The Framework Behind 9 “Lucky” $1M Business Hits

- June 23, 2025 (9 months ago) • 01:08:54

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	Alright, we got Ben here, and this is the real deal. Ben — this is Ben, the business partner. If you listen to every single episode of this podcast, you hear me 2 hours a week; I probably talk to Ben 20 hours a week.
00:09	Ben Levy	Yeah, pretty much. I feel like you have 100 times more great stuff that never makes it anywhere. It just goes into our text thread and dies immediately, so we gotta bring it out.
00:25	Shaan Puri	Ben, I was counting before we started this episode. So, together we've been working for five years now. We've created nine different things—no, we've created nine different projects that have made more than $1,000,000 each. The very first thing we did together is the All-Access Pass, which was a pretty batshit-crazy idea. I was like, "What if listeners of the podcast could actually see what I'm doing every day to build a business?" I basically said, "For three months—ninety days—I'm going to send an email every day just showing you what I worked on each of those days while I try to do X thing." The things I was going to try included: start an e-commerce brand, raise a fund, start a course—whatever. That one did over $1,000,000.
01:10	Ben Levy	The craziest part about that one is you were basically like, "Hey, dude — I just met you, or we barely worked together — wanna do a 90-day sprint where we just figure out what we're gonna do and then tell everyone in the world what we're doing?" But we've never... yeah, we basically never worked together before then.
01:23	Shaan Puri	We've never worked together. Also, we have—like, what's the opposite of a romantic-comedy first meeting? In a romantic comedy they're walking down the street, they bump into each other, the papers fall on the ground, they scoop them up, make eye contact... it's a thing. Ours was completely different. You—I think you were just a listener to the podcast, and I was testing out an idea for these CEO mastermind groups. I basically said, "Hey, I need five or six people who have a business that does over $1,000,000 a year; come join this group," which basically became Hampton. By the way, Sam ended up turning that into a real business called Hampton. I did one group and you were in it, and the funny thing was you had a business that was doing over $1,000,000 a year. Ben, how many—how many customers did you have in that business?
02:09	Ben Levy	One. One customer.
02:10	Shaan Puri	Ben — Ben had a business with a single customer that paid him $1 million a year. Can you say it's over now? You could say who it is.</FormattedResponse>
02:17	Ben Levy	Yeah, it was Anheuser-Busch at the time — Budweiser.
02:20	Shaan Puri	So, Ben is basically like, "My customer is Budweiser. There are no other customers. They pay me $1 million a year to do this" — like a very simple thing. You were like, "I don't know, you were building their SMS list for them or something like that," but you seemed bored out of your mind. Also, you seem bored out of your mind, and I was trying to do new things. I was like, "Hey, I like this guy — he's got a good vibe. You wanna try some stuff with me?" Does that — is that the summary of how it went down for you? </FormattedResponse>
02:47	Ben Levy	Pretty much. I mean, the only other thing was peak COVID. I specifically remember it was those masterminds and watching the Jordan doc. Those were the highlights of the month, basically.
02:57	Shaan Puri	"Why did you say yes?" "You had a business that was doing $1 million a year. I was not offering you more money than that. Why did you say yes to the offer?" By the way, I think you have good instincts. I've never asked you this, but why did you even say yes to begin with?
03:09	Ben Levy	I mean, at the time I felt like I tried everything to figure out how to grow that business, and I just had zero answers. It had been a year, and I was like, "I've tried literally everything I can think of—nothing is working. This is kind of going nowhere. I'm running into a wall every time." That was one. And then two: I thought you had a ton of juice. I feel like I text you this all the time, which is to me—I just feel like you have "too much juice." I felt that then, and I feel it now. This guy's a beast; he's like the next Joe Rogan. </FormattedResponse>
03:41	Shaan Puri	Is it TMJ—like the thing where your jaw hurts? It's like when you... yeah.
03:45	Ben Levy	Too much.
03:45	Shaan Puri	To me, yeah—that's what I have. I have... I got a bad case of TMJ. Too much juice.
03:50	Ben Levy	So, I just believed in you, and I thought, "I'm gonna take a bet." Also, I felt like I'd hit a wall a hundred times in a row trying to grow that thing, and it had gone nowhere.
04:01	Shaan Puri	Well, I do appreciate that — you have a shit-ton of belief in me, which is cool. We actually have this phrase we call "first believer." Basically everybody I know who's successful in life at some point had somebody who irrationally believed in them. Bill Simmons calls that person the "irrational confidence guy." I think there's that for entrepreneurs too — before you've proven anything, before you've actually done it, and honestly when you still kind of suck, somebody is just like, no, I believe in you — a "blank‑check" belief in you. For me, that was this guy Michael Birch initially when I was 23–24 years old. He kind of recruited me for a job I wasn't really qualified for, and then he named me CEO — he gave me his job as CEO. I was the youngest person in the company, and that was irrational. There was really no proof, no logic, no nothing, but I will never forget that. We've actually taken that further: if we believe in somebody, we don't keep it private — we go tell them. You and I will text them, and be like — for example, this guy Billy Oppenheimer, who I think we both are big believers in — we'll just text Billy and say: > "I'm buying all the Billy Oppenheimer stock on the market right now. I'm cornering the Billy Oppenheimer market right now. I'm trying to build a huge position here because I am a believer in you and your talents." Have you seen that? Who else are we kind of first believers in — do you know? </FormattedResponse>
05:22	Ben Levy	Yeah. I think George Mac said that you were one of the first believers who told him—your old intern, Ishawn—that he should stop running an agency and go all in on betting on himself. </FormattedResponse>
05:34	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I was the first believer in him, for sure. He was probably 18 years old when I started working with him. I think everybody needs that. Whoever was that person for you, you should send them a note today and just say, "By the way, thank you for that — that was huge for me. You had no reason to believe me, but you did." I think more people need to do that. It's like an "angel investor," but before money you need at least the belief that you can do something. That belief is actually more important as a starting ingredient than cash initially. I think more people need to have that — that belief, that angel-investor-style support.
06:04	Ben Levy	"You need—you need someone to give you minutes in the game, you know? I just want to get—give me two minutes. Don't leave me on."
06:08	Shaan Puri	The bench. A coach that puts you on the floor. Dude, you were just speaking of basketball. You were just at this fantasy camp thing — can you explain what this was like? Two weeks ago, Ben goes, "Hey, I'm gonna be offline for a week. I'm going to the Duke Basketball Fantasy Camp — Coach K Academy." Can you explain what this is? Because I think this is kind of amazing.
06:30	Ben Levy	Yes. So two weeks ago I basically decided to go to K Academy, which is Coach K — obviously, you know who he is, the famous Duke coach. Every year he hosts a basketball camp for people who are 35 and older. Spoiler alert: I just turned 35 six months ago, so the first time I could go I immediately decided to go. I took my dad with me, so it was me and my dad. We haven't hung out for five days in a row in years without kids. We went to North Carolina, and it's unbelievable.
07:00	Shaan Puri	"It's basically rich dude fantasy camp. It's like summer camp for rich dudes, right?"
07:06	Ben Levy	Yeah — it's basically rich dudes that want to go back to high school, where they were on the basketball team. They're competing like their lives depend on it, and every other hour someone's tearing... [sentence trails off]
07:15	Shaan Puri	"Their ACL — that's an amazing pitch, because I would happily pay $10 for that right now. If you could take me back to when I was on my high school basketball team, that was like the happiest days of my life."
07:25	Ben Levy	Yeah, that's what I thought. Then, immediately when I got there—in the first game—I got way fewer minutes than I expected. My dad was cussing under his breath, saying I should've gotten more minutes. I was like, "I don't know." I don't know if I actually want to go back to high school again, where I literally had the same exact experience. We get there, and it's 150 people, and everyone there was like, "One for me"—actually, wait [unclear].
