AI transcript
0:00:04 All right. So we got to talk about this. This business is really, really cool.
0:00:09 It’s a product I want to use, and I think it’s a business that could be kind of big.
0:00:10 Revolutionary maybe.
0:00:24 Yeah. You probably saw this because it’s been going viral over and over and over again. And I
0:00:29 always look for products that have this playground virality, meaning anytime somebody shows you
0:00:33 that you’re using it or they share a picture of it, it immediately sparks a big reaction.
0:00:39 And so I saw, I’m going to share these three posts, so there’s like, check these out. The first one
0:00:45 is this Reddit post. And so I go on Reddit and I see this post, and it’s in the r slash. Damn,
0:00:49 that’s interesting. Subreddit, which is one of my favorite subreddits. And it’s basically
0:00:57 a video of somebody inside this venue. And it’s like a sports bar meets IMAX. So you’re sitting
0:01:02 there, you’ve got a beer, you’re just hanging out with your friends. But there’s a giant screen,
0:01:07 it’s almost a dome that’s over you, where it looks like your front row at a football game in
0:01:12 this case. And they’re cheering and their crowds went crazy. But it looks like you’re in the stadium,
0:01:16 but you’re not in the stadium. You’re just in a bar. And this is called COSM, or as I’m calling
0:01:21 it, the mini sphere. Some people have probably heard, you’ve probably seen the sphere in Las
0:01:28 Vegas, this giant, huge dome that’s, you know, in the middle of Las Vegas. And it’s this insane
0:01:33 $2.3 billion project that is, you know, just remarkable. It looks like it’s kind of cool.
0:01:37 It’s like one of those things where it’s like humans built the pyramids, and then we built the
0:01:42 sphere. It’s like it is marvel of engineering and technology. Well, the COSM is basically a
0:01:50 mini sphere. So it’s like a 2000, you know, seat venue that you can use for sports games and all
0:01:54 the stuff. And now they got a couple of them popping up. I think this is really cool. I think
0:01:59 it rides on a bunch of big trends. So it’s, you know, out of home entertainment, I think is a
0:02:04 big deal. I think people are looking for places to congregate, to drink, to eat, and to enjoy
0:02:10 themselves. And movie theaters are sort of stale. Like I think streaming has sort of kicked movie
0:02:16 theaters ass in a way. And now this is the out of home way of punching back. This thing, I think,
0:02:21 is going to be a much better way to watch live events, live sports than sitting at home.
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0:03:12 for free. Back to this episode. Yeah. So basically, if you’re listening, if you see the photos, it’s
0:03:18 as if they, so they build this massive, it’s not even a bar. It looks like, it looks like a sign
0:03:22 center. It’s like a huge building that they’re building just for this thing. And you go in,
0:03:27 and it’s like as, did you ever go as a kid to the sign center where it has the, it was called
0:03:31 omnimax? Yeah. Like a planetarium where it screens all above you. That’s basically what it is.
0:03:36 But they had to raise $250 million to build this because it’s like a massive. No, they just raised
0:03:40 that. So they just raised that a few months ago. They built the first two without, or they built the
0:03:46 first one at least without that because that was in July. Who funded that? So the story of this is
0:03:54 there’s a guy who’s behind it. And he started one of the biggest real estate property management
0:03:58 software companies, I think called Real Page. The guy’s name is Win. Oh yeah. Something Win.
0:04:03 So he has this thing called Real Page. Real Page got bought by Thomas Bravo for like $10 billion.
0:04:08 This guy made a couple billion dollars out of it. He then starts his own kind of,
0:04:13 by the way, you might be confusing the name. Steve Win is the guy from Las Vegas, the casino guy.
0:04:17 Yeah. I think this guy’s name is also Win, but it’s W I N N. Oh, really? Yeah. So
0:04:24 it’s a different Steve Win that is, that is behind this one. And so he, he’s got this
0:04:28 venture capital firm, Marysome Capital. So he basically, what he did was actually producing.
0:04:33 So you said it’s like a planetarium. No, no, no. It is a planetarium. Do you know the backstory
0:04:39 of this? No, I, no. So he went and bought three companies. So he bought the companies that make
0:04:44 the science planetarium things for every, you know, museum or whatever, like, you know,
0:04:48 science place. So they, he bought that company. Then he bought another company that, you know,
0:04:53 did the LED screen part of that. Then he bought another company that was like the cameras and
0:04:58 technology part of it. So it’s a roll up of three or four companies now at this point that he did.
0:05:04 And because of that they have, you know, they’re basically the monopoly on, I mean, it’s not a
0:05:08 monopoly as in nobody else can do it, but they’re the biggest player in developing this type of
0:05:13 technology, these types of screens. Wow. What he did was realize, hey, this is cool, but it doesn’t
0:05:18 have to just be for, for the planetarium. Like you could use this for sports. If you send your own
0:05:26 video crew to go film, like the sort of court side or field side seats at these different venues.
0:05:29 And so they do, they’re basically a full stack thing. So they have the rights with the leagues,
0:05:34 like UFC, for example, they have the rights with the UFC, they have the rights to certain football
0:05:39 leagues and they go, they send a full production crew there. So it’s not just what you’re, it’s not
0:05:45 just what you see on TV, but bigger. It’s its own thing. And so they have like crews that are almost
0:05:49 like VR where you see like, they’re right there by the end zone. And then as the guy crosses, the
0:05:53 camera’s turning with them. And then they have a live production team that’s basically cutting
0:05:57 between the different cameras that they have to show what’s going to be on that huge screen.
0:06:01 And so that’s how they actually made this. That’s the backstory of how they did this.
0:06:07 That’s, that’s amazing. I did not realize that that’s how it started. I really want to go to one
0:06:11 of these. I’ve had a friend who, his name’s hat. I think you, you know, hat. He went to the one in
0:06:15 Dallas and he sent me a video of it. I do not have a friend named hat. Who’s, who is our friend named
0:06:23 hat? He, he messaged us about it. He hosted the Dallas MFM friendly, your friendly with a guy
0:06:29 named hat. And he, he sent me a video and he was like, Hey, I’m in Houston. And it was some sports
0:06:33 games, some sport game. And I was like, that game’s not in Houston. And he’s like, no, no, no, this
0:06:39 is a screen. Right. I’m not here right now. This is a screen. And I genuinely thought he was there.
0:06:44 And so like I would pay, I’m, I, as soon as UFC is on this, I’m going to be paying money.
0:06:51 It is this weekend, actually. So this weekend’s sphere, the fight card they’re having at the
0:06:55 sphere, I believe is going to be shown in the Cosm. So they, they basically have a, a mix of
0:07:00 things. Cause it’s not just sports. So there’s sports, but then they got Cirque du Soleil. And
0:07:04 so if you want to go see, Oh, but you want to see, Oh, like in the best seat that ever existed,
0:07:09 plus the backstage, plus follow one of the performers, plus in the air, you can go watch
0:07:13 Oh, at this thing. And so I was doing the math on this and I don’t have the exact numbers here,
0:07:18 but here’s, here’s the rough math on a venue like this. So they have general admission,
0:07:22 which is kind of like standing room only. You can literally, there’s people just sitting on the
0:07:26 floor and those are 22 bucks. So super cheap. And they’re going to make the money on those people
0:07:32 through, you know, beer and French fries or whatever. Then they have the like booths or tables
0:07:37 type of thing, which is each seat there is kind of like between 50 and 200 bucks, depending on the
0:07:41 day and the event. And they can fit, you know, a thousand general admission and a thousand, you
0:07:46 know, premium people into this thing. But they have shows all the time because they have like
0:07:51 the Cirque du Soleil thing, they have this like art exhibit thing, they have a orbital thing that’s
0:07:56 space, then they have sports. And so they have 64 events this month, barely in the next coming
0:08:02 month. And I don’t know what, I don’t know how, you know, what the occupancy is like, but it’s
0:08:07 pretty easy to see that this thing is probably somewhere between, you know, four to six million
0:08:14 a month in revenue right now, not counting all the alcohol sales. So, you know, that that might be
0:08:19 double, you know, over there. So I would say low end, maybe three to four million on tickets.
0:08:24 And on the high and then, you know, double that once you once you factor in all the food and
0:08:29 alcohol purchases. I talked to this guy the other day for money wise, we did this podcast with him.
0:08:36 And he basically made something like $25 million. He like owned a tech company. He sold it. He got
0:08:42 $25 million in cash. He still owns $25 million in equity in the business. And he’s based out of
0:08:49 Canada, inside of a 2000 person town. And he sold the business, made his money, whatever, and he
0:08:54 still has his office in that small town. And he said in the small town of 2000 people, he employs
0:08:59 roughly 50 of them. And he owns the fanciest office building on the main street. And they have barbecues
0:09:04 and shit like that every week where the community can come and hang out, whatever. And it made me
0:09:09 sad that I make money on the internet and that I make money remotely with the remote staff,
0:09:13 because it’s hard to see the magic that you’re working so hard to create. Or hopefully your
0:09:18 output is magic where you create products and services that people love. And it made me really
0:09:22 bummed. And I was like, I want to get into like more physical stuff or to be able to like physically
0:09:27 see my creation, even if it’s just like employees in an office. And when I see products like Qasim,
0:09:31 it seems trivial. Like, oh, we’re just doing it just like a place where people can drink beers and
0:09:37 watch sport. But that’s it’s more than that. And to see this as your output of like, I’m creating
0:09:42 something that is physical that I can go and see and be proud of while people are watching and enjoying
0:09:47 it. I’m envious of that as someone who does mostly digital sport, drink beer, but they can watch
0:09:55 sport drink beer in front of a huge screen, a big ass screen. No, I know what you mean. I would feel
0:10:01 that way. But I’ve done a restaurant. I have an e-commerce thing that has physical products.
0:10:04 And I’ve also done some events. And every time I’ve done any of those things,
0:10:10 I hate it. I’m like, oh, my God, this would be so much easier. I would enjoy my life so much more.
0:10:15 If I could, I am so much happier sitting behind the computer on my laptop in my boxers.
0:10:22 You know, I told you the Peter Levels photo of him sitting on a couch with his neck scrunched
0:10:28 in the worst posture, no shirt, boxers, laptop on. That to me is the Jordan logo. Dude, that is
0:10:34 the Jordan logo. That is somebody dunking from the free throw line of life. And that’s what I want.
0:10:38 I don’t want any of this shit where I have to like have a brick and mortar venue. I know it
0:10:45 sounds romantic, but no. Look, you’re in luck. That’s the perfect segue to today’s sponsor.
0:10:50 Because look, if you like to create content, doing what you and I do of having a podcast,
0:10:54 it’s kind of hard because you have to have like a schedule all the time and you got to go and
0:10:58 perform. Doing video is even worse because video is like impossible to edit and it’s just a pain
0:11:05 in the ass. Writing is without a doubt the best in terms of having the best lifestyle because
0:11:08 you can just write late at night. You don’t have to be dressed. You can do it in your bed, whatever.
0:11:12 It’s also the best because it might be, a newsletter might be, one of the most profitable
0:11:16 creator outlets. I think there is in terms of like CPM and willingness to
0:11:21 people to buy subscriptions. Can we tell the story of when you were doing the hustle? I remember
0:11:27 you had a blog and you were doing these viral blog posts that were these like guys, you know,
0:11:31 micro dosing LSD. You like paid some, some dude like 200 bucks to micro dose LSD.
0:11:36 Another guy was living on Soylent for 30 days straight and like documenting it every day.
0:11:39 And these posts were getting millions of views and then you came into my office and you’re like,
0:11:43 yeah, I’m switching to a newsletter. I was like, newsletter, that’s like old. What do you mean?
0:11:46 What are you talking about? And you were way ahead of the curve and you told me, you were like,
0:11:52 yeah, I think these things make like 50 bucks per thousand impressions, like $50 CPM.
0:11:56 And I was like, no way, dude, a YouTube video, a video,
0:12:02 like video ads got to be higher. Like YouTube, a YouTube creator is making like $4 CPM.
0:12:07 Why would a newsletter make $50 CPM? And you were absolutely right. Of course, you know,
0:12:12 six years later, I started a newsletter company doing the same exact model for the same exact
0:12:16 reason and ended up, you know, selling it, you know, just the same way you did. It’s amazing
0:12:22 how well that business model works. And if you’re going to do a newsletter, where should you do it?
0:12:24 Here, you should do it be high, of course. And we’re going to give that plug, but I want to give
0:12:28 you the math behind the thing that you just talked about, which was basically, let’s say that when
0:12:32 I was doing those newsletters or those blogs, let’s just say that like one or two went viral
0:12:37 and I would get like 250,000 visitors that month or 200,000 visitors that month. I made like a
0:12:43 thousand dollars. Let’s say I had a newsletter that had a hundred thousand subscribers and I
0:12:48 wrote to them daily. That’s five grand a day that I would make if I could get $50 CPM, which I was.
0:12:55 Exactly. So it’s like the math was like, so I literally went from like 5,000 to $300,000 per
0:12:58 month. Right. And in one, you have to pray to the viral gods to go viral. In the other, you
0:13:03 basically just, you told me, you called it your pirate ship. You’re like, I’m a pirate. This is
0:13:07 our pirate ship. And every new email subscriber is a little wind in our sales. And I love that
0:13:10 metaphor. And I think it’s the same way that I know a ton of people who are on Beehive that have
0:13:17 like a newsletter with 10,000, 12,000, 22,000, 32,000 readers that are, it’s great. They get to
0:13:21 put out to the world their thoughts, their ideas, and they get paid to do it. I think it’s an
0:13:26 amazing thing. So check it out. If you’re looking for a place to do a newsletter, beehive.com, it’s
0:13:32 B-E-E-H-I-I-V. The worst thing about them is the spelling of the domain. Everything else is flawless.
0:13:37 Can I tell you something that’s going to sound stupid and ridiculous, but I think it’s true
0:13:40 and it’s going to make a lot of money? Stupid and ridiculous, but I think it’s true. It’s going
0:13:44 to make a lot of money. Damn, dude, you just do a personality test. That was awesome.
0:13:48 Describe yourself. Is that your bio?
0:13:56 Yes. There’s people who are like E-F-G’s or whatever. I’m like, an I-D-O-I-T.
0:14:00 It’s a new Myers-Briggs, dude. That was awesome.
0:14:08 I-D-I-O-T. Oh, what are you? Oh, are you an M-O-R-O-N?
0:14:17 Listen to this. So you know how like, let me think. What’s the best way to phrase this?
0:14:22 Because we’re coming from a moron’s perspective. All right. There’s something that I think has
0:14:28 not been touched on forever, or at least in the startup world. It bothers me. The reason why it
0:14:33 bothers me is because Tesla, when that came about, that was like, oh my god, this is like the craziest
0:14:38 thing I’ve ever known, whatever touches. But it has worked and now Rivian and there’s other now
0:14:42 car startups. Same with SpaceX. SpaceX, when they started, it was like, this is ridiculous. You
0:14:46 can’t make a hardware company that goes to space. That’s ridiculous. Now we have Andrew. We have a
0:14:49 bunch of other stuff like that. And they’re getting funding and they’re proving that like,
0:14:56 this is a good idea. There’s a category of products inside your home. You probably have
0:15:02 used this product today that it boggles my mind why there’s no innovation. So to put this in
0:15:07 perspective, I believe, all right, so there’s about 15 million cars sold per year. There’s
0:15:14 about 13 million units of this product sold per year. Basically, everyone in America has them.
0:15:21 They cost thousands of dollars. The lifespan of these products is like five years. And that is
0:15:27 the washer and dryer. It boggles my mind while we have not seen more innovation with the washer
0:15:32 and dryer. And yes, I’m going to say I say washer because with an R, that’s a weird Midwestern accent.
