We decoded the business behind this influencer’s perfect life

Key Takeaway

You don't need to wait to become the person you aspire to be—you can decide today. Label yourself as that person right now, not "working to become" them. As Tony Robbins said, "I created this Tony Robbins." Start documenting your transformation publicly, making the journey itself your content. The power of reinvention lies in deciding who you are, then living it into existence through action and public commitment.

Episode Overview

This episode explores the power of radical lifestyle reinvention and personal branding through the lens of influencers like Ballerina Farm's Hannah Neilman and World Cup Dad. The hosts discuss how going all-in on a lifestyle transformation—and documenting it publicly—can create compelling content, authentic brands, and genuine personal change.

Full Transcript

Transcript of We decoded the business behind this influencer’s perfect life from My First Million. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

When I was at the Tony Robbins event, he was like, "You think I just woke up like this? I created this Tony Robbins motherucker. I decided that that's who I needed to be." And then I created him. All right. I've got something that every woman listening to this is going to be saying to themselves, "No duh." But I think it might be interesting to you. There's a chance that your wife has already um indoctrinated you on this, but have you heard of this thing called Ballerina Farms?

Why does that sound familiar? What is it? What's Bellina Farms? Farms? Farms? Awesome. I love that you don't know this. All right, so check this out. So, there's this woman named Hannah Neilman, and I started following her on Instagram along with like 20 million other people. She's got 20 million followers across all of her platforms. So, definitely was not an early adopter. You discovered her. Yeah. So, yeah. You're welcome. Um, but basically her content is like these like warmly lit videos where it's sort of a little Martha Stewarty and it's her on her farm talking about how she's making like sourdough bread and she's making like um she's making her own getting her own milk from the cows and making like different recipes and all this amazing stuff and it's blown up and it's this whole category of influencer called the tradife.

Have you heard that term trad? I've definitely heard Tradife. Definitely seen the Tik Toks which are like somebody's churning their own butter. butter. butter. Yeah. So, it's sort of like that. And frankly, I don't think even Hannah Neilman would call herself a tad wife, but she's got 20 million followers across all social media. And it's crazy because I think she has like nine kids. And so, part of her videos are like her kids running around barefooted and it's a very calming aesthetic. And I think she's got a she has a company.

It's called Ballerina Farms where they sell sourdough mix. They sell electrolike mix. They sell I think they sell meat and at one point they sold milk. And I think it does like 80 or $70 million a year in revenue. That was some estimates that I that I saw on like some pretty reputable uh sites. And it's kind of this phenomenon where now her store, she has a physical store as well as an online store has become this destination that these young women just like are kind of obsessing over.

And I found this to be very fascinating for a few reasons. But she was just actually in the New York Times last week and let me read it to you. Uh let me read one of the paragraphs. She said, "Uh, you might recognize Midway, Utah as a storybook backdrop to Hallmark Christmas movies like Christmas on Duty. And if you're from Utah, you might recognize it as a village that looks like it's from the Swiss Alps. Swiss Alps. Swiss Alps. But if you're a woman with any degree of susceptibility of gigum aprons, hand hem sourdough knives, milk cradling on a thick layer of cream, then you might recognize it as this place called Ballerina Farms.

Ballerina Farms, which supplies a store in this town, is a working farm about a half hour's drive away from Midway. And it's in between snow frosted mountains and cow pastures of rural northern Utah. But it's also Ballerina Farms is also a woman named Hannah Neilman who's a Giuliard trained ballerina who gave up dancing to become a farmer and mother of nine. And it goes on to like explain the story of how this woman Hannah has blown up, but it comes with a lot of hate what she's done because a trad wife that comes with a lot of political baggage.

It also comes with a lot of I don't know if you describe it as jealousy of I'm a young woman and I want to live that life or if I don't like if I think that this is somehow like anti-feminist like it comes with all this baggage but regardless of what like people think about it. It's pretty amazing that this phenomenon is happening. The article says that teen girls were lining up as if this was Disney World. And I think this is so fascinating and I wanted to talk a little bit about this like traditional life movement but more so what I want to talk about is how she has gone allin on a lifestyle and I think that if you're creating a brand particularly around content I want to talk about like the tactics that I think you can use around this because I think it's super super underrated.

So when you say lifestyle I almost think I'm not even sure if that's the right word. It's either the word I would have used is either aesthetic or escape. So I noticed this with um you know my wife and my my mom they love to watch Bridgetgerton and it's like the crown and there's this fascination with like this kind of royal England lifestyle or Bridgetton which is like this like fantasized version of that and I think that in the same way that dudes will get really into sci-fi or Game of Thrones or different sort of gladiator u there's like you know the whole meme around guys fantasizing about the Roman Empire Empire Empire I think that there's a handful of these kind of escape aesthetics.

And if you position your your products as part of that escape aesthetic, I think that you differentiate from the you can sell the same commodity product but differentiate. And what I would want to see is instead of people doing it for apparel, which is where this is most common, right? Apparel is the classic way that people do this. You'll find apparel brands that are golf brands and people wear who don't play golf. People buy running shoes, they don't run. And people will buy uh, you know, uh, aesthetics that are, you know, summer in the Hamptons or whatever it is.

And I think that it would be really interesting for people to do this with like dental care, for people to do this with supplements, to do this in categories that you wouldn't expect it in. I think it would work. I think that if you created the same, you know, what whether it's like creatine, collagen type of supplement brand, but instead of just looking like every other supplement brand, you look like you were part of a different aesthetic or same thing on uh any sort of everyday staples, consumables.

I wonder what would happen. I'm not sure it would work, but I really wonder what would happen. Milk, you take a milk, you create a milk brand, but the milk brand looks like way further down the the spectrum of like, you know, whether it's farm or or even, you know, maybe a different less expected direction. What do you think about that? Well, what I'm describing is basically when I say lifestyle, I'm putting an emphasis on life. And what I mean by that is I have invested in a couple companies as well as I'm just a fan of certain bits of content where the person goes allin and they live a certain life and they bring me along with them.

