From selling ACs to becoming the tourism king of Jamaica

MFM

If you're like me you're gonna get inspired by this story a white dude from jamaica who built an incredible you know multibillion dollar business and lived life on his own terms that's the headline this is my billy of the week

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so this is a

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guy who created something called sandals now let me tell you let me tell you the story first we just gotta look at this picture because I'll be damned if this doesn't look like a young sam parr look at this guy is this not you

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yeah this guy's you is he actually he's jamaican

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so he he lived in jamaica okay so here's here's the story so his name's gordon stewart and he's born in jamaica white kid born in jamaica his mom calls him butch because he was chubby so he becomes known as butch for the rest of his life which is amazing as a young kid he does all kinds of odd job little hustles so he's like helping out the fishermen then he buys a boat then he starts making money boating the fishermen around and repairing boats and he would skip school altogether he was like he was like I just wanna be on the water and he goes he he said later I didn't wanna be a businessman I wanna be a fisherman just a rich fisherman and that led him into business so I love this guy so he's like along the way he's living in jamaica obviously jamaica's super hot and he realizes as air conditioning becomes a bigger and bigger thing that yo air conditioning's gonna be huge in in the caribbean you know things take time to diffuse right from different different places and so maybe it was normal in the states but it wasn't as normal in the caribbean yet and so he saves up $3,000 and he starts a company called appliance traders limited and the idea is he's gonna import ac from the us ac units and he's gonna go door to door selling them himself and he decides I'm gonna do this b to b I'm gonna convince business owners that they should have ac because for them it's not just about their own comfort but like they're gonna have more sales if their store has ac and the other store doesn't customers are gonna wanna spend time in their stores so great idea now he's like how do I differentiate myself so he tries selling door to door makes some progress just hustling and he hires some other island boys to come like help him sell but he's going up against general electric right so he's going up against westinghouse he's going up against these huge companies that have much bigger sales forces than him so he's like he asked himself a better question instead of how do I out compete them on sales where they're excellent and have more resources how do I do something they would not dare to do so he goes what what can the big guy not do speed and what does the big company not care about service so he decides to differentiate his offering so he says if you call me I'll have ac installed within eight hours and he just starts with that vision and he's like works backwards to figure out operations like how how could I possibly do that well I guess I'd need boys over here I need a call dispatcher I need to prioritize the the most recent call not the oldest call and deliver this eight hour service and then the second thing he says is look these acs they break they're running them all the time here's the deal we will fix all the acs no extra charge like if it breaks we fix it and we fix it fast and nobody else is gonna offer you this and because of these two things speed and service he dominates the caribbean market he takes over jamaica he builds a powerhouse and so out of this he makes you know that's his first kind of fortune that he makes

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how much did it make

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I don't know his net worth at this time but it's enough where he could go to montego bay and buy a rundown hotel that everybody else ignored and so 1981 he buys this resort called bay rock and at the time think he's crazy because tourism is not that popular in jamaica at the time crime was super high the this hotel was run down had a bad rep and so he was buying kind of like a run down distressed asset but he has his vision so he's like I love it here I think people will love it here I just have to find a positioning for this and this is where butch the marketing genius starts to inspire me

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what's montego bay I I'm not I mean I it's a city in jamaica

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I think it's a city it's a play it's an area I don't know if it's a city or town or whatever you call it but yeah my sister got married there I should probably know this but

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but it's in jamaica it's a thing got

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it okay so he has his vision he's like I wanna give americans a carefree luxury caribbean vacation and so he's like what's the worst thing about like a vacation he's like you know you you don't know where to go you don't know what you're gonna get and then you sort of cost add up and you get nickel and dimed people feel like they may not be able to afford it and that will stop some people from coming so he's like let me do it instead this way upfront you get one price and everything is included and I'm gonna standardize luxury so he's like there wasn't luxury in this area

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so first thing he does

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he rebrands the bay rock to sandals because he's like that already sandals like embodies relaxation and like being on the beach then he goes and he starts studying so he's a he's a shameless copycat so he's like I'm gonna go study all the other hotels in this area + other other islands and I'm gonna steal the best ideas from each so he goes and he sees club med and he's like oh it's good but it's a little too spartan I like I feel like I'm gonna like make a mess here and I'm in trouble if I do that so like I want luxury but still you should feel like you're here you can have a good time here and then he's like oh I like the way they serve this champagne oh what is this thing a whirlpool we're gonna get one of those over here so he starts importing innovation from all these different places