0:15:36 I’m going to get that out of the way because people are going to make fun of me. But what’s been killing
0:15:39 me is and I’ve said this for years that there’s not a good two and one washer and dryer. So this
0:15:43 company called LG, they came out with this like washer and dryer the other day that it’s a two
0:15:48 and one washer and dryer. And it was on the Wall Street Journal and there’s videos on YouTube
0:15:52 talking about this washer and dryer. These nerds like me who are like into this technology,
0:15:57 they’re like going bananas that this technology has actually is actually coming to fruition,
0:16:02 which basically being the main critique of the washer and dryer and one is that it was really
0:16:07 hard to create a so when you have a washer, that means it has to be water sealed. But when you
0:16:11 have something that’s water sealed, it’s hard to increase the temperature. So how do you put
0:16:14 heat in there to dry your clothing? And that technology is actually really hard. But these
0:16:18 guys have actually like they’re slowly getting around to where it’s actually working. And
0:16:25 it’s amazing how big some of these businesses are that sell just mostly washer and dryer. So if
0:16:31 you look at Whirlpool, I believe Whirlpool is publicly traded. Last year, they had $22 billion
0:16:37 in sales and about half of that revenue was from washer and dryers. And what’s crazy to me is
0:16:42 that that’s compared to Rivian, which is a venture startup. Now I think it’s publicly traded $2
0:16:48 billion a year in sales. And so like it’s crazy to me that a lot of these sexier industries in the
0:16:53 hardware space, cars, rockets, self-defense are getting funded and are like popular. But the
0:16:59 washer and dryer in particular, I’m making a prediction that in the next 10 years, maybe 15,
0:17:03 we’re going to see a lot of movement in the space. And I think the appetite is big. And I’ll give you
0:17:08 another example. There’s this company called Impulse Labs. Have you heard of Impulse Labs?
0:17:12 No, I’ve never heard of them. So Impulse Labs. And you can make the same case that I made for
0:17:17 washer and dryers. You can make that case for ovens or stove tops. But if you look at stove tops,
0:17:23 the majority of homes in America have electric stove tops. And electric stove tops are a huge
0:17:28 pain in the ass because the way they work, I believe, is that there’s basically only one
0:17:33 temperature. And so it’s like an on or an off. And so when you use an electric stove top, even
0:17:36 though you put it on high, that just means that it’s going to self-regulate to where it’s going
0:17:40 to stay on for a certain amount of time and then turn off for a few seconds and then turn back on
0:17:44 and then turn back off to a point where it’s high. Then with medium, it’s going to turn off for longer.
0:17:49 And then you don’t mean it’s going to like try and stay at that same time. That’s actually
0:17:53 like makes a huge difference in your cooking if you’re into like cooking nice meals.
0:17:57 And it’s a huge pain in the ass. And so these guys called Impulse Labs, they have built this
0:18:02 technology to where you have a battery that’s charging all of the time and that battery when
0:18:07 you want to use your stove, it like turbocharges your stove top so it keeps the heat at a steady
0:18:13 temperature and it gets hot really, really fast. And so they’ve launched these new stove tops.
0:18:17 And when I hear their argument about how big this business can be, I kind of have bought into like,
0:18:22 I think this actually can work. Now the downside is that you have to raise hundreds of millions of
0:18:27 dollars potentially. But when you’re thinking about stove tops and washer and dryers, these are
0:18:35 actually really, really big markets. Like similar size of car companies, but are drastically under
0:18:41 funded, potentially have less competition than a lot of these other industries because there’s not
0:18:45 a lot of startups attacking this. Well, I think this is pretty interesting, but I’m going to poke
0:18:50 a few holes in your argument. There’s many, but this argument that I presented, it’s like,
0:18:53 we’re going to call this string cheese. Swiss cheese. I think it’s just the way you look.
0:19:01 No, it’s string cheese. There’s ways around it. I’ll pull back some holes in this string cheese
0:19:08 here. Let’s keep the analogy going. So the problem with the kind of rockets and/or cars, and let’s just
0:19:13 take cars for example, I think the reason that Rivian and Tesla have so much, had so much heat
0:19:18 when they came out, even though they weren’t selling that many units was people see that their,
0:19:21 first of all, cars are much more expensive than washers and dryers. So that’s the first thing.
0:19:26 Oh yeah, that’s true. It’s multiple of maybe 10x higher price per unit. So yes,
0:19:30 they sell the same number of units, but at least 10x higher, maybe 20x higher in a lot of cases.
0:19:35 On top of that, you buy multiple of them. So like, I don’t know when you get, like, I haven’t
0:19:40 replaced a washer and dryer in five years since I’ve been living in a place. Have you lived in
0:19:43 one home for one place? Probably not for more than five years. Have you lived in one house for five
0:19:47 years? But is that the shelf life of these things? You have to replace them after five years?
0:19:55 Ish. Okay, gotcha. The other part of it that I think is hard is, with Tesla and Rivian, I think
0:20:01 the thesis is that all cars eventually go electric. So you basically take the entire fleet of cars,
0:20:05 and you say these are all going to have to switch to electric, and that the traditional car makers
0:20:08 are not going to be, these guys will figure out how to ramp production before the traditional
0:20:12 car makers figure out how to go electric. And I don’t know if that’s proven out to be true or not.
0:20:17 I mean, Tesla has obviously beaten the traditional car makers, and I think Tesla is worth more than
0:20:22 like all of the other, you know, next five car makers combined type of thing. It’s ridiculous.
0:20:28 And whereas I don’t think the two and one necessarily, maybe it’s true that two and one
0:20:32 basically replaces all, all combos, I’m not sure. The last thing I would say is that a lot of these
0:20:37 have like switching costs. So for example, you know, the stove top, even if I like it, I’m not
0:20:41 going to rip out my stove to do this, it’s only going to be let’s say new builds that are going
0:20:46 to put something like this in like this stove top. Whereas with a car, the switching cost is
0:20:52 lower because I can always get a second car, I can, I can trade cars, it’s not the same as like
0:20:56 ripping up my kitchen and her to get these. So I think that’s the hard part about some of these is
0:21:02 you have a lot of capital and a lot of difficulty, but some pay out, you know, 10 or 100x.
0:21:07 And that’s why the funding goes to the space companies goes to the military, you know,
0:21:11 weapons companies and goes to the car companies before it’s going to go to some of these.
0:21:16 That being said, I have the, I have the June thing. I have the June oven. And
0:21:23 I got to say it’s good, but it’s complete overkill. And so I think the hard part of this is like,
0:21:26 like, I don’t know if you’ve ever used it, but there’s a camera inside of it. So you put
0:21:33 a bagel inside and it just says, wait, wait, wait, I got it. Bagel. And I’m like, yeah, cool,
0:21:37 still get a push toast. Like the fact that this camera was in here that recognized the bagel
0:21:44 is like a cool demo, but ultimately like not that important of a feature compared to, you know,
0:21:48 just like not being a thousand dollars, right? I think the June oven is like a thousand dollars
0:21:53 or more. So yeah, I’m not super convinced on these, but I do like where your head’s at, which is
0:21:59 what are these sleepy industries that need innovation where size is there, sleepiness is
0:22:04 there, but the innovation is super low that in general is a good place to go if you’re really
0:22:08 determined and can make some shit happen. You know who kicks ass in one of these places is
0:22:12 Shark Ninja. Have you heard of Shark Ninja? Like they make Ninja and Shark. It’s two different
0:22:16 brands, but under one company, Shark Ninja. I believe it’s a boot shop company. It started in
0:22:22 1994. It got bought and went public, but within six years, they were doing 100 million in revenue,
0:22:28 which in within the year eight, they were doing $250 million in revenue based out of Boston,
0:22:34 American company. The products that they make amazing. They have made some of the best products.
0:22:39 So like their vacuum is amazing. I own the creamy, which is like the greatest thing ever.
0:22:44 They helped innovate and create the air fryer. Some of these appliance businesses have been
0:22:50 shockingly good and surprisingly bootstrapped. Well, you know, my favorite one of these that’s like
0:22:57 not as hard to do, but also kind of a sleepy industry is Hexclad. Do you have Hexclad? Do you
0:23:03 have any other pans? I’m thinking about buying some. So commit to me why I should buy them.
0:23:05 Well, dude, I don’t know. I think, you know, one of the things here is like
0:23:11 customer has like a different like awareness and sophistication level. So I don’t actually
0:23:15 know what would make a great pan if there, I’m sure there’s people out there who are like, no,
0:23:20 no, no, only cast iron or only this type of pan or it’s all marketing, whatever. But I’m in the
0:23:25 bucket. That’s like the fat part of the bell curve where it’s like, yeah, marketing just kind
0:23:32 of works on me. I saw that Gordon Ramsay invested $100 million into Hexclad, which is a stunning
0:23:38 amount of money. And how does Gordon Ramsay have $100 million to invest in the startup?
0:23:44 Let me make sure that I have this right. So I guess it’s his studio. So Studio Ramsay Global,
0:23:49 a partnership between Fox and Gordon Ramsay is investing 100 million into Hexclad. So not
0:23:53 him personally, let’s say, but him and his venture studio or whatever his venture venture firm.
0:23:57 Their website is beautiful. And I want to buy Hexclad right now because of their website.
0:24:01 So I bought it. The pans are pretty good. I don’t know, again, if they’re the best pans ever,
0:24:08 but they’re, they’re good. And the branding is great. The visual of it. So like the pan itself
0:24:13 has little hexagons as the bottom of it. So it’s an instantly recognizable product. Like when I
0:24:17 look in my cabinet, I have like all my generic pans. And then I can literally just see the
0:24:21 difference of a Hexclad pan and it’s like ties to the name. And then you have Gordon Ramsay as
0:24:27 the influencer behind this. And it’s just pans, dude. It’s like a sleepy industry that everybody
0:24:33 needs. It’s high value, high AOV product. And these guys crush, they do hundreds of millions in
0:24:38 revenue. And, you know, they’re sold in Costco. They have like amazing distribution. I think
0:24:45 they’re one of the biggest Shopify stores overall. And it was such a non like, I don’t want to
0:24:49 disparage them by calling it non innovation, but it’s not rockets and it’s not electric cars,
0:24:56 right? It’s like nonstick pans. But it is, it is very well done. And I’m very impressed with
0:25:02 their execution and it’s a great business. Was it just a person? Here’s what it says. In 2013,
0:25:06 the two co-founders, Danny and Cole, they had worked for a now defunct cookware company and
0:25:10 decided they wanted to start their own. So they started, you know, working on it. They dabbled
0:25:15 with a couple of products. They started selling in 2016. 2017, they get to deal with Costco.
0:25:20 And the business has doubled almost every year since 2017. They’re one of the top Shopify sellers
0:25:24 in the world. They have one of the biggest Black Fridays of any, they said, “I have never heard
0:25:28 of anyone who’s sold more than us on Black Friday,” which I think is just pretty dope.
0:25:34 It’s a very, very well done product. They make you feel elite, you know, by buying this pan,
0:25:40 whether the pan is elite or not, is sort of secondary. It’s an amazing example of just like
0:25:44 what brand marketing and influence can do for you. Speaking of food and cooking,
0:25:49 do you have any plans for the holidays? Because I’ve got some, I got an idea for you.
0:25:51 Okay. You’re inviting me over or what’s happening right now?
0:25:55 That’s even better. This is even better. Are you free?
0:26:00 I’m free. All right. I’ve got like a little like eight week little project for you.
0:26:04 If you’re interested, you know, it’s no big deal. It’s just a little small. It’s like the
0:26:10 equivalent of like a super Lego. Okay, go for it. Weight Watchers. Do me a favor and Google
0:26:14 Weight Watchers stock right now. Okay. What’s their market cap at?
0:26:17 Oh, geez, 58 million. What happened? Oprah, what happened?
0:26:23 That’s what happened. Oprah left. Oprah’s gone. Are you serious? That’s what caused this?
0:26:29 Well, and they lost $110 million last year and the business declined by 10%.
0:26:32 Osempic hit them? What happened? I think Osempic hit them.
0:26:36 Well, let me make an argument as to why Weight Watchers is going to start selling
0:26:42 Osempic and why Sean is going to own 10% of the company. So listen, that’s your little,
0:26:45 your eight week project, your holiday project. So Weight Watchers was started,
0:26:50 I think in the ’60s and the way it started was there was this housewife in New York City and she
0:26:55 was a little overweight and she got a bunch of dieting tips on how to lose weight and then she
0:27:00 created like an eight-person support group where she got her friends to give her $2 per meeting
0:27:05 and they met once a week and it helped everyone lose weight. They were held accountable and they
0:27:11 loved it. She did it for about a year and then eventually this one man and his wife or his wife
0:27:14 was like, “Hey, you need to lose weight. You go to this woman’s support group. I bet she’ll lose
0:27:21 weight.” And this guy was a businessman and he was like, “Hey, we should definitely make this a
0:27:26 thing.” Like her name was Gene. He was like, “Hey, Gene, this should be like a business. This was
0:27:31 amazing. I actually like lost weight and it changed my life a little bit.” And so they come up with
0:27:38 this idea to franchise the business and they launched it in 1963 and by 1968 they had a million
0:27:44 members each paying a monthly fee in order to attend a local meeting that was based off of their
0:27:48 dieting advice, but a local meeting where you would go once a week or once a month in order to
0:27:56 have your support group. And then by 1968, they sold the business for $751 million then,
0:28:02 which is something like $400 million in today’s money. Oddly, they sold to Heinz, Heinz Ketchup,
0:28:07 which is like the maker of a lot of foods that are the opposite of what Weight Watchers would
0:28:13 suggest. But anyway, they do their thing and then Oprah comes into play. And so Oprah comes into play
0:28:18 and when she comes into play, the stock takes off to where she buys a bunch of stock and then
0:28:24 within weeks or something like that she has tripled her money and it booms and it takes off. Well,
0:28:27 over the last handful of years, her Weight Watchers plan has been shedding her weight to watch her
0:28:32 stock and she’s been losing a bunch of her stock and selling it and now it’s plummeted. And so the
0:28:39 stock is horrible. And so my opinion is if I’m Weight Watchers, I think I’m just going to start
0:28:45 selling Osempic. That’s what I’m going to become. I mean, if I have millions and millions of members
0:28:53 who are subscribed to me for weight loss tips, if I needed to just only care about money, my new
0:28:59 game is, well, by the way, they have 3.8 million paying subscribers. The name of my game is,
0:29:05 hey, for an additional $300 or $400 or $500 a month, we really can guarantee that you’re
0:29:09 going to lose weight. They’re definitely going in this direction. So I didn’t realize this, but
0:29:16 do you know who the CEO of Weight Watchers is? No, who? Her name is Sema Sistani. And the reason
0:29:20 that name sounds familiar is because she was formerly the CEO of Meerkat. Do you remember
0:29:27 Meerkat, the live streaming app? What? Yeah, so she worked with Ben Rubin and when they turned
0:29:35 into house party, they ended up getting acquired. Sema ends up now being the CEO of Weight Watchers
0:29:42 and she recently wrote an email to the team. So this is a couple months ago. And it says,
0:29:46 “Team, as the week draws to a close, I want to take a moment to address
0:29:50 some of the breathless media coverage I’m sure you guys have seen.” And basically it says,
0:29:56 “Hey, we’re in a good cash position. We have strong liquidity. The work we do matters. Our
0:30:00 business is healthy.” And it says, “We’ve repositioned the company to grow with a clear
0:30:04 differentiator. We’re going to offer a full spectrum of weight care from behavioral,” which is
0:30:11 the thing what they’ve been doing, “to clinical.” And clinical being the sale of essentially
0:30:15 semi-glute type products is where they’re going with it. So I think it’s kind of interesting
0:30:21 what you’re saying because I don’t know what is the price of a Weight Watchers subscription.
