What’s truly going on inside DOGE?

Dude this Vault this giant filing cabinet is worth more than Snapchat it's worth more than Pinterest it's worth more than Twitter as a company isn't that [Music] crazy all right we're going to get a little current eventy which we don't often but I love current events so I want to talk about a current event so was it last night Elon did this thing Where he was like in Trump's office with like kid like crawling all over him climbing up on him which is kind of funny and he told this story about uh a mine where

all the government files were did you hear what he said I didn't hear what he said I saw a photo of this place like underground somebody said uh oh it's the bureaucratic gring gots from Harry Potter it's like this underground bank vault so Elon said something that I feel like it was like an off-handed Comment but it actually led me down the Rabbit Hole basically they were asking him about how he was like getting rid of all these jobs and he was like yeah I want to like actually retire more people but I was told

that I can only retire 10,000 people a month and I was asking well why is that and he said well because all the retirement paperwork is manual meaning it's literally on paper and it's written down on a piece of paper and then it goes down a mine There's literally a limestone mine where all the paperwork for retire people who want to retire is where it's stored and so in in order to actually make this work the speed that we can move the limiting factor is the speed at which the line shaft elevator can actually move

down like go and and you hear this story and you're like what the hell are you talking about man and so I went down a rabbit hole and I had to figure this out so can I tell you a little story About not just this mine but this whole company that operates yes around this so basically in the 1920s there is this guy who grew mushrooms and and in I guess in order to grow mushrooms in the part of America where he was growing mushrooms he had to grow them in a cave and so he

was uh the Mushroom King of America at one point he was the largest Creator or grower of mushrooms in America he was this German immigrant and he was kind of like this like funny guy where like his Advertisements he called himself the Mushroom King whatever and he had to rent a cave and grow mushrooms and eventually he bought a cave and that's where he grew mushrooms and this cave that he bought was massive it was a huge cave and for some reason starting in the 1950s post World War II those damn Europeans started undercutting them

and started selling cheaper mushrooms and he was like my mushroom business is going to go under I This is not going to work I got to figure out what to do and so he bought a bank vault door that was $20,000 in 1950 and he installed it in his cave he took out the mushrooms and he installed this bank vault door and he went to a local bank and was like hey you guys have a lot of paperwork you've got a lot of files that you have to store I have the safest place on Earth

to store the this paperwork you want to like make a make a business deal and so he changed his Business and he started this thing called Iron Mountain and it was called Iron Mountain because it was literally in like a uh a mine that was like they would use the I don't know how this all works but they would use like the the rocks to make like iron and he grew this thing like crazy and so basically this company it's called Iron Mountain Google Iron Mountain Market cap Iron Mountain Inc is a $30 billion company

wow all right so I have this notebook Here and the reason I have here is I take notes whenever we have a guest not because it's my job and I'm a podcast host but because a lot of times what the guests are talking about it's just so interesting to me as a human I just want to go and like implement it in my business or my life and the person I took the most notes for was Jesse ller if you haven't heard that podcast it's the best like it legitimately changed my life and so I

thought let's share our Notes and so with the help of the team at HubSpot we went and took all of the notes from that episode and we turned it into a 10 page document you can download it for free it changed my life that episode I think it might change yours so check it out the link is below in the description again notes with Jesse ller down below so this company I looked it up since the year 2000 they have created a billion dollars at least or roughly per Year in free cash flow and they

now own something like I think it was something like 80 million square feet of storage and so they have everything so it could be like Princess Diana's will is in there but it's like uh Sony the the Music Company Sony the record label Sony has all of their masters recordings like literally like the the tape stored in Iron Mountain but their biggest customers is like uh it's like an insurance company in Connecticut who Been in business for 100 years they for some reason legal reasons they have to keep their paper files they have to save

them for something like 75 years this is nuts dude so so they're just a giant they're just like a physical Vault for documents it says inter Enterprise Information Management Services founded in 1951 so it's just a giant Vault and they're like we will protect your files we'll protect your paperwork exactly but it's huge so literally they have caves And he like would joke that it's an atomic bomb shelter but that wasn't really a joke they actually have a whole bunch of decommissioned atomic bomb structures as their vaults and so and they do this because if

you um uh if you are like for example WWE is one of their customers and they have every single time they've literally like physically filmed a fight like a like a an event match the match they store it and they have all these tapes which is like Sounds like okay that's just like a small example but they have other examp examples where 8-year-old me would have broke in there so excited to just go to the Vault of all WWE matches ever yeah but they also have like billions of dollars worth of art so if you're

a a museum and you have extra art that you need to store you're going to go to Iron Mountain because you know it's like real like safe it's one place or they have a bunch of these they have dozens and Dozens of places so I think they have why caves like don't caves literally like cave in like why why not just a building what's wrong like building with guys with guns why not because it uh uh it has a low moisture so it's like it's like it's good for paper and a bunch of reasons like

that but it's also like literally safe so like a cave is actually uh you know I don't know how this works but it's actually safer in terms of like they being an earthquake Or there being an atomic bomb when someone just gives me one scientific fact like just like a a minor if you were just like yeah the humidity coefficient is is lower I all right all right I don't need to hear more like I'm just like so STIs as long as I know there's any scientific basis for something I'll just accept it the argument

in full it's the uh there was a Harvard study uh that's it has the same effect on me exactly it's and I was Reading this and it was by the New Yorker and there was like all like it it it was hard to comprehend how like epic this thing is now so this is the thing that stores the government stuff or no separate business yes so let's get to the government stuff so he said there's I think he said uh there's he goes there's a limestone mine where this is all stored so he kind of

like dismissed it because it was a mine but that's actually important but the federal Government is a customer of Iron Mountain and so here's how this works this part is absolutely insane so starting in the 1950s of the 1960s uh the federal government became a customer of Iron Mountain and to this day it basically operates the exact same way and so right now the federal government is retiring around 100,000 people a year and when let's say you work for the FBI or some agency Federal agency the the Postal Service whatever and you need to Retire

because of 100 plus years of laws there's a lot of complications and so when you retire you're supposed to get a pension let's round numbers of $100,000 a year but some people might get 98,000 some people might get 108,000 and the reason they will is because let's say this federal employee was a cafeteria worker uh for a federal agency that requires a different set of rules let's say this person was a retired vet let's say this person was uh an amputee There's like a million rules about what what you are going to be earning after

you retire however this is all done on paperwork so every single federal employee they and not just the current ones but the past ones they have a manila envelope in this mine in Pennsylvania that Iron Mountain runs and so when you want to retire you have to file a piece of paperwork like you literally write up on a piece of paperwork you give it to your boss at Your federal agency the federal agency has to mail it to the mountain or to the mine in PA and it takes roughly 60 days because one of the