MFM

wait really quick have you seen that meme where it's like you know if you're going up against a deal or you know if you're going up against this guy in a deal you're gonna get screwed it's like a guy with a fat wallet wearing like you know wrangler blue jeans and he's got a fat and chubby him with a fat watch you know that meme

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and new yeah

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yeah new balance bush stewart looks like this guy I could see him like doing research where he's like at a bar and he sees something interesting and goes hey miss you know you've been a lovely waitress can you bring over that song bitch let me let me let me look at that margarita maker what is that tell me about that thing hey can you do me a favor doll go ahead and order me about 20 of them will you please darling

MFM

exactly it's the famous sam walton story where sam walton did the same thing he would study every other retailer sam walton who created walmart of course but on the way on the rise what helped make walmart so great is that he stole anything good any other retailer did he would steal it so there's this great story of sam walton in in brazil and someone is walking down the aisles of a store and they see a man dead on the ground and they were like oh my god help this guy's dead here he's just passed out on the ground and that man was sam walton and he was not dead he was measuring the distance between aisles using his body length dude because he didn't have a like a ruler with him he's like I like I like this spacing what is this so he laid down

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and used his body to measure things it's about from shoulder to knee

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they didn't understand what he was doing and so so butch was basically doing this he decides to rebrand it as couples only because one of the things he realized is that like a lot of these resorts it's like you look around you see the people who are here the lovebirds who are here then you got the families who are here and they're kind of interrupting you know the the families don't wanna see these two making out the makeouts don't want the kids running around so he decides what if I just made it instead of just okay for everybody what if I made it great for one one killer use case so he rebrands it as couples only it's adults it's romance it's no kids and this was a radical positioning at the time nobody was really doing this but it gave it a clear identity and and then he pours millions of dollars into advertising which again most people would not do he had not proven out the concept it's not like he was taking profits and reinvesting them he was reinvesting because he just had a belief

MFM

well had he raised money for this

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no this is the money he made from the ac company and so he's like spend bigger to earn bigger and later he had this great line which he goes because he built he ends up building I don't know 30 resorts or something like that in jamaica and he's done all you know millions of square feet and he says the most valuable real estate and the hardest real estate to build is the one in the consumer's mind and that's always where I start and I was like oh I love this guy just an old school ad man just a classic ad man

MFM

like the type of guy he's like never read a book in his life on advertising but like listen to one ted talk and that's what he bases his entire education on

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yeah yeah exactly

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alright so a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business now a lot of people message sean and I and they say alright I wanna start something on the side is this a good idea is that a good idea and again what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas well friends you're in luck so my old company the hustle they put together a 100 different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea database it's a list of a 100 pretty good ideas frankly I went through them they're awesome and it gives you how to start them how to grow them things like that gives you a little bit of inspiration so check it out it's called the side hustle idea database it's in the description below you'll see the link click it check it out let me know in the comments what you think

MFM

and the other thing cool thing he does is he basically revitalizes jamaica so he ends up employing like 10,000 jamaicans he's like loved in jamaica for what he did for the local economy how he treated people there was a a big change that happened when he brought tourism and so he goes on on a buying spree basically as as this happens and he starts buying more and more failing hotels across the caribbean he would be super hands on so he'd go stay there he'd eat the food he'd sleep in the bed he'd check the pillows and he basically make detailed notes about anything that needed to change so like if a customer complained about the temperature of the champagne it wasn't chilled enough he would make sure by the next day like all the fridges are recalibrated to the right temperature and he would let the customer know like you know thank you we we know we changed it for you so he was always tweaking it was and that was one of his core philosophies he's like I'm not gonna get it right right away but I'm gonna tweak and tweak and tweak until I get it there and you know this kinda works so hotels are known for their repeat rate so like could you tell the quality of hotel not by the the number of stars that it's rated but by how many guests come back and stay again and sandals would have like for decades a 50% repeat rate which was like unheard of in the industry people loved going there and so this guy would just take all these crazy measures to make it to build this business so he would he's like I I after he ran out of buying the like distressed hotels that already existed he's like I need to buy new great properties on beach fronts and so one thing he realized is that so many beaches that people don't even really know about so he would rent a helicopter and fly over the island and look for undiscovered beaches and then find them scout them buy the land and then build the hotel on on that which is just like again just a sort of a brute force first principles approach to building you know a luxury hotel

MFM

and now his kid's running it so is it an independent business

MFM

yeah he passed away in 2021 I'm not so sure what's going on with the business since then but yeah he he kinda left that that's his legacy basically in in jamaica his kids they said like know all these wonderful things about him which is another great test you know how great of a man are you sort of like you know do your kids do your kids wanna be around you what do they have to say about you and you know it seems like at least from the outside that he did a good job there he also did this crazy thing with the airlines do know the story