0:30:28 If you don’t have insurance, semi-glute type is somewhere between $500 to $1,000 per month.
0:30:35 Exactly. And your insurance will cover it if you have diabetes or if you’re obese.
0:30:40 And I think, isn’t there government proposal to make free Osempic to everybody? Isn’t
0:30:45 there some proposal that’s going to cover it and that the government would somehow cover this?
0:30:52 Well, the Osempic issue is basically highlighting an issue with the healthcare system. And it’s
0:30:56 funny that Osempic is like the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back. But they’re like,
0:31:02 “Dude, in Europe, this drug is $5. In America, it’s $1,000. What the hell? What’s going on?”
0:31:07 And so it’s kind of like… No one noticed, which is like the company that makes Osempic.
0:31:11 They’re not only, I think they are now the most valuable company in Europe,
0:31:16 but on top of that, I think they spend more on lobbying than like any other company right now.
0:31:22 And so they are pushing very hard for U.S. lobbying, which is insane. So Weight Watchers
0:31:27 subscription is $9.99 a month right now for the first nine months. And if you just take
0:31:33 the idea that they’re going to go from making $100 a year per paying customer to even a fraction of
0:31:37 the audience decides, “Yes, I’d like to push a button and start to get Osempic or start to get
0:31:41 whatever their generic version is going to be called,” they’re going to jump to $5,000 or
0:31:47 $10,000 a year for those customers. So if you believe that they have the right distribution
0:31:53 and they have the end customer relationship, they might be swapping out training wheels for
0:31:58 Harley-Davidson in terms of business models. And the business is quite large. Unfortunately,
0:32:03 they’ve lost a lot of money. But last year, they did $900 million in revenue and had $100
0:32:09 million loss. So those are huge numbers, but their market cap as of today is $60 million.
0:32:15 And so I don’t care, but it’s going to be fun to watch because there might be a roller coaster
0:32:19 here. And it’s so here, by the way, one of the reasons the business is not doing great.
0:32:24 So by the way, your project for me was to what? To take Osempic or to buy the stock?
0:32:25 Because I might do both. Well, maybe a little down and do both.
0:32:31 Maybe a little bow. When Oprah did it, the estimates are that she made a quarter of
0:32:36 a billion dollars over 10 years of owning and then selling the stock. So basically,
0:32:42 she announced that she was part of Weight Watchers. The stock doubled in a matter of days.
0:32:48 And so in February of this past year, 24, the stock went down by 25%. Just when she announced,
0:32:53 like, “All right, that’s ran its course. I did my thing. I’m out. I’m no longer involved.”
0:33:00 I think Sean Perry is going to be the new Oprah. I think that, look, for $2 million,
0:33:06 you can own 4% of this company. Did I math that right? Or close to 4%. I think, and then
0:33:10 just announcing it, we’re going to do a good old fashioned pump and dump.
0:33:20 You just got us flagged by some agencies out here. Dude, they’re listening to podcasts now.
0:33:24 You know, we’re big in the SEC right now, right? This podcast is going viral there.
0:33:30 I’m joking, by the way. But I do think that a $16 million market cap for a business that has
0:33:33 these large numbers, even if it is a massive loss, and a reputable brand.
0:33:36 I’m just reading about them on the fly here while you’re talking about this. But it looks
0:33:39 like they made a $100 million deal to buy Sequence, which is a telehealth business
0:33:43 that lets you do virtual prescriptions for patients who want weight loss drugs,
0:33:48 and that they will start doing the semi-glute head stuff soon. So we’ll see.
0:33:54 Yeah, I just thought this was interesting. I want to put it on record that we’ve discussed this,
0:33:57 because maybe this could be one of those big opportunities.
0:34:03 But because $60 million for a brand that’s so reputable in some circles, but everyone knows
0:34:08 what that means, that’s pretty amazing to me. Okay, I like it. Sam Stockpix,
0:34:14 whether there’s a great YouTube… By the way, any Stockpix I have just don’t listen to anything
0:34:18 that I ever give advice on, because regarding the stocks, it’s horrible.
0:34:22 What’s that guy? There’s a guy who does this YouTube channel called Good Work. I think he’s
0:34:28 part of Morning Brew, and he put out this video that I thought had the best YouTube title that
0:34:33 I’ve seen. I know. Is it Zed? No, no, not the Zed one. His Zed one was also great. The Zed one
0:34:42 was, “Is Zed going to kill me and the boys?” And now the new one is, “Can this extremely loud man
0:34:48 make you rich?” And it’s a picture of Jim Cramer, who’s shilling some stock. I thought it was awesome.
0:34:55 Dude, there are videos. He’s the best, like I did. He’s the absolute best.
0:34:58 I want our YouTube team to just look at these titles and thumbnails.
0:35:02 This is what winning looks like. This is what we need to do.
0:35:06 I’m just going to read you some of their other titles, his other titles.
0:35:11 “Saudi Arabia going sicko mode on its sci-fi city-state.” It’s the picture of that giant
0:35:15 wall that Saudi Arabia is building. “Helping a fourth-grader explain her loser dad’s
0:35:21 stupid hedge fund job, LOL.” Yeah, it’s great.
0:35:30 Yeah, I’m a big fan of this guy. He’s really good. Austin’s one of my best friends,
0:35:35 the founder or the CEO of Morning Brew. I give him a hard time for a long time because Morning
0:35:41 Brew has not been able to hire interesting talent. Hiring and retaining and developing talent on a
0:35:45 media as a media company, that’s really, really, really hard. You’ve got to find interesting people,
0:35:50 which is hard. The most interesting creative people are typically also the biggest pain in
0:35:56 the asses to work with and to retain them. This guy, and a few others actually, but this guy is
0:36:00 a really good example of how a media company finds talent and nurtures it and makes him huge.
0:36:03 Yeah, he’s doing amazing. Good job. What is his name, by the way? I don’t know this guy’s name,
0:36:07 but Dan Toomey. Yeah, Dan, you’re doing a great job.
0:36:13 So I moved to this new city. It’s called Westport, Connecticut. It’s a 35,000-person town. I’ve been
0:36:18 reading all these books about biographies of politicians and stuff lately, so I thought,
0:36:21 “I don’t really know anything about politics. I’m going to see if getting involved is even
0:36:28 interesting.” So I just emailed the mayor, which I didn’t know if that was a thing or not,
0:36:32 but I just found her email, and I emailed her, and now we’re going to go get lunch together.
0:36:35 What’d you say? I’m going to get lunch with the mayor. I said, in a small circle of the
0:36:43 internet, a very tiny corner, I’m a little bit popular, and I’m not sure what that means to you,
0:36:48 if anything, but I’m just trying to make myself look a little bit important to you,
0:36:53 and I would love to hang out and introduce myself with no agenda, and that’s all I said,
0:36:58 and she said, “Absolutely.” So what’s the plan here? What are you going to do?
0:37:04 I don’t know, yeah. I got to figure out how to be conniving and how to take over a town.
0:37:08 I don’t have a plan yet, but I just thought it was interesting.
0:37:12 Are you going to binge two seasons of House of Cards or something and just start to get
0:37:21 yourself in the mindset? Yeah. I’m just going to come with armed guards and just take over.
0:37:31 I’m going to do a coup. It’s going to be a coup. I don’t know. I think local politics are a really
0:37:36 interesting way to actually have real impact, but it just seems fun, and so I didn’t know that you
0:37:41 could email a mayor, and they would reply, but they did. It reminds me of when we got to college,
0:37:48 my buddy Dan, you’re given a school ID, a school email address, so his was, I don’t know,
0:37:55 DNC6@duke.edu, and so the first thing he did, which I would have never thought to do, but he’s
0:38:06 a weirdo and a genius, and so he emails DNC4 and DNC5, and he’s like, “Fellas, I’m here. I don’t
0:38:10 know who you are. I don’t know what those initials stand for for you, but I’m here to carry the
0:38:15 torch legacy. What do you guys do?” And one of them is a banker somewhere, and it could have led
0:38:22 to an internship, basically, just by sending out a random email being like, “Hey, I’m the new guy
0:38:27 in town that has the same… I’m the next in the alphanumeric sequence here for us.”
0:38:33 And do they become friends? I don’t know. I feel like he just would open up all these doors
0:38:36 and just look inside, be like, “What’s in this closet?” When someone comes into your house,
0:38:40 they’re like, “Oh, what’s this over here?” Have you seen people do that with their phone number?
0:38:43 They change one number in their phone number, and they text them and say that their phone number
0:38:49 comes in? Yeah, exactly. You said something a few weeks ago that had an impact on me, and I’ve
0:38:53 been meaning to bring this up to you, but I had to test this out. So you told me that there’s been
0:38:57 a few weekends where Friday to Sunday, you did phone lists, and I thought that’s a great idea.
0:39:03 The problem is, is that I’m an addict of all types of sorts, and just like everyone else,
0:39:07 getting rid of my phone is really hard. So I looked for a solution, and I found this thing.
0:39:10 This isn’t a sponsored thing. I’ve never talked to these guys. I just think it’s cool.
0:39:15 Have you seen this? It’s called Brick. Yeah, I’ve DMed these guys. They’re young guys.
0:39:20 Did you look them up? Yeah, so I looked them up. So let me explain what this product is,
0:39:26 but I think it’s only $49. So for people listening on your headphones and not looking at a screen,
0:39:31 I just showed a Brick. It’s like a two-inch by two-inch square that’s made out of plastic,
0:39:35 just like 3D printed plastic. And the way it works is you download their app,
0:39:39 and you say which apps are allowed. So in my case, I think I’ve allowed texting,
0:39:46 phone calling, and email. And basically, I use this Brick, and I touch my phone with it,
0:39:51 and it bans or makes every app on my phone, except for the ones that I’ve allowed,
0:39:57 it makes it so I can’t use them unless I touch this Brick again. And there’s an emergency button
0:40:03 within the app, but only three times can I click like emergency override, and I could override,
0:40:09 like if I’m away from this Brick. But if I leave this Brick at home, I can only use the apps that
0:40:16 I’ve allowed on my phone. Shockingly good. This works. I like it. I love it. And I think these
0:40:20 kids who started it, I think they started it when they were like 20-year-old college kids. Is that
0:40:26 right? Yeah, something like that. And I think this business might be amazing. You know, it’s only
0:40:31 50 bucks. It’s hard to make a lot of money on $50. But what’s interesting is that we build all this
0:40:36 technology to like get, we want new, we want more convenient, we want better. And then after a while,
0:40:41 you get used to this life, and it gets better and more efficient and more addicting, and you want
0:40:46 to create things now that will undo all of that. And so I’ve been testing leaving my phone at home.
0:40:49 I’ve been testing, but that’s a little bit inconvenient sometimes because what if there’s
0:40:54 like a real emergency? So do I have to buy like a dumb phone? But then to buy a dumb phone, I need
0:41:00 a whole different cell phone plan. It’s like a safe for the pantry. You like put your snack in it,
0:41:04 and then you lock it. It’s like, this can only be open at 7 p.m. Yeah. Well, and one time I broke
0:41:10 it to get to my phone, like it’s fucked up how bad I am. And so this brick so far, I think,
0:41:14 is the best solution I have found. That’s cool. Yeah, I looked into this because I was curious
0:41:18 about it. I think it’s a really cool idea. I like the design of it too, by the way. I like the name
0:41:22 of it, how it just bricks your phone. I loved how bricked up you are about this whole thing. So I
0:41:26 think it’s a great, I think it’s a great product. I don’t use it personally, but I have thought
0:41:33 about doing the kind of dumb phone, smartphone thing. And this does seem better than having two
0:41:38 phones, but I would lose this brick for sure. So what is it? So if I lose this brick, I can just
0:41:42 through my own phone, just put it in the emergency and be like, Hey, I need my phone back.
0:41:48 Yeah, but only like three or five times. I forget the number. But after a certain number,
0:41:52 then the app, like the brick doesn’t work and you got to go buy a whole new one.
0:41:54 It’s like a nicotine patch for cell phones.
0:41:58 Yeah. And it’s awesome. And that’s exactly what it is. And I think it’s actually pretty good.
0:42:02 And it’s cheap enough that I’m going to just like start gifting these out.
0:42:06 It’s a great passive aggressive gift, right? Yeah, it’s like getting your appellate out, I guess.
0:42:11 Hey, asshole. There’s something you need.
0:42:19 Yeah. But these are awesome. By the way, I think it’s a, it’s called NPC. Is that the technology
0:42:24 that they use for this? NFC, I think. NFC, sorry. Which is like, it’s like a very, very, very tiny
0:42:29 chip. And then the rest is just like 3D printed plastic. And so there are like interesting ways
0:42:34 to make this fun. Like you can 3D print anything and just touch your phone. And so like, for example,
0:42:39 if you have a music event or not a music event, like a small club or something at your home,
0:42:42 like if you have like an event, something where it’s like a book club or you have 10 people coming,
0:42:45 you just touch your thing, everyone touched the other thing and that breaks your phone.
0:42:49 Like there are like a bunch of cool ways to make this fun. Wait, so that can break anybody’s phone
0:42:54 or just your phone? If you, if you have the app, I think it could break anyone’s phone.
0:42:57 Okay. Well, there’s a, there’s a next level to this.
0:43:01 Of course. Of course. But it’s actually quite cool. And then you have, you’ve seen the things
0:43:05 where you go into comedy shows and you put your phone in one of these like air tight bags.
0:43:10 I hate those things, but I understand. I hate them too. They’re at the local school that I live
0:43:14 at. They’re starting to do that for the school. So you have to leave your phone in these bags.
0:43:19 Yeah. My four year old is in TK and she’s told me her friend has a phone. She’s like,
0:43:24 yeah, she showed me the real phone in her bag. It’s hers. And I have somebody that I’m like,
0:43:28 we’re like friends with the parents. I’m like, do I just text the parents be like,
0:43:33 yo, you got your kid a phone or, or do I just text the kid and be like, is this a real phone?
0:43:41 What’s going on? That’s insane. Can I finish with just a pro tip, a life pro tip, a little
0:43:45 framework, a little bit of value here at the end. I feel like we gave some dessert and now it’s
0:43:52 time for a quick vegetable. All right. All right. So I have a friend who is named Stan and Stan
0:43:56 is a Silicon Valley OG. And what’s interesting about Stan is that
0:44:02 for many years, Mark Zuckerberg personally tried to recruit Stan and he always said,
0:44:06 no, no, no, no, no. And, and Zuck just kept reaching out, kept trying to recruit him and
0:44:11 eventually got Stan to join Facebook and he ended up running Messenger, the, the bit, you know,
0:44:17 the, the multi billion user product inside of Facebook. What does the recruitment from Zuck
0:44:21 look like? So he’s, you know, he’s not, uh, he just don’t want to kiss and tell. So he didn’t
0:44:26 give too many details and brag about it too much. But I got the sense that not only was he recruited,
0:44:30 but he had been, he had reached out to him many times across the years and eventually made him
0:44:35 an offer, you know, too good, so good he couldn’t refuse. And so he joins and I asked Stan and I
0:44:40 go, Stan, what are you like, why are you so good? And I was like, no, no, no, bad question. Let me
0:44:44 ask a better question. Like, what are you doing differently than the average person here in Silicon
0:44:49 Valley who has maybe the same skill set as you, but isn’t having the same result as you?
0:44:54 Are you asking why Zuck wanted him or why he’s had success throughout his entire career?
0:44:58 I knew Zuck wanted him. I didn’t ask why Zuck wanted him. I asked him specifically. I said,
0:45:02 why does somebody who, why are you having more success than the average person who has the
0:45:06 same skill set as you? Like, is it that you’re just working 10 times harder? Are you 10 times
0:45:09 smarter than somebody? Or do you, do you know something or do you do something? And he told
0:45:12 me one thing that I thought was interesting. He said a few things, but the one that stood out,
0:45:18 this was many years ago, by the way, so this still sticks with me, is he said, you know,
0:45:24 in Silicon Valley, we’re big on being data driven and data, data, data and data is awesome.