And I find that fascinating. And this woman Hannah gets a lot of hate because her husband, his father founded JetBlue. So he's if he's not a billionaire, he's whatever. He's up there. is very rich and so there's a lot of like well you can it's easy for you this and that you know which I think is nonsense but what I've noticed is that I've started following these um people on Instagram like there's this one kid who you actually showed me and he was like the opening line for his Instagram was I just graduated college and I had barely any money but I've decided to move to uh rural Virginia and open up an Airbnb and like like there's this shtick where people actually live the life that they are wanting to live and then they happen to sell a product that goes along with that life.

And what I'm the point I want to make is that I think that that is super underrated and not enough people do it and brands could benefit from doing it a lot more than they currently are. So I used to work for this guy named Mike Wolf. Mike was the star of the show called American Pickers which when it was on the on TV or it still is on TV but at its prime it was like the second most popular show on TV. I think that they would get like 6 or 7 million viewers a week whereas David Letterman was getting like 1 or 2 million.

And the way that Mike got the show popular was he actually and this was in early 2000s. This might it might have been in the late '9s where Mike's job was he would drive around a country and go to old barns, find interesting stuff and meet the people and find the stories of the people and the objects that he was buying. And he would bring like a literal camcorder. This was before smartphones. And it got picked up and it became this whole lifestyle. It was called picking and there was this small niche that was quite large of people who identified with being pickers.

They love collecting, antiquing. I also I'm an investor of this thing called All right, so this episode is all about excellence. A while back, I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life, and the team at HubSpot turned it into a 30-day operating system that you can check out right now. right now. right now. It breaks down the systems that have took me 10 years to figure out and shows how exactly I use them day-to-day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life.

So, if you want to build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, let's get back to the show. There's this guy named Brent. Brent was partners with Ryan Holiday. And do you remember years ago, I think in 2014 or 13, there was a old abandoned mine town that was for sale for like $2 million. It was 500 acre acres. You remember that? remember that? remember that? In California or Utah, where where is the the the California? And then the pandemic hit.

And Brent, who is kind of the main guy uh leading the charge, he was like, "Screw it. I'm going to go live in that town." And now he has a YouTube channel with millions of followers. And if you go to YouTube and type in ghost town living, every single one of his videos gets a million views. It's crazy. And he's documenting how he's turning this town into a hotel. And it's been a huge pain in the butt because like that's like a lot more work than making a cast iron skillet to sell.

Uh, but it's just like so fascinating to me because I think that going allin on something with your life is a more fun and will increase the likelihood that you will succeed. And I think that there's a framework behind it. I think that you have to find a thing that sings to you that you're interested in. So the easiest one, so basically the moment you start typing on a computer, by the way, this concept gets kind of lame. And so this mostly only works for products where the creating of the thing is the content and like easy ones are like farming or fitness.

Those are like the easiest ones. So for example, I worked in finance or or I worked in tech and I said screw it all. I'm moving to a farm because I want to eat better meat or I want to drink better milk or I want to make some supplement or I think coll not collagen. What's the uh breast milk that comes out right when the baby's born? Colostrum. Colostrum. Colostrum. Yeah. Like that's like all the rage where it's sort of like this. There's a story arc of I was this person.

I want to become this person. Come along this journey. And for the few of you who truly are bought into this, I happen to have a product that you can buy, but the the making of the product needs to be the content. This is timely because the World Cup is going on. Have you ever seen World Cup dad? So, basically, there's this guy, Zack Duke, and he posts on TikTok one day that he's I think he's 34, 35 years old. He's like, "I'm a 35-year-old dad who's never played soccer, and I'm training to be on the World Cup team." And he's got kind of like a dad bod.

He's got a little bit of a gut and but he's like, you know, he's kind of like, he's definitely athletic at the same time. And so he has he's like this weird like you know immediate visual hook of this unathletic looking guy but he's doing pretty athletic looking things and he says he's never played soccer and that he's going to make the World Cup. Like what does that mean? And he went mega viral. So it was basically can a dad who's never played soccer make it to the 2026 World Cup and he started training like hard every day.

He would he would post everything that he's doing. Um and he would he didn't say like I want to see what can happen. He was like I will make it. It was very like manifestationoriented, like I'm doing this. And so the haters loved it in the comments, but then there were some people who were pretty inspired by like what he was doing and like, hey, it's actually not bad. He actually is looking way more fit. Hey, actually he does have pretty good touch. You know, he's not bad.

And so he started doing this and he actually like, you know, he kind of made it pretty far. So he got in legitimately great shape. If you go look at his videos, we put them on the screen here. He got really got pretty good at soccer. like if for a guy who never touched a soccer ball and then he started getting like all these like brand deals and opportunities to play on these like small like three on three seven on seven the Adidas Cup and so all this like kind of amazing stuff happened like no he didn't make it onto the US you know national team but you don't have to he he transformed his life you don't have to I bet his videos get more views than eight of the 11 guys on those the starting team on the actual World Cup team and so in a way he like yes he didn't make it make it but but man that's pretty impressive how for you.

This guy changed his own life just with doing what I call like man on a mission content. So I have these like different content buckets in my head. One is called man on a mission. Another one is called is like you said like the sort of escape lifestyle where you say, "Oh, this is just how I live." Like I'm just the type of person who does this. There's this woman who goes viral on Twitter because she just walks every day and eats like natural food. So she'll just post a tweet.

I think we talked about her before. She posted a tweet and the tweet's basically like walked, you know, 6 and a half miles and ate a chocolate cake. And it'll just be pictures of like the scenery where she walked and a giant chocolate cake that looks really great and it'll have like 10,000 likes on that one picture and she just posts the same thing every day. That's the whole content stick. I think it's kind of amazing. This idea of like you can make this decision to become this person.

You don't have to be the person at first. So, for example, one of the reasons I love the man, the entrepreneur Ralph Lauren is because he had this great line where he was like, you know, some people, he's like, I'm a Jewish guy from like New York City and yet I sell like western wear. Sometimes people would criticize me, but the fact is is I would want to be more brave and so I would sometimes wear like vintage military gear or I would want to be like a little more adventurous and I would dress like a cowboy.