MFM

well on his wikipedia it says that he owned jamaican air

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exactly so he realizes at a certain. He's like it's pretty he's like I'm telling you this is paradise but the experience to get to paradise is hell right this is heaven well that's hell so he's like air jamaica was this failing airline the brand sucked the service sucked and so you know you you sign up for this vacation I give you these glossy ads he was buying ads in playboy and cosmo and like anywhere that he could sell the idea that if you're in love you go to sandals so not just like it's a nice vacation it's a symbol of how much you love each other is that you do a sandals vacation and like you know the way that sort of diamonds are a girl's best friend or like diamonds are forever diamonds became this symbol for do you commit you know are you are you all in on this he did that with basically the vacation so he's doing this but he's like the airline experience sucks getting here and going home sucks that's kind of the first impression and the last impression that the consumer's gonna have so what does he do he buys the airline takes full control like vertically integrates the experience and he's like look the airline was a tough business it's a bad business but he had an advantage which is he owned the resorts so he basically used the airline as a giant flying billboard to the resort and he's like I will just market my resorts I'll bundle the flights and hotels I will use it to advertise my resorts so that you wanna stay there I will do service and kinda like lose a little money or break even on the airline as long as I give you a first class experience down to my resorts where you're gonna spend a lot of money he's like if they get off the plane angry you know then it doesn't matter I've already lost the game before they step foot on the beach again I love this guy

MFM

brian chesky my wife used to work at airbnb and brian chesky would give this talks about like I think he called it a 10 star experience where he was like has this famous one star yeah is it 12 star where he was like what's like a one star experience one star experience is like you book you do a booking and we leave the key out of the mat and it's just fine

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and there's rats and it doesn't look like the pictures yes that's one star

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and a five star is like michelin restaurant like style service he's like but what's six stars people and start getting creative they're like get picked up in a limo and whatever but what's eight stars what's 10 stars and he goes all the way up to 12 stars and for him it's a really cool exercise to think about what's like extreme hospitality and he made this argument and this was pre covid and covid changed everything at airbnb because they had to focus on different stuff because they were you know it was an existential crisis but he used to say that he wants to launch an airline and I was thinking I was like what could the tagline be for that and it would be like when you fly with us the vacation starts at the airport right and I was like oh that's so interesting like we could actually make that a thing because when you you're said

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that or he said that

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I said that not to him I was just like thinking it might

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that airbnb job offer might come back around twenty years that's

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a good one right because I was thinking about like when you know if you fly first class or fly in the or you go to the lounge you're like it's pretty cool the vacation started now so like and just got if you sometimes get there early and you gotta wait three or four hours because I'm a I'm a early early arrival at the airport like it's kinda like are

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four hours early

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like three hours but like if there's a delay what don't know dude I get there early

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are you crazy what are you doing

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I've never missed a flight in my life the time with you was the closest I've ever gotten but no I don't miss flights how how early do you get there now I guess I get there I have tsa kind of changed things but yeah I'm always at least a two hour early guy

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I like to slide in at fifty minutes before the flight and see if I can get to tsa in the next twenty to thirty that leaves me another twenty to thirty to get on the plane easy

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but if I have lounge access I'm like look I'm just gonna eat there I'll eat my lunch or dinner there and then we'll get on the plane and so but that's my slogan the vacation should start at the airport

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alright we need a trademark we need a trademark on this

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that's pretty good right

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that's really good

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yeah that that that has a ring to it I enjoy reading about hotel businesses you know there was a I I had a fling with my own little hospitality business it was called an airbnb that went horrible but I read a bunch of books on this have you ever heard about hares entertainment it was a it was a no hares was a casino and this was

MFM

like in vegas

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yeah so it was a casino but this was before like kinda casinos became hotels but I was reading this book called the caesar palace coup and in about 2018 all these hedge funds had owned little bits and pieces of caesar palace which I think was the largest casino hotel management company in the world and it's about like the greed and all the stuff of like what it took to bike by it and how like the downfall of it but they talk about the founding of it and it was founded as hares entertainment and then there was another hotel they merged they created caesars entertainment but up until like the 1990s or early 2000s hotels were just like the hotel and casinos were just like really simple businesses but then harrah's and thus caesar when it merged hired a guy who was a 40 year old mathematician from harvard he had no management experience no experience running a company his name is gary loveman and he comes in and he just makes this his math playground and he dials it in to the within two years of him being ceo they dialed this in I think in like the year 2001 before the internet was like super popular to where when you called and booked a hotel based off of all types of math and math they would know to offer you an upgrade or offer you $50 in free gambling because it was all math to them and they knew that if they get you a free room they got you hooked on gambling it was all like a statistical thing and he basically invented this idea of I actually don't know what the phrase would be but this idea of like using data in math like a moneyball type of way for hotel guests

