0:00:06 all right sam why are we dressed so festive it’s casual friday baby it’s casual friday and the best
0:00:10 stuff is always in the group chat and these are the things that i sent in the group chat that i
0:00:13 wouldn’t post publicly but decided you know what is casual friday let’s air them out
0:00:25 all right can we do the first one the first one here it is okay this is a tweet from dylan dylan
0:00:31 says at long last any app can be your alarm app apple has finally introduced alarm kit this is at
0:00:36 the the apple announcement that happened this week that lets any app have the same privileges as the
0:00:42 clock app this is long overdue dylan you are absolutely right dude i did not understand this
0:00:47 is this a joke no this is real so basically you know like apple gives you certain permissions right
0:00:51 if you’re an app you can send push notifications you could use the camera you could use the gps
0:00:58 but for a long time no app could become your alarm app it couldn’t access the same features of an
0:01:03 alarm app which is like now any app you don’t just have to use the apple alarm app anybody could build
0:01:09 an app for alarm sounds i don’t understand yeah this does sound small so change my mind why is this
0:01:15 important so think about it this way there’s like two billion people with iphones and you know not every
0:01:20 app can address all two billion people but an alarm clock can basically address like a billion or two
0:01:27 people who actually have the need for an alarm clock so what happened was two weeks ago or you know a
0:01:33 week ago as an app developer you that was not a category you could be in and now it’s a category you
0:01:38 could be in where there’s a billion active users that might want your app and there’s been no creativity
0:01:45 and no innovation so like the app store has been out been out for you know 15 years now so a lot of
0:01:50 stuff is solved right camera apps are pretty good map apps pretty good with google maps and ways and
0:01:53 you know ride sharing apps there’s all kinds of apps and there’s been tons of innovation
0:01:59 but this has been basically artificially blocked wait really quick do you remember the the joke of
0:02:05 peter teal where he said you wanted flying cars but you got 190 characters like on twitter this isn’t even
0:02:12 140 140 this is the even worse version of that you wanted flying cars now you can make alarm apps you
0:02:18 wanted ai instead you got a snooze button by the way i met the guy who wrote that line for uh i didn’t
0:02:23 meet it but i i i found out who wrote that line for peter teal wait wait wait wait wait you met him
0:02:31 okay you you mistakenly said you met him versus you heard about i met a guy who was like that’s the guy
0:02:36 who wrote that that’s peter’s guy he he comes up with those and that was his job was basically follow
0:02:44 peter around listen to what he’s saying and then try to like transform his sentiment into something
0:02:49 really punchy and that guy came up with that line which became the basis for like founders fun and like
0:02:56 a rally cry that’s cool well tell him good job all right so check this out easy idea david goggins
0:03:01 would you like a million dollars because david goggins today should pay some kid to make the
0:03:08 alarm app that’s basically the david goggins skinned alarm app like i want to wake up with david goggins
0:03:14 just saying wake up bitch there’s miles to run and i just want to hear that when i wake up and not like
0:03:20 you know the default alarm sound for the for my phone are there uh when is this going live when when’s
0:03:26 this alarm kit thing so they did the developer preview that’s what wwdc is right they tell you
0:03:30 what’s possible and you can start building with it but it’s not like available yet to customers but it
0:03:34 usually i think it’s just like a couple months it’s like not not very long this is low-hanging fruit
0:03:39 my friend it’s a good idea it’s a good idea yeah this fruit that might just be on the ground actually
0:03:45 this might be rotting fruit i’m not entirely sure um all right next one we go by the way we’re
0:03:51 totally stealing this gimmick from our boys at tbpn shout out to john and jordy part of the
0:03:57 brotherhood but i gave them a shout out later on one of my one of my uh photos or tweets is from them
0:04:02 which is yeah they basically had the the true innovation in the podcasting industry of printing
0:04:07 out the tweets and uh we decided that we too shall now print out tweets but i’ve been doing five
0:04:12 twitters for a lot longer than those guys so i i think i’m okay all right uh this one comes from
0:04:18 chris bachy he says this is a chris bachy banger he says in 2022 mckenzie paid 55 million dollars
0:04:23 was paid 55 million dollars to advise warner brothers uh when they merged with discovery
0:04:31 they charged them 37 million by advising them to change hbo to hbo max then to max then back to hbo max
0:04:36 and in 2025 they billed them an additional 63 million again to determine that warner brothers and discovery
0:04:41 should be separate brands again did you see that mckenzie last week laid off uh 15 percent of their
0:04:48 staff because of ai because now like ai could do half the job or what uh is that why sure yeah for
0:04:53 sure this is this is absolutely insane what did you say you’re allergic to lack of common sense this is
0:04:58 ridiculous this is exactly the sort of lack of common sense i was talking about this tweet has 70 000
0:05:02 likes by the way i don’t know if you totally made up these numbers or if these are true but
0:05:09 directionally correct there were some good reactions to this greg greg tweeted don’t be the problem be the
0:05:16 solution that creates the problem that is my takeaway yeah it is pretty ridiculous have you ever had
0:05:21 friends that have worked at mckenzie yeah yeah uh my buddy romeen who i do a bunch of business stuff
0:05:27 with he was a former mckenzie guy they’re easy to make fun of because you’re like what does a 23 year
0:05:32 old know about business but like i have a friend that worked there and she had some pretty amazing like
0:05:39 basically a pe firm uh in her case identified like a bunch of dairy farms that they wanted to like roll
0:05:44 up and so they bought a bunch of them the pe firm did and then they hired mckenzie folks to come and
0:05:49 figure out how to make it more efficient and so she literally would go to iowa every single week for
0:05:54 about six months and devise interesting things like for example we’re going to change the bucket size that
0:05:58 we like use that the workers use like like really interesting things like have you seen landman
0:06:04 yes yeah when like the lawyer shows up on the like on the oil field and she’s like got her high heels
0:06:09 like stuck in the mud basically that’s what i’m imagining the mckenzie consultants showing up at the uh
0:06:13 the cattle farm it was kind of great it’s like i learned about this whole this whole experience she
0:06:18 had and there is value that is created from these consultants even though we like to make fun of them
0:06:22 have you did ramin actually work on anything interesting well they deserve to be made fun of
0:06:27 because they’re incredibly smart they get paid very well so you know that means you’re a punching bag
0:06:34 right yeah that’s basically the criteria for like oh it’s free game right it’s like what a nerd was in
0:06:39 middle school it’s like the opposite traits right like the person you could give a swirly to in in sort
0:06:45 of junior high would be like somebody who’s sort of weak and powerless but when you grow up you can’t
0:06:49 make fun of the weak and powerless you only make fun of the powerful and yeah so yeah ramin was like
0:06:53 this basically he would tell me things that they would do and i’m like oh that’s really smart i was
0:06:57 kind of hoping you guys were a bunch of idiots but actually that sounds pretty good but what i did come
0:07:02 away with was they have huge brains but small balls is generally like the person who stays in consulting
0:07:09 and that’s like uh which by the way that’s the definition of anxiety is when you’re uh the definition
0:07:14 of anxiety is when your uh brain is a lot bigger than your balls so that’s probably why there’s a
0:07:20 bunch of anxious consultants running around i like how you just i like how you’re just saying something
0:07:25 is the definition of it’s absolutely not the definition of and that’s hilarious i’m gonna start
0:07:31 doing that well well you know the root word of that and then you just make it up it’s not even the
0:07:36 root word all right we got a couple more reactions our boy ty lopez comes in comes in hot off the top
0:07:41 ropes a good gig you know it’s you know it’s a good scam when ty lopez is giving you giving you
0:07:47 respect oh these are all replies to that original one okay i didn’t even i wasn’t even following that
0:07:53 yeah we’re learning that’s insane and what about this one this is the consulting uh meme uh consulting
0:07:58 if you’re not a part of the solution there’s really good money to be made in prolonging the problem
0:08:05 there’s this thing that happens in sports that i’ve always wanted to be a part of business
0:08:09 so you know in the ufc how they have press conferences where they really talk shit about
0:08:13 each other and i’ve always felt like yeah it’s the best part and you know i wish business people would
0:08:17 do the same like i wish right now i’ve gone to the wars they’re awesome you’ve been to the press
0:08:22 conferences i’ve been one time i tried to sneak in when i ran the hustle like i would try to like get
0:08:25 i couldn’t get credit i was like let me see if i can get credential to this and they didn’t give it to
0:08:31 me and so i showed up anyway and they kicked me out so i i went like they made me walk to the back
0:08:35 and like sit with the crowd and i and i watched it yeah it was great they didn’t respect the hustle
0:08:40 as a newsletter as a media brand dude the the hustle is the worst name ever when you’re trying
0:08:48 to hustle someone like i was sure do you know what i mean it was just like some random security guard
0:08:54 my name is john scam hoping for you to tell me your coinbase password
0:09:01 it was the worst like the lady like giggled at me and it was like a it was a pathetic laugh it was
0:09:06 like it’s so no i got kicked out it did not work but if anyone’s listening who works at the ufc if
0:09:11 you and i could get credentialed to go to a ufc event and ask a question i would do that in a
0:09:17 heartbeat and i would take it incredibly seriously arguably too seriously might ruin the whole event
0:09:24 all right this episode is brought to you by hubspot they’re doing a big conference this is their big
0:09:29 one they do called inbound they have a ton of great speakers that are coming to san francisco
0:09:34 september 3rd to september 5th and it’s got a pretty incredible lineup they have comedians like
0:09:40 amy poehler they have dario from anthropic dark cash sean evans from hot ones and if you’re somebody
0:09:44 who’s in marketing or sales or ai and you just want to know what’s going on what’s coming next
0:09:48 it’s a great event to go to and hey guess what i’m going to be there you can go to inbound.com
0:09:54 slash register to get your ticket to inbound 2025 again september 3rd through 5th in san francisco
0:10:01 hope to see you there all right what’s what do you have next do the frank sleutman one oh okay this
0:10:05 is good this is related this is actually related to what i was just talking about so frank sleutman who
0:10:11 is the uh the man’s man ceos he’s the david goggins of the corporate world would you agree
0:10:16 yeah i mean he’s pretty baller uh he’s he kind of says it like it is for people don’t know he
0:10:21 took over he’s been a bunch of he’s ceo a bunch of companies but he took over at snowflake and he has
0:10:26 all these famous memos that he wrote on linkedin and it was basically like don’t be a bitch work hard
0:10:30 like that’s like how he summarizes everything yeah but it’s a little bit different so he’s got this book
0:10:35 called amp it up but if you really you could just read his blog post called amp it up and get 80 of
0:10:41 the the idea it’s not even just about working hard it’s like pick up the pace pick up the there’s his
0:10:46 basic point is that in every organization there’s an incredible amount of slack that’s just built up
0:10:54 it’s an expectation of timelines of rigor of of effort of everything and then another one of those is
0:10:59 common sense and like his approach is just to cut through all the bullshit and so he has this quote
0:11:02 where he’s like talking about the man in the you know that famous like man in the arena quote
0:11:08 yeah it’s kind of i i kind of think that uh that quote is super lame now it’s been hijacked by people
0:11:15 i don’t like i know chamath is what you’re saying yeah yeah was people a singular word
0:11:22 all right here we go so here’s what frank slutman says he says there’s lots of people in this world
0:11:28 who are not really in the arena they’re either observers consultants or agents or vcs that just provide
0:11:31 capital but there are some people who are in the arena they’re very special people and then he says
0:11:36 he talks about he was asked to speak at a business school where they always ask for his advice he
0:11:42 says you all have elite educations you’ll have many job offers paying you big bucks your parents and
0:11:47 siblings will be incredibly proud of you but they’re all consulting jobs for bain mckinsey and companies
0:11:51 like that you’re going to have an easy path to pretty quick earnings but you’ll never know whether you
0:11:58 have what it takes to actually build something new and roosevelt’s words you will be those cold and
0:12:04 timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat i had actually never read that part of the of the
0:12:08 quote and i thought that part’s way colder than the than the the rest of it you know what i mean
0:12:17 imagine saying this to a room full of stanford kids it’s like that’s i wonder what that what do you
0:12:21 think the reaction would have been like i think the reaction would have been like god he’s so right
0:12:26 after i finish up this first four-year tenure at mckenzie then i’m totally gonna do that i think
0:12:31 that’s the real the true reaction it’s like he’s so right i’m not actually gonna rescind the i’m not
0:12:35 actually withdraw the job offer i’m i’ll finish up i’m gonna make sure i get the first few years and
0:12:41 then i’m gonna go do that thing someday i’ve hung out with like my friends children or you know people
0:12:46 who are like in the uh applying to college age right now it’s way different than when we were
0:12:52 younger like when we were younger not going to college for a huge majority of people for anyone
0:12:57 that’s like a middle class on up it was like that wasn’t even a question now it definitely seems like
0:13:01 the smart people are saying i’m not sure what my i’m weighing my options i’m trying to look at all
0:13:06 that’s available have you noticed that no is that like and when you say that they’re thinking about
0:13:11 like trade school or dropping out or everything’s on the table yeah so for people are their parents
0:13:17 entrepreneurs or no the people people the people who i know it’s just like let’s say cousins and
0:13:22 nephews and things like that and they’re mostly like well to do or at least like have a household
0:13:26 income of two hundred thousand dollars and it’s basically like this and these are smart kids so
0:13:31 typically when we were younger sean the smart kids like always went to college now the smart kids
0:13:35 are like i’m not sure you know i i’ve been in contact with this company about just going getting an
0:13:40 internship right away right at 19 years old other people who are less of the academic like they’re
0:13:45 they’re not like the geniuses they are considering trade school and it’s not nearly looked like when
0:13:49 i was younger if you said you’re going to trade school it was like it was like uh is that like
0:13:56 punishment for getting in trouble do you know what i mean oh you’re dumb yeah now i think there is a
0:14:04 there is 100 a change in sentiment well that’s and i wonder i wonder if like this whole mbas are
0:14:08 dumb that’s a new feeling ish that’s like peter teal was the one who popularized that where he said for
0:14:14 he goes the valuation of your company take a million dollars off for every mba uh employee you have and
0:14:19 so now that’s popular and i wonder the mba people who are there now and who would hear something like
0:14:24 this how they feel if they acknowledge it or if they don’t right that peter teal quote is like how
0:14:29 that’s like my parenting style i’m like one more word one more word and we’re not going to the pool for
0:14:34 two days oh oh three days and i just keep going i’m just like if you say one more thing
0:14:41 and you lose a little bit more do you stick with it there’s all kinds of retrades dude i’m i’m trump
0:14:47 i’m trumping the china deal right now wait you let your kids trade i raise the tariffs
0:14:51 and then there’s a temporary pause for extenuating circumstances while we negotiate
0:14:56 and then we have some really good interactions and then we start thinking and then they come back again
0:15:00 and they do something you know they just throw their spaghetti on the floor and then we’re back
0:15:05 at 125 percent terror what age does punishment work because right now when they do something i say no
0:15:11 it’s just like they laugh at me they can start to understand like cause and effect or consequences
0:15:15 somewhere between two and three years old i think you start to get it at a very basic level but you also
0:15:22 have to time it so like if the kid is emotionally upset or is feeling something they’re not going to learn
0:15:26 the lesson in the moment or they’re having to fit whereas like i think as adults we’re like well this
0:15:31 is why and we’re trying to like explain the thing while they’re like you know having their meltdown it’s
0:15:36 like you have to have let the meltdown happen and then if you want to have a teaching moment it’s like
0:15:39 got to come after which is probably true for adults too but it’s like very obvious with kids
0:15:43 because they’re literally melting down i gotta figure this out because i yeah i’ve been trying
0:15:48 to like punish her not punish her be like no you can’t do this right and i just get laughed at um
0:15:56 all right read the next one so uh this is one of yours so it’s a david senra uh tweet he says
0:16:03 charlie munger told me flex charlie munger told me to read les schwab’s autobiography i’m glad i did
0:16:09 because les says things like this quote success in life is being a good husband a good father and you
0:16:15 end up being a second father to hundreds of other men and women last night i attended a wedding of a
0:16:21 young man from our office and the young man told me that two men had influenced his life his father
0:16:29 and me that’s worth more than money so this guy les schwab is amazing i haven’t completed his book but
0:16:32 i’m in the middle of reading it but let me tell you about this guy so go to the dumb question is less
0:16:39 so there’s charles schwab no relation okay he’s he’s he he was a hillbilly in oregon basically uh he was
0:16:46 like orphaned at the age of like 13 or 14 uh was like a plumber and then started a tire shop at the age
0:16:51 of 31 or 32 didn’t know anything about tires but started a tire shop eventually over the course of 50
0:16:57 years it grew into a multi-billion dollar operation and he’s famous for being really great at
0:17:02 incentivizing employees and he’s famous for being very good at managing and leading to the point where
0:17:07 warren buffett and charlie munger looked to stories for uh from him on how to properly lead and incentivize
0:17:14 and then go to the next slide look at what he looks like so he was a hillbilly uh he was uh he was a he
0:17:20 was like a from the streets type of guy i’ve been thinking about how i can describe these types of people
0:17:26 because i love them and i think the best way to describe it is small town grit with big number
0:17:31 swagger something like that like these guys that you and i love who are these like blue collar so
0:17:38 small town grit with big city swagger no with like big number swagger so it’s like these guys big city
0:17:44 right but what i mean is is that they’re like these kind of hillbillies who build these massive
0:17:49 companies and so they can they may like for example one of our friends kevin van trump is one of them
0:17:54 where you see this guy and he comes off or he’s like hey what’s going on brother i gotta write my
0:17:58 newsletter and like he like talks like this but like turns out he makes like 20 million dollars a year
0:18:03 and like the people who read his newsletter he’ll you know kevin’s this big guy from kansas city comes
0:18:10 off like like a hillbilly because he talks funny but his work is read by like world leaders and he makes
0:18:15 20 million dollars a year and in the background of his video zoom call is like a picasso so like i
0:18:20 love guys like this and this guy’s one of them so les schwab started a tire company he died in his 90s
0:18:24 but ran the company up until then grew to a multi-billion dollar organization and i want to go to the next
0:18:29 one i want to read he wrote the his own forward to the book and i highlighted my two favorite sentences
0:18:34 from the forward read that all right so it starts he just says this book is mainly written for the
0:18:40 2 000 families that make their living selling less swab tires and for the thousands of families to
0:18:44 follow in the next 20 30 40 years all right so he says this is what you highlighted i wrote this in
0:18:52 november and december of 1985 i did write this 100 with my 40 year old typewriter and then at the
0:18:58 bottom okay uh i do think jan nolan my right hand gal lorraine o’hara our word our word processing
0:19:02 operator for helping me correct misspelled words and helping me with punctuation i didn’t have a
0:19:08 gross writer i wanted it in my own words and then it says basically in this i’m going to pass on my
0:19:13 theories of business to our people and he says should we fail to follow these policies towards
0:19:19 customers and employees going forward i would prefer that my name be taken off the business and then it
0:19:24 ends with he basically says if you’re not interested in business this book will bore you and if i were you
0:19:28 i wouldn’t waste my time reading it how great is that how much of a simpleton am i that it’s just
0:19:37 here’s you want to win me here you go push me away that’s all it takes oh you think i won’t like this
0:19:45 book watch me read every word it’s called already buying a second copy treat them mean keep them keen
0:19:52 yeah that’s all you gotta do why am i so easy to manipulate how how beautiful is this guy uh so you
0:19:59 read this book is it like i’m in the middle of reading it yeah so far seven out of ten fine and
0:20:04 forgettable eight out of ten i’ll remember the big idea but that’s kind of it i didn’t need 300 pages
0:20:11 nine out of ten really enjoyed it good book ten out of ten i’m giving this book out as gifts where is it at
0:20:18 uh i’m only a quarter of the way through and it’s between an eight and a nine yeah an eight and a nine
0:20:25 yeah quite what’s the big idea so far he just treats people well and if you treat people well you get
0:20:30 rewarded in return so it’s it’s it’s it’s a very simple thing which is you said there’s a lack of
0:20:37 common sense he’s a very common sense rational person but often rational means cold and he is he is
0:20:42 rational warm oh warm rational okay that’s cool that’s a good insight because your start of your
0:20:45 answer was kind of boring but the end of your answer was fire there that was good so it’s sort of like
0:20:50 his original quote which was uh i went to i i became a father to all these people and i go to their
0:20:56 weddings and that makes me feel great that is a rational thing to say and and it is warm versus you
0:20:59 know what a mckinsey consultant would say which is it’s all just about these numbers on a spreadsheet
0:21:05 that is also rational but it’s rational cold yes so do you honest question do you think that you’re
0:21:08 you kind of are doing that do you think that you have that kind of like i’m a
0:21:15 a fatherly influence or a man influence on other men uh you know is that something you think is true
0:21:19 or take pride in are you like yes i need to double down on that from this podcast because like remember
0:21:23 when we were at this dinner or you weren’t there but i was at a dinner and i told you about it like
0:21:27 this guy came up you know at the end of the dinner he’s like hey sorry i wanted to say hi i saw you guys
0:21:30 over here i didn’t want to bother you but he’s like because i always ask people i say what you know
0:21:34 what do you really like about the potter like what is it you know what’s stood out to you or what’s
0:21:38 helped you and he was like he had basically mentioned he’s like me and my girlfriend got
0:21:43 pregnant we didn’t plan on that but hearing you and sam talk about like kind of how fun it is to
0:21:48 have kids and build your business and they’re not like either ors like kind of nudged me towards
0:21:52 deciding like you know we should keep this we should do this and i remember being like whoa that’s like
0:21:56 a lot of responsibility a lot of weight on the words that i didn’t really sort of think about
0:22:02 do you feel like that yeah i do i i think it’s hard to feel that way because if people knew how
0:22:06 we record this we’re just in our rooms like by ourselves talking to each other on a screen so
0:22:11 it’s hard to like feel a presence but i think i view this podcast as well as my company i view it
0:22:16 a little bit more as a a very tiny way to decide the life that i want to live with others and just
0:22:21 make that reality in my small corner of the world i also think that like i thought about like we are not
0:22:26 even remotely like this so i don’t even love saying it but like when lebron james or some famous
0:22:30 athlete does something bad and they’re like i didn’t sign up to be a role model i think about that all the time
0:22:34 where i’m like well i used to like tweet some something that was a little bit mean and i’m like
0:22:39 well i don’t care if this influences me this is just me this is this is just my opinion and then now i’m
0:22:43 like uh you know it holds a little bit of weight i want to make sure that i i’m right about it and not
0:22:48 hateful right right and you know the best thing that ever like the best thing about a podcast is that
0:22:52 it feels like i’m just talking to you and we’re just goofing off here and there’s only two of us
0:22:55 but like you know let’s say this episode on average these episodes get like you know
0:23:03 300 000 people listening to them i mean that’s bigger than the biggest college football stadiums
0:23:09 you know what i mean like if we if we were sitting in the 50 yard line and there was three stadiums
0:23:12 stacked on top of it’d be like almost three or four stadiums of people stacked on top of each other
0:23:18 do you know differently we would do this like it would suck i would i would be so nervous and thinking
0:23:24 about every word and the show would honestly suck if it was if it felt that way and so i think one of
0:23:28 the real blessings is that that’s not the case you don’t you don’t know it you’re blind to it we rarely
0:23:35 record in real life and one time that we did there was a uh the studio manager was a woman who was really
0:23:40 attractive and i noticed that one time one of us or maybe i forget who said something that made her
0:23:47 laugh and i was like oh that felt nice i want to i want to make you laugh again and then and then
0:23:52 she didn’t laugh and i was like that didn’t feel good and i started like performing really poorly
0:23:59 i’m like i can’t stand the the presence of one person let alone uh 300 000 in real life
0:24:06 that’s crazy all right next uh next story i want to show you did you see this did you see this tweet
0:24:11 no here’s what it says so this is from at restructuring which is a good it’s a good
0:24:15 account by the way do you follow this account no is this all about companies that have gone out of
0:24:21 business no it’s kind of like pe it’s like a pe uh type of account uh they treat private equity
0:24:27 type of stuff anyways oh we talked about this a while ago i believe didn’t we so i i think we
0:24:32 mentioned it but i didn’t i didn’t know the story so the headline here is man steals 122 million
0:24:38 dollars from facebook facebook and google simply by sending them random bills which they agreed to pay
0:24:44 why is that a crime why is that a crime exactly this the tweet here is this remains my favorite path to
0:24:50 wealth exploring exploiting the big company inefficiencies should not be illegal uh i agree
0:24:57 all’s fair love and war if you if i send you an invoice and you pay it am i at fault or you hold on
0:25:03 what’s going on here but there is a little more to the story so have you read about how this actually
0:25:11 worked no well wasn’t he like legitimately a vendor for them no no i think that was a little bit of the
0:25:18 problem okay so here’s the story so there’s a 50 year old dude the guy who’s in cuffs here and he
0:25:24 was impersonating a company so there was a company called quanta computer that’s a legit company that
0:25:30 was a vendor for facebook and google he sets up a company also called quanta computer but bases it out
0:25:36 of latvia and so he just copies the same company name the same logo but it’s incorporated in a different
0:25:41 country and he starts making fake invoices contracts letters corporate stamps corporate seals
0:25:49 and he’s sending these to facebook and google for over two years and he got paid out 122 million
0:25:56 dollars across the two companies so 98 million from facebook and 23 million from google they then
0:26:03 find him in latvia extradite him and here’s a great quote from the u.s attorney so the guy’s name i guess
0:26:09 it’s rima rima rima sowskis so rima sowskis thought he could hide behind a computer screen
0:26:14 halfway across the world while he conducted his fraudulent scheme but he has learned the arms of
0:26:22 the american justice system are long and he now faces time in a u.s prison dude how hard is this guy
0:26:30 this u.s attorney that’s amazing by the way i think he still made out good he had to give back
0:26:36 he had to forfeit 49 million and he had to pay another i think 26 million in restitution
0:26:41 that doesn’t add up to 122 million so he might have still made a bunch of money
0:26:47 what conversation do you have with your wife or you’re like so what do you do what do you do uh guy
0:26:50 you know what i mean today i kind of want to get him on the pod
0:26:59 jail pod a rare category of illegal but impressive no yeah yeah yeah yeah which like it’s like the
0:27:06 like the bernie madoff scheme not cool and impressive like uh you know what i’m wondering like i want to
0:27:11 learn more about it right right and if you judge us for saying impressive and illegal like do you like
0:27:17 oceans 11 because that those guys are right here rooting for the guys who are robbing uh anyways
0:27:24 this episode is brought to you by hubspot media they have a cool new podcast that’s for ai called
0:27:29 the next wave it’s by matt wolf and nathan lands and they’re basically talking about all the new tools
0:27:33 that are coming out how the landscape is changing what’s going on with ai tech so if you want to be
0:27:38 up to date on ai tech it’s a cool podcast you could check out listen to the next wave wherever you get
0:27:46 your podcast all right here we go so uh what else we got oh i i have uh something here on chat gpt have
0:27:53 you seen this okay so chat gpt’s product retention curves is a product manager’s wet dream their one
0:27:58 month retention has skyrocketed from less uh from less than 60 percent two years ago to an unprecedented
0:28:06 90 percent youtube was best in class with 85 percent six month retention is trending towards 80 percent
0:28:14 and rapidly rising generational product okay so this little line chart here if for people who don’t
0:28:19 really recognize this imagine when you’re at a hospital and they hook the patient up and you have
0:28:24 the heart monitor and you see that heartbeat that line and it’s got to keep beeping for the patient to
0:28:29 be good right and you have all these these monitors with these little lines well this is the equivalent of
0:28:34 that for a company so what this is is a retention curve so the the line at the very bottom here
0:28:40 would be like the oldest cohort so that’s like people who signed up for chat gpt two years ago and as you
0:28:45 can see it starts at 100 percent of people using it on day zero or month zero but then even by month one
0:28:51 it’s at 60 percent by month two only 55 percent are still using it and by the time you get to a year
0:28:56 you know less than it looks like 30 percent of people are still using the product so that means
0:29:01 more than two-thirds of people just stopped using it after they tried it and that’s the sign of a
0:29:06 product that won’t win as is because the bucket is too leaky you know you’re getting too many customers
0:29:11 in that are that are churning out they’re not finding value in the product and what this curve or
0:29:15 the other lines are are the next month the next month the next month and as they improve the product
0:29:21 you can see that the drop-offs are way less so now what he’s saying is that basically the one
0:29:26 month retention is now 90 percent so people are finding so much value the first month that they
0:29:32 use it that a month later 90 percent of them are still using it and so this is how this is like the
0:29:36 key metric for most businesses is retention that’s the thing that tells you if your business is going
0:29:41 to be around for a long time or if it’s just a leaky bucket and seeing this with chat gpt is pretty
0:29:48 stunning and it kind of leads into my next tweet here which is that open ai is now at 10 billion
0:29:55 in arr so that’s 2x since the end of 2024 so they basically doubled revenue from 5 billion to 10 billion
0:30:00 and it’s been less than three years since it launched so in less than three years they’ve grown
0:30:05 this product to 10 billion dollars in recurring revenue which is just stunning and it highlighted to
0:30:10 me one one very big takeaway from this which is that open ai is the facebook of this current
0:30:16 generation maybe more 20 years ago it was google and amazon were the big deal that was that was it
0:30:22 30 years ago it was like microsoft 20 years ago it was like google and amazon maybe 15 years ago or so
0:30:27 you know it was that was the facebook era and facebook was the thing that was like oh it’s a billion
0:30:32 dollar company a fit 10 billion dollar company and now it’s a trillion dollar company well the one right
0:30:38 is uh is open ai for the next decade it’s gonna we’re just gonna me and you are probably gonna look
0:30:42 at ourselves and be like how are we doing this podcast how are we looking at these tweets these
0:30:48 charts and just like why didn’t we go buy open ai stock like how dumb do we have to be like it was on
0:30:52 sarah’s list three years ago or something like that wait was it really did we talk about it then
0:30:56 maybe not three but two for sure like i think i think the very first uh sarah’s list episode we
0:31:01 probably had them on there and it’s like i was like what what kind of doofuses are we that we don’t
0:31:08 own any of this stock can can you own it yeah you can buy it in secondary i uh i had a buddy of mine
0:31:15 about two or three years ago he was at my house you know who this guy is and we were uh talking and
0:31:19 he was like yeah i have a job offer from neural link and open ai and i was like wow those are both
0:31:23 pretty promising what do you and he was like what should i do and we just had a conversation about
0:31:28 it and i didn’t know anything i mean at the time it was really hard like they’re both like run by
0:31:35 tycoons they’re both really interesting they’re both the hot startup and he chose open ai and he has made
0:31:42 so much money just in and to it like tens of millions of dollars in the in like two and a half or
0:31:48 three years just from being like the 1000th employee something like that like like nothing
0:31:55 like it it’s just astounding at how big this is what is his job is he uh he’s not like he’s kind
0:32:01 of like the rare ai phd type dudes right is he a pro is he a programmer is he a product person what
0:32:08 what’s this what’s the role product person yeah product person uh sorry sorry uh programmer he’s a
0:32:13 programmer okay massive difference uh yeah i was gonna say if you’re a product guy and you made
0:32:17 tens of millions of dollars opening eye how’s that even possible if you’re just like you know random
0:32:23 person engineers okay i guess i can see it you know you get a you get a stock package that’s worth
0:32:28 two million dollars over four years but you got it when opening eye was valued at 60 billion and now
0:32:34 it’s valued at 400 billion right so it’s it’s up you know 8x or something like that and so your
0:32:38 two million dollar stock package turned out to actually be a 16 million dollar stock package
0:32:44 it’s crazy that that’s a normal thing that happens that’s happened to like a thousand people right now
0:32:52 or more in uh like in a in a like 30 mile radius of where i live this was sort of an un we kind of like
0:32:58 glazed over this but basically uh harley from shopify was on the pod and he at one point they were worth
0:33:03 250 i think when we recorded with them they were with 150 billion dollars and it’s basically like
0:33:07 the hundredth largest company in the world right now which means it’s like the like the hundredth
0:33:13 largest company probably ever ever created it’s like around the like so every business ever created
0:33:19 it is the 100th most valuable which is which is astounding right that’s that’s an astounding number
0:33:25 to think that open ai is a lesson it’s a it’s a decade old or something like that company and it is
0:33:33 already like the 50th or 25th largest company ever created isn’t that astounding not even from
0:33:38 a like a product or the technology but literally how do you organize that like organize the people
0:33:43 who work there organize the investors just the organizational you know they say like uh just the
0:33:48 idea of like you know have you heard the stories about china building like a a fast railroad in like
0:33:54 you know six months like it’s it’s it’s it’s sort of fascinating like that it’s definitely the number
0:34:00 one most valuable non-profit ever is it still really a non-profit uh i think so and he said
0:34:05 they’re not gonna he also said they’re not gonna make a profit until they hit uh what did he say he
0:34:08 goes we can’t make a profit until we get to 10 billion in revenue or something remember my thing
0:34:13 earlier about like just push me away their investor thing which is like listen we have to put a cap
0:34:17 a hundred x cap on your returns because this is gonna get bananas so
0:34:25 dude that pitch the balls it takes to have that as your pitch which is like instead of promising
0:34:30 upside saying listen we’re gonna need to cap your upside because it’s gonna be so insane how much