0:45:28 But he goes, what I found is that most people, when they look at data, they already have a story
0:45:32 in their head about what they think happens or what we need to do. And then they simply just
0:45:38 search for data that’s going to confirm that story, or they just like squeeze the data until it fits
0:45:43 that cookie cutter story that they want. He goes, I’m, he goes, I’m different because I just do
0:45:48 one thing different. I look at the data and I ask a simple question. What story is the data telling
0:45:56 me? And what story is the data telling me is a much better question. For example, we were just
0:46:00 looking at the Weight Watcher stock and I was like, what happened? And you go Oprah, I was like,
0:46:04 Oprah, what happened? And you go, Oprah happened. But if you actually look like the stock falls off
0:46:09 a cliff as soon as like the Osempic trend started, right? Like that was the, that was the date.
0:46:13 Oprah left, I think in like 2014 or something, she left like a long time ago, but the stock
0:46:18 really fell off a cliff when Osempic took off. And the data is telling us that something happened
0:46:24 in early 2023 that really hurt Weight Watcher stock. And then you go look at what actually
0:46:30 happened. And I’ve, I just felt this in one of my companies too, where we, in my e-com stores,
0:46:35 like we’ve been beating every month forecast. And then August was the first month we didn’t beat.
0:46:41 And I asked the team, I said, what happened? Am I CMO? We’ll give one answer. And our chief
0:46:45 product officer will give another answer. And then the website guy will give a different answer.
0:46:50 And how am I supposed to figure out what answer? And the way I figure it out is I tried, I just
0:46:56 told them, I said, post the data first, and then tell me the story. Cause what, what always happens
0:47:00 is they tell me the story, and then they’ll go find some data that might, some cherry pick a
0:47:04 bit of data that might support that, but they’ll leave out a bunch of other data.
0:47:06 Well, it’s like, you ever played those things where it’s like, find a word.
0:47:11 And like, it’s like the puzzles in the New York Times, like find, find this word.
0:47:15 It’s like, if I already know, I’m looking for this word. Yeah. Word is like, if I know I’m
0:47:18 looking for this word, I think I can find it. But if you tell me that I got to find a variety
0:47:23 of words, I might find those first. Exactly. Exactly. And so what we did, I just flipped it.
0:47:28 I just said, before you give me your, your idea of what happened, what went wrong. Can you first
0:47:32 just show me the picture of the data, like the full, full set of the data of what happened.
0:47:37 And then it should tell us a story. So then we just started asking the question, what data,
0:47:41 what story is the data telling us? And I think that that is just a much better way to approach
0:47:48 data decision making. And I think that is a great hack that this guy who’s had an amazing
0:47:52 success in his career says, you know, this is one thing I do differently that I think it leads to
0:47:57 a different result. Because every time I do that, you know, it’s like, how do you be right more often?
0:48:01 One way is just remove a bunch of your bad habits and bad biases that’s causing you to
0:48:05 make bad decisions. And I think this is a good habit that would lead you to make better decisions.
0:48:14 So I wanted to share that. That’s kind of a weird, that’s if, for you to think,
0:48:19 for him to think, why am I so successful? Not weird, weird’s the right word. That’s a very
0:48:24 particular. Well, I specifically asked, what are you doing differently? Not why are you so successful,
0:48:29 but what do you do that’s different than the average person who’s got the same skill set as
0:48:33 you? What is it that you do differently? So for example, I know that, you know, Sam, you’re a
0:48:37 great writer. I’d be like, you know, why are you a great writer? And you might say, well,
0:48:41 I practiced a bunch or I read or I naturally have a gift for it. A different question is,
0:48:46 what do you do differently than other people who also write blog posts or write newsletters?
0:48:53 What would your answer be? I potentially am significantly more honest than most people. And
0:48:59 I explain all of the bad sides and the good sides up front in a particular story, which makes people
0:49:04 like and trust me more. So like I try to be the opposite of sensational. Yeah, you wrote an email
0:49:10 to the mayor, and you said your honest thing was in a small corner of the internet, I’m popular.
0:49:15 I don’t know if that matters to you, but I’m trying to impress you because I don’t know if that
0:49:20 worked. But I’d like to say that I say that to impress you. Nobody would say in the email,
0:49:26 I say that to impress you. Obviously they do that to impress them, but nobody says that out loud.
0:49:32 I think your gift is that you are willing to say the honest part out loud and that that endears
0:49:36 people to you and that makes it more likable and that makes it more distinct and that makes it stand
0:49:41 out versus reasons that other people, their writing might stand out. So I think that’s a
0:49:46 great example of that question of what is it that you actually do that’s different
0:49:52 versus how do I become successful or how did you become successful? People have different,
0:49:54 they’ll give you a different answer depending on the question.
0:49:59 And I guess what I’m saying is it’s probably him weird is not the right word because that sounds
0:50:06 negative. What I mean is that’s such a particular and unexpected answer of like, oh, you just look
0:50:12 at the data and you’re like not judgmental about it versus coming to it with an emotion or a story
0:50:17 to prove. So it’s like you’re black and white about different information and you’re not
0:50:23 coming with an agenda. Right. It’s a weirdly specific answer. I agree. The caveat is this was
0:50:28 like 10 years ago when he told me this. And also, I bet if I asked him the same question today, he
0:50:32 would give me a different answer. Maybe that was just top of mind because of what was going on that
0:50:37 day in his world or what he had noticed recently. Why did you, well, why did you just remember this
0:50:42 now? Because I saw the problem pop up in my own company where I was like, oh, this is hard. I can’t
0:50:47 get to the truth because everybody already has a pre-baked answer. And then when I told him,
0:50:50 hey, can we figure out what went wrong? They say, yeah, I’m going to go figure it out. But really,
0:50:56 it’s just, oh, wow, they never changed the answer when I just said, hey, what went wrong?
0:50:59 And they say, can somebody dive in and they come back with the same answer every time?
0:51:03 It’s like, wow, what’s the point of diving in if you already had the answer? And then when you
0:51:08 dive in, you simply just go find one or two cherry-picked data points that support that.
0:51:12 And then if I go look and I say, well, is that really true? Because what about this?
0:51:16 And it kind of violates the narrative. So it’s more like, maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t
0:51:24 explain all of this, correct? And then they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s true. And so I need my own
0:51:28 team doing it. And I think in general, if more people did this, they would be more successful,
0:51:33 myself included. I’m guilty of this as well, where I have an immediate reaction of what we
0:51:38 should be doing or what’s bad about what we’re doing or what’s not working. And then I try to find
0:51:44 data or examples that support it versus first looking at the actual data and feedback and
0:51:51 then saying, what story is this telling me? When you go through that, how often do you question
0:52:01 if you are right or wrong or put differently? What level of certainty is your average big monthly
0:52:07 decision? That’s a great question. What percent certainty is my average monthly decision?
0:52:11 In the situations where I have data, because there’s two types of decisions. There’s data
0:52:17 where there’s decisions where we have information. And there’s decisions that will actually go
0:52:22 create information, meaning we’re only going to know this by trying this and that will gather
0:52:29 more information. Here’s what I mean. Every month or quarter or so, a business that is
0:52:35 in the 5 million, 10 million, 20, like some range where it’s like, all right, this definitely is
0:52:40 working, but I don’t know if it’s going to be massive, medium, or it could even go out of business
0:52:46 eventually. But there’s something here. So for those types of businesses, every quarter or month,
0:52:53 there’s a decision that can potentially change the trajectory entirely or not impact anything at all.
0:53:00 And I’ve noticed that it’s monthly or quarterly. And I asked myself wondering, before I was very
0:53:04 certain, like, if I do this, I’m going to do this, or we’re going to figure it out. Now,
0:53:10 I’m actually realizing the decisions I make for during those periods can actually be very
0:53:13 impactful, both in a negative and a bad way. Like, you can make a decision today that you
0:53:20 pay for in 18 or 24 months. And so I used to be very confident. Now, I’m less confident of like,
0:53:23 I think this, but I want everyone to know I don’t know anything. Right. So what I’m asking for you
0:53:29 is, do you come to these decisions with high certainty or low certainty? I don’t really think
0:53:35 about it like that. If I had to answer that part, it would probably be high certainty for the next
0:53:41 phase, the next chunk, meaning I know that I’ve looked at what the options are and what the
0:53:45 information we have is. And of those two things, and once I take those, you know, I have the menu
0:53:50 of options and I got the information that we have, I can make the right decision for this moment.
0:53:55 That doesn’t mean it’s going to end up being right. It means, given what I had, that had to
0:54:00 be the right decision. There was a only other suboptimal decisions from there. But there’s
0:54:04 still some probability that that’s not going to be true. But I couldn’t have known that because
0:54:08 I just didn’t have the information. I think I’ve done a good job of hitting the ball into the net
0:54:13 where I look back because I do this often. I look back and I say, could I have known
0:54:18 this? Or did I already know? Did I actually know deep down? And I ignored it. Or did I know,
0:54:24 or could I have known, but I rushed? And I have cut those down a lot, mostly honestly, because
0:54:30 I work with Ben and I talk things out loud. And when I’m talking out loud, I can literally hear
0:54:35 like, I can litigate against my point. I can hear the holes in my argument.
0:54:40 Right. And I’m comfortable enough with him to be able to be saying it out loud and not feel stupid
0:54:45 to mid-sentence, be like, but actually, I think that doesn’t matter at all. But actually, that might
0:54:51 not even be true. I might just be saying that. Or I’ll stop midway and just say, but honestly,
0:54:56 of all those things, the most important thing I said was this. And that actually wipes out all
0:55:02 the other shit. And so never mind. Let’s go for a no instead of a yes. And I’ll just edit it midair
0:55:07 because he makes me feel comfortable enough and already have enough trust built up where
0:55:12 it’s only about getting it right. There is 0% about appearing right, which in my other companies
0:55:18 before, I think it was much, much more tied to having to feel like I needed to maintain some
0:55:24 appearance of being smart and in charge and knowing things. And I wouldn’t litigate my own
0:55:29 thoughts. I would not cross-examine them enough. And I think that led to a lot of bad decisions
0:55:34 before. And the reason I’m bringing that up is I’m feeling this is a similar thing as I
0:55:38 get a little bit older and sometimes have more success and sometimes not.
0:55:44 What I’m learning is that there’s a million different ways to get different things done.
0:55:50 And they’re like, for example, we saw go viral this founder mode thing and everyone loved it.
0:55:54 And maybe that is right for certain people. I could point to many examples of successes that
0:56:02 are not that exact opposite. It violates exactly what that person is saying is the law. And as I
0:56:08 grow and start getting to some of these decisions, I’m learning a little bit. It’s more becoming
0:56:12 them. I don’t know anything. Let’s just do what feels good. And so I guess it’s like surrendering
0:56:19 to the world of like, I know nothing. You’re kind of back to where you were when you were 18 years
0:56:23 old of like, I don’t know the right way. Whereas when you’re a little bit younger, you read all
0:56:27 these books. Like according to the startup, what’s that startup book about lean MVP?
0:56:33 Lean startup. According to the lean startup, we have to do this, this, and this. And so you just
0:56:37 do that. And sometimes it works. But there’s just, there’s so many different ways to make the same
0:56:42 thing work. Because of that, I want to get some of these decisions. I’m significantly less confident
0:56:44 in having the right answer, but I’m kind of okay with it.
0:56:47 Well, I think there’s a difference in confidence and certain. So I’m definitely less certain.
0:56:50 That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m less confident, meaning I can be confident that this is the
0:56:56 right decision to make. But I can agree that, Hey, there’s low, low certainty here that this is going
0:57:02 to work or that this is correct. One of the things that’s helped me is to figure out some words to
0:57:07 describe this. Because what I found was that one of the big leaks was that I was miscommunicating
0:57:12 my own certainty to others, meaning I talk in a very confident way, or I’ll say, let’s do this.
0:57:17 And even though in my mind, I’m like, let’s do this. And then we’ll know by next Friday or we’ll
0:57:21 try it three times. And then we’ll know after three times, whether this was the right path or
0:57:25 the wrong path. But I want to go try it three times, right? I want to go give it three weeks.
0:57:29 So I want to go give it three months. I know that for certain, but that was coming across to
0:57:33 other people like this is the way and this is the right answer. And then they got very,
0:57:36 they got a lot of whiplash when that would change. And I’m like, why are you getting whiplash?
0:57:41 We were looking for, we wanted to try it to know if this was the correct path or not. And
0:57:45 turns out we’re going to turn. And so I found that I use this phrase a lot now, which is,
0:57:48 let’s turn over another card, which is like a poker term, right? So it’s like,
0:57:53 in poker, you operate with, you have your hand, first you have your two cards. So you just know,
0:57:57 is it, should I fold here, or is it worth, worth seeing the flop? So I’ll say that let’s see the
0:58:01 flop here. What’s the flop is, let’s take the call with the person, let’s take the meeting,
0:58:07 let’s make the prototype, let’s draft the thing. Let’s write down, let’s, let’s write down the
0:58:11 plan. And then let’s see after that, if we want to do it or not. And then sometimes we’ll say,
0:58:15 you know what, let’s turn over another card, which means let’s get to the next milestone
0:58:20 of information to get to a point where we will have more certainty of whether this is the correct
0:58:25 thing to do or not. And that language at least taught kind of like my little team, which is,
0:58:31 it’s, they know now how much, like, yes, we are doing this, we’re committed to doing this step,
0:58:35 but we’re not committed to doing the next 1000 steps, because we’re going to turn over another
0:58:38 card and we’re going to find out some more information, we’re going to find out, right?
0:58:43 Oh, we think this guy’s really great. Should we hire him? Let’s turn over another card. Let’s do
0:58:47 some reference checks. Let’s give him the project, right? We don’t need to debate more. We’ve already
0:58:51 debated as much as we need to, given the information we have. At this point, it’s about getting more
0:58:56 information. And the other thing that’s helped a lot is be specific about what information. So
0:59:02 often Ben will hit me with a like, well, let’s see. Or like, yeah, I just want to like look into it
0:59:07 more or like, I want to try it out. And then we’ll just pause be like, cool, what, what specific
0:59:10 information do you think you lack right now? Like if we don’t have enough information to make a
0:59:15 decision, what is the information we need? And then you often realize you’re like,
0:59:20 and actually, it’s just I didn’t feel confident enough to make a decision right now. I don’t
0:59:24 even really know what I’m looking for. So even if I spend another few weeks thinking about this or
0:59:28 exploring this, I’m going to do it haphazardly because I don’t have clarity on even what I’m
0:59:32 looking for. I don’t know what question I’m trying to answer here. So therefore, probably
0:59:36 going to have probably going to still be as uncertain three weeks from now as I am today.
0:59:40 But when you kind of try to pin down like, well, what do we really need to make this decision or
0:59:44 what extra information do we need to know? You might be able to like make this decision that
0:59:52 afternoon. Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m become old. But like, I thoroughly enjoy it. Like,
0:59:58 like, these are the things I think about lately. It’s just like, am I making the right decision?
1:00:04 You know, like, what’s that one smart dude say a life unexamined is a worthless life?