600 employees at this mine needs to physically have the file in hand needs to walk to your file in the mountain which this mountain is 200 football fields or 200 Acres they have to literally hand like by hand go and get that file and they got to look at your file and they got to say all right Sean um looks like 65 it looks like oh He actually retired at 59 years old then he came back so that gets a different thing uh turns out he served in the Iraq War so he gets a this

thing this thing this thing and then they close the file and they put it back and they send paperwork back to your agency to let them know here's what Shawn is going to be paid for his pension fund and that process takes something like 90 days to do that whole thing and since uh since the 1980s they have spent hundreds of Millions it's approaching billions of dollars to digitize this it's failed every time and The New Yorker in 2004 wrote this amazing article they're like we tried it in 1980 we trying it now we tried

it in 1995 why does fail what what why why can't they digitize too much or it gets rejected what it's a huge it's a huge task but this mountain it's in rural Pennsylvania and these Pennsylvania folks they they were literally Mine Workers like that that That's what they were this mine when it was an active mine so it's like generations of miners who are now doing this thing so it's not like these 600 employees aren't exactly like computer experts they're like physical laborers so they don't exactly have like the labor there to do it but

also just the bureaucracy the same thing that happened with uh when Obama launched uh was it healthcare.com or whatever like it's just really hard within a government Within the four years that a president is President to make this massive change and so this mind and nobody and you're not going to get huge pat on the back for like digitizing this process you know what I mean and the people who work at the M they interviewed a couple of them they were like it's a pretty Miser miserable place to work in the winter time when we

arrive at work we're there when it's dark uh and then when we come home at night it's still dark and you Can't have a flame in the mind so all of the food has to be delivered for us every day and it's like fried food or pizza that's like our two vendors um but they let you have unlimited overtime if you if you want and it's an 8 to five uh n or 8 to five job and uh no one leaves like the retention is 100% they're like it's just a good stable job these guys

need a podcast I need I want to be listening to Iron Mountain pod where they're just just these miners just Talking about about paperwork and eating pizza it's like an ASMR channel of the Limestone mine and The New Yorker did an article and they like were talking to these people and they were like if you guys want to see taxpayer waste you should see what happens when a federal worker retires goes back to work and then retires again he goes uh one guy they interviewed they go I'm working on a case now that's taking me

120 days to figure out how much uh pension this Worker is owed and it's just a nightmare and so it's like literally a physical labor job to walk around and find all these this mining company is this this Vault this this giant filing cabinet is worth more than Snapchat it's worth more than Pinterest it's worth more than Twitter as a company isn't that crazy the $3 billion company and the retention might be better and here's why it might be better here so so it is better I guarantee listen Workday workday is a piece of software

I've never I don't think maybe I've used it but like the thing about work workday is considered like a dinosaur software company right it's like or let's say ADP like these payroll softwares that a lot of huge companies have and they they're regarded as a sticky product but the issue with that is that you a worker as well as management you interact with that product every day so you're like this [ __ ] sucks So eventually you Might get pissed off and want to change it with Iron Mountain a a bank by law has to

keep these files on on and say they go hey we're going to give this to you guys and they'll never talk to him again for the next 50 years dude should we open up a drawer like should we just go havies on a single drawer in Iron Mountain and just start saving like hateful YouTube comments in there just have one one little one little station they told a story about this mine they Said there was some rich Anonymous person this old lady who had like $100 million worth of Art and she once a year would

go down to the mine and bring a blanket and cheese and wine and would just sit and look at her art I just be like this is awesome and uh that was in the article that she did that um crazy company right this freaking Iron Mountain really really fun find I'm glad you found that um also hilarious that you started with let's Start with current events and then you started talking about this old file storage system from like the 1950s and that's where you went with this uh this information did you see photos of it

yeah I saw I saw the one photo now I'm looking at more and it's pretty um pretty wild dude it's just like I mean it makes sense now that you say it now that you explain it it makes sense it's just who knew who knew that this is how this is how it all works now there's Like digital versions of this um I forget what one some of the guys in the space are but uh like they were like Iron Mountain was like hey are you guys nervous about digital and they like dismiss it they're

like dude you don't know how much like crap people need to store like we're going to be fine uh like it's going good and so if you look at their financials it's just like consistently like a billion dollar Plus a free cash flow just every year dud This is how my wife treats my kids art she like created her own Iron Mountain in our house it's just disgusting all right so um you brought up current events and then you said something that was totally not a current event but there was other current events that are

actually I'm just curious give me your 1 to 10 level of interest in these you may you may I I have a feeling you might not be interested in these Elon offering $97 billion to buy open AI did that tickle You eight out of 10 the El stuffff is is like inherently incredibly interesting at the moment right okay eight out of 10 uh let's rank this one um Elon doing crashing the press conference in Donald Trump's o Donald Trump's Oval Office that was that a 10 that's and by the way I bet it's not even

for the content just for the uh social Dynamic of him standing behind Trump and just just overtaking the press conference is that right that's my guess is that what you Want to talk about well there's there's one other I want to get your read on Doge as a whole uh nine nine or 10 yeah let's go in that order okay okay so start at 10 yeah so you sent me a text last night and you sent uh you said uh rule number one never outshine the master Elon Musk and you're referring to the 48 Laws

of Power uh how to be powerful you never outshine your master Elon Musk 100% outshined Donald there that was so emasculating to have Donald Just sitting there and elon's standing up sort of behind him like he was going to come and put his arm like his hands on his shoulders you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah D he hijacked the press conference and just started giving his own speech a wordy speech while his kid is there rambling also and Trump is just sitting there like a goon uh at the table and it was just