MFM

dude this is sick I've never heard of this guy gary loveland so he's after nine years at the faculty of harvard business school he left to become coo of harrah's then became the ceo of caesars for twelve years that's crazy he owns a minor he's a minority owner of the boston celtics the use of analytics to influence customer behavior

MFM

yeah up until him it had never been done but he was a famous faculty member at harvard and he would teach all this methodology and then one day harris was like hey we will hook you up big time we'll give you access to the private jet so you could fly down on a monday come home on a friday we're gonna roll out the red carpet for you just do what you want and he did what you wanted and eventually they go alright brother you're now ceo it works great and so he like it was crazy like within three months of him joining the company they saw massive improvements and then within like a year or two he implemented it was all data driven

MFM

he's like cherries in the vodka we're gonna put cherries in the vodka and everyone's like we we don't know the the data says put cherries in the vodka slot machine sales are gonna go up by 3.3% right like I mean a casino is one of the most well optimized it's like you are the sponge and the casino is ringing you out

MFM

well he's the guy who did that and so now I think he's chairman or vp chairman something like that of aetna one of the largest insurance companies

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in oh the good yeah perfect just what we did

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it's the same it's the same like math where it's like it's just a like if your goal is just maximize profits like you do this math equation

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this is like when I learned the tobacco companies like own craft food or whatever it's like oh the children's food is owned by the cigarette company oh great

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yeah like annie's goldfish is owned by the same guy who's like making a making a cigarillos

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yeah exactly so this so this guy is kind of a genius I wanna tell you about this genius thing that I've been thinking about okay not not my idea that's just the idea of geniuses let me just tell you a story here I'm gonna read from I think this is a financial times article but I'm just gonna read you a couple of the intro here because it's amazing alright sam I want you to imagine you are stacy tang you're a chinese woman like you've always wanted to be a manager at a pharmaceutical company in beijing and you receive a phone call on some squid game shit an unknown number calls you and says we like your son you have a 15 year old son says we believe that he might be qualified for the genius program and we'd like to give him a test now it's also covid it's peak covid twenty '22 people can't meet in person so they said stacy I know you might be concerned about covid you're you're a good mom fear not we're gonna put him in the back of this van and we're gonna drive around the city and he's gonna do math problems in the back of this van and we'll know by the end of the ride if he's qualified or not and we'll dump him off on the street if he's not and if he is you'll see him in a couple years and like stacy would feel you might be

MFM

I would say what color is the van and what corner should I leave him at

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exactly that's exactly how stacy felt she says I wasn't worried about an abduction plot in any other country I would but not here she goes I was weeping not china I was weeping with joy

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not mid covid who full trust in china mid covid of course

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I was weeping with joy and I sent my boy right away because I knew this what I knew what this was a golden ticket to the

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best educational resources of china article stacy is very optimistic woman

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so stacy and her son were part of this program that china's running right now where they have a 100,000 kids that they've identified as like possible geniuses and they put them through what they call the genius program and what they do is that at a young age they sort of identify certain aptitude for math for science etcetera and they say we'd like to invite you to the genius program the rsvp says yes or yes and then you go you send your kid and it's a few year intensive study program you get to skip all your normal school you get to skip the college entrance exams you don't have to take any of those but you're in basically math boot camp and you are gonna be studying with the brightest and the best and they are trying to produce incredible talent in china and so you might be wondering well like how does that work is it is it working right natural question is it working sam do you like tiktok genius program sam you ever heard about taobao which is their you know essentially their like paypal genius program have you heard about their groupon genius program have you heard about their super app genius program have you heard about the brothers who are behind their big nvidia competitor genius program you ever heard of deepseek they were in the news recently created that big algorithm didn't even have access to the best chips and somehow outperformed all of the openai models genius program