And you could kind of tease me for being cosplaying, but the fact is is that then I eventually like would go on a farm and I would dress like this and you become this thing like I I make a decision to become a little bit of a farmer and I own a ranch. Now the point that I want to make to the listener is and also to myself I'm learning about this as well and I'm being inspired by it is you can sort of just change who you are publicly and you don't need to start at all.

In fact, probably you could it's a better story to start at a horrible place where you're nothing like the person who you want to be or the aesthetic that you want to be. And I just think that it's a more fun to do it and b it will increase the odds that you will succeed. This guy who I'm going to talk with on Thursday, his name's Mark O'Brien. So check this guy out. So his old photos when I used to look at him, he was a normal looking real estate guy in New York City and he wore a suit.

But he's got AI. He looks like AI. No, but this guy has a really striking look. And now on all of his more recent photos, he's wearing like a white t-shirt and he's doing manly stuff like restoring town homes. And his whole shtick, which from an outside, I'm going to talk to him on on Thursday, so I'll get a better sense of it, is he finds old brownstones in Brooklyn, and you literally will see him bring a sledgehammer and start like renovating it, like breaking the stuff and explaining the story behind it.

And this guy, if you look at his old photos, was wearing a suit and he just looked like this normal real estate guy. And he kind of like leaned into this like, you know, this lifestyle to where now I think he actually is that person. And it's I've been enamored by by following his journey and I'm just realizing how powerful it is. There's this other company called um I think it's called uh Maui Newi. They make um uh beef jerky made out of the venison in Maui.

You know what I'm talking about, right? right? right? Yeah. Yeah. And if you and if you go to their Instagram handle, it doesn't say anything about how they're actually like making the stuff or how like, you know, like for hunters and things like that, you could actually show them like doing the hunt, setting it up, and how they're doing it ethically and why this is better. I just don't think that there's enough brands who are doing a good enough job of bringing you along because it's scary.

It seems stupid at first. You might look dumb and I just think that it's far more compelling and more people should do it. I think you can like figure out what are the uh innate feelings that we all have right now. I think that there's this innate feeling. I think there's categories of like cleanliness both in terms of the food that you eat but your home of like feeling clean and feeling tidy. I think there's this whole mother category of how do you care and protect your children the best.

I think there's another category of people who want to master something and be craftsmen and be great at stuff. And I just think there's this massive opportunity. It's always existed though to look at what popular shows and content existed in the 90s and 2000s and just redo that with your phone and bring people along with you. You know, you could be like the Anthony Bourdain where you look at restaurants and you could start selling products. And I just think that it's well, people will often say, well, there's so many other people doing this.

Well, there's always room for more. There's always room for better. And it's just an underrated tool to go all in on a lifestyle and then eventually sell a product. product. product. Yeah. On one hand, what you're saying sounds like you're saying there's this great opportunity, which I think make makes most people think there's this new opportunity. No, it's not new. And I think in this situation, it's No, what you're saying is not new. It's being done. It's been done and it will always be done. And what you're saying is easier than ever.

It can still be done. And in some ways, it's easier because it's easier than ever to create. It's easier than ever to be discovered. It's also harder than ever because it's more competitive, right? And you get to choose what which part of that narrative you're going to feed your energy into. I have a couple of examples that that work here. First, I'm just going to read you from Robert Green who came on the podcast. Really interesting guy wrote 48 Laws of Power. Law number 25. Recreate yourself.

It says, "Do not accept the roles that society forces on you. Recreate yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions. Your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life. That's exactly what we're talking about here is the power to reinvent yourself, to dramatically do it, and to never bore the audience. Have you ever heard of a guy named Anthony uh I think his name is Anthony Mahar Maharavik?

You know this guy? guy? guy? No. No. What's he do? Well, uh Anthony J. Maharovich born into a family that had a lot of trouble blah blah blah. He ended up reinventing himself as a guy you might know named Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins. And so that's Tony Robbins birth. And when I was at the Tony Robbins event many many years ago, 10 years ago maybe, he tells this story where it was part of the Q&A. It wasn't really part of his like script. He was like, "You think I just woke up like this?

You think I was just born like this? You think I just stood up on a stage and suddenly talked like this? You think I looked like this? You think I had the power to compel people like this?" And he just goes, "You think I woke up with discipline? I just well one day I just had discipline suddenly and he was like no and he goes I created this Tony Robbins mother he goes I created him I decided that that's who I needed to be and then I created him and he goes and you know now it seems like yeah that's just how it is but he goes you have to decide for yourself like who you are going to make yourself into and I just remember feeling like that was just a very powerful way of saying it no accident you know like um the sort of The bitter and the hat the haters will always say is, "Oh, it was luck.

You were given something." It was, "Yeah, it's easy for you to say, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's easy for you to say that." It's actually incredibly hard to do what I've done. And I think that people should should take pleasure in the fact that you can today on on the drop of a hat. You could right now, you could be listening to this podcast right now. You could pause it. You could open up your Apple Notes app and you could literally write down like, you know, yesterday I was this and today I'm this.

And you can start to reinvent yourself like starting in any given moment. There's incredible power once you realize that. And I think there's a lot of power by labeling yourself. So like you wake up the next day. I remember when I um I was like mildly fit and I woke up the next day and I was like I'm an athlete and I used to joke with you and but it wasn't a joke. I was like I'm a fitness influencer now. influencer now. influencer now. You started with a smile but you weren't joking.

No, I was like and I and I think that like you can tease me and make fun of me and all you want and I think I deserve it, but like there is power to like labeling yourself as something and you are that, not I'm working to become this. this. this. There's this old school book. It's it's impossible to read. It's like so dense at this point, but the title itself actually tells you everything you need to know. It's called Your Word is Your Wand. I think it's by Florence Scoville.

The basic idea is that the words that come out of your mouth are like spells that you cast, you cast on yourself, you put yourself in a trance as well as others around you. And so, uh, be very careful the words that come out of your mouth. My trainer always says this. He goes, "When I say something differently than I used to say it, you know, one day I'm going to versus I am or or I do or I haven't done this yet." The word yet is actually a very powerful word.