so interesting I never seen anyone who's not the President give their own press conference from the Oval Office while the president sits there forget what they were even talking about just that was like whoa hold on this is like uh you know like if you watch The Bachelor sometimes they do a two-on-one date it's like whoa hold on it's that a one-on-one it's a two-on-one oh there's going to be some drama here that's how it felt it felt like a bachelor 2on one goes going on when Elon told the story of Iron Mountain uh Trump

like looked back at him and he goes huh no [ __ ] really like he was like like he was learning like he was being entertained at that moment as well do you know what I mean I also love how Trump sometimes just like well we're going to send Elon in elon's going to go in he's going to he's going to do great things he does great things and he's just like that'll be the plan but honestly that's actually not a bad plan it's like if I was going To say one thing it's like we're

going to send Michael Jordan on the court and he's going to shoot he's a great shooter it's like that's kind of what he does with things he's like we're gonna send Elon in there he's going to take care of things that was a actually a really good Trump impression I mean I didn't fully commit I do I do regret that I didn't fully commit because it kind of started off pretty hot and if I had really gone for it I maybe I would have surprised Myself but I'll never know and I'll live with that regret

till I die I thought it was pretty good I it was a very that had a lot of promise there uh what about the Doge stuff in general I have a I have a very opinionated take do you I have a big picture take and then I have just like small things that I wish wish more stuff would come out from so here's my big picture take I cannot believe we're on this timeline so if you just rewind the clock Like a couple years ago here's what was going on I was reading this right doio

book did you ever read the Rio like I forgot what it's called rise and fall of Nations or something like that it's basically how Empires like fall right no Empire the the title scared me and I was like I just kind of want to be ignorant but I read his first one principles and I know that he comes off historically is a pessimist right no no no he's a realist I don't know he's he's just an Observer of of how things are so if you're going to watch one thing by the way watch he's got

this thing called the the economic machine works it's a 20 or 30 minute YouTube video which sounds long but it's amazing um it's an animated video where he just explains how the economy Works in a way that even a you know boo like me could understand and it's it's it's amazing go watch that like you should just pause this podcast and go watch that think it's called how The economic Machine Works the Bridgewater office by the way is literally 1.5 miles from my house if you want to go and just talk to him sure we

just walk right in yeah we absolutely should so he wrote the book about the rise and fall of Nations and he basically talks about like he studied all the empires the Dutch Empire the Roman Empire the Chinese Empire and basically why do the empires end why don't they just keep going they have all The advantages they got the power they got the best military they got the best economy they have the growing population like where do things go wrong and he saw that over time things go wrong in a very predictable cyclical fashion and um

and then because he studied history he could see that okay even if it's not going to be the same it's probably going to rhyme I should look out for some of these signs and you know one of the signs that he talks about is around um uh uh the Big debt cycle so there's like a short-term debt cycle there's a long-term debt cycle which like 80 to 100e debt cycle and what happens is you know the uh countries or Empires will end up going into um too much debt which the US is in right now

like $35 trillion of debt like just an absurd number and then the interest payments are really high then because people lose faith in their ability to pay off that debt um you know they lose at some point their Status is the global Reserve currency blah blah blah okay so Ray Dalia makes this argument it's a interesting book you should read it now does he mention uh mukbang where on the timeline is do you know what mukbang is listening to people eat right watching and listening to people eat incred fat people just stuff their face with

Ramen yeah it's like a governmental mukbang is what he describes does he mention uh when the decline is when uh Mukbang gets popular there were signs so so as he's talking about this it's like oh okay [ __ ] you look at the kind of the current world you're like oh [ __ ] uh we got inflation but then you know to fight inflation they got to raise rates when they raise rates that slows down the economy which slows down spending which creates this other problem then you get stagflation you get like all these oh

man this could go Poorly right oh they're printing too much money that could hurt the the dollars you know they're debasing the currency that's what he says that they do this is what's going to happen and it just seemed inevitable the problem was you looked at you like but who's going to go and fix this right it's not like a company because a company has to Face Reality so what a company has to do is ultimately the company needs profits and needs the the shareholders are going to Demand that the company stop this excess spending

but the problem with the the government is the government can sort of go infinitely in debt until it can't it could just print money right like imagine if you or I just had a a little machine in the closet it's like well I could solve this problem with hard work cutting back tightening the belt you know or I could just go in the closet push this button I'll just do it this one time just this one time okay and Like that's what just kept keeps happening you go and you push the button you print the

money and so um so that's the problem okay and it just seemed like there was no solution to this because anybody who wanted to get elected right the leader first the leaders were not business people right so problem number one the people who run the country were lifelong politicians typically and they were not CEOs or Executives who had that as their core skill set the second thing Is they didn't have the incentive right cuz when you want to get elected it's like Middle School all over again you're got to go promise we're going to have

free pizza every Friday it's like where's who's going to pay for that I don't care I just got to say it and promise it we'll deal with the consequences because that's what gets me elected so the presidency is is never about hey I'm going to cut back all your favorite programs it was always going to Be we're going to do more for you we're going to cut your taxes okay so less revenue for the government how's that going to work we're already in debt we we're going to cut your taxes and uh you know what

we're going to we're going to spend more on this we're going to invest in education that sounds great we're going to give you free health care we're going to pay off your student loans it's like wow we're just going to where's the money coming from and the money was Coming from that magic money printer in in the closet okay so it just seemed like dude there's no way there's no way out and somehow this insane situation has occurred I'm not saying that it's going to work and I'm not saying I agree with everything about these

people I don't agree with everything Trump says I don't even I didn't even vote okay look you can't even hate me okay I didn't vote for the guy I didn't vote for anybody so so you Can hate me for other reasons I don't agree with everything that Elan does but he's an impressive ultimately impressive uh entrepreneur I think he's the greatest entrepreneur of all time okay so but I also yeah don't think he I agree with I don't agree with everything he says great my caveats out of the way I cannot believe we ended up

on this timeline where Trump gets elected Elon Musk the greatest entrepreneur of all time and if even if you disagree okay He's second right like he's close um what when did Trump was it January 20th is that wait when or four was it 20th is inauguration yeah so less than a month ago okay three weeks ago and he brings Elon Musk in and basically like like he's still doing onboard if you just said what's the only way America can get out of this I'd be like dude we got to get like someone as smart as

