shaan Puri 14:20 Please, please don't do that

Sam Parr 14:21 ... how big is the coding bootcamp?

Shaan Puri 14:21 Please don't do ...

Sam Parr 14:22 [laughs]

Michael Girdley 14:23 Uh, that is, that is, uh, low eight figures.

Shaan Puri 14:26 That's amazing.

Sam Parr 14:28 And very profitable?

Michael Girdley 14:30 Uh, that runs kinda consistent with what we were talking about, that 15 to 20% even margins.

Shaan Puri 14:34 And, and so, um, so you got a bunch of these. So, um, I like your Twitter because, um, you talk about a bunch of things that I think most people aren't talking about. My feed is very like, I don't know, my Twitter feed is just like the same crypto people, the same Silicon Valley people, and then there's like five people that are like just, you know, different. And I think you're friends with all of them. Like, that guy Molson I think is like a total nut. I find him, his feed to be hilarious.

Michael Girdley 14:59 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:59 Uh, you're kind of a nut, you're hilarious. Uh, there's this guy Jay Vasabalalala. I don't know how to say his last name exactly. Long Indian last name. He's super smart.

Sam Parr 15:07 Jay Voss. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 15:08 And like, you know, people just don't follow you guys in the same r- like to the same level as I think you should. Um, like I'll make a list of these people, I'll tweet it out, because I think you guys are all way more entertaining on Twitter than, than most. Um, but I wanna read you a couple of tweets, and I want you to just kinda riff on, like kind of explain it, uh, but riff on what you, what you mean there. Like, what was the kind of the golden thing there. So,

Shaan Puri 15:30 um, you had one about going to touristy places but doing non-touristy things. You were tweeting out like you were in China, and you're tweeting out like what a, a w- p- paper recycling mill, like what does waste paper from the US, where does it go once we like ... Where does the waste paper go? And you like found where it goes in China, and it was this gnarly-

Michael Girdley 15:52 Yeah

Shaan Puri 15:52 ... factory. B- and so like I dunno if you, [laughs] you can talk about that or just this idea of going, going on vacation or going to a touristy place, but then hitting the non-touristy parts of that country. Uh, talk a little about that.

Michael Girdley 16:03 Yeah. Well, that was a, I mean, that was a business trip. Like, I was there training the team and helping them go learn how to buy fireworks. Um, and like we were just like driving down the road.

Shaan Puri 16:13 [laughs]

Michael Girdley 16:13 And like literally, so the process of going to buy fireworks, uh, is there is like a Silicon Valley of fireworks, and it's in China, and it's about a two-hour flight from Hong Kong in the southeast of China. And you go to this place, and like it's the same thing every day. You go, the Chinese take you to a fancy dinner, and there's always the same restaurant and the same food. Uh, and then they take you to a factory, and then they show you some fireworks and hopefully you buy them. And that happens like for six days in a row. And then-

Shaan Puri 16:37 And you have to drink a bunch of nasty biju, right?

Michael Girdley 16:39 Uh, they j- they have like Budweiser, Chinese Budweiser [laughs] they serve you and-

Shaan Puri 16:45 Oh, yeah

Michael Girdley 16:45 ... it's pretty fun.

Shaan Puri 16:45 Ching Dao. Yeah.

Michael Girdley 16:46 Yeah. It's pretty fun. Um, but yeah, after like the fourth year of doing that, like I was there with, with the team, and I was, we were like driving along, and I was just so sick of going to yet another fireworks factory, 'cause they all look the same. It was just like the same little old ladies like doing the same thing. And all the fireworks workers, by the way, are like 70 years old. They can't hire young people to work in fireworks factories. It's just crazy. And I was like, "What is that over there?" And, uh, and they're like, "Oh, that's the box factory." And I was like, "A box factory? Let's go over there." And so they pull over to the side of the road, the driver goes in, and, uh, the Chinese seller to us like takes us in for a tour of this box factory. And for me, it was just like an opportunity to kind of push a little bit and like really get underneath and understand like how a culture like lives and really functions. And like he told us like, look, they're, they're having a problem making boxes now because they can't put the wastewater directly in the river anymore. I was like, "Oh, this is [laughs] why things are so cheap in China." Um, but yeah, that's it. Like, just, you just kinda start wandering and then magic happens. So that was one of those moments.

Sam Parr 17:44 What type of trip was that where you, uh, bring a bunch of Texas firework workers to China and like ... I just imagine like, just like, "What the fuck is this soy sauce shit?" You know what I mean? [laughs] Just like imagine that conversation. And, uh, that must, you must've had a blast-

Michael Girdley 17:58 [laughs]

Sam Parr 17:59 ... hanging out with a bunch of, uh, uh, Texas firework guys and a bunch of Chinese fireworks guys. You guys, that, that ... We really got brought together there on that one.

Michael Girdley 18:06 [laughs]

Sam Parr 18:09 Our, our love of blowing shit up.

Michael Girdley 18:10 Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm somewhat worldly. The guy, the guy that we took on the trip, actually the COO for the business, is a former, uh, a former senior military officer who's Romanian and lives here in San Antonio now, used to work for Aldi. And they didn't know what to make of him. Like, they were just totally confused why we had a Romanian with us like going through rural China. So [laughs] it was pretty good times.

Shaan Puri 18:31 Have you had any of these other like, have you intentionally gone and sort of gone off the beaten path to like... 'Cause I feel like what you're d- when I look at your, your Twitter feed, you've sort of accumulated a bunch of random disparate business knowledge, and a lot of this comes from like, oh, you see a guy selling something on the street. You're like, "Hey, so what is this? Where does this come from? How do you do this?" Right?

Michael Girdley 18:50 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 18:50 That sort of thing. Can you tell any other stories of, you know, sort of like intentionally stumbling into interesting things? And 'cause I think more people should do that. Um, and-

Michael Girdley 19:00 Yeah

Shaan Puri 19:00 ... I wanna kind of like, you know, l- hear some of those stories.

Michael Girdley 19:04 Hmm. That's a really good question. I need to think of a good a- [laughs] need to think of a good answer. I'm glad we're, I'm glad this is being edited.

Shaan Puri 19:10 [laughs]

Michael Girdley 19:11 Um, when have I done that the most? Um, yeah, we went down... One, one time we went down, this is super interesting, um, you know, our business Dura has some employees in Medellin in Columbia, you know, where Pablo Escobar is from. So we went down there to just kinda like start wandering around and like meet our employees and like understand should we outsource more here. Um, and we just started like going around with a guide and just like asking people questions like, "What do you think of Americans? What is it like here?" And like you just start to see random stuff. Um, I mean, the reason I started the coffee business, by the way, is like I was riding my bike around Arkansas, and I'm like just riding outside the Walmart headquarters 'cause like I'm a business nerd, and staring at the Walmart headquarters. And, uh, like there's this like drive through coffee shop there, and it was COVID and I was bored, and I, so I just sat there for an hour, and these guys were just printing money. And I came home and I called my buddy who I'd wanted to work with for years, and I was just like, "Hey, we should start a coffee business." And he said, "Why?" And I sent him the pictures. I was like, "Look at all these people. They're just like printing money." Um, so it's just kinda this idea of just like, for me, like, like the way I build ventures and the way I find them is just kind of by like stumbling around like an idiot. And then like you end up in front of the Walmart headquarters and watch some guy selling millions of dollars worth of coffee. Um, so yeah, that's another story.