1:00:12 What’s that dude’s name Socrates? And so I’m like examining like some of my decisions and things
1:00:17 like that. Anyway, I can talk about this stuff all day, but it gets pretty nerdy. I think I have
1:00:21 another little exercise for you. I do this thing. It’s on the wall over here. You can’t see it. But
1:00:27 I take every month and I just make a box. So it’s like a 12 box grid. And in it, we’ll look back
1:00:32 and we’ll say, okay, last six months, a 12 box. So it’s like January, February, each, each month
1:00:37 is a box. Okay, so I just make it make a calendar looking thing. And then what we do is we just
1:00:42 go and we look and we just say, what’s the one thing we did or like, what are the things we did
1:00:49 that month that were the like big, the things that actually made an impact? We worked, you know,
1:00:54 24 days out of the month or whatever, we did so many things. But like, when you zoom out,
1:00:56 and you just look back, you’re like, what were the things that actually mattered that month?
1:01:03 Similarly, we’ll say, and in that could be a decision, it could be, you know, a product you
1:01:09 launched or a thing you did, it could be a buy sell decision, it could be a hiring, firing decision,
1:01:14 it could be whatever, right? But it’s all big font. So it’s like, it’s got to be something
1:01:17 you can read from like, you know, 10 feet away, meaning you can’t just write in there your entire
1:01:23 to-do list. And when we do that, it’s amazing, because every month has like, an embarrassingly
1:01:27 low number of things that actually mattered, like one to three. And everything else was just
1:01:33 the cost of doing business. Everything else was just the noise that it took to get to those one
1:01:40 to three things that even mattered in a month. And when you do that, you start to, but the good
1:01:44 thing about going back and looking at it is, the more you go back and look at it, the more that
1:01:48 in the moment, you start to realize like, oh, this is probably going to be the thing for the
1:01:52 month that actually matters. Let me really like focus and get this part right, because it’s probably
1:01:57 going to make up for like all the rest of the random activity, the random motion that I’ve
1:02:02 been doing this month, because you start to see patterns of like, what even could make it into
1:02:07 this box? And, you know, those are the things that matter. Okay, this month, this seems like it’s
1:02:10 probably going to be the thing that we’ll end up writing in the box for the month.
1:02:12 And you never write it before?
1:02:17 Well, I don’t know before exactly, right? Like, I just on a given day, I kind of know what I’m
1:02:22 focusing on in a given week, I kind of know what would make for a good week. But when I zoom out,
1:02:30 it’s like, you know, the decision to invest in X or the decision to bring on this person,
1:02:36 this trip that we took that had those five meetings in person that would not have been
1:02:42 the same over zoom, you know, spending that two days with that person who we think is like just
1:02:46 awesome value add to our life is such a fun, awesome person, and going deep with that person
1:02:52 rather than keeping it surface level, like little things like that, or it’s the decision to stop
1:02:56 working on X project was the main thing we did that month. And that was huge, because had we not
1:03:00 done that, we wouldn’t have had the time and the bandwidth to do this thing the next month.
1:03:06 So it’s usually things of that at that level. That’s pretty good. I’m gonna start doing that.
1:03:10 Is that it? Is that the pod? Are we doing a Sarah’s list on Wednesday?
1:03:16 Next episode, we’re gonna do Sarah’s list. I got I got probably six or seven companies right now.
1:03:22 That I think are good contenders for it. And if you don’t know Sarah’s list, we’ll do the teaser
1:03:29 here. Sam’s wife, Sarah blew my mind. Me and Sam were entrepreneurs, we’re taking maximum risk,
1:03:33 we’re living off of nothing, you know, like Sam spent himself like 20 grand a year or something
1:03:38 like that at the time. And I just looked at what we were doing, which was this kind of like
1:03:44 one in 20 shot of success, mostly eating shit every day, had to be innovative, had to take
1:03:50 high risk. And then we looked at Sarah, who joined, I think Airbnb and Facebook companies that were
1:03:56 like, we I could have told you in my sleep that those were winners. And she joined as like employee
1:04:01 400 or 1000 or something like that, like not even betting on it when it was the first 10 employees.
1:04:07 And the basic math was that if you get a job that’s what to say, I don’t know her number,
1:04:10 so I’m just going to make this up. You get a job where you’re making,
1:04:15 let’s call it $150,000 a year based salary, and then they give you a stock option grant that’s
1:04:23 going to give you $40,000 a year of stock on top of that. So you get, let’s say a $200,000 ish
1:04:31 stock package that if that company just basically four X’s, five X’s in a four year time span,
1:04:35 you’ve made a million dollars without taking any of the risk that we were taking as entrepreneurs.
1:04:40 And she did it multiple times. She did that multiple times. And we realized, wow,
1:04:44 there is a set of companies that are like, they’re past the point of like,
1:04:48 they’re out of there going out of business, they’re out of the death trap of or, you know,
1:04:53 like the highly likely to die, you know, area. These are great businesses that will just keep
1:04:57 growing, keep compounding. You could join them today as employee 500, and you will become a
1:05:02 millionaire without doing any of the entrepreneurial stuff. If you could just identify the kind of
1:05:07 like 10 companies a year that fit that mold. And so we take a stab at identifying those 10
1:05:11 companies. And that’s, that’s what we call Sarah’s list. And that episode, we’re going to record
1:05:18 Wednesday. So I got to prepare for it. I got a couple, but it’s really hard. This is actually
1:05:22 a hard list to make because I don’t want to like, you’re not exactly giving advice, but
1:05:26 some people take it as such. So I want to make sure that it’s good. Well, we’ve also done the
1:05:31 look back at the last time we did it. And I think our hit, we’ll do it again. We’ll go, we’ll go look
1:05:35 at, we’ll go look at an update, see what was the hit rate of the ones we did last time. We do not
1:05:40 proclaim to be, you know, that these are all going to work. No way, right? That’s not, that’s not
1:05:45 it. And the hit rates are good because we pick things that are obvious and they get big and it’s
1:05:50 like, duh, it’s all relative to the current valuation of the company. Right. So, oh yeah,
1:05:55 that was already a billion dollar company. Cool. It’s six now. So it’s six X, right? Your $200,000
1:06:00 stock package is six X now. All right. That’s today’s pod. We’ll talk to you Wednesday.
1:06:08 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days
1:06:13 on on the road. Let’s travel never looking back.
1:06:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:09 It’s a product I want to use, and I think it’s a business that could be kind of big.
0:00:10 Revolutionary maybe.
0:00:24 Yeah. You probably saw this because it’s been going viral over and over and over again. And I
0:00:29 always look for products that have this playground virality, meaning anytime somebody shows you
0:00:33 that you’re using it or they share a picture of it, it immediately sparks a big reaction.
0:00:39 And so I saw, I’m going to share these three posts, so there’s like, check these out. The first one
0:00:45 is this Reddit post. And so I go on Reddit and I see this post, and it’s in the r slash. Damn,
0:00:49 that’s interesting. Subreddit, which is one of my favorite subreddits. And it’s basically
0:00:57 a video of somebody inside this venue. And it’s like a sports bar meets IMAX. So you’re sitting
0:01:02 there, you’ve got a beer, you’re just hanging out with your friends. But there’s a giant screen,
0:01:07 it’s almost a dome that’s over you, where it looks like your front row at a football game in
0:01:12 this case. And they’re cheering and their crowds went crazy. But it looks like you’re in the stadium,
0:01:16 but you’re not in the stadium. You’re just in a bar. And this is called COSM, or as I’m calling
0:01:21 it, the mini sphere. Some people have probably heard, you’ve probably seen the sphere in Las
0:01:28 Vegas, this giant, huge dome that’s, you know, in the middle of Las Vegas. And it’s this insane
0:01:33 $2.3 billion project that is, you know, just remarkable. It looks like it’s kind of cool.
0:01:37 It’s like one of those things where it’s like humans built the pyramids, and then we built the
0:01:42 sphere. It’s like it is marvel of engineering and technology. Well, the COSM is basically a
0:01:50 mini sphere. So it’s like a 2000, you know, seat venue that you can use for sports games and all
0:01:54 the stuff. And now they got a couple of them popping up. I think this is really cool. I think
0:01:59 it rides on a bunch of big trends. So it’s, you know, out of home entertainment, I think is a
0:02:04 big deal. I think people are looking for places to congregate, to drink, to eat, and to enjoy
0:02:10 themselves. And movie theaters are sort of stale. Like I think streaming has sort of kicked movie
0:02:16 theaters ass in a way. And now this is the out of home way of punching back. This thing, I think,
0:02:21 is going to be a much better way to watch live events, live sports than sitting at home.
0:02:26 All right. I want to tell you about a really cool feature in Hubspot that I don’t think most
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0:02:52 light on which leads that you have or most likely to purchase. And then they have the analytic suite.
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0:03:05 check out the content hub and marketing hub for Hubspot. You can visit Hubspot.com to get started
0:03:12 for free. Back to this episode. Yeah. So basically, if you’re listening, if you see the photos, it’s
0:03:18 as if they, so they build this massive, it’s not even a bar. It looks like, it looks like a sign
0:03:22 center. It’s like a huge building that they’re building just for this thing. And you go in,
0:03:27 and it’s like as, did you ever go as a kid to the sign center where it has the, it was called
0:03:31 omnimax? Yeah. Like a planetarium where it screens all above you. That’s basically what it is.
0:03:36 But they had to raise $250 million to build this because it’s like a massive. No, they just raised
0:03:40 that. So they just raised that a few months ago. They built the first two without, or they built the
0:03:46 first one at least without that because that was in July. Who funded that? So the story of this is
0:03:54 there’s a guy who’s behind it. And he started one of the biggest real estate property management
0:03:58 software companies, I think called Real Page. The guy’s name is Win. Oh yeah. Something Win.
0:04:03 So he has this thing called Real Page. Real Page got bought by Thomas Bravo for like $10 billion.
0:04:08 This guy made a couple billion dollars out of it. He then starts his own kind of,
0:04:13 by the way, you might be confusing the name. Steve Win is the guy from Las Vegas, the casino guy.
0:04:17 Yeah. I think this guy’s name is also Win, but it’s W I N N. Oh, really? Yeah. So
0:04:24 it’s a different Steve Win that is, that is behind this one. And so he, he’s got this
0:04:28 venture capital firm, Marysome Capital. So he basically, what he did was actually producing.
0:04:33 So you said it’s like a planetarium. No, no, no. It is a planetarium. Do you know the backstory
0:04:39 of this? No, I, no. So he went and bought three companies. So he bought the companies that make
0:04:44 the science planetarium things for every, you know, museum or whatever, like, you know,
0:04:48 science place. So they, he bought that company. Then he bought another company that, you know,
0:04:53 did the LED screen part of that. Then he bought another company that was like the cameras and
0:04:58 technology part of it. So it’s a roll up of three or four companies now at this point that he did.
0:05:04 And because of that they have, you know, they’re basically the monopoly on, I mean, it’s not a
0:05:08 monopoly as in nobody else can do it, but they’re the biggest player in developing this type of
0:05:13 technology, these types of screens. Wow. What he did was realize, hey, this is cool, but it doesn’t
0:05:18 have to just be for, for the planetarium. Like you could use this for sports. If you send your own
0:05:26 video crew to go film, like the sort of court side or field side seats at these different venues.
0:05:29 And so they do, they’re basically a full stack thing. So they have the rights with the leagues,
0:05:34 like UFC, for example, they have the rights with the UFC, they have the rights to certain football
0:05:39 leagues and they go, they send a full production crew there. So it’s not just what you’re, it’s not
0:05:45 just what you see on TV, but bigger. It’s its own thing. And so they have like crews that are almost
0:05:49 like VR where you see like, they’re right there by the end zone. And then as the guy crosses, the
0:05:53 camera’s turning with them. And then they have a live production team that’s basically cutting
0:05:57 between the different cameras that they have to show what’s going to be on that huge screen.
0:06:01 And so that’s how they actually made this. That’s the backstory of how they did this.
0:06:07 That’s, that’s amazing. I did not realize that that’s how it started. I really want to go to one
0:06:11 of these. I’ve had a friend who, his name’s hat. I think you, you know, hat. He went to the one in
0:06:15 Dallas and he sent me a video of it. I do not have a friend named hat. Who’s, who is our friend named
0:06:23 hat? He, he messaged us about it. He hosted the Dallas MFM friendly, your friendly with a guy
0:06:29 named hat. And he, he sent me a video and he was like, Hey, I’m in Houston. And it was some sports
0:06:33 games, some sport game. And I was like, that game’s not in Houston. And he’s like, no, no, no, this
0:06:39 is a screen. Right. I’m not here right now. This is a screen. And I genuinely thought he was there.
0:06:44 And so like I would pay, I’m, I, as soon as UFC is on this, I’m going to be paying money.
0:06:51 It is this weekend, actually. So this weekend’s sphere, the fight card they’re having at the
0:06:55 sphere, I believe is going to be shown in the Cosm. So they, they basically have a, a mix of
0:07:00 things. Cause it’s not just sports. So there’s sports, but then they got Cirque du Soleil. And
0:07:04 so if you want to go see, Oh, but you want to see, Oh, like in the best seat that ever existed,
0:07:09 plus the backstage, plus follow one of the performers, plus in the air, you can go watch
0:07:13 Oh, at this thing. And so I was doing the math on this and I don’t have the exact numbers here,
0:07:18 but here’s, here’s the rough math on a venue like this. So they have general admission,
0:07:22 which is kind of like standing room only. You can literally, there’s people just sitting on the
0:07:26 floor and those are 22 bucks. So super cheap. And they’re going to make the money on those people
0:07:32 through, you know, beer and French fries or whatever. Then they have the like booths or tables
0:07:37 type of thing, which is each seat there is kind of like between 50 and 200 bucks, depending on the
0:07:41 day and the event. And they can fit, you know, a thousand general admission and a thousand, you
0:07:46 know, premium people into this thing. But they have shows all the time because they have like
0:07:51 the Cirque du Soleil thing, they have this like art exhibit thing, they have a orbital thing that’s
0:07:56 space, then they have sports. And so they have 64 events this month, barely in the next coming
0:08:02 month. And I don’t know what, I don’t know how, you know, what the occupancy is like, but it’s
0:08:07 pretty easy to see that this thing is probably somewhere between, you know, four to six million
0:08:14 a month in revenue right now, not counting all the alcohol sales. So, you know, that that might be
0:08:19 double, you know, over there. So I would say low end, maybe three to four million on tickets.
0:08:24 And on the high and then, you know, double that once you once you factor in all the food and
0:08:29 alcohol purchases. I talked to this guy the other day for money wise, we did this podcast with him.
0:08:36 And he basically made something like $25 million. He like owned a tech company. He sold it. He got
0:08:42 $25 million in cash. He still owns $25 million in equity in the business. And he’s based out of
0:08:49 Canada, inside of a 2000 person town. And he sold the business, made his money, whatever, and he
0:08:54 still has his office in that small town. And he said in the small town of 2000 people, he employs
0:08:59 roughly 50 of them. And he owns the fanciest office building on the main street. And they have barbecues
0:09:04 and shit like that every week where the community can come and hang out, whatever. And it made me
0:09:09 sad that I make money on the internet and that I make money remotely with the remote staff,
0:09:13 because it’s hard to see the magic that you’re working so hard to create. Or hopefully your
0:09:18 output is magic where you create products and services that people love. And it made me really
0:09:22 bummed. And I was like, I want to get into like more physical stuff or to be able to like physically
0:09:27 see my creation, even if it’s just like employees in an office. And when I see products like Qasim,
0:09:31 it seems trivial. Like, oh, we’re just doing it just like a place where people can drink beers and
0:09:37 watch sport. But that’s it’s more than that. And to see this as your output of like, I’m creating
0:09:42 something that is physical that I can go and see and be proud of while people are watching and enjoying
0:09:47 it. I’m envious of that as someone who does mostly digital sport, drink beer, but they can watch
0:09:55 sport drink beer in front of a huge screen, a big ass screen. No, I know what you mean. I would feel
0:10:01 that way. But I’ve done a restaurant. I have an e-commerce thing that has physical products.
0:10:04 And I’ve also done some events. And every time I’ve done any of those things,
0:10:10 I hate it. I’m like, oh, my God, this would be so much easier. I would enjoy my life so much more.