It implies that it's it is inevitable. For example, my my company that I named 10 plus years ago before I had any anybody before I made my first million, my LLC was called inevitable outcomes. And I basically thought I was it's an inevitable outcome that I will be successful and I'm going to invest in other things that I view to be inevitable as well that they will be successful. successful. successful. You know, my my trainer made this this shirt that said I am. And it said the two most important words in the English language are I am because whatever comes after it defi, you know, defines your destiny.

Decides your fate. Just take it as a test. Just try to word like riff off the top of your head. I'm the kind of guy who and what comes out after that is it I'm the kind of guy who you know when th when things get tough I fold when and you could define like whatever you say is true right it will be true it will always be true and so you know I think one of my superpowers is that I'm a pretty analytical guy by nature by training and if you can marry that with a little bit of the soft stuff right not just EQ of how you deal with people but the sort of you know the sort of manifestation world that sounds like total hocus pocus but when you start to realize like actually the way you think will shape the actions you take, right?

What you believe will change what you do and what you do changes your results. Once you realize that, you will approach things somewhat differently. I think being willing to go kind of eastern western in that way, I think it get can take you very far. My most annoying trait according to my wife and probably everyone who knows me is I'm like a stickler for words. So when people say like, "Well, it's just semantics." I'm like, "Yeah, it is just semantics and it's just really important. where you're purposely using certain words.

So like for example, I'll say to someone like, "Well, what do you think about think about what do you think about this?" They'll say, "I don't know." It's like, "Well, I didn't ask what you know." I said, "What do you think?" So man, what's the point of words? What's the point of words if we're not going to use the right words? That's right. I was I remember being at Twitch after we got acquired. And on the ninth floor at Twitch was the the the main meeting room.

And that's where the CEO EMTT would sit and the CLO at the time, Sarah, she would sit. They sit at the head of the table and then basically every 30 to 45 minutes a new team would come in. So then the trust and safety team comes in, the growth team comes in, the mobile team comes in, the international team comes in and they basically come and they just dump their problems on the table and then the CEO and the COO would try to help them, you know, work through it.

And I remember sitting at a bunch of these tense meetings and I thought for at the beginning I thought, man, this EMTT guy is kind of a genius, but he's an idiot. Like he's really smart, but man, he gets focused. He gets hung up on the dumbest things because he would always get hung up on words. And you could tell that the teams hated it that he would get into these what he would call the Socratic debates about things and he would just be debating the team endlessly about the most like minor sounding things.

And over time I came to appreciate that well there there were sometimes that he took it too far. There's a cost to doing it but there was a great benefit in doing it too. I remember in one meeting uh he was talking to the team that decides the homepage and they said something like oh yeah but that's algorithmic versus editorial and he just like got hung up on it. He's like what's edit what does editorial mean? And then they like laughed and he's like no what's the de what do you mean when you say the word editorial and they're like well there's like editors who pick it so it's editorial.

He goes and who are these editors and how do they pick it? And he didn't it's not like he had some destination in mind that he was leading them into some trap. He literally wanted to understand the specific meaning of the words that were coming out of their mouth and get a shared understanding of what each of the words mean because in his view and his view it was like we will never get to the right solution. If you say words that mean one thing and I say those same words and they mean another thing we're screwed.

And so he would always go to this painstaking like semantical debates with people that for a while seemed like are we just going in circles here? Like what does this really matter? And um you know there was a bit of a method to his madness that you saw play out. You know maybe not in that first meeting but 3 weeks from then or four weeks from then or 7 weeks from then when the teams then realized they had to be really precise in their language and they had to really know the details of their [ __ ] because it would be tested.

And even just knowing that he might ask made sure that they came in knowing everything about what they were going to say and being way more precise about their thinking, their level of uh clarity on their thinking. My sophomore year of high school, we had to take a class, a speech class. That was the best class I've ever taken in my life. And the best lesson that they taught us was you must always define your terms. And I deeply believe that that to be true for anything that you're discussing, you have to deeply define your terms.

The downside of that is that you look like an [ __ ] And it's pretty annoying. you it is quite annoying when we do this where someone said like someone will say something and you're like what do you mean and they'll say it again it's like those words don't make sense to me can you use other words and what you find is that if they have unclear words they have unclear thinking and so it becomes really obnoxious and annoying but I do think it's really powerful I just saw this other story it was on 60 Minutes last night or the week before you probably have never heard of this it's called the mountain pass mine And the story on 60 Minutes was basically these two hedge fund guys and I think that they were like mildly successful, but they somehow raised money and they I think they raised $20 million and they bought a mine in I think at the border of Nevada and California.

And now if you Google Mountain Pass Mine, I think the company name is called MP Materials Corp. It's a $10 billion publicly traded company and the whole story which was really cool and it and they had to use the platform of 60 Minutes as opposed to their own and I think they should use their own was two hedge fund guys who knew nothing about nothing are now wearing hard hats driving an F-150 and they're in the thick of it. You know, they like are literally learning this as they go, although it's been 10 years now so they've probably have learned a lot.

But they're like these yepies who knew nothing about blue collar work. Now they're living that life and it's paying off. And I I heard this story and I'm like I'm so in. I'm so in on a mine. Well, I've heard of MP Materials. I didn't know the backstory of uh Mountain Pass Mine. Pass Mine. Pass Mine. How have you hedge fun guys? Well, it went public. It was like a spack, right? It was like a Chumat spec, I'm pretty sure, or or something like that. that.

that. He did it uh either he did the pipe or something like that. I'd heard of it at that point. It was like a rare earth company and I was like, what are rare earths anyways? And how does this work? So yeah, I've I've looked at it, you know, just kind of in passing that way, but I didn't know didn't know the backstory. Another kind of World Cup thing that's going on right now, you've probably seen this is all of the international tourists that are coming to America for the World Cup and discovering America for the first time.

And it's sort of like when a friend goes into town and suddenly you're like, "Okay, yeah, let's go to Alcatraz." And you've been living here for 5 years, you've never been to Alcatraz, but because somebody's visiting, you suddenly will go that week. Right now on on social media, there's a whole swath of people. Have you seen these that are going viral? So Freddy LA is one of them. Uh but basically this guy like comes to America for the World Cup and he's just touring through America kind of like you did when you rode your motorcycle around America and um he's said like this one for example.