Shaan Puri 20:29 And

Shaan Puri 20:30 does, uh, you went to the Berkshire Hathaway, uh, like summit, which I think is kinda like a pilgrimage for like businesspeople/entrepreneurs. It's like, oh, you gotta go visit the Mecca and like you see the old kind of religious, you know, leader, you know, the, the 90-year-old, uh, guru sitting there, and, uh, is it worth it? Should I go?

Michael Girdley 20:49 Uh, you definitely gotta go at least once. I mean, it was like, so I'm 47, so like I always regretted I didn't see Jerry Garcia before he died. And, uh, like that was the way I felt about seeing Charlie and Warren. And, and, you know, it's like one of those things where I was kind of happy to be there 'cause it felt like a once in a lifetime thing, and the people watching is amazing. Like, it's like, it's like the combination of like, uh, cash like investing and like a NASCAR race. Like, it's perfect. Um, so [laughs] I just had so much fun doing it. But it's also kind of, you know, I feel like going at this point, like Charlie and Warren are getting up there. Like, they're 92 and 98. Like the morning, you know, Warren spent a lot of time just kinda trying to find his words, and then he got into a rhythm and it was like he was his old self again, and it was pretty awesome. But I mean, I think if you're a capitalist, you gotta go once. You just gotta go once 'cause you're just like, it's just such, it's just such an insane experience seeing these people so devoted to the company, dropping $250 on a pair of Roper boots or Justin Boots, and then walking over and drooling over like how they can buy like a Sunbeam boat. Like, it's just like just the coolest thing. So you gotta go at least once.

Shaan Puri 21:55 Sam, have you been?

Sam Parr 21:56 No. Uh, I was invited to go. I think you and I were invited with Sieva and Suli, and I didn't go. Is... I guess I, I guess I would go just to see it. Dude, those guys are old, aren't they? Like, isn't Charlie Munger like 93?

Michael Girdley 22:10 98.

Sam Parr 22:11 Oh my God.

Michael Girdley 22:12 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:13 Uh-

Michael Girdley 22:13 Yeah, you gotta go-

Sam Parr 22:13 ... I guess next year it would have to be the... Yeah, I guess next year would have to be like the [laughs] last one maybe.

Michael Girdley 22:20 You gotta go just to watch him and see how much peanut brittle he eats in a four-hour setting. Like, it was unreal. The guy ate like four pounds of peanut brittle.

Sam Parr 22:29 Mm.

Michael Girdley 22:29 And when I like live tweeted the thing, [laughs] like it was like, "I can't believe he's still eating this much peanut brittle. I'm 47, there's no way I could do that." And he was just sitting there pounding it the whole time.

Sam Parr 22:37 Dude, that, that peanut brittle from See's is fire. I feel that. It, it is pretty amazing.

Shaan Puri 22:41 These guys have like, they have the most success and they do the opposite of what every like, you know, success coach and like motivational entrepreneur do- you know, tells you to do. It's like, you know, they're like, you know, y- it's like if you go on Instagram, it's like, oh, I need to, you know, wake up at 5:00 AM, I need to, you know, meditate, I need to do my ice plunge, then I need to do my w- CrossFit workout, then I need to like, you know, do my daily gratitude journal, then I need to do my like hyper-focus chamber where I go and I figure out my priorities for the day, then I need to like speed read and listen to my podcast on 2X speed. And these guys are basically like, you know, they somehow made it to, they became one of the richest people in the world, lived until they, you know, till they're about 100 years old, and they wake up every day, they eat McDonald's breakfast, eat a bunch of M&M's and Diet Cokes, and then they read and play bridge all day and like go for walks and, uh, you know, that's where they get their, [laughs] their, their ideas from. [laughs] And so, you know, I think there's something to what they're doing. I think it's a... You know, I think they're still alive 'cause they're low stress, [laughs] despite what they eat. Uh, and I think they're sh- they're smart thinkers 'cause they don't overload their brain with information like, uh, I'm guilty of, and I think a bunch of people are. When you, when you're hooked into social media, you're just constantly consuming info.

Speaker 23:49 [upbeat music] This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed. HubSpot. Grow better.

Sam Parr 24:11 What, of your, of the things in your, uh, the, the things in your portfolio, which company besides the, um, besides the, the bootcamp are you like, "This is just the greatest thing ever. I'm so happy we own this. Uh, I, more people should know how easy," or not easy, but how straightforward this business is. It feels like I'm winning in easy mode.

Michael Girdley 24:34 Yeah. Well, I think th- the Near business, so it's hirewithnear.com. Um, so it actually ... This is a, this is the, this is the apex of what I want for Girdley existence to be, which is I want ... I've gone from starting businesses myself and working in them, then starting businesses and having other people work in them, and this is one that has started basically with me doing no work, but I have substantial amount on the cap table. Like, it's the apex of Girdley automation. Like, I'm always scaling stuff. So the Near business, like, we looked up and, like, like, I, I'm in a CEO peer group, and, like, none of my peers could, like, hire people. Like, it was the past couple years, it was just such a mess. Uh, and then I'd ask them, "Well, have you considered hiring overseas?" And, uh, they're like, "I don't know how to do that. How would I do that?" So we, we, we ... Basically I took one of my associates and I said, "Hey, we should go build in this direction. There's this huge wave, and here's this problem. Let's go try some stuff and see what happens." Um, and that business I like so much just because everything seems like it's on easy mode because everybody's offshoring. Like, everybody wants to do this. Um, it was that way when the economy was going well. Now it's even more so when the economy's going poorly. Um, and I've hired personally of my associates, I have three of the six that work, work overseas. I've never met them in person. It's, like, the best.

Sam Parr 25:46 And you partnered with someone to make this according to the About page, right?

Michael Girdley 25:50 Yeah. So, um, Hayden is, started as an associate of mine. So I hire these, um, people, I call them associates, and it's basically an entrepreneur in training program. So I, like, mentor them through. I pay them a salary, um, and then I help them, like, get out of the, like, 12 bad ideas that every entrepreneur has to get when they're 27 years old. I help them, like, think through all those, and then we work on a good idea together. And then at the end of it, they can either start a company with me or they can go take a job or whatever. And so Hayden and Franco were two of the guys in that program, and, like, I'm on the cap table with them. Like, I put up the money and have been guiding them through it, but they've done all the work.