MFM

it's like a thiel fellowship run by the government

MFM

exactly so china already has this incredible like population advantage where they produce 5,000,000 graduates in math computer science and engineering compared to I think we have like half a million that are in technology the the technology and science fields in the us so 10 to one already they're 10 to one us just in in in normal college graduates but now they're looking for the cream of the crop and they are basically trying to create this talent pipeline homegrown talent pipeline of math geniuses computer science geniuses etcetera and it's working so they started this program many years ago and at the time china didn't have a very notable math or science like achievement record at the international level so there's these things called the math olympiad it's sort of like the olympics for math and so the first year they sent a team of three and they got like the bronze and they're like yes and then they the next year they sent like six teams and they got two medals and now basically they just sweep all the medals every year they just dominate these programs they send like the most they have the most players and the most wins and their ai program like you know if you go walk into an open ai office you're gonna see tons of chinese phd ai researchers who now work in the us but there's for everyone that you see here you know there's a 100 that are still in china working at the chinese companies the chinese labs and I was just pretty inspired by this whole thing they there's one anecdote in the in the story where it says that like if you go into a normal chinese public school there's a blunt slogan on the wall this is not even the genius program this is just a normal elementary school public school and it's a reminder for the teachers and staff there and it just says produce talent quickly and early and I thought about that because I send my kids to school and the teachers and the staff do not have a philosophy about producing talent quickly and early it what's our slogan no child left behind right that was the the famous education program that we launched I don't know when bush was president it's or something like

MFM

exact opposite

MFM

it's the exact opposite it's about don't discriminate don't make anyone feel left out in in san francisco they were doing this thing where they were getting rid of the gifted and honors programs because it was like made the other people feel bad and we basically are taking the exact opposite with the sort of inclusion focus and the like no child left behind focus whereas if other countries are taking this idea of like your job is to produce talent quickly and early and that like it's the the goal is greatness and let's be competitive about it like what's gonna happen over a twenty year arc right like you're gonna get more and more they're gonna win and so I just thought this was pretty interesting I wanted to hear your thoughts on this

MFM

it kind of begs the question like why doesn't facebook have like what's it well yes but what's it called the d league for nba g league yeah the g league or what's like the minor leagues you know

MFM

triple j baseball yeah

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yeah like why doesn't Google and facebook and the top 200 schools have like a farm team where they identify 14 year olds that are promising and they go hey would you like to come to school here forever or for free and you can choose to work at our company afterwards but just so you know you have like a job here if you choose to and we will educate you and get you up to date up to speed on all the stuff

MFM

totally I actually when I first moved to san francisco this was the thing I was pitching investors I was like I think I should go create Google you and my dream would be to be the dean of Google you was like I can't I think it's crazy that these giant companies don't have their own talent farms right why wouldn't they try to produce talent

MFM

we we wrote a story at the hustle about this kid named michael praisman michael if you hear this what's up and he was like a 15 year old who had this rag to riches story where he somehow got mark zuckerberg's attention at the age of 14 because he wrote like a viral app and he made the news because zuck was like hey do you want like an internship here and then that led to a full time job when he was only 16 and now I think he's doing I think he's on the ai what's it called the super team the super intelligence facebook team which is like the $100,000,000 a year salary is insane stuff and it was like we wrote a story because of how remarkable it was that facebook hired a high school kid

MFM

we need more doogie howser shit right

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like why don't we do that

MFM

where's our competitiveness so you have the thiel fellowship right that's like a thing and obviously there's like little programs all around dude I remember when I was in seventh grade duke university did what I didn't realize was essentially just a marketing campaign but they had created something called the duke tip program and it was called the talent identification program and I didn't I lived in texas and suddenly duke university did this thing where my school in texas had us all go to the cafeteria and take a little test and then you got like a little merch bag with it of like duke gear and then the results came back and was like we think you're talented and bro that I think I rode that for like seven years and then I went to duke that thing really influenced me in some weird subliminal way that like maybe I am special and maybe I can do this and maybe I should go pay duke $200,000 to go to school there and I did all those things and I I'm surprised that more of that shit doesn't exist I kinda wanna create something like this because I think it actually creates inflection now the china one is more like boarding school right and there's been other countries that do that but like I feel like we need our own versions of these like where what is the is the american talent pipeline look like and where are we identifying the best and the brightest on some ender's game shit and inviting them to the academy and then letting them you know duel and compete in like a pretty hardcore way because look hardcore is not for everybody but there's some people that only thrive on hardcore situations they want to play the game at the competitive level basically what we do with like youth sports with aau and travel ball and shit like that but do that for the genius kids do that for the makers right like I think that is maybe it exists I don't I'm just not aware of it but

MFM

have you heard of birthright

MFM

I love birthright

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crazy so for those listening I well learned about it because I was dating a girl who went on birthright I don't remember what age I was like 21 years old