07:48	Shaan Puri	So, do the math on that: 150 people — what is the price of this thing?
07:51	Ben Levy	It's $13,000.
07:53	Shaan Puri	Alright. So it's a two‑million‑dollar, five‑day camp — basically for them, revenue‑wise.
07:59	Ben Levy	Yeah, $2 million. But I think everyone there... basically becomes a part of their fund and helps support Duke athletics. So it's great for that. It's like great top-of-funnel for key people for
08:10	Shaan Puri	Duke athletics booster, or an alumnus — a sort of supporter of the program.
08:15	Ben Levy	Yeah, but what I wanted to do when I went there was—yeah, I love basketball; it's gonna be awesome—but I just wanted to meet every single person who's here. Because if you're spending $13 to hoop for five days, you're probably rich and interesting.
08:27	Shaan Puri	Or just rich — maybe not that interesting. That's also a possibility. Hey, I got a quick break because I want to tell you something cool: our sponsor for this episode is HubSpot. But instead of the ad telling you about HubSpot, they wanted to do something useful for you. They did some research and found that many people in our community have side hustles. They start a business on the side, get it going, and over time it becomes their main hustle. So instead of just listing HubSpot's features, they put together something practical for your side hustle: a database of AI prompts — prompts you can put into ChatGPT or your favorite AI tool to help with your side hustle. Check it out. It's going to save you a bunch of time. I think it's a prompt database you should be using to make your side hustle more successful. You can use this as your personal cheat sheet — your toolset to be a better operator with your side hustle. You can either scan the QR code on the screen or get the link in the description to access the AI prompt database. Alright — back to the show. We should explain this. You do this type of thing — this is actually a little bit of your job. And because people probably don't know: I always say, "we're business partners." What does that actually mean? What do you actually do? </FormattedResponse>
09:39	Ben Levy	The way I tell people — which you'd probably explain differently — is I focus on three things. First, try to make the main mission happen. The main mission changes very often: it can be everything from making great content, to making money, to just having fun. Second, I add that you should also avoid working too hard. I do think I work hard, but in general I want to have a good time and be there for my friends and family. Third — or maybe a fifth part I added last year — I probably spend 20% of my time playing basketball. I want to spend that time playing basketball. Overall, I spend a lot of time trying to find interesting things we can attack that may support the main mission, whether that means buying a company, making an investment, developing interesting content ideas, or meeting people.
10:34	Shaan Puri	So, here are some examples. One of them was: "Let's raise a fund." This was back in 2020 or 2021. We decided, hey, we want to raise a fund to invest in startups — we have all this deal flow, so let's do this. That became the main mission for about three months. We raised, I think, something like $20,000,000 to invest in startups. Okay, great. Then we did grow my e-commerce store. I think at the time you joined, my e-commerce brand was doing about $5,000,000 a year in revenue, and now it does $25,000,000 or $30,000,000 in revenue. For twelve months, that was the mission. The funny thing is we just pick a main mission roughly every three to six months. The longest we've done is probably a year or two, and we just do whatever it takes to figure it out. For example, when we were doing the e-commerce thing, neither you nor I knew anything about e-commerce. One of the things Ben does that's brilliant is he's very good at getting insights from the audience. What he did was create a group called Club LTV. Club LTV was basically a call: "If you own an e-commerce brand that does more than $5,000,000 in revenue — we were at $5,000,000 — come hang out in this thing. I'm not selling you anything; it's free to join, but you gotta be legit. You gotta be the owner and you have to do over $5,000,000 in revenue." We'd just hang out every other Friday. He'd host it. It was like speed dating: you'd meet a bunch of other e-commerce founders, we'd share what's working in our businesses, and then every week one guy would stand up and say, "Here's what I'm doing with TikTok, here's what I'm doing with email marketing," and you'd learn something that, if you implemented it, would instantly make you more money. That was the general idea. You got, like, I don't know, 150 e-commerce business owners in there in the first month, and suddenly whenever we had a problem, somebody in that group had already had that problem and could answer it. It just accelerated our business learning so fast. That's kind of where I figured out this model: I create the content, I attract interesting people, but I'm kind of an introvert — I like being alone. I like doing stuff like this podcast: just me in my bedroom. I don't really like going out and doing meetups, hangouts, or calls. Ben loves that. Ben would go meet people, talk to them, see what they're up to, find ways to help them, introduce them to people, and be useful to them. In doing so, one out of every twenty of those people would do something useful to us. Maybe we invest in their company, maybe they teach us something — whatever it is. That's an example of how it's worked in the past.
13:16	Ben Levy	Yeah, and I think the two things I think about a lot are: First, I want to be useful. A lot of this is that I don't want to take from people—it's more like, "Hey, I want to help you." When and if we ever need anything, I know they'll take my call, but it's not really about that. It's just that I talk to a lot of people; I might know something you want to know, or I might know someone you should know. Second, I think—this is a Warren Buffett thing—is: "You can't connect the dots looking forward."
13:41	Shaan Puri	Steve Jobs
13:42	Ben Levy	Steve Jobs. Alright — a lot of this is... a lot of it is creating serendipity and luck. I just never know what's going to connect. Something someone might have said a year ago might randomly hit—something I never thought of in the past year.
13:55	Shaan Puri	Well, we should explain, because people don't know how we do this. First, explain who this guy is — I think his name is Nick Dio [uncertain of the exact spelling] — and then explain how he kind of inspired us to do stuff on our side.
14:09	Ben Levy	Yeah, so Nick Dio — let's just call him Nick Dio. I like that better than Dio. Essentially, he's Gary Vee's relationship guy, I think is the way I would say it. Gary V obviously has tons of access and owns a huge agency, but he can only be in so many places at once. So he's basically built this guy, Nick. What he does is manage all of Gary's core relationships. From what I've heard, he basically hosts a dinner every night. Anyone who wants to meet Gary, he connects them with him. He's the main guy — the face of Gary. He's front-facing; he collects everything and helps people.
14:43	Shaan Puri	Sometimes — and I think a lot of times — Gary's not even there. So it'll be like, "Gary really likes this person," or "these people; he wants to get to know certain people." Nick will go and host an event, take them on a trip, or hang out with them, almost on behalf of Gary. Right — Gary's not even there some percentage of the time. I think... I think a large percentage of the time.
15:03	Ben Levy	I think... 99% of the time, Gary's not there. I think it's literally...
15:06	Shaan Puri	99, but the guy knows. He's just like, "Yeah, Gary thinks what you're doing is dope. We just want to get to know you. If we can ever be helpful, let us know." I heard this — and this was in sports — that came out several years ago: LeBron James spends $1 million a year on his body. Like, on treatments, trainers, food — all of it. $1 million a year just fine-tuning his body. Other athletes heard that and were like, "Shit, dude, I'm not doing that. I just gotta go to the gym or just use the team's guy." I don't do that. But it makes total sense: if you're an athlete, your body is your business. It makes sense to spend money maintaining and improving your body. So LeBron did that, and I've always had this question: what's my version of spending $1 million a year on my body? When I heard that Gary Vee has this guy, Nick, I was like, "Oh, that makes perfect sense." Gary is building a magnet to attract people who like what he's all about. That's his content he's putting out there. But he can't — and maybe he doesn't even want to — constantly be meeting people that he's attracting because it's too much. This audience is too big. Of course, it sounds crazy to say he hired a guy that just hangs out with people in his orbit. I was like, "Yeah, that sounds a little weird," but actually that's obvious and logical, and we should totally do that. I didn't hire you in that way — that's not what... but you do end up doing that because you're extroverted. You actually get a lot of energy from texting people, talking to people. Like today, in the last 24 hours, how many people have you texted? I mean, probably 70. It's a ton. If I look on my phone right now, how many people do I actually text on a daily basis? There's my wife, there's the lady who we're getting our mortgage loan from, my dad for Father's Day... yeah, there's like seven people max that I'm talking to in a given day. Even that, I'm pretty bad at replying. Whereas you just love doing it. You do it all the time. In fact, you had this little phrase — I was like, "What's the secret?" — and you're like, "I reply, bro. Most people just don't reply." "I reply." Ben — he replies. That's what he does. You also check in with people and see what they're up to and how it's going. You congratulate people all the time on what they do. You have these little things that just kind of keep people in our orbit. So that's one thing: learning from that. The other is: we took luck and we actually made it like a business metric that you measure. Could you explain the luck system and how...