We found another surreal surreal place on our way. I know some people will say I'm too positive about everything but this place is crazy. And he's at an out like a bass pro shop outdoor world and it's just pictures of like you know the just the the enormity of this place. a giant fish tank. He's like, "There's a shooting range inside the store." He's like, "They're literally selling rifles in here." And so he's just been stopping at like Bies and he's been stopping at like he, you know, we found this river in Chattanooga and we're in a tube and the guy said this and you know, at the airport we asked this and the guy just gave us a ride.

It was incredible. And so he's just like, you know, when you have kids and you get to like rediscover the world again cuz your kids are discovering the world and it's like, yeah, you know what? If you take like a straw and you like squish the paper down and then you drop a piece of a drop of water on it, it expands like a snake and you're like and their mind is blown and you remember when your mind was blown when you were seven and that happened, but you just, you know, took it for granted, forgot about it, and just throw away all your your straw paper now.

And so this guy basically there's this group of of guys on on Twitter and Instagram that are coming to America that are just posting all these things that are very like run-of-the-mill American things, but they're amazed by it. And it totally like makes you proud to be an American in a way and like rediscover like Yeah. Do you know what? Like America's pretty awesome actually and we have these kind of amazing things and actually have you guys been to Waffle House? I can't wait for Freddy to go to Waffle House.

Right. you you want him to go to the next sort of like part of real America. It's like more entertaining than the World Cup to me. me. me. Look at the title. German tourist Freddy is going viral as he visits Louisiana on the way to World Cup. That's awesome. One of One of One of Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. There's this great book. Uh I'm sharing it now. I don't know how to pronounce their name, but it's Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip. I read this a few years ago.

It's so good. So, basically in and it has very few reviews on on uh Amazon. It has 40 reviews and a paperback copy is $400. And so in 1935, well into the era of Soviet communist Russia, two uh Russians came over and they took a road trip throughout America and they describe what they're seeing. And this book is one of my favorites. It's so good to hear the history of America from people and like what they're seeing. And it's very similar to what you what people would experience now.

Just like it's huge and the everything's big and like there's processed food everywhere. It's funny. The same stuff in 1935 people would say today. today. today. Yeah, I'm into this. So, let me uh let me show you this one. So, this is this Japanese guy. And he goes, "USA, a Mexican restaurant. We have not ordered anything yet. And yet, the food is already arriving. Chips, salsa, unrequested, free." I stopped the waiter. We have not earned these. They just come with a table. In my land, hospitality is a debt.

Every gift creates an obligation. Weighed carefully. Returned to the proper season with an interest of feeling. Here the gift arrives before you have even proven you could pay for dinner. It is not an appetizer. It is a declaration. We trust you. Eat. I eat with the gravity the moment deserved. And then I must report calmly. This basket is empty. A new one appears. Did we refill? It's bottomless. Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined. My friend warned me.

Don't fill up on ships, dude. Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished. An unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not uncomfortable. I had been defeated by courtesy. Generosity arrived before the request can be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I made peace with my basket. One basket. Two at most. Who am I deceiving? There's no number of baskets I refuse.

The tr the trust of a nation is in that salsa. And I intend to honor all of it. That's beautiful. There's no way that's real. Is that real? I don't think it's real, but it's hilarious. Uh, so I don't know if it's real or not, but have you seen the the all the Japanese like lore that's just being honored in America for the World Cup? Have you seen what's going on? No, man. You're you're World Cup deep. I I'm I'm in New York City. I just got done like burning down a bus because the Knicks.

Knicks. Knicks. It's like uh you know, one time I went to this basketball game and I was in the owner suite and there was just all these like Instagram hoes basically there and they all had their phone out and I was like, "Wow, they're so um like they're so into capturing like the second quarter of this game." And I realized the all the phones are pointed at them, not at the game. And that's me with the World Cup right now. I'm the hoe where I don't watch the game.

I only watch the crowd. And there's this incredible thing with the Japanese crowd where they're all waving these blue what looks like blue like kind of like is it flags? What is that? No, it's a trash bag. And so they use trash bags to cheer. And at the game it's kind of like their version of carrying a sign or waving a foam finger or a flag. And they were like, "Why are they all waving trash bags?" It's like, "Oh, because then we can cheer. It makes sound.

It has a color, but then we could just clean up after ourselves on the way out." And they clean up their whole section using the trash bags at the end. And they showed the locker room of the Japanese national team. And every single item is folded properly in the middle. The locker room is pristine. And that that's how the J Japanese soccer team is leaving the locker rooms. And I'm like, God, if Japan couldn't go any higher on my list of like incredible cultures and people that, you know, you sort of have to see it to believe it.

Um, they're just the stock continues to go up. It's a it's untethered with reality. Before UFC was a thing, there was called Strike Force and it was a Japanese fighting league or whatever. And it's they're the best videos to watch because in the crowd they're silent and then you hear you you hear the punches and it's really hard to watch almost and they only cheer on like the epic big punches and it's like very strange and awesome at the same time. You know, I think a guy who we both admire, I think he's one of your heroes, definitely one of mine, is Jesse Sler.

And it's this idea of like buying into the lifestyle. And I think that in particular right now, we're in this phase where people are trying to balance like how do I work hard in my job and particularly women, how do I work hard at my job and be a good mother? But same thing for fathers. How do I work hard and be a family person while also being fit? I see everyone. everyone. everyone. Did you see um Jesse's story on Instagram the other day? I just know that right now he's like he's like Uncle Rico.

Jesse wrote the song for Go New York Knicks. Uh you know, go New York and whatever the Knicks start playing again. That's his that's his story that it brings up and I love it. I'm I'm not sick of it. So he he was at Madison Square Garden when they won I think game four maybe. and he leaves and he sees this guy who's given like rickshaw rides or what what do they call it in New York where it's like the guy's biking and you sit in the carriage behind it whatever that's called like so he hops in as billionaires do and he was like and that guy's playing the go New York go and he's like that's my song and the guy's like no and he's like what's your name and he like looks it up he's like that's your song and he's like I got to give you a ride around town so he just rode around all of New York with this guy and he just posted it and there's there's a small set of people that I feel like they they don't have any more time than the rest of us, but they seem to be getting a lot more out of their time.