0:10:15 If I could, I am so much happier sitting behind the computer on my laptop in my boxers.
0:10:22 You know, I told you the Peter Levels photo of him sitting on a couch with his neck scrunched
0:10:28 in the worst posture, no shirt, boxers, laptop on. That to me is the Jordan logo. Dude, that is
0:10:34 the Jordan logo. That is somebody dunking from the free throw line of life. And that’s what I want.
0:10:38 I don’t want any of this shit where I have to like have a brick and mortar venue. I know it
0:10:45 sounds romantic, but no. Look, you’re in luck. That’s the perfect segue to today’s sponsor.
0:10:50 Because look, if you like to create content, doing what you and I do of having a podcast,
0:10:54 it’s kind of hard because you have to have like a schedule all the time and you got to go and
0:10:58 perform. Doing video is even worse because video is like impossible to edit and it’s just a pain
0:11:05 in the ass. Writing is without a doubt the best in terms of having the best lifestyle because
0:11:08 you can just write late at night. You don’t have to be dressed. You can do it in your bed, whatever.
0:11:12 It’s also the best because it might be, a newsletter might be, one of the most profitable
0:11:16 creator outlets. I think there is in terms of like CPM and willingness to
0:11:21 people to buy subscriptions. Can we tell the story of when you were doing the hustle? I remember
0:11:27 you had a blog and you were doing these viral blog posts that were these like guys, you know,
0:11:31 micro dosing LSD. You like paid some, some dude like 200 bucks to micro dose LSD.
0:11:36 Another guy was living on Soylent for 30 days straight and like documenting it every day.
0:11:39 And these posts were getting millions of views and then you came into my office and you’re like,
0:11:43 yeah, I’m switching to a newsletter. I was like, newsletter, that’s like old. What do you mean?
0:11:46 What are you talking about? And you were way ahead of the curve and you told me, you were like,
0:11:52 yeah, I think these things make like 50 bucks per thousand impressions, like $50 CPM.
0:11:56 And I was like, no way, dude, a YouTube video, a video,
0:12:02 like video ads got to be higher. Like YouTube, a YouTube creator is making like $4 CPM.
0:12:07 Why would a newsletter make $50 CPM? And you were absolutely right. Of course, you know,
0:12:12 six years later, I started a newsletter company doing the same exact model for the same exact
0:12:16 reason and ended up, you know, selling it, you know, just the same way you did. It’s amazing
0:12:22 how well that business model works. And if you’re going to do a newsletter, where should you do it?
0:12:24 Here, you should do it be high, of course. And we’re going to give that plug, but I want to give
0:12:28 you the math behind the thing that you just talked about, which was basically, let’s say that when
0:12:32 I was doing those newsletters or those blogs, let’s just say that like one or two went viral
0:12:37 and I would get like 250,000 visitors that month or 200,000 visitors that month. I made like a
0:12:43 thousand dollars. Let’s say I had a newsletter that had a hundred thousand subscribers and I
0:12:48 wrote to them daily. That’s five grand a day that I would make if I could get $50 CPM, which I was.
0:12:55 Exactly. So it’s like the math was like, so I literally went from like 5,000 to $300,000 per
0:12:58 month. Right. And in one, you have to pray to the viral gods to go viral. In the other, you
0:13:03 basically just, you told me, you called it your pirate ship. You’re like, I’m a pirate. This is
0:13:07 our pirate ship. And every new email subscriber is a little wind in our sales. And I love that
0:13:10 metaphor. And I think it’s the same way that I know a ton of people who are on Beehive that have
0:13:17 like a newsletter with 10,000, 12,000, 22,000, 32,000 readers that are, it’s great. They get to
0:13:21 put out to the world their thoughts, their ideas, and they get paid to do it. I think it’s an
0:13:26 amazing thing. So check it out. If you’re looking for a place to do a newsletter, beehive.com, it’s
0:13:32 B-E-E-H-I-I-V. The worst thing about them is the spelling of the domain. Everything else is flawless.
0:13:37 Can I tell you something that’s going to sound stupid and ridiculous, but I think it’s true
0:13:40 and it’s going to make a lot of money? Stupid and ridiculous, but I think it’s true. It’s going
0:13:44 to make a lot of money. Damn, dude, you just do a personality test. That was awesome.
0:13:48 Describe yourself. Is that your bio?
0:13:56 Yes. There’s people who are like E-F-G’s or whatever. I’m like, an I-D-O-I-T.
0:14:00 It’s a new Myers-Briggs, dude. That was awesome.
0:14:08 I-D-I-O-T. Oh, what are you? Oh, are you an M-O-R-O-N?
0:14:17 Listen to this. So you know how like, let me think. What’s the best way to phrase this?
0:14:22 Because we’re coming from a moron’s perspective. All right. There’s something that I think has
0:14:28 not been touched on forever, or at least in the startup world. It bothers me. The reason why it
0:14:33 bothers me is because Tesla, when that came about, that was like, oh my god, this is like the craziest
0:14:38 thing I’ve ever known, whatever touches. But it has worked and now Rivian and there’s other now
0:14:42 car startups. Same with SpaceX. SpaceX, when they started, it was like, this is ridiculous. You
0:14:46 can’t make a hardware company that goes to space. That’s ridiculous. Now we have Andrew. We have a
0:14:49 bunch of other stuff like that. And they’re getting funding and they’re proving that like,
0:14:56 this is a good idea. There’s a category of products inside your home. You probably have
0:15:02 used this product today that it boggles my mind why there’s no innovation. So to put this in
0:15:07 perspective, I believe, all right, so there’s about 15 million cars sold per year. There’s
0:15:14 about 13 million units of this product sold per year. Basically, everyone in America has them.
0:15:21 They cost thousands of dollars. The lifespan of these products is like five years. And that is
0:15:27 the washer and dryer. It boggles my mind while we have not seen more innovation with the washer
0:15:32 and dryer. And yes, I’m going to say I say washer because with an R, that’s a weird Midwestern accent.
0:15:36 I’m going to get that out of the way because people are going to make fun of me. But what’s been killing
0:15:39 me is and I’ve said this for years that there’s not a good two and one washer and dryer. So this
0:15:43 company called LG, they came out with this like washer and dryer the other day that it’s a two
0:15:48 and one washer and dryer. And it was on the Wall Street Journal and there’s videos on YouTube
0:15:52 talking about this washer and dryer. These nerds like me who are like into this technology,
0:15:57 they’re like going bananas that this technology has actually is actually coming to fruition,
0:16:02 which basically being the main critique of the washer and dryer and one is that it was really
0:16:07 hard to create a so when you have a washer, that means it has to be water sealed. But when you
0:16:11 have something that’s water sealed, it’s hard to increase the temperature. So how do you put
0:16:14 heat in there to dry your clothing? And that technology is actually really hard. But these
0:16:18 guys have actually like they’re slowly getting around to where it’s actually working. And
0:16:25 it’s amazing how big some of these businesses are that sell just mostly washer and dryer. So if
0:16:31 you look at Whirlpool, I believe Whirlpool is publicly traded. Last year, they had $22 billion
0:16:37 in sales and about half of that revenue was from washer and dryers. And what’s crazy to me is
0:16:42 that that’s compared to Rivian, which is a venture startup. Now I think it’s publicly traded $2
0:16:48 billion a year in sales. And so like it’s crazy to me that a lot of these sexier industries in the
0:16:53 hardware space, cars, rockets, self-defense are getting funded and are like popular. But the
0:16:59 washer and dryer in particular, I’m making a prediction that in the next 10 years, maybe 15,
0:17:03 we’re going to see a lot of movement in the space. And I think the appetite is big. And I’ll give you
0:17:08 another example. There’s this company called Impulse Labs. Have you heard of Impulse Labs?
0:17:12 No, I’ve never heard of them. So Impulse Labs. And you can make the same case that I made for
0:17:17 washer and dryers. You can make that case for ovens or stove tops. But if you look at stove tops,
0:17:23 the majority of homes in America have electric stove tops. And electric stove tops are a huge
0:17:28 pain in the ass because the way they work, I believe, is that there’s basically only one
0:17:33 temperature. And so it’s like an on or an off. And so when you use an electric stove top, even
0:17:36 though you put it on high, that just means that it’s going to self-regulate to where it’s going
0:17:40 to stay on for a certain amount of time and then turn off for a few seconds and then turn back on
0:17:44 and then turn back off to a point where it’s high. Then with medium, it’s going to turn off for longer.
0:17:49 And then you don’t mean it’s going to like try and stay at that same time. That’s actually
0:17:53 like makes a huge difference in your cooking if you’re into like cooking nice meals.
0:17:57 And it’s a huge pain in the ass. And so these guys called Impulse Labs, they have built this
0:18:02 technology to where you have a battery that’s charging all of the time and that battery when
0:18:07 you want to use your stove, it like turbocharges your stove top so it keeps the heat at a steady
0:18:13 temperature and it gets hot really, really fast. And so they’ve launched these new stove tops.
0:18:17 And when I hear their argument about how big this business can be, I kind of have bought into like,
0:18:22 I think this actually can work. Now the downside is that you have to raise hundreds of millions of
0:18:27 dollars potentially. But when you’re thinking about stove tops and washer and dryers, these are
0:18:35 actually really, really big markets. Like similar size of car companies, but are drastically under
0:18:41 funded, potentially have less competition than a lot of these other industries because there’s not
0:18:45 a lot of startups attacking this. Well, I think this is pretty interesting, but I’m going to poke
0:18:50 a few holes in your argument. There’s many, but this argument that I presented, it’s like,
0:18:53 we’re going to call this string cheese. Swiss cheese. I think it’s just the way you look.
0:19:01 No, it’s string cheese. There’s ways around it. I’ll pull back some holes in this string cheese
0:19:08 here. Let’s keep the analogy going. So the problem with the kind of rockets and/or cars, and let’s just
0:19:13 take cars for example, I think the reason that Rivian and Tesla have so much, had so much heat
0:19:18 when they came out, even though they weren’t selling that many units was people see that their,
0:19:21 first of all, cars are much more expensive than washers and dryers. So that’s the first thing.
0:19:26 Oh yeah, that’s true. It’s multiple of maybe 10x higher price per unit. So yes,
0:19:30 they sell the same number of units, but at least 10x higher, maybe 20x higher in a lot of cases.
0:19:35 On top of that, you buy multiple of them. So like, I don’t know when you get, like, I haven’t
0:19:40 replaced a washer and dryer in five years since I’ve been living in a place. Have you lived in
0:19:43 one home for one place? Probably not for more than five years. Have you lived in one house for five
0:19:47 years? But is that the shelf life of these things? You have to replace them after five years?
0:19:55 Ish. Okay, gotcha. The other part of it that I think is hard is, with Tesla and Rivian, I think
0:20:01 the thesis is that all cars eventually go electric. So you basically take the entire fleet of cars,
0:20:05 and you say these are all going to have to switch to electric, and that the traditional car makers
0:20:08 are not going to be, these guys will figure out how to ramp production before the traditional
0:20:12 car makers figure out how to go electric. And I don’t know if that’s proven out to be true or not.
0:20:17 I mean, Tesla has obviously beaten the traditional car makers, and I think Tesla is worth more than
0:20:22 like all of the other, you know, next five car makers combined type of thing. It’s ridiculous.
0:20:28 And whereas I don’t think the two and one necessarily, maybe it’s true that two and one
0:20:32 basically replaces all, all combos, I’m not sure. The last thing I would say is that a lot of these
0:20:37 have like switching costs. So for example, you know, the stove top, even if I like it, I’m not
0:20:41 going to rip out my stove to do this, it’s only going to be let’s say new builds that are going
0:20:46 to put something like this in like this stove top. Whereas with a car, the switching cost is
0:20:52 lower because I can always get a second car, I can, I can trade cars, it’s not the same as like
0:20:56 ripping up my kitchen and her to get these. So I think that’s the hard part about some of these is
0:21:02 you have a lot of capital and a lot of difficulty, but some pay out, you know, 10 or 100x.
0:21:07 And that’s why the funding goes to the space companies goes to the military, you know,
0:21:11 weapons companies and goes to the car companies before it’s going to go to some of these.
0:21:16 That being said, I have the, I have the June thing. I have the June oven. And
0:21:23 I got to say it’s good, but it’s complete overkill. And so I think the hard part of this is like,
0:21:26 like, I don’t know if you’ve ever used it, but there’s a camera inside of it. So you put
0:21:33 a bagel inside and it just says, wait, wait, wait, I got it. Bagel. And I’m like, yeah, cool,
0:21:37 still get a push toast. Like the fact that this camera was in here that recognized the bagel
0:21:44 is like a cool demo, but ultimately like not that important of a feature compared to, you know,
0:21:48 just like not being a thousand dollars, right? I think the June oven is like a thousand dollars
0:21:53 or more. So yeah, I’m not super convinced on these, but I do like where your head’s at, which is
0:21:59 what are these sleepy industries that need innovation where size is there, sleepiness is
0:22:04 there, but the innovation is super low that in general is a good place to go if you’re really
0:22:08 determined and can make some shit happen. You know who kicks ass in one of these places is
0:22:12 Shark Ninja. Have you heard of Shark Ninja? Like they make Ninja and Shark. It’s two different
0:22:16 brands, but under one company, Shark Ninja. I believe it’s a boot shop company. It started in
0:22:22 1994. It got bought and went public, but within six years, they were doing 100 million in revenue,
0:22:28 which in within the year eight, they were doing $250 million in revenue based out of Boston,
0:22:34 American company. The products that they make amazing. They have made some of the best products.
0:22:39 So like their vacuum is amazing. I own the creamy, which is like the greatest thing ever.
0:22:44 They helped innovate and create the air fryer. Some of these appliance businesses have been
0:22:50 shockingly good and surprisingly bootstrapped. Well, you know, my favorite one of these that’s like
0:22:57 not as hard to do, but also kind of a sleepy industry is Hexclad. Do you have Hexclad? Do you
0:23:03 have any other pans? I’m thinking about buying some. So commit to me why I should buy them.
0:23:05 Well, dude, I don’t know. I think, you know, one of the things here is like
0:23:11 customer has like a different like awareness and sophistication level. So I don’t actually
0:23:15 know what would make a great pan if there, I’m sure there’s people out there who are like, no,
0:23:20 no, no, only cast iron or only this type of pan or it’s all marketing, whatever. But I’m in the
0:23:25 bucket. That’s like the fat part of the bell curve where it’s like, yeah, marketing just kind
0:23:32 of works on me. I saw that Gordon Ramsay invested $100 million into Hexclad, which is a stunning
0:23:38 amount of money. And how does Gordon Ramsay have $100 million to invest in the startup?
0:23:44 Let me make sure that I have this right. So I guess it’s his studio. So Studio Ramsay Global,
0:23:49 a partnership between Fox and Gordon Ramsay is investing 100 million into Hexclad. So not
0:23:53 him personally, let’s say, but him and his venture studio or whatever his venture venture firm.
0:23:57 Their website is beautiful. And I want to buy Hexclad right now because of their website.