MFM

you remember when she told you about it what your reaction you were like what

MFM

yeah and she wasn't even jewish like she was like ethnically jewish I guess but like basically birthright is a program it's funded I think it's funded a little bit by the government but a lot of it is wealthy jewish people but also I think a lot of wealthy christian people who believe that when the end of the world according to the bible when the end of the world happens the jews need to rise first then the christians go behind them that's like what the book of revelation says and so they believe for a variety of reasons that we need to keep israel strong I don't care about the politics I'm just telling you guys the facts and so a lot of christians I think but also like bernie madoff was a huge funder lot of people are funders

MFM

it says 67% of the funding for birthright is individuals 27% is the government and then there's like a couple% of other things

MFM

and it's basically a free trip to anyone who could prove you'll have to tell me the exact measurement but I think it's like if you have like a great grandpa great grandparent who's jewish so you could be like not jewish at all does it say what the requirements are

MFM

well I just asked does it count if I have a jewish friend and it said no that's not gonna get me there

MFM

like you identify as jewish but basically it's like a very small percentage and they bring you on something like a three week all paid expenses trip all expenses paid trip and they basically at

MFM

least one jewish birth parent or a recognized conversion

MFM

okay so just a parent they bring you for like two or three weeks I forget how long it is

MFM

but they like business yeah

MFM

but they give you a tour and you see all the types of stuff but they basically like I remember when I was dating this girl we broke up afterwards because she was like they introduced us to all these israeli soldiers and like and I was like alright like guy's really ripped why did he take his shirt off like you know like why do you have photo anyway and like it and like a small percentage of them then you know become like good buddy siva like become more in touch with judaism and in touch with israel and thus support israel more

MFM

yeah it's how culture lasts through generations right is cultural experiences and exposure any culture can do this they've just systematized it in this really like cool like opportunity for people

MFM

yeah it's awesome and like it's pretty great like I would because I think you have to be like 18 between there's an age limit I think it's like 18 to 25 I forget what it is when you're like primed to like wanna go on a free trip you're like yeah fuck it I'll go and then you like it's a free trip hell yeah and then you get there and you're like okay I actually do like this or like that right and so it's pretty cool and I think that's kind of a good example like the

MFM

world's best timeshare presentation

MFM

yeah and I think that's like a really good way and this sounds bad I don't mean it bad to indoctrinate someone into like a cause and get them long term bought in and it is kind of like an interesting model

MFM

yeah love that so what are you saying we need our own birth rate where are you going with that

MFM

well no what what I'm saying is two I actually do think that america should have mandatory I think Scott galloway said this I've agreed with this for a long time we should have mandatory service for american military I think that would be great but number two I think that's a really good example of how you have like whatever we're calling this like a farm leak of like getting in with people at a young age like it is I wonder like worked really well with duke and you I mean I didn't go to a good school was from missouri I didn't go to a good college but like it is interesting why you aren't promoted to a little bit earlier on to like buy into like a certain movement like going to a good university or joining like an interesting company

MFM

well we're kinda saying three different ways that you can produce this like talent farm so the first one was the china one which is you identify promise and potential early and then you invest in that and they do deliberate intensive practice and you know you you the those people who had potential they build the skills in a more intense way a more hardcore environment okay that's one way you could do things second thing we talked about let's say the duke example is sometimes just creating a test or something like that just to do talent identification if nothing else makes people feel like they're special and that they're talented and literally that self belief is worth something it's not the same value as going to an intensive boot camp and capitalizing on it but it's not nothing either and then the third one is how do you get that sense of pride cultural like ties and enthusiasm and one idea is like you know birthright or something like that so there's like all these different ways you could do it I started studying was like who else has done things like this and so there's the have you seen the story of the soviet like or have you are you familiar with the story of like the soviet olympic program basically how they did this

MFM

yeah and how they were just like this shit and well they also like drugged him that's why they like won all the like a ton of the women track and field records are from the ussr in the eighties like still it's like the longest standing records

MFM

so so the I didn't I didn't know the whole story so I was kinda looking into this it's pretty interesting so soviets were kinda famously independent they were kinda like we don't need to be a part of the olympics so they actually had their own kinda like fitness games they had they had what they called physical culture which is like then they had their own thing called like sparta something sparta calladis that was like their olympics but at a certain. It was kind of like the olympics had the network effect it had the brand it had the prestige so even if we were winning our local thing it kinda didn't hold we couldn't do this and so they basically built a machine so they decide alright we're gonna enter the olympics but the way they did it was just so russian so incredible they built an incredible machine and so that I I respect so what they did they did same thing talent identification so they go at age six to 10 they start measuring how long are your arms how big is your your wingspan what's your reaction time what does your body composition look like what's your flexibility like for gymnastics and they basically didn't wait for greatness to appear they went on a talent search and they searched for greatness and once they did the hat they they basically hacked the system so at the time I think until like 1988 or something 1986 something like that the olympic charter said that you couldn't be a professional athlete