And there's something to be studied and learned. And there's a reason that I get interested in these folk. Nick Ray is one of these people. I think Jesse's one of these people. There's there's a handful of these people that seem to kind of go with the whatever way the ball of life is bouncing. They seem to just experience more and have a sort of like tap dancing through life sort of experience. Even when even when they do hard things, it just seems like, you know, enjoyable in this way because they're like surrendered into it.

I don't know. I don't know what it is, but that's something I think the art of living well is is not well understood. And you know, for me, it's a it's a bit of a mission to understand what gets more out of the hours rather than like always feeling like if only I had more time, then I'd get more. And it's like actually I think kind of [ __ ] I think a you're wasting a ton of time either doing fake busy work or just on social media.

And two, even if I gave you an extra four hours, I don't think you'd get any more out of life. I think you just fill it with more of the same feelings you currently are having whether they're stress or anxiety or any of the others. I've been meeting these people. So I I live in a building in Manhattan and there's rich people and there's poor people in this building and I really like that. And we were contemplating getting a big we got a great place but we were we were like should we get more space for more kids and all this stuff and then I met this family that has uh it's a family of four husband and wife and two girls twins and the girls are now 18 or 19 or something like that.

And they've lived in the same one-bedroom apartment for 30 years. So the mom and dad live there. And I was like how do you guys like what's your sleeping arrangement? And they're like, "Well, mom and dad get the bedroom and we just we have like this Murphy bed that we sleep in uh the living room." And part of me was like, obviously it's like, "Oo, I don't want that." But then the other part, they start telling me these stories and I actually go to their apartment and we all hang out and I'm like, "There's a lot of inconveniences here, but there's a lot of conveniences here at the same time, which is you guys are all together at the same time." And it's kind of nice.

And I think that like uh we are looking at this other place and I'm like, there's two living rooms. Why? I don't want two living rooms. I want one living room. I want everyone to be in the same room at the same time all the time. And uh I I think that like there is this inherent want that many of us have, myself included, of more, more bigger, bigger, bigger. And I just don't think that that is often times the answer to creating a memorable life.

And um um um there's an amazing uh post that's kind of gone a little bit viral. You might have read it um by Julie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Zo, Zo, Zo, I read your comment on it. So the blog post is called Yeah, Julie. Um the blog post is called all the to all the folks who are about to be rich and it was released the day before the SpaceX IPO and she basically starts with like you did it. Congrats like all the hard work blah blah blah you legend your stock is about to be liquid.

You're about to be rich. And she I think when she was at Facebook when Facebook IPOed and so she was kind of like telling a bit of the like almost like your older sibling like hey like you're going to go to college like guess what it's going to be crazy a little bit and here's some things that are going to happen and so she's almost describing like what happens from here and there were so many incredible oneliners uh in this and you know part of it is like you know scientific studies say that like you know blah blah blah after one year lottery winners default to the same happiness that they were before.

Yes, exactly. And so there's there's one line I love. She she talked about like the three groups of people from when she saw the the Facebook thing. Some of my former colleagues slipped away from tech like aquarium fish being flushed out into the ocean off to find their true homes. Engineers who decided they're not going to code anymore. Uh I saw people become chefs, hotelers, artists, therapists, writers, teachers, parents. These groups always fascinated me because I was watching some sort of Cinderella transformation. Who would you bloom into once you were given the gift of true freedom?

Uh, so that's like group one, she calls the fish. And then group two, she calls the the leisure class, which is basically people who say, "Oh, I'm going to pursue this lifestyle of leisure." So, I'm going to travel to all these wonderful places, Michelin star restaurants, have a sleek new home with all the fancy furniture, forget forget IKEA. I'm going to do the Disneyland VIP tour, Coachella. I'm going to buy a $500 hoodie from Japan. And then she's like, and then there's the others who continued on the same track in tech.

they become VCs or founders and they continue to march um to try to get a higher high uh for the next you know few years they're chasing the thrill of the climb and she's not really saying one is better than the other but she she does sort of have her own take but she says I saw it play out in all three groups I know I know people for whom the money simply let them check off some goals like paying off their parents house or having enough for retirement maybe they upgrade their car or their house and largely they stopped they didn't change how they carried themselves they didn't change who they hung out with they didn't they did not take up the game of more.

And so she talks about this idea of the game of more. And she was uh I think the way she said it was like there is a game and that game is called more. And once the money lands a question will be waiting for you to think think deeply. Am I still playing? And I just thought like if you just take this idea of there is a game and a game called more but it's more of what? What do you want more of? Do you want more leisure?

Do you want more travel? Do you want more challenge? Do you want more impact? Do you want more uh authenticity to who you are? Do you want more joy? Do you want more kids? It's like what do you want more of? And I think I think it's a very powerful question of if you assume for a second that everybody is playing some game of more, right? We've not renounced our desires. We all wake up today, we're going to go do some [ __ ] but in the name of what?

And I just think it's actually pretty powerful to put a name on like what is the what is the game of more that you're playing right now? I think it's actually a really really hard question. I think you might be embarrassed by the answer to those questions if you if you looked at your actions and you said what is this action in the g in the seek uh what am I seeking more of? You know, if I'm going to post a story of my vacation right now on Instagram, what am I seeking more of?

I'm playing the game of more and that's a game of more validation, more status, more prestige. Um, you know, I like that I don't post stories because I've opted out of that. But like I have opted into a game of more in other flavors. And so I just think this is a really really powerful idea. I don't know what you think about that. Well, I want to know did she say which one she has found people to be most happy in and amongst your friend group?

I I I believe she's mostly referring to people who overnight are now liquid, which is a very interesting phenomenon. I've seen it happen many times. Not rich to super rich. Yeah. So, versus like someone who has been a lawyer for a long time and they've like made money throughout their career. I was in the category of I wasn't and then I was all of a sudden. Um I think you have been like uh accumulating along as you've gone. Um and but we know a bunch of people who have overnight um made it.