Elon Musk in there with a mandate and somehow have a free mandate To actually go and cut all the bloat to get us out of this excess spending to cut the deficit to balance the budget to get us even into a surplus that's the only way we got to like somehow do that that sounded impossible two to three years ago like what there was no path where something he's not even an American citizen can't be president he's not going to run the president's not going to just give them free reign well somehow we ended up

in this 0.1% Probability timeline where Trump gets elected Elon becomes his bestie by backing him and giving a bunch of money and put throwing his weight behind him Elon stipulation was like I want to create Doge haha Doge uh and he's like I'm going to cut spending and Trump's like okay great and somehow it became cool to cut spending which was never cool before that and now he just took like this Army of his smartest most ruthless people it's not even Army it's 40 or 50 folks who are 20 four more just go get a

bunch of 10x type of people and he's he's literally like raing he's like raing buildings and he's taking over payment systems and being like okay you I can't change the laws but I could stop the flow of the money I could audit everything from this payment record system and he's bringing like young hackers in he's bringing some of his smartest people in he's doing this now will this be successful I have no idea I Can't tell you is this fascinating absolutely is this one of our only shots to get out of the death spot of

excess spending I believe so and I cannot believe it happened end of rant all right let me give you let me give the audience a Counterpoint and I'm going to get flam for this you're going Devil's avocado on me I'm going hardcore Devil's avocado on you no not exactly because I'm on board with like what a lot of the stuff he's doing but listen To this let's just say that you're 45 years old you got two kids in high school you got a mortgage and you're thinking like you know life's pretty good and then all

of a sudden you get a message that says look we appreciate you Diane for working for the government for so long but you're done you're you got to get out and you're thinking how the hell am I going to pay my mortgage how am I going to like provide for my kids you want to go to college and then you Look online to learn about your situation and you're like wait the guy who just decided to fire me changed his Twitter handle to Twitter to Harry balls and he put in his description that he's offering

circumcision for 69 and did he just call ay a [ __ ] on Twitter dude someone yesterday sent me an advanced search you knew your Twitter advanced search it was just like a a single link I could click that was just Elon Musk saying the word [ __ ] and bro You could scroll for days it was it was unbelievable it was an unbelievable link it's sort of like like uh a a really successful entrepreneur CEO doing layoffs because money short from his beautiful Chalet in Aspen with a beautiful view behind him on zoom and

for Elon I'm like do what you got to do but can you not be so smug about it and like have some like [ __ ] Grace when you're like doing some of these things even if those things are good and I Agree with them I just wish that like the maturity level would go up because at the end of the day it's cool for like these Tech Guys to say like cut them cut them Let's uh make the government smaller whatever but it's at the end of the days it is real people's lives and

half of these people they're not like hungry power people they're just [ __ ] guys who are working 9 to5 and they just want to play softball in the weekends you know what I mean and that that that Bums me out I wish that he would show a little Grace uh when he's slashing you know what I mean like I think you bring up great points I think his uh it's like I've been told many times you're not wrong but your delivery sucks what do they say in the big laas you're not wrong man you're

just an [ __ ] yeah that's that's like what's going on here so I think you're absolutely right on that I will say they did offer 8mth Severance I will also say this wasn't like an optional or flimsy like it's not like somebody's just messing around basically but that's what it seems when you changed it to Harry balls he made it seem like that you're absolutely right it seems like he's messing around the style is bad I think the substance is good the reality is the way that the government works is actually like a financial

terror attack On All American citizens and so as much as Diane I I don't like that Diane is is going to possibly lose her job the reality is she shouldn't have had that job probably in the first place or this old maybe not her specifically but the overall system is spending so much it is going to tank the entire economy like you look at all these crazy stats about how much of job growth is just federal jobs how much of spending is just going to federal employees it's like you know A a wormy like the

game of snake when you start to eat your own tail it doesn't even make any sense I'll give you I'm going to tell you something I have a friend who was at last year or two years ago they had an unlucky break they wanted this promotion or this job they didn't get it they didn't really know what to do didn't look like they had a had a great you know like upside I thought that they deserved a little bit better said let me see if I can help This person out and around this time I

had met some people that were some fat cats who were doing well with government contracts and I'm talking about like you know one company for example they just they a web web dev shop they made websites now they're a fat cat we got to bring that back great usage fat cat yeah exactly and what I mean by that is they were making websites which you can go on Fiverr and get a website for five bucks You can go on upwork and get somebody to do it for a couple hundred bucks you can go on Squarespace

and do it yourself you could there's a whole bunch of things you could do they're getting 192 million contracts to build simple websites it was unbelievable and and and there were multi-year contracts to do things that literally I have interns that could do them in three four days it was uh and these aren't like high traffic not complex apps not super sensitive data Just like a square informational websites very menu online yeah exactly so um started noticing this so I go to my friend and I say let's get you a government contract and I can't

say too much specific stuff we have a we got this friend a government contract to do something that probably takes four hours not even high skilled time you know not not anybody could do it my sister could do it my cousin could do it anybody could have got this contract it's been Going for two years and now it's a hilarious game of hide-and seek because I'm like yo doge is GNA find this contract and when Doge finds this contract they're going to publish this thing and be like we paid for this and I'm glad that

my friend got like you know a a great lifestyle however it's the what what is that thing called the free rider problem in society it's like uh I forgot there's Like some social term for this where it's like you you can abuse public parks and public transport because nobody's kind of like on the hook for it and like well I'll get mine I'll get mine and when everybody tries to get theirs we all get screwed where did your head go where your friend doesn't get the promotion and then the default response is let's get you

a government contract baby go to let's go to the government contract store just pick it off the Shelf and go check out D there's these side quests that um you know I'd been through this this podcast is great right you do this podcast and you meet people and you hear stories we were talking about we had done a segment on government contract businesses uh I think we had done a bus a thing because somebody I know had pivoted they used to have the episode I remember specifically was they used to be in the business of

making vodka bottles with LED lights so If it was like Sam's bachelor party it'd be like Sam last day of Freedom like ating around a vodka bottle that was their business Co hit and they pivoted their entire business to selling masks and got an 80 or 90 million contract yeah and this is somebody who lives less than a m friend who who did that and I was like oh my God can you believe that we talked about it on the podcast and I just had some people email me which is the flywheel of this podcast