MFM

one of our past topics dipri fontaine was one of the biggest advocates to abolish that

MFM

okay so great so the russians basically just worked around it so they're like this gymnast she's a student this guy this hockey player he's a officer and like you know they had these job titles that were only on paper but actually they're just training full time for this yeah whereas the us would be like I'm juggling school and my training and obviously somebody who's only training is gonna get further ahead

MFM

well remember mirko krokop the one of the best yep

MFM

mma fighter yeah

MFM

yeah he was supposed to be an ex police officer that was like the shtick was that he was a but he was really trained think as in I forget where a former ussr state as a fighter that's and he trained full time

MFM

he's like I'm the can man anybody can get it right now

MFM

that's really funny

MFM

different boxers alright so so they so they do that then they start drugging right so they're like okay what else can we do peds so that became obviously a thing they also did like world class you know I guess like progress and innovation in calisthenics and training programs and regimens that were like progressive loads and deloads and how do you peak at the right time stuff that's yeah today standardized they invented and and like kinda created and we had to go steal it from them basically of like how are they doing this

MFM

in running there's called periodization which is like you start with heavy miles and then you slowly taper off or you go to speed they helped invent that they also helped invent the idea of training lifting weight in cold atmos with the ac down to like sixty and fifty five

MFM

what does that do

MFM

it just makes you stronger I I don't know the science behind it but that was like one of their theories

MFM

I love how I ask as if that's my problem ah it's been the temperature this whole time

MFM

no they just like came up with like all these like really weird I mean they were lab rats and so they came up with a bunch of stuff like volume training for weightlifting like they were the best weightlifters so like a lot of the best they're now old guys but a lot of the fathers of like bodybuilding in the nineties and february they're all in their eighties now were ussr guys

MFM

right and so they ended up dominating the olympics they were either you know first or second in medal count and then you know it just sort of like there was a. Of time where they really dominated and it was also cool like why did they care so much and it was basically let's send a message it's like physical dominance was like a signal for dominance in other things so this is why I thought the china thing's so interesting because

MFM

because it's the exact opposite it's it's brain

MFM

it's brain dominance but even even more there's more stakes like was symbolic it's like we'll show the world what we're capable of and there's always been these symbolic victories like the first to climb everest or the north pole or the south pole things were there's objectively no value to be gained by being the first guys to reach the south pole aside from bragging rights and countries cared a lot about these bragging rights and now with the ai thing it's like it's not just a symbolic victory it's actual like total domination of the world's most powerful technology and will probably create the next global power so it's like all of the same national pride bravado stuff from the olympics multiplied by actual real world tangible benefits and dominance

MFM

dude I think it's great like like blue angels bravado stuff like this is like the like the greatest thing ever like think it's

MFM

sam's all in on bravado

MFM

well just think that like having a common enemy is really good for bringing people together like I I remember post nine eleven like I remember like there wasn't a lot of I remember I distinctly remember the week after I remember walking around the street and I was like there's something about this that I just feel like a bond with strangers do you remember that feeling

MFM

well a little different as a brown guy but yeah

MFM

yeah you actually had the exact opposite of experience but I forgot about

MFM

that like oh I was the common enemy

MFM

you were the enemy you were the other

MFM

the same great yeah do

MFM

I was the us and you were the them have you heard of this thing this is related to what you were saying about planting a seed in someone that they're good have you heard of this thing called the michelangelo effect michelangelo effect no it's this like psychological phenomenon where basically it's a there's been a bunch of tests that have proven it to be true and we use this phrase with hampton all the time it's like a gift from the gods this phrase so the michelangelo effect it basically just says that if you have two romantic partners or a peer group or a friend group as long as they affirm each other and plant the seed in you like for example if I'm like sean like you are the man you will be fit you will achieve this you will do whatever you want and we keep affirming each other every time you say that to one another it's as if when michelangelo was doing the statue of david someone said how did you make this amazing statue he says the statue was there I just chipped away at all the stuff covering that beautiful statue and so it's as if like the greatness is in you because I have put that label on you and each time I affirm or congratulate or say how you're amazing I'm chipping away at the stone that's going to unveil this beautiful like thing inside of you which is whatever the goal is that you want to become and they have found that basically if you are raised around fat people you are more likely to be fat if you are raised around depressed people you are more likely to be depressed if you're raised around rich people you're more likely to be rich and it's not just because of what your parents do it's just like you become what you are affirmed and what you are told and it's called the michelangelo effect it's a really cool idea and this has been studied by psychologists they looked at a group of 50,000 people and they were like what words are you using to talk to this person and how do they end up and where do they become and it's really telling and so it's a really cool idea that if I tell you at a young age that you are special that you work hard that you're gonna be great that you belong in this category you are more likely to actually become that simply of me like telling you that you are