Sam Parr 26:26 When you're hiring CEOs, how much equity do you give them, and how much, uh, how much do you pay them, and how do you incentivize them to want to stay with you for a long time?

Michael Girdley 26:34 Yeah. So totally depends upon the situation. Um, you know, obviously if a business is much more established, um, or demands somebody who's, like, much more, like, um, like, mature, um, that, that makes a situation where oftentimes you have to come up with more. Um, my best situations are when I can partner with somebody. So all this stuff I'm in, while I have significant stakes in it, I have other people on the cap tables. Like, that's one of my, like, I feel like superpowers. Like, I can just, like, maintain partnerships. Like, I have 100% success rate on partnerships with people. So the absolute best way is if I can get somebody like Paul at Dura is to be, like, a co-founder, and the absolute best way of that is if they're a co-founder and they put money in it like me, and then they make that their job. Like, that's the absolute best skin in the game kind of outcome. But, you know, you can have anywhere from a 27-year-old who will make 60 to 80K a year plus benefits, um, to some of these people who are much more senior, like our coffee, um, our coffee person. You know, he worked at 25 years at Circle K and he's running this, he's running that business. Um, he obviously needs to make much more money than that. Um, and then the equity really depends. Totally depends on the opportunity. It depends on how much skin in the game they want to have, uh, what level of commitment they have, and how early they're coming in the venture, but it could be anywhere from 40% to 20% to 5%.

Shaan Puri 27:53 And why does, let's say for Dura, uh, why does your partner want to give you ... What, let's call it, let's pretend you have 30%. I don't know what you have. Maybe it's 50, maybe it's a little less. Let's just say 30%. Why does he wanna have g- give you 30% and he's day-to-day in it, but you're not, right? Uh, so how do you think about that-

Michael Girdley 28:10 Yeah

Shaan Puri 28:10 ... like value exchange, um, when you're not gonna be the operating person and then they are?

Michael Girdley 28:16 Yeah. Well, I mean, a- so you're asking that question from the same lens I have, which is, like, being an operator isn't our dream. Most people, their, uh, their dream is to be an operator. They're excited when we're able to work together and create an opportunity for them to be their best self, right? And that's what I see kind of as that benefit. And so, and, a- and so I think a situation like that where, like, you know, oftentimes I'm part of the very early figuring out what the idea's gonna be. Um, I'm putting up a substantial amount of money. I put up more money than, than, say, the other partners did. Um, we did some debt to do the first deal. Like, I personally guaranteed it. Uh, and then the last thing is, like, like great teams, they have these complementary things. Like-

Sam Parr 28:57 How much money would you use to fund a new business?

Michael Girdley 28:59 So that one was, like, a couple million, and then some of these are, like, 50 to 100.

Sam Parr 29:03 Wow. Okay.

Michael Girdley 29:04 So that's-

Sam Parr 29:04 But you do put up a lot of money.

Michael Girdley 29:06 Yeah. So yeah, skin in the game matters. Um, then that also helps me not to try to do too many things. Like, I can just be like, "Okay, like, I'm putting real money in this. I better really believe in it." Um, but, like, like the last thing with these operators is a lot of the things I feel like I bring to the business, where it's, like, strategy, insights, like, best practices and connections, like, those are things that they're happy to have somebody along on the journey with them who has the same level of commitment, um, and wants to be a board member. Like, I, I don't want their job, and I, I'm not, I wouldn't be good at it. So, you know, I think that's, that's the partnership I end up having with these folks.

Sam Parr 29:41 Shaan, have you heard of, um, this guy named Kevin Ryan?

Shaan Puri 29:44 Only through you. He's like a media-

Sam Parr 29:46 Right?

Shaan Puri 29:46 Is that, is that the same guy?

Sam Parr 29:49 Yeah. So Michael, have you heard of this guy, Kevin Ryan?

Michael Girdley 29:51 I'm googling him.

Sam Parr 29:52 All right. So I think there might, there's probably a billion Kevin Ryans, so, like, maybe a baseball, that's a baseball player or something like that-

Michael Girdley 29:57 Oh, he's the Alley Corp guy

Sam Parr 29:58 ... might come up. So yeah, so listen to this guy. So early in his career, he worked, like, in the newspaper business, nothing particularly exciting, and then he worked at this company called DoubleClick, and he was, like, the 30th employee there and then took over as CEO, and then DoubleClick was sold for, like, a billion or many billion, and it eventually became AdSense for Google. So, like, pretty big thing. He told me that he had made, like, um, very low digit eight, eight figures. Uh, he was like, "It was enough money that, like, I'm set, but, uh, like I still wanted to, like, create stuff." And so him and this guy named Dwight, who I think he worked with at DoubleClick-

Michael Girdley 30:35 They started Alley Corp, and their whole thing was, "We're gonna fund companies with 200 to $300,000, and all of the ideas are gonna come from us. All the ideas are only gonna be back of the envelope math, and we're gonna hire someone to get it off the ground, and we're gonna give it 300,000 and six months to prove if this is a good idea or a bad idea. And we're gonna do it a bunch of times." A few of their successes that they've done this with are, uh, Mongo dot- MongoDB, which I don't know what it's at now, but in the range of like a 20 to 50 billion dollar, uh, market cap publicly traded software business. The second one is Business Insider, which sold for 600 million, I think. It, but it's like a big company now. The third one is Gilt, Gilt Group, which was a clothing company that was huge. It, it didn't actually work out, but it was huge for a little while. And I think the fourth one w- there's another... Oh, the fourth one is Zola. You guys know Zola? It's like where you go for wedding registries. I believe that's a unicorn, and there a- might actually be two or three more of these companies that Alley Corp has like, uh, founded. And basically he was like, "Yeah, so me and Dwight just sit around and we come up with like a cool idea. Like, I go to a wedding and I just ask people where they bought all the gifts." And like, he's like, "I just had this idea. So I knew someone who worked at Gilt Group who mentioned she liked this type of business. I hollered at her. I go, 'Hey, here's 300K if you can get this going, and you get a small portion but we get most of it. You wanna try it?'" And that's how it worked. It, it's a... He, he's pretty amazing.