17:40	Ben Levy	We do that. Yeah, so the core idea I think was basically: if we're going to spend a ton of time creating luck, that's going to surface in a ton of ways. Maybe it'll surface in content, maybe in an investment, maybe in a future business. You have to track it. It's really easy to say, "Oh, every day I'm gaining weight," but never get on the scale because you don't want to look. Then you just gained 10 pounds — it happens fast. If I'm on the scale every day, I'd never gain that weight. What I mean by that is I decided to track what I'm actually doing. So every day I want to note the five or six things I did that I think will create some luck, and then later actually see if anything hit when I look back. An example: if I pull up my spreadsheet, I found a tweet that then became a great piece of content for MFM. Another example might be: we ended up getting into a deal because I chased this guy pretty aggressively to get into the round, and then we wired him.
18:47	Shaan Puri	An example would be: one thing you're great at is that you're happy for other people. I think a lot of people in the entrepreneurial game get bitter as others become successful. You see that—someone hits a revenue milestone and your actual reaction is either like, "Fuck you," or, "We're way behind," or something similar. That kind of bitterness doesn't last. I think it's a pretty common reaction for people, even if they don't say it out loud. I've been around you a bunch, and you actually have the opposite reaction. If something awesome happens for someone, you literally say, "Oh, that's awesome—congrats." You'll do things like, when somebody hits a milestone, you send them a cake with the number on it. You do these random things that seem unproductive in the moment—like you take 15 minutes to design a cake and send it to this person—but then that person calls you to thank you. You catch up with them, they tell you about something they're doing, and you realize, "Oh—for our basketball event I didn't realize this guy actually knows the owner of that team. We could ask him for an intro." You create luck through a bunch of these small activities. Other simple examples: you're pretty willing to refer people. If you find out someone is looking for X, you'll take an hour and hunt down a referral for them—you'll find the agency or the person they're looking for and make the connection the same day. It doesn't seem like there's anything to gain in that moment, but it builds so much goodwill that business karma comes back around. So what we did was look at the last year's best outcomes and trace them—like a 23andMe/Ancestry.com-style ancestry of what led to each success. We have one business that's just going gangbusters right now. We haven't announced it yet, but we just crossed $10,000,000 in ARR [annual recurring revenue], profitably bootstrapped in less than 18 months. That business is amazing. If we ask, "Where did the key customers come from? Where did the intros come from? Where did we hire the key talent?"—each one of those came from Ben doing random stuff. We decided to apply the Peter Drucker mantra: > "What gets measured gets managed." Let's actually treat luck like something you can manage. Could you measure it? If you could measure it, would that encourage you to do more of it? If you did more of it, would more good things happen? The answer so far for us has been yes. Even though this is kind of a nerdy thing—this is like when Sam talks about how he and Sarah do off-sites and have OKRs for their relationship—you kind of think, "Dude, you're killing the romance here." Most people treat luck the same way: "Dude, just let it happen." We actually treat creating luck as a skill. Luck is something you can influence—how much of it you're going to have in your life. We celebrate you doing things that generate more luck for us. I also think it makes...
21:46	Ben Levy	You just think about the things I'm learning or seeing because it's like, "Oh — if I write it down; if I just keep it in my head, one, you never hear it, it never goes anywhere." It's pretty easy for me to forget. But if I write it down, it's like, "Oh, that actually was interesting," or "This story someone told me would actually make sense to tell on the podcast," or "We should follow up on that." So I think that helps a ton, too.
22:06	Shaan Puri	Also, it changes your decision-making. Sometimes you'll be like, "Ah, should I go do this?" You went and flew out and hung with Jesse Itzler for a couple of days. There was really no— we weren't trying to do a deal with him, we weren't trying to sell him on anything. There's no agenda. He's awesome; we thought he was awesome. He was like, "Hey, you should come hang." People just say that as a figure of speech—"Oh yeah, if you're ever in town, hit me up"—whereas we were like, well, I think doing that will generate some good things. That increases our luck quotient if you do that versus if you just sit at home for the next two days. So Ben books a flight, goes and hangs out with him for two days. Sure enough, while you're there the conversation leads to different—you know—different good things: learnings, insights, opportunities, whatever it may be. I don't think we would maybe have the green light to shoot our shot as we do now. Now that we actually made it one of our goals—to create more luck—our goal for the year is Ben's gotta create 100 lucky breaks, and he keeps track of the 100 lucky things that go our way. In order to do that, you have to do, like, 500 or 700 just interesting things that might generate those 100 lucky breaks.
23:18	Ben Levy	Yeah, I will say Jesse Yitzler's a proud member of the TMJ crew — Too Much Juice. So, if you're in—if you've got Too Much Juice—you get a round-trip flight from me immediately if you're in that class.
23:29	Shaan Puri	Yeah, actually that's kind of a good—a good thing. Another good framework you have is this: explain your barbell thing, because I like this. I think more people should do this.
23:38	Ben Levy	The way I operate is basically two things: either I'm constantly — I mean, you know — my phone is just constantly texting people with things I see. So it's either "we're constantly talking via text," or "I'm texting, but in..."
23:50	Shaan Puri	A very lightweight way, right? It's very light communication. You're not sitting on a 40-minute Zoom call with them.
23:57	Ben Levy	Yeah. I do go by the "I reply" thing. Although since I told you that—and since I think you said on the podcast—every time I don't reply, I feel very guilty. Sometimes I just forget, or it's hard. The barbell is just: go spend more time in person with people, so I haven't done it as much as I want to. But I think longer hangs—I think this is also a David Sender idea—are the answer: you do longer hangs.
24:25	Shaan Puri	I think Ku Kugan was the one who told John Kugan from Technology Builder TPPN. He was the one who told us this idea—or at least he said it out loud to me. > "The middle zone is death. It's death by a thousand Zoom calls." A 40– or 45-minute Zoom call is basically the worst of both worlds. It takes a lot of energy, but you don't really build a bond or get into much depth. You're better off on one of the two extremes: very lightweight contact or a deep, in-person hang. Lightweight contact could be quick, funny memes, texts, or tweets—something that takes you ten seconds. The other extreme is spending substantial time together: go hang out for five hours, fly to see them, drive up, grab lunch, go for a walk, have coffee. If you do that, you actually get a much stronger connection, more insight, and a different type of hang. It can feel like the equivalent of 10 Zoom calls—or even 200 Zoom calls—when you do it right. You want to spend your time on either end of the barbell: the lightweight side or the really in-depth side. A good example: Chris Sacca used to do this. I don't know if you know the story, but he was an angel investor and he moved out of San Francisco—which at the time made no sense, because all the angel investors and startups were there. He realized that if he stayed in San Francisco he was constantly playing defense, taking random coffee meetings that felt surface-level and undifferentiated. So he moved to Truckee, near Lake Tahoe, and bought a cabin. He also got a second cabin—a guest house—right next to it. If he found somebody interesting, he would make a bigger effort and invite them to stay for a weekend in his cabin. Founders would think, "Oh, that's cool—Lake Tahoe, that sounds fun," and he'd spend 48 hours with them. They'd be in the hot tub together, skiing, talking, drinking, eating, cleaning up—doing all those different things. By the end of the weekend, they actually felt like good friends, not just acquaintances from a coffee meeting. He really understood their business in-depth; he knew how good the founder was and what they were really made of, which you couldn't get in a 20–30-minute coffee meeting. That's how he got into the Uber deal and the Instagram deal: he invited their founders to hang out for the weekend, solidified the bond, and then knew to back up the truck and invest.