MFM

that's amazing my dad told me this story about something his dad did for him that's all stuck with me and so this is a little dad dad nugget of gold to pay forward so

MFM

I don't wanna cry not at all emotional today

MFM

it's not that emotional but maybe you're in that phase where you know the hormones hormones

MFM

happy to have a little girls man I feel like I wanna like tear up all the time

MFM

so my dad was telling me so my dad grows up in india right like and if you look at you know today he lives in san francisco and he's had this great life but like know it's kind of unheard of from a village in india right it's like hard to imagine starting there and ending here in one lifetime so he he tells me the story and he's like he's like you know there's one thing my dad always did for me and he goes my dad always he's like he planted the seed in me that I was special that I was different that I was gonna go do great things and he goes it didn't make any sense because I was not doing anything I relived in this little dirt village right we'd nobody in our family had ever done anything so his dad worked at a factory and he told me the story how his dad would bring him to the factory and the boss would be there like oh hey kiddo like you know who's the kid you know and he put a hard hat on him and be like you know one day like you can you know you can be here with us you know when you grow up and then his dad to his boss was like are you kidding me he's like no this boy this boy's special this boy's not gonna be here he would take the hat off the hard hat off of him like he's not gonna be here he's not gonna be in a factory he's gonna be in america this boy's special you don't know this guy is really special he's really smart he's really special he's gonna do something amazing in america and he told him that since he was like age four five years old six years old seven years old he's like he put this in me that like was special I was gonna do something I was gonna go to america he's like my dad had never been to america he doesn't even know what america is at the time he'd never been on a flight never been on an airplane but he had this idea and he put it he just said it so matter of factly and he said it in front of other people to his boss and he's like I I just had to take that as like this must be serious he wasn't even telling me I just overheard it I eavesdropped on that and I thought that was great I was like I'm

MFM

ready to do

MFM

that for my kids

MFM

great is that is that the best

MFM

that's the best

MFM

I do that with my kids all the time we do daily affirmations in the morning and we say I'm bold I'm tough I'm smart

MFM

yeah we we do this I'm brave I'm strong I'm happy and I could do anything know we we we run that all the time I tell you about the tennis little victory I had with my son when he would go into new classes he would always get scared to like new soccer class new tennis anything and as a parent it's very frustrating right you pay you drive through traffic you go there and then your kid doesn't go in and then in front of you all the other kids are like doing it happily blah blah blah I'm like bartering and bribing and threatening and then ignoring and then trying again and then I'll go in with you and then I'll do the I'll jump on the trampoline like let me let's do this together and then the teacher's like hey can you leave like the parents aren't really allowed to be in here so it's been the situation over and over and over again so we go to a tennis class new tennis class and sure enough doesn't wanna go in and I'm like okay I decide alright I'm gonna try this a little differently so we just we hang out and we're talk we're just talking I decide we're gonna stay here we're not I'm not gonna try to force you to go in we're just gonna sit here and talk and I start telling him I'm like you know you know I get I get pretty afraid at doing new things too actually so I totally get that and you know I realized that it's other people aren't it's not that the other people aren't afraid like they have the scared they have the scared in them too right here right in their chest and I was like but you get to decide like does this scared win I was like and sometimes the scared wins and like today the scared won but it doesn't always have to win sometimes you get to win so I tell him this I forget about it he doesn't really even really give you know kids don't always like verbally affirm like that

MFM

yeah not sure if he's even what

MFM

a wonderful lesson like he's just like you know looking at his like car that he's playing with or whatever so three weeks later we go and we go to class and my wife takes him and he goes in she's like oh he went into tennis no problem this time after you know three weeks and then afterwards he's like know what what good job like you know I'm so proud of you how'd you do it and he was like I didn't wanna let the scared win today and I was like yes total and complete victory in life I did it I did it I'm not a terrible dad I I actually taught him something so it was like this huge like you know great moment of my life that that was just hearing that that that little seed watered enough like eventually did bloom in his own words and I had actually forgotten about that whole thing and he remembered it

MFM

what a wholesome episode right that stuff fires me on yeah thank you for dad corner yeah I wanna go and hug my my kids alright that's it that's fun