and they Were like yeah dude like have you ever checked this out check this out you can go see what what's up for bid right now hey have you heard about this company have you heard about this company so I started getting curious now I was never going to do it right because I'm at a phase of my life where I am intentionally trying to not make any decisions for money so even when I saw something that I was like oh wow you could go make money doing that I no Longer want to be that

guy I was that guy for like 15 years I don't want to be that guy anymore if I make a decision it can't be for the for money as the number one reason but I did take note and I was like somebody could do that maybe somebody who's maybe top priority right now is money and so this little side quest was let's go help a friend I don't want to do this for me it wouldn't be worth it for me but it would totally be worth it to to like for the story and to See

if I could help my friend out and it's still going it's still going but dude every month and now that doge is out it's literally like a game a hide-and seek and I can hear the footsteps coming I know I know it's coming and it's going to be hilarious when it hits that's insane that is pretty funny what about the um the third thing the um this the so the uh the reasoning behind it like he has a reason for doing this which is that he's trying To explain what it is explain what it is

so people don't know so Elon uh so from my understanding uh uh open AI is a nonprofit they're trying to convert to a for-profit in order to do that Sam Alman as well as some of the shareholders have to quote buy the company um and what Elon has done is he's put a competing offer to buy the nonprofit of open AI in order to make Sam Alman as well as the other shareholders to have to pay more Is that the summary sort of he's not trying to buy the nonprofit he's trying to buy the assets

and same thing so basically open AI today is a nonprofit that how it started that's who you know has a lot of the IP then they created a four profit where the nonprofit owns I think 25% of the for-profit or they're they're trying to own 25% of the for-profit that would be like the the deal and um the for-profit has been raising billions and billions of dollars They just they were just trying to raise from Masa um and soft bank at a $250 billion billion 2lion valuation and so that implied that when they do this

conversion um or they sell they convert the ass they get the assets out of the nonprofit into the for-profit right the IP the the Intel the the the all the the code all that stuff uh the assets were valued I think at 40 billion in that that transition and it was going to be like stock basically it's like oh you're Going to have 25% ownership in the for-profit and what Elon did was just throw a wrench in that a little bit cuz he's like actually I'll I'll buy the assets for 90 whatever he said 97

billion so couple possibilities here number one he might actually get it it's possible that he could do it and then in that case he would own the assets of open AI merge it with xai and he would be he would go from fourth place to first place overnight that see I'm I'm Uneducated on the topic but I know a little bit about stories that just seems too that that won't Game of Thrones they're they're going to die before they do that okay yeah that story won't happen so he's so it's possible possible not probable yes

and it's possible not probable only because of the Egos and personalities involved Sam Alman would fight to the death to not have that happen that would be him losing and getting checkmated by Elon and Elon is Doing it because he wants to Checkmate Sam because he feels like he got wronged and betrayed because he funded the first 40s something um million dollars into opening ey when it was a nonprofit and he owns nothing of the for-profit today um would you put money on either of them winning you think they're or just like in terms of

just like the battle of the wits like a chess match or do you think that it's too hard to you you know when we watch those UFC pay-per-views And it's like sometimes you get the ones where it's just like oh I just want to see kabib do his thing he's gonna win but I just want to watch how and then there's other times where you're like I have no idea who's going to win this fight I have no idea you got the Unstoppable wrestler versus the guy who's amazing at Jiu-Jitsu and striking and like I

could totally see it going either way I got to pay $90 pay-per-view I got to watch this that's how this one Is because I agree for as many people say you never bet against Elon there's a equal number of smart people who say you never bet against Sam Alman right and and so you don't know which way it's going to fall now and there's also it's the highest Stakes thing like AI is the highest Stakes game and this is the Crown Jewel asset is open Ai and it's going to be a fight to the death

okay so the second possibility is he just wants to make it more expensive for open a cuz Like I said the implied valuation they were talking about was about $40 billion for the assets non-cash uh contribution U or maybe it was a cash contribution I'm not sure and this would up the price so if nothing else you go to your enemy and they have to pay double for their car but do you think like maybe that's satisfying enough maybe that's in the board meeting can you just imagine all these suits to like well do we

do we look at this offer and then everyone Just like no it's just Elon he's just being a [ __ ] okay like do you just like do they just like collectively agree that he's just being an [ __ ] or are they like uh guys we got to like look into this they're collectively because I mean that would be a very low price for the for the assets of open AI right like literally on the open market they're raising out of $240 billion valuation so to sell the assets at a $97 billion valuation wouldn't

really make a Lot of sense right um so at the very least he's upping the price or just slowing it down making life more complicated for his competitors so if I if we're competing in a race but I know I can distract 15% of your mind share right it's like a Honeypot like you know like people used to do this like send in a a pretty looking girl and it's like this is just a nice little distraction for my competitor that I can send in like they will do that so there's There's multiple levels this

might be playing at I don't know which this is just like the nerdy uh Kendrick Lamar versus Drake thing because they're now they're going after their personalities they haven't gone after family yet but I honestly would not be surprised if that happens next yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly so I'm not paying a whole lot of attention to it but it I mean it is interesting to watch like a sort of real life you know rap beef or a Game of Thrones battle going on does it Bo does any of this like wear you out because

I feel a little excited at the moment but I wonder when but we're only a month in and I'm like how much longer can I like last uh with all these like uh Amazing Stories yeah uh yeah I know what you mean there's definitely a part of it where it just feels like I've just watched too many episodes of Jersey Shore and I'm like I wasted my whole day you know like you know there oh he said This and he did this and they're going to do this and let me look up the Delaware law

it's like for what is are you getting anything out of this or are you just gossiping it's say oh I'm gossiping okay cool well there only so much of my energy I really want to put towards gossiping I also just constantly think and I think a lot of other people think this is how does one man have so much energy it's pretty like amazing it's Hard for me to imagine like writing a serious email that would require me to make a decision that has long-term impacts because I'm like uh I just can't like turn my

brain on right now to get into that imagine never feeling that feeling I think um Jimmy Mr be said something he said something like an off-handed com uh comment I think he was like uh he was like oh no I'm focused like every waking hour or he made like he was like I I don't get distracted Like I don't uh like browse like he said something like that he was like but when I do get in that mood which is uh seldom I go all in for like 24 48 hours and I just need like