Shaan Puri 32:02 Speechless. [laughs]

Michael Girdley 32:04 That's impressive. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 32:06 It's like, yeah. [laughs] I was like, "Yeah, those guys

Shaan Puri 32:08 are really good." They, there's th- this like holdco model is, is like in vogue, right? 'Cause it, it's sorta like s- to me, I, I, I worked at, at a startup studio for a while, and I think that was like the thing for a period of time, probably still is a thing where- Yeah ... you build one company, you run it for a while, you sell it, great. Now you got cash. You still wanna do more entrepreneurial things, and so you self-fund a studio where you're like, "We're gonna work on a bunch of ideas," and then you try to find like new winners out of those- Right ... bunches, bunches of ideas. And so like, you know, I worked at out of one. That's how I got into tech. Um, you know, Mark Pincus, the guy who created Zynga, then he created one. The guy who created Uber, he created one. Uh, Kevin Rose created one. Like, it's just a bunch of s- serial entrepreneurs who create these, and they've actually had a pretty poor track record of success. And then we see the, like the holdco mafia is sort of the same where you get, you know, um, guys like Andrew Wilkinson who's got Tiny, and then you have, you know, a bunch of other people who are doing their own holdco versions of that, whether they buy boring businesses, they buy sweaty businesses, they buy software businesses, they buy whatever. Um, and you're kind of in that boat. You're in that boat too. Uh, what do you think is the... I guess like how do you think about that, you know, in terms of like who do you think should be the type of person who, who should do this, and, and, and what are some of the misconceptions or like traps that people fall into when they go down this path? 'Cause I'm sure you've seen a bunch.

Michael Girdley 33:29 Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's two, there's two bad things going on with holdcos right now. I think there's a whole group of people that are doing them and they actually, uh, think it's not that much work. [laughs] Like the... I talked to them, I'm like, "So why are you doing this?" They're like, "Uh, it seems really easy." I'm like, "This is really hard." And the reason, number two, that it's like super hard is because this is exactly the opposite of operations. Like the, everything that you do and all the habits and skills that you learn when you are a CEO running a business, which is where most of these people are coming from, or you're a senior exec in a company, like everything you do in a holdco is exactly the opposite. Like, like when there's a problem, you don't rush in and fix it for your company. You actually say, "Man, that really sucks. What are you gonna do about that?" Two entirely different things in terms of the way you approach it. So you mean, it'll be interesting to see what happens with all these people who think holdcos are really hot. Um, as I talk to most of them, I don't think as many of them are wired to be holdco people as they really think they are. Like the mes, the Xavier Hokensens, like, like we're odd. Like we're different people, and there's a reason for that, that we're not operators. And so it'll be, it'll be interesting to see what happens, uh, with some of these people. Well, what's so hard about it? You know, I think it goes against people's nature, right? So like, like take me for example, like I love to live in this idea space, right? And I'm, I have like a relatively crappy memory, which is like, uh, why I have to write stuff down like crazy. Um, but that's different for other people. Like a lot of the people that I partner with as operators, they look at like what I do as insanity 'cause they just couldn't imagine letting go of the vine of these particular things going on. And so, you know, it goes against this human nature where a lot of times, like for example, those people, like there's this problem going on in the business, they wanna sprint to that problem, right? And they can't imagine even stepping away from it. So it just goes against, in my opinion, who you are as a person and makes it almost incredibly difficult or impossible for the many people.

Shaan Puri 35:24 Yeah, you say that, but at the same time I'm like, oh, uh, everybody I know is like, "Oh, I like to operate at a high level, you know, the 10,000 foot view, and I'm an ideas guy." I, I don't know anyone that doesn't think they're an ideas guy.

Michael Girdley 35:35 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 35:35 Maybe I just run in the wrong circles, but you know, I don't know a lot of people who are like, "You know what? I, I like to grind the opera- likes to go grind the day-to-day optimizations," versus, "I like to be the idea guy-

Michael Girdley 35:46 Yeah

Shaan Puri 35:46 ... who helps just get it started-

Michael Girdley 35:47 Yeah

Shaan Puri 35:47 ... and somebody else goes and does all the hard work." You know, that seems like, seems like there's a ratio of 100 idea guys to every one guy who's just truly loves executing.

Michael Girdley 35:56 You ever heard of Excel, dog? That's my jam. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 35:59 [laughs]

Michael Girdley 35:59 Oh. No, no, you... I lived in the Silicon Valley bubble too. Like I was, I fit right in. I was great there. And then I came back [laughs] here to the, the hinterlands of San Antonio and like I started to see these people. And like I've got buddies who, for example, are senior executives at the largest private grocery chain in America, H-E-B. Have you guys heard of this company?

Shaan Puri 36:19 Yeah, I love H-E-B. It's like my favorite grocery store.

Michael Girdley 36:21 It's, it's insane. You should see how optimized those guys are when they're running at 3 or 4% EBITDA margins, and like they think it's great.

Shaan Puri 36:30 Tell me everything.

Michael Girdley 36:31 About H-E-B?

Shaan Puri 36:32 Yeah.

Michael Girdley 36:33 Uh, what, what do you wanna know? [laughs]

Sam Parr 36:36 Like, what, what, why, what makes it so great?

Michael Girdley 36:39 It all comes down to, it all comes down to the philosophy of the family that owns it. So you have Charles Butt, who is the majority owner, and then his, his relatives are the other rest of the owners, and then they have a percentage that's owned by the employees. But it's, like, 85, 90% owned by, by, by these guys. Um, and so they'll just do crazy stuff. Like, when they heard, um, when they heard that Trader Joe's was coming to San Antonio, so H-E-B's located here, um, there's an anecdote that they just packed up all the senior executives who were in charge of product selection, s- location selection, interior store experience, all that stuff. They put them on a private jet, and they flew out to, ah, to California and said, "Don't come back until you have the best of every single one of their products, 'cause we need to up our game." Um, there's another anecdote when Walmart came to San Antonio that H-E-B went and lowered their profit targets 'cause they're just like, "We're not losing to Walmart. That's just the way it's gonna work." And that all emanated from the ownership, right? You didn't have this, like, public stock people coming in and saying, like, "Oh," like, "think quarter by quarter." No, you had these folks that were thinking, like, "We've been here for 70 years. How are we gonna be here for another 70 years, uh, and just go crush it?" And that goes all the way down the culture. Um, my buddy works there, and he said it took 10 years, um, before people stopped referring to him as the new guy.

Sam Parr 37:55 [laughs]

Michael Girdley 37:57 People just stay. Yeah, imagine that in Silicon Valley.

Sam Parr 38:01 Of all the... It sounds like to you that, like, H-E-B is almost like a dream business, or not a dream business, but it's one that, like, you look at and you're like, "Damn, that is cool. That is well run." I, I admire a few things about that. What else do, what other companies do you admire that most people don't maybe know about or think about when it's like, oh, that's actually really neat for these following reasons?

Michael Girdley 38:19 Hmm, really good question. What other businesses are super sexy? I feel like I've talked a lot about this on Twitch.

Sam Parr 38:26 Not sexy, but it's just, like, thin- things where it's like, ah, man, this is, these guys got it made. They, they're, it's hard work, but it seems like it's, like, a, pretty fun, and I think that what they're doing has a lot of soul and they're doing it right.