Have you noticed any similarities or commonalities of who ends up in a place that um more people would desire to be in that place? Yeah, I mean this is probably the thing I'm figuring out the most. So I have some thoughts, but I bet in 5 10 years I will have a much simpler, wiser perspective on this than I do today. Is your question of what's the right answer or what's your question really? Well, there's no right answer, but I'm just saying like can you stereotype each bucket of what you've noticed?

I only have maybe one friend who has done the first one where he's opted out. So here's here's a couple of observations. I think there is actually a better and worse even if there's not a right answer. And I would say the the leisure path doesn't seem to result in anything good. Uh I completely agree. Sure. Sure. Take a take a take a few trips. Sure you could upgrade your car, your house, whatever. That's fine. But the diminishing returns are are very real and very dramatic in that path.

And the people who seem to do that and seem to wander, they sort of lose themselves in a way that like, you know, everybody sort of looks back. It's almost like funeralesque when people talk about them at at some point because they're sort of seeking something and but they're in the wrong place, right? It's like searching for your keys, but this is not where you drop them. And so, uh, that path actually does genuinely seem to be worse. I would say, um, very few people can do what I call slay the money.

So very very very few people very very very few people can actually achieve financial independence by my definition. So most people feel that financial independence is the ability to buy whatever you want. You have the freedom to buy to do to go to fly to to whatever. And it's actually freedom from that you want. Financial independence to me is not the ability to buy whatever you want. It's that you make decisions not based on money. So sometimes that's about buying what you want, right? You might order a certain dish or buy organic or whatever.

You might buy things because you're choosing what you want and not based on the pricing, but for the most part, it's you choose to whatever your next project is, you didn't do it because this could be a 10x or this could whatever. Right? So, freedom from I think is very very rare. The second thing I would say is very very rare. Uh it seems valuable when you have it. And by the way, like Jesse, we've talked about earlier, Jesse's a great example of this. Like I've talked to him on the phone about ideas that could make a ton of money that were like, "Yeah, that would make we could be making 20 million a year if we just did this." And then we're both like, "I don't know, man." He goes and I I was like, "What do you really want to do, Jess?" He's like, "I think I just like to ride my bike." And he's like, "I want to go do these races and triathlons and Iron Mans." He's like, "I think I just like riding my bike, actually." And because we both agreed like money at a certain point has very little utility to you.

So at at the beginning of your money curve, when you're, let's say, in debt, money has a tremendous amount of utility. When you have no savings and no safety net, money has a tremendous amount of utility. And then as you get to be comfortable, money has less utility, but it can if it buys you back your time, you don't have to work. You get way more utility. At a certain point, you're trading very valuable hours of life energy for useless dollars that you have no ability to even spend to improve your life.

And I find that vast majority of our friends who have achieved that, they still make that horrible trade of valuable life hours for useless dollars. And so I think that that's like the probably the most common observation is man that must be really hard to kick that most people can't do that. And I'll say one last thing which is the other observation I have is that you have like man needs a quest. Man needs a project but you got to choose what is the quest and what is the project that is going to light you up.

And I don't think very many people are able to to do a very good job of that because we're incredibly mimemetic creatures. So if all our friends are starting companies, we start companies. If all our friends are investing, we start investing. And we don't we rarely ask ourselves what do I really want? You know there's this uh idea of like mimemetic which is uh Rene Gerard and and Peter Teal have like really uh really popularized this idea around what we we want what we want because other people want it.

And so I think a very valuable trait in humans that I've sort of started to observe is people who are anti-imetic meaning people who seem to want things from their own internal valition and not because other people want those same things. Who? Tell me examples of people you know who fit in that category. that category. that category. Nick Gray is incredibly anti-mimetic. He is surrounded by goofballs like us that are always on to the next company and the next investment, the next this and the next that.

And Nick Gray was like, I'm going to prioritize hosting cocktail parties. I'm going to prioritize, you know, uh, writing my blog. I'm going to prioritize going and traveling to India and living like a villager in India. He wants what he wants and he wants it because he wants it. And you could tell because he's very lit up while doing it. And you could tell the people who don't because they have everything and they're still not lit up. Why? Because they're choosing things that that other people want.

Tony Robbins had told this story once at his event where he he was talking about eating dinner with his wife and she said this thing where she was like, you know, the waitress brings out her burger and it's a burger with, you know, pickles and blah blah blah and blah blah blah. And then they were talking about this idea of like, are you even doing what you really want or are you just sort of still programmed and conditioned by your upbringing, by society, by your friends, by whatever?

and she's like, "Whose burger is this?" Like, "Why do I even order with pickles? I don't even like pickles that much. Maybe I should start ordering differently." Right? Like, and I think that that metaphor applies to a lot of life. Like, a lot of what what's around you is a burger you ordered. That's like, is this even how I like my burgers? Maybe I like my burgers, you know, medium or rare, you know, maybe I like this, maybe I like that. And so, once you sort of become alert to it, you might start to observe examples of people who who operate this way.

Like I think Palmer Luck is incredibly anti-imetic. Um you know he was doing everything every project he's picked was incredibly unpopular when he picked it. This is sort of the the test, right? Like how popular is the thing you're doing amongst the people who you associate with or want to be like and you know doing virtual reality goggles when he was 19 living in a trailer park, you know, he was not like keeping up with the Joneses, you know, and then even afterwards when it happened, he's he stayed wearing his Hawaiian shirts and his jorts and his flipflops.

He didn't suddenly start wearing, you know, designer clothes and and and this and that. He didn't become a venture capitalist. He didn't start worrying about his summer vacations. He then went and worked in the defense industry. Started building weapons when that was incredibly unpopular to do in Silicon Valley. You were seen as sort of a black sheep for doing that. It was hard to get funding for doing something like that because it was incredibly unpopular. So you look for people who do unpopular things because to them it's what they want.

want. want. There's this book I read last year called uh status and culture and it was this like idea of what does high status mean and how does that impact trends whether it be fashion or whatever and the book's author uh his one of his points was to be inauthentic is the lowest status thing and if you look at all the people who you admire they're truly whether they've become that person or they are born that way both are fine they are truly authentic and if you look at like who we admire.