a 2-day recharge and then I'm back in and I don't uh I don't get distracted now imagine being like an Elon and having to like you don't have do you have zone out mode like most people do after 7 o'clock at night you know you know what I mean I read this story about Bill Gates and it was a Story about how Bill Gates was building Microsoft and people don't know because Bill Gates is now a philanth philanthropist SL like you know he's got Grandpa energy he's got Grandpa energy exactly he's wearing hisat sweater he's

like well you know I read books and blah and I you know got these nets to catch mosquitoes like you he just sounds like you know sort of harmless he was ruthless putting around putting around bill yeah he he's putting around in the Mornings he was ruthless when he was building Microsoft and he was insane energy if you don't believe me play the clip of him jumping over the chair all right we're back so on top of that they were like Bill do you uh somebody was like riding in a car with him to do

an interview or something like that and they go Bill what happened and they look at his um his car like the tape deck was missing was like pulled out like it almost got Stolen and they go did it get stolen he said no I took it out they go why'd you take it out you don't like to listen to music he goes if I'm know the radio he goes if I'm listening to the radio I'm not thinking about Microsoft so I just took it out I don't want to listen to the radio I want to

think about Microsoft it it's wild right that's just a little tiny story but there's probably like some epic epic stories and and these are small things like for example Let's say you get like um an email saying like you know uh this partnership that we thought about doing or the sale that we're thinking about doing from you it's not for us thank you there's people and this is like kind of small but like it's just an example of this Behavior who they're like they'll just get on a plane and they'll fly to that person's office

that next morning and they'll just make it work and you think about doing that with like your young kids you Got a few kids I have one kid and I'm like there's not a chance that I'm getting on that plane unless it's like a pretty amazing thing but just to do these like daily these daily these daily items that show how intense you are it it it's really challenging to imagine living that life and I think very few people can actually sustain it and I'm not one of them right dude there's uh so back to

your question of like how does he do it this is a Legitimate question how does he do it so one of the reasons my my interest in doge is is uh top of mine right now is I just had my most viral tweet ever you did yeah and it was me all I said was I would pay stupid amounts of money for someone to follow around the Doge team for the next six months Hard Knock style like have you ever seen Hard Knocks the show on HBO they follow like an NFL team through training camp

I would and it's true I would pay a ridiculous amount of Money for that what was the reach on that I mean the Tweet got like 50,000 likes or something crazy oh that's so funny I didn't see that it has just like it went like really viral for some reason um a lot of people felt the same way like there's a Fascination around this and part of it is um I would really want to see like I want to know I want to know what it's like like uh I'll give you two things so one

I want to know what elon's like but not because I'm Like oh Elon he's the best I just want to see I literally want to understand like so this guy's running six companies at logistically yeah and then there's [ __ ] like where he's like he's also tweeting 10 times more than me so it's not even like oh but he just doesn't waste time on social media like you it's like no actually Wast more time on social media it's like yeah but he doesn't just waste time playing video games like you asshle it's like dude

he He's bragging about being a top 100 rank Diablo player and it's like something's cap the Diablo thing I'm certain is Cap like I am certain that dud he's paying how old are you can are you allowed to say that I thought it was pretty fluid was that not it was actually so fluid I was like I was like what did he just say I said it in the mirror the other day and I was like I think that works I think that's I think I can add that to my bag there's another One I

can't believe dude you you downplayed having audacity to do Trump did have the audacity to say cap and so fluidly like that was really I've been on the internet for way too long um I thought you make cap like a cap to his energy not cap like no cap that was really good dude I'm going to start saying cap as in a limit that's cap that's the cap that's the maximum cap what I've reached my threshold is What I'm saying what are you saying I didn't say a lied what did I say on MF like

earlier this year you like let him let him bake let him bake you were like riing and I was like let him bake I try to be cool they're like wait is it bake or cook or microwave what is the phrase I uh have you met anyone who's worked with them I I haven't uh yeah I have actually I I talked to that one guy who that one time said um uh recently he said um he goes I had a meet with Elon And his assistant gave me the heads up in advance and he goes

just so you know elon's companies are making something like $20 million per hour or something like that or 20 million per half hour so if you are going to have a conversation with him it better be a $20 million conversation and that $20 million number by the way that it's more now it's more now if you if you think of Doge so it's just like every can you imagine that actually that's kind of an exhausting Way to live because do you ever hear when people say like uh well that's just not worth my time and

when I would think about that for a long time I'm like does that mean I should always be doing something that is like of more value and I'm like well how much am I valuing just laying on this couch or how much am I valuing just like mowing my grass because I want to actually mow my grass and I thought that was kind of an exhausting way to look at life it Totally is by the way there's a simple simple solution to that which is you only price things that you don't want to do if

you want to do it you don't put a you don't put a price on it if you like if you enjoy the if it's therapeutic to you or what what's it called like uh whatever it feels good just doing nothing feels good to do to do the dishes or to like like trim the bushes in your garden or whatever like go do it you know no you have at it you don't Need to be like oh this is inefficient use of my time you only price the things you don't want to do to say you

know what am I wasting my time on stuff I don't even enjoy well mean we had Rob drick on the Pod he said that he places that number at $1 million per hour yeah dude I watched a Cody Sanchez clip and like I don't mean to knock on Cody she's always been nice to me but she she was on a panel and they go she goes I was talking to my Mentor Bill Perkins and he always you know tells me um you are as you are as low as the low like something like that it's

like you are as low as the lowest tasks you do and she she's like you know I um she like I was dropping some I I had to I was pumping oh she he goes do you still pump your own gas and she goes at first I thought how pretentious of I still want to be a person who pumps my own gas and then he did the math from about how much I'm wasting how much Money I'm wasting pumping my own gas and he said are you still buying this you should not be buying that

you should not be going to the store to do that and I just thought like and this video had like whatever tens of thousands of likes and I think that's a totally valid way to think she might be right that might be the right answer for her it's not the right answer dud I went to Whole Foods last night at 9:00 p.m. just to walk around totally totally totally I Think there I think underneath a lot of that like oh I got to be so ficient with every second of my day is just some underlying

feeling of lack what do you think you lack in your life that you have to optimize every minute of every hour of every day and that you are like above doing certain things and by the way also when you stop doing things you lose touch with reality so there's a price to that too and so I just think like there's a the the my takeaway was Not even about Cody or her idea that if it works for you more power to you I just think I just thought to myself you know you know how much