Shaan Puri 38:40 Sam, do you have one while he's thinking?

Michael Girdley 38:41 [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:43 Yeah. Uh, I mean, it does seem like it's a lot of family guy stuff. I would say, um... Do you guys, do you guys know Bl- Ba- uh, Black Rifle Coffee?

Shaan Puri 38:51 I've heard of them-

Michael Girdley 38:52 Yeah

Shaan Puri 38:52 ... but I don't know much about them.

Sam Parr 38:53 I don't drink, so I don't really drink too much of it. I drink the black stuff b- because the other stuff has a lot of sugar. They're typically drank by, like, conservatives. Like, they've, like, do the, they've done, like, they advertise on Fox. They've done, like, a good job of, uh, it, like, like, this is made in America. It's all about freedom, like that whole thing, which is, well, you know, whatever. That's cool. And, but they're like, "Yeah, let's sponsor rally r- uh, dirt rally race cars." And I asked them, I was like, "Why?" And they, and they're like, "It's 'cause it's freaking awesome."

Shaan Puri 39:21 [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:21 And they're like, "What's the point of, like, having this company if we can't do dope shit like, you know, go to a, go to a rally car and give out our coffee?" And, or they'll do it with, like, mountain biking races, or they'll do it with the, like, they make all this, all this cool content where they're just, like, doing, like, the redneck version of Red Bull stunts.

Shaan Puri 39:37 Right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:37 You know? Like, uh, and I think that's awesome. I love that stuff. I think that to me, I imagine in their heads, they're like, yeah, they're like, "We kinda care about coffee, but we really just care about living a really cool, amazing life and h- letting people have fun, and it just so happens we're, we're, we're selling a bunch of coffee. It allows us to, to do that." So that's a good example of a, of a business that I like. And they took it public, and it's worth, like, 6 or $700 million, so it's, like, really successful.

Michael Girdley 40:03 Yeah. They're located here in San Antonio. Have you seen... It's, it's super cool that that business, you would think it's, like, a coffee chain, and it's actually just a lifestyle brand. It's all, like, you go into the stores and there's, like, a little coffee thing on the side, and then it's, like, all T-shirts and swag. And it's good-looking stuff. Like, I'm not, like, their demographic obviously, but, like, it's super fun to, like, go in there and be like, "Man, these guys, like, I'd wear that," [laughs] even though it doesn't represent me.

Sam Parr 40:26 Yeah, no, I, I like them a lot. Shaan, do you have one?

Shaan Puri 40:28 You know, uh, I do ha- I do have a couple. Um, I like to, I kind of admire, like, oh, shit, that's simple. I like when it's really simple and the person has cr- has, like, good life perspective. So a, the guy came on the podcast, Mike Brown. I met him through you. I met him at, I went to the Hustle office and he was, he was just sitting there hanging out with you. And, um, and you were like, "This guy's great. You know, you know what's great about this guy?" And, and I think, uh, Sam, you probably know the story a little better than I do, but, like, what they did was they would go around to families in Texas that o- that were, like, basically living on a gold mine, right? It's like they [laughs] they were living on some valuable deposit of, you know, minerals or oil-

Sam Parr 41:09 Oil

Shaan Puri 41:09 ... or whatever, and they would go knock on doors and they would say, "Hey, you know, you, um, you're living on this land. I'll, we'll, like, we'll pay you for the land rights in some way," and they would go of those assets, and then they would never go do the oil mining or the, or, or oil, oil drilling themselves. They would then flip that to the oil company and say, "Hey, look, we got the title rights, you know, clear and easy that are in the earth." And they were making a killing. So they were making, you know, uh, I don't know, almost, almost $100 million doing this. Is that right, Sam?

Sam Parr 41:38 Yeah. Uh, uh, I believe it was multiple eight figures in profit a year with, like, a team of, like, eight people, and they're like, "Yeah," so-