0:24:01 So I bought it. The pans are pretty good. I don’t know, again, if they’re the best pans ever,
0:24:08 but they’re, they’re good. And the branding is great. The visual of it. So like the pan itself
0:24:13 has little hexagons as the bottom of it. So it’s an instantly recognizable product. Like when I
0:24:17 look in my cabinet, I have like all my generic pans. And then I can literally just see the
0:24:21 difference of a Hexclad pan and it’s like ties to the name. And then you have Gordon Ramsay as
0:24:27 the influencer behind this. And it’s just pans, dude. It’s like a sleepy industry that everybody
0:24:33 needs. It’s high value, high AOV product. And these guys crush, they do hundreds of millions in
0:24:38 revenue. And, you know, they’re sold in Costco. They have like amazing distribution. I think
0:24:45 they’re one of the biggest Shopify stores overall. And it was such a non like, I don’t want to
0:24:49 disparage them by calling it non innovation, but it’s not rockets and it’s not electric cars,
0:24:56 right? It’s like nonstick pans. But it is, it is very well done. And I’m very impressed with
0:25:02 their execution and it’s a great business. Was it just a person? Here’s what it says. In 2013,
0:25:06 the two co-founders, Danny and Cole, they had worked for a now defunct cookware company and
0:25:10 decided they wanted to start their own. So they started, you know, working on it. They dabbled
0:25:15 with a couple of products. They started selling in 2016. 2017, they get to deal with Costco.
0:25:20 And the business has doubled almost every year since 2017. They’re one of the top Shopify sellers
0:25:24 in the world. They have one of the biggest Black Fridays of any, they said, “I have never heard
0:25:28 of anyone who’s sold more than us on Black Friday,” which I think is just pretty dope.
0:25:34 It’s a very, very well done product. They make you feel elite, you know, by buying this pan,
0:25:40 whether the pan is elite or not, is sort of secondary. It’s an amazing example of just like
0:25:44 what brand marketing and influence can do for you. Speaking of food and cooking,
0:25:49 do you have any plans for the holidays? Because I’ve got some, I got an idea for you.
0:25:51 Okay. You’re inviting me over or what’s happening right now?
0:25:55 That’s even better. This is even better. Are you free?
0:26:00 I’m free. All right. I’ve got like a little like eight week little project for you.
0:26:04 If you’re interested, you know, it’s no big deal. It’s just a little small. It’s like the
0:26:10 equivalent of like a super Lego. Okay, go for it. Weight Watchers. Do me a favor and Google
0:26:14 Weight Watchers stock right now. Okay. What’s their market cap at?
0:26:17 Oh, geez, 58 million. What happened? Oprah, what happened?
0:26:23 That’s what happened. Oprah left. Oprah’s gone. Are you serious? That’s what caused this?
0:26:29 Well, and they lost $110 million last year and the business declined by 10%.
0:26:32 Osempic hit them? What happened? I think Osempic hit them.
0:26:36 Well, let me make an argument as to why Weight Watchers is going to start selling
0:26:42 Osempic and why Sean is going to own 10% of the company. So listen, that’s your little,
0:26:45 your eight week project, your holiday project. So Weight Watchers was started,
0:26:50 I think in the ’60s and the way it started was there was this housewife in New York City and she
0:26:55 was a little overweight and she got a bunch of dieting tips on how to lose weight and then she
0:27:00 created like an eight-person support group where she got her friends to give her $2 per meeting
0:27:05 and they met once a week and it helped everyone lose weight. They were held accountable and they
0:27:11 loved it. She did it for about a year and then eventually this one man and his wife or his wife
0:27:14 was like, “Hey, you need to lose weight. You go to this woman’s support group. I bet she’ll lose
0:27:21 weight.” And this guy was a businessman and he was like, “Hey, we should definitely make this a
0:27:26 thing.” Like her name was Gene. He was like, “Hey, Gene, this should be like a business. This was
0:27:31 amazing. I actually like lost weight and it changed my life a little bit.” And so they come up with
0:27:38 this idea to franchise the business and they launched it in 1963 and by 1968 they had a million
0:27:44 members each paying a monthly fee in order to attend a local meeting that was based off of their
0:27:48 dieting advice, but a local meeting where you would go once a week or once a month in order to
0:27:56 have your support group. And then by 1968, they sold the business for $751 million then,
0:28:02 which is something like $400 million in today’s money. Oddly, they sold to Heinz, Heinz Ketchup,
0:28:07 which is like the maker of a lot of foods that are the opposite of what Weight Watchers would
0:28:13 suggest. But anyway, they do their thing and then Oprah comes into play. And so Oprah comes into play
0:28:18 and when she comes into play, the stock takes off to where she buys a bunch of stock and then
0:28:24 within weeks or something like that she has tripled her money and it booms and it takes off. Well,
0:28:27 over the last handful of years, her Weight Watchers plan has been shedding her weight to watch her
0:28:32 stock and she’s been losing a bunch of her stock and selling it and now it’s plummeted. And so the
0:28:39 stock is horrible. And so my opinion is if I’m Weight Watchers, I think I’m just going to start
0:28:45 selling Osempic. That’s what I’m going to become. I mean, if I have millions and millions of members
0:28:53 who are subscribed to me for weight loss tips, if I needed to just only care about money, my new
0:28:59 game is, well, by the way, they have 3.8 million paying subscribers. The name of my game is,
0:29:05 hey, for an additional $300 or $400 or $500 a month, we really can guarantee that you’re
0:29:09 going to lose weight. They’re definitely going in this direction. So I didn’t realize this, but
0:29:16 do you know who the CEO of Weight Watchers is? No, who? Her name is Sema Sistani. And the reason
0:29:20 that name sounds familiar is because she was formerly the CEO of Meerkat. Do you remember
0:29:27 Meerkat, the live streaming app? What? Yeah, so she worked with Ben Rubin and when they turned
0:29:35 into house party, they ended up getting acquired. Sema ends up now being the CEO of Weight Watchers
0:29:42 and she recently wrote an email to the team. So this is a couple months ago. And it says,
0:29:46 “Team, as the week draws to a close, I want to take a moment to address
0:29:50 some of the breathless media coverage I’m sure you guys have seen.” And basically it says,
0:29:56 “Hey, we’re in a good cash position. We have strong liquidity. The work we do matters. Our
0:30:00 business is healthy.” And it says, “We’ve repositioned the company to grow with a clear
0:30:04 differentiator. We’re going to offer a full spectrum of weight care from behavioral,” which is
0:30:11 the thing what they’ve been doing, “to clinical.” And clinical being the sale of essentially
0:30:15 semi-glute type products is where they’re going with it. So I think it’s kind of interesting
0:30:21 what you’re saying because I don’t know what is the price of a Weight Watchers subscription.
0:30:28 If you don’t have insurance, semi-glute type is somewhere between $500 to $1,000 per month.
0:30:35 Exactly. And your insurance will cover it if you have diabetes or if you’re obese.
0:30:40 And I think, isn’t there government proposal to make free Osempic to everybody? Isn’t
0:30:45 there some proposal that’s going to cover it and that the government would somehow cover this?
0:30:52 Well, the Osempic issue is basically highlighting an issue with the healthcare system. And it’s
0:30:56 funny that Osempic is like the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back. But they’re like,
0:31:02 “Dude, in Europe, this drug is $5. In America, it’s $1,000. What the hell? What’s going on?”
0:31:07 And so it’s kind of like… No one noticed, which is like the company that makes Osempic.
0:31:11 They’re not only, I think they are now the most valuable company in Europe,
0:31:16 but on top of that, I think they spend more on lobbying than like any other company right now.
0:31:22 And so they are pushing very hard for U.S. lobbying, which is insane. So Weight Watchers
0:31:27 subscription is $9.99 a month right now for the first nine months. And if you just take
0:31:33 the idea that they’re going to go from making $100 a year per paying customer to even a fraction of
0:31:37 the audience decides, “Yes, I’d like to push a button and start to get Osempic or start to get
0:31:41 whatever their generic version is going to be called,” they’re going to jump to $5,000 or
0:31:47 $10,000 a year for those customers. So if you believe that they have the right distribution
0:31:53 and they have the end customer relationship, they might be swapping out training wheels for
0:31:58 Harley-Davidson in terms of business models. And the business is quite large. Unfortunately,
0:32:03 they’ve lost a lot of money. But last year, they did $900 million in revenue and had $100
0:32:09 million loss. So those are huge numbers, but their market cap as of today is $60 million.
0:32:15 And so I don’t care, but it’s going to be fun to watch because there might be a roller coaster
0:32:19 here. And it’s so here, by the way, one of the reasons the business is not doing great.
0:32:24 So by the way, your project for me was to what? To take Osempic or to buy the stock?
0:32:25 Because I might do both. Well, maybe a little down and do both.
0:32:31 Maybe a little bow. When Oprah did it, the estimates are that she made a quarter of
0:32:36 a billion dollars over 10 years of owning and then selling the stock. So basically,
0:32:42 she announced that she was part of Weight Watchers. The stock doubled in a matter of days.
0:32:48 And so in February of this past year, 24, the stock went down by 25%. Just when she announced,
0:32:53 like, “All right, that’s ran its course. I did my thing. I’m out. I’m no longer involved.”
0:33:00 I think Sean Perry is going to be the new Oprah. I think that, look, for $2 million,
0:33:06 you can own 4% of this company. Did I math that right? Or close to 4%. I think, and then
0:33:10 just announcing it, we’re going to do a good old fashioned pump and dump.
0:33:20 You just got us flagged by some agencies out here. Dude, they’re listening to podcasts now.
0:33:24 You know, we’re big in the SEC right now, right? This podcast is going viral there.
0:33:30 I’m joking, by the way. But I do think that a $16 million market cap for a business that has
0:33:33 these large numbers, even if it is a massive loss, and a reputable brand.
0:33:36 I’m just reading about them on the fly here while you’re talking about this. But it looks
0:33:39 like they made a $100 million deal to buy Sequence, which is a telehealth business
0:33:43 that lets you do virtual prescriptions for patients who want weight loss drugs,
0:33:48 and that they will start doing the semi-glute head stuff soon. So we’ll see.
0:33:54 Yeah, I just thought this was interesting. I want to put it on record that we’ve discussed this,
0:33:57 because maybe this could be one of those big opportunities.
0:34:03 But because $60 million for a brand that’s so reputable in some circles, but everyone knows
0:34:08 what that means, that’s pretty amazing to me. Okay, I like it. Sam Stockpix,
0:34:14 whether there’s a great YouTube… By the way, any Stockpix I have just don’t listen to anything
0:34:18 that I ever give advice on, because regarding the stocks, it’s horrible.
0:34:22 What’s that guy? There’s a guy who does this YouTube channel called Good Work. I think he’s
0:34:28 part of Morning Brew, and he put out this video that I thought had the best YouTube title that
0:34:33 I’ve seen. I know. Is it Zed? No, no, not the Zed one. His Zed one was also great. The Zed one
0:34:42 was, “Is Zed going to kill me and the boys?” And now the new one is, “Can this extremely loud man
0:34:48 make you rich?” And it’s a picture of Jim Cramer, who’s shilling some stock. I thought it was awesome.
0:34:55 Dude, there are videos. He’s the best, like I did. He’s the absolute best.
0:34:58 I want our YouTube team to just look at these titles and thumbnails.
0:35:02 This is what winning looks like. This is what we need to do.
0:35:06 I’m just going to read you some of their other titles, his other titles.
0:35:11 “Saudi Arabia going sicko mode on its sci-fi city-state.” It’s the picture of that giant
0:35:15 wall that Saudi Arabia is building. “Helping a fourth-grader explain her loser dad’s
0:35:21 stupid hedge fund job, LOL.” Yeah, it’s great.
0:35:30 Yeah, I’m a big fan of this guy. He’s really good. Austin’s one of my best friends,
0:35:35 the founder or the CEO of Morning Brew. I give him a hard time for a long time because Morning
0:35:41 Brew has not been able to hire interesting talent. Hiring and retaining and developing talent on a
0:35:45 media as a media company, that’s really, really, really hard. You’ve got to find interesting people,
0:35:50 which is hard. The most interesting creative people are typically also the biggest pain in
0:35:56 the asses to work with and to retain them. This guy, and a few others actually, but this guy is
0:36:00 a really good example of how a media company finds talent and nurtures it and makes him huge.
0:36:03 Yeah, he’s doing amazing. Good job. What is his name, by the way? I don’t know this guy’s name,
0:36:07 but Dan Toomey. Yeah, Dan, you’re doing a great job.
0:36:13 So I moved to this new city. It’s called Westport, Connecticut. It’s a 35,000-person town. I’ve been
0:36:18 reading all these books about biographies of politicians and stuff lately, so I thought,
0:36:21 “I don’t really know anything about politics. I’m going to see if getting involved is even
0:36:28 interesting.” So I just emailed the mayor, which I didn’t know if that was a thing or not,
0:36:32 but I just found her email, and I emailed her, and now we’re going to go get lunch together.
0:36:35 What’d you say? I’m going to get lunch with the mayor. I said, in a small circle of the
0:36:43 internet, a very tiny corner, I’m a little bit popular, and I’m not sure what that means to you,
0:36:48 if anything, but I’m just trying to make myself look a little bit important to you,
0:36:53 and I would love to hang out and introduce myself with no agenda, and that’s all I said,
0:36:58 and she said, “Absolutely.” So what’s the plan here? What are you going to do?
0:37:04 I don’t know, yeah. I got to figure out how to be conniving and how to take over a town.
0:37:08 I don’t have a plan yet, but I just thought it was interesting.
0:37:12 Are you going to binge two seasons of House of Cards or something and just start to get
0:37:21 yourself in the mindset? Yeah. I’m just going to come with armed guards and just take over.
0:37:31 I’m going to do a coup. It’s going to be a coup. I don’t know. I think local politics are a really
0:37:36 interesting way to actually have real impact, but it just seems fun, and so I didn’t know that you
0:37:41 could email a mayor, and they would reply, but they did. It reminds me of when we got to college,
0:37:48 my buddy Dan, you’re given a school ID, a school email address, so his was, I don’t know,
0:37:55 DNC6@duke.edu, and so the first thing he did, which I would have never thought to do, but he’s
0:38:06 a weirdo and a genius, and so he emails DNC4 and DNC5, and he’s like, “Fellas, I’m here. I don’t
0:38:10 know who you are. I don’t know what those initials stand for for you, but I’m here to carry the
0:38:15 torch legacy. What do you guys do?” And one of them is a banker somewhere, and it could have led
0:38:22 to an internship, basically, just by sending out a random email being like, “Hey, I’m the new guy
0:38:27 in town that has the same… I’m the next in the alphanumeric sequence here for us.”
0:38:33 And do they become friends? I don’t know. I feel like he just would open up all these doors
0:38:36 and just look inside, be like, “What’s in this closet?” When someone comes into your house,
0:38:40 they’re like, “Oh, what’s this over here?” Have you seen people do that with their phone number?
0:38:43 They change one number in their phone number, and they text them and say that their phone number
0:38:49 comes in? Yeah, exactly. You said something a few weeks ago that had an impact on me, and I’ve
0:38:53 been meaning to bring this up to you, but I had to test this out. So you told me that there’s been
0:38:57 a few weekends where Friday to Sunday, you did phone lists, and I thought that’s a great idea.
0:39:03 The problem is, is that I’m an addict of all types of sorts, and just like everyone else,
0:39:07 getting rid of my phone is really hard. So I looked for a solution, and I found this thing.
0:39:10 This isn’t a sponsored thing. I’ve never talked to these guys. I just think it’s cool.
0:39:15 Have you seen this? It’s called Brick. Yeah, I’ve DMed these guys. They’re young guys.