0:34:33 value we create so i just need to make sure you’re okay with that
0:34:43 i’m gonna start using that just start using that formal formula in my life skip to the this elon one
0:34:47 yeah all right why don’t you frame this one up all right so uh
0:34:55 the uh breaking news president trump comments on elon musk’s apology i thought it was very nice that he
0:35:01 said that trump says and elon musk has a tweet that says i regret some of the posts about president
0:35:03 trump last week they went too far
0:35:11 insane this is insane you can’t do that and apologize right
0:35:19 there is you don’t apologize like dude if i called you a a a pedophile or a rapist
0:35:24 in front of literally the entire world right i can’t say i’m sorry
0:35:30 there’s no there’s no sorry big enough you’re saying dude what genghis khan doesn’t apologize
0:35:36 like when you do like can you imagine napoleon being like hey that one it went a little far
0:35:41 do you want to like shake it out like oh you’re saying conquerors can’t apologize that’s the take
0:35:49 that was a uh such a crazy thing to do and say and he tweeted it out uh very casually where he said
0:35:55 have a nice day donald trump like you know what i mean like it was so it was it was such a a dagger
0:35:59 you can’t apologize for that that i i don’t see how you can come back from that and i don’t see why you
0:36:06 would even try right well i could see why you would try which is like you know you well there’s no winners
0:36:11 at war basically is what what’s gonna happen here with these guys fighting but uh and then look at
0:36:18 the next one dude the the elon knows i love him no no hold on i’m open to rick reconciling with elon
0:36:23 after seeing his latest post elon knows i love him jd knows this too that’s just hilarious by the way i
0:36:28 don’t even know why that’s in there jd knows this too i give the best and biggest reconciliations
0:36:34 everybody knows this that is incredible i don’t even know if this is fake by the way this could totally
0:36:39 be a fake truth post because there’s nothing easier to fake than a truth social post because
0:36:43 nobody has nobody i know has an account on there and so you could just write anything and make me
0:36:49 tell me that he tweeted that and plus he’s he might say he might he could totally have said this uh but
0:36:55 dude how funny is this elon knows i love him jd knows this too what’s that i don’t know i think it’s
0:37:01 because uh jd was on uh theovan’s podcast talking about it i mean are they not talking day to day
0:37:07 and then he goes i give the biggest and best reconciliations dude it’s insane melania knows
0:37:07 this
0:37:17 it’s insane man it’s just crazy this is a reality show this is by the way we need to clip in you calling
0:37:21 this on the podcast that they would break up you were like how long do you give this and it was like a
0:37:25 couple months or something and i was like well i don’t know they’re both like pretty all in on each
0:37:29 other it seems like it’s gonna be really hard to it’d be really messy if they try to break this off
0:37:34 and you’re like rule number one from the 48 laws of power right is that what you were quoting you
0:37:41 were like never outshine the master yeah and i also said they’re gonna break up in june i said it’s
0:37:47 gonna only last until june wow frankly like what a waste of an incredible prediction yeah i mean it’s
0:37:53 like being the tallest midget like it’s not that interesting but like it was a very easy prediction
0:37:57 this was i we knew that it was gonna have they were gonna have a falling out and uh i had you know
0:38:03 a eight percent chance of guessing the month it was very predictable but i this was sort of one of those
0:38:09 moments where like i remember where i was when it happened when i saw that when i saw that tweet we were
0:38:17 my company had a meeting and everyone said oh my god it it it was pretty crazy how elon and trump fighting
0:38:23 it brought down the stock market did you see that yeah it was absolutely ridiculous that my
0:38:28 finances were impacted by this spat and i thought that i thought it was kind of funny it was a it was
0:38:31 a wild day the memes that day were incredible i think i tweeted that out i was like listen this is
0:38:36 a sad day for america but the content is outstanding right now let’s talk self-driving real quick so
0:38:42 self-driving cars are on fire in uh la they’re the rioters are beating up the self-driving cars not
0:38:47 sure exactly why but i like this one from andrew ackerman nodded at the waymo in downtown dc so it
0:38:57 would know i’m one of the good ones hey this episode is brought to you by mercury they’re the fintech of
0:39:03 choice for over 200 000 companies i myself use it for eight different companies the reason why we all
0:39:08 choose it is because it does everything you need under one roof so like my e-commerce company
0:39:11 it’s super important for us to be able to easily wire transfer pay all our different vendors and
0:39:15 suppliers all around the world and the old way with our you know more traditional bank uh that shall now
0:39:20 be named i try it online it would say no it would freeze my account then i’d have to go in book an
0:39:25 appointment speak to a specialist who try to upsell me on something i didn’t need and then finally after
0:39:30 you know 30 minutes there then they charge me 50 bucks for the pleasure of that terrible interaction
0:39:34 and now with mercury i just go online push two buttons and i’m done it’s such a seamless experience
0:39:38 it’s very intuitive everything’s under one place they basically took all the things any company would
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0:39:48 so highly highly recommend it if you’re not using mercury i question your judgment so that’s it you’ve
0:39:52 heard on my first million for more information check out mercury.com mercury is a financial
0:39:59 technology company not a bank check show notes for details have you developed a relationship with
0:40:05 your ai i mean i don’t like to say that but yeah like my voice changed on my chat gpt like the talking
0:40:10 voice and i had like i was like i felt uncomfortable talking to her because i had gotten close to the
0:40:20 other one so i had so i had to change it back and so he’s joking but not really right i mean this is
0:40:25 kind of like the uh sometimes i pray to god even though i don’t believe but just in case uh there’s
0:40:30 definitely an element of that with ai where i’m like i’m gonna say please and thank you you know just
0:40:37 in case just in case things get a little crazy have you taken away mo yeah they’re amazing have you
0:40:45 no they don’t have them in uh in connecticut it’s not exactly uh like the best place to try it out but
0:40:49 no i i i think they’re amazing everyone says they’re amazing go to that one go to the uh the
0:40:56 eric one i think this is like an inspirational one so check this out so uh i i met eric so eric eric’s
0:41:01 the ceo of a company called ramp which like has grown to like a six billion dollar valuation in like four or
0:41:08 five years and he was telling me about uh tp what is it what’s it called tbpn what’s it stand for the
0:41:13 tech bros podcast network i don’t know what that actually stands they tried to change it so it’s not
0:41:18 bro technology brothers i think it’s called like the business podcast and i think that’s what they
0:41:22 changed it but it’ll always be technology brothers to me go on so it’s this guy named jordy and john
0:41:27 coogan they’re fantastic they have this new podcast it’s more like a like a daily news show not even a
0:41:31 podcast but like a video show it’s not even a show it’s basically they do stuff but you don’t even
0:41:36 need to watch the show it’s all clips for twitter so it’s like twitter is like short shorts and clips
0:41:41 is what they what they make they’re hilarious and i was at eric’s office and i said what’s this and it
0:41:47 was a little booklet and apparently they had made like a 20 page book that they sent to potential
0:41:52 sponsors people they’re according to like you know be their sponsor and they wanted to get like a big
0:41:59 check and i turned the page and on one of them uh there was this this piece of copy uh in the deck and
0:42:05 it said our hope is that this partnership is the domino that bankrupts your competitors and
0:42:13 grants you a monopoly so powerful that you are dragged in front of congress and i read that line
0:42:20 and i was like that is the greatest opening line for a pitch deck that i’ve ever read it was fantastic
0:42:25 yeah and i read that line and uh i was joking with eric i’m like this is the greatest thing i’ve
0:42:29 ever read and and he he it made him giggle so i guess he shared that and it’s wonderful how good
0:42:37 is that dude they’re so good i love those guys also i have a funny eric story i met eric when i was in
0:42:45 college and we both got picked for this trip to go go to the alibaba headquarters so it was like a free
0:42:51 all expenses paid trip to china courtesy of jack ma for 50 of the top college entrepreneurs and i was on this
0:42:58 bus and eric was right next to me nice guy he’s kind of a baby-faced guy at the time i don’t know if he
0:43:02 still is you said you met him in person but yeah he’s like he’s like he doesn’t come off like a tycoon
0:43:09 like he comes off like very kind and warm yeah he’s lovely and uh at the time i think he was literally in
0:43:17 an mlm i’m not 100 sure but i’m pretty sure he was selling products that were part of a like a like
0:43:23 an mlm sort of scheme or or he was i don’t remember exactly like essential oils it was like as creams or
0:43:27 something like that and i i’m vaguely remembering this so i could totally be wrong sorry eric if i
0:43:33 got some of the details wrong but i swear if it’s not that it’s in the zip code and i just remember
0:43:37 thinking like oh this guy’s kind of cool he’s a hustler really nice guy uh i don’t know what he’s doing
0:43:42 with these you know whatever it was creams or whatever he was doing at the time and then i’ve
0:43:47 seen him build ramp and i’m like is that the dude from the bus in china who was trying to sell me
0:43:53 creams and uh it just goes to show anything is possible dude when i talked to him it was him and
0:43:59 his part it was like me david senra eric and then eric’s partner all in a room and we were just riffing
0:44:02 and then hanging out i was wanting to meet up with david because david’s a buddy of mine he goes hey i’m
0:44:06 going to be hanging out at ramp’s office if you just want to come and see me it’s right down the street
0:44:09 from your office so i go to see him and i walk in and it’s and it’s and it’s these guys and so it’s
0:44:15 pretty cool and the partner of uh co-founder of ramp kareem i think his name was he told me this story
0:44:22 he was like yeah like we had this idea and our goal was to get to a billion dollar valuation in 12 months
0:44:26 that was the goal and we did the math and we thought that was possible and i was flabbergasted i was like
0:44:34 what i was like did you hit it he goes no man we didn’t hit it it took like 18 months and uh and it was just
0:44:39 really cool to be in a room of people who thought like craziness like that and it actually worked
0:44:44 well you know what’s crazy you know uh i think they were a massive underdog when they started so if you
0:44:52 remember back when they were early brex was already out and early as well and brex was the san francisco
0:44:58 based company ramp is in new york brex had the yc network and connection they went through yc and they were
0:45:02 all the yc companies were kind of like you know yc is kind of like this network effect this little
0:45:07 mafia that they have that can kind of king make certain companies if you get enough momentum
0:45:14 and i just remember i would have bet like the odds bet the betting odds were that brex given those
0:45:18 advantages given that they’re the sf the tech tech focus one like really was is the new york startup
0:45:22 gonna beat the the silicon valley startup it didn’t really seem like that was usually the case and they
0:45:27 had ads everywhere brex did they were advertising everywhere they were a hot name they were nyc like they had a
0:45:31 lot of things that would have made you think they would be the winner here and ramp has thoroughly
0:45:37 kicked the shit out of brex uh they are worth way more and have done a much better job i use ramp it’s
0:45:41 a great you know great product so you know that is very impressive to me i think that that was that is
0:45:47 not how i would have guessed that that would have played out 100 i agree with you apparently the story
0:45:53 is that they ran a company called paribus which is something like uh you get rebates online so you buy
0:45:58 something and you can get like uh uh they help you find a deal and you get a little bit of money and
0:46:01 the brand saves a little bit of money something like that like you know something’s a hundred dollars
0:46:05 you pay 90 bucks and they give you a little bit of cash back whatever they sold the company after
0:46:12 three years for 40 or 50 million dollars and he was like it was nice like we like but we got a lot
0:46:18 wrong and when we sold it we sold it to capital one and in capital one we learned about the demand for
0:46:23 all these things and uh like the the demand for like a good bank account system a demand for all
0:46:29 these business services that people needed and we ran the math because we saw like how big capital one
0:46:32 was and we thought that we could build a billion dollar company in the first year if we did one or
0:46:37 two things right and it was amazing to hear that story that’s pretty cool we should get eric on that
0:46:41 would be well he should come on and tell the story i’m i’m working i’m working with them on it they
0:46:46 have this like huge like event they’re basically what they’re doing doesn’t sound like it would work but it’s
0:46:51 working so they’re like doing all this goodwill stuff sponsoring podcasts they have this huge office
0:46:56 that seats 300 people and they just host events there like these things where like people are like
0:47:01 oh but like what’s the attribution to that and it’s like i don’t know but it somehow it still works
0:47:10 right okay we got to do one uh here this is uh oh no hold on my my text is gone here but i have a uh
0:47:19 new segment sam rich guy house alert what happened all right i saw this tweet about some event it was
0:47:26 like a event i think for like san francisco like kind of like paul like set policy maybe and i was
0:47:29 like okay cool whatever hundreds of people went to this like san francisco policy thing and then somebody
0:47:34 goes but the tweet said uh overwhelmed with the standing room only crowd at gary tan’s house
0:47:39 and i just remember thinking gary tan’s house and i see this tweet that says this is gary tan’s house
0:47:45 big ass house dude gary tan told us he lived in a neighborhood of the city of san francisco
0:47:50 yeah so we’re gonna try to try not to dox him although he said he came in and he goes hell yeah it is my
0:47:57 house and this is the house so have you seen this it is a old church i remember that yeah across the street from
0:48:01 dollars park yeah exactly so so he lives at something here he owns this thing called the
0:48:07 lighthouse it’s a townhouse condo at a hundred year old restored church right across from dolores
0:48:11 four beds three beds but it’s got 30 foot ceilings crazy so look at this house dude wait
0:48:17 he lives there or is that like an event space he owns it i don’t know if he full-time lives there i
0:48:21 you know i don’t want to don’t want to comment on that but like how insane is this i’ve always by
0:48:24 the way i’ve always dreamed of doing this buying an old church these old churches have like sometimes
0:48:29 amazing locations and really like unique bones and structure i didn’t know you could convert
0:48:34 them to housing so this is kind of interesting here but dude how crazy is this house i remember
0:48:38 when this was for sale in san francisco it was i still live there and i remember it being for sale
0:48:43 and i remember there was a another person living there not living there it was like a rich it was
0:48:50 another rich guy who was using it for events and they put it for sale and i’m amazed that he bought
0:48:56 this this looks awesome oh my god look at this bedroom dude i don’t want in a steel cage i don’t
0:49:06 yeah i don’t i don’t want that you know if i was like brock lester or someone like really hardcore
0:49:09 like that looks cool but like
0:49:15 when you watch too much wwe you’re like okay hell in the cell bedroom
0:49:19 look i’m not a tough guy i’m not i’m not brock lester
0:49:26 i mean how hardcore is this bedroom dude this is amazing i love how he’s got like the plush carpet
0:49:31 right outside like a like a waiting room lobby before you enter the the bed the bed zone all right do we
0:49:39 want to do any more are we uh we out oh yeah two more i want to show you guys my my oldest bookmark
0:49:45 from the year 2018 in preparation for this podcast sam’s like cool let me just go look at my twitter
0:49:51 bookmarks and see what good tweets i have and you found this your first ever bookmark is this in 2018
0:50:02 what is this is this group of kenyan men uh the samburu men are describe this like you know because
0:50:05 there’s people who listen to this only on audio by the way if you’ve been listening to this on audio
0:50:10 the whole time please get to youtube please go to youtube and watch this because this is that this
0:50:14 whole thing works if you see the tweets do you remember that movie with kevin bank uh bacon where
0:50:19 he went to africa to play basketball and he found this like tribe of like really tall guys and they
0:50:23 would jump up and they would wear like like very traditional what you would think of like
0:50:28 an african tribes person wearing right they have their shirtless and they have like amazing beads and
0:50:33 and whatever and they have the red hair just like the guy in the movie that’s what this is it’s a group
0:50:39 of guys in kenya and the tweet says that these men are often considered to be the most stylish men
0:50:46 on the planet and uh it’s a photo of these guys and so look honestly agreed first of all the account is
0:50:52 it’s called at kenya picks is that an account you just follow yeah i love kenya because uh i’ve i
0:50:58 like i like runners and so my goal has always been to go to the rift valley which is this area of kenya
0:51:04 and see uh kenyan runners i’ve always admired like running and uh particularly there’s like this group
0:51:07 imagine like a suburb and like something like
0:51:16 90 percent of the distance gold medals have been won by this group of like 10 000 people
0:51:22 in kenya this and that’s always fascinates me and so i’ve always wanted to go and see these guys and uh
0:51:27 this is like nearby in that tribe and so then and then it just says hashtag international men’s day so
0:51:32 that was cool back when hashtags were a thing and then there’s also a picture of the guy jumping and he’s
0:51:37 guys easily five feet off the ground i don’t know how this is this photo this is incredible what is
0:51:42 this no i don’t i don’t know what that is i don’t know i i don’t know that much about kenya but it
0:51:48 looks dope to me should we wear this for next casual friday dude look how like yoked those guys are
0:51:53 i get made fun of for like commenting on people’s calves and like guys bodies but like these guys are
0:51:59 are just jacked right yeah yeah uh what about the theo von one let’s see the last one
0:52:07 because i actually think this is amazing so it’s a picture of theo von uh smiling like how my son
0:52:11 does when we try to get him to take a picture he’s with ivanka trump and who’s that jared right
0:52:18 yeah jared kushner and ivanka trump and he says uh y’all’s posture is so good
0:52:25 what the hell are y’all are y’all in spine club or something i’m built like a damn raccoon thanks for
0:52:33 the hospitality had a blast it’s pretty amazing dude you and i okay so when sean and i started
0:52:39 this podcast uh sean started it and then i joined a little bit later and i said do you like fighter
0:52:44 in the kid and sean was like i love fighter in the kid and fire in the kid is a not so much popular
0:52:50 podcast anymore but it was two guys brennan schaub and brian callen who would talk about ufc fighting
0:52:56 and their friend theo von would occasionally come on the pod he was just a guy he was a he was a character
0:53:02 on the pod and that slowly has developed into they had another pod together called king it and sting it
0:53:07 and he rose further and further and further dude look at him now he’s like he’s talking to the
0:53:13 president the vice president he’s hanging out with these guys how crazy of a career has theo had in
0:53:18 the last decade it’s amazing it’s his rise is pretty great i actually knew him from when he was on like
0:53:23 road rules 20 years ago like because i like real world road rules and the challenge and stuff like that
0:53:28 and so yeah it’s pretty wild to see kind of the the crazy growth but even more wild is this is what i
0:53:34 appreciate about this because this tweet it’s funny but do you know how hard it is as a man to put up
0:53:41 like a a kind of like a thank you post or congratulatory post but not be lame and theo did it you know what
0:53:46 i mean like think about what this post is this post is basically like had such a good time at brunch but
0:53:52 if you just posted that dude you know that’s the lamest thing that you could possibly do but to go with
0:53:58 this y’all’s posture is so good what the hell are y’all in spine club or something it’s just that’s how
0:54:04 it’s done and so i’m studying the art of how how how men can express themselves while still being still
0:54:07 being cool about it you know what i mean dude he’s the best he’s one of the few podcasts that i listened
0:54:12 to i listened to him and tim tim dylan have you listened to him and tim dylan i’m not a huge
0:54:17 tim dylan guy but it’s an acquired taste yeah yeah it’s very much an acquired taste it took me about
0:54:22 two years to get into him he’s uh it’s pretty raunchy uh it’s he’s these guys are like uh
0:54:28 my two favorite podcasters right now it’s pretty amazing how good they are all right that’s it that’s
0:54:47 all right so when my employees join hampton we have them do a whole bunch of onboarding stuff
0:54:52 but the most important thing that they do is they go through this thing i made called copy that copy
0:54:56 that is a thing that i made that teaches people how to write better and the reason this is important is
0:55:02 because at work or even just in life we communicate mostly via text right now whether we’re emailing
0:55:08 slacking blogging texting whatever most of the ways that we’re communicating is by the written word
0:55:12 and so i made this thing called copy that that’s guaranteed to make you write better you can check
0:55:18 it out copy that dot com i post every single person who leaves a review whether it’s good or bad i
0:55:22 post it on the website and you’re going to see a trend which is that this is a very very very simple
0:55:25 exercise something that’s so simple that they laugh at they think how is this going to actually
0:55:30 impact us and make us write better but i promise you it does you got to try it at copy that dot com
0:55:34 i guarantee it’s going to change the way you write again copy that dot com

0:00:02 Will software in some way replace teachers?
0:00:05 Parents want better outcomes.
0:00:10 What is actually improving retention of information, learning, memory?
0:00:15 They’re allowing a teacher to be a lot more productive and be 10 times better at their job.
0:00:21 Will we see more parents like, I want more of a truly AI-directed education for my kid?
0:00:25 It’s teachers who are willing to pay and use this in their every single day workflow.
0:00:29 We need the textbook companies to grow some innovation arms fast.
0:00:37 AI is already reshaping the way students study, teachers teach, and creators deliver knowledge.
0:00:41 But the bigger question is, are we on the brink of a complete rewrite of how learning works?
0:00:45 On today’s episode, we’re joined by three A16Z consumer partners,
0:00:48 Olivia Moore, Zach Cohen, and Justine Moore,
0:00:53 who together bring perspectives on the cultural, technical, and market shifts transforming education.
0:00:56 From TikToks featuring AI-generated celebrity tutors,
0:00:59 to private schools running full-stack AI curricula,
0:01:03 to the surprising way teachers, not students, are driving adoption.
0:01:06 This conversation discusses what’s real, what’s hype,
0:01:09 and what the future of learning might look like when it’s built natively for AI.
0:01:11 Let’s get into it.
0:01:18 As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only.
0:01:21 Should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice,
0:01:24 or be used to evaluate any investment or security,
0:01:28 and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund.
0:01:33 Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast.
0:01:36 For more details, including a link to our investments,
0:01:41 please see A16Z.com forward slash disclosures.
0:01:50 I’m Justine, and this is Olivia, and welcome back to This Week in Consumer AI.
0:01:59 This week, we’re going to be talking about a very fun trend we’ve seen recently blowing up all over our social media feeds related to AI and education.
0:02:05 And for this topic, we wanted to bring on our subject matter expert here at A16Z on education,
0:02:07 which is our colleague, Zach.
0:02:11 Zach, you want to give a little introduction and talk about your experience in ed tech?
0:02:12 Yeah, I would love to.
0:02:16 I think it’s fun to feel invited to a podcast from colleagues.
0:02:18 It’s an interesting feeling for sure.
0:02:20 Yeah, so quickly, just my background.
0:02:23 I’ve been operating and investing in education for quite some time.
0:02:26 So I’ve been here for a little over two and a half years,
0:02:30 thinking about what the next generation of education is going to look like with the advent of AI.
0:02:34 And then before this was at General Atlantic with one of my coverage areas on the Consumer Internet Group,
0:02:37 being education, we were investors in Quizlet Duolingo.
0:02:39 We did the Chess.com deal while I was there.
0:02:42 So the edutainment kind of consumerization of education.
0:02:47 And then before that, I actually built and sold an education technology company
0:02:52 that was focused on delivering high school computer science education in mostly the Northeast area.
0:02:55 And we sold that to actually an education-focused roll-up.
0:02:57 You can count how many times I’ve said education.
0:03:03 Where I worked for a couple years as well, rolling up different assets in mostly adult education and corporate training.
0:03:07 And I know we have looked at a lot in ed tech over the past two years especially.
0:03:13 I think everyone has this intuitive sense that people are using AI for homework.
0:03:18 But even I was surprised, like, seeing some of the data for probably the full first year of ChatGPT.
0:03:25 Like, the .edu users were even larger than everyone else who was a non-student user, which is pretty crazy.
0:03:31 And it does feel like the backlash was also as severe and as immediate, like all of the anti-AI checkers.
0:03:33 Are schools still anti-AI?
0:03:35 Like, how has that evolved?
0:03:37 Yeah, it’s a good question.
0:03:42 We had, like, AI wave, then AI detectors, and the rock’em-sock’em wars of education.
0:03:46 And you had the LA and New York City public schools banning AI right away.
0:03:51 I think we’re super far away from that moment, which I think is really, really strong.
0:03:56 Now, I think we’re in different layers of far away depending on where you are in education.
0:03:59 So, if you look at K-12, there’s still some skeptics.
0:04:08 There’s still, I would say, like, predominantly, like, I think 80% of districts now have a generative AI team that’s going after and looking at procuring kind of new technologies.
0:04:13 So, not only is there, like, earmarked budget, there are people who are thinking and proactively looking for it.
0:04:22 There’s still friction around what you want to use it for and how you want to use it, and maybe there should be a teacher in the loop that has more understanding of how students are using the AI.
0:04:27 And maybe that’s a good or bad thing, but I think it’s a good thing, kind of net-net, that there will be more AI in the classroom.
0:04:32 And then higher ed, like, you have Claude releasing Claude for education.
0:04:35 You have OpenAI releasing kind of education platform.
0:04:39 And they’re partnering and piloting with a bunch of universities.
0:04:45 And this is, like, a pretty horizontal platform that will be, like, fundamental to teachers and students’ experiences.
0:04:47 So, I think higher ed is leading the pack.
0:04:53 I think they’re realizing that this is going to be a tool that people are going to need to know how to use in their jobs, in their everyday lives.
0:04:55 So, I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
0:04:59 I know, you know, 18 months does feel like a long time, but in education, it’s not.
0:05:05 We’ve taken five, six years to move to cloud, and, like, most people aren’t even there yet in the education world.
0:05:07 So, I think it’s super impressive.
0:05:11 And there’s some schools that are, like, mandatory AI usage, like, in the curriculum.
0:05:12 I think Ohio State is one of them.
0:05:15 So, I think it will continue to trickle down.
0:05:19 I think people are always a bit more careful and wary about technology with the younger ages.
0:05:27 But I think we’ve passed the kind of hysteria moment, are now in kind of the pragmatic moment, which is exciting, especially for founders building this space.
0:05:28 Totally.
0:05:29 For sure, yeah.
0:05:33 And I think you sort of alluded to this when talking about your experience in ed tech.
0:05:42 But one of the things that’s so both interesting and scary about the education market as more outsiders is, like, it’s not just one industry, right?
0:05:44 There’s public schools.
0:05:44 There’s private schools.
0:05:45 There’s charter schools.
0:05:47 There’s homeschooling.
0:05:49 There’s supplementary products that parents buy for their kids.
0:05:52 Then there’s the whole higher ed, public and private industry.
0:06:05 And then there’s, like, adult education, kind of future learning, reskilling, all of those sorts of things, which I would imagine is probably going to be huge in the age of AI, automating many jobs and or enhancing many jobs.
0:06:06 I’m curious.
0:06:14 Have you seen the most adoption among a segment of that market, like parents just buying standalone products for their kids versus school districts?
0:06:19 I’m still really surprised that this is my answer, which is teachers.
0:06:21 It’s not actually students.
0:06:24 It’s teachers who are willing to pay and use this in their every single day workflow.
0:06:34 I’ve seen a lot of adoption at students who are trying to use this for homework helpers, but they’re turning off or using it as a way to get their problem set done and then go back to kind of hanging out.
0:06:42 And adult learners, like, the retention maybe has been a bit better or, like, the completion rates or learning efficacy on Duolingo has improved with all the AI features.
0:06:53 But I have not seen a native AI player in the adult education space, and maybe that’s just because distribution is really hard and layering on AI to existing strong pedagogy is maybe the right way to do it.
0:06:55 Or it seems like that is the case now.
0:06:59 But with teachers, like, the rapid amount of adoption is so high.
0:07:09 And that’s a lot of it is because, like, 90% of the job that they hate is the administrative part, which is grading, feedback, going home, building new assignments, new curriculum.
0:07:12 A lot of them have just been borrowing curriculum year over year.
0:07:17 They’ve been trying to iterate on one unit at a time, and now they can generate a curriculum per student.
0:07:19 And I think that’s extremely exciting.
0:07:28 I think we hopefully will take it farther, and it won’t be generating assets that we’ve already seen in education, like worksheets or multiple choice questions.
0:07:31 And, like, the units will start to become more of an AI experience.
0:07:34 But for now, it’s been teachers the wave.
0:07:36 I think Magic School has over, like, 5 million users.
0:07:39 I think 50% of U.S. teachers has used their tool.
0:07:45 Most of the most mature AI companies from a revenue standpoint have been selling to teachers bottoms up, which is tremendous.
0:07:48 Teachers have a very small wallet to spend on tools.
0:07:52 And this is just an outsized return for them compared to the 15 or 20 bucks a month that they’re spending on it.
0:08:01 This brings up another point when you think about what’s driving student outcomes, which is, like, there’s a couple ways to look at what is working in AI and ed tech.
0:08:10 And one would be, like, what is getting the most usage, which, to your point, is probably still ChatGPT for the end students versus, like, maybe more focused products.
0:08:16 And then there’s what is actually improving retention of information, learning, memory, things like that.
0:08:21 Have you seen anything that you’ve been really impressed by in terms of what’s working in AI and ed tech?
0:08:28 Yeah, I think the core of the question is the question, which is, like, what is working, which is, like, what does working mean?
0:08:28 Yeah.
0:08:35 There’s the investor side of what it’s working, which is, like, what do you want to see when you’re investing in a company, right, which is different than, like, the learning outcome side.
0:08:40 And I think from the investing side, I care a lot about looking at kind of retention and engagement.
0:08:47 Retention, obviously, because you have summer months, but you also have students who come on with a test that they have in two days.
0:08:51 And is the experience good enough that they capture them to work proactively on the app the next time?
0:08:52 Right.
0:09:02 So we look at metrics such as cohort engagement to see how students are performing, things like that, or monthly retention, less so like the weekly or yearly retention, which I think could be kind of a red herring in this market.
0:09:08 So I love looking at, like, how many days in a week is a user using this on a cohort basis as the company grows?
0:09:11 Is this starting to become part of their learning?
0:09:16 And I think that that is also a good proxy for how good the product is, not just how engaging it is.
0:09:21 Because if a student is doing this to just get their homework done, I don’t think you’re going to see that level of engagement.
0:09:25 You’re going to see it taper off around certain times, certain months, or be a little spikier.
0:09:33 But people who are seeing flattening engagement of number of days per week, hopefully, you know, above four or five given the school week, I think it’s exciting.
0:09:39 On the education side of what’s working, this is a really, really hard question.
0:09:46 And I think it’s probably, like, a lot of different markets are kind of suffering from this, which is, like, what is the benchmark and eval function in education, right?
0:09:54 So luckily, education, like, it’s not like a corporate job where it’s like, oh, you have an ambiguous performance review, and maybe you’re doing 10% better.
0:09:58 There is, like, tests at the end of the year that measure students’ performance.
0:10:04 The problem with that is you need multiple years of student testing, because there’s a bunch of variables there.
0:10:11 So one is, like, how do you figure out, like, what’s a conditional, what’s independent, what’s dependent, all of that stuff in terms of, like, what’s working in the school.
0:10:15 But on top of that, AI is still at the periphery of education, right?
0:10:19 So since it’s at the periphery of education, we don’t actually know what the outside’s impact is.
0:10:20 It’s helping teachers create assignments better.
0:10:22 It’s helping students get homework done.
0:10:24 But it’s not, like, core to the schooling system.
0:10:27 So I think it’s really hard to know learning outcomes.
0:10:37 I think it has to be a mix between, like, the metrics of the product and how good an understanding the founder is of, like, how to build kind of pedagogy and learning methods within the product.
0:10:42 But I think we’re still, like, a couple years away from actually understanding, like, you know, what the learning goals are.
0:10:51 There’s some papers that have come out from various schools and universities that have shown, like, test improvements with an AI-instructed course or things like that, which is exciting.
0:10:53 But, again, these are research papers and case studies.
0:10:56 These aren’t kind of, like, full state or full nationwide studies.
0:10:57 Okay.
0:11:06 So to get back to the point about making AI core to the educational experience, that kind of touches on one of the sort of viral social media accounts we’ve been seeing.
0:11:09 And I’m sure anyone in the education space, definitely you, Zach, has been seeing.
0:11:12 I think it’s literally called The Future of Education.
0:11:13 It’s an Instagram account.
0:11:14 It’s run by this woman.
0:11:16 I think her name’s Mackenzie Price.
0:11:30 And she runs a school called Alpha School, which I believe is a charter school in a few states now and has had these viral Instagram videos blow up by showing how her school, they have two hours of classwork, I believe it is, a day.
0:11:37 And it’s delivered via AI tutors, like, these computer programs that are teaching kids at their level.
0:11:42 And then they spend the rest of the day on sort of self-directed projects or things like that.
0:11:45 Would love to know your take as the education expert, Zach.
0:11:48 What you’ve heard about Alpha School or will it work to deploy AI like that?
0:11:54 Yeah, Alpha School is, like, everything I can ask for about what’s happening in education.
0:11:55 We talk about it.
0:11:56 We opine on it.
0:12:03 And then we have to just sit here and wait for superintendents and district heads to buy single-point solutions in AI every turn of the budget.
0:12:06 And then over three to four years, we can have a narrative.
0:12:12 I think what Alpha School brings us is what, like, any labs team would bring at a company, right?
0:12:22 So it’s like, hey, you know, the Snap Labs team is going to try out a bunch of new features, and they could deprecate whatever features because they’re moving fast and not deploying a bunch of resources, and they have outsized budget to go do this.
0:12:28 Then let’s see what works and what works we’re going to take and what doesn’t work we’re going to deprecate and we’re going to continue to iterate.
0:12:37 I think Alpha School is doing that for private schools now and hopefully for public schools later, which is tuition is, you know, $40,000 or a super well-funded private school.
0:12:42 The parent and student base is self-selecting into a group who wants technology in the classroom.
0:12:52 These might seem like just small facts, but, like, all of these in amalgamation change, like, the outcome of what something like a school can do and removes a bunch of friction to allow you to move fast.
0:13:05 So I think what Alpha School is showing us is if you try to turn full tilt on AI in education and you bring it into the classroom and you’re fine overspending on software, you’re fine spending a bunch of money testing a bunch of different softwares, you can figure out what’s working.