For example, I was just reading about this um mathematician. Have you heard of this guy? His name's um Gregory Pearlman. No. Who's that? Well, he's one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. And he um won the Nobel Peace Prize or sorry, the Nobel Prize for math, I guess. Or was it economics? I forget. I think it was there's a math one. And he turned it down and he's like, I'm not I'm not about this. I didn't do this for this reason. And then like someone calls him to um like say, "Hey, you won the prize." And his his um famous quote was, "You're disturbing me from picking mushrooms." And he hung up.

And he never collected the prize. He never collected the prize. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. He did not. And you hear about these guys that are rebellious like this. And and what I've noticed is that the worst thing that you can do if you're going to be someone like for example I think I've fallen partially in two of the categories of the three that you've mentioned and I've been a little bit halfp pregnant with them and I think the worst thing that you could do is to be unbalanced about where you fall and to go allin on which type of person you want to be and to not halfass it and to go all in.

Yeah, it's a very scary that's a very scary feeling. But if you do go all in, so for example, I don't like everything Palmer Merl Lucky does or says, but I respect the hell of the fact that he seems authentic and and and he he does believe the way that he acts and says, but if you look at other people, for example, some of the times you'll hear Elon say something and you're like, "Dude, that's cringe. Why is that cringe?" It's like, "Well, it's cringe because I don't think that you truly feel that way and you're just doing this for laughs." And like that's like the the the idea of authenticity.

Yeah, exactly. Look at an example of somebody who's incredibly anti-mimedic. Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett became at one point the richest man in the world. He lived in the same house in Omaha. He drove the same car. He liked his breakfast mc from McDonald's. He liked to drink Coke. You know, he he loved to read. So he read. He resisted basically every every fad and trend. He did not participate in the tech bubble. Basically, he did not participate in tech altogether cuz he didn't understand it.

and his stayed true to his principles, right? He loved to read, so he read. He loved to play bridge, so he played bridge. He had certain small set of friends. He stayed with them. He closed down his fund at one point cuz he was like, I just don't see good opportunities. He goes, I think every what everybody's doing in the market right now seems crazy. I can't understand it. And the fools are getting rich, so I just I'd rather not play than play their way. This literally like the definition of anti.

He literally closed down the Buffett partnership um after like he had run it up to like a hundred million. He gone from like a couple hundred thousands to to a 100 million in the yeah 60s 60s or 70s something like that that that and I'm like damn that's incredible and so and then I think you know practically speaking it's kind of like u you know when you want to get fit like if you were to advise me you're like all right Sean you've been talking about getting fit let's get real all right you want to get fit here's the first thing you need to do here's the second thing you need to do what would be in the top three of things you need to do if you're if you're real about getting fit probably eat your body weight in grams of protein um so you take one metric that you're going to optimize for that like is a a non-negotiable daily set point that you're trying to hit.

Okay. Next, Next, Next, uh I would say probably walk 10,000 steps while lifting weights three days a week. week. week. And and what's usually the leak for somebody who's who's uh trying to get fit, but they keep snacking or they eating like what's the solve for that? Because that's the that's the problem. How do you solve that? You remove barriers. So, for example, the day you say you want to get fit, you immediately go to the gym and buy a one-year membership. Or the day you want to eat better, you immediately throw everything away that you think is bad.

You have to remove all just don't have it in the house. And so that I think there's what's the equivalent of that in terms of living life well or living this sort of anti-imetic life where you actually if if we take this train of logic which is that you will be most lit up and happiest when you're living uh authentically and in line with what you really want and living in line with your own values. To me it's basically like you if you spend all day you spend three hours a day looking at other people on Instagram and Tik Tok and the way they're living their life.

I think you're basically, it's the equivalent of having like a free vending machine of snacks in every bedroom of your house. This sounds like such a silly hack, but I've noticed whenever I wanted to become something in life, if I unfollow everyone on Instagram and only follow the people I aspire to become, you 100% get closer to being that person. So, like I remember when I wanted to get fit, my Instagram feed was literally only shirtless rip dudes. Yes. Immersion. Total immersion. To dress better, I unfollowed everyone.

I only follow people I wanted to dress like. like. like. Did I tell you the story of when we were hanging out with uh Mr. Beast and he told me the story about getting fit? Well, I know that he painted a thing on his wall, which you'd explain. You got to explain what that what he painted. So, I was hanging out with him and I was we see him every year once a year. So, I was like, "Dude, you got in incredible shape, you know, congrats, man.

Like, how'd you do it? What was the what was the thing?" And he goes, "You see that really jack dude right there?" And he points over at like a guy who thought was like his bodyguard or something. He's like, "That's my trainer. He's just with me everywhere I go. He's watching everything I eat, everything I do, and I just hang out with him a lot. He goes, "Then I told all my friends, like, you know, his boys that he's grown up with, that he does, you know, all his videos with." And he's like, "Hey, I'm getting fit and uh this is going to be a lot easier for me if you get fit, too, and you have to be as committed as I am.

Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to hang out with you." He's like, "Cuz if I'm hanging out with you and you're eating pizza, that's too hard for me. I'm going to have to suddenly resist pizza. So, like, how about we just all do this?" or if you're going to be the guy eating pizza, just know that I'm not going to be hanging out with you as much because like I just can't do that. I'm this is my priority, so I'm going to do this. And basically like changing your peer group, what usually means is like you go join a different set of peers.

You move to a city of really ambitious people if you want to, you know, go go start a company or move to Hollywood if you want to be an actor or you um you know, start to go to the gym with people who go to the gym every day because it'll become a part of your lifestyle. Well, he was like for his own friends, he's like, "You need to change your lifestyle because I'm changing mine." and otherwise this is not going to work. We're not going to be hanging out very much.

And I just thought that's actually like like like again a very uh direct path to the outcome. You brainwash yourself, but you use you use your your lizard brain or your monkey brain to your own benefit rather than having it used against you all the time. You're just I'm just going to uh steal this word for word as as some of our ad copy for Hampton. Thank you. Um All right, man. Well, good talking to you on this podcast. Mahalo dog. I'm not in Hawaii. Actually, that's good.

That's good. That's a good cover story. story. story. Bye. Bye. Bye. All right. See you.