26:55	Ben Levy	I think it's also cool to just go hang out with people and see how they live. I think we've talked about this a lot. It's like—you go see how someone like Monish Pabrai lives. When we go to his house and hang out with him, you can taste their lifestyles and decide whether or not it's actually interesting.
27:10	Shaan Puri	Right, by the way, I'm looking at the luck sheet right now. This is a great example. Your mission was to to grow MFM at one. So you were spending a couple of months trying to grow My First Million, and you were like, "Dude, you guys don't bring enough guests on. The guest episodes don't do well." You and Sam are pretty lazy—you don't like to reach out to guests—so it just doesn't really happen. You went back, looked at the archive, and said, "Alright, let me find somebody who was awesome on the pod before and bring them back." You found that Jesse Itzler was on a year or two ago. You tried to get him on; he didn't reply. He didn't reply again. Then you saw that he had, I don't know, his calendar or his book coming out, and you basically bought 100 of them proactively. You reached out: "Hey, I think your calendar's awesome. I bought 100 of these and I'm gonna give them away on My First Million. Keep doing what you're doing—this is great." He replies because he's like, "Oh dude, somebody just came and bought 100 of my products. They think it's awesome—thank you, I appreciate that." And by the way, "Yeah, I'm happy to come on again." He comes on the podcast and it reignited—maybe—a relationship that was kind of dormant. You've done that a bunch: somebody comes out with a product, you buy it, you hype it up, you celebrate it, and that makes them feel good and leads to good things. All this stuff is pretty unpredictable when you're doing it, but it works out.
28:28	Ben Levy	Yeah. I think—like, you know—it's important to say: none of this is transactional. I kinda do this; again, the goal is to be useful. I want to help people. Again, I think we all win together. This is not a zero-sum game. We help people; they help us, etc. So it goes. </FormattedResponse>
28:44	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah — exactly. Also, for every one thing I'm saying that led to this, there are eleven other things that didn't lead to anything, and we're totally fine with that. It was just fun to do; it was nice to do, so we did it. You know, that's all there was. There was no expectation of something happening. Except for, like, "if I do a bunch of great stuff with great people, good things are going to come out of that." So that's the luck thing. You sent this doc with other stuff on it. I want to—let's talk about some of these other things.
29:11	Ben Levy	I know normally—basically—you always do business ideas, but I feel like you and I talk business nonstop. It's just constantly business ideas. So I made a list of things that I wish existed—basically stuff I want to be customer number one of. I want to talk to you about them, show you, and see what you think.
29:28	Shaan Puri	So, things that don't exist today but you kinda low-key wish existed.
29:34	Ben Levy	Yeah, and you know, I'm an early adopter. So if someone—someone makes these, I'm gonna buy them.
29:39	Shaan Puri	Ben tries weird stuff. He'll be like, "Oh, I'm eating this peanut butter that's made out of caramel only," and I'm like, "What?" He'll buy any product that's, like, weird because there's a chance it's amazing. Most likely it sucks, but there's a chance it's amazing. So I'm guessing these ideas are gonna be like that: probably weird, probably suck, but there's a chance they would be amazing.
29:59	Ben Levy	"Am I right on that? Yeah, one out of ten hits. And, you know... hey, I'm glad I tried ten random peanut-butter protein things, you know."
30:06	Shaan Puri	Alright. So this is Ben's random wish list. Let's go.
30:09	Ben Levy	So, I've got... I've got three ideas. I've got 10 ideas, but the first one I'll give you is courtside seats. Whenever you're watching an NBA game—at the Knicks games, for example—they always show Timothée Chalamet going nuts with Kylie Jenner. I just think there's way more to do around courtside seats. Let me give you three—I have three courtside-seats spin-off ideas. So, one...
30:34	Shaan Puri	Okay.
30:34	Ben Levy	I want to make a YouTube channel where, basically, all you do is buy courtside seats and interview someone courtside at every game. The goal is to figure out: what do they do? How much money do they make? How do they make their money? All you have to do is buy a courtside seat and you can immediately get someone at every single game. What do you think?
30:52	Shaan Puri	Okay, so the upside is you get to be courtside. Worst case scenario, your YouTube channel fails, but you got to sit courtside at a bunch of games. It does use that thing that seems to work on TikTok, which is: people approach a rich person in their car and say, "Hey, nice car, man. I just want to ask — what do you do?" The person answers and it creates this one-minute clip that tends to go viral. People like that stuff. You're basically piggybacking off of that. But the investment here is pretty substantial. How much are courtside seats anyway? How much would this even cost to do? There are 40 home games a year, so what are you spending to do this?
31:29	Ben Levy	It probably depends where you're doing it. I think if you're doing it in Orlando, you're probably spending about $100. If you're doing it in New York, you're probably spending $400–$500.
31:38	Shaan Puri	You could probably go get a sponsor like FanDuel or SeatGeek upfront to sponsor you for this. Pitch them: "Hey, look — I'm gonna... this is the concept." I bet you could present it as a show where they're the main sponsor. I think this will do really well. I kinda think you could get it paid for. You don't need all of them paid for, but enough to do four or five episodes. Then, once you get some views, you can go from there. It's not a bad idea. </FormattedResponse>
32:05	Ben Levy	And then the tangent I have is: why are there not courtside seats at the Apple Demo Day, YC Demo Day, or OpenAI? Why is Timothée Chalamet not sitting courtside there? They should definitely have Timothée Chalamet, or whoever's sitting there, be the concert.
32:23	Shaan Puri	Seats, right? Like, pretty much any event—it's kind of interesting to know who's up front, who's there, who came. I'm kind of interested in that. What I want is not the interview, though. I just want to know, literally—this is my version of LinkedIn. Whenever I'm watching a Warriors game, I'll basically pause the screen and try to see: do I recognize anybody? Who are these people sitting there? It's kind of like My First Million—all those people have some interesting success story. You don't get to be courtside without an interesting success story, and I want to know who those people are. If someone were to do that, I'd gladly pay $20 a month for somebody to photograph who's courtside at the games and then tell me who those people are and what they like. It's my version of paparazzi or TMZ that I actually give a shit about. It's this weird mix of business and basketball—very niche, but I would do it. </FormattedResponse>
33:16	Ben Levy	Yeah — the other day it was, like, a highlight of my week. I was watching the Thunder–Pacers game and I saw a guy we know on Twitter sitting courtside, fist-pumping Mike Beckham from Simple Modern. I was like, "Damn."
33:27	Shaan Puri	That's cool. Yeah, I saw that. That's cool. Alright—what's your next half-baked idea?
33:32	Ben Levy	Alright. So the next one I call LunchBounty. But we've got to buy lunchbounty.com. The idea is basically this: you've seen these social networks where all the tokens are available, and to claim them you pay $100,000, right? That was BitClout, right?
33:49	Shaan Puri	Yeah.
33:50	Ben Levy	And then we've heard these stories of people who spend $30,000 to $100,000 to go get lunch with someone. I believe.
33:58	Shaan Puri	Warren Buffett or...