0:13:16 I think my takeaway here is this is a great signal for where technology is today that if you have the privilege to go test it out and figure it out, it will have outsized impact.
0:13:18 I think they rank, like, 99th percentile in a few different assessments.
0:13:21 Their students are now, like, top 1, top 2 percent of the nation.
0:13:23 Like, it is incredible outcomes.
0:13:27 But, again, this is, like, the lack of commercialization of a lot of this software.
0:13:29 Part of that is what does the integration look like?
0:13:30 Part of that is just the cost of software.
0:13:35 Part of that is, like, the software literacy at the school level.
0:13:38 So I think Alpha School is net-net extremely positive signals.
0:13:40 I think it’s an incredible way to learn.
0:13:46 It’s leaning into a lot of the old ways that we’ve talked about learning, which is, like, self-discovery, self-learning, very limited instruction.
0:13:48 And it’s working.
0:13:50 So I think public schools are looking at it.
0:13:54 Maybe superintendents are saying, well, I don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars of the software budget.
0:13:56 But I think that’s okay, right?
0:14:01 Like, we see software gets cheaper, let, you know, the Alpha Schools of the world test out what’s really working.
0:14:04 And those companies will really benefit from early partnerships from Alpha School.
0:14:08 And to me, it’s, like, paving a way for a lot of companies to see what they’re doing.
0:14:11 Obviously, from a very privileged standpoint where Alpha School is.
0:14:12 Interesting.
0:14:12 Yeah.
0:14:21 I think the controversial question there, like, when you talk about superintendents don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on software every year, they do spend that on teachers.
0:14:25 And so the controversial thing is, will software in some way replace teachers?
0:14:27 Will AI replace teachers?
0:14:34 Or will we still need a human instructor to be delivering the curriculum or giving lessons to the majority of students?
0:14:34 Yeah.
0:14:37 I think no or a very long horizon away.
0:14:38 There’s still a shortage.
0:14:41 There’s still teachers who are swamped with work.
0:14:49 What we’re talking about in the AI world for what consumers can do with AI and what even enterprises are doing with AI, like, we are multiple years behind there.
0:14:56 Like, the biggest use case of AI right now is generating an answer sheet or a worksheet assignment.
0:14:58 It’s not even, like, a unit in the classroom.
0:15:01 And what I mean by that is, like, it’s actually a really big nuanced difference.
0:15:11 And one of the reasons why I’ve had a little bit of a hard time investing in these early education companies is they’re allowing a teacher to be a lot more productive and be 10 times better at their job.
0:15:13 I feel like burnout is a lot lower.
0:15:14 Incredible.
0:15:15 Right.
0:15:16 Really, really amazing.
0:15:20 But it doesn’t mean that the students are interacting with AI in a learning environment.
0:15:23 They’re actually interacting with the same asset that they would, and they’re having the exact same experience.
0:15:25 Maybe they’re having updated worksheets.
0:15:31 Maybe there’s some, like, better memes or better references in those worksheets because the teachers can update it weekly.
0:15:44 But that’s very different than being in an AI-enabled environment where you can take a history lesson straight from Abe Lincoln’s avatar and speak to them and have a detailed conversation or create your own world around what you think.
0:15:48 You know, you write a creative writing prompt and go create your own world around it or create a game around it.
0:15:50 Like, I think those experiences are far away from coming.
0:15:50 Yeah.
0:15:56 So I think my point here is not to not answer the question, but to say we’re so far away from even, like, AI teaching units.
0:15:57 Yeah.
0:15:58 I think we’re very far away from AI teachers.
0:16:05 Now, I think what will happen is, like, the amount of active teaching will go away because I think you can, like, have really good active teaching with AI.
0:16:08 But I don’t think it’s going to fully replace a human teacher.
0:16:08 Yeah.
0:16:09 Super interesting.
0:16:21 I do feel like on the opposite end of the spectrum from Alpha School, which is, like, very private, very high cost, is this explosion of, like, free, publicly available, what I would call ed tech content.
0:16:30 But it looks very different from the prior best in class, which was, like, the Khan Academy videos that I learned math and other things on and that I love.
0:16:32 That open source animation package is called Manum.
0:16:33 Yes.
0:16:33 It’s still around today.
0:16:34 Yeah.
0:16:39 And now we have, like, people putting their textbook into Notebook.lm and making a podcast.
0:16:44 You found a bunch of TikTok videos that generate, like, Sydney Sweeney explaining this.
0:16:44 Yeah.
0:16:46 There’s this Instagram account called Onlock Learning.
0:16:47 Okay.
0:16:47 Yeah.
0:16:50 And every video they post gets millions of views.
0:16:57 And it’s, like, explanations delivered by, like, deep fake AI celebrities of, like, math and physics content.
0:16:59 I think particularly for the AP or IB exams.
0:17:00 Yeah.
0:17:05 And it also has, like, diagrams and graphics that sort of walk you through the explanation.
0:17:06 Yeah.
0:17:18 And I guess it just makes me think, to what extent are we going to see standalone AI ed tech products versus just new formats and ways to learn that are delivered across all of the platforms that we already have?
0:17:19 Yeah.
0:17:20 I think it’s a great question.
0:17:27 And I’ve watched way more educational videos than I have in the last, like, four days than I’ve had in the last 10 years.
0:17:31 Which, again, is, like, a really good signal that, like, they’re engaging.
0:17:33 They feel like brain rock content.
0:17:34 But they’re actually the complete opposite.
0:17:35 Yes.
0:17:38 So they, like, look, feel, sound, or cut the same way.
0:17:43 But they’re teaching a really, really, really, really detailed topic and pretty technical topic.
0:17:45 And, like, they’re getting better.
0:17:48 Like, I remember a year ago, it was, like, Taylor Swift teaching the Taylor series.
0:17:54 It’s a tool we use in math to turn scary functions into friendly polynomials.
0:17:55 Yeah.
0:17:59 And now you have, like, Drake in conversation with Sidney Sweeney.
0:18:02 So if we square root it, we get the vector’s length.
0:18:07 And that, guys and gals, is why this expression gives you the length of a 3D vector.
0:18:08 Yeah.
0:18:10 Talking about three-dimensional shapes.
0:18:15 It is, like, getting better, both on, like, the animations of the graphic side and then also the deepfakes of the celebrity side.
0:18:17 Like, it’s all getting a lot more engaging.
0:18:25 What I think is really interesting here and the thing to focus on was, I don’t know if you remember as a kid, you were like, oh, like, Zach’s a visual learner.
0:18:27 Or, like, Justine likes audio.
0:18:27 Yeah, yeah.
0:18:30 Or Olivia likes to read and, like, marinate with her ideas.
0:18:33 And then you kind of get boxed into, like, a type of learner.
0:18:36 And that was considered, like, pretty progressive education.
0:18:40 It’s like, oh, we know what type of learner you are and we’re going to, like, cater to it.
0:18:40 Right.
0:18:46 The problem is I’m a visual learner for one thing, but I might want to listen to a podcast for another and read for another.
0:18:46 Yeah.
0:18:48 Or watch a brain rot radio for another.
0:18:50 Like, it just could be so many different things.
0:18:50 Yeah.
0:18:52 Or to do a hundred problem sets, right?
0:18:52 Yes.
0:18:55 So I think what’s happening now is, like, we’re going to have, like,
0:19:00 have, like, a factioning of a bunch of different types of learners where, depending on the topic
0:19:04 and your understanding of the topic, you could pick whatever modality you want.
0:19:06 And I think that’s really, really exciting.
0:19:08 And then also depending on how serious you want to get in the topic.
0:19:11 Like, if you want to just be conversational around it and it’s not for a test,
0:19:13 then, like, maybe brain rot content is perfect.
0:19:14 Yeah.
0:19:22 But if you are taking, like, an exam that matters for your final grade, like, maybe you want to generate a bunch of problem sets and then listen to audio that explains your answers, right?
0:19:36 So I think for me, it’s more, you know, I don’t know if any of these turn into individual companies, but I think what’s really exciting here is, like, the mode of learning is going to be, like, the title of what mode of learning you are and what mode of learning, like, you’re going to be, like, burdened.
0:19:38 You know, it’s going to be removed from that burden.
0:19:43 And I think that, to me, that is, like, the most exciting aspect for education right now.
0:19:45 And I think, like, we’re seeing it, right?
0:19:46 The engagement of these videos are insane.
0:19:48 I mean, this is not a brain rot video.
0:19:50 You know, this is not Italian brain rot.
0:19:51 Like, this is very, very different.
0:19:52 Yeah.
0:19:52 Well, even the—
0:19:53 It’s exciting.
0:19:57 Even the VO3 vlogs, where it’s, like, a day in the life of some famous historical figure—
0:19:58 Yeah, the history stuff is incredible.
0:19:59 It’s fascinating.
0:20:01 It’s, like, truly entertaining to watch.
0:20:03 And I find myself, like, actually learning things.
0:20:10 I think the hard part of that is there’s a few different companies that are doing really interesting things at the forefront of AI and education.
0:20:10 Yeah.
0:20:17 One of which feels like what the VO3 thing is doing, which, like, you can chat and have a conversation with Napoleon about history, right?
0:20:18 Things like that.
0:20:27 But in order to get school adoption, they have to wedge in with these kind of, like, more rudimentary tools, which is, like, the worksheet generators and, like, student helpers and feedback.
0:20:36 And then once you do that, it’s not so easy to get people to use the other mode because it’s a new form of education versus, hey, do the same thing.
0:20:37 Just do it 10 times better.
0:20:50 So it’s interesting to see, like, the stuff that engages us the most and gets me the most excited, even if it’s being adopted and paid for by the school, if you look at the usage of those tools compared to the usage of kind of the more rudimentary tools, it’s extremely low.
0:20:58 So I think there’s probably going to have to be, like, a large, like, PD movement here on, like, how to bring AI not just into your workflow but into your classroom.
0:20:59 And I think that’s a really big difference.
0:21:07 It’s fascinating to think, too, about if you were to design the school system from the ground up starting in the AI world, like, how it would be different.
0:21:18 One of the things that has really interested me about the BrainRot videos is, like, for the first time, it feels like it’s separating, like, what the content is and who is delivering the content.
0:21:21 And then it’s optimizing both of those.
0:21:25 So if you look at the comments on these videos, I’m sure we’ll show some of them.
0:21:31 It’s often people who are, like, I was, like, a physics graduate student and I got, like, a 4.0 at this prestigious program.
0:21:36 And I’m, like, telling you guys this is, like, an exceptional explanation and I’ve never understood this content better.
0:21:41 So, like, you’re optimizing for, like, hey, this is how you deliver the content in a good way.
0:21:42 Explain it in a good way.
0:21:43 Make it understandable.
0:21:47 And then, like, here’s the, like, BrainRot celebrity, like, this is a familiar voice.
0:21:49 This is her first video on top.
0:21:49 Exactly.
0:21:53 This is an interesting graphic or image to, like, bring those things together.
0:21:54 Yeah.
0:22:04 Which we’ve pretty much, I think, only seen with the self-directed AI products today because the traditional schools, you can’t really separate the content from the teachers, is my understanding.
0:22:05 Yeah, it’s interesting.
0:22:12 I think the answer is, in my head, is probably, like, the textbook companies control this dynamic here a lot.
0:22:17 They are still the gatekeepers of a lot of content and what gets in and out of the classroom.
0:22:21 Now, I think it depends on whether they run with this or not.
0:22:25 I think sometimes they view this as cannibalizing their existing business.
0:22:32 Sometimes they’re, like, oh, this is extending our existing content and we have the single source of truth and AI is really good at augmenting but not net new creation.
0:22:40 So, I think what’s going to happen is really dependent on, like, where the textbook companies and the publishers spend the next kind of 18 months thinking about net new products.
0:22:44 Are they going to partner with AI companies and the AI companies will get distribution?
0:22:52 The textbook companies will get really strong product and technology extension of their existing content that feels like it’s slowly losing its value day by day.
0:22:56 So, it’s a weird kind of power dynamic right now.
0:22:58 But I think that that’s where we are.
0:23:03 We need the textbook companies to grow some innovation arms fast.
0:23:04 Or outsource them.
0:23:04 Yeah.
0:23:08 Zach’s on one side of the spectrum, which is this is how the educational system actually works.
0:23:10 And it’s, like, very complicated.
0:23:16 And in some ways it’s, like, the healthcare system or the tax system where there’s a bunch of annoying, outdated stuff but you can’t really change it.
0:23:22 And then I’m on the other end of the spectrum where I’m, like, blow it all up and have everyone be taught by an AI tutor, like, all of the time.
0:23:27 Like, if LLMs have ingested the whole internet, they’ve probably learned a lot of stuff.
0:23:27 Yeah.
0:23:30 And they might even know what to teach us that teachers don’t.
0:23:30 Yeah.
0:23:35 And I would assume that sort of the Zach perspective is more where we are today.
0:23:44 But I am wondering, like, are we going to see – a lot of people are basically reckoning what to do with their careers, what to do with their lives, what to do with their education in the age of AI.
0:23:45 Yeah.
0:23:53 Will we see more parents opting for something more on the second path that’s, like, I want more of a truly AI-directed education for my kid?
0:23:53 Yeah.
0:23:55 Parents want better outcomes.
0:23:57 Like, that’s what the reward model for them is.
0:23:58 Are we going to invest in technology?
0:23:59 Are we going to invest in this tutor?
0:24:05 Are we going to invest in this course that allows my child to be better off from an education standpoint?
0:24:13 I think, like, one of the most interesting pitches I’ve seen in a company that was super early was an AI reading company, which basically, like, sent kids’ books.
0:24:16 And then they had AI teach the kids how to read.
0:24:19 And it was mostly three- to four-year-olds.
0:24:22 The promise was to get them to read at, like, a third-grade level within three months.
0:24:22 Wow.
0:24:24 And it was $500 a month.
0:24:24 Yeah.
0:24:28 And they had a bunch of parents within the first two months sign up for this.
0:24:28 Wow.
0:24:31 Now, if they can prove this outcome, I think they’ll get a lot more parents.
0:24:36 If they can’t, I think parents are like, well, AI and technology maybe isn’t the right way to do it.
0:24:37 I’m going to go pay a tutor.
0:24:47 I think the other side of this is also if you have the disposable income to spend $100, $200 an hour on a private tutor, the comp to using AI is a bit harder.
0:24:52 And if the AI software is priced against that, then you have a little bit harder and more friction on the adoption curve of AI.
0:25:02 But if it’s, hey, my kid’s going to watch Netflix for four hours or I can put them in front of an LLM that can teach them things and keep them engaged, then that’s a very different conversation.
0:25:05 So I think it’s very kind of socioeconomically dependent.
0:25:07 I think it’s very geo-dependent.
0:25:09 I think it’s very, like, resource constraint dependent.
0:25:17 So I think there’s a future probably for a few students to feel that way, especially because, like, LLMs can be controlled, right?
0:25:20 So, like, parents could say, hey, I want it to explain this way.
0:25:31 You know, if it gets easier to control them, even for non-technical users, which it continues to be, like, hey, I don’t want you to discuss this topic or every question I want you to, like, show the mathematical equation and write the proof and explain it.
0:25:34 You know, I think all of that control is really, really exciting for some parents.
0:25:38 So I think we just have to figure out how to harness it and how to benchmark it.
0:25:40 And I think it could be a potential future.
0:25:45 Looking a year from now, AI ed tech, like, first of all, what do you think we’re going to see?
0:25:47 Is it a lot of progress?
0:25:48 Is it a little bit of progress?
0:25:50 And then what would you like to see, ideally?
0:25:52 Yeah, so much.
0:25:57 In a year from now, I think we’ll see a ton of progress on the higher education side.
0:26:00 I think this is the year for higher education, this kind of next coming school year.
0:26:02 How do higher ed use it?
0:26:04 How do the large model companies work with education companies?
0:26:08 The question of, are the large model companies going to be good enough?
0:26:13 Will there need to be smaller application companies built on top of the large model companies?
0:26:15 I think that’s one thing we’re going to learn a lot of.
0:26:25 I think we are going to, in the next 12 months, move from the outside of education, the use of AI, just to make things easier, to bring it into the classroom, whether it’s adding it to a discussion.
0:26:28 I think a lot of the unlocks in voice in real time is really exciting.
0:26:32 So I think the next 12 months will show us a lot.
0:26:35 I don’t know if it will necessarily, like, birth a massive company in education.
0:26:36 I still think it will move.
0:26:39 But I think education will look fairly similar, though.
0:26:42 But I think we’ll learn a lot as the market kind of matures.
0:26:49 What I’d love to see from a consumer perspective is the first, like, fully AI teacher influencer.
0:26:50 Not one of the deepfake celebrities.
0:26:52 I know they’re super entertaining.
0:27:00 But it would be fascinating to see, like, what does it look like if you designed the most engaging but also truly informative teacher from the ground up?
0:27:00 Totally.
0:27:02 And you alluded to this as well, Zach.
0:27:05 Like, there’s probably not one teacher who’s that for everyone.
0:27:21 I might learn best from an animated dog, whereas you might learn best from an actual photorealistic teacher and how we can create those sort of, like, adaptive, AI-driven characters in real time who can deliver really personalized learning on each student’s timeline.
0:27:32 Because we sort of touched on this a bit, but I think one of the exciting things that schools like Alpha School are enabling is you can spend as much or little time on a subject as you need to learn it, master it, and move on.
0:27:37 Whereas in a traditional school system, almost everyone is moving at the pace of their classroom.
0:27:41 Like, you’re moving at the average pace of the 30 other kids.
0:27:41 Yeah.
0:27:48 And you can’t really speed it up or slow it down unless you have an external tutor, like you mentioned, Zach, that’s several hundred dollars an hour.
0:27:51 So, anyway, that’s what I would like to see.
0:27:57 More AI teacher influencers and more sort of apps that allow personalized learning speeds.
0:27:57 Yeah.
0:27:59 I think that that is the right push.
0:28:05 And I think what you’re saying, and I think we’re agreeing, is, like, the brain, the language models are good enough to teach.
0:28:06 Like, they really are, right?
0:28:09 Like, if you want to learn something, ChatGPT is a great place to go learn something.
0:28:13 Obviously, make sure everything they’re saying is perfect, but it’s a great place to learn something.
0:28:18 But it’s not really an engaging product, especially when you have to learn it and there’s stress involved.
0:28:26 So, I think all of the kind of infrastructure around avatars, around voice, and everything you’re describing, Justine, is going to actually unlock a lot around education.
0:28:32 I’m sure we’ll unlock a bunch of use cases around more engaging or less engaging things that need to be more engaging.
0:28:32 Yeah.
0:28:32 Right.
0:28:33 So, I think it’s interesting.
0:28:36 We’re at the moment where I think LLMs are trusted as a learning partner.
0:28:42 Now, we have to build experiences around them that feel native to how you interact with language models.
0:28:43 Yep.
0:28:49 And native to the tools that are, one, that we can build with AI today, and two, where students are engaged, right?
0:28:52 Which is, like, the Brainard video is a great example of all of that.
0:28:53 Amazing.
0:28:55 Well, thank you for educating us all on this, Zach.
0:28:55 This was awesome.
0:28:56 Yeah, of course.
0:28:57 It was great talking to you both.
0:29:03 Thanks for listening to the A16Z podcast.
0:29:09 If you enjoyed the episode, let us know by leaving a review at ratethispodcast.com slash A16Z.
0:29:11 We’ve got more great conversations coming your way.
0:29:12 See you next time.

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0:01:11 So what did you want to talk about?
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0:01:42 Welcome to Office Hours with Prop G.
0:01:47 This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind.
0:01:48 What’s happening?
0:01:53 Just a reminder, you can now catch Office Hours every Monday and Friday.
0:01:54 That’s right, every Monday and Friday.
0:01:55 Bookends of the week.
0:01:57 Feeling a little exposed?
0:01:57 A little insecure.
0:02:03 If you’d like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehoursofpropgmedia.com.
0:02:06 Again, that’s officehoursofpropgmedia.com.
0:02:11 Or post a question on the Galloway, Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode.
0:02:11 What a thrill.
0:02:13 Question number one.
0:02:16 Our first question comes from L from Pennsylvania on Reddit.
0:02:24 In 2024, median CEO pay rose 9.7% to $17.1 million.
0:02:29 Median employee raise rose 1.7% to $85,000.
0:02:32 That’s roughly a 200 to 1 ratio in CEO earnings to employee earnings.
0:02:41 In the 60s and 70s, presumably a time where MAGA thought America was great, it was much closer to 20 or 30 to 1 per the Economic Policy Institute.
0:02:51 Seeing stuff like this and hearing working-class Americans more concerned with identity politics than the massive disparity in compensation between wealthy executives and the working class drives me insane.
0:02:56 What can we do to make this issue more well-known and understood additionally?
0:02:58 And what can we do to address this disparity in earnings?
0:03:00 Love your show and opinions.
0:03:02 Been sharing your content with a lot of folks.
0:03:03 Thanks, L from PA.
0:03:05 So, look, we’re brothers from another mother.
0:03:06 We’re cut from the same cloth.
0:03:07 Birds of a feather.
0:03:09 I think it’s insane.
0:03:10 I think income in a quad.
0:03:12 My entire investment strategy is pretty much income inequality.
0:03:17 I’m like, okay, certain companies have more access to cheaper capital and running away with it.
0:03:24 I only invest in companies that I see are probably either a monopoly or some sort of strange left-for-dead company that might offer a 10 or 20 extra turn.
0:03:28 And also, I’ve been buying a lot of real estate in very kind of tony areas.
0:03:31 London, Palm Beach, Aspen, and New York.
0:03:35 Because I think that essentially really, really wealthy people are the most boring or homogenous people in the world.
0:03:41 And they don’t want to live in one of five places, Dubai, London, Palm Beach, New York, or Aspen.
0:03:43 But it’s insane.
0:03:44 And part of it is CEO compensation.
0:03:49 And first, let me tell you how it happens and, two, what I think we should do about it.
0:03:49 Okay.
0:03:51 What happens?
0:03:55 I’ve served on the compensation committee of boards that decide the compensation for the CEO.
0:04:04 And this is very sensitive because, obviously, the CEO is usually there for money and knows what his or her buddies are making as CEO of their competitor.
0:04:06 And they’re very sensitive about it.
0:04:11 And it’s taken them a long time and they’re very talented to get to the iron throne and they want to get paid really well.
0:04:15 And also, compensation committee members don’t like to actually do any real work.
0:04:18 So we hire this firm called Towers Parent or another compensation consultant.
0:04:23 And the compensation consultant comes in with the following, a bunch of data on, say, you’re running, say, you’re on the board of the New York Times.
0:04:25 I think I was on the compensation committee there.
0:04:26 I don’t know.
0:04:31 Anyways, they bring in a bunch of data that says, okay, this is a $5 billion media company.
0:04:33 $5 billion media companies.
0:04:34 Here’s the range.
0:04:35 Here’s the lowest paid CEO.
0:04:39 Here’s the highest paid CEO of a $5 billion media company.
0:04:45 And then the CEO will try and stuff in new media companies because those compensation levels are much higher, right?
0:04:54 The CEO’s vested interest is to get a consultancy that will show that the market is paying people a shit ton of money and he or she usually gets to decide who they hire.
0:04:56 And so it’s a bit of a racket.
0:04:57 It’s a bit of an inside job.
0:04:59 And this is what happens.
0:05:07 At the 50% level, that’s where the average CEO of a $5 billion media company, that’s what their compensation is.
0:05:09 And psychologically, what happens is the following.
0:05:21 Despite the fact that the average pay of a CEO of a $5 billion media company is really great compensation, we think, well, Janet Robinson, who was our CEO at the time, is trying hard and she’s smart and we want to send a good signal and keep her motivated.
0:05:37 So despite the fact that she’s a fairly mediocre CEO, in my view, at the time, and shooting everyone who potentially could be the next CEO because of her insecurity, that’s a sign of a bad CEO, we’re going to pay her at 60%, not at 50%.
0:05:39 And you think, well, that’s no big deal, pay them slightly above average.
0:05:51 But if you’re paying someone 20% more than average, that means every three and a half years, you’re doubling their compensation relative to the average of an already really well compensated group of people.
0:06:02 As a result, the CEO compensation has skyrocketed, absolutely skyrocketed, whereas employee compensation, per your statistics, is not really accelerated.
0:06:03 Now, here’s the issue.
0:06:05 What do you do about it?
0:06:08 I don’t think you can put caps on compensation.
0:06:10 I don’t, I think that’s socialism.
0:06:11 I don’t think it works.
0:06:13 What I think you can do is the following.
0:06:15 We need a more progressive tax structure.
0:06:20 I think it’s okay that CEOs make tens of millions or hundreds of millions or sometimes even billions.
0:06:29 If the CEO is really adding that much value and creating that much shareholder value, I don’t have a problem with them sharing in it, even if they become, I remember when Mickey Drexler made a billion dollars at the gap.
0:06:30 I’m like, he deserves it.
0:06:32 He’s created so much shareholder value.
0:06:33 He deserves it.
0:06:37 And who are we to tell him that compensation is too much?
0:06:38 You want to use the word fair.
0:06:42 You’re not going to find a lot of fair in the corporate world, especially in a compensation table.
0:06:48 But I do think we need to more aggressively address a progressive tax structure.
0:06:56 And that is, I see no reason why anyone who makes over $10 million a year shouldn’t have a 60 to 80 percent marginal tax rate.
0:06:56 Why?
0:06:58 We need that money.
0:07:01 And there’s a lot of people making crazy amounts of money right now.
0:07:03 And we need to pay down our deficit.
0:07:10 We need to reinvest in technology and education and food stamps and help some of our least fortunate figure out a way to pull themselves up.
0:07:21 And we’re going to have to just tax people more because what we have now is a regressive tax structure because the majority of your employees pay taxes on current income, maximum rate 37 percent.
0:07:26 And the CEO gets majority of their compensation from equity, maximum tax rate 23.8 percent.
0:07:29 So the tax structures actually become regressive.
0:07:36 So I would like to see an alternative minimum tax of 50 or 60 percent, no loopholes for people who make more than $10 million a year.
0:07:40 And this is why that tax, while it sounds scary, is less taxing.
0:07:45 And Republicans would like you to believe that they’re our most productive employees and it’s theft.
0:07:46 No, it’s not.
0:07:50 That’s actually a lower tax rate than the super wealthy have been paying for most of the 20th century.
0:07:51 And here’s the good part.
0:07:53 They’re no less happy.
0:07:57 Once you get above a certain amount of money, incremental money doesn’t give you, provide you with anything.
0:08:00 It doesn’t give you any additional value or happiness.
0:08:03 What are you going to give it to your kids so they can have a Range Rover and a cocaine habit?
0:08:08 I mean, you want taxes that are the least taxing, so to speak.
0:08:10 I’m a big fan of raising taxes on estate taxes.
0:08:16 I do think you’re going to have to raise taxes on corporations who are paying their lowest taxes since 1929.
0:08:18 But I don’t think you can put compensation caps.
0:08:25 I think that’s socialism, it doesn’t work, and creates all sorts of gymnastics around spreading out all these unnatural acts that’ll waste time and energy.
0:08:32 But I do think anyone making over a certain amount of money should be subject to the same progressive tax structure that we’ve had for most of the 20th century.
0:08:34 Appreciate the question.
0:08:38 Our second question comes from Papaya Melon on Reddit.
0:08:39 You’ve got to give it to the Redditors.
0:08:40 They sound very creative.
0:08:42 They sound like a group of people to be fun to do edibles with.
0:08:48 All right, I’m a 23-year-old engineer working in the aerospace industry at a Fortune 500 company.
0:08:56 On one hand, I find that I have a good job that I could maybe rise up in, have great friends and a great family, all while living in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
0:09:02 On the other hand, the job is very unchallenging, and I find myself wanting to go after my startup dream to chase that challenge.
0:09:13 I feel that at my age and skill, my risk tolerance is very high, and I should be going after the startup dream, but I struggle to identify if that’s really what I want to do or if that’s just conditioning from the internet and that I’m not doing enough.
0:09:22 Do you think that a young 20-something should throw caution to the wind and bet on their ability or value the growth opportunity and comfort that corporate America provides?
0:09:29 This is what the passé internet answer is going to be and is going to be, go for it now.
0:09:30 You’re young.
0:09:32 Start a company.
0:09:33 This is America.
0:09:34 Absolutely.
0:09:35 Chase your dreams.
0:09:38 You know, all the shots you don’t take, you miss.
0:09:39 Okay, hold on.
0:09:40 Hold on.
0:09:44 Anyone who’s telling you to start a company without a solid idea of what you’re doing is already rich.
0:09:46 And here’s the thing.
0:09:52 We romanticize entrepreneurship and we diminish unfairly the power of the U.S. corporation.
0:09:57 The greatest wealth generator in history is the U.S. corporation, and it sounds like you’re at a good one.
0:10:01 So I would be very careful before leaving that seat.
0:10:08 If you’re making good money at a good company and doing well, they’re going to have no trouble replacing you.
0:10:13 There’s going to be a lot of applications that come in for your job.
0:10:37 Now, as someone who started nine companies, if you have a co-founder, if you have an idea, if you have a small company that reaches out to you and they already have traction, I actually think the sweet spot of upside on a risk-adjusted basis is not being the founder of a company because there’s just so much infant mortality and hooking up the printer and finding money and trying to find those first few employees.
0:10:44 I think the sweet spot is being employee kind of 10 to 50 because some of the risk has already been starched out.
0:10:51 A lot of the people who work at Prof. G were joined L2 after the first few employees, so they kind of knew it was working.
0:10:57 They kind of knew we had some level of product market fit, but it was still early enough that they got a decent chunk of equity.
0:10:59 I think that’s the sweet spot.
0:11:05 But if you have a great idea, you feel like you’ve already lined up, if you want to start a business, start it before you leave.
0:11:11 And that is, have a company or have people who’ve already kind of started it and you know it sort of works.
0:11:18 But just deciding to take off with a backpack and come back and start a company and give up a job, time goes fast.
0:11:23 And I think there’s a really decent chance that two, three years into it, you look back and think,
0:11:26 I probably just should have stayed at that company and banked some money.
0:11:34 If you’re not challenged at work, then what I would suggest, if you’re good, is you have a transparent conversation with your manager in your review and say,
0:11:40 I don’t, you know, I like it here, be appreciative, be thoughtful, but I’d like some more challenging work.
0:11:42 I’d like to challenge myself and push myself.
0:11:46 And if it’s a good company, they’re going to find the type of work that challenges you.
0:11:56 So in sum, we romanticize entrepreneurship and people don’t appreciate how great it is to have a big platform that pays for you to have that mole removed.
0:11:58 And you can make a lot of money.
0:12:02 You know, corporations are a great place to get rich slowly and time goes fast.
0:12:08 And if you’re maximizing out your 401k and getting equity participation and they like you,
0:12:15 I would think about trying to find a more entrepreneurial culture or more challenging work within that organization.
0:12:18 But again, these are very personal decisions.
0:12:23 One thing I would definitely recommend doing is assembling a kitchen cabinet of kind of sober people who know your situation,
0:12:25 how important economic security is.
0:12:27 And if you find an opportunity that you can bounce it off of,
0:12:30 because sometimes it’s hard to read the label from inside of the bottle in sum,
0:12:34 anyone who just hears the question and answers one way or another isn’t being very thoughtful.
0:12:36 It depends on your situation at work.
0:12:37 It depends on your opportunities.
0:12:39 Quite frankly, it depends on how much money you have.
0:12:42 If you have rich parents you can fall back on, sure, you can be more risk aggressive.
0:12:48 If you just had your second child and your spouse isn’t working, it’s very hard to give up that steady salary.
0:12:53 But again, a big theme here is we have a tendency to romanticize entrepreneurship
0:12:56 and not appreciate how powerful the U.S. corporation is.
0:12:58 Congratulations on all your success.
0:13:00 It sounds as if you’re doing really well.
0:13:03 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:14:03 That’s Upway.co, code PROFG2025.
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0:14:16 On this show, we talk a lot about financial security.
0:14:19 It’s the goal that so many people simply don’t find attainable.
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0:15:01 Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principle.
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0:16:29 Welcome back, on to our final question.
0:16:32 Hey, Professor Galloway.
0:16:33 Patrick here from New Hampshire.
0:16:39 I’ve spent over 25 years in higher education, mostly at public universities and colleges.
0:16:44 I have been a student, an RD, an adjunct, and a dean, but now I’m a community college administrator.
0:16:48 So, basically, I’ve had every seat except the one with huge endowments.
0:16:56 You often focus on the overly rejective schools, the elites of the world, if you will, and how they need to evolve and are not.
0:17:00 I’d love to hear your take on the rest of the iceberg, community colleges.
0:17:08 We serve almost half of the undergraduate population, quietly, efficiently, and without a marketing budget that rivals a Marvel film.
0:17:19 In a future driven by ROI, relevance, and access, and where education is critical to the nation’s success, where do you see community colleges fitting in?
0:17:20 Thanks.
0:17:21 What a great question.
0:17:24 And also, you press on soft tissue.
0:17:26 I’m a little defensive because you’re right.
0:17:33 By the way, when you find yourself getting a little offensive, it’s usually because whoever’s asking you a question is right, and it’s touched a nerve.
0:17:36 And I don’t speak nearly enough about community colleges and the Cal State system.
0:17:37 I’m very involved at UC.