Shaan Puri 41:46 It was super profitable, super small, super simple. It was like, "Well, basically we go knock on doors, we call people, and we explain what we're doing, and then we make them an offer that they can't refuse." Uh, like, you know, they're not gonna do anything sitting on that land. And so, you know, it, to me, I'm like, this is so simple. You compete with pretty much nobody. Um, and then you, and then he was like, I was like, "So your br- it looks like your brothers work in the business. Like, how's that working with family? You know, some people say different things about that." And he was like, "No, it's awesome." He's like, "I love my brothers." He's like, you know, uh, he's like, "My, my philosophy is you, you know, you find the people that you love and you do life with them." And he said that, and it kinda changed the way I, I operated. I was like, oh yeah, who are the people I wanna do life with? And like, you know, just kind of pick the five people who are the most awesome and then find excuses to do life with them. That sounded really simple. It's like, oh, I love Sam. I'm gonna do a podcast with Sam. And it's like, oh, our buddy Ramon's awesome. Cool, I'm gonna go on vacation with Ramon. Or, you know, like, you wa- and like, you know, hey, this person's awesome. Why don't you come work in one of my businesses? Right? Rather than just go work in your own job. So I really liked, I kind of admired that philosophy, and I admired just the, like- Sheer profits of what they were doing [laughs] and how simple it was, and how it didn't require, you know, genius or like... Honestly, I'm sure he felt like he was working hard, but it's not that hard. Like, it's not- Well, he used to say, he was like, "Everyone we hire, we make them get into cycling, 'cause we all, we like going bike riding for two hours in the middle of the day." He's like, "We all, we all wanna go for, we all wanna go work out." Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, so I, I kind of admire people who are the anti-hard work crowd, 'cause I'm more of that, like, you know, can you work smarter, not harder? And then can you even, like, not feel like you're working? Can you turn it into play by, you know, having people who are awesome, you know, doing it with you? So I like that example. The other one is, uh, Bill Simmons, who started The Ringer. Like I, I really don't think- Mm-hmm ... media companies are a very good business and, you know, ironically, just started a media company, but like, Bill Simmons is fucking awesome and he kinda changed the game for what he does. Like, every sports journalist did things one way, and he just did it differently and built his, he built his following, uh, sort of unapologetically. And- What does he do differently? So he just wr- like, he wrote from the perspective of a fan. And, uh, that sounds actually... Yeah, that's actually giving it too much intellectual credit. Actually, what he did was he was like, "All right. What are the rules if you're a journalist?" It's like, "You need to be objective." He's like, "How can I be objective? Dude, I follow sports 'cause I love the Boston Red Sox. I love the Celtics. I'm from Boston. I grew up, my dad used to take me to the games." He's like, "I'm gonna write as, like, this diehard fan, and when my team wins, I'm gonna be so happy, and when my team loses, I'm, the sky is falling." He's like... And that, of course, was super relatable to a reader, 'cause that's who your reader is, is like a diehard sports fan. So he, like, didn't pretend to be objective. That was, like, the first part. Then he would be like, "Cool, I'm also not just, like, this flat thing that, like, I can only, like, talk about sports." So he's like, "Oh, you know, I love the Die Hard trilogy," so he'll write a column that's like, you know, "If NBA players were characters in Die Hard, here's who would be Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2." And like, you know, he would do these crossovers that didn't... Nobody else really took those risks. It sounded crazy. Like, Sam, you know, you and me both watched MTV's The Challenge. He's, like, a huge Challenge fan, and he'll talk about it, and he also, he'll do a separate podcast about it even though the audience is kinda niche. But it's so niche that when it hits, it hits in a very big way. Like, it's a v- like, has a high, like, emotional score when he does talk about something you get, you, that, that you're in on the joke. Be like the trade value column- So he's one of your heroes ... or the mailbag or things like that. He's one of your business heroes. And, uh, anyways, then, then he spun off, did his own... He was doing podcasting before it was popular, before it was, like, an obvious thing. And so when he, he recently sold the whole company to Spotify for, like, 200-something million. But, you know, that, I, I kind of admire that because it was like, he deserves that. He was podcasting before podcasting was a thing. And so yeah, he now has the number one sports podcast, and he can cash out. And th- all along the way, there was never really any plan you could draw up how that podcast was gonna make the guy $200 million someday. It was like, that was an unfathomable thing, but he did it 'cause he... Again, it's kinda like your Black Rifle example. It's like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna do it 'cause I think it's fun and it's cool shit." And like, I, I kind of b- believe in this magic phil- this philosophy that if you take a bunch of cool shit and you put it in the, in the hat, you kinda s- mix up the hat, like, something really good comes of that, and you don't have to be able to draw it out, you know, ahead of time. So I kinda, I tend to love examples like that, 'cause I wanna live my life more like that, where I just do things without so much of a, of a, of a mind map of exactly how it's all gonna pay off. Dude, I love that. I think, um, I saw this amazing quote. I'm trying to find it, but it was from Kanye. And he was, like, saying, "I despise people who do things..." I, I can't find the exact quote, but he's like, "I despise people who do stuff, and they don't want it to be dope." He's like, "I wanna, if I'm gonna do a cloth- if I were to do a clothing company, I'm making it dope. Even if that means I lose money, I'm making it dope. I'm making it awesome." But he kept using the word dope. And he's like, "I'm just gonna do stuff because it's amazing, and yeah, it'll probably make money. But for all the people out there who just do stuff just to get the money, but they don't wanna make it awesome in the process, I think that's really weak and not cool and not dope." Have you heard that Dave Chappelle story he tells on, like, some late night show about Kanye? Yeah, tell it. [laughs] My life is dope. Yeah, yeah. I don- And I do dope shit ... I don't remember the exact details, but he's like, "I was hanging out with Kanye, then Kanye got a call." Who, dude, who was it? Somebody called him. Who was it? So it was, uh, it was, uh, Kanye was backstage with Dave Chappelle and Jay-Z, and Kanye was just coming up. And he was playing a, uh, a Jay-Z song, and Kanye's verse comes up, and Kanye's, like, the noob in the room, and he goes, "Wait, stop that track. Rewind that and listen to that guy." [laughs] And he, like, made them rewind, and then, um, he's like, they're like, "Dude, what are you doing, man? You're not, like, the, you're not the big shot here." And then, uh, he gets a phone call, and he goes, "Oh, hello? Yeah. Yeah, that's fine, but, uh, can I call you back? Uh, yeah. Well, I'm backstage watching never seen before clips with Dave Chappelle." Yeah. "Because my life's dope, and I do dope shit." And then hangs up. [laughs] And then that's... [laughs] Yeah, exactly. [laughs] And- I love that story. That is the best. And also, um, like- [laughs] ... that philosophy is actually kind of amazing. First of all, to believe in your own life being dope. Like, how many people think that their life is dope, that they are dope, and they do dope shit, and therefore they have a dope life? Like, most people don't give themselves that credit, and, you know, they're kinda waiting for dope stuff to happen for them to be able to say that. Kanye's the opposite, right? He's crazy in a bunch of ways, but one of the good ways he's crazy is that he just declares, "My life is dope, and I do dope shit." And guess what? You'll kinda live up to that reputation if you believe that about yourself, right? [laughs] Like, if you say, you know, um, you know, "I take chances," you know, "I'm, I'm bold. I take to- I take bold risks," well, guess what? You're gonna actually take the next bold risk when the opportunity presents itself, 'cause you've kind of hardwired yourself to, to have that identity. When we were, Sam, you'll like this, at Bebo, when, um, we hired this guy Jason Hitchcock, and Jason was... Jason's the best person you can hire because he will believe in you and the cause 150%. Like, he'll believe in you and the mission if you're, like, his boss and your manager or whatever, like, more than you believe in yourself. And he'll believe that the company's gonna work even more than the CEO's gonna believe. He's like a, I call him a Kool-Aid drinker. Like, he drinks the Kool-Aid, and he's not ashamed to do it. And so he, he, because of that, he's, like, the, an amazing person to have at a startup when there's a m- actually, a lot of people have a bunch of doubt and uncertainty in their mind. And so one day, I was talking to Jason, and we were like- Um, the Hustle Con was coming around, around the corner, and I was like, "I think I had messaged you." I was like, "I wanna talk at Hustle Con." And I think you were kinda like, "Yeah," like, "Yeah, I'll, I'll... I don't know, we got a bunch of speakers already." You kinda blew it off. You were like, "You know, we..." No. And, uh, and I was like, "All right, fair enough," but I asked. And I was like, I was like, "Jason, next year we're gonna talk at Hustle Con." I was like, "In fact, not just next year we're gonna talk at Hustle Con. In fact, everything we do this year, I want you to think about how it's gonna play at your Hustle Con talk you're gonna give. When you're gonna give this talk about how we grew from o- zero to a million users, how we took over the game-

Sam Parr 49:41 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:41 ... in our industry, like I want you to not just wake up and be like, 'Okay, today I'm gonna send out a bunch of emails.' It's like I want you to think about how this could be part of your talk, like how I landed the big fish through cold emails, or how I, you know, growth hacked my way to do X." And we used to talk about that literally on a weekly basis, like, "This is part of the Hustle Con talk." And it was just to hype ourselves up to, like, do the more dope version of the task we were already gonna do. 'Cause, like, imagine you're gonna talk about this on stage. That means it must have turned out pretty dope, or you must have done a pretty dope attempt in order to have that mindset. And I, I'll st- I still carry that-

Sam Parr 50:15 Yeah

Shaan Puri 50:15 ... to this day of like that's a pretty cool way to work. Um-

Sam Parr 50:19 Here's the, uh, here's, here's the quote, by the way. So this is from Kanye. He said, "For me, dopeness is what I like most. People who wanna make things as dope as possible, and by default make money from it. The thing that I like least are people who wanna make money from things-

Shaan Puri 50:34 [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:34 ... whether they're dope or not, especially make money from making things the least dope as possible."