33:59	Ben Levy	Warren Buffett — or I've heard stories where people used to pay $35,000 to get dinner with Peter Thiel — and it changed their entire life. But there's no real marketplace to find those opportunities. Maybe you'll occasionally find them on eBay or Twitter. I want to create a marketplace that's basically like: okay, if there's $100,000 sitting here and Bill Ackman — all you have to do is hit "yes" — and then your lunch is, you know, Ben is willing to pay $100,000 to get lunch with you. It's to have a marketplace where it's just one — a one-hour lunch — and someone can basically preemptively bid on how much they're willing to pay for lunch with "X." I like this.
34:37	Shaan Puri	This is actually—when you first said it, I didn't know where you were going with this, but this is kind of an interesting, simple idea. By the way, I think the right—the right lens for this is: these are non-serious business ideas. We have a bunch of more serious, more boring business ideas, but these are just fun ideas. </FormattedResponse>
34:51	Ben Levy	And the key to this one, by the way, is charity. He's like—everything goes to charity.
34:56	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. So you need—basically, are you saying do it permissionlessly? Are you saying you'll just put up "Bill Ackman lunch, New York" and get it to $50,000? Or someone who wants to go have lunch with Bill Ackman, and then you basically are telling Bill Ackman: > "Hey, by the way, we're auctioning this off. It's at $50,000. The proceeds will go to your favorite charity. Would you be—are you willing to honor it? Are you willing to do it?" The guy doesn't get charged anything if he doesn't do it. You're basically going to publicly pressure them to do this to get it off the ground. Yeah, exactly.
35:26	Ben Levy	"That's the exact idea."
35:29	Shaan Puri	You know, it's sort of a gray area, but how mad are they really going to be? You're raising a bunch of money for their charity of choice. I think you could do this — I think you could get away with it. I know Andrew Wilkinson did this not long ago; I think he did a $20,000 lunch or something like that. We know that Manish Pabrai paid $650,000 to go to lunch with Warren Buffett. If you just think about it: let's pretend you had two of these a week. Maybe you have it as a successful person and then maybe either an actor, celebrity, musician, or an athlete — something like that. But even two a week, and let's say the average one of these would go for, what, like $25,000? </FormattedResponse>
36:07	Ben Levy	10 to 50. Yeah — $25,000 is a good ballpark.
36:11	Shaan Puri	"So you're going to raise basically $2.5 million for charity. If you could even just do two of these every week."
36:19	Ben Levy	Yeah, I think it's... I actually think it's a good idea. It is a crazy idea, but I think it's a good idea.
36:24	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. I think if you're trying to do something fun or social impact, this is kind of an interesting idea. And, by the way, you would end up meeting all these people because you created this—whatever this thing is—the lunch program.
36:36	Ben Levy	Yeah, exactly — that's my idea.
36:38	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, alright. What else you got? Well, hey—do this one: everyone needs their Birkin bag. I'm surprised you even know what a Birkin bag is. What... what are you—what are you thinking here?"
36:47	Ben Levy	I don't know much about Birkin bags, other than it sounds cool and I think it's really expensive. One of my buddies started this company called StockX, and he called me — I don't know, a year ago. He was like, "Dude, I'm starting a new company. We make these awesome collectibles." What we do is... the website is, I think, "ghoststrike.com." We basically make figurines of fame. We do licensing deals. We make figurines of famous people, very similar to this thing called Kaws. </FormattedResponse>
37:20	Shaan Puri	So, by "figurines," do you mean small figurines? Are they big? What are they like—are they plastic?
37:24	Ben Levy	Or I think he makes both, but for this specific one he called me out of the blue. Six months— I think they're glass, plastic—a mix of everything. But six months ago he calls me out of the blue and he goes, "Dude, I know you're a huge Phoenix Suns fan. I've got something just for you." I was like, "What is it? You're calling the right guy." And he goes, "You know, we're—maybe we're doing this special run of six-foot-tall figurines." He's like, "Alright, I have no idea where I'd put a six-foot figurine that's, I think, made out..."
37:54	Shaan Puri	A glass nutcracker that you put at the door, right?
37:56	Ben Levy	Like... it's like I have no clue. But hey, you say Phoenix Suns and honestly you might have sold me already. He goes, "So we're doing a special run. It's only — only a certain number of NBA players, and we're making a Devin Booker — a six-foot-tall Devin Booker figurine." I was like, "Alright, how much?" I guess I've been looking for my Birkin bag, so how much? And you know, he goes, "$10,000." Which, you know, I don't think I've spent $10,000 on myself — really on anything, you know, outside of investing in Bitcoin. I can't think of the last time I spent $10,000 on something. Yeah... and I didn't even think about it. I said yes immediately. And then later I told my wife and I was like...
38:42	Shaan Puri	And, by the way, this is like a one-of-one — or there's, like... it's</FormattedResponse>
38:46	Ben Levy	It's a one-of-one, so I'm the only guy with the Devin Booker. I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I mean, I'm the only guy with the Devin Booker, and I was like, "Okay, it's gonna be cool, because maybe one day he's gonna call me — he's gonna be like, 'Dude, I respect that you own the other one-of-one. That's cool.'"
39:02	Shaan Puri	"Devin Booker is going to call you. That's the dream."
39:04	Ben Levy	"The dream is that Devin Booker is gonna call and FaceTime me one day and be pretty fired. Hey."
39:08	Shaan Puri	"I heard you bought that six-foot figurine of me."
39:10	Ben Levy	Yeah, exactly.</FormattedResponse>
39:11	Shaan Puri	"Do you wanna be friends?" "That's what you thought was gonna happen."
39:13	Ben Levy	I mean, that's a terrible dream now that I say it, but that's what I was hoping for.
39:17	Shaan Puri	Right, then a small part of you.
39:18	Ben Levy	And then I told my wife, "Yeah, so I got this thing coming in six months. I don't know when it's arriving, but it's from a buddy." Here's the good news: it's a six-foot-tall figurine. The even better news is that it was a gift. Unfortunately, I left out the fact that it was a $10,000 gift. It led me to my new take: everyone needs their Birkin bag. The idea is to empower everyone to make that crazy purchase — it makes absolutely no sense — and just call it a gift. Tell your wife it's a gift.
39:58	Shaan Puri	"Tell your wife it's a gift — it's a gift that I bought for myself." You know... I think you might be onto something. Collectibles is now a bigger and bigger space. One of the investments we missed on, which I think still kinda eats at us a little bit, is Whatnot [company]. We had the ability to invest in Whatnot pretty early on. We tried; the guy was like, "I don't know, there's not enough room in the round," and we didn't really push it. We were like, "Okay, well... we want to," and then we didn't really follow up. It's now... how much is Whatnot worth? I think, at the time, Whatnot was valued at $50 or $60 million. It seemed high.
40:34	Ben Levy	"I think it's $5,000,000,000 now." </FormattedResponse>
40:36	Shaan Puri	$5 billion. I think they just said they've done $5 billion in sales on their platform. If you don't know what Whatnot is, it's basically an app where you open a live video of someone opening a pack of Pokémon cards or NBA trading cards. You basically buy it: you push a button, use Apple Pay, and buy the pack. The host will be like, "Oh, Sean—alright Sean, you bought the pack, alright man, good luck." They open the pack live in front of you, show you what it is, and then they mail you the cards afterward. So you kind of shop live: they open the pack, you see it like a lottery—you see if you win or not—and then they mail you the item after the fact. It's kind of a crazy idea, but it's all collectibles, and they've sold $5 billion in the last, I don't know, twelve months or so. For some people it's Birkin bags. For some it's Pokémon cards. For some it's NBA trading cards. For you it might be a statue of Devin Booker. For your wife it might be an actual Birkin bag. I think the question is: who doesn't have their Birkin yet? Basically, what niche does it fill? We have a buddy who's going pretty hard at tech collectibles. He's trying to buy the original Macintosh or a piece of the first SpaceX Falcon—stuff that doesn't really have a market now; it just feels like random memorabilia. But I think over time tech has become so much more important in culture. Growing up, tech was a side thing, but now it's central: you get movies like The Social Network and everybody knows who these CEOs are—who Zuckerberg is, who Elon Musk is—they're some of the most followed people on the planet. I think tech collectibles are going to be a big thing. Our friend who's doing this—I'm jealous that they're doing it—because I think this is a smart idea.