0:17:38 I went to UC Berkeley.
0:17:39 I went to UCLA.
0:17:41 And I talk a lot about the UC system.
0:17:49 But sort of the hero of California is the Cal State system that is the biggest grantor of Pell Grants, meaning they’re educating more kids from low-income households.
0:17:50 And it’s a great way.
0:17:51 Most of us aren’t remarkable.
0:17:52 I applied to college when I was 17.
0:17:56 I showed up to UCLA and rushed a fraternity when I was 17 years old.
0:17:57 My boy is 17.
0:17:59 The idea of him at college right now totally freaks me out.
0:18:09 And within, like, a couple weeks, I got too fucked up, fell, was in the emergency room, barely got through my freshman year, almost got kicked out of school.
0:18:16 I was on academic probation because I couldn’t handle the temptation of alcohol and sports and being away from home.
0:18:18 And everything ended well.
0:18:19 It turned out okay.
0:18:21 And maybe that was part of the learning process.
0:18:25 But community colleges, you know, there’s sort of a chance to marinate a bit.
0:18:27 Not the same.
0:18:31 First off, I love the fact that they have much lower admission standards and much lower costs.
0:18:33 That is where higher ed needs to go.
0:18:46 Anyways, according to the U.S. Department of Education, there are 1,022 community colleges in 2020 to 2021, making up 28% of U.S. colleges participating in federal aid programs.
0:18:51 Nearly 9 million students attended community colleges, accounting for 44% of all U.S. undergrads.
0:18:53 Most 72% attended part-time.
0:18:57 Average in-district tuition, love this, $3,300.
0:18:59 And 32% a third received Pell Grants.
0:19:01 13% took out federal loans.
0:19:06 My roommate, my junior in college, a kid named Mike, went to junior college first.
0:19:10 And he was one of the more impressive people that I went to college with.
0:19:12 Like, kind, nice, handsome.
0:19:18 Anyways, just a—and he had gone to community college for one or two years.
0:19:23 It was a ton of kids in the fraternity at UCLA who were like, you know, okay, I didn’t get $1,600 on the SAT.
0:19:25 Maybe I’m helping my parents out.
0:19:27 Maybe I don’t have the money right now.
0:19:33 Whatever it is, I’m going to kind of marinate, if you will, and go to community college.
0:19:37 I think that there’s a huge opportunity in rural for community colleges.
0:19:41 What I would like to see is it—I mean, essentially, there’s kind of a trade here.
0:19:46 And that is, college has become so expensive that there’s sort of a community college arb.
0:19:47 What is that?
0:19:58 Rather than going to UC Santa Barbara—let’s not even use UC Santa Barbara—rather than going to USC, which costs probably $100,000 a year when you take on tuition and living costs,
0:20:02 you go to community college for two years, which costs a lot less.
0:20:07 And basically, you cut the total cost of your four-year education by a third, maybe even a half.
0:20:12 Now, having said that, you lose a lot because you don’t have the same momentum and the same friends and the same kind of four-year experience.
0:20:16 But at the end of the day, if you don’t have the money, it’s a pretty good arb.
0:20:18 It’s also a chance to get into a really good school.
0:20:22 One thing that’s wonderful about our elite schools is they do take in a lot of transfers.
0:20:33 And if you show you can operate well in the academic environment at Santa Monica Community College, where I was going to go had I not got into UCLA the last minute, UCLA likes that.
0:20:36 And they say, well, clearly, you can operate in an academic environment.
0:20:43 So I’m a big fan of—if I were going to say, all right, where does Governor Newsom need to allocate more or less funds?
0:20:44 I hate to say this.
0:20:48 The University of California has people like me donating millions of dollars.
0:20:54 The Cal State system, because it’s not as sexy and people don’t brag about naming the new wing at Santa Monica Community College.
0:21:01 It doesn’t get nearly the philanthropic giving because it’s not as prestigious and doesn’t tickle rich people’s egos.
0:21:04 But that is really where the greatest return on investment right now.
0:21:16 I’m not as familiar with the curriculum, but what I would suggest is I think the biggest opportunity, and also foots to this kind of emerging crisis of struggling young men, is more vocational programming.
0:21:23 And that is a track for kids looking to transfer to a four-year program that’s more liberal arts, more general, if you will.
0:21:26 And then there’s tracks for kids who are like, I’m not cut out for school.
0:21:27 We all knew that person in high school.
0:21:32 It was usually a guy who hated school, wasn’t good at it, but could fix your car.
0:21:39 And loved wood, auto, and metal shop, which we’ve replaced with computer science for some reason, or Mandarin.
0:21:44 So I wonder if there’s more investment or tracks available for great vocational jobs.
0:21:53 You’ve probably seen that TikTok showing that an 11th grader who gets through auto shop, they’re being offered $70,000 a year jobs out of the 11th grade.
0:22:13 So I wonder if the role of vocational programming that foots to the economy, where we’re supposedly going to have somewhere between 7-11 million open jobs in the vocations, the skill needed to install energy-efficient heaters, fix an EV, build a nuclear power plant, especially construction, especially nursing, health care.
0:22:18 All a long-winded way of saying, I think you’re doing God’s work, and I’d like to see greater resources.
0:22:27 And if there’s any suggestion I would make, and maybe you’re already making it, is to not fall into this drunken, intoxicated elitism that you have to have a liberal arts education.
0:22:36 There’s great trade jobs out there that someone with 12 to 24 months in apprenticeship right away can put themselves on an on-ramp to a wonderful middle-class life.
0:22:38 But again, I appreciate your good work.
0:22:44 That’s all for this episode.
0:22:49 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at propgmedia.com.
0:22:52 Again, that’s officehours at propgmedia.com.
0:22:59 Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.

0:00:05 Hey, this guy sells 300 grand a year on the side of a product he didn’t even invent.
0:00:06 What’s up?
0:00:06 What’s up?
0:00:07 Nick Loper here.
0:00:11 Welcome to the Side Hustle Show, where we’ve been helping people make extra money since
0:00:12 2013.
0:00:17 Today’s guest took a creative approach to his side hustle, starting with a product that
0:00:21 was already selling and then applying his own branding, marketing, positioning to it
0:00:25 and driving around $300,000 a year in sales.
0:00:29 From baldbuck.com, Chris Gray, welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:00:31 Nick, I’m happy to be here.
0:00:34 Your voice is so soothing.
0:00:38 Like it could be like on a calm radio station or something.
0:00:40 You have a really nice voice, dude.
0:00:43 This is my podcast voice, honed over decades of doing this.
0:00:43 Okay.
0:00:45 Well, you as well.
0:00:46 Very deep.
0:00:47 Let’s stick around in this one.
0:00:51 We’re going to learn how Chris came up with the idea for Bald Buck Barbecue Seasoning.
0:00:52 It’s a barbecue rub brand.
0:00:57 The sales tactics you can borrow for your own business and how he’s grown and scaled all
0:00:59 as a part-time project.
0:01:01 And barbecue season is upon us.
0:01:02 So good timing on this one.
0:01:05 And my understanding is that’s where this story starts.
0:01:08 A few years ago, eating some delicious chicken.
0:01:09 Yeah, man.
0:01:14 I was hanging out with my brother-in-law and I’m, you know, I’m in Texas, Texas boy.
0:01:16 And I love smoking food.
0:01:21 One day I go over there and I eat this chicken and I’m like, man, this is delicious.
0:01:22 What did you put on it?
0:01:24 And he showed me the, uh, the seasoning.
0:01:26 I said, oh, okay.
0:01:30 So I went and found out how to get some, um, or actually he gave me some, like a big bag of
0:01:30 it.
0:01:35 I used it on chicken, Mick, and my friends loved it.
0:01:36 My family loved it.
0:01:40 I started getting requests to like cater within the family, right?
0:01:42 This is not like paid catering, but people were just loving it.
0:01:43 Okay.
0:01:48 And so I was like, I’m sitting on something here and I could either go open a restaurant
0:01:50 or I can just sell the rub.
0:01:53 So I decided to sell the rub.
0:01:53 Pause right there.
0:01:57 Cause those are two very different options that I think other people might’ve come up with.
0:01:59 Other people might’ve been like, well, here’s where you can go get it.
0:02:00 Or here’s where I got it, right?
0:02:01 Like there’s the easy solution.
0:02:06 And then there’s the one step, you know, inserting yourself into potential profit stream step.
0:02:07 Yeah.
0:02:07 I don’t know.
0:02:08 I think that’s the way I think.
0:02:10 I just saw an opportunity, right?
0:02:14 I, I, I like most entrepreneurs, I probably suffer from chasing too many things.
0:02:19 Um, but I saw here was an opportunity for something that I’m passionate about, which is
0:02:23 smoking food, barbecue, and then I’m also passionate about marketing.
0:02:30 And so I chose to go sell the seasoning itself as opposed to open a restaurant because the overhead
0:02:35 was going to be lower and I could work more digitally than having to commit a bunch of money
0:02:40 to buying a space and getting staff and having rent and all the overhead that would come.
0:02:41 Yeah.
0:02:42 With having a barbecue joint.
0:02:42 Okay.
0:02:44 So step one, delicious chicken, maybe step zero.
0:02:50 Step two is, I assume going to your brother and say, well, where did you get this stuff?
0:02:54 How can I, um, build a, build a distribution channel here?
0:02:55 Like what’s going on there?
0:02:56 So this is what I love.
0:03:00 I tell people, I sell this barbecue seasoning and they’re like, oh man, did you come up with
0:03:01 your own special blend?
0:03:03 And how long did it take?
0:03:04 And did you have a lab?
0:03:05 And none of that, man.
0:03:07 I just found out who made it.
0:03:10 And then I called them up and I’m like, Hey, I like your seasoning.
0:03:12 Do you white label it?
0:03:15 Meaning do they give you the rub and allow you to put your own brand on it?
0:03:16 Yeah.
0:03:17 And the white labeling happens all the time.
0:03:21 If you go to like Costco has Kirkland’s, which is a white label of something else.
0:03:24 Walmart has great value, a white label of something else.
0:03:25 And so Amazon does it.
0:03:26 Everybody does it.
0:03:27 Yeah.
0:03:29 And so I called them up and said, Hey, can I just white label your season?
0:03:31 They’re like, yeah, we have a program for that.
0:03:32 And I was like, great.
0:03:38 So then I had to go and create my own brand, my own coloring, my own, all that stuff, which
0:03:39 was easy to do.
0:03:43 I was lucky because my business partner, we have a business partner in several businesses.
0:03:45 He’s a graphic design guy.
0:03:50 And we were going over all these different names on, you know, what we wanted the seasoning
0:03:50 to be.
0:03:52 I had a list of 20 different names.
0:03:53 One was bald buck.
0:03:55 We chose bald buck because it was funny.
0:03:56 Plus I’m bald.
0:03:58 My nickname with my friends is buck.
0:03:59 They would call me bald buck.
0:04:03 So I found, I thought this would be a way of like getting back at them.
0:04:04 Like, Hey, you made fun of me.
0:04:05 Now I have a brand.
0:04:08 Um, and so we did that.
0:04:10 We came up, he drew the, he made the logo.
0:04:11 We came up with the name.
0:04:12 We gave it to the company.
0:04:15 They label it, they can it, and they just ship it to us.
0:04:19 So all I got to do now is push it, which is kind of scary, Nick, because when you get
0:04:24 sold or when you get shipped 5,000 units of seasoning, you better, you better figure out how
0:04:26 to move it or you better cook a lot of chicken.
0:04:27 Okay.
0:04:32 So the seasoning company had this system already in place and they say, Hey, you can totally
0:04:32 do that.
0:04:34 Just send us your graphics.
0:04:35 Send us your seasoning.
0:04:38 Send us your branding package and we’ll, we’ll put it on the bottles for you.
0:04:39 You don’t even have to do that yourself.
0:04:41 Yeah, they, they can it.
0:04:42 They put it on enough.
0:04:42 I want to save money.
0:04:45 I got to do that myself eventually, but they do it all.
0:04:47 And a lot of places do this, Nick.
0:04:48 And a lot of different things.
0:04:49 Um, it could be microphones.
0:04:50 It could be art.
0:04:51 It could be shirts.
0:04:54 Like a lot of people do most of the work for you.
0:04:56 All you have to do is go push it.
0:04:58 And that’s something I wish I would have understood a long time ago.
0:05:00 I don’t have to create everything.
0:05:02 A lot of the work can be done.
0:05:05 I just need to find something that works and then find a way to sell it.
0:05:08 So in this case, we had this seasoning worked.
0:05:09 My family loved it.
0:05:10 Friends loved it.
0:05:13 It was already popular in a different state.
0:05:16 I just had to take it, bring it and wrap a different story around it.
0:05:17 And that’s what I did.
0:05:17 Yeah.
0:05:24 And there’s some, uh, parallels or similarities to like the Amazon FBA private labeling world
0:05:26 that was big, you know, eight or 10 years ago.
0:05:29 Whereas, you know, look at the two, three, four-star reviews for a given product.
0:05:32 You know, what are people it’s, you know, you know, it’s already selling, you know,
0:05:35 there’s some proven demand, but how can you make some tweak
0:05:39 or improvement or iteration and go oftentimes find that same factory?
0:05:42 Like, I want you to make me this, but with these adjustments,
0:05:45 with these small changes, then I bring that to market.
0:05:49 And like, that was a very popular side hustle for, for a long time.
0:05:50 And I imagine people are still doing it.
0:05:53 And in this case, it sounds like, well, I didn’t tweak the recipe at all.
0:05:56 I just, I’m going to put my own marketing to it.
0:05:57 Once I, once I’ve got it landed.
0:06:00 Yeah, man, I think things get, uh, what’s the word?
0:06:05 Commoditized easily nowadays say there’s a widget out there and everybody’s selling it.
0:06:08 And I say, well, my widget just kind of has this little special thing to it.
0:06:09 The special feature.
0:06:11 Well, then nobody cares about a feature, right?
0:06:13 Like I have a Apple watch right here.
0:06:18 If you see any kind of Apple commercial, they don’t, they don’t sell you on the features of the phone
0:06:20 or the watch or whatever it is.
0:06:21 It’s always some kind of benefit.
0:06:25 And usually one key benefit they talk about with seasoning, right?
0:06:31 There’s no like, well, there is a benefit, but what I think sells this thing is the stories
0:06:32 that are behind it.
0:06:35 These are things that are happening in my life or things I’ve experienced or things I heard
0:06:36 from other people.
0:06:39 But I don’t know if you ever heard, Nick, somebody can look this up.
0:06:41 I forget the name of it, but it was a study done over 10 years ago.
0:06:47 And these guys bought several items from eBay, several like really, really cheap items.
0:06:51 They probably bought them for, I don’t know, sub two bucks, sub a dollar, whatever they buy
0:06:52 them.
0:06:59 And then what they did was they paid some copywriters to put a story behind each item
0:07:01 and then they relisted it, right?
0:07:07 So say they bought something for a buck on eBay, take that same item, relist it this time
0:07:08 with a story.
0:07:09 Okay.
0:07:09 Okay.
0:07:12 There was a story about a horse head and a story about this, that they did that.
0:07:17 They sold this thing for like, if they bought it for two bucks, they could sell it for like
0:07:18 32 bucks.
0:07:18 Okay.
0:07:18 Right.
0:07:19 Whatever that multiple is.
0:07:25 And that was item after item after item with the only difference being the story.
0:07:27 That’s an example of what happened with bald buck.
0:07:31 Cause you take this seasoning and I’m not just, we’re not just selling seasoning here.
0:07:32 There’s a story behind that.
0:07:33 This there’s love behind it.
0:07:34 There’s entertainment behind it.
0:07:35 There’s some drama behind it.
0:07:39 We wrap these stories around the recipes and that’s how we sell it.
0:07:39 Yeah.
0:07:40 I like that.
0:07:43 I tried to do something similar selling an old car of mine, a crappy car.
0:07:46 It was going to sell for like 2000 bucks, but I was like, here’s the journey that we’ve
0:07:47 been on together.
0:07:50 They’re like, it’s ready for its next adventure, you know?
0:07:51 Yes.
0:07:52 So this is, this is great.
0:07:58 I love that example of, you know, taking a commoditized thing and adding words to it, adding
0:08:00 a little more emotion and story to it.
0:08:00 Absolutely.
0:08:02 You get 5,000 units.
0:08:05 First of all, we got to pause and say, well, how much does that cost?
0:08:07 And it was at the minimum or could you have gone lower?
0:08:10 Or like how much does the minimum order, what’s the startup cost here?
0:08:16 Well, the MOQ was like 300 actually, but it was like the price is super high.
0:08:18 So I just like, let me, I just jumped in.
0:08:20 It’s kind of like to burn the ships, right?
0:08:23 Like if I buy 300, I’m kind of like, yeah, well, I got 300 here.
0:08:24 It might work.
0:08:28 I buy 5,000, which ended up being over $5,000 or something.
0:08:33 And it’s like, okay, you know, I’m, I better move this seasoning or my wife is going to
0:08:35 be upset.
0:08:39 So that gave me the added motivation to really move this seasoning.
0:08:43 And so one of the things that helped get it, get it off the wall, I’m talking a lot that
0:08:45 did I answer your question before I go?
0:08:45 No, no, no, that’s good.
0:08:45 Okay.
0:08:47 So just to get a ballpark, okay.
0:08:54 5,000 units, roughly 5,000, maybe a little more, but like a bucket to per jar per thing.
0:08:55 Is that accurate?
0:08:56 Yes, sir.
0:08:56 Okay.
0:08:57 All right, go ahead.
0:08:59 So these things get landed and now you’re like, well, now I got to figure out how to
0:08:59 move them.
0:09:02 Like, what are some of your, what are some of your first marketing moves here?
0:09:02 All right.
0:09:06 So the first one, I didn’t know I was sitting down, I was sitting down and I was like, man,
0:09:07 I gotta, I gotta move this.
0:09:09 And so I just started thinking, I’m like, well, you know what?
0:09:10 Let me just reach out.
0:09:16 I use something to tell me the most popular barbecue influencers on YouTube.
0:09:21 I Googled it, got the most popular ones, and I went to the list and then I found, I was
0:09:25 watching these different guys’ videos and there was some I resonated with, some I didn’t.
0:09:27 There was one in particular named T-Roy.
0:09:28 I just liked him.
0:09:29 I just liked his vibe.
0:09:30 I liked his shows, digging him.
0:09:33 So I started doing my research on him.
0:09:35 If you’re reaching out to somebody, and this is something that I’ve learned.
0:09:38 So this is like, if I’m, if I was watching this show, this is me talking to me.
0:09:44 If I’m looking to reach out to Nick or somebody on YouTube, learn a little bit about them and,
0:09:46 and be able to speak to them a little bit.
0:09:51 Because if you just kind of come out and you’re just like, hey, sell my seasoning and I don’t
0:09:51 know who you are.
0:09:53 Well, then they’re not going to, they’re not going to really care about you.
0:09:58 But if you can reach out and speak their language or resonate with them in some form or fashion
0:10:02 or show that you’ve been watching it or you’re, you’re familiar with them, then that helps.
0:10:09 So I do my research on T-Roy and come to find out, Nick, that T-Roy used to live in the
0:10:10 same city I lived in.
0:10:13 It’s a, it’s a, it’s a bigger city now in Texas, but it’s not huge.
0:10:14 It’s called Pflugerville.
0:10:15 It’s North of Austin.
0:10:16 It’s like not a big city.
0:10:17 He lived in Pflugerville.
0:10:19 I lived in Pflugerville.
0:10:21 Then I found out that he lived his own, and I forgot how I did this.
0:10:22 I was doing research.
0:10:25 He lived in an old neighborhood that my best friend lived in.
0:10:31 So when I reach out to T-Roy, I reach out to him with a, I don’t just say a simple email
0:10:33 like, Hey, check out my seasoning.
0:10:38 I get, I put, I gave him an email that he would, would break his pattern, his reading pattern.
0:10:42 The title of the email was like, ball, black, Jamaican from Pflugerville, Texas.
0:10:46 That’s going to be a lot different from everything else he sees in his email stuff.
0:10:46 Right?
0:10:48 So ball, black, Jamaican from Pflugerville, Texas.
0:10:49 He opens it.
0:10:50 Then he opens it.
0:10:52 And I first go into, I’m from Pflugerville.
0:10:55 I had a, my, one of my best friends grew up in Black Hawk, blah, blah, blah.
0:10:58 So I was, so I, he knows that I’ve done my research then.
0:11:02 Try to find like some common connection and may not, you know, luck may not strike that
0:11:06 you have, you know, a hometown in common with, with the big influencer in your niche, but like
0:11:10 use that as a framework to try and find some sort of common connection.
0:11:11 Yes.
0:11:12 And there’s, there’s all, there’s going to be something.
0:11:15 I got lucky with that, but there could have been a number of things.
0:11:18 I could have talked about seasoning or an episode, whatever it is.
0:11:20 There’s a number of ways I could have gone about it.
0:11:22 But to, to your point, Nick is yeah, find something in common.
0:11:23 I did that.
0:11:28 And then the next thing I did that was important was I didn’t say, Hey, will you just put my
0:11:29 seasoning on your show?
0:11:30 Who’s going to do that?
0:11:30 That’s all.
0:11:31 That’s like, what’s in it for me.
0:11:34 My thing was what’s in it for him through that.
0:11:35 It was like, you know what?
0:11:37 I’m going to, I love to give you this seasoning.
0:11:38 I like to mail it to you.
0:11:40 I want you to try it.
0:11:44 And if you, I said it, it works best on chicken, smoked chicken.
0:11:51 If you like it, I will then give it to the first 50 fans who request it for free.
0:11:53 So one, I’m saying, Hey, try it first.
0:11:55 Cause I’m not sure if he’s going to like it or not.
0:11:56 And I want him to like it.
0:12:01 Otherwise he’s not going to really be like as authentic when he talks about it on the show.
0:12:04 And then two, it was like, it was something that he could give to his fans.
0:12:06 It’s not me giving to him.
0:12:08 It’s him giving something to his fans.
0:12:14 I, I, I lose what a hundred something, 200 something bucks when it comes to the shipping
0:12:14 and all that other stuff.
0:12:15 Yeah.
0:12:21 But I just paid that money for massive advertisement and backing.
0:12:22 Yeah, no, this is really cool.
0:12:25 So it sounds like he does try it.
0:12:26 He, he, he responds.
0:12:28 First of all, you get a yes.
0:12:28 Yeah, sure.
0:12:28 Send me it.
0:12:29 I’ll give it a try.
0:12:32 He likes it, makes a video about it.
0:12:34 And there’s a cool angle of like, Hey, this stuff is super good.
0:12:39 Plus if you’re watching this and you’re the first to like comments,
0:12:42 subscribe, you know, whatever his call to action is, uh, you fear in the first 50,
0:12:45 I’ll send you, Chris, I’ll send you a jar of this.
0:12:46 Absolutely.
0:12:48 And that was done in like 2021, I think.
0:12:50 And I’m still getting emails today.
0:12:51 Hey, I saw your video.
0:12:54 Can I, that was done in like four years ago at this point.
0:12:54 Yeah.
0:12:59 The first 50 have long since been claimed, but well, that’s, and that’s kind of cool.
0:13:03 It’s like an evergreen type of, uh, type of medium where people could be discovering
0:13:06 the stuff years after it’s originally published.
0:13:07 Absolutely.
0:13:10 And then now what was beautiful about this is okay.
0:13:15 We, um, you know, I put it out there, the video, you get this massive spike in traffic
0:13:19 when, when the video drops, you know, first 50 people get it for free.
0:13:20 Other people who realize, Hey, I can’t get it for free.
0:13:21 I’ll buy it.
0:13:22 They, they go buy.
0:13:23 So a couple of things happen from there.
0:13:28 One, other YouTubers will reach out to me about, Hey, I saw it on T-Roy station.
0:13:30 Can we do it on ours?
0:13:33 I’m like, yeah, I’ll give it to your fans for, I’ll give it to 20 of your fans, depending
0:13:35 on the size of their, their channel.
0:13:38 So I just started giving it away to people who asked me to do reviews.
0:13:38 Okay.
0:13:44 And because T-Roy was a, a giant in the barbecue influencer space, other people were watching
0:13:48 is that, Hey, you know, could we do, could we do set up a similar arrangement, uh, for
0:13:50 my own channel for the other barbecue channels?
0:13:54 I’m looking, it looks like 350,000 subs for T-Roy.
0:13:58 So I’m not a, not a small influencer to say yes, right out of the gate.
0:13:59 Not a small one, dude.
0:14:02 He, it, he had, you’re right.
0:14:03 You hit the nail on the head.
0:14:06 He had a, he has a massive influence and other people who want to be like him are watching.
0:14:07 So then they want to be like him.
0:14:07 So what do they do?
0:14:10 They go copy him and they reached out to me.
0:14:12 So I got other videos done just through that.
0:14:14 And then number two, I have the video.
0:14:17 I have a video of T-Roy that to your points evergreen.
0:14:23 Now I can use that in several different ways as social proof.
0:14:31 So now if we do an ad or we do a story or something, it’s not us talking about how great
0:14:32 ball buck is.
0:14:34 We’ll do the story or whatever, and we’ll put ball buck in there.
0:14:39 We’re also going to drop that video there so that the person who’s reading this story, reading
0:14:44 this thing, this recipe can click the video, go to YouTube, or they can watch the video right
0:14:45 on the page.
0:14:49 Or if they YouTube ball buck, he’s probably going to come up with some other people.
0:14:51 So they watch a C ad or whatever.
0:14:53 And we talk about how good it is.
0:14:57 They leave the landing page and now they search us and we’re there.
0:15:03 We’re on YouTube and we have other people talking about how good the seasoning is, which gives
0:15:05 us some social proof and helps sell it.
0:15:05 Yeah.
0:15:05 Yeah.
0:15:07 It’s not just the brand talking about it.
0:15:08 Like, hey, trust us.
0:15:08 We’re great.
0:15:09 It’s like, I don’t know.
0:15:11 We have other people vouching for it too.
0:15:12 Yes, absolutely.
0:15:17 More with Chris in just a moment, including the marketing tactics that drive consistent
0:15:17 sales.
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0:17:42 Aside from the giveaway, I take it, you said that the people who don’t get the, they don’t make it in time for the giveaway.
0:17:44 Like, do they come by and buy the stuff?
0:17:47 Like, are you starting to see your first paid sales at this point, too?
0:17:48 Yeah.
0:17:51 The people who didn’t make the giveaway, they start, some of them start buying it.
0:17:53 Then eventually that slows down.
0:17:57 And so I hit this point where I was like, okay, I did the T-Roy video.
0:17:57 That was cool.
0:18:01 It’s cool to show my family and friends and stuff like that and make a few sales.
0:18:03 But then how do I keep selling?
0:18:03 Right.
0:18:05 I got 5,000 of these to move here.
0:18:05 Yeah.
0:18:08 So then that’s what I came up with.
0:18:09 I was like, well, that’s when it hit me.
0:18:10 And I was like, well, I have this video.
0:18:12 This video is excellent social proof.
0:18:14 So at that point, we’re like, you know what?
0:18:18 Let’s write some blogs, some stories about this.
0:18:21 And what we did, Nick, was we would, I was like, you know what?
0:18:25 Let me write an article about how to smoke chicken.
0:18:29 Or get with, we would get like, this is interesting.
0:18:31 My brother-in-law, right?
0:18:35 He has his dad, his dad’s a salty older guy or whatever.
0:18:36 So I would just talk to this guy.
0:18:38 This guy’s been in a lot of different barbecue competitions.
0:18:40 I would talk to him about stories.
0:18:43 And he would teach me a little bit about how to smoke chicken.
0:18:46 But I’d also ask him about stories, about competition stories.
0:18:47 I jotted down.
0:18:52 So now I take those same tips he gave me about how to smoke chicken because they’re really
0:18:53 good tips.
0:18:57 And I could write an article about how to smoke the best chicken and blah, blah, blah.
0:18:58 And you’re going to get some feedback.
0:19:00 I’m going to educate you on how to smoke the chicken.
0:19:02 But more important, there’s going to be a story in there.
0:19:07 And that story would probably resonate with the demographic that’s going to read that article.
0:19:09 And so that’s what we did.
0:19:09 All right.
0:19:14 And you’re relying on Google Organic at this point for people to find it?
0:19:15 We pushed a lot of that through Facebook.
0:19:17 Again, I’m a marketer.
0:19:24 So if we could rely on Organic and if I didn’t have 5,000 units of it, I probably would just
0:19:28 slow roll it, but didn’t have the time for that.
0:19:33 And so what I did was we just went to Facebook ads, put an ad out there, and then let it roll.
0:19:38 And the great thing for you guys who don’t know, Facebook ads or most platforms nowadays,
0:19:41 they do what I call the heavy lifting.
0:19:44 Like back in the day when me and Nick were doing a bunch of marketing, you’d have to be
0:19:48 real specific about your targeting and kind of get all technical with your targeting.
0:19:52 Nowadays, these platforms, these social media platforms are so good.
0:19:56 They kind of know who to put these things in front of without you saying it.
0:19:59 You just need to put the ad out there and it’ll figure it out for you.
0:20:01 And so was the ad like a direct call to action?
0:20:02 Hey, come by the seasoning.
0:20:05 Or was it more of like a content?
0:20:08 We’re going to show them the article on how to smoke.
0:20:10 Here’s a great smoked chicken recipe.
0:20:12 Try to get a sense of what you found effective there.
0:20:17 If I come out and say, ball buck season and buy it, watch this video, not going to sell.
0:20:21 But if I come out and say, hey, hey, here’s how to smoke chicken.
0:20:24 Or here’s some three smoked chicken tips that most people don’t know.
0:20:27 And I give them really good tips that they did not know.
0:20:28 That’s really helpful.
0:20:33 And then I subtly mention the rub and how it helps.
0:20:36 Now it has a better chance of selling.
0:20:38 It’s an indirect sell.
0:20:42 So the purpose here is to educate, then sell, not sell.
0:20:43 Got it.
0:20:43 Got it.
0:20:50 And I’m looking at pricing on the site and it seems to be kind of in the $30-ish, $35 maybe.
0:20:53 Oh no, it’s $18 for the single container.
0:20:58 So if the acquisition cost is a buck or two, there’s some margin to play with there.
0:21:01 Have you done any testing on pricing or how do you arrive at this?
0:21:03 No, I mean, I started at the top.
0:21:09 So I just went and looked at the best rubs in the market, found how much they could, what was the max they were selling for.
0:21:11 And then I matched that.
0:21:14 And I had to because, you know, this is not a high ticket product.
0:21:22 So you want, you know, if there was any, again, if I’m watching this and I’m giving myself advice, like charge more, right?
0:21:25 It’s easier to come down in a price than it is to go up.
0:21:34 So I figured I needed to charge more so I could have room for hiring people and shipping and buying products and the things that come with selling a seasoning.
0:21:36 So we charged, I charged as much as I possibly could.
0:21:41 And I’ve gone up since then because tariffs and things are more expensive to get shipped in and stuff like that.
0:21:44 And so, but yeah, I found the most expensive thing on the market and matched it.
0:21:45 Okay.
0:21:45 Got it.
0:21:45 Yeah.
0:21:48 You’re going to have to pay for shipping or pay for ads.
0:21:51 There’s acquisition costs involved.
0:21:53 Did you pay for these giveaways, all sorts of things?
0:21:54 Yeah, exactly.
0:21:55 We have to pay for these giveaways.
0:21:59 I mean, I had, I need as much room to work with as possible.
0:22:01 And so I need as much margin as possible.
0:22:01 Yeah.
0:22:08 I was going to say when it’s a direct to consumer play, it’s not like somebody is standing at the grocery store and they’re, you know, comparing one, two and three.
0:22:12 And well, this one is $5 and this one is 10 and this one is 15.
0:22:15 And they’re like really looking at the label and sniffing it and smell.
0:22:23 It’s like, it’s almost in this impulse buy category of like, well, this YouTuber recommended it or this recipe looks good.
0:22:24 Like it recommended it.
0:22:25 It’s like, I’ll give it a try.
0:22:25 Right.
0:22:29 And so it seems, even though it’s somewhat commoditized, right?
0:22:36 You can get this stuff at any grocery store, but it’s like, that’s that story and that branding and the positioning and like the interrupt factor.
0:22:37 Oh, I saw this on Facebook.
0:22:41 I saw this on YouTube where it’s maybe less price sensitive than you might think.
0:22:42 Yeah.
0:22:47 I mean, they’re at the grocery store and they’re comparing, okay, this one’s five, this one’s 10, this one’s 20.
0:22:49 Oh, I’m going to get the five one and try it.
0:22:50 And that’s just a commoditized type thing.
0:22:58 Whereas our seasoning, you know, not saying that there’s nothing special about the seasoning at the grocery store, but there is a lot of love behind what we do.
0:23:03 And the stories that, I mean, I’m, I’m talking to, by the way, my rub goes out to an older demographic.
0:23:06 And it’s funny because where I get my stories comes from an older demographic.
0:23:10 I got, I got, uh, you know, the, the pit match guy I was talking to.
0:23:12 He’s, he’s an older gentleman.
0:23:14 There’s a female I talked to and she’s older as well.
0:23:16 And I go and I grabbed their stories.
0:23:18 I grabbed that people who love to cook.
0:23:19 And then I use that.
0:23:22 If I was just trying to push seasoning, I wouldn’t do that.