Shaan Puri 50:39 That's amazing.

Sam Parr 50:39 [laughs] And I, I read that quote and I was like, "Yeah."

Shaan Puri 50:43 We need to make that the intro-

Sam Parr 50:44 I agree, Kanye

Shaan Puri 50:44 ... of the podcast.

Sam Parr 50:45 Yeah. Wise.

Shaan Puri 50:46 Ben, find a clip of Kanye saying that out loud and let's make that the, the opening clip of the podcast. Um, the other thing we did, by the way, that's in this bucket that I highly recommend people do is it's tempting to say, "We should do cool shit. Yeah, blah, blah, blah." And then, like, fast-forward a month and everybody's feeling tight about the budget or the deadlines or the, the g- the goal numbers are not being hit or whatever. It's ver- what's the first thing you cut is the stuff that doesn't easily map to this quarter's result. And, and so we separ- we created a separate do cool shit budget. It was 15% of our total budget we put into a do cool shit bucket, which the outcome of it had to be-

Sam Parr 51:23 Where? At, uh, where?

Shaan Puri 51:24 It was at Bebo, and then I tried to do this also at Twitch.

Sam Parr 51:27 Where?

Shaan Puri 51:27 Um, which was like, "Hey, whatever the number is that we have to spend, 15% is gonna be on cool shit that we cannot, like we... It doesn't have a measurable immediate payoff. So that's, like, the criteria. You can't, it can't be used in this way.

Sam Parr 51:41 Like, like making a flamethrower.

Shaan Puri 51:42 It can't be used in this way. Like making a flamethrower or, like, you know, w- I, I don't know if you saw this. We did the Milkroad rebrand or whatever, and I paid this guy to make this little video that's like this mock Apple commercial. And, like, it doesn't do anything. It's, it's not gonna drive subscribers. It's not gonna, like, make revenue. Uh, it's, I mean, in many ways it is arguably a waste of time and money to just, like, pay the guy to do that and to even think about the concept and all that. But I've always had this with my companies, which is like, I need 15%. I was like, at the very least, this is just to keep myself amused and engaged and, like, a fan of my own business. And I, 'cause I know if I'm, like, the mo- if I'm just more engaged in my own business, I'm gonna do... Uh, that part will pay off. And on the other side, it's like I think your consumers, the customers of your business also pay attention to that. If they see you doing dope shit just for the sake of doing dope shit, they kinda see you as the cool kid in school in a way, right? Like, if you're always just begging for, for customers or users or doing a discounted sale or, like, saying, "Please, please, please follow me. Please, please, please subscribe," like you kind of are low status in a way. And I think at The Hustle you guys did a good job of this too. Do you, did you do... Do you have any examples of this?

Michael Girdley 52:49 Yeah.

Sam Parr 52:49 Yeah, like we did stuff early on that we kinda, like people got mad at. And I was like... They're like, "You're gonna lose money, lose customers." I'm like, "Yeah, but it's hilarious." Like one time, uh, we wrote entir-

Shaan Puri 52:58 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:59 [laughs] We wrote an entire email in Trump's voice, and so we're like imagine, like, if you read it and you were saying it out loud, like that-

Shaan Puri 53:06 It was the best email

Sam Parr 53:06 ... it, it would sound like you were Donald Trump.

Shaan Puri 53:08 Everybody loved it. Everybody's saying it's the best. People are saying that. They're saying it's the best. [laughs]

Sam Parr 53:13 Yeah, like that's how it, that's how it, that's, like, how it was written. Uh, and then another time, um, this was, like, pretty vulgar, but it was pretty funny. We wrote the, the subject was, "Here's the only tip that you need to know for how to be productive today at work." And you open it up and it was just that picture of Johnny Cash where he flicks off the camera, and it just says, "Close this browser and get back to work."

Shaan Puri 53:34 [laughs]

Sam Parr 53:34 And that w- and, like, that was, that was, that was it. That was the email. And we sent that to 120,000 people. We didn't even, like we didn't even-

Shaan Puri 53:41 That's crazy

Sam Parr 53:41 ... we didn't even send an email. And then maybe one final thing, this woman, Lindsay, worked for me, and she sent the Tuesday's email on Wednesday, which is, like, a mistake. And she's like, "Shit." She's freaking out, and I was like, "Here, do this." Um, I wrote in Slack. I was like, "Hey, uh, you know, I heard you sent the wrong email." And she replied in Slack, "Yeah, my bad. It was really messed up." I go, "We gotta talk, but until then just, like, fix it." And she replied with like, "Well, what should I do?" I was like, "I don't know, man. Just put the new email in and send it again. Just take a screenshot of this and, like, put that, uh, and they'll understand, I'm sure." And he goes... And she replied with something, like, funny, and that was just the screenshot that just went at the top of the email. There was no explainer.

Shaan Puri 54:20 [laughs] Right.

Sam Parr 54:21 And so we would do, like, little things like that all the time. What about you, Michael?

Shaan Puri 54:25 Yeah.

Sam Parr 54:25 Are there any companies that you look at that, uh, kinda fall into this category?

Michael Girdley 54:30 It's super fun. Um, well, I did, I did find one to talk about the... Have you guys done PopSockets before?

Sam Parr 54:38 You talked to them?

Shaan Puri 54:38 We haven't talked about it, no.

Michael Girdley 54:40 I love... Yeah, it's a crazy story. So, um, it's the, it's the little, like, you take the, the back of the case of your phone and you put the little ring on it. Well, that's patented, and they're called PopSockets, and they're very litigious. So the business started in 2014, and they sold 30,000 of these things. So they're, you know, 10 or 12 bucks, whatever. Um, but then they got really popular, and people, the Chinese started trying to knock them off and sell them on Amazon and all this stuff. Um, and so it was a, a UC Boulder professor, and by 2017 they sold 35 million of them. In 2018, they sold 60 million of these things. So all because they have a patent on this little way that, you know, teenage young girls-

Sam Parr 55:18 [laughs]

Michael Girdley 55:18 ... in Orange County wanna grip their phone, like, they're just printing money. So supposedly in 2018 they had 200 million in revenue and 90 million in profit, all 'cause of a patent It's one of the great, one of the, one of the greatest... Yes. I know this is true 'cause I got it off of Wikipedia when I [laughs] researched this a few months ago.

Shaan Puri 55:40 Yeah, that's, that's amazing.