42:26	Ben Levy	Yeah, I think that's a great idea, but I am curious: what's your working bag like? What—what did you buy, dude? That's insane.
42:36	Shaan Puri	> What's the definition here? So it's gotta be something that's totally irrational, right? It's not about the utility of the product. > > I mean, I bought a piano — I play the piano; it's an instrument. Yeah, I could have bought a cheaper one, but I bought a more expensive one. I think that doesn't count. > > I think it's also gotta be kind of status- or collection-driven. And I don't know if I'm a collector. I'm not a car guy. I'm not a watch guy.
43:02	Ben Levy	"You did buy a CryptoPunk, like, you know, three years ago."
43:05	Shaan Puri	"I did — I did, but I didn't buy it. I mean, we bought that as a marketing gag for Milk Road. We didn't really... it's not like I was like, 'Oh my God, I love the art.' It's never been a thing for me, yeah. You know what I would do? I would do it if musicians did their version of Birkins. So, like, if a musician was like, 'Hey, we have a one-of-one collectible' — maybe it's a recording, or it's a freestyle, or it's a variation of the song — and they're only going to sell one of them. You get to collect it as a piece of art. That's music. I would be pretty into that. I think that's pretty cool."
43:43	Ben Levy	"Maybe MFM needs to come with its own Birkin bag that we can offer the biggest MFM fans." </FormattedResponse>
43:50	Shaan Puri	"I'll have six with a statue of you, dude. Alright, what else you got? You got any other good ones? What's your best one—what's your best idea? Okay."
43:58	Ben Levy	I think my best idea... I've got a bunch of good ones, but I'll give you a great one. So, I think—yeah—I've been thinking a lot about when you're post-economic, which I am not, but I hope to be at some point in the future. </FormattedResponse>
44:11	Shaan Puri	"The defined 'post-economic' — what does that mean? People don't know that." </FormattedResponse>
44:14	Ben Levy	You know, basically, if you've made over $10 million and you don't have to work, what are you going to spend your time doing?
44:21	Shaan Puri	"I would say post‑economic is when you no longer make decisions based on money." That's both spending decisions — you decide what you want; the price doesn't really matter. This happens first at a small scale: you buy guac at Chipotle and you don't care that it's $2. Then it scales up: you can go to any restaurant and buy anything, go to any store and buy anything, and it just levels up from there. You travel first‑class and you don't even think about it. You travel private [jet] and you don't even think about it. Spending is one side. The other side is earning: you decide what to do with your time not based on how much money it's going to make you. To me, that's post‑economic. </FormattedResponse>
44:55	Ben Levy	Yeah, so once you're there you basically have all these nice things and you quickly get used to them. You move into a nicer house — after a week you totally freak; you just don't even, for lack of a better word, care. It's like, "Yeah, I'm used to it." You get a nicer car... I've been thinking about what actual experiences change what people want. I think when you're there, one, you want to feel pain again. You kind of want to go back to where you were when you were starting something — when everything was hard — and you want to feel pain. So my big idea is Survivor. We all, obviously, know what Survivor is: basically a month-long TV show where you go in the middle of nowhere and you have to compete. Imagine a world where we basically create an island where you have to pay $100 to go compete in a real-life Survivor. You get dropped in the middle of nowhere for a whole month. You pay $100 to be there, and the winner wins money. The whole idea is basically an actual Survivor that you pay to be on. All your friends and family can watch — it's livestreamed. It's purely for when those people are post-economic and they're sick and tired of flying all over the world, sick and tired of staying at random hotels. It's just not that interesting. Go back to square one and go beyond Survivor.
46:17	Shaan Puri	You know, I think when you first said it I was like, this sounds kinda dumb. But actually, we have so many friends who sell their company and immediately start training for Ironman races or triathlons. If you want to get in great shape—like for an ultra race where you're going to run 50 or 100 miles—marathoners and ultra-racers are in good shape in one dimension, but it's not actually good for your body. They end up with shin splints and kind of destroying their bodies. They don't get in very good aesthetic shape; you don't put on muscle—you kind of skinny yourself out. They do it because they want to do something hard. You feel alive, you feel tough, you have a story to tell, and you challenge yourself. Voluntary hardship—cold plunges are the same. That's a "voluntary hardship" that you get to show. I actually think you're right that a number of people would sign up for a combination: it's a digital detox because you won't have your phone or internet—you'll be totally disconnected. It's hard, so you get that hardship experience without having to train to run a long race. I think it's a transformative, rite-of-passage type of thing, which people need more and more now that the whole world is so easy. You push a button and someone will literally deliver a platter of nachos to your door from DoorDash. Life has never been easier in one sense, which creates a craving for hard. If hard is not natural, then you have to create an artificial hard, and I think that's what this is. I think that's why people like David Goggins and Jocko Willink—people gravitate toward that stuff because there's some itch they're trying to scratch. It seems like you're saying: here's a version of that—pay $50 or $100 and you're going for, what did you say, 30 days?
48:15	Ben Levy	Yeah — 30 days. That's all it takes.
48:18	Shaan Puri	30 days, and you have to survive with just your own bare necessities on an island.
48:24	Ben Levy	Yeah, and you know, this works. You can take it to other franchises too, right? It's like Love Island — it's like, "don't go on Match" [the dating app].</FormattedResponse>
48:29	Shaan Puri	"Oh—use matchmaking, actually. Just branded as part of the game, as part of the show. Is that what you're saying?"
48:36	Ben Levy	I'm just saying: you take all these popular reality TV shows, and people just go pay to have their own versions of them, because it's better than...
48:45	Shaan Puri	Dude, Love Is Blind. I swear I can't believe there's not a Love Is Blind tour going around city to city where people who are single and watch Love Is Blind are like, "Alright, I want to do it. I want to go on the pods. I'm going to meet somebody that way." They'd spend basically three or four days doing this, then come out and date that person. Trim the marriage part, because that's the drama for TV that doesn't make any sense — like, "Oh, we propose and we have to get married in 20 days." You could take that part out. But just the pods experience: if I was single, I would want to do that. That's kind of an insane idea. I can't believe that's not on tour.
49:20	Ben Levy	I mean... for real-life Survivor, I'd pay $100 right now to go there. It was basically just like, "Hey."
49:26	Shaan Puri	"You don't pay the $100, I could just drop you off somewhere, dude, and I'll pick you up in thirty days." </FormattedResponse>
49:30	Ben Levy	Yeah, I think—like, reality TV done well is a great idea for people who want to pay for it. </FormattedResponse>
49:38	Shaan Puri	Yeah. It creates the desire and the curiosity: "Could I do it? How would I do it?" If you just made that accessible to people—yeah, for sure. People would want to do that. And, by the way, is this... are you saying this is a business? What are you saying here?
49:53	Ben Levy	"I'm saying it's a fun, fun—maybe it's a business. Maybe it could be like the new Tough Mudder. It's like, back in the day when Tough Mudder was pretty big. Maybe it could be the new Tough Mudder: just a five- to ten-day experience."