0:23:28 Like I care about this and these people, and they talk to me and there’s a love there that I then transfer to the landing page.
0:23:32 That’s much different than me just putting an ad out about a seasoning.
0:23:34 I think there’s more behind what we do.
0:23:40 And when the reader feels, reads that, it’s like when you, when people go to the movies, they’re going to the movies to check out.
0:23:42 Like there, there’s nothing going on.
0:23:45 That’s a lot of people’s way of being present and checking out.
0:23:45 Right.
0:23:53 So now if I give you a story and it happens to be by seasoning, but I’ve allowed you to check out and get immersed into something.
0:23:58 And then you see this thing, you’re much more receptive to paying whatever the price is.
0:24:00 Cause now it’s not a five, 10 or $20 thing.
0:24:04 It’s a, this really cool story about this really cool product changes the game.
0:24:06 Here’s one thing that kind of surprised me.
0:24:09 Cause I’ve seen so many direct to consumer brands go this way.
0:24:12 The default is the subscription.
0:24:14 I’ll send you another thing every month, click here to sign up.
0:24:16 And it’s like, timeout.
0:24:17 I don’t know if I want it.
0:24:21 Like I haven’t even tried it yet, but it’s like, everybody seems to go be going that way.
0:24:26 And it’s kind of surprised, especially since it’s like a replenishable type of thing.
0:24:28 You’re going to, if you use it, if you like it, you’re going to run out.
0:24:29 You’re going to need to order more.
0:24:36 I was a little bit surprised not to see that like checkbox for the recurring, you know, subscribe and save type of thing here.
0:24:37 I thought about that, Nick.
0:24:39 And I was like, man, really, this is, it’s a lot of seasoning.
0:24:42 I mean, if you’re a heavy user, you’re probably using two cans.
0:24:46 I mean, if you’re a, if you’re a barbecue pit master guy, whatever.
0:24:46 Okay.
0:24:47 Different.
0:24:51 But your everyday person who’s buying this, maybe one a year.
0:24:52 I’m lucky if they get two.
0:24:56 It’s just, so what I’m going to send you seasoning every, every three months.
0:24:57 You’re just going to stack up.
0:24:59 No, I’m going to sell it to you.
0:25:02 And I’m also going to send you weekly emails to let you know that I’m still here.
0:25:05 So when you decide to buy, you can do it.
0:25:10 But again, this thing is, there is a very human component behind what we do.
0:25:11 I, at least I believe.
0:25:16 And I think that the way we approach it, avoiding the subscription thing is just more of a, is an example of that human approach.
0:25:16 Right.
0:25:17 That’s fair.
0:25:23 We’re going to do the follow-up, but we’re not going to, we’re not going to force you to commit to doing this subscription thing.
0:25:24 I wouldn’t want to buy all that.
0:25:25 See, like, what am I going to do with all that seasoning?
0:25:26 It doesn’t make any sense.
0:25:27 And so, yeah.
0:25:28 Okay.
0:25:33 Going back to the Facebook ads, was there a target cost of acquisition that, that you like to be in?
0:25:35 And like, how often do you have to rotate the copy?
0:25:38 Or is it just like, we’re running this on Evergreen?
0:25:41 Some of the campaigns run three, four, five months at a time, depending.
0:25:44 It is hard to get a target CPA.
0:25:46 A target CPA, for those who don’t know, is target cost per acquisition.
0:25:49 So you want to say, hey, I want to sell this thing.
0:25:54 I want this to cost me no more than $5 in advertisement for everything I sell.
0:25:56 That’s harder to do nowadays.
0:26:05 Back in the day, before cookies and this, and when consumer behavior was a little more simple, you could get a pretty decent target CPA.
0:26:08 You could be like, yeah, it’s costing me about five bucks to sell this thing.
0:26:11 Nowadays, the consumer is smart.
0:26:13 We’re all smart.
0:26:14 Like, I’ll give you a quick story.
0:26:21 We have, we had Windows installed in my house a year or two ago, which are way more expensive than I thought Windows should be.
0:26:22 We got them installed in our house.
0:26:23 But this is the thing.
0:26:26 I saw a ad on Facebook.
0:26:29 I then forwarded to my wife.
0:26:33 My wife goes to their website, comes back and talks to me.
0:26:37 And then she calls them again, I think, through their PPC, their pay-per-click, their Google Ads.
0:26:42 So, what happens is their Google Ads gets credit for that sell.
0:26:43 But where did it start?
0:26:45 It started back with me, with Facebook.
0:26:54 So, what I mean by that is, like, I can’t trust the CPA, and Facebook might be super high.
0:26:59 But if I’m selling a lot of products on the back end, well, they might have saw the ad on Facebook, but they watched YouTube.
0:27:01 Yeah, they had to come from somewhere.
0:27:06 Yeah, they saw it on Facebook, then it went to my site, or they went to Amazon, or something like that.
0:27:11 And so, I have to kind of get a feel for it as much as – it’s not as much as the science, like it used to be.
0:27:12 Okay.
0:27:22 Yeah, there is – as much as we’d like to be able to track down to the dollar with all these attribution models, it sounds like there may be a little bit of a gray area.
0:27:27 And you have to kind of trust the bottom line of, well, what sold?
0:27:28 What was their ad spend?
0:27:29 They had to come from somewhere.
0:27:34 They had to find that initial awareness somewhere, and it must be working, even if it’s not –
0:27:38 they didn’t follow the funnel in the same session.
0:27:38 Yeah.
0:27:43 I mean, and they’re so – they do have these other attribution tools, like I think Hyros and Triple Well.
0:27:46 They’re supposed to – to me, they’re not that great.
0:27:48 To me, at the end of the day, this is just for me.
0:27:53 I’m not saying that for everybody, but just for me, it’s what Nick just said, where I’m just – it has to come from somewhere.
0:27:54 Let me see what’s happening at the bottom line.
0:27:55 What am I spending on marketing?
0:27:55 Total.
0:27:57 What are my top line sales?
0:27:57 Total.
0:28:06 Let me do my best to try to figure out what’s really working as best as I can, but it comes down to having a feel, which you get by doing this over time.
0:28:06 Okay.
0:28:12 Now, are you shipping these initial orders out of your spare bedroom, out of the garage?
0:28:15 Like, is there a logistics partner?
0:28:24 Like, all of a sudden, if we’re talking about 5,000 units, licking and sticking and going to the post office, and it’s like, this is starting to get to be another – a whole other job.
0:28:29 Yeah, my living room was real fragrant there for a while, really fragrant.
0:28:40 And when I first started doing this, it was just me and my office, and I would have two days a week, which I didn’t have those two days to be doing this, but it was two days – I started off really heavy.
0:28:43 So, it’d be like two full days of me just doing it all.
0:28:44 Like, I was like – because I got hit.
0:28:48 It kind of – it was like an oh-my-gosh moment where it just – a lot came at once.
0:28:53 My very first article worked way better than I thought it would, and then all of a sudden, I have all these orders.
0:28:58 And so, now, I’m like, oh, crap, I have to do all these orders, and two days a week of just doing orders.
0:29:02 And as time went on, I ended up – my grandma lives down the road.
0:29:04 Thank goodness she has a big shed.
0:29:08 I could put an AC unit in, so now I put all the product and everything and all my materials in that shed.
0:29:11 The AC and all that’s good to go.
0:29:18 And then I have a pool house slash workout room in my backyard, and I have – there’s two employees, actually three employees.
0:29:22 But one of the employees comes once to twice a week, depending on the workload.
0:29:29 And she’ll go in the pool house, and she has everything she needs out there, and she’s just – we do all that in the pool house.
0:29:32 USPS comes and picks it up, and I’m done.
0:29:33 All right.
0:29:34 We’re not promising overnight shipping.
0:29:36 We’re going to process these a couple days a week.
0:29:38 You get it when you get it.
0:29:51 You mentioned Amazon, so I do want to talk about that as a distribution channel, as a place to potentially find people who – yeah, they discovered you through YouTube, and they’re – well, they’re used to shopping on Amazon, so they may find you over there.
0:29:52 Yeah.
0:30:00 Or through potentially Amazon directly if they’re looking for unique gifts or barbecue seasoning or something directly on Amazon.
0:30:03 Can you talk to me about that as a sales channel?
0:30:04 Yeah, absolutely.
0:30:05 I was against it at first.
0:30:08 For those who don’t know, when you ship on Amazon, you don’t keep your data.
0:30:09 What do I mean by that?
0:30:11 That means that you don’t know the person’s email.
0:30:13 You don’t know their phone number.
0:30:15 I don’t know if you even get their address.
0:30:16 I don’t remember.
0:30:31 But my point being is if you buy from my store, if Nick comes to my store and he buys, I get all Nick’s information, not just like random information, good information, like his real name, real phone number, a real email because he just bought something, so he wants to track it.
0:30:34 So I get a real email address, and I get his physical address.
0:30:38 This is quality data, which is a whole other game, whole other conversation.
0:30:39 So I get that.
0:30:41 When you go to Amazon, you get none of that.
0:30:42 Amazon keeps that.
0:30:44 Yeah, it’s Amazon’s customer, not your customer.
0:30:45 Exactly.
0:30:49 I’m helping Amazon get data, and nowadays data’s gold.
0:30:52 So I’m helping Amazon get all the data, keep all of it, and I just sell.
0:30:56 So I was against it, but I had to, I was like, you know what?
0:30:57 People trust Amazon.
0:30:59 They may not trust me, even though I have all the social proof.
0:31:00 Let me put this on Amazon.
0:31:04 So I put it on Amazon, and man, it’s sold.
0:31:05 Like, people just trust Amazon.
0:31:07 So I was like, oh gosh, the people are really buying it.
0:31:08 Yeah, yeah.
0:31:10 Like, I see, like, hundreds of reviews on the listing.
0:31:10 Yeah.
0:31:12 People, it’s Amazon.
0:31:13 They trust it.
0:31:17 So I had to go there at the expense of data.
0:31:20 It helps with the top line, so I just had to go there.
0:31:21 And here’s the thing.
0:31:25 With Amazon, I don’t play the whole, let me compete with other barbecue seasonings and
0:31:27 barbecue brands and play the organic and the SEO.
0:31:29 I had my site optimized on Amazon.
0:31:34 Like, I, you know, the first time I threw it up there, it was a really weak looking, like,
0:31:34 listing.
0:31:37 And then eventually, I was like, oh, let me look like a professional.
0:31:41 And so we did it, and it looks like a professional listing now, at least as professionals I can
0:31:42 pay for.
0:31:45 But we did that.
0:31:48 And like I said, man, it did really, really well.
0:31:49 What’s your take on this?
0:31:53 Because we’ve seen more people go your direction versus starting on Amazon.
0:31:57 We’ve seen more and more people try and build up their own traffic sources through their own
0:31:58 Shopify-powered store.
0:32:02 And then you know that a certain percentage of people are going to be looking for it on
0:32:02 it.
0:32:03 Can I just get it on Amazon?
0:32:05 Like, they already have my checkout information.
0:32:07 Can I just click the one-click thing?
0:32:12 Do you find there’s some value in the algorithm when you’re, like, driving your own traffic to
0:32:13 a certain extent?
0:32:13 Absolutely.
0:32:17 I think that I’m playing the whole, like, Amazon SEO.
0:32:19 When I say SEO, guys, it’s search engine optimization.
0:32:23 So I’m trying to rank organically on, like, if somebody typed in Barbecue Rub, there’s a
0:32:24 game you play to get you at the very top.
0:32:27 I don’t want, I don’t feel like playing all that, playing the game.
0:32:28 I don’t feel like advertising on Amazon.
0:32:31 I don’t even do the whole fulfillment by Amazon because they take a lot of your money.
0:32:35 If I do the advertising and fulfillment by Amazon, my margins shrink.
0:32:36 So I was like, forget it.
0:32:40 What I’ll do is do all my advertising off that platform.
0:32:44 And I only use Amazon when somebody wants to buy.
0:32:46 If somebody finds me on Amazon, they’ve probably made their decision already.
0:32:47 Okay.
0:32:48 And that’s what I wanted.
0:32:52 So the conversion rate on those, you know, listing clicks are super high because they
0:32:54 already know what they are looking for.
0:32:56 And so you’re doing fulfillment by merchant.
0:32:58 Like somebody will collect the order and then you’ll ship it out.
0:32:58 Absolutely.
0:32:59 Yeah.
0:33:00 Otherwise, yeah.
0:33:03 If they’re warehousing it, if they’re, if you’re doing their ad platform, like all this
0:33:03 stuff.
0:33:06 And all of a sudden those margins get real, real narrow.
0:33:08 Amazon’s making money no matter what your margins are.
0:33:10 Amazon’s so dirty, Nick.
0:33:14 And what they’ll do too is like, if you have a commodity or something, like say I had this
0:33:14 comb.
0:33:17 If you’re wondering why I have a comb, it’s for my beard, not for my head, obviously.
0:33:21 But if you have a comb there and Amazon sees that you’re selling a ton of this comb, what
0:33:22 does Amazon do?
0:33:22 Yeah.
0:33:23 The Amazon basics version.
0:33:24 Yeah.
0:33:25 They have all your data.
0:33:28 They know exactly what you’re doing and they have more money than you.
0:33:31 So they’ll go and just take your product and undercut you.
0:33:32 The beautiful thing about this.
0:33:34 And so you have to be cognizant, man.
0:33:39 Amazon can play that game where you can have your Amazon barbecue rub, but it’s not going
0:33:43 to sell unless you, because you’re not doing what I’m doing, which is putting something else
0:33:43 behind it.
0:33:48 More with Chris in just a moment, including the creative way he increases his average order
0:33:54 size and the side side hustle he expects to eventually overtake the barbecue rub e-commerce
0:33:55 part of the business.
0:33:56 Coming up right after this.
0:34:02 One strategy I didn’t fully embrace or maybe wasn’t fully aware of when I was starting out
0:34:06 was this idea of the piggyback principle in the startup phase.
0:34:09 That means you don’t have to start completely from scratch, but instead you can take advantage
0:34:15 of existing tools, templates, playbooks, best practices from the people who’ve gone before
0:34:15 you.
0:34:18 A perfect example of this is our partner Shopify.
0:34:24 Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses from household names to side hustlers
0:34:28 on their way to becoming household names with hundreds of ready to use templates.
0:34:31 Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store and start selling.
0:34:35 Plus, Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools to accelerate your workflow.
0:34:40 We’re talking product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhancing your product photography.
0:34:44 You can even easily create email and social media campaigns to reach your target customers
0:34:46 wherever they’re scrolling or strolling.
0:34:49 If you’re ready to sell, you’re ready for Shopify.
0:34:53 Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side.
0:34:59 Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash side hustle.
0:35:02 Go to shopify.com slash side hustle.
0:35:05 Shopify.com slash side hustle.
0:35:13 For such an important channel like phone, the software powering this important channel was super outdated and clunky.
0:35:20 We wanted to make it delightful and make it very easy for businesses to connect with their customers through voice and text.
0:35:24 That’s Darina Kulia, co-founder of our sponsor, OpenPhone.
0:35:31 Trusted by more than 60,000 customers, this is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications.
0:35:39 We bring your calls, your messages, your contacts in one simple place, and we allow you to bring in your team.
0:35:46 So you as a business owner don’t end up being the bottleneck, and we really make it easy for you to deliver that incredible experience.
0:35:52 It’s all about speed, streamlined communication, team access into one centralized place.
0:35:53 I think that makes a lot of sense.
0:36:00 Something that all of our customers love is ability to have a shared phone number, which really is great for calling and texting.
0:36:08 So when someone calls you or texts you, there’s multiple people that can team up on responding, and everyone is in the loop about that conversation.
0:36:12 This visibility is so critical, especially as you scale.
0:36:18 And the ability to text a business is like a new and novel thing that, as a customer, I really appreciate.
0:36:25 One thing that we’ve launched at OpenPhone, which is, I think, a game changer, is Sona, which is our voice AI agent.
0:36:29 It basically helps you never have a single missed call.
0:36:39 It can handle responses to any common questions, basically any questions that you train it on, and then it can capture that information so you can quickly follow up.
0:36:43 We are helping businesses never lose a customer because a missed call is a lost opportunity.
0:36:49 Now, OpenPhone has automatic AI call summaries, so you don’t have to worry about taking notes while you’re on the call.
0:37:01 But another cool feature is what Darina called AI call tagging, basically allowing you to quickly filter for the calls that were sales objections or customer complaints or requests for a discount.
0:37:09 So you can review those and see what worked, what didn’t, and train team members on the most effective tactics and language in those cases.
0:37:13 And it’s all in the name of building a better, faster, and friendlier customer experience.
0:37:24 Right now, OpenPhone is offering SideHustle show listeners 20% off your first six months at OpenPhone.com slash SideHustle.
0:37:29 That’s O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash SideHustle.
0:37:35 And if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge.
0:37:38 OpenPhone, no missed calls, no missed customers.
0:37:40 Yeah.
0:37:45 You have control over the pricing, too, so you can kind of match, make sure it’s the same pricing.
0:37:46 Absolutely.
0:37:48 Can I hit on one thing about pricing, if you don’t mind?
0:37:49 Yeah, go ahead.
0:37:53 If you go on my site, you’ll see that there’s, I’m not just giving people seasoning.
0:37:55 Seasoning is expensive.
0:37:57 There are some items where it’s, what is it, a premium.
0:38:03 So the premium being, like, you buy this seasoning, you get this thing for free.
0:38:05 My seasoning is expensive.
0:38:05 I get it.
0:38:13 And so what I did was I would work with, talking about MOQs, I would work with, like, an Alibaba or somebody like that who sells wholesale.
0:38:17 This is prior to all the tariff stuff, by the way, so I’m not sure what the prices are now.
0:38:28 But back in the day, I could, like, get a bunch of barbecue slicers or, yeah, I can get a bunch of slicers or barbecue meat, like, thawing trays or 50-cal bottle openers.
0:38:38 It’s just cool things, depending on if it’s a female or male who’s buying my stuff, that if they went and bought that item alone, it would cost them north of 20 bucks, sometimes over 50, depending on the item.
0:38:50 So I go and I buy those and I say, hey, if you buy five things of seasoning, which lasts you two, three years, if you buy five things of seasoning, you’ll get this thing for free, this meat thawing tray.
0:38:53 Or you buy two things of seasoning, you get this slicer for free.
0:38:59 And then you see that, and you’re like, oh, the price of this is 30 bucks, but if I just bought the slicer alone, it’s 20 bucks.
0:39:00 So really, this is, it makes sense.
0:39:05 I did the premium thing, and you can help me kind of, like, make this point a little better here, Nick.
0:39:11 But adding a gift to it, like a free gift, a premium or something, helps justify the purchase.
0:39:16 If Nick buys something today and it was super expensive, and he goes to his wife and is like, babe, I bought this and it was really expensive.
0:39:17 She’s like, what the heck?
0:39:22 But if Nick’s like, hey, babe, I bought this, it was expensive, but we got a free car, she’s gonna be like, oh, that was great.
0:39:28 So you want to give people an excuse, a reason to not look stupid when they’re making a purchase.
0:39:40 I think that’s a really creative way to increase the average order size where you’re like, I could just get the, you know, the one pack, but for a little bit more, I could get two plus this free gift, or I could get five.
0:39:43 Yeah, I think this is a really interesting way to do it.
0:39:48 I don’t know if I’ve seen anybody doing exactly that on other e-commerce sites like this before.
0:39:49 Yeah, thanks, man.
0:39:51 That was exactly what it was.
0:39:53 It was like, I need to increase this average order value for this thing to make sense.
0:39:55 And it’s a good deal.
0:39:58 These slicers and these other things that we give away, those things are expensive, man.
0:40:03 Like, so we just give it to you for free with the seasoning, and now it makes more sense to buy the seasoning.
0:40:04 Okay.
0:40:07 Now, is there all these sitting in the pool house slash warehouse now too?
0:40:10 Yeah, yeah, they’re in the warehouse slash pool house.
0:40:16 So you have most of it in the warehouse, and then we just went, as we move things or things are selling, we just put what we need to in the pool house.
0:40:20 And again, the pool house is my workout room, and it is quite fragrant.
0:40:23 Come out of there, smell it like barbecue.
0:40:25 Yeah, exactly.
0:40:33 The other thing that you touched on was email marketing and sending out kind of a weekly, sometimes story-based, you know, newsletter, so to speak.
0:40:36 Is this content on how to smoke better chicken?
0:40:43 Like, give me an idea of what kind of stuff that you’re sending out that can’t always be, hey, did you run out yet?
0:40:44 Buy more.
0:40:50 Yeah, and that’s exactly what I was avoiding was, you know, you don’t want to send out something like, hey, buy more, buy more, because nobody cares about it.
0:40:54 Again, I’m thinking about the consumer more than I’m thinking about me when it comes to this.
0:41:01 And with the newsletter, this is a way of building a community around a seasoning, which sounds odd, right?
0:41:02 How do you build a community around a seasoning?
0:41:04 Well, we do it through our newsletter.
0:41:08 And for those who don’t know, if you’re looking at a side hustle, you know, don’t sleep on newsletters.
0:41:11 There’s platforms out there like Beehive, and newsletters are big business.
0:41:13 There was one, The Morning Brew.
0:41:15 They sold for like $75 million.
0:41:19 And then there’s smaller ones that sell for a million, and smaller ones that sell for $500,000, $600,000.
0:41:23 So newsletters are a side hustle if you could build it.
0:41:25 And so what I decided was, hey, you know what?
0:41:26 We’re going to do a newsletter out of this.
0:41:31 It’s going to have a weekly recipe, but it’s not just going to be, hey, here’s a cheesecake recipe.
0:41:34 It has nothing to do with the seasoning, but I give them recipes.
0:41:39 But if I just sent out recipes about chicken alfredo or something like that and pointed back to my site, nobody cares.
0:41:43 But it’s more of the same where it’s like, okay, who are these people?
0:41:46 These people I know that I can get stories from or whatever.
0:41:49 And then I go and I take those stories.
0:41:51 I give those to the people.
0:41:55 Like, here’s a story about something that happened last week or whatever it is.
0:42:01 And then I give them the actual recipe of what I’m saying or what I’m talking about that week.
0:42:03 And then let them go to the site if they want to or not.
0:42:10 It’s a cooking newsletter, but really it’s an entertainment newsletter where it’s a story about something that happened with our guy Buck that week.
0:42:12 And then there’s three interesting articles.
0:42:17 It’s typically articles that we find interesting, something that will entertain people.
0:42:18 And then there’s a recipe.
0:42:21 And it’s that format week after week.
0:42:23 And what we found, Nick, is that the audience loves it.
0:42:27 They email us back saying, hey, this is something that they look forward to weekly.
0:42:30 They really look forward to it, something that entertains them.
0:42:33 So now, again, it is not just a seasoning.
0:42:34 It’s a community.
0:42:35 It’s a thing of entertainment.
0:42:36 It changes.
0:42:39 I’m out of that whole commoditized, is it 5, 10, or 20?
0:42:41 I’m in a whole new ballgame.
0:42:42 Mm-hmm.
0:42:42 Yeah.
0:42:47 I mean, is the newsletter, do you see that becoming a side hustle on a side hustle?
0:42:53 Like, is it become its own like barbecue influencer thing that people follow along with, whether or not they ever buy the stuff?
0:42:54 That’s exactly what it’s going to be.
0:42:55 It’s a side hustle on a side hustle.
0:42:59 At this point, I did my first advertising two weeks ago.
0:43:01 My very first one, $7.20, right?
0:43:04 We got to start somewhere, though, right?
0:43:07 But I’m consistently like Beehive.
0:43:13 I like Beehive, the platform, because Beehive will make it easy for your newsletter to get sponsored.
0:43:16 All you have to do is make sure people want to actually read your newsletter.
0:43:18 And so we get high engagement.
0:43:22 And so now we’re getting flooded with sponsorships.
0:43:23 My first one was $7.20.
0:43:30 And then now I’m starting to figure out, OK, I can start testing how to put sponsorships in here.
0:43:32 And there’s other ways to monetize the newsletter.
0:43:36 So to your point, Nick, it’s a side hustle on a side hustle.
0:43:44 And to me, I think that I will eventually be more profitable in the newsletter business than I am with the seasoning business.
0:43:45 Interesting.
0:43:46 Yeah, you can see where it’s going.
0:43:48 How many subscribers do you have to at this point?
0:43:50 Right now we’re at 7,000.
0:43:51 We were as high as 9,000.
0:43:55 I had 42,000 emails at one point.
0:44:00 And then I went down to like 15,000 that were like somewhat active.
0:44:07 And then now on Beehive, since it’s so they really care about people engaging, I keep the list real tight.
0:44:10 Like if you don’t open my email within 30 days, I’m kicking you off and I’ll tell you.
0:44:10 Yeah, yeah.
0:44:18 And so I keep it real tight because I’d rather have a tighter list with higher engagement than a big list with low engagement.
0:44:18 Okay.
0:44:22 So Beehive, I assume Shopify is what’s running the site.
0:44:22 Absolutely.
0:44:25 Any other tools or tech that you swear by here?
0:44:28 We run the site on Shopify, use Beehive as a newsletter.
0:44:34 I use a lot of, I do a lot of talking with ChatGPT and Claude.
0:44:35 These are AI platforms.
0:44:38 A lot of idea stuff happening with that.
0:44:41 For those who I’m sure at this point, everybody knows about ChatGPT.
0:44:49 Some of y’all might know about Claude, but I don’t just go in there and like just come out to ChatGPT and ask it, hey, solve this problem.
0:44:55 I really take time to make sure ChatGPT knows exactly how I wanted to act.
0:45:02 And not just that, if you’re in ChatGPT, you go to the top of it, there’s certain models that ChatGPT has.
0:45:05 And each model does something different.
0:45:06 You’ll have a basic model.
0:45:09 You’ll have a model that’s good for ideas and research and writing.
0:45:11 You’ll have a model that’s good for coding.
0:45:17 I am very, very intentional about the way I’m training it to act.
0:45:19 Think about like training a person.
0:45:23 I tell it exactly how to act and I give it examples of what I’m looking for.
0:45:23 Okay.
0:45:24 Right.
0:45:26 And then I pick the correct model.
0:45:29 I’m looking, so if I’m doing research, ideal stuff, I’ll pick the research one.
0:45:30 At this point, it’s 4.5.
0:45:32 So I know how I want it to act.
0:45:34 I have it in the correct model.
0:45:37 And now I start working with it and coming up with ideas.
0:45:39 And here’s the thing I’ve learned about AI.
0:45:45 If you are terrible at, let’s say, writing copy, which is mean writing words to sell yourself,
0:45:51 if you’re terrible at that and you use AI, it’s just going to multiply how terrible you are.
0:45:52 Right.
0:45:52 That’s all it does.
0:45:58 But if you have a skill, like something you’re good at and you use AI correctly, it’ll multiply
0:46:00 your efficacy by 100 times.
0:46:06 And so I use it to magnify my strengths and in some cases compensate for my weaknesses.
0:46:11 But I find much more help when I use it to magnify my strengths.
0:46:12 Yeah, but you’re right.
0:46:14 It’s kind of garbage in, garbage out.
0:46:19 But if you can kind of prompt and prime it to act a certain way, it does a really good
0:46:20 job of doing that.
0:46:24 And again, between, and I’ll use, I’ll go, I’ll have chat GBT open and I’ll have Claude
0:46:24 open.
0:46:25 Claude’s another one.
0:46:32 And I’ll do the, I’ll like do the exact same thing to both and get different ideas and different
0:46:32 feedback.
0:46:35 And I’ll kind of compare and contrast that feedback.
0:46:40 It’s just like helping me expanding the mind, man.
0:46:40 It’s really, it’s really good.
0:46:45 Any other tools or resources that you like?
0:46:49 If you are trying to sell something, like you don’t have stories, you don’t know what’s going
0:46:57 on or whatever, Reddit is a goldmine, just a goldmine, depending on what you’re trying to
0:46:57 do.
0:47:02 If you’re trying to like crowdsource things or figure out what people think, if you’re trying
0:47:05 to find the story or something for something, I like to go to Reddit.
0:47:09 I’ll find the subreddit that makes the most sense for what I’m trying to figure out.
0:47:12 Then I’ll sort it by top comments.
0:47:16 Then once you do that, or top posts, you can sort it by top posts.
0:47:20 And then after you sort it by top posts, you can say for the year, for all time, for the
0:47:20 last week.
0:47:24 So I usually go top posts all time or top posts for the year.
0:47:27 And I start at the top and I look at the posts.
0:47:30 And not only do I look at the posts, I’ll open the post up and I’ll look at the comments.
0:47:31 These are real people.
0:47:36 So depending on your niche, let’s say you’re in the weight loss niche and you sell to females
0:47:40 and you find a subreddit that has a bunch of females who are looking to lose weight and
0:47:42 you sort it the way I’m looking at, I’m telling you to sort it.
0:47:46 And you go there and you read the posts and more important, read the comments and the comments
0:47:48 that really got a bunch of likes and stuff.
0:47:49 You learn a lot.
0:47:51 It’s crowdsourcing for free.
0:47:55 I would pay money for Reddit with the type of stuff that I learned from it.
0:47:56 It is amazing.
0:47:58 Do you have an example in the barbecue space?
0:48:01 Like I’m trying to think of what that might look like.
0:48:04 And now that I think about it, at the very beginning, when I was telling you, I was trying
0:48:06 to find an influencer, I use Google and I’m going to Reddit.
0:48:08 And that’s how I found T-Roy.
0:48:13 Now that I remember it, but in the specifically selling the product, there was a, it was tips
0:48:16 on how to smoke something called tri-tip, I believe.
0:48:20 And I went to, went to Reddit, went to the barbecue thing.
0:48:23 I looked up tri-tip, went in there, started looking through what people were saying.
0:48:25 Amazing tips, amazing tips.
0:48:26 I take it.
0:48:27 I go test it.
0:48:28 It worked great.
0:48:29 Boom.
0:48:30 Good to go.
0:48:34 And then putting that into an email or putting that into an article, which then drives a
0:48:35 Facebook ad, which then drives sales.
0:48:37 Absolutely.
0:48:39 That’s just one small example.
0:48:41 I’ve got different businesses done different things.
0:48:43 I’ve used Reddit heavy.
0:48:44 Got it.
0:48:44 Yeah.
0:48:49 This is almost a page out of the Buzzfeed playbook where, you know, there’s curating different
0:48:50 tweets or different faces.
0:48:52 And it’s just, you know, now that’s a piece of content for them.
0:48:53 Exactly.
0:48:57 And then for me, I’ll go to like, cause I’m not just doing, I don’t just sell barbecue
0:48:58 recipes.
0:49:01 I might, I had like, let’s say a creamy lemon chicken or something like that.
0:49:06 I’ll go to things like all recipes or just any like popular food thing.
0:49:08 And I do the same thing.
0:49:10 You go and you just look at the recipe.
0:49:10 Okay.
0:49:11 Is that good or whatever?
0:49:13 But then I start reading the comments.
0:49:16 There’s so much free crowdsourcing information out there.
0:49:23 If you get creative, if you want to pay for stuff, there’s another tool I use called SEM
0:49:23 Rush.
0:49:27 And this talks about traffic that’s at different websites.
0:49:30 And it’ll show you, Hey, this website’s getting so much X traffic or whatever.
0:49:36 But if you pay a little bit more, you figure out what the top pages are in that website.
0:49:38 So now let’s take a cooking website, like all recipes.
0:49:40 I go there, put it in SEM Rush.
0:49:41 It will show me all the traffic.
0:49:46 Then I’ll select something called top pages and I’ll sort it for top pages by the last two
0:49:46 years.
0:49:51 And then you’ll start to see which one of their recipes got the most traffic.
0:49:55 If that recipe got the most traffic, well, that tells you that people are interested
0:49:56 in it.
0:50:00 Maybe I should write an article about that recipe because people are already interested
0:50:00 in it.
0:50:01 Oh, okay.
0:50:01 Okay.
0:50:07 And even if it’s not going to rank organically, it may resonate with people on social because
0:50:09 you’ve got some data to back it up.
0:50:11 People are already finding it through all recipes.
0:50:12 Absolutely.
0:50:16 And so now instead of somebody having to search for it, like anything else, I’m bringing it
0:50:16 to them.
0:50:21 And they’re like, Oh yeah, I want to know how to make, you know, great homemade brownies
0:50:22 or something or whatever.
0:50:23 I keep using desserts.
0:50:25 I don’t really sell the product with desserts.
0:50:30 It’s like, well, it’s gotta be a Thai cheesecake and then chicken on the side.
0:50:33 But yeah, it’s usually a more savory recipe than I’m advertising.
0:50:37 But when I’m trying to put on my rest on my website and my newsletters, I’ll just, again,
0:50:38 I’m just giving out good information.
0:50:42 So I’ll give them a solid brownie recipe that I got from some website.
0:50:45 Plus use AI to like polish it up and give me tips.
0:50:47 I’ll give them some like really good information on how to cook stuff.
0:50:51 I mean, it’s such an interesting angle because I imagine the cost per clicks or cost, you
0:50:56 know, that you’re paying to Facebook are so much lower sending people to a piece of content
0:51:01 on a, you know, a recipe type of page than it would be to a product sales page.
0:51:04 And if I’m at the conversion rate, it’s obviously going to be a lot lower too.
0:51:07 It’s like, there’s a balance there and then, but there’s, you know, retargeting.
0:51:10 There’s all sorts of fun stuff you can do after that.