Michael Girdley 55:42 Gotta be several hundred million at least. I mean, they gotta keep growing. Ev- every lady I know has one of those things. You can fit your nails in there. It's great.

Shaan Puri 55:49 Sam, you, you wanna know a little realization I had today?

Shaan Puri 55:52 When Michael was coming on, I was like, all right, what do I know about Michael? I was like, oh, he does that, like, Chili's little shtick where he's always like, you know, you know, the only thing w- I don't even, I don't know how I would explain it, but he basically was just like find an excuse to name-drop Chili's and say how great Chili's is and, like, why it's the best place for a meeting and, like, you're just like, you know, "Oh my God, I, you know, so happy for, you know, Mother's Day. I love my mother, but not as much as I love Chili's," right? Like, you just, like, come up-

Michael Girdley 56:12 Yeah

Shaan Puri 56:12 ... with some way to, like, integrate Chili's in. And Sam, I don't know if you've seen this, but I, I actually, me and Ben talked about this once. We go, when we were, like, trying to build up, uh, my brand, it was like, all right, I got this podcast. It's brand new. I got a Twitter. It was like, you know, a few thousand followers at the time, and it was like, "What should we do to, like, build a brand?" So I, uh, we did this one, like, you know, two-hour exercise where we just looked at people who had good brands and we're like, "What are, what are peop- what's some common things that they do?" And one of the things we found was that a lot of people ha- Early on in the tech industry, like, uh, or, like, sorry, like, early on, not early on in the tech industry, that's like in the '70s or some shit, but, like, early on when I got into tech, I was following some people on Twitter and, um, and I saw this guy, Ryan Hoover, and he seemed interesting. He was blogging. He started this thing called Product Hunt. But Ryan would always, it was always Philz Coffee and LaCroix. Like, he would always talk about Philz Coffee and LaCroix, and in fact, like, LaCroix kinda became, like, a startup meme. I really give Ryan a lot of credit for it because he was always F-ing talking about LaCroix, and then when Product Hunt got popular, it just, like, accelerated the, like, the LaCroix meme in the community as like, "You know what's, like, low-key great? LaCroix." And like, um, and so he had LaCroix and then, I don't know, so Pomp, Pomp does this thing with Domino's all the time where he's like, he'll do, like, a Domino's pizza or he always says that, like, Domino's is the best, I think. And, um, and he's just like, and it's kind of this thing where you got this serious business persona in one way, but then you show this, like, human side, and it's like, "Oh, I'm just like, I love this thing." Uh, you know, I don't know if yours would be, like, Topo Chico or something like that. Like, you, you used to, like, kinda pip those out. Michael's got Chili's.

Michael Girdley 57:45 We gotta make ours Cheesecake Factory.

Shaan Puri 57:47 Yeah, like, I was like, "Chick-fil-A, Cheesecake Factory. We need something that's, like, our shtick, um, that's like, it can't just be false. Like, you gotta genuinely have that love for it." The only part that's the shtick is that you talk about it and you don't really talk about, it's like you're serious, serious, serious, Topo Chico 'cause it's like, you know, the, this makes the cut. It's that important to me. [laughs] It's that good. It is, I, I'm that big of a fan.

Michael Girdley 58:12 You're like, "Michael, uh, we had a great time, you know, but let me know when you're, when you're in Austin, and we'll go out sometime for some Cheesecake Factory, and, uh, maybe get the chicken piccata. We'll have a great time."

Shaan Puri 58:20 [laughs] Yes. That sounds good.

Michael Girdley 58:22 Is that on menu, like, page 14 of the menu or 57?

Shaan Puri 58:25 Yeah, it's on the Skinnylicious menu. [laughs]

Michael Girdley 58:28 So I think, I think when you pick this thing, the thing I would recommend, it's gotta be something that's... Well, okay, so here's a story for you. So I'm 25 years old, and I'm finally figuring out how to talk to women in my life. Like, it's just like I had not figured it out at this point. And so my buddy and I decided to start going to parties, and we would dress up in suits, and this is, like, when everybody's, like, dressed in, like, grunge, like in San Francisco. Like, so it didn't work. So we'd show up dressed in these fancy suits, and it was just odd enough that the women would be like, "Why are you guys doing this?" Like, it's just, it's just slightly odd, right? And so I think you need to figure-

Shaan Puri 59:03 Peacocking.

Michael Girdley 59:05 What's it called? [laughs] Peacocking? Yeah, okay. I... [laughs] I could've been one of those, like, uh, with the pickup artist guys.

Shaan Puri 59:13 Exactly.

Michael Girdley 59:13 I, who, who needs to do this holdco stuff? I could be a pickup artist. I, I have, I could not do that. Anyway, uh, I don't, I don't like hair gel enough. But anyway, the, um, I think you gotta figure out something that's just a little bit odd. You're like, why does this, like, technology entrepreneur in San Antonio like Chili's so much? So if the Cheesecake Factory is that, I think you're good, but whatever it is, it's gotta be just a little, like, that they're like, "Why are they w- why, why are they wearing suits to this party?"

Shaan Puri 59:39 Yeah.

Michael Girdley 59:40 Like, what's going on?

Shaan Puri 59:40 It, it can't be cool.

Michael Girdley 59:41 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 59:42 That, that's the first thing. It can't be cool 'cause if you're just trying to say some fad that, like, everybody thinks is cool, then now you're just hopping on a bandwagon.

Michael Girdley 59:48 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 59:48 You actually, you have to say something that's actually not so cool. Like, for me, like, the genuine one would be Cinnabon. Like, I fucking love Cinnabon.

Michael Girdley 59:54 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 59:55 Nobody even thinks about Cinnabon, so the, that's, the, the corner for Cinnabon is open. I can take that corner. You know, that's a, that's a piece on, it's a piece of land on the, on the board that, that nobody's touching right now. I can just pick that up for cheap. And but the people who, but people do know it. It's kinda nostalgic, and it gives people something to, like, something that they can gift you, someplace they can offer to take you, [laughs] someplace that every time they go there or see one, they will think of you. Like, every time I drive by a Chili's, goddammit, I think of Michael Girdley, right? And it's like same thing with the LaCroix and Ryan Hoover. It's like they own that mental real estate in my mind. And so Sam, we could do that with Cheesecake Factory. We could just, every time someone sees it, they see us. [laughs]

Michael Girdley 1:00:35 You definitely should do that. That's a great idea.

Shaan Puri 1:00:37 All right. Thanks for coming on, man.

Michael Girdley 1:00:39 Wait, wait, wait. He's gotta promote, promote himself. What's his handle?

Shaan Puri 1:00:41 @girdley on Twitter.

Michael Girdley 1:00:44 Sick. Well, thank you. Thank you for coming on. That was awesome. [upbeat music]