50:07	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, yeah. Well, I think you gotta bring the price down. I mean, $100,000 is really—it's very high. I think, really, if you did this for $10,000, this might work. Not to cheapen your idea, but I feel like you could get some scale with this thing. Because what does it cost you to run it? It's like you just need a medic, and then there could be 20 people doing this together. They could live as a tribe. In fact, it's probably better as a tribe and not you on your own, right?"
50:34	Ben Levy	"Yeah, it's probably way better—like your five friends as a tribe in there."
50:38	Shaan Puri	"Are you doing the whole thing? Are you voting people off, or no — it's just 30 of survival?"
50:41	Ben Levy	No, you're voting people off. I think you got—oh.
50:43	Shaan Puri	It's the whole thing. Okay. Gotcha.
50:45	Ben Levy	I think it's the whole thing.
50:47	Shaan Puri	You got some more on here? So let's do Cool Carpal Tunnel brand. Oh — I know what this is. </FormattedResponse>
50:56	Ben Levy	Yeah, so...
50:57	Shaan Puri	Ben — put your hands up right now if you're on YouTube. Right now he's not wearing this glove. I've never seen Ben's right hand because every time I get on a call with him he's wearing this "Michael Jackson" glove — this absolute "OJ strangler" glove — on his right hand at all times. It's because he had a carpal tunnel issue, so he just wears it all day.
51:19	Ben Levy	Honestly, I don't even know if I have carpal tunnel anymore. I'm just used to wearing the glove, and I like the fit. I'm like, "Oh, you know, people make cool batting gloves for baseball."
51:27	Shaan Puri	It's just my thing now.</FormattedResponse>
51:28	Ben Levy	You know... now we just need cool—cool gloves for working. Where's the cool "carpal tunnel" brand?
51:34	Shaan Puri	So, okay... I just want to explain this: you started having pain, you Googled how to fix it, and this came up.
51:42	Ben Levy	I mean, I think it's like one of those WebMD things. One day I was like, "Oh, my hand feels kind of weird when I'm typing — maybe I've got bad form." Then you just go down this whole thing and start watching YouTube videos about, "Oh, maybe I have carpal tunnel." Then I went to Amazon and I probably spent $500 on fifty pairs of these gloves, which I now wear every day.
52:03	Shaan Puri	We were talking about Touchland the other day with Harley from Shopify. The thing about Touchland is they took a very boring, sterile category — hand sanitizer — and the founder rebranded and remade it into something kinda sexy, kinda cool, that smelled good. They started collaborating, made the designs look good, began branding with Disney and others, and licensed the IP. I think about, like, all kinds of braces. Basically, the things you were talking about: your wrist brace, your wrist glove. I have a knee thing. There are arm sleeves. A lot of people wear these because they have pain — plantar fasciitis, knee pain, elbow pain, wrist pain, frozen shoulder, whatever it is. All of those are very ugly and very sterile-looking, similar to hand sanitizer. You're probably right that somebody could just make a cooler brand in that space and charge more for it. I mean, it is fashion — it doesn't have to be ugly. It's a thing you're wearing; why not make it look better and see what comes out of that?
53:12	Ben Levy	Yeah, I mean... I think it's a—no, I think it's a no-brainer. Again, I kinda want to hide this glove when I wear it, but no—hey, I think it's a no-brainer.
53:20	Shaan Puri	Yeah, but... I don't know what glove would look cool on you. What would I do to that glove to make it not look like you're wearing the "Michael Jackson" glove? I don't really know. If it was a different color, would that really change anything? It's hard to say.
53:32	Ben Levy	"I think it needs Johnny Ive. Like, you know, if we had $5 billion, we could get Johnny Ive on it."
53:40	Shaan Puri	"Alright, what else should we talk about?"
53:41	Ben Levy	I've got one more that I think we should hit. At the top of this episode we were talking about how I went to K Academy. I basically went and spent a week at Duke basketball [camp], competed really hard, and Coach K was there the whole time. He sits there — he doesn't talk much — but he does give two or three speeches. He said one thing in his speech that I wrote down because I thought it was really good. He actually said two things: one of them is part of the half-baked idea, and the other was just interesting. He said, "At Duke we pursue moments," which I wrote down because I think... it's really, you know — basically he's like: everything's a moment. I want to hold these moments that are awesome. So when I kind of took that and said, "Alright, I want to pursue moments," I think that's...
54:23	Shaan Puri	A "cool moment"—that sounds cool. What do you really mean by pursue moments? What's an example of that?
54:29	Ben Levy	I think it's basically just: be present. You're looking for very, very specific things and remember those things. But also [someone] was just like, "Oh, it sounds cool — it's a cool thing to tell."
54:42	Shaan Puri	My mom taught me to pursue moments. I think about that a lot—whether it's with my kids or... you know. "You're going to do a business for five years—that's a long time." If I probably just told myself that, I'd say, "Alright, I'm just trying to pursue this moment. What's the moment I'm trying to pursue?" Or, if I'm in the moment, really pursue it: really go for it, lean into it. I think I kinda like that. Alright—I mean, I buy that.
55:06	Ben Levy	Go ahead. The second part was about how he worked with Kobe. He was telling the story about how he made Kobe cry before they played in that USA gold medal game in 2008 when they beat Spain. He was talking about how he motivated him. At this K Academy, everyone there is like an ex-Duke player—there are fifty ex-Duke guys just walking around that you can talk to. I went and asked five of them, “What was Coach K so good at? What was he a-plus-plus at?” Everyone just said motivation. I know you're a motivation guy—I'm aware you're a Tony Robbins disciple—and everyone talks about how he made these incredible custom videos. So I thought: what if, before this game, he's going to bring me in and have this custom thing he built just for me to focus on my hustle or my intensity? I had this idea: "Coach K in a box." With AI, could you essentially make something that produces custom motivational videos based on all these inputs—exactly what you need today? Like, if I wore this device and it knew everything about me, I could say, “I just want a custom motivational video right now for this workout I'm about to do” or “for the sales call I'm about to take.” That's the idea: "Coach K in a box." I know you have a bunch of thoughts—let me hear them.
56:36	Shaan Puri	When I was at Duke, my roommate Trevor was trying to walk onto the basketball team. He ended up being the last guy cut, so he didn't get on the team, but he was a manager for the team for a few years. He would tell me all the time about Coach K — what he was doing and all that. I had the same question you did: this guy's the, I think, the all-time winningest college basketball coach. He was the men's Olympic basketball coach for a long time. Okay, he's the goat. I wanted to know what makes this guy so great because I want to learn from the goats. Trevor told me, "Dude, he would do this stuff in the locker room." I thought when a coach gives a motivational talk they walk in and say, "Alright, everybody listen up. We got a big game. Are you gonna give it your all?" I thought it was something like that. But no — here's how it worked. Before Coach K entered the room, they dimmed the lights and turned on the big screen in the locker room. It would be an edited video — basically a spliced piece that was like, say, footage from the last time they played this team, intercut with scenes from Braveheart: the speech, the war scenes, spliced in with the game. It was kinda cheesy, but in the moment that stuff hit hard — the music, the splicing, the speech, the footage of you. At the end, Coach K literally came out face-painted like Braveheart, rolled a ball onto the ground. Coach K was old — in his seventies, had double hip replacements — and he would dive on the ball. The ultimate sign of hustle in basketball is diving for a loose ball, and he would run into the locker room face-painted, dive onto the ball, screaming, and be like, "Let's fucking go, kill these guys right now!" People were like, "Whoa." It was total shock value, and he would really light into them. Two years ago, when we did our basketball camp — the one you and I do called Hoop Group, where we take 25 or 30 of the most ambitious founders we know (lots of them love to play basketball) — we visited Duke and played in Cameron Indoor Stadium. We asked one of the ex-players, who is now a coach, for a great Coach K story. He told us this: He was on the team and a captain. He had a bad game and expected Coach K to maybe rip into him at practice the next day. But Coach K didn't say anything during practice. Afterwards, he called the player into the film room — the room where they review game footage. The room had six or eight TV screens. The player walked in and his face was on every single screen. It was just him and Coach K in there. It was basically a slideshow of his facial expressions from the last game: him whining, "I didn't get that call," "I missed that shot," being bummed about it, being taken out of the game, showing bad body language. In the second half he was having a bad game, so he checked out during the team huddle. Then he fouled a guy, disagreed with a call, and was pouting, waving his hands like, "Oh, come on, man." They froze that on the screen. Coach K looked at him and said, "If I ever see the palms of your hands again, you will never play for this team again." He told him, "You're a captain. You're a man. You're a leader. Leaders don't look like this. They don't beg and whine and pout. You need to carry yourself like a leader. I don't care what you do — I don't care if the ball goes in or not — but you will not act like this again." The player said that line burned into his skull and he would never act that way again. I thought that was an incredible story. Whenever I ask people, "What's it like to work with Elon or Steve Jobs?" I'm looking for a story like this — something they actually did that was different, something I would never think to do but that makes sense when they do it and actually shifts how someone operates and works. I couldn't believe that story. Do you remember that one?