0:51:11 You got those people to initially click.
0:51:11 Yeah.
0:51:12 Yeah.
0:51:17 I’m not pushing finance or weight loss stuff or these things that have high CPCs cost per
0:51:18 clicks or high CPM.
0:51:20 CPM is basically how much it costs for people to see your stuff.
0:51:22 This is just food stuff.
0:51:26 And I want to find a recipe that’s engaging because here’s one more quick tip.
0:51:29 If you’re advertising on social media, you’re working with social media.
0:51:34 You have two different people who are your, your readers or your clients on there.
0:51:36 You have the people that you’re trying to sell to whoever that is.
0:51:39 And then you have the actual platform itself.
0:51:39 So let’s take Facebook.
0:51:44 You’re trying to reach the user, but also you need to be like taking care of Facebook.
0:51:45 Well, how do you take care of Facebook?
0:51:49 What’s Facebook in here for Facebook want Facebook or Tik TOK or whatever it is, pick your social
0:51:50 media platform.
0:51:50 What do they want?
0:51:54 They want people on their platform for as long as possible.
0:51:59 So if you’re putting something out there that has people on the platform, whether it’s like
0:52:05 watching a video for a while or engaging with the video or writing or sharing it or reading
0:52:10 something, if you play Facebook’s game or any social media platforms game, which is keep them
0:52:15 on that platform for as long as you can, then that social media platform will reward you
0:52:18 by putting your stuff out there for even cheaper.
0:52:20 So that’s the game.
0:52:20 Okay.
0:52:24 So it’s not even driving, it’s not even driving traffic back to baldbuck.com.
0:52:28 It’s like, I’m going to, I’m going to copy paste the whole recipe into the body of this Facebook
0:52:28 post.
0:52:41 And then also what Facebook likes is you get the biggest, I guess, bump, if you want
0:52:43 to call it for sharing and comments.
0:52:47 So if you’re getting people to share your stuff or comment on your stuff, if Facebook sees it,
0:52:50 man, this post, everybody’s talking about it, they’re sharing it.
0:52:51 What’s Facebook going to do?
0:52:52 Boom, boom, boom, boom.
0:52:55 They want to keep people happy, keep people engaged, keep them on the platform.
0:52:58 If you could do that, then you could do well.
0:52:58 Yeah.
0:53:02 And then all of a sudden, yeah, your cost per engagement or cost per reach goes, goes way
0:53:03 down because they’re pushing it out.
0:53:04 Way down.
0:53:05 Absolutely.
0:53:05 All right.
0:53:06 What would you do differently?
0:53:09 I mean, it sounds like we were three, four years into this business.
0:53:12 If you had to start over, anything you’d do to accelerate the journey?
0:53:19 I would have gotten more aggressive with reaching out to YouTubers or user-generated content influencer,
0:53:19 whoever it was.
0:53:22 I still could do that to this day, but this is a side hustle.
0:53:27 I got other stuff going on, but it’s not what you have to say.
0:53:29 It’s what other people have to say about the product.
0:53:32 And there’s a few ways of doing that.
0:53:33 You can’t just copy and paste a review.
0:53:40 If you could really get other people to speak about the product for you, that gives leverage,
0:53:40 man.
0:53:42 Would you approach it similarly today?
0:53:44 It was like, hey, we could do a giveaway for your audience.
0:53:49 Would you say, hey, I’d love for you to be an affiliate partner for this thing.
0:53:51 You know, here’s a unique referral code.
0:53:52 Like, how would you, how would you pitch it?
0:53:56 Everything you just said, the essence of what you just said is what’s, what’s in it for that
0:53:56 person.
0:54:02 Um, not caring about like, you know, obviously I have goals here, but for me to get those
0:54:04 goals, it’s the whole Zig Zig Ziglar thing, right?
0:54:05 You can get everything you want.
0:54:06 If you help enough people get what they want.
0:54:09 So it’s what’s in it for this other person.
0:54:13 How can I make them look good or help them make money or whatever it is?
0:54:15 Let me key in on that.
0:54:17 And then I’ll get what I need from, from this.
0:54:18 Fair enough.
0:54:20 Any, uh, any big surprises?
0:54:23 The surprise was, oh no, all of a sudden it’s an actual business.
0:54:27 Oh no, I have to actually like work with people and now I have to manage people.
0:54:28 And that was a surprise.
0:54:31 And so I didn’t think about that prior to getting into this.
0:54:32 I didn’t see that coming.
0:54:32 Yeah.
0:54:33 That’s interesting.
0:54:36 Is that the, the question most people ask is what if this fails?
0:54:37 What if it doesn’t work?
0:54:40 What if I just have to liquidate these 5,000 units of seasoning?
0:54:44 The other side of it is, well, what if it does work?
0:54:48 You know, what’s that, what’s that going to look like two, three, four years down the road?
0:54:53 And if it actually is selling, is that going to be, is that, it could be a win for me?
0:54:57 And I mean, it sounds like, yes, but just like, you know, there’s, there’s other things that
0:55:00 happened along the way or that necessitated along the way.
0:55:03 It’s like, yo, if I don’t want to be doing all the work, yeah, I’m going to have to bring
0:55:03 on some help.
0:55:06 This is something that’s going to sound a little bit of woo woo, but I’m going to go there anyways.
0:55:10 Like I told you at the very beginning, I bought a bunch of units and it was, I might, I might
0:55:10 recommend it.
0:55:15 I’m not saying go spend a bunch of money and like put yourself into a corner.
0:55:16 I don’t, that wasn’t a wise move.
0:55:17 It was just something that I did.
0:55:25 But I will say that I feel like the mindset behind stuff is, is underestimated.
0:55:30 So if I bought these units feeling like, man, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know if I’m
0:55:33 going to be able to do this, then I probably want, if I buy these units and I’m like, I
0:55:37 have to do this, then it just puts me in a different mode.
0:55:39 You’re working from a totally different place.
0:55:40 That’s one.
0:55:44 And then the second thing, when I’ve noticed this with anything that I’ve started, any
0:55:48 business or whatever, I would get caught up in what’s the logo going to be?
0:55:50 What’s the product?
0:55:51 Let me optimize the product.
0:55:52 What’s my website going to look like?
0:55:52 What?
0:55:53 Oh, let me change this color.
0:55:58 And I would do all these things, do all these different things, everything, but the most important
0:56:00 thing, which is sell it.
0:56:01 It was a pattern of mine.
0:56:03 Well, it’s easy to procrastinate on.
0:56:03 Yeah, that’s the hard part.
0:56:05 But you feel like you’re doing something.
0:56:09 It’s like a, like a, like a running back going from sideline to sideline instead of up to
0:56:09 field.
0:56:12 Like you look busy, but you’re not doing anything.
0:56:12 Yeah.
0:56:15 And that’s how I was like all these little things that made me feel good.
0:56:16 Let me get it up.
0:56:18 Maybe I should go back to school.
0:56:21 Like all these things making me feel good about it.
0:56:24 But what I’m doing is really just procrastinating, doing the thing that’s most important, which is
0:56:25 selling the product.
0:56:29 And if I could go back and tell myself that with anything I’ve done is figure out how to
0:56:31 sell it, then figure everything else out.
0:56:32 Yeah.
0:56:33 We’ll figure out.
0:56:33 Yeah.
0:56:35 We’ll, we’ll figure out the logistics once we got some orders.
0:56:35 Yeah.
0:56:38 Well, we could always change the logo down the road if we don’t like it.
0:56:38 Yeah.
0:56:39 There’s all sorts of, yeah.
0:56:43 But no, it’s, it’s easy to get caught up on that, you know, because you want to, you
0:56:47 want to put your best foot forward, but at the same time, yeah, I’m, I’m with you
0:56:48 on, on all of that.
0:56:52 But baldbuck.com, that’s where you can find this order ups, the barbecue seasoning for
0:56:53 yourself.
0:56:55 Yo, Chris Gray is where you can find Chris on social.
0:56:57 What’s next for you?
0:56:58 What’s got you excited this year?
0:57:00 I love our newsletter and what we’re doing there.
0:57:02 That’s, that’s really fun.
0:57:05 And then I’m really excited about where AI is right now.
0:57:10 Kind of think that we are in the wild west of it where in my, in my little inner bubble
0:57:13 circle, whatever you want to call it, everybody’s talking about it, but the general population
0:57:15 isn’t really on it.
0:57:19 And I think that this is like, you know, back in the day, you know, I don’t know how old
0:57:21 you are, Nick, I’m, I’m 44, man.
0:57:25 And, and I was around when the internet started coming to, to be a thing.
0:57:26 I’m, I’m close to that.
0:57:27 I’m almost there.
0:57:27 Yeah, man.
0:57:32 Well, you remember people were like email or you could buy things online.
0:57:34 That’s how it was back then.
0:57:35 Now look at it today.
0:57:39 I believe we’re there with AI and we’re on the precipice of it.
0:57:40 And a lot of people don’t know about it.
0:57:43 And there’s a lot of different ways to make a lot of money.
0:57:48 Maybe using AI and using AI and robotics and automation and, or use you just using AI to
0:57:49 get ideas and help with stuff.
0:57:54 But I think we’re kind of, we’re here where there’s an opportunity to use it to make money
0:57:58 or use it to help you make money or directly use it to make money.
0:57:59 I’m excited about that.
0:57:59 Yeah.
0:58:01 It’s a, it’s a brave new world.
0:58:02 We’ll see where it goes.
0:58:06 I’m trying to get better about using it on a daily, weekly basis.
0:58:09 I know I’m just scratching the surface and try, try and crowdsource some, some wisdom
0:58:12 from guests and from side hustle show listeners as well.
0:58:14 And what, what’s your use case here?
0:58:15 What am I, what am I missing out on?
0:58:16 But, uh, very cool.
0:58:20 Uh, so we’ll link up all this stuff, baldbuck.com and Chris Gray’s socials.
0:58:24 Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
0:58:29 My number one tip is if you are starting to sell something or you have an idea of a product
0:58:34 that you want to do or a service you want to do, and you’re just starting, find something
0:58:36 that already works.
0:58:41 Don’t get crafty and try to create something unique and have this, oh, this idea, my blah,
0:58:41 blah, blah.
0:58:48 Like to get the thing off the ground to, you really want to get a ball rolling, find something
0:58:49 that is already working.
0:58:50 Then put your spin on it.
0:58:53 In the case of baldbuck, the seasoning was already selling.
0:58:56 I just need to, it was already good.
0:58:57 It already tasted good.
0:58:58 I didn’t need to come up with my own blend or something.
0:58:59 It was already working.
0:59:00 Yeah.
0:59:00 Yeah.
0:59:02 I just put, I put my label on it and figured out how to sell it.
0:59:06 But I think that concept is something else that’s helped me tremendously as I leverage
0:59:07 what’s already working.
0:59:07 Yeah.
0:59:09 Remove part of the equation, right?
0:59:13 Like it’s a way to kind of leapfrog or piggyback what’s already been done.
0:59:15 You don’t have to start completely from scratch.
0:59:19 It’s, you know, just, there’s still a lot of moving parts that you got to figure out,
0:59:21 but it’s like, well, here’s one, one less thing to worry about.
0:59:22 One less thing.
0:59:22 Up to the move.
0:59:24 So appreciate you sharing that.
0:59:25 That was one of my takeaways here.
0:59:32 You may not have to be a creator, an inventor completely from scratch.
0:59:36 And maybe you iterate on something that’s already out there, but go where there’s some proven
0:59:38 demand versus trying to create demand from scratch.
0:59:44 I loved Chris to talk about the brand positioning and then going after the partnerships.
0:59:46 We’re like, well, how am I going to sell this stuff?
0:59:48 Who’s already got some traffic and eyeballs?
0:59:50 Well, all these barbecue influencers do.
0:59:55 How can I make it a win for them instead of, and trying to find some sort of common ground
0:59:57 and then initial outreach, lots of good tips there.
1:00:02 And then going back to the storytelling and the emotion and his eBay example of like, it’s
1:00:03 the same stuff.
1:00:07 It’s the same commodity that it was 10 minutes ago, but now it has this story attached to it.
1:00:09 People willing to pay a premium for that.
1:00:12 Plus some creative ways to increase the average order size.
1:00:15 You’re going to do the shipping and logistics side of it anyways.
1:00:19 You know, what’s another couple of jars of stuff to throw into the box?
1:00:22 How do you incentivize people to increase that average order value?
1:00:23 What do you think?
1:00:26 Is there an opportunity to white label a product that you already love?
1:00:32 Your free listener bonus for this episode is my list of 20 hobby-related niches to get
1:00:35 your creative juices flowing, like barbecue might be a hobby for you as well.
1:00:37 Other stuff you might be able to sell for a profit.
1:00:40 Just follow the show notes link in the episode description.
1:00:41 It’ll get you right over there.
1:00:43 You’ll be able to download that for free.
1:00:46 Again, my list of 20 other hobby-related niches.
1:00:49 Big thanks to Chris for sharing his insight.
1:00:52 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
1:00:57 As always, you can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our
1:00:59 sponsors in one place.
1:01:00 That is it for me.
1:01:01 Thank you so much for tuning in.
1:01:05 If you’re finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
1:01:07 So fire off that text message.
1:01:09 Maybe it’s to that barbecue lover in your life.
1:01:12 Maybe it’s to somebody who’s just on the cusp of that next side hustle idea.
1:01:14 Would love your help in spreading the word.
1:01:17 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen.
1:01:20 And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.
1:01:21 Hustle on.

0:00:03 – There are two kinds of people in the world,
0:00:06 backward thinkers and forward thinkers.
0:00:08 Forward thinkers have plans 15 minutes from now
0:00:11 and 15 years from now.
0:00:12 They’re not just one step ahead,
0:00:15 they’re 1,000 steps ahead.
0:00:16 And when you’re a forward thinker,
0:00:19 you need a platform that thinks like you do.
0:00:21 Workday’s AI illuminates decision-making
0:00:24 and re-imagines how you manage your people
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0:00:33 – It won’t take long to tell you Neutral’s ingredients.
0:00:39 Vodka, soda, natural flavors.
0:00:46 So, what should we talk about?
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0:01:03 When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?
0:01:06 When your famous grainy mustard potato salad
0:01:08 isn’t so famous without the grainy mustard.
0:01:11 When the barbecue’s lit, but there’s nothing to grill.
0:01:13 When the in-laws decide that, actually,
0:01:14 they will stay for dinner.
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0:01:29 Groceries that over-deliver.
0:01:31 – Episode 353.
0:01:34 353 is the area code serving southwestern Wisconsin.
0:01:38 In 1953, the first James Bond novel was published.
0:01:41 What would happen if James Bond took Viagra?
0:01:44 He would continue to be a state-sponsored terrorist
0:01:46 whose actions disgrace us all.
0:01:47 Disgrace us all.
0:01:48 Mm, I didn’t like that one.
0:01:50 I was once in a James Bond-themed porn film.
0:01:52 I didn’t enjoy it, but I did manage to come on cue.
0:01:57 That’s better.
0:01:58 Go, go, go!
0:02:10 Welcome to the 353rd episode of the Prop G-Pod.
0:02:10 What’s happening?
0:02:13 I am in, I’m French dog right now.
0:02:16 I’m a cheese-eating surrender dog.
0:02:17 Mm, is that fair?
0:02:18 Is that fair?
0:02:20 France did fall in about 11 days.
0:02:22 So I’m in the south of France.
0:02:26 You know, France absolutely would be the most amazing country in the world
0:02:28 if it wasn’t inhabited by the French.
0:02:30 All right, they just know how to do shit here.
0:02:31 Everything is beautiful.
0:02:33 The Côte d’Azur is wonderful.
0:02:35 I had a James Bond moment about, I don’t know,
0:02:38 I think the first time I came to Cannes,
0:02:40 I bombed into, I landed in the airport,
0:02:43 Delta Airlines overnight, no sleep.
0:02:47 And I pull up Uber to take an Uber to my hotel.
0:02:50 And this was back when I was actually working for a living
0:02:52 and I’ve got an Airbnb for like, I don’t know,
0:02:55 70 euros a night, you know, 40 minutes out of town.
0:03:00 And I pull up Uber and up pops this helicopter icon.
0:03:00 So I’m like, what the fuck?
0:03:02 So I press on it and it says,
0:03:07 meet your helicopter to Cannes and the baggage claim.
0:03:09 And I show up and I meet this 13-year-old
0:03:12 in what looks like a Halloween costume of a pilot’s uniform,
0:03:14 puts me in a van, takes me to this thing
0:03:16 where there’s a lawnmower with a rotor blade
0:03:17 called a helicopter.
0:03:21 We take off, we zoom or whisk across the Côte d’Azur,
0:03:24 land in the Palais.
0:03:25 And I get out and there’s a bunch of people
0:03:27 at Meta Beach kind of trying to figure out
0:03:30 how they can get teenage girls to self-harm more.
0:03:32 And they look up and they see me getting out
0:03:33 of my helicopter and I’m like,
0:03:34 da-na-da!
0:03:37 Literally, that was kind of a James Bond moment.
0:03:41 Now my life is pretty much about trying to pursue
0:03:43 a series of James Bond moments.
0:03:46 I’m here at my favorite hotel in the world,
0:03:47 the Hotel de Cap Eden Rock,
0:03:49 which is reeks of European luxury.
0:03:51 My favorite thing, and I’ve talked about this before,
0:03:53 but that’s not going to stop me from talking about it again.
0:03:57 I go to the FTR, I go to this beautiful little patio
0:04:00 at the Hotel de Cap, and I have my latte and my croissant
0:04:03 and my freshly squeezed orange juice.
0:04:06 And I sit there with my Financial Times,
0:04:09 or as I like to call it, that salmon bitch,
0:04:12 trying to signal that I’m smart and very international.
0:04:16 And then I hire a Zodiac for the week,
0:04:21 this guy, French guy, who somehow manages to drive a boat
0:04:24 while having two cigarettes lit at once.
0:04:28 And he takes me in, and I always crash the beach from,
0:04:34 I’m like fucking the 5th Battalion of the U.S. Army
0:04:36 crashing on Normandy.
0:04:38 I go into Omaha Beach.
0:04:40 Omaha Beach for me is meta.
0:04:42 I hate those motherfuckers.
0:04:44 And I always land on their beach, and they look up,
0:04:45 and there’s a security guard, and they know what to do.
0:04:47 And I just bomb through there onto the Palais.
0:04:48 That’s what you do.
0:04:49 You go into the soft tissue.
0:04:51 You land from the seaside.
0:04:53 And I did it at a Pinterest beach, but they’re nice.
0:04:54 They didn’t care.
0:04:55 They just looked up and said,
0:04:59 oh, would you like to browse some soapstone kitchen counters
0:05:00 or plan your wedding?
0:05:04 Anyways, I love Cannes, Lions.
0:05:08 It used to be where they’d give out trophies to the ad execs
0:05:10 who were all looking for a different job,
0:05:12 and then basically Tech 8 Media.
0:05:14 I mean, it’s just so hilarious.
0:05:17 The lions of this industry were Martin Sorrell, Maurice Levy,
0:05:19 and a guy named John Wren from Omnicom.
0:05:20 And now, between the three of them,
0:05:22 they have a $40 billion market cap.
0:05:26 And you’re seeing, I mean, they’re just unimportant.
0:05:28 It’s just hilarious we continue to talk about these companies.
0:05:32 that Alphabet or Amazon will lose or gain the value
0:05:34 of all three of these companies in a trading day.
0:05:36 And yet, they’re trying to hold on.
0:05:38 And WPP just made this big announcement
0:05:41 that they’re moving to more of an influencer model.
0:05:42 Well, oh, wow.
0:05:43 Yeah, that’ll help.
0:05:44 It’s got a $9 billion market cap.
0:05:48 And I’m pretty sure there’s going to be an activist coming to WPP
0:05:50 because my guess is they have some really good assets.
0:05:53 And what you have now is a hole that’s less than the sum of its parts.
0:05:58 The original conglomerate model fashioned by Sir Martin Sorrell
0:06:00 made a lot of sense and it no longer makes sense
0:06:02 or it doesn’t make sense when you have a lot of your assets are dying
0:06:03 or in structural decline,
0:06:06 especially with meta deciding that, oh, using AI,
0:06:08 we can do the creative and we can do the account planning
0:06:09 and the media buying
0:06:12 and stop hiring these very young, attractive people
0:06:13 who you overpay such that you can get invited
0:06:16 to their used-to-be-cool party.
0:06:18 Anyway, lovely to be here.
0:06:22 My big tip around traveling is travel to hotels, not to cities.
0:06:25 It’s like what school you pick for your kids.
0:06:26 We obsess over what school.
0:06:28 We obsess over what city we’re going to.
0:06:31 Well, actually, if you find the right teacher, it doesn’t matter what school.
0:06:33 And if you have a bad teacher, it doesn’t matter what school.
0:06:34 It’s more about the teacher than it is the school.
0:06:37 I think it’s the same with hotels.
0:06:42 I read all these hotel lists and I travel to hotels versus a city
0:06:47 because a mediocre hotel in LA makes LA kind of a hellish place
0:06:49 with a bunch of freeways as you’re trying to go somewhere
0:06:51 and do something cool, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
0:06:54 Or if you’re having an affair with your, I don’t know,
0:06:58 secretary’s husband or something, and that’s the Hotel Bel Air.
0:07:01 If you’re younger and you want something a little cooler,
0:07:03 you go to the addition and they’ve got a cool restaurant there.
0:07:05 I mean, it’s all about the hotel.
0:07:06 LA, yeah, LA’s great.
0:07:07 But you don’t go to LA, you go to the hotel.
0:07:09 Where do you go?
0:07:10 You don’t go to the South of France.
0:07:11 Cannes itself is not that nice.
0:07:12 It’s okay.
0:07:13 It’s okay.
0:07:15 What’s nice is the Hotel du Cap
0:07:16 or what’s over the top is Hotel du Cap
0:07:20 where you get a latte and a croissant for $38.
0:07:20 No joke.
0:07:22 And as I’m sitting there reading my FT,
0:07:24 hands down the highlight of the trip
0:07:26 is these two ridiculously ripped,
0:07:28 they look Italian, maybe they’re French.
0:07:30 They come out in these like cool polos
0:07:32 and they’re in between working out
0:07:33 and taking human growth hormone.
0:07:35 And they come out on their arm
0:07:37 with these two peregrines,
0:07:38 is that what they’re called?
0:07:39 Falcons.
0:07:40 And they have the little hood on them
0:07:41 and everyone just kind of stops eating,
0:07:45 you know, their croquettes
0:07:46 or whatever it is we were eating for breakfast.
0:07:48 And they look at these two beautiful men
0:07:51 with their two equally beautiful hawks.
0:07:54 And the problem is occasionally a seagull,
0:07:56 the seagulls haven’t gotten the memo
0:07:58 that these rooms are 4,000 euros a night
0:08:00 and they’ll come up and literally steal your croissant.
0:08:03 And seagulls are, I don’t know,
0:08:04 they’re flying rats as far as I can tell.
0:08:07 So what they do is they bring out these guys
0:08:08 with these hawks and the seagulls
0:08:10 are going around, you know, flying
0:08:11 and then they take the hood off
0:08:15 and instinctively the hawk just bolts off the arm
0:08:17 of the handsome ripped French slash Italian guy
0:08:20 and like takes a seagull.
0:08:21 And when I say takes,
0:08:22 I mean somehow in midair
0:08:24 manages to rip the fucking thing apart.
0:08:26 And then all of a sudden the seagulls are like,
0:08:27 I mean, they’re going crazy.
0:08:29 They’re going, for good reason,
0:08:30 they’re going crazy.
0:08:31 And then there’s no seagulls
0:08:33 for like seven or eight minutes.
0:08:34 And it’s just fucking hilarious.
0:08:36 And I’m like, whoa, I see this thing.
0:08:37 I see the rip guy.
0:08:40 I see the, I see the Falcon rip apart a seagull.
0:08:42 And I’m like, I would pay 4,100 euros
0:08:43 for my room right now.
0:08:48 Just a reminder that Prop G Markets is now daily.
0:08:48 That’s right.
0:08:51 You’ll find it only on the Prop G Markets feed.
0:08:52 We’ve gone daily.
0:08:55 We still do two days a week, me and Ed.
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0:09:01 talking about specific topics,
0:09:02 a little crisper, a little shorter,
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0:09:50 Thank you for enduring that.
0:09:52 Thank you for enduring that.
0:09:54 I’m going to, if you come up to me and say,
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0:09:57 I’m going to reward you with 10 seconds
0:09:58 of uninterrupted eye contact.
0:10:00 Okay.
0:10:03 In today’s episode, we speak with one of my role models.
0:10:04 People say, who do you look up to?
0:10:06 And I have a lot of people I look up to.
0:10:07 Most of them, nobody else knows.
0:10:09 Just dudes getting up,
0:10:11 you know, making money for their families,
0:10:12 trying to be good role models,
0:10:14 you know, absorbing blows,
0:10:16 not being assholes.
0:10:17 Those are the people I admire.
0:10:20 But in terms of popular or pop figures,
0:10:23 the individual I get a lot of guidance from
0:10:24 is Sam Harris,
0:10:26 a neuroscientist, philosopher, best-selling author,
0:10:29 and host of the Making Sense podcast.
0:10:32 I find Sam is just literally a buoy,
0:10:34 a, what’s it called?
0:10:35 A life raft,
0:10:36 a port of call,
0:10:37 and a stormy seas.
0:10:39 I just find he has such moral clarity,
0:10:41 does the work.
0:10:42 If you listen to his podcast,
0:10:43 every word is just,
0:10:45 you can tell every word has been selected.
0:10:46 The economy of words,
0:10:47 it’s so crisp,
0:10:47 it’s so tight.
0:10:49 We discussed with Sam
0:10:51 the collapse of trust in institutions,
0:10:52 why getting off Twitter
0:10:53 was the best decision he’s ever made
0:10:54 for his mental health,
0:10:56 and what Elon Musk and Andrew Tate
0:10:58 reveal about masculinity today.
0:10:59 With that,
0:11:00 from the south of France,
0:11:02 from the Hotel Ducap Eden Rock,
0:11:04 here’s our conversation
0:11:05 with Sam Harris.
0:11:19 Sam,
0:11:20 where does this podcast find you?
0:11:22 Los Angeles.
0:11:23 So,
0:11:25 I was struggling with what
0:11:26 topics to cover,
0:11:28 specifically what topics not to cover,
0:11:29 so I thought I’ll
0:11:30 basically do a buffet here
0:11:32 and have you decide
0:11:33 of all the things
0:11:35 we’re most concerned about
0:11:37 or of all the things
0:11:38 to be concerned about.
0:11:39 What are you most concerned about
0:11:40 right now and why?
0:11:43 I think it would have to be
0:11:44 the way we’re interacting
0:11:46 with information.
0:11:46 You know,
0:11:47 I mean,
0:11:47 it just is,
0:11:49 and largely this is a story
0:11:51 of what social media
0:11:52 and the internet
0:11:53 generally has done to us,
0:11:54 but,
0:11:55 you know,
0:11:56 you can throw into this bin
0:11:58 the failure of institutions
0:12:01 and the pervasive lack
0:12:02 of trust in institutions
0:12:04 that is far deeper
0:12:06 and more widespread
0:12:08 than the failures
0:12:09 of those institutions
0:12:10 would justify,
0:12:10 right?
0:12:11 I mean,
0:12:12 people are far more
0:12:14 distrusting of the media
0:12:17 than the errors of,
0:12:17 you know,
0:12:18 the woke errors
0:12:18 of the media
0:12:19 over the last few years
0:12:20 justify.
0:12:23 People are far more
0:12:24 distrusting of government
0:12:25 and the scientific
0:12:26 establishment
0:12:27 than the errors
0:12:28 committed during COVID
0:12:29 justify,
0:12:29 right?
0:12:31 And so we’ve reached
0:12:32 this kind of freefall
0:12:32 condition,
0:12:33 as far as I can tell,
0:12:35 especially in independent
0:12:36 media and over in
0:12:36 Trumpistan,
0:12:37 it’s just a,
0:12:38 you know,
0:12:39 the physics have
0:12:40 completely changed,
0:12:41 wherein you have
0:12:43 proper lunatics
0:12:44 trusted as,
0:12:46 you know,
0:12:47 as honest brokers
0:12:47 of information.
0:12:48 You’ve got people
0:12:49 like Tucker Carlson
0:12:51 and a host of
0:12:53 slightly better behaved
0:12:54 but no less
0:12:56 confused podcasters
0:12:57 who I might not
0:12:57 name here.
0:12:58 And,
0:12:59 you know,
0:13:00 conspiracy theorists,
0:13:01 people like Alex Jones,
0:13:02 I mean,
0:13:02 these people are in
0:13:03 good standing
0:13:04 right of center
0:13:06 and it’s bonkers.
0:13:08 And so I fear
0:13:08 that we are in a
0:13:10 position increasingly
0:13:11 where we’re rendering
0:13:14 ourselves ungovernable
0:13:14 or,
0:13:15 you know,
0:13:16 governable only
0:13:17 by,
0:13:18 you know,
0:13:19 half the population
0:13:21 willing to get
0:13:22 absorbed into a
0:13:23 personality cult
0:13:25 and continuously
0:13:26 fed lies.
0:13:28 And it’s just a,
0:13:28 you know,
0:13:28 I don’t know how
0:13:29 we would respond
0:13:31 to the next
0:13:32 proper emergency.
0:13:33 You know,
0:13:34 if 9-11 happened
0:13:34 now,
0:13:36 if a pandemic,
0:13:36 you know,
0:13:37 worse than COVID
0:13:38 happened now,
0:13:39 if a real war
0:13:39 happened now,
0:13:41 I think we’re
0:13:42 in a society
0:13:42 that is just
0:13:43 riven by
0:13:43 misinformation
0:13:45 and frank
0:13:46 dishonesty.
0:13:48 And it’s a very
0:13:48 dark picture,
0:13:49 I think,
0:13:50 of us politically
0:13:51 at the moment.
0:13:52 Do you see
0:13:53 any sources
0:13:54 or paths
0:13:54 to repair?
0:13:56 Well,
0:13:56 I do think
0:13:57 we have to
0:13:58 figure out
0:13:58 how to reboot
0:13:59 trust in
0:14:00 institutions,
0:14:00 which is,
0:14:00 you know,
0:14:01 obviously a
0:14:01 two-sided
0:14:02 problem.
0:14:03 The institutions
0:14:04 themselves
0:14:05 have to
0:14:07 become
0:14:08 trustworthy,
0:14:09 and,
0:14:10 you know,
0:14:10 the Trump
0:14:10 administration
0:14:11 is making
0:14:11 that hard
0:14:12 now by
0:14:13 launching an
0:14:13 all-out
0:14:14 assault on
0:14:15 them in
0:14:16 ways that,
0:14:16 you know,
0:14:17 if the purpose
0:14:18 was to make
0:14:18 them trustworthy,
0:14:19 you would go
0:14:20 about it very
0:14:20 differently,
0:14:21 right?
0:14:21 I mean,
0:14:22 I share the
0:14:23 concern that
0:14:24 the Ivy League
0:14:25 and other
0:14:26 universities failed
0:14:27 to deal with
0:14:28 the explosion
0:14:28 of anti-Semitism
0:14:29 and frank
0:14:30 moral confusion
0:14:31 that happened
0:14:32 after October
0:14:32 7th,
0:14:34 but if that
0:14:34 was your
0:14:34 concern,
0:14:36 if your concern
0:14:36 was to deal
0:14:37 with the,
0:14:38 merely deal
0:14:39 with the
0:14:39 ideological
0:14:40 capture of
0:14:40 so many
0:14:40 of these
0:14:41 departments
0:14:41 and the
0:14:42 administrators
0:14:43 and talk
0:14:43 some sense
0:14:44 into them,
0:14:45 you wouldn’t
0:14:45 go about it
0:14:46 the way
0:14:46 the Trump
0:14:46 administration
0:14:47 is.
0:14:48 So,
0:14:49 we need
0:14:50 to restore
0:14:51 trust in
0:14:51 institutions.
0:14:53 We’re not
0:14:53 all going to
0:14:54 independently
0:14:55 do our own
0:14:55 research in
0:14:56 the face of
0:14:57 the next
0:14:59 great challenge
0:15:00 to our
0:15:00 society.
0:15:01 We need
0:15:02 to have
0:15:02 people we
0:15:03 can trust.
0:15:03 We need,
0:15:04 you know,
0:15:04 we need real
0:15:05 air traffic
0:15:06 controllers who
0:15:06 can keep the
0:15:06 planes in the
0:15:07 air,
0:15:07 right?
0:15:08 And so,
0:15:10 there’s been
0:15:10 a kind of
0:15:11 disavowal of
0:15:12 expertise,
0:15:13 especially in
0:15:14 independent media,
0:15:14 especially on
0:15:15 podcasts,
0:15:17 as though any,
0:15:17 you know,
0:15:18 comedian who’s
0:15:19 a quick study
0:15:20 and, you
0:15:20 know,
0:15:21 can use
0:15:22 chat GPT
0:15:23 can be an
0:15:23 expert on
0:15:25 the war in
0:15:25 Ukraine or
0:15:27 the Israeli-Palestinian
0:15:29 conflict or
0:15:30 epidemiology or
0:15:31 whatever it is.
0:15:33 And it’s a
0:15:33 free-for-all out
0:15:34 there.