bad advice is out there like whether this was bad advice or other like one of the great skills in life is just playing hopscotch and not not stepping on the like landmines of terrible advice that exist on the internet our podcast included by the way we say some dumb [ __ ] and we say some things that don't make sense they don't Make sense for you maybe make sense for us or maybe it just doesn't make sense at all but there is a skill to how do you block out the 98% of awful advice that

sounds smart you want to hear something funny so I met this guy uh who's a billionaire a multi-billionaire he's probably 65 and I talked to him for like an hour online for something and at the end of the call for some reason he started talking about his family and his kids And how he uh has like I forget five kids and they're each Married with Children and he's like oh I'm always around the grandkids I just love this like and he was explaining his life philosophy and at the end of the call I go hey

um you know we don't know each other we only know each other for this hour but do you think I could come over um me and my wife and stay with you and your family and I can just watch how you interact with your family because you Seem really happy man and you're successful You've Won and he goes I would love that and so tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. I am flying to Park City to go to this guy's house for 3 days and he was like my whole family's going to be there for this weekend

and I was like great can I come and just hang out with you guys and be part of the family for a weekend just to see how you're interacting with everyone because you are awesome and he was like yeah I would Love that so I'm going to his house tomorrow uh tomorrow till Sunday uh just to like learn how to be when I met him I was like you are just such a warm person and you're you're rich and successful which is like one attribute that's amazing you seem happy you seem fit you uh have

a lovely family and they seem like they love you I gotta I got to download what you're you're doing because you are amazing he letting me come over Dude That's great I've I've Always um enjoyed doing that I have a word for it can I throw some jargon at you stalking is that it the word for it is insitu so like what's that wait is this a madeup word I'm a biology major so at one point I did a biotech company and one of the things you learn you do any any biotech company is there's

a huge difference between the lab environment which is a sterile controlled environment um and you see this data come out and it says wow This Thing Really Works we produced this many you know uh this many MERS of this or this many grams of this substance or whatever right had this much this much energy uh this many kilowatts generator whatever whatever the thing you're doing in lab and then you're were like oh my God this amazing we're about to change the world and I was like trying to high five and nobody else was excited I

was like why aren't you guys excited they're like well like it's the lab I'm like oh Does the lab mess up they go no the lab's great so what do you mean what's the problem lab it's a test it's a scientific test how much more proof do you want they go oh Everything Changes in situ in what and like in situ basically was like you take the thing the the the in in our case we were working on these microbes we had this company where microbes would eat coal and basically fart out natural gas so

you could get natural gas without Burning coal kind of amazing natural microbes real microbes that just exist on the planet right and so uh they were working amazing in the lab they were producing so much natural gas it was it was amazing we're going to we're about to change the energy industry what's that word in situ is like in sit in a situation situ I don't know exactly what it's I don't know what the technical definition but yeah it's kind of like in the situation or in ground and so what We did was you take

the bugs then you have to actually go to the field where the coal is buried 200 meters underground or whatever and you're going to pump the microbes in and you got to pump them in with some water and you got to like see what happens and then there's cracks in the ground it's not perfect and then the blah blah blah the weather everything everything is different the temperature is different the the other microbes that are there There interfere right Etc um and always the Inu was you know not only worse but like just dramatically different

to the point where it's was like why are we even doing these lab tests and they're like well look if it fails in the lab it's for sure going to fail in situ right but just because it succeeds in lab doesn't mean it works in situ and so there a really long-winded way of saying I have this little word I tell myself which is like go in situ so so for Example it's like you might have a theory but go test it you might have an idea go test it you might think your Donald Trump

Impressions good you got to say that [ __ ] on the mic and see what happens another version of it is this person might look like they they've got it all together they're happy they're successful God they're saying all the right things on this podcast go in sit you go to their house and you'll know within like 15 minutes you said three Days 3 days massive Overkill you'll know within like 90 minutes for sure everything you need to know about this guy um and you'll you'll pick up all these nuances just about like the family

Dynamics and the house and their schedule their level of overall like busyness and rushing through their day versus like wow this person really seems at peace or like you know what they just seem like their Baseline mood is really high or you know their um how their kids Relate to them shows me that they have a great bond an underlying Bond uh you know versus what they say and so you pick up so much and this is why people are like oh what happened to you and Sam aren't doing this interview together and it's like

yeah cuz I actually wanted to go to that dude's house and he lives near me or he lived where I was traveling and Sam was traveling somewhere else at the time or whatever but I pick up so much more not from the Interview but the like hours we spend before the interview just hanging out at their house I pick up so much more in terms of lifestyle and I've talked about this before but like we went one person who you hung so well go go ahead I'll give you the example so we go to Austin

and we had four interviews scheduled it was Joe Lonsdale a billionaire who started more billion dooll companies than anyone else in America think like a hard hitting uh get after Alpha type of Dude exactly I go to and so there was him there was monish PAB an investor so he was a value investor from the the school of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger there's um Tim Ferris Tim Ferris a guy I've admired for many years author experimenter investor Etc um and then the fourth one was somebody else just I'm forgetting this was like a year

ago um so we go and we do the four now for each of the four I hung out with them uh Tim less but the others like Joe Londale I went to his house at 8:00 in the morning I did a morning workout with him we had breakfast together we did a cold plunge together we talked and then we did the podcast I saw his family met his wife you know Etc toured his house saw where you know where where does he work where does he play what you know he's got this land Center like

literally like a gaming land Center for him and his cousins to just come play video games like six computers Oh L okay yeah he's got like a basketball court he's got like you know uh old like artillery gun at the top of his thing right right when we were leaving 10 senators were coming over for lunch and Elon Musk showed up while we were leaving the house it's like whoa okay that's what your day looks like got it you know had like a it was amazing he was so hospitable by the way he's got like

he was so nice and generous with his time um did had monish P I go over To his house he's like yeah come over whenever my day is clear I go to his house he doesn't have a staff that answers he opens the dooro he's wearing basketball shorts and his Barefoot and uh he's like yeah what do you want to let's just sit let's have some tea you want tea and we have tea he's got no clock no assistant telling him you got to move the next thing he shows me his nap room he's like