01:01:32	Ben Levy	Yeah, it's insane. And that's—like—that's what I want. I'm like, "Okay, he's a good motivator, but tell me the stories that he'd—like, I wanna..." I'm like, "Oh, we should just go write a book where you go get 25 Coach K stories that are just about how he motivates, because it's insane."
01:01:47	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. And also, it kinda makes you think: damn—I wouldn't even think to do that. I mean, there's no rule against something like that, but it just feels against the norms. As you build up your own credibility, it's almost like you lean into that power and basically use your credibility. He could kinda say anything, do anything crazy, and get away with it because he's Coach K. I guess there's a method to the madness. I wonder if he was doing that stuff early on, and if he got more bold about it as he went along. But I'm with you, dude—if I had a Coach K in my life, I'd be good. I don't know if I could do the motivational speech, because I think part of it is you need the b-roll to be me—like the b-roll of me just typing emails, writing a document. I don't think there's anything you could play, even "Fort Miner," on that track; it's not gonna do anything for me.
01:02:43	Ben Levy	It might.
01:02:46	Shaan Puri	I don't know.
01:02:47	Ben Levy	Yeah, and also there was this one story. A few years ago the Heat had that miraculous run to the Finals, and I specifically remember this moment where Bam Adebayo was up there at the end. They were interviewing him because he was the Eastern Conference Finals MVP, and he got on the mic and said: > "Dude, dude, Donis Haslam had this insane video for us that changed how we approach Game Seven when they beat the Celtics." I spent the past two years trying to figure out what that video was. At this camp—the last thing about K Academy—I went up to Justice Winslow, who played for the Heat, and I asked, "Dude, what did the Heat do to motivate—what was in that video?" He said, "I wasn't on the team then, but I could text some guys," and then told me: > "But I'll tell you now: it is exactly like the thing you heard from Coach K. It's gonna be something so custom. It's gonna be Braveheart. It's gonna be Fort Minor. It's gonna be like they're pulling out all the stops." And ever since then I'm like, "Dude, I just wanna, next Hoop Crew, I just wanna experience that for like ten minutes. That's my only ask, you know."
01:03:53	Shaan Puri	"That's too good. I love that story." "Yeah — I really love that story. It's in my hall of fame of motivational stories." "What else you got? Do you want to do anything else, or are we going to wrap up?"
01:04:08	Ben Levy	Let's see. I think—we should wrap on one final thing, which is: earlier you were talking about Club LTV, which is awesome. I think we had 150–200 people in it back in the day, meeting once every other week to talk business and meet each other. I think we should bring that thing back in some way. What do you think?
01:04:27	Shaan Puri	Okay, so, what would we do? I don't think we need to do the e-commerce version of it anymore. Here’s my thesis — “thesis” is a very fancy word for what I'm about to say, so let me bring that expectation down. MFM has roughly a million people who listen to it. Maybe not all regularly, but that's kind of our reach: a million people who are all entrepreneurial. They're what I call “entrepreneurs with a sense of humor.” I think we attract people who are entrepreneurial and have a sense of humor. I'm never going to meet all those people. Honestly, I don't really want to meet a million people — that's not my goal. However, the top 1% of our audience is a fascinating group. They're very interesting: CEOs of public companies, some dude in Wichita who runs a $40,000,000 chemicals plant, a guy with a tutoring business side hustle, and a bunch of other interesting people in that top 1%. What would be dope is if we did Club LTV again. That was your thing — a curated group. I think that's key because you want everybody in there to be someone you're happy to have met. Take the top 1% of MFM listeners and basically do what we did before: a happy-hour, speed-dating kind of format. Meet once a month roughly. Ben puts people in groups; you talk with a specific prompt; then he shuffles the groups. In an hour you'll meet a bunch of cool people and learn one or two things. I think that would be awesome — we should bring that back. By the way, people might not know: Club LTV stands for “lifetime value” — the key metric in e-commerce. We made it Club LTV as a gimmick of a name. The funny thing was Ben would always create moments to make it fun: custom Zoom backgrounds, an intro that felt like a nightclub, even cameo intros (like DJ Khaled) played for the whole group at the beginning. It was awesome and a lot of fun. I still remember that, and I think we should keep doing those things.
01:06:54	Ben Levy	I think we had Method Man and Redman, too — I think.
01:06:58	Shaan Puri	Yeah, every time there was some washed-up rapper who would hype the shit out of us for the first 30 seconds of the thing. Ben's just burning, like, $500 on cameos to make that happen.
01:07:10	Ben Levy	Yeah, man. I mean, to me it's like when you meet someone who also likes MFM — even for me, and for you too — it's like, "Oh, I like this guy," or "I like this woman," or "I like this girl." I mean, when you actually meet them, you like that person.</FormattedResponse>
01:07:23	Shaan Puri	No, I know what you mean. We're not for everybody. So if you like it, the odds of you getting along with somebody else who really likes the podcast are pretty high. It's kind of like one of those things where, if two people were wearing the hat, you would do the nod and be like, "Okay—we're sure we would have a pretty fun hangout if we hung out." That's kind of the idea here.
01:07:41	Ben Levy	Yeah, and it's not Hampson. It's not a group. It's just very lightweight—meet some other cool people, you know, and get to know the other people's names.
01:07:48	Shaan Puri	And it's free, by the way — it's not a paid thing. So what do you want? How do you want people to apply? You're going to curate the group, so what do you want people to do and how should they do it?
01:07:58	Ben Levy	Let's see.
01:07:59	Shaan Puri	Should we put a link at the... Just put a link at the—let's put a...
01:08:01	Ben Levy	"Link in the description."
01:08:03	Shaan Puri	"Alright. If you want to do it—if you think you're in that top 1% of interesting, fun MFM listeners, put yourself down there and tell us, tell us who you are. Then Ben will kind of curate a good group every—every month for us."
01:08:14	Ben Levy	Alright. If you want to follow me on Twitter: Ben M Levy. I don't tweet much, but I will DM you.
01:08:20	Shaan Puri	Why would someone follow you? When was your last tweet, dude? It was, like, in 2018. It's been...
01:08:25	Ben Levy	A long time. It's been a long time.
01:08:29	Shaan Puri	So that's— that's Ben. Thanks for coming on, dude. I'm gonna talk to you probably right after this because that's what we do. I call you after every podcast, so I'll see you in a second.
01:08:37	Ben Levy	Alright. Thanks, guys.
01:08:53	Shaan Puri	Hi.

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The Framework Behind 9 “Lucky” $1M Business Hits

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