0:15:34 And I just,
0:15:34 so we’re going
0:15:35 to have
0:15:35 to,
0:15:36 it may
0:15:37 require some
0:15:39 very clear
0:15:41 catastrophes born
0:15:42 of misinformation
0:15:43 to get our
0:15:44 heads screwed on
0:15:44 straight,
0:15:45 but, you know,
0:15:45 eventually we’re
0:15:46 going to bump
0:15:46 into some
0:15:47 hard objects
0:15:48 out there in
0:15:49 the real world
0:15:49 and we’re
0:15:50 going to want
0:15:50 to know what
0:15:51 real experts
0:15:51 think about
0:15:52 real problems
0:15:54 and we’re
0:15:54 going to stop
0:15:55 denying that
0:15:56 expertise is
0:15:56 really a thing.
0:15:57 And, again,
0:15:58 I’m not arguing
0:15:58 that mere
0:16:00 credentialism is the
0:16:00 way you find
0:16:01 experts.
0:16:01 it’s not,
0:16:02 you know,
0:16:03 we might go
0:16:03 into that if
0:16:04 you’re interested
0:16:05 because people
0:16:06 are confused
0:16:06 about this,
0:16:08 but the idea
0:16:09 that everyone’s
0:16:10 opinion is worth
0:16:12 hearing on every
0:16:13 topic is just
0:16:14 a colossal load
0:16:15 of bullshit
0:16:15 and everyone
0:16:16 knows this at
0:16:17 bottom and yet
0:16:19 the way we
0:16:19 interact with
0:16:20 information is
0:16:20 not reflecting
0:16:21 that.
0:16:22 I’m curious,
0:16:23 and I think you
0:16:24 share this opinion,
0:16:24 there’s been so
0:16:25 many things,
0:16:25 I don’t know if
0:16:26 you, that I
0:16:26 thought would
0:16:27 have been
0:16:28 disqualifying about
0:16:28 the Trump
0:16:29 administration just
0:16:29 in the last
0:16:30 hundred days that
0:16:30 the public would
0:16:31 have just,
0:16:32 you know,
0:16:33 that’s it,
0:16:33 they’re going to
0:16:34 regurgitate here,
0:16:34 there’s going to
0:16:35 be real pushback
0:16:36 and there hasn’t
0:16:36 been.
0:16:38 And I’ve come to
0:16:39 a very crude
0:16:39 conclusion,
0:16:40 and maybe I
0:16:41 shouldn’t conclude
0:16:41 it, or a thesis
0:16:42 I should say
0:16:43 that America
0:16:44 would rather have
0:16:45 an autocrat,
0:16:45 a kleptocrat,
0:16:46 than a weak
0:16:46 party.
0:16:48 And I saw a
0:16:48 survey yesterday
0:16:49 that said if
0:16:50 the election were
0:16:52 held, yesterday
0:16:52 even knowing what
0:16:53 we know so far
0:16:54 in the Trump
0:16:54 administration,
0:16:55 that he would
0:16:56 still win.
0:16:58 I’m curious what
0:16:59 underlying or what
0:16:59 shifts in the
0:17:00 ground,
0:17:03 you felt led to
0:17:04 his re-election
0:17:05 and what’s
0:17:06 happened since
0:17:07 then, and why
0:17:07 it just doesn’t
0:17:08 seem as if
0:17:09 there’s anything
0:17:10 that can actually
0:17:11 be disqualifying.
0:17:14 Well, on that last
0:17:15 point, I think I’m
0:17:16 as confused as
0:17:17 anyone.
0:17:17 I mean, again,
0:17:18 there are a thousand
0:17:19 things, any one of
0:17:20 which would have
0:17:23 totally wrecked the
0:17:24 presidency of any
0:17:25 other American
0:17:26 president.
0:17:27 I mean, this is
0:17:27 something that
0:17:29 President Obama
0:17:31 remarked on from
0:17:32 some stage recently,
0:17:34 where he just said,
0:17:34 you know, can you
0:17:35 imagine me doing
0:17:36 any of these things?
0:17:37 And then he went
0:17:38 through a short list
0:17:40 of things, again,
0:17:41 any one of which
0:17:42 would have been a
0:17:42 national scandal.
0:17:43 I mean, the news
0:17:44 cycle would have
0:17:45 never stopped
0:17:49 ruminating on just
0:17:50 how appalling that
0:17:51 thing was, whether
0:17:52 it’s launching a
0:17:53 meme coin, which is
0:17:55 a device calculated
0:17:56 to accept bribes
0:17:58 from crooks and
0:18:01 foreign agents, and
0:18:03 to very quickly reap
0:18:03 hundreds of millions
0:18:04 of dollars in
0:18:06 profits thereby,
0:18:08 grifting your
0:18:09 credulous cult.
0:18:10 That’s just one
0:18:10 thing.
0:18:13 I mean, it sounds
0:18:14 hyperbolic to say
0:18:15 a thousand, but
0:18:16 that’s conservative.
0:18:18 There’s well more
0:18:19 than a thousand
0:18:20 things Trump has
0:18:21 done in the last
0:18:22 ten years, said or
0:18:23 done, that would
0:18:24 be perfectly
0:18:25 disqualifying in
0:18:26 another candidate or
0:18:27 another president.
0:18:28 I mean, the meme
0:18:30 coin is such a
0:18:31 shocking act of
0:18:33 corruption.
0:18:34 It’s amazing we
0:18:35 don’t have very
0:18:37 clear laws against
0:18:37 it.
0:18:38 Apparently we don’t,
0:18:39 and we’re just
0:18:40 discovering that.
0:18:41 So the job of the
0:18:42 next president,
0:18:43 whoever that, or I
0:18:44 should say the next
0:18:46 sane and ethical
0:18:47 president, whenever
0:18:48 we get such a
0:18:50 person, may not be in
0:18:51 the next round,
0:18:53 obviously, that
0:18:53 person’s job is
0:18:55 going to, in my
0:18:56 view, is going to
0:18:57 be to do a
0:18:59 post-mortem on
0:19:00 this decade of
0:19:01 American history,
0:19:03 political history,
0:19:04 and try to figure
0:19:05 out how we never
0:19:07 become vulnerable
0:19:07 to this kind of
0:19:08 thing again.
0:19:09 I mean, clearly we
0:19:12 need a system that
0:19:13 is immune, as immune
0:19:15 as a system can be
0:19:16 to the private
0:19:17 derangement and
0:19:19 corruption of a
0:19:20 bad actor, right?
0:19:21 Because we’ve proven
0:19:22 ourselves as a
0:19:24 population, as a
0:19:25 citizenry, perfectly
0:19:27 capable of
0:19:29 electing a
0:19:30 patently
0:19:31 unqualified,
0:19:33 malicious, vindictive,
0:19:35 and morbidly
0:19:37 selfish person to
0:19:37 the highest office
0:19:38 in the land.
0:19:39 We did that.
0:19:41 I mean, we can
0:19:42 wonder why we did
0:19:43 that, but we’ve
0:19:44 proved to ourselves
0:19:45 and to the world
0:19:46 that we’re capable of
0:19:46 doing that twice,
0:19:47 right?
0:19:48 We’re capable of
0:19:49 electing a person who
0:19:50 we knew last time
0:19:50 around tried to
0:19:51 steal the election
0:19:53 and lied about it
0:19:54 having been stolen
0:19:57 from him and told
0:19:59 this lie again and
0:19:59 again as a
0:20:00 continuous provocation
0:20:01 to political
0:20:03 violence on the
0:20:04 part of his cult.
0:20:07 And all of this
0:20:09 is so weird and
0:20:11 so destructive of
0:20:13 the faith that so
0:20:14 many people have
0:20:15 had in the
0:20:15 stability of our
0:20:16 system of
0:20:17 governance that,
0:20:18 of governance,
0:20:20 that, yeah, I
0:20:20 think we have to
0:20:21 figure out what
0:20:23 laws we should have
0:20:25 had to backstop
0:20:26 some of the
0:20:27 norms we thought
0:20:27 were inviolate,
0:20:29 all of which
0:20:30 Trump and his
0:20:31 administration have
0:20:32 violated.
0:20:34 So, I mean, I’m
0:20:36 totally mystified as
0:20:37 to why people aren’t
0:20:39 as allergic to
0:20:39 these norm
0:20:41 violations as we
0:20:41 are.
0:20:41 I mean, there’s
0:20:43 just, it’s, again,
0:20:44 there’s, you could
0:20:45 name, I could easily
0:20:46 name dozens here
0:20:47 off the, you know,
0:20:50 off the cuff, but
0:20:52 it’s, I mean,
0:20:53 take just adjacent
0:20:53 to the meme
0:20:54 coin, the fact
0:20:55 that we now are
0:20:57 a country wherein
0:20:58 the president is
0:20:59 using our foreign
0:21:00 policy, our
0:21:02 tariff policy, to
0:21:03 privately,
0:21:05 personally enrich
0:21:06 himself.
0:21:07 You know, when we
0:21:08 slap a 46% tariff
0:21:10 on Vietnam, the
0:21:11 Vietnam’s response
0:21:13 to mitigate that
0:21:14 harm to their
0:21:15 economy is to
0:21:17 invite Elon to
0:21:18 give them internet
0:21:19 service through
0:21:20 Starlink, right?
0:21:21 So, that’s
0:21:22 clearly a conflict
0:21:23 of interest and
0:21:26 a moment of
0:21:27 self-dealing there
0:21:27 on the part of the
0:21:28 administration, but
0:21:29 then also to
0:21:30 greenlight a $1.5
0:21:31 billion resort
0:21:33 from the Trump
0:21:34 administration, right,
0:21:34 or from the
0:21:35 Trump family.
0:21:37 It’s just, in the
0:21:38 perfect world, people
0:21:39 would go to jail
0:21:40 for this, right?
0:21:42 And so, I just
0:21:43 don’t know how our
0:21:44 system is this
0:21:45 vulnerable.
0:21:46 It’s quite
0:21:46 shocking.
0:21:49 It’s pretty
0:21:49 obvious that the
0:21:50 system, at least in
0:21:51 the short term, does
0:21:52 not have the
0:21:53 resilience to
0:21:54 arrest this or
0:21:55 cauterize it.
0:21:57 And I think a lot
0:22:00 of Democrats are
0:22:02 disappointed there
0:22:02 hasn’t been a more
0:22:03 robust pushback.
0:22:05 If you were
0:22:05 advising the
0:22:07 Democratic Party on
0:22:08 how to be more
0:22:09 effectively or
0:22:10 robustly pushed
0:22:11 back on what’s
0:22:13 going on, assuming
0:22:14 the institutions
0:22:14 aren’t going to
0:22:15 solve the problem
0:22:16 right now, what
0:22:16 advice would you
0:22:16 give them?
0:22:19 Well, that’s very
0:22:20 hard.
0:22:21 It’s hard to see
0:22:22 what they can do.
0:22:23 I mean, Cory Booker
0:22:24 standing up for 25
0:22:25 hours and talking
0:22:27 doesn’t move the
0:22:28 needle, as far as I
0:22:28 can tell.
0:22:30 I mean, there may be
0:22:32 nothing to do short
0:22:33 of winning the
0:22:35 midterms decisively.
0:22:38 And for that, I just
0:22:38 think the Democrats
0:22:39 have to learn the
0:22:41 lesson, the obvious
0:22:43 lesson of the
0:22:44 presidential election
0:22:45 in 2024, which is
0:22:47 that the far-left
0:22:48 activist class of
0:22:50 the party has no
0:22:51 advice worth
0:22:53 listening to, right?
0:22:54 Their concerns are
0:22:55 bogus, their
0:22:57 convictions are
0:22:59 scarcely sane.
0:23:01 They have to be
0:23:02 ignored, right?
0:23:04 I mean, all, you
0:23:05 know, I view
0:23:07 Harris’s loss as
0:23:08 overdetermined, but
0:23:09 she clearly lost
0:23:12 based on her
0:23:12 efforts to
0:23:14 maintain something
0:23:15 like a, you
0:23:16 know, a game of
0:23:17 four-dimensional
0:23:19 chess with woke
0:23:21 identity politics,
0:23:21 right?
0:23:22 I mean, she was, at
0:23:22 a minimum, she was
0:23:24 unable to properly
0:23:27 disavow some of the
0:23:28 crazy things she had
0:23:29 said in 2019
0:23:30 and 2020, and
0:23:31 just whenever
0:23:32 put on the spot
0:23:34 was either
0:23:35 completely tongue-tied
0:23:36 and just stonewalling
0:23:37 or she just
0:23:39 produced something,
0:23:40 some sort of
0:23:41 woke word salad.
0:23:42 And it was
0:23:43 obvious that she
0:23:44 couldn’t be let
0:23:44 loose on Joe
0:23:45 Rogan’s podcast for
0:23:46 fear of what she
0:23:48 might say over the
0:23:49 course of three
0:23:49 hours.
0:23:52 That caution, that
0:23:53 sense that you can’t,
0:23:53 there are all these
0:23:54 third rails you can’t
0:23:56 touch, otherwise
0:23:59 the intersectional
0:24:00 maniacs will come
0:24:02 for you on X, that
0:24:03 spell has to be
0:24:04 totally broken, and
0:24:05 I’m hopeful that it
0:24:07 has been, but I’ve
0:24:08 yet to see real
0:24:09 evidence of it.
0:24:09 I mean, what we
0:24:10 need are charismatic
0:24:13 candidates who will
0:24:15 speak in, you know,
0:24:17 ad lib and at
0:24:18 length with a
0:24:19 perfectly carefree
0:24:21 attitude with respect
0:24:22 to the, you know,
0:24:23 all the various
0:24:24 shibboleths that
0:24:26 gave us wokeness over
0:24:27 the last, you know,
0:24:28 decade or so.
0:24:28 I mean, it’s just,
0:24:30 all of that has to
0:24:33 be just continuously
0:24:34 violated with
0:24:35 abandon.
0:24:36 And I’m not saying
0:24:36 that we suddenly
0:24:37 turn into bigots,
0:24:39 but there’s clearly a
0:24:42 line that protects
0:24:43 the, you know, any
0:24:44 sane political
0:24:46 commitment to social
0:24:47 justice, I mean, of
0:24:48 a sort that we, you
0:24:48 know, that could have
0:24:49 come out of the
0:24:50 mouth of someone
0:24:51 like Martin Luther
0:24:54 King Jr., which has
0:24:56 us speaking sanely
0:24:57 about things like
0:24:59 immigration and, you
0:25:00 know, youth, gender,
0:25:02 dysphoria, et cetera, in
0:25:03 ways that don’t, won’t
0:25:04 alienate half of
0:25:05 American society.
0:25:06 And we have to do
0:25:07 that immediately and we
0:25:08 have to find the stars
0:25:10 in the Democratic Party
0:25:11 who stand a chance of
0:25:13 getting elected to
0:25:14 Congress and to the
0:25:16 presidency in the next
0:25:16 elections.
0:25:18 Do you think it’s fair
0:25:19 to say that the
0:25:20 Democrats have their
0:25:20 hearts in the right
0:25:21 place, but they go too
0:25:24 far and then they kind
0:25:25 of invite an overreaction
0:25:26 and that’s sort of
0:25:27 playing out here?
0:25:28 Yeah.
0:25:29 So in that sense, I
0:25:32 find the left fairly
0:25:34 culpable for Trump and
0:25:35 Trumpism, right?
0:25:35 I just think it was
0:25:38 obvious what should have
0:25:40 been said about all of
0:25:40 these cultural war
0:25:43 issues that would have
0:25:44 been acceptable and
0:25:46 sane, even if it
0:25:48 departed from what
0:25:49 the far right wants,
0:25:50 it wouldn’t have, it
0:25:51 wouldn’t have been a
0:25:54 continuous SNL sketch
0:25:56 of identitarian moral
0:25:57 confusion, right?
0:25:59 And so given that the
0:26:01 party got that captured
0:26:03 by these, which was
0:26:04 effectively a new
0:26:06 religion of, at the
0:26:07 center of which was a
0:26:08 kind of moral panic,
0:26:10 and the idea that in
0:26:11 the aftermath of a
0:26:12 two-term black
0:26:14 presidency, not only had
0:26:16 we made no progress on
0:26:17 race issues in this
0:26:18 country, racism was
0:26:19 somehow at its most
0:26:22 excruciating high tide,
0:26:22 right?
0:26:24 Like, it’s just,
0:26:26 everything was wrong.
0:26:27 Systemic racism was
0:26:28 everywhere.
0:26:29 And, you know, I mean,
0:26:32 Joe Biden gave a speech,
0:26:33 I think it was to
0:26:34 Morehouse College, very
0:26:34 early in his
0:26:37 presidency, which was the
0:26:39 most delusional piece
0:26:43 of pandering to the far
0:26:44 left on this particular
0:26:44 issue.
0:26:45 I mean, he stood up in
0:26:47 front of these black
0:26:49 graduates and said, you
0:26:51 know, the deck is so
0:26:52 stacked against you, you’re
0:26:53 not only going to have to
0:26:53 be the best, you’re going
0:26:54 to have to be better than
0:26:56 the best to get your foot
0:26:58 in the door in this
0:26:58 society.
0:26:59 It’s so poisoned by
0:27:00 racism.
0:27:01 And he said this at a
0:27:03 time when everyone,
0:27:04 literally everyone,
0:27:05 knew that not only was
0:27:06 this not true, the
0:27:07 opposite was true.
0:27:08 If you’re at all
0:27:10 qualified, if you’re a
0:27:12 black graduate of a good
0:27:14 institution in the year,
0:27:15 you know, this I guess was
0:27:19 2021, the chance that you
0:27:20 were going to get into
0:27:21 medical school or get
0:27:21 into, get a job at
0:27:23 Netflix or get into, you
0:27:24 know, get a job at the
0:27:25 Ford Foundation or whatever,
0:27:26 the Bill and Melinda Gates
0:27:28 Foundation, anywhere, any
0:27:30 high status job, right, or
0:27:33 position in academia, was
0:27:35 not only not harmed by being
0:27:37 black, you were positively
0:27:38 advantaged by being
0:27:38 black.
0:27:39 Literally everyone knew
0:27:40 this.
0:27:41 They had known it for
0:27:42 years, and yet the
0:27:42 president of the United
0:27:44 States is telling the
0:27:45 graduating class of a
0:27:47 black college that they’re
0:27:49 under the boot of a racist
0:27:51 patriarchy.
0:27:52 Undoubtedly, he would
0:27:54 have added the variable of
0:27:56 gender as well if he’d been
0:27:57 given the chance.
0:27:58 I mean, it’s just, it was
0:28:00 pure delusion, and everyone
0:28:01 knew it.
0:28:04 And so I think that that
0:28:05 bell has to be unrung
0:28:07 somehow left of center.
0:28:08 I think it’s in the
0:28:09 process of being, I think
0:28:11 we’re, we no longer
0:28:12 believe this stuff.
0:28:15 And DEI is now, you
0:28:18 know, the acronym is
0:28:22 radioactive, I think for
0:28:23 good reason.
0:28:25 Again, none of this is to
0:28:27 repudiate a commitment to
0:28:29 civil rights, and none of
0:28:30 it’s to ignore that there
0:28:32 are still real racists in
0:28:34 our society and real threats
0:28:36 of racism, and probably
0:28:38 policies that, that, you
0:28:40 know, meet the test of
0:28:41 institutional racism that
0:28:43 still need to be found and
0:28:43 changed.
0:28:44 I mean, all of that’s true,
0:28:47 but this tip over into
0:28:48 reverse racism, which really
0:28:51 was what DEI became, was
0:28:53 totally dysfunctional and
0:28:55 unethical, and, and yeah,
0:28:57 I mean, it gave us, in large
0:28:58 measure, it gave us
0:28:58 Trumpism.
0:29:00 Do you distinguish between
0:29:01 DEI efforts on campuses
0:29:04 where, you know, 60 years
0:29:06 ago, Harvard, Princeton, Yale,
0:29:07 12 black people combined,
0:29:08 that’s a problem, but now
0:29:09 60% of Harvard’s freshman
0:29:11 class identifies as non-white
0:29:14 versus the corporate world
0:29:15 where we still have, I think
0:29:17 about 80 of the Fortune 500
0:29:20 CEOs or 16% are women, that
0:29:21 there still are a lot of
0:29:24 companies who their boards
0:29:25 and their CEOs and their
0:29:27 senior management just are
0:29:30 much different than their
0:29:32 broader employee base or
0:29:33 their customer base.
0:29:34 Do you make any distinction
0:29:36 between kind of DEI and how
0:29:37 far it’s gone or not gone
0:29:39 between academic institutions
0:29:40 and the private sector?
0:29:43 Well, I think it’s a complex
0:29:44 problem, and I think it
0:29:46 changes depending on the
0:29:49 context and the identity
0:29:51 you’re talking about, right?
0:29:52 So for like women in the
0:29:53 workplace, there’s the
0:29:54 obvious variable of, you
0:29:56 know, women deciding to
0:29:57 have families, getting
0:29:59 pregnant, and the asymmetry
0:30:00 there, what happens to them
0:30:01 versus what happens to men
0:30:04 who, you know, ride
0:30:05 shotgun with them and also
0:30:06 just get to have families.
0:30:07 That has obvious
0:30:09 consequences, and I think,
0:30:10 you know, that, you know,
0:30:13 the wage gap, what I
0:30:14 imagine is true is that if
0:30:16 you correct for the effect
0:30:18 of, you know, losing those
0:30:19 years of your life to
0:30:21 pregnancy and raising kids,
0:30:23 you know, that closes the
0:30:25 wage gap, and it also
0:30:26 probably accounts for the
0:30:27 some of the differing
0:30:28 ambitions between men and
0:30:30 women, and those are
0:30:31 differences that we might
0:30:32 not want to correct for in
0:30:33 the end.
0:30:34 We might want some other
0:30:35 way of correcting for it.
0:30:37 I mean, I think it’s hard to
0:30:38 know what is optimal there.
0:30:39 I don’t, you know, the idea
0:30:43 that every person is, it just
0:30:45 wants to be a CEO really at
0:30:47 bottom and wants to make the
0:30:49 sacrifices that entails.
0:30:50 I think that’s, you know,
0:30:52 probably not true, and it’s
0:30:53 probably good that it is very
0:30:54 good that it’s not true.
0:30:56 You know, I just think we had a
0:30:59 moment in the 60s where a
0:31:03 fairly heavy-handed approach to
0:31:04 righting the wrongs of the
0:31:06 past was warranted, right?
0:31:08 And so I think it was totally,
0:31:10 I think our approach to
0:31:11 affirmative action then was
0:31:13 totally justifiable, and then
0:31:16 we entered a period where it
0:31:18 did all the good it could do,
0:31:19 and it started doing some
0:31:19 obvious harms.
0:31:21 For me, the goal is quite
0:31:24 clear, and it is a goal that
0:31:25 people like Martin Luther King
0:31:27 Jr. explicitly articulated,
0:31:28 which is we want to get to a
0:31:30 colorblind society, which is
0:31:32 not to say that it’s a
0:31:33 society where no one notices,
0:31:35 you know, the superficial
0:31:36 characteristics between people,
0:31:38 but that those characteristics
0:31:39 don’t matter, right?
0:31:40 That there’s no political or
0:31:42 moral significance to the
0:31:43 color of a person’s skin.
0:31:44 We want to get to that
0:31:48 world, and we were and are, I
0:31:49 think, very close to getting to
0:31:49 that world.
0:31:52 Some of us live in that world
0:31:53 already.
0:31:55 I mean, you know, in high status
0:31:58 parts of culture, for much of the
0:32:00 time, that’s how you experience
0:32:03 life, and I’m sure it is in other
0:32:06 parts of culture, but insofar as we
0:32:07 haven’t perfectly gotten there, we
0:32:08 want to get there.
0:32:09 The problem with the far left is
0:32:11 that they explicitly have
0:32:13 disavowed that as the goal.
0:32:15 They don’t think colorblindness is
0:32:15 a rational goal.
0:32:18 What they want to do is play this
0:32:21 intersectional game of, you know,
0:32:23 power politics across identity
0:32:27 groups, wherein, you know, white
0:32:31 males have the least rank, and so
0:32:33 you just flip the hierarchy on its
0:32:36 head, and they want to prosecute
0:32:37 this war of all against all until
0:32:38 the end of time, right?
0:32:40 And again, this goal and the
0:32:42 disavowal of colorblindness has
0:32:43 been explicit.
0:32:46 They think there’s no getting over
0:32:47 race.
0:32:49 Race is just super important and
0:32:53 super indelible, and therefore,
0:32:54 we’ve been living in a society,
0:32:57 again, I think the vapors of this
0:33:00 lunacy are getting expunged, but
0:33:03 rolling back the clock prior to the
0:33:05 2024 election, we were living in a
0:33:10 world where left of center, people
0:33:13 cared about race as much as—the only
0:33:15 people right of center who cared about
0:33:18 race as much as the left wing of the
0:33:21 Democratic Party are white supremacists
0:33:23 and neo-Nazis and actual racists.
0:33:25 I mean, that was what was so perverse
0:33:25 about this.
0:33:29 There were documents issued by, you know,
0:33:32 like the Democratic Party itself and
0:33:34 certainly every activist group
0:33:36 supporting it, which if you had done a
0:33:38 search for place for white and black in
0:33:39 those documents, they would have read
0:33:42 like Ku Klux Klan pamphlets from the
0:33:44 early 20th century, right?
0:33:47 It’s just—it was completely bonkers, and
0:33:50 how we lived so long under that mania is,
0:33:52 again, is another one of these inscrutable
0:33:52 things.
0:33:54 I mean, we can now say the same thing
0:33:55 about Trumpistan.
0:33:58 I mean, how is it that all of this is
0:34:01 passing among otherwise sane people?
0:34:04 It’s a mystery, but it’s, you know, the
0:34:07 left is largely culpable for this pendulum
0:34:12 swing into populist, no-nothingism, and,
0:34:16 you know, the way immigration got
0:34:16 weaponized.
0:34:19 I mean, yes, there were both sides
0:34:21 accounted for how we got here.
0:34:25 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:37:55 So you live in L.A.
0:37:59 I went to college in L.A., UCLA, and in 1997, they did
0:38:01 away with race-based affirmative action, and they
0:38:05 moved to kind of an adversity score, which is
0:38:07 essentially, the way I can best describe it, would be
0:38:10 affirmative action based on income as opposed to race
0:38:11 or sexual orientation.
0:38:15 Do you think that’s a good model, or are you part of the
0:38:18 kind of merit-only philosophy?
0:38:23 No, I think, I mean, I’m very worried, as I know you
0:38:28 are, about wealth inequality and income inequality, I think
0:38:30 wealth inequality more so.
0:38:35 And I think correcting for that is an intrinsic good.
0:38:42 I think that this is a real disparity in luck that, you
0:38:45 know, people suffer everywhere, you know, within our society
0:38:51 and across societies, and insofar as we can cancel it, I
0:38:53 mean, you know, I don’t think, I think we should be
0:38:55 tolerant of a certain amount of inequality, because I think
0:38:59 that is, it is part of the flywheel of capitalism that some
0:39:02 people can get up earlier in the morning and strive harder and,
0:39:06 you know, miss dinners with their kids and earn, you know,
0:39:10 more money as a result because they just had that
0:39:12 entrepreneurial ambition.
0:39:14 I think we want to preserve that.
0:39:17 I think we want all the incentives that, you know, if there’s a
0:39:20 better incentive structure than capitalism, we haven’t found it
0:39:26 yet for producing wealth and creativity, again, that we all
0:39:28 benefit from, even the lazy benefit from it.
0:39:35 But, no, there are people who were born to immense advantages that
0:39:39 others don’t have, and we should try to figure out how to correct
0:39:43 for that. And one of the disadvantages historically in the United
0:39:47 States, certainly, has been the, you know, the ambient level of
0:39:54 racist bigotry and an exclusion from economic opportunity on that
0:39:57 basis, right? So, yes, I mean, I think it’s still true to say that
0:40:06 black families have, on average, one-eighth the level of stored wealth
0:40:12 as white families. And one must imagine that the legacy of racism has a lot
0:40:17 to do with it. The crucial thing to realize, however, is that the thing
0:40:25 that is stopping any person from getting ahead now is very unlikely to be
0:40:31 racism now, right? So that’s the thing that was so misguided about so much
0:40:36 of DEI thinking, right? It’s like, you know, if you wave a magic wand and get
0:40:43 rid of all the racists, you’re still not going to suddenly have more, you know,
0:40:47 Fortune 500 people, you know, more members of the black community who are
0:40:54 qualified to be Fortune 500 CEOs or cardiologists or etc. So there are economic
0:41:01 disparities, which are riding on top of educational disparities and disparities in
0:41:07 health outcomes and, you know, single-parent families at a much higher rate, etc. But if
0:41:16 you use class as your proxy for all of your other concerns about disparities of
0:41:21 outcome, again, educational, health, etc., I think you do a lot of good and you also
0:41:28 disproportionately help people of color because as a, you know, class, their
0:41:33 identity, the various identity groups are highly correlated with disparities in class
0:41:34 difference.
0:41:43 Yeah. So we’re both dads. You know, we think a lot about, write a lot about and speak a
0:41:50 lot about the struggles of young men right now. They’re just as well and as much
0:41:55 advantage as men have registered over the last, you know, several hundred, couple thousand
0:42:01 years. The last 20, 30 years, it would be hard to point to a group that’s done worse in America
0:42:08 than young men. I’m curious as a dad and as someone who’s a keen observer of culture and
0:42:15 society, what do you think has led to this? And any thoughts as a dad or just someone as an
0:42:23 observer on how what we can do or what society, assuming you agree it’s a problem, can do to
0:42:29 help sort of right the ship around young men, you know, again, starting to participate or
0:42:32 be more productive members of society?
0:42:40 Well, I must say as a father of two girls, one in her teens and one soon to be, it’s very
0:42:45 easy for me to be taken in by the view of young men as just rapacious hoodlums who need to be
0:42:52 viewed as a problem. But I can dimly remember that I was once a young man and I know this problem
0:43:00 from the other side, obviously. No, I mean, I think you have been a great voice of reason on this topic
0:43:09 and a counterpoint to many of the examples that are getting, that are serving as sort of pathological
0:43:15 attractors to young men in our society. People like Andrew Tate, right? Like you, you know, you’re like
0:43:21 the anti-Andrew Tate and, you know, that’s a good thing. I mean, we need, we need more people like
0:43:30 you who are modeling masculinity in a way that is ethical and, um, and just, just kind of conversant
0:43:35 in the, in the skillset you want young men to be conversant in, right? I mean, it’s, it’s really,
0:43:42 it’s amazing if you kind of hold your body of work up against, you know, the, the Andrew
0:43:49 tateification of, uh, similar topics. It’s, um, you know, you’re, you’re checking similar
0:43:54 boxes, right? I mean, it’s like, it’s all, you know, economic independence is, you know,
0:44:00 is one variable, but you, when you look at the diabolical version of it, it is all about just
0:44:09 the, the most, um, obscene materialism, right? Without any, any deeper aspiration, right? Without
0:44:15 any ethical engagement with the problems of, of this world, it’s just, if you can get a Bugatti,
0:44:21 you know, or rent one in Dubai, you know, and pretend, and, and, and pretend to your, you know,
0:44:27 fans that you, that this is your lifestyle, you’ve basically accomplished everything you need in life,
0:44:32 right? I mean, that’s, and, and so that, that is something that we need to, to offer a counterpoint
0:44:36 to. And, um, I think you’re doing that. I think you’re doing a great job of it.
0:44:38 I think you’re being generous.
0:44:44 No, I mean, honestly not. I mean, it’s just, you’re, I think you do a fantastic job of, uh,
0:44:51 putting the lie to the notion that, that money can’t buy you happiness in any sense, right? I mean,
0:44:56 we, we know that’s not true. We know that being poor or being subjected, not even poor, but just
0:45:03 having financial stress be a major component of your life. We know that’s corrosive to a feeling
0:45:08 of, of wellbeing. And we know it’s corrosive to marriages and relationships. And, uh, and so you,
0:45:17 you know, you have taken the taboo off of talking about wealth in an aspirational way. Uh, and you
0:45:22 found a way of doing it. That’s not icky. That’s not, that doesn’t disregard the problem of wealth
0:45:27 and equality and the ethical burden of, you know, being generous and, and creating a, a social safety
0:45:33 net and paying taxes and, you know, everything in that bucket that, that is the antithesis of what
0:45:39 the, the president of the United States, uh, or his various acolytes like Elon Musk message about. I mean,
0:45:44 it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s counter-programming that that’s absolutely necessary. And, and so, you know,
0:45:51 I view you as a great, um, messenger of, of what it’s like to be a good citizen and a good man and just,
0:45:57 just a mensch. I mean, the word we have, the, the, the only good word we have for it is, is, is, uh,
0:46:00 Yiddish, you know, it’s a, you know, you’re a mensch. So keep it up.
0:46:07 Well, let me, let me just say, I’m really enjoying this podcast so far, Sam. Um, so like men, young men
0:46:11 are going to look up to just naturally the president of the United States and the world’s wealthiest man.