I nap every day it's great napping is great my whole job is Thinking you know I have to make great decisions napping keeps me fresh it's like having a second day you know I was like whoa and then he's got all these books in his library but it's also kind of alone I was like you don't have a team he's like no like investors make their decisions not as a committee investors make their decisions you know as an independent thinker and so no I don't have a huge team I got like a researcher or two

but like you know they Don't they don't come over every day so he has how many billions in his fund two I think something like that and it was really just him and a researcher he was the only guy there he didn't have like a but like is a five person staff generously generously yeah uh I could be wrong right like don't don't don't don't quote me on these but that's what it I'm 90% sure um Tim Ferris I was like uh you know he shows up and I was like so like what you been

up to and he was like oh I Just came back from Europe I was like oh cool like vacation ski what are you doing and he goes no I spent three days with the guy who's the best in the world at making board games and I wanted to understand I wanted to learn about board games so so you pick up like Li lifestyle flexibility um ability to indulge in your hobbies how lonely are you uh you know do you have a team are you do you know somebody tweeted this out there the other day they

go the Thing that socialists or marks got Carl marks got wrong was how much fun it is to make money with your boys I like I feel that dude like me Ben Diego it's so much fun to just do what we do it would be way less fun if it was just me doing it even if I had owned 100% I got more equity and all that I would never take that trade dude I I completely agree by the way that's why I have co-founders and I moved Diego out here I was like dude I'll

pay you more just move out Here move within 10 minutes of me and now we hang out every day and I'm like my life just got better right like little things and so you know my kids interrupt me in the middle of the day I have a piano right next to my desk cuz in between working I'll just play piano it's for fun right like if somebody was here in situe with me they would see that I don't have a perfect life but I've built a life that I love and they will know for themselves

if that's kind Of what they want and so I think this is massively underrated is a very long-winded way of saying I think more people should do this I think you pick up way more when you go to somebody's house and see their you just kind of hang with them for for a day um or even a couple hours I think we need like um like a tobacco pipe or something today's like you know uh philosopher hour on our on our rocking chairs just like riffing on What makes a good life and what doesn't you

know what I mean yeah we started at [Laughter] limestones we should go by the way check them out it sounds sick yeah yeah exactly I I would love to go uh go see it I think it' be pretty boring but it would be mind-blowing at the same time you know what I mean I think it would be nothing nothing would be thrilling but the whole thing would be mind-blowing that that's what it that's what it is That's what exist we almost need to do like MFM field trips because I the timing was horrible when you

were doing the monish PAB one because I was moving that day and we couldn't make it work because I had like a six-month-old and it was like a huge whatever but I am so envious I'm like [ __ ] I just wanted to like see I just wanted to like get a a feel I wanted to do a field trip of just sitting in his living room and watching him interact totally that's like I get So much joy doing that exact same thing you know what I would want to do so there's like uh your

boy Brett who's doing robotics I want to go see that [ __ ] I want to go see humanoid robots and the factory and just be inspired by that um there's another one that I think would be really cool have you ever been to um a Cisco foods like Cisco is the company that like makes the food that goes to all the restaurants like they make sauces and [ __ ] yeah what no I've not been what is that it's I went once cuz we had a restaurant and it's the most wild like huge scale

operation you don't realize it you're like oh I guess yeah the company that supplies all of the materials to all of the restaurants and grocery stores I guess they got to be pretty big right bigger than anything you've ever seen and and it was like a tour of that facility and then you see the automation like there's these little Like hockey puck look you know those like scooters are like the butt scooters where you just like sit down on this thing like an old PE thing where you sit down on this little four-wheel flat thing

and it rolls around that's like little robots like that that that fly around this Warehouse picking up pallets and moving them places and so it's this incredibly sophisticated operation to move like cans of tuna just I'm looking at their factories it looks so large That you could like see the Earth curve you know what I mean it's it's huge another one would be like like probably not allowed but like andil or like one of these companies just making like lasers and like you know like war machines um also just like the crypto house and just

go see all these like degenerate 19-year-olds that's actually a good idea it's like you don't know it till you see it till you feel it right like it just leaves an imprint on you in A different way going to hacker houses in San Francisco was amazing and seem like their kitchen and I'm like who cooks what how do you guys know you've seen the bar stool like One Bite Pizza reviews we just do the one sniff Hacker House reviews the odor just dude and they're all in San Francisco they're all in like these uh like

warehouses so they all got Walmart feet so everyone's walking around barefooted with like dirty dirty ass bottom of their feet It's like disgusting and I had so much fun doing it I remember I felt that same way walking around Facebook have you walked around Facebook's campus yeah Facebook's one of those I remember walking around I'm like why does a web page need so many employees what are all these [ __ ] people doing there like there's so many people walking around and you're I can't like I would make fun of Facebook constantly because I thought

it was a soulless job but you walk Around and you're like oh my God this is like a beehive you know what we should do do you remember Tech crunch cribs did you ever see this show yeah it was awesome it was awesome and they discontinued it just like they discontinued cribs uh but I think that needs to come back and okay realistically we're like we should do this and then both of us are going to like look at our kids and then like just not travel sorry I'm going to go to a Cisco Factory

yeah I really want to go see the learn how hot fries are made yeah exactly so realistically let's be honest absolutely not going to do this idea but we need a field correspondent every great show's got a field correspondent right so that's actually kind of funny I'm going to throw down the gauntlet right now 100K a year be the MFM field trip correspondent we're going to send you to different uh awesome places you got to film it like The old TechCrunch cribs uh or MTV Cribs episodes and you just got to go to like funny

epic places you know cool interesting companies where they got a crazy like office life uh crazy factories and [ __ ] like this um and that could be your job travel around film content we'll put them up on MFM as episodes I want to see these like there's dude these AI we got to talk about this next week but these AI companies that have like 20 employees But 100 million in Revenue I just want to see what they're doing all day abs absolutely um to audition email me Sean shar.com and just email a audition tape

so do a do an episode of any business near you uh go to your coffee shop and just film it just so that we can get a sense of how you are on camera that's the best um nice pod I actually enjoyed these you never said that to me that was very nice thank you I enjoy these because I just enjoy hanging out those Are my favorite podcasts um all right that's it great pod wonderful pod see you out there [Music] what