0:46:16 And I don’t think Donald Trump, I’m not sure Donald Trump was ever what you would call an
0:46:23 aspirational man or a good person, but my senses, and you’ve written about this, Elon Musk, you were
0:46:30 friends with and had a lot of admiration for, and I think you had a similar type of relationship with
0:46:36 Joe Rogan. And then, and, and I see one of the things I love about America is I do think there’s
0:46:44 a zeitgeist guideposts, a natural gravity towards once you experience success, it becomes correlated
0:46:49 with trying to be kinder or start to think bigger picture about leaving your mark on society in a
0:46:55 positive way. Even the robber barons at some point flipped the script and said, what can I build here
0:47:04 with my wealth that would serve society well? And it seems as if those rivers have reversed and that
0:47:10 some of our most powerful people, as they get more powerful or a broader platform, don’t evolve, but
0:47:17 digress. Do you have any sense for why that is happening now across some of our most powerful and
0:47:25 influential men? Yeah. Well, I think just a few people can do a lot of harm to the culture. I mean,
0:47:33 you have any, in the person of Elon, just this unique example of somebody who, um, has so many obvious,
0:47:40 genuine gifts. I mean, you know, above all as an entrepreneur, I mean, he, he’s clearly, uh, has a
0:47:45 vision and can sell that vision to, to lots of talented people and to, you know, tens of thousands of
0:47:52 talented people who want, who will, you know, you know, stumble over themselves to get a chance to
0:47:59 work for him. And, um, they can do some amazing things, right? So he’s, so he’s aspirational and a
0:48:06 great model of, of success in that regard. But, you know, he’s had this kind of personal unraveling,
0:48:13 which I’m at pains to explain apart from just the influence that Twitter and now X has had on his brain,
0:48:19 uh, and the influence of, you know, fame, I guess, um, a certain kind of fame that, to which he’s
0:48:26 clearly addicted, um, that has just encouraged him to become this very different sort of person.
0:48:29 And whether he was always this sort of person, just kind of waiting to get out and I didn’t see it,
0:48:35 I don’t know. I mean, I, so I’m, I’m forced to believe I, one of two things, either he’s changed a
0:48:40 lot, having become the richest and one of the most famous people on earth, uh, or I just didn’t know
0:48:45 him in the first place. Right. So let me just press pause. You’re, you’re a neuroscientist. Do you
0:48:50 think ketamine could have anything to do with it? Yeah. I mean, I, so I’ve, I just heard, I’ve heard
0:48:55 the reports that you’ve heard. I mean, this was reported in the wall street journal. Um, if I wanted
0:49:01 to dig in his circle, like I’m sure I could find, you know, uh, firsthand reports of how much of that’s
0:49:07 true, but, um, yeah, if he is using ketamine as, as frequently as was reported, that certainly can’t
0:49:16 help. Right. I mean, he’s, he’s, um, but he’s just, uh, honestly, his engagement with, with X,
0:49:25 um, was so dysfunctional for so long, even before he bought it. Um, and, and, um, it became his, you
0:49:31 know, seemingly full-time preoccupation. It’s just this, it did something. I mean, you know, everyone
0:49:38 who, who’s ever, it was ever addicted to it, or, you know, it’s just too, uh, fixated on it has a,
0:49:41 you know, a homeopathic dose of this. I mean, they know it, like I, you know, I got off of Twitter
0:49:49 now, um, two and a half years ago because of how demonstrably harmful it was, it was proving in my
0:49:54 life. And I was never somebody who was addicted to it. I was just somebody who was using it as an author
0:49:59 and as a, you know, as a speaker and a podcaster, I just thought it was a necessary marketing channel.
0:50:04 And it was also just very tempting to talk to other prominent people and, and, uh, you know,
0:50:10 try to clean, clean up misinformation and react to things. And so I was using it in a normal way.
0:50:16 I mean, and I do not consider Elon’s use of it at all normal, but it was still probably the worst
0:50:22 thing I did to my life in the last 10 years. Right. And, and, you know, the, and getting off
0:50:27 of it was, I’m always embarrassed to admit the best thing, the best life hack I have found in the last
0:50:32 decade. I mean, it was completely transformational of my life to get off Twitter. And that’s just a sign
0:50:38 of how, uh, debasing it was for me to use it the way I was using it. Um, and again, I was, I was not a
0:50:44 super tweeter. I was maybe, you know, on average once a day or so a couple of times a day, but I would go
0:50:50 for days without doing it, but it was still punctuating my life in a way, uh, and amplifying a certain
0:50:56 kind of signal in a way that was, was proving quite harmful, um, and quite disorienting. And I think it
0:51:00 was just giving, it was turning me into a bit of a misanthrope. I mean, it was, I was seeing the worst
0:51:05 in people, you know, pretty much all the time. I mean, just whenever I looked at my phone, I was just seeing
0:51:14 some awful piece of, um, you know, dishonesty or malice broadcast to me by people who I, who I
0:51:19 knew in their, in normal, you know, certainly most of them in their, in their private and even public
0:51:26 lives were not this sort of person. But in this context, it was, it was amplifying for the worst in
0:51:34 people. And so, you know, Elon has just performed a kind of human sacrifice of himself on the altar of
0:51:41 that, of, um, that set of incentives. And he’s acts like a, you know, whether he is a psychopath or not,
0:51:46 he acts like one, right? And I, and I’m not, I’m not actually exaggerating. He acts like a psychopath
0:51:54 on X. He’s completely callous as to the harms he caused and all the while knowing the harms he causes,
0:52:01 both in the lives of private citizens who get doxed and get, you know, swarmed by his cult,
0:52:07 uh, and just the harm he causes in the world. I mean, just the, his adventures in doge when he,
0:52:13 you know, fed on his account, fed USAID into the wood chipper and stopped, you know, life-saving
0:52:18 programs in sub-Saharan Africa, which people immediately recognized would, would lead to death,
0:52:25 you know, in very short order. And if not corrected for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths
0:52:31 within a year, right, he, he, the attitude he took to all of that was one of just, you know,
0:52:38 probably, you know, fentanyl addled ecstasy, right? I mean, he was just, he just reveled in the chaos he
0:52:43 was causing. And so it was with his, you know, Hitler salutes, which, you know, may have not been
0:52:48 Hitler salutes. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s just a moron, uh, who has just
0:52:53 bad, you know, awkward body English, uh, who knows what he was up to there with his, my heart goes
0:53:00 out to you. And now I look like Adolf Hitler, uh, you know, twice, uh, in a row, but whatever his
0:53:07 intentions, when he saw the blowback, when he saw how much, when he saw that every anti-Semite on planet
0:53:15 earth was celebrating, right? He could have very easily have signaled to his 210 million, whatever, whatever
0:53:20 it was at that point. Followers, listen, this is, I see how, I see what that looked like. You know,
0:53:25 sorry, that’s embarrassing. Obviously I despise anti-Semitism. And if you’re an anti-Semite,
0:53:31 please unfollow me, right? Like that would have been the sane, ethical, manly thing to do, right? But
0:53:38 instead he just made Nazi jokes and trolled the world, right? Uh, all the while, uh, signal boosting
0:53:43 the accounts of real anti-Semites and bringing real anti-Semites back onto the, onto Twitter with great
0:53:48 fanfare and people like Nick Fuentes, uh, and also funding the far right party in Germany to,
0:53:54 to boot, right? I mean, it’s just he, so his contributions to the greatest eruption of anti-Semitism
0:54:02 in our lifetime have been at best ambiguous. And, uh, yeah, he’s, it’s just totally irresponsible.
0:54:10 So the fact that, that he is the cultural influence he has been, um, has been directly harmful to a
0:54:13 generation of young men who have worshiped him. I mean, I think the greatest thing to,
0:54:20 to ding his reputation, and it really should have been a fatal blow was the gaming, uh,
0:54:25 controversy where he, where it was revealed. He was pretending to be one of the best gamers
0:54:31 on earth. I don’t know if you saw this, Scott, but, um, you know, a bunch of gamers saw him play
0:54:36 one of these games in public and it was totally clear. I’m not a gamer, so I can’t get into the
0:54:42 details here, but apparently it was, it was clear to a, to a moral certainty that, uh, he did not have
0:54:47 the skills he was pretending to have. He had paid someone to build out his character, someone very
0:54:53 likely, you know, in China to play 24 hours a day and, uh, build out his character to superhuman levels,
0:54:58 uh, so that he could inherit all those powers and then display them ineptly in front of the gamers who
0:55:02 actually knew how to play the game. But he had gone on Joe Rogan’s podcast and Lex Friedman’s
0:55:08 podcast and lied to their face about being a top 10. And in some cases, uh, you know, the best gamer
0:55:15 in the world, uh, on certain games and what, when they lavished praise on him, you know, just talking
0:55:20 about what you just, that, that suggested that he has, you know, a kind of a neurological, uh, you know,
0:55:26 a six sigma level, you know, neurological health that, that, uh, you know, would predispose him to those
0:55:30 abilities. Uh, he totally owned it. It’s like, yeah, you know, it’s gaming as a great surrogate
0:55:35 for all kinds of talents. And yeah, it’s really, and it’s, he was lying about all that. Right. So
0:55:40 that if anything was going to destroy his reputation with a young man, I thought that was going to be
0:55:45 it. And I think it probably did in, in gaming circles. We’ll be right back.
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0:58:16 Hey there, this is Peter Kafka, the host of Channels. And this week I’m talking to Scott Frank,
0:58:20 the writer and director who moved from movies to Netflix, which is where you can see Department
0:58:26 Q, his newest hit. And we talked about how no one knows what the future of Hollywood is going to be
0:58:30 like, except that it won’t be like the past. This business hasn’t landed where it’s going to land
0:58:35 yet. And people keep looking backwards and saying, no, we just need to get movie going back to where
0:58:40 it was. That boat sailed. That’s not going to happen anymore. That’s this week on Channels,
0:58:42 wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
0:58:51 We’re back with more from Sam Harris.
0:58:59 I have to credit you. You’re the first time we had dinner, you gave me permission to get off of
0:59:06 Twitter. I said, I, I, I acknowledge that probably 20 or 30% of my mental health episodes over the last
0:59:10 few years had been triggered by something on Twitter. And you said, why are you there? I’m like, well,
0:59:14 got a big following, half a million people. And I think, how many did you walk away from?
0:59:19 Uh, I think I had 1.5 million when I pulled the cord.
0:59:25 And I, I, I got off and it’s exactly what you said. It’s been one of the most accretive things
0:59:29 to my mental health that I’ve done in the last 10 years. And what you realize the thing I’ve,
0:59:33 I’m curious if you feel this way, once you’re off it, you’re off at three or four months,
0:59:41 you recognize just how small it is. That it really is a, it is a small part of the world that is
0:59:48 occupying way too much of your world. I have no difference in my life. None, except I’m not,
0:59:58 I don’t venture into this strange moon of, of Mars that’s hostile and, and biased and weird and angry.
1:00:04 And it’s like, why was I, why was I vacationing there? You know, seven times a day, you know,
1:00:09 I’m, I’ve talked a lot about this a lot on the pod. And when I was younger, I didn’t have enough
1:00:12 anxiety. I wasn’t worried about anything. I almost failed out of UCLA several times. I didn’t really
1:00:17 care. Almost got fired a lot. Didn’t really care. Sleepwalking through life, kind of 30 to 40,
1:00:22 the right amount of anxiety, enough anxiety to be productive, worry about the right things.
1:00:26 Now I have too much anxiety. I worry about everything. Anything happens with my kids,
1:00:32 I worry. And lately I’ve had a really difficult time disassociating from things I can control and I
1:00:36 can’t control specifically some of the things that are happening around the Trump administration.
1:00:42 I mean, it’s like, this shit really rattles me. Like it’s taking time for my presence
1:00:47 and ability to just stay focused on the really important things in my life, such as when I’m
1:00:52 with my kids or with my partner. I’m curious if you struggle with some of those same things,
1:00:57 your inability to disassociate from these, some of these things that are going on. And if you are
1:01:01 able to do with it, what are the vehicles and practices for helping you do that?
1:01:07 Yeah. Well, as you know, or I think, you know, meditation has been a very big focus of mine.
1:01:14 And I mean, for me, that really is the, it’s a kind of superpower because it, I mean, at a certain
1:01:20 point you recognize that your mind is all you have really. I mean, obviously you, you have a body,
1:01:26 you have circumstances in the world. I mean, things matter, but your, your reaction to what happens
1:01:33 is so much more important in, in, in almost every case than what, than what happens.
1:01:41 There’s so much, so much room for being on the negative side, being needlessly, pointlessly
1:01:47 unhappy, right? I mean, worrying when worry does absolutely no good. And you, you just suffer twice,
1:01:52 right? If the bad thing happens and you were worrying the whole time before it happened, well,
1:01:56 then you got to, you got to suffer all the way up to the bad thing happening. If it didn’t happen,
1:02:05 your, your worry was, it was truly a hallucination, but in no case does, I mean, for me, negative mental
1:02:12 states like anxiety are useful in a very punctate way in that they give you information about the world
1:02:15 or your, your place in the world or some, you know, something that needs to be responded to.
1:02:23 But then for virtually every moment thereafter that state, whether it’s anxiety or anger or
1:02:29 impatience or, or, you know, just pick your, your flavor, that state is almost always counterproductive,
1:02:34 right? Which is to say you, you, you want to be in a different state when you’re, you’re actually
1:02:38 solving the problem at hand, or you’re just waiting to see what happens, right? I mean, there, there are
1:02:42 many problems, as you point out, that we’re powerless to solve and we’re just kind of witnessing
1:02:48 this kind of slow, slow rolling emergency. The question is, how unhappy do you have to be
1:02:54 living under that condition of uncertainty? And the answer you find when you learn to meditate is
1:03:04 not unhappy at all, really. And so, so my life is a very strange bifurcation between having kind of a
1:03:11 very high level of personal wellbeing, you know, certainly most of the time, and also being very
1:03:16 concerned about the state of our world, right? I mean, so I, I spend most of my time professionally
1:03:22 and even just, you know, personally, privately focusing on the bad things that are happening
1:03:26 and the bad things that may yet happen, the bad things I’m, I, I think it’s rational to worry
1:03:35 will happen or very likely will happen. And yet my life is so good. I’m so, it’s so good in,
1:03:42 in, in, in superficial, you know, contingent ways that could change as much of that is born of my
1:03:49 ability to notice what I’m doing with my attention and to cease to do the dumb thing that is causing
1:03:52 me to be miserable in, in this moment, right?
1:03:54 And you get that perspective from meditation?
1:03:59 Yeah. I mean, so, you know, mindfulness for lack of a better word, I mean, that’s, that does
1:04:05 cover basically what I mean, but it’s something I get into in, in much greater detail in over at
1:04:11 waking up, which is the meditation app that, um, I have and in my book by that same title,
1:04:18 but briefly, it’s just, I mean, if you’re, if you’re suffering, you’re almost certainly thinking
1:04:25 without noticing your thinking, without noticing the power of thought to determine how you feel and
1:04:32 react in each moment to, to just your sensory and raw sensory existence, right? I mean, you’re just,
1:04:36 you’re just, in each moment, you’re just seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
1:04:43 uh, and thinking and the, and, and therefore feeling various moods and emotions and the role
1:04:48 that thought plays there, the role that our, our captivity to thought, our, our unawareness of, of
1:04:53 any alternative to being identified with each thought that passes through consciousness,
1:04:58 that role is decisive. I mean, it’s every bit as decisive as, you know, when you’re asleep and
1:05:03 dreaming and you don’t know you’re dreaming, right? You, you’re safely in your bed and in reality,
1:05:06 you’re safely in your bed, but you, now you’re having some horrible dream.
1:05:12 That, you know, plunges you into shame, right? Or, or, uh, fear or some other negative mental state
1:05:19 that the, the, the neurology of that, right? The, the, the failure of reality testing, the fact that
1:05:26 your, your, your conscious life can be completely subsumed by self-generated imagery. That is a, a,
1:05:32 a, a version of that is happening to us in the waking state. And we call it thought, you know,
1:05:36 we call it ourselves, really. We call it me. It’s like, what are you talking about? It’s just me here.
1:05:41 I’m thinking, I’m, I’m the thinker, right? I’m, these thoughts are in my voice, right? That’s the,
1:05:47 that sense of being identified with, with thought is something that is, is a spell that gets broken
1:05:54 ultimately when you actually learn how to meditate. And it does give you this, this degree of freedom
1:06:00 that people otherwise don’t have, which is to just, just get off the ride, right? You’re, you’re feeling
1:06:04 miserable because you’re thinking about the thing that happened yesterday or the thing that might happen
1:06:12 tomorrow. You can actually get off that ride. Uh, even if, and you can get off of it, even if it’s,
1:06:19 if it’s a real problem, right? It’s like, you know, your kid has some scary illness and you’re going
1:06:24 from doctor to doctor and you don’t know what, what’s what, and you have real reason to be worried,
1:06:28 right? I’ve been in that situation. You know, it’s, of course you’re going to be unhappy,
1:06:35 but the question is how unhappy do you have to be? How contracted do you have to be? How ruled do
1:06:41 you have to be by your thoughts from this moment to the net, until that you get the net, the appointment
1:06:48 next Tuesday or to, until you get the results of the scan, you know, you got a scan on Friday and,
1:06:51 you know, perversely, we have a medical system that doesn’t work on weekends, right? So you,
1:06:58 you have to wait until Monday for the results of an MRI. Um, if you’re lucky, uh, how,
1:07:06 how riddled by anxiety do you have to be? Meditation gives you a freedom to just actually,
1:07:13 just enjoy the beauty of your life in the meantime. Uh, because you’re going to, you’re going to be there
1:07:18 to deal with it when you actually have to deal with it. I mean, Monday will come around and then
1:07:24 you’ll be the guy who has to absorb whatever information you get. And the question is, do you
1:07:30 want to, to do that well and to be a good father in that context? Do you want to be the guy who was
1:07:34 just racked by anxiety all weekend? Or do you want to be the guy who actually had a good time with his
1:07:40 kids on the weekend? And then you get the information on Monday, right? It’s like, we’re all going to die,
1:07:44 you know, where this is all going, right? All right. We’re going to die. Our kids are hopefully
1:07:49 are going to live long enough to be old enough to be, you know, the ripe old age that, that it’s
1:07:54 appropriate to die, but impermanence reigns, right? So the question is, how can we be happy
1:08:01 under conditions where the punchline is that everything changes, right? And that you, that
1:08:07 everything that is gathered gets ultimately dispersed, right? That’s, that’s what’s, that’s the
1:08:14 situation we’re in. The people who, who first figured out how to meditate, figured out that you,
1:08:20 that how you use attention really matters and really can spell the difference between happiness
1:08:27 and suffering in each moment. As you’ve gotten older, the things that give you joy and peace,
1:08:34 have they changed, become certain things more or less? I think I’m a slightly odd case because I got
1:08:42 very into meditation and, and, uh, uh, became very cognizant of the, the finiteness of life
1:08:50 very early, right? So I was a, you know, I was probably 18. Um, and I was, I, I became kind of
1:08:55 obsessed with my own mortality earlier than that. My best friend died when I was 13. My dad died when I
1:09:05 was 17. Uh, so, so loss was, was something that I, um, uh, I understood, uh, fairly early and the,
1:09:10 sort of the philosophical and psychological implications of that became interesting to me
1:09:19 very early. So I was always, um, a student of, of life-changing philosophy. I mean, not just,
1:09:23 you know, purely academic questions of interest, but just sort of like, what does it mean to live a good
1:09:29 life? We’re like, what, what, what, in a context where we know, uh, we’re ultimately going to lose
1:09:35 everything. Uh, and so I was thinking about that very early. So I, I can’t say that that has changed.
1:09:43 I, I just, in some ways I’m learning, relearning the lessons I learned when I was 18 and 19 and 20.
1:09:52 Um, and they’re, they’re, they’re landing, uh, harder and, and perhaps, uh, uh, slightly differently
1:09:57 now, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a continuation of where my head has been at for, for many decades,
1:10:02 I have to say. Would you describe the loss of your father as sort of a defining or the defining
1:10:07 moment in your life? Like, has there been one moment that sort of changed or your orientation or
1:10:14 approach to life or given you, you know, set you on a different path? Well, I, it was less so in
1:10:19 this case. I mean, we were, we were close, but it was a long distance relationship. He had left when I
1:10:26 was, um, two and a half and, uh, So you were raised by a single mother or did she remarry? Yeah. Yeah.
1:10:31 I mean, she, she eventually got remarried when I was 15, but yeah, no, for all intents and purposes,
1:10:36 I was, I was raised by a single mom and she was quite a, quite the hero. I was raised by a single
1:10:42 mother too. And I didn’t know that about you. Can you talk a little bit about, uh, I def, I think
1:10:47 almost everything, I see almost everything, the way I respond to the lens of being raised by a single
1:10:53 mother. Can you talk a little bit about how that impact that’s on had on you as an adult and your
1:11:00 approach to partnership and being a dad? Yeah. Well, so again, this is a, a case that is going to be
1:11:08 somewhat, um, atypical because my mom was just, um, uh, both very, very talented and, and very lucky.
1:11:14 Right. So she’s, she, uh, really did not have resources. My dad left, I think he, um, on her
1:11:20 account, he, I think cut one child support check of $500 or something like that. But I mean, he really
1:11:26 did not discharge his responsibilities as a dad very well. And he was a struggling actor, so he didn’t,
1:11:30 he didn’t have money either, but, uh, he had been, he was painting houses at that time to make
1:11:37 money. Um, but he abandoned me and my mom, you know, to go be an actor in, in New York. He couldn’t
1:11:43 figure out how to do that in LA for some reason. Um, so that, that attests to some other lack of
1:11:51 commitment to, um, being a parent. But, um, my mom, uh, discovered one day that she could write,
1:11:56 uh, television shows and she discovered this very quickly. I mean, she just, she, I think she
1:12:01 actually sold her first script. She was just watching television one day trying to figure out
1:12:06 how she was going to make money. Again, we really had nothing. And she, uh, I think she said, I forget
1:12:12 the, it was maybe $2,500 or something. She, but she sold, sold the first thing she wrote and then
1:12:20 just became a, a colossus within the television industry. And she, um, eventually, I mean, her big
1:12:27 hit was golden girls. She created golden girls. And so we went from being, uh, poor to being wealthy
1:12:32 over the course of, um, probably, it was probably a little more than a decade. I mean, I think I was,
1:12:39 Oh my God, Susan Harris. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I literally just thought I’ve kept, I keep saying,
1:12:44 I thought I’ve seen the name Susan Harris on the, in the credits of all these series in the seventies
1:12:52 That was my mom is awesome. Um, but so, but it was a very weird time. And so there’s a funny story
1:12:59 that she likes to tell, uh, which, um, maybe says more about me than, than, uh, I would like, but
1:13:04 she, um, I mean, she was working really hard again. She was a single mom. So I, I grew up with a lot,
1:13:07 with a long string of babysitters and, you know, when I would come home from school, there would be a
1:13:13 babysitter. My mom would be, you know, writing at the office. And at one point she came to me and she said,
1:13:20 uh, we were living in a little rented house in the San Fernando Valley. And, uh, um, but I was going
1:13:27 to a private school that she had stretched to get me into. And, uh, so I was surrounded by kids who
1:13:33 had much more money than we did. And she said to me, uh, I don’t remember this, but I’m sure this is true
1:13:41 because this is, was indelibly, uh, etched upon her memory. She said, um, you know, um, if I have an
1:13:47 opportunity here, if I work much harder than I’m working now, our situation is going to change.
1:13:52 And either you’ll, you’ll be able to, one day we’ll be able to, you’ll be able to have a pool in the
1:13:58 backyard, like your friend, Tom Brown, uh, who has, he had a great house with a great pool.
1:14:03 And, um, but you’re going to have much, you have less of me, you know, you’re going to spend more
1:14:10 time with, with babysitters and, um, you know, so it’s, there’s going to be a sacrifice. And apparently
1:14:14 I thought for a few seconds and I turned to her and I said, get the pool, mom.
1:14:22 I want the pool. I’m not exaggerating, Sam. I’m freaking out. You’re you. Yeah. I feel like you’ve
1:14:27 raised me through my fifties, but your mother, I just figured out kind of raised me. I was a child of
1:14:33 television. Oh, my soap is the first time I was ever introduced to a gay man, Billy Crystal.
1:14:40 Well, then not only you, not only you, that’s she’s America often, often credited with writing
1:14:45 the first truly positive. I mean, I’m not sure it’s totally aged. Well, I mean, it was probably,
1:14:52 you know, more character than you would, you would want, but, um, she is the true first truly positive
1:14:55 role for a gay character in television. I believe that’s true.
1:15:01 He wasn’t like a psycho killer or a pedophile. And then the first time I ever saw a black man in a
1:15:08 position of leadership was Benson, which is also another show. And then when my mom was six,
1:15:14 she and I used to watch everyone loves Raymond Frazier and the golden girls. Right. Wow. That
1:15:20 is, that is this wild. So quite, quite, quite heroically. She wrote, I think this is a, uh,
1:15:25 I mean, this may not sound as impressive as it is because people don’t know how television gets made,
1:15:32 but she famously wrote, she didn’t have a writing staff for soap. So she wrote, I believe is the first
1:15:39 75 episodes all by herself. I mean, she was banging out one episode a week of television, 22 weeks a
1:15:46 year all by herself. And I mean, I, uh, very few people have done that in television. So it was quite
1:15:52 amazing. So just as we wrap up here, you gave me a piece of advice about being a dad a couple of years
1:15:57 ago that I’ve really held onto. And I want you to, I’m going to try and, uh, prompt you to remember
1:16:02 it, but you said you figured out that you just, in certain instances, just needed to be dad. Can you
1:16:09 speak more about that? Yeah. I mean, I, and part of this was, was my realizing what I wanted in a
1:16:15 school. I mean, I, I just wanted to outsource all of the, the, the role of being a teacher to the
1:16:20 school so that, and I, I must say this has been achieved imperfectly in the, in my daughter’s
1:16:24 schools, but I just wanted to be able to say, oh, you know, yeah, that, you know, that, you know,
1:16:30 Mrs. Johnson, she’s, she’s a hard teacher, you know, and just commiserate with the, with my daughters
1:16:35 without ever having to, to tiger mom anything. Right. I just don’t want to be that guy.
1:16:40 And the truth is I’m just not comfortable being that guy. I don’t want, I don’t like the subtext of
1:16:48 apparently conditional love that gets communicated when you, when you really push. Um, and so I just,
1:16:55 um, I haven’t. And, uh, I mean, I, both my daughters are good students and they’re, you know,
1:16:59 they’re, they’re getting educated, but you know, there, there’s definitely a difference between,
1:17:05 you know, tiger momming it and not, and I’m, I’m definitely not. And, uh, I realized I just
1:17:12 want, I just want to, to have a, I want there to be no doubt in my daughter’s minds, how much I love
1:17:21 them and how much I, I rejoice in who they are as people. Um, and so whenever I’m in a mode that
1:17:26 stands a chance of, of confusing that, you know, it’s, it’s, I, I, I’m, I’m alert to the, to the,
1:17:33 the downside there. So I just, um, yeah. And as a result, I have very little stature in the home as a,
1:17:39 as a source of, of, uh, knowledge or wisdom. Um, I mean, you know, when push comes to this,
1:17:43 that’s probably not true, but there’s a fair amount of comedy had at my expense. I mean, I’m going to,
1:17:48 unlike you, I’m in a household with, uh, with, uh, three girls, uh, or, you know, two girls and a,
1:17:53 and a mother. And, um, it’s, uh, there’s a, there’s very little testosterone in the home.
1:17:58 Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, bestselling author, and host of the Making
1:18:04 Sense podcast. Sam, um, just to put some additional pressure on you, when people ask me who my role
1:18:11 model is, I, I cite you. So if you, if something happens, so I really hope for just selfish reasons,
1:18:14 you keep killing it. Cause if you go down, you’re probably taking me with you.
1:18:20 Okay. So I need you, I need you to remain to be thoughtful and courageous and fearless and,
1:18:26 and well-read and, and rigorous in your research, but always enjoy, uh, our time together.
1:18:32 And I, I really do look at you as someone who looks at the issues and then, uh, and I’ve tried
1:18:39 to model this and then says what you believe is right, regardless of what heckling from the cheap
1:18:45 seats or shame you might endure. And it’s something that’s given me a lot of courage and discipline to
1:18:50 say, okay, where does, where does, in an attempt to find the truth, where does it take you? As opposed
1:18:55 to constantly checking myself and thinking, well, what will the reaction be? So thank you.
1:19:00 Well, thank you. And, uh, high praise, but I will, I will, I’ll try to keep it together.
1:19:01 There you go, brother. Take care, man.
1:19:24 Okay. I was with happiness. Father’s day just passed. Um, I think like a lot of people, I have a
1:19:32 complicated relationship with my father. Um, my dad, uh, was, uh, pretty selfish and
1:19:39 married and divorced four times as far as we know. And I was the son by a second marriage. He had
1:19:44 another daughter by his third marriage. I’ve actually become quite close with, but you know,
1:19:49 at the end of the day, my dad left my mom and I and moved to Ohio because he got a promotion.
1:19:57 And I saw my dad mostly in the summer and during the holidays and I’ve kind of never forgiven him.
1:20:04 And also something that I think moms do. And I recognize accidentally, and it’s usually the mom
1:20:08 that’s the single head of the single parent household is my mom sort of weaponized me against
1:20:14 my father and used to send very, very aggressive messages through me to my father. And then my father,
1:20:20 my father would respond equally angrily and it kind of would ruin the weekend. I were the time I was
1:20:26 spending with my dad and my mom sort of, I wouldn’t say turn me against my dad, but, uh, there’s just
1:20:30 no getting around it. When your parents get divorced and you’re living with mom, you’re going to probably
1:20:38 see, I think dad is kind of the bad guy. And I certainly did. And also he just was so, um, not generous
1:20:43 with money. Uh, you know, he had a nice life economically. We did okay, but it was definitely
1:20:49 a strain. And I look back on it now. And I think one of the reasons I try to be, I won’t even say
1:20:56 generous, but promiscuous with money was I was just so fucking turned off by how cheap he was. Um, anyways,
1:21:01 I had a lot of issues. I, I, I never didn’t speak to my dad, but I didn’t feel very close to him for
1:21:07 a long time. I resented him, uh, about, you know, with just a little bit effort. He could have been
1:21:12 so, so much of a more of a positive force in my life, but this is what I did. And what I would suggest
1:21:18 you do. If you have a great dad and it’s all like shadow boxing and football games, and he showed up
1:21:22 every, every week on the sidelines for you, then great. Um, then you’re not going to have a problem
1:21:26 being good to your dad. And if you do, if you aren’t, then it’s your problem.
1:21:31 But for those of us, like most people who have a father who is flawed, or maybe doesn’t fit the
1:21:37 current version of what it means to be a dad in the Hallmark channel from 2025, what has helped me is
1:21:43 I asked myself, I go to basic evolution and that is, was your father better to you than his dad was to
1:21:48 him? My dad, and I didn’t know this, my dad never complained about this, but I found out from his
1:21:55 sister, uh, my dad was the oldest and living in Depressionair, Scotland and his father, it sounds
1:22:01 like was an alcoholic and his father was physically abusive. And she outlined one instant where, um,
1:22:07 my grandfather, my dad’s dad came home drunk one night, woke him up and beat him. Can you imagine
1:22:13 being a child and you get woken up by the guy who is supposed to be your protector and beats you?
1:22:21 So my dad never beat me. Um, was never, it was, it was, uh, it came close a couple of times. I was
1:22:25 very scared of him. I think it was like the shark and jaws. It was the unknown that was more scary than
1:22:32 the actual shark. Uh, but he was much better to me than his dad was to him, which means he checked the,
1:22:42 the dad box. And that is he made the effort to be better to me than his dad was to him.
1:22:47 And my dad did make an effort. He would, when he was in Chicago and heard I was somewhere, he would
1:22:53 fly me out and take me to museums and try and find something to do with a 14 year old. And I’ve gotten,
1:22:59 I’ve gotten much better at remembering the good stuff and then putting all the bullshit aside and
1:23:03 something that has been an enormous unlock for me, not only with my father, but with all of my
1:23:10 relationships is to not keep score. And what do I mean by that? Instead of thinking, Oh, I’m his son.
1:23:17 He owes me a lot. And on a scorecard, he came up short. I just said, all right, what do I want to be a
1:23:21 son? Who do I want to be as a son? And the answer is I want to be a loving, generous son. Then hold
1:23:27 yourself to that standard and don’t keep score. Don’t think about, well, did he do enough to deserve a
1:23:31 loving, generous son? That’s not the point. The point is, do you want to be a loving, generous
1:23:36 son? If the answer is yes, then just be a loving, generous son. And if your father dies, which my
1:23:42 father will soon, my father’s 95 and in hospice and basically has the kind of mental complexion of a
1:23:47 baby right now, it doesn’t recognize anybody. Am I going to regret? Am I going to think to myself,
1:23:51 I just don’t think there’s any way I’m going to think to myself, I was too nice or too generous to my
1:23:57 dad. And if you’re better to your dad than he was to you, that’s fine. I think that’s kind of what it
1:24:03 means to be a man. And then in a nod to him, if he was better to you than his dad was to you, then you
1:24:08 need to be better. And hopefully you will be to your own sons. But if you’re like me and have a bit of a
1:24:13 complicated relationship with your father, what I would suggest is just an enormous unlock is put away
1:24:21 the scorecard, put the bullshit aside and just be the son you want to be and enjoy Father’s Day with
1:24:21 your dad.
1:24:31 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for
1:24:35 listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Stay tuned for next week’s conversation
1:24:37 featuring Robert Green.
1:25:13 Thank you.