0:39:20 Did you look them up? Yeah, so I looked them up. So let me explain what this product is,
0:39:26 but I think it’s only $49. So for people listening on your headphones and not looking at a screen,
0:39:31 I just showed a Brick. It’s like a two-inch by two-inch square that’s made out of plastic,
0:39:35 just like 3D printed plastic. And the way it works is you download their app,
0:39:39 and you say which apps are allowed. So in my case, I think I’ve allowed texting,
0:39:46 phone calling, and email. And basically, I use this Brick, and I touch my phone with it,
0:39:51 and it bans or makes every app on my phone, except for the ones that I’ve allowed,
0:39:57 it makes it so I can’t use them unless I touch this Brick again. And there’s an emergency button
0:40:03 within the app, but only three times can I click like emergency override, and I could override,
0:40:09 like if I’m away from this Brick. But if I leave this Brick at home, I can only use the apps that
0:40:16 I’ve allowed on my phone. Shockingly good. This works. I like it. I love it. And I think these
0:40:20 kids who started it, I think they started it when they were like 20-year-old college kids. Is that
0:40:26 right? Yeah, something like that. And I think this business might be amazing. You know, it’s only
0:40:31 50 bucks. It’s hard to make a lot of money on $50. But what’s interesting is that we build all this
0:40:36 technology to like get, we want new, we want more convenient, we want better. And then after a while,
0:40:41 you get used to this life, and it gets better and more efficient and more addicting, and you want
0:40:46 to create things now that will undo all of that. And so I’ve been testing leaving my phone at home.
0:40:49 I’ve been testing, but that’s a little bit inconvenient sometimes because what if there’s
0:40:54 like a real emergency? So do I have to buy like a dumb phone? But then to buy a dumb phone, I need
0:41:00 a whole different cell phone plan. It’s like a safe for the pantry. You like put your snack in it,
0:41:04 and then you lock it. It’s like, this can only be open at 7 p.m. Yeah. Well, and one time I broke
0:41:10 it to get to my phone, like it’s fucked up how bad I am. And so this brick so far, I think,
0:41:14 is the best solution I have found. That’s cool. Yeah, I looked into this because I was curious
0:41:18 about it. I think it’s a really cool idea. I like the design of it too, by the way. I like the name
0:41:22 of it, how it just bricks your phone. I loved how bricked up you are about this whole thing. So I
0:41:26 think it’s a great, I think it’s a great product. I don’t use it personally, but I have thought
0:41:33 about doing the kind of dumb phone, smartphone thing. And this does seem better than having two
0:41:38 phones, but I would lose this brick for sure. So what is it? So if I lose this brick, I can just
0:41:42 through my own phone, just put it in the emergency and be like, Hey, I need my phone back.
0:41:48 Yeah, but only like three or five times. I forget the number. But after a certain number,
0:41:52 then the app, like the brick doesn’t work and you got to go buy a whole new one.
0:41:54 It’s like a nicotine patch for cell phones.
0:41:58 Yeah. And it’s awesome. And that’s exactly what it is. And I think it’s actually pretty good.
0:42:02 And it’s cheap enough that I’m going to just like start gifting these out.
0:42:06 It’s a great passive aggressive gift, right? Yeah, it’s like getting your appellate out, I guess.
0:42:11 Hey, asshole. There’s something you need.
0:42:19 Yeah. But these are awesome. By the way, I think it’s a, it’s called NPC. Is that the technology
0:42:24 that they use for this? NFC, I think. NFC, sorry. Which is like, it’s like a very, very, very tiny
0:42:29 chip. And then the rest is just like 3D printed plastic. And so there are like interesting ways
0:42:34 to make this fun. Like you can 3D print anything and just touch your phone. And so like, for example,
0:42:39 if you have a music event or not a music event, like a small club or something at your home,
0:42:42 like if you have like an event, something where it’s like a book club or you have 10 people coming,
0:42:45 you just touch your thing, everyone touched the other thing and that breaks your phone.
0:42:49 Like there are like a bunch of cool ways to make this fun. Wait, so that can break anybody’s phone
0:42:54 or just your phone? If you, if you have the app, I think it could break anyone’s phone.
0:42:57 Okay. Well, there’s a, there’s a next level to this.
0:43:01 Of course. Of course. But it’s actually quite cool. And then you have, you’ve seen the things
0:43:05 where you go into comedy shows and you put your phone in one of these like air tight bags.
0:43:10 I hate those things, but I understand. I hate them too. They’re at the local school that I live
0:43:14 at. They’re starting to do that for the school. So you have to leave your phone in these bags.
0:43:19 Yeah. My four year old is in TK and she’s told me her friend has a phone. She’s like,
0:43:24 yeah, she showed me the real phone in her bag. It’s hers. And I have somebody that I’m like,
0:43:28 we’re like friends with the parents. I’m like, do I just text the parents be like,
0:43:33 yo, you got your kid a phone or, or do I just text the kid and be like, is this a real phone?
0:43:41 What’s going on? That’s insane. Can I finish with just a pro tip, a life pro tip, a little
0:43:45 framework, a little bit of value here at the end. I feel like we gave some dessert and now it’s
0:43:52 time for a quick vegetable. All right. All right. So I have a friend who is named Stan and Stan
0:43:56 is a Silicon Valley OG. And what’s interesting about Stan is that
0:44:02 for many years, Mark Zuckerberg personally tried to recruit Stan and he always said,
0:44:06 no, no, no, no, no. And, and Zuck just kept reaching out, kept trying to recruit him and
0:44:11 eventually got Stan to join Facebook and he ended up running Messenger, the, the bit, you know,
0:44:17 the, the multi billion user product inside of Facebook. What does the recruitment from Zuck
0:44:21 look like? So he’s, you know, he’s not, uh, he just don’t want to kiss and tell. So he didn’t
0:44:26 give too many details and brag about it too much. But I got the sense that not only was he recruited,
0:44:30 but he had been, he had reached out to him many times across the years and eventually made him
0:44:35 an offer, you know, too good, so good he couldn’t refuse. And so he joins and I asked Stan and I
0:44:40 go, Stan, what are you like, why are you so good? And I was like, no, no, no, bad question. Let me
0:44:44 ask a better question. Like, what are you doing differently than the average person here in Silicon
0:44:49 Valley who has maybe the same skill set as you, but isn’t having the same result as you?
0:44:54 Are you asking why Zuck wanted him or why he’s had success throughout his entire career?
0:44:58 I knew Zuck wanted him. I didn’t ask why Zuck wanted him. I asked him specifically. I said,
0:45:02 why does somebody who, why are you having more success than the average person who has the
0:45:06 same skill set as you? Like, is it that you’re just working 10 times harder? Are you 10 times
0:45:09 smarter than somebody? Or do you, do you know something or do you do something? And he told
0:45:12 me one thing that I thought was interesting. He said a few things, but the one that stood out,
0:45:18 this was many years ago, by the way, so this still sticks with me, is he said, you know,
0:45:24 in Silicon Valley, we’re big on being data driven and data, data, data and data is awesome.
0:45:28 But he goes, what I found is that most people, when they look at data, they already have a story
0:45:32 in their head about what they think happens or what we need to do. And then they simply just
0:45:38 search for data that’s going to confirm that story, or they just like squeeze the data until it fits
0:45:43 that cookie cutter story that they want. He goes, I’m, he goes, I’m different because I just do
0:45:48 one thing different. I look at the data and I ask a simple question. What story is the data telling
0:45:56 me? And what story is the data telling me is a much better question. For example, we were just
0:46:00 looking at the Weight Watcher stock and I was like, what happened? And you go Oprah, I was like,
0:46:04 Oprah, what happened? And you go, Oprah happened. But if you actually look like the stock falls off
0:46:09 a cliff as soon as like the Osempic trend started, right? Like that was the, that was the date.
0:46:13 Oprah left, I think in like 2014 or something, she left like a long time ago, but the stock
0:46:18 really fell off a cliff when Osempic took off. And the data is telling us that something happened
0:46:24 in early 2023 that really hurt Weight Watcher stock. And then you go look at what actually
0:46:30 happened. And I’ve, I just felt this in one of my companies too, where we, in my e-com stores,
0:46:35 like we’ve been beating every month forecast. And then August was the first month we didn’t beat.
0:46:41 And I asked the team, I said, what happened? Am I CMO? We’ll give one answer. And our chief
0:46:45 product officer will give another answer. And then the website guy will give a different answer.
0:46:50 And how am I supposed to figure out what answer? And the way I figure it out is I tried, I just
0:46:56 told them, I said, post the data first, and then tell me the story. Cause what, what always happens
0:47:00 is they tell me the story, and then they’ll go find some data that might, some cherry pick a
0:47:04 bit of data that might support that, but they’ll leave out a bunch of other data.
0:47:06 Well, it’s like, you ever played those things where it’s like, find a word.
0:47:11 And like, it’s like the puzzles in the New York Times, like find, find this word.
0:47:15 It’s like, if I already know, I’m looking for this word. Yeah. Word is like, if I know I’m
0:47:18 looking for this word, I think I can find it. But if you tell me that I got to find a variety
0:47:23 of words, I might find those first. Exactly. Exactly. And so what we did, I just flipped it.
0:47:28 I just said, before you give me your, your idea of what happened, what went wrong. Can you first
0:47:32 just show me the picture of the data, like the full, full set of the data of what happened.
0:47:37 And then it should tell us a story. So then we just started asking the question, what data,
0:47:41 what story is the data telling us? And I think that that is just a much better way to approach
0:47:48 data decision making. And I think that is a great hack that this guy who’s had an amazing
0:47:52 success in his career says, you know, this is one thing I do differently that I think it leads to
0:47:57 a different result. Because every time I do that, you know, it’s like, how do you be right more often?
0:48:01 One way is just remove a bunch of your bad habits and bad biases that’s causing you to
0:48:05 make bad decisions. And I think this is a good habit that would lead you to make better decisions.
0:48:14 So I wanted to share that. That’s kind of a weird, that’s if, for you to think,
0:48:19 for him to think, why am I so successful? Not weird, weird’s the right word. That’s a very
0:48:24 particular. Well, I specifically asked, what are you doing differently? Not why are you so successful,
0:48:29 but what do you do that’s different than the average person who’s got the same skill set as
0:48:33 you? What is it that you do differently? So for example, I know that, you know, Sam, you’re a
0:48:37 great writer. I’d be like, you know, why are you a great writer? And you might say, well,
0:48:41 I practiced a bunch or I read or I naturally have a gift for it. A different question is,
0:48:46 what do you do differently than other people who also write blog posts or write newsletters?
0:48:53 What would your answer be? I potentially am significantly more honest than most people. And
0:48:59 I explain all of the bad sides and the good sides up front in a particular story, which makes people
0:49:04 like and trust me more. So like I try to be the opposite of sensational. Yeah, you wrote an email
0:49:10 to the mayor, and you said your honest thing was in a small corner of the internet, I’m popular.
0:49:15 I don’t know if that matters to you, but I’m trying to impress you because I don’t know if that
0:49:20 worked. But I’d like to say that I say that to impress you. Nobody would say in the email,
0:49:26 I say that to impress you. Obviously they do that to impress them, but nobody says that out loud.
0:49:32 I think your gift is that you are willing to say the honest part out loud and that that endears
0:49:36 people to you and that makes it more likable and that makes it more distinct and that makes it stand
0:49:41 out versus reasons that other people, their writing might stand out. So I think that’s a
0:49:46 great example of that question of what is it that you actually do that’s different
0:49:52 versus how do I become successful or how did you become successful? People have different,
0:49:54 they’ll give you a different answer depending on the question.
0:49:59 And I guess what I’m saying is it’s probably him weird is not the right word because that sounds
0:50:06 negative. What I mean is that’s such a particular and unexpected answer of like, oh, you just look
0:50:12 at the data and you’re like not judgmental about it versus coming to it with an emotion or a story
0:50:17 to prove. So it’s like you’re black and white about different information and you’re not
0:50:23 coming with an agenda. Right. It’s a weirdly specific answer. I agree. The caveat is this was
0:50:28 like 10 years ago when he told me this. And also, I bet if I asked him the same question today, he
0:50:32 would give me a different answer. Maybe that was just top of mind because of what was going on that
0:50:37 day in his world or what he had noticed recently. Why did you, well, why did you just remember this
0:50:42 now? Because I saw the problem pop up in my own company where I was like, oh, this is hard. I can’t
0:50:47 get to the truth because everybody already has a pre-baked answer. And then when I told him,
0:50:50 hey, can we figure out what went wrong? They say, yeah, I’m going to go figure it out. But really,
0:50:56 it’s just, oh, wow, they never changed the answer when I just said, hey, what went wrong?
0:50:59 And they say, can somebody dive in and they come back with the same answer every time?
0:51:03 It’s like, wow, what’s the point of diving in if you already had the answer? And then when you
0:51:08 dive in, you simply just go find one or two cherry-picked data points that support that.
0:51:12 And then if I go look and I say, well, is that really true? Because what about this?
0:51:16 And it kind of violates the narrative. So it’s more like, maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t
0:51:24 explain all of this, correct? And then they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s true. And so I need my own
0:51:28 team doing it. And I think in general, if more people did this, they would be more successful,
0:51:33 myself included. I’m guilty of this as well, where I have an immediate reaction of what we
0:51:38 should be doing or what’s bad about what we’re doing or what’s not working. And then I try to find
0:51:44 data or examples that support it versus first looking at the actual data and feedback and
0:51:51 then saying, what story is this telling me? When you go through that, how often do you question
0:52:01 if you are right or wrong or put differently? What level of certainty is your average big monthly
0:52:07 decision? That’s a great question. What percent certainty is my average monthly decision?
0:52:11 In the situations where I have data, because there’s two types of decisions. There’s data
0:52:17 where there’s decisions where we have information. And there’s decisions that will actually go
0:52:22 create information, meaning we’re only going to know this by trying this and that will gather
0:52:29 more information. Here’s what I mean. Every month or quarter or so, a business that is
0:52:35 in the 5 million, 10 million, 20, like some range where it’s like, all right, this definitely is
0:52:40 working, but I don’t know if it’s going to be massive, medium, or it could even go out of business
0:52:46 eventually. But there’s something here. So for those types of businesses, every quarter or month,
0:52:53 there’s a decision that can potentially change the trajectory entirely or not impact anything at all.
0:53:00 And I’ve noticed that it’s monthly or quarterly. And I asked myself wondering, before I was very
0:53:04 certain, like, if I do this, I’m going to do this, or we’re going to figure it out. Now,
0:53:10 I’m actually realizing the decisions I make for during those periods can actually be very
0:53:13 impactful, both in a negative and a bad way. Like, you can make a decision today that you
0:53:20 pay for in 18 or 24 months. And so I used to be very confident. Now, I’m less confident of like,
0:53:23 I think this, but I want everyone to know I don’t know anything. Right. So what I’m asking for you
0:53:29 is, do you come to these decisions with high certainty or low certainty? I don’t really think
0:53:35 about it like that. If I had to answer that part, it would probably be high certainty for the next
0:53:41 phase, the next chunk, meaning I know that I’ve looked at what the options are and what the
0:53:45 information we have is. And of those two things, and once I take those, you know, I have the menu
0:53:50 of options and I got the information that we have, I can make the right decision for this moment.
0:53:55 That doesn’t mean it’s going to end up being right. It means, given what I had, that had to
0:54:00 be the right decision. There was a only other suboptimal decisions from there. But there’s
0:54:04 still some probability that that’s not going to be true. But I couldn’t have known that because
0:54:08 I just didn’t have the information. I think I’ve done a good job of hitting the ball into the net
0:54:13 where I look back because I do this often. I look back and I say, could I have known
0:54:18 this? Or did I already know? Did I actually know deep down? And I ignored it. Or did I know,
0:54:24 or could I have known, but I rushed? And I have cut those down a lot, mostly honestly, because
0:54:30 I work with Ben and I talk things out loud. And when I’m talking out loud, I can literally hear
0:54:35 like, I can litigate against my point. I can hear the holes in my argument.
0:54:40 Right. And I’m comfortable enough with him to be able to be saying it out loud and not feel stupid
0:54:45 to mid-sentence, be like, but actually, I think that doesn’t matter at all. But actually, that might
0:54:51 not even be true. I might just be saying that. Or I’ll stop midway and just say, but honestly,
0:54:56 of all those things, the most important thing I said was this. And that actually wipes out all
0:55:02 the other shit. And so never mind. Let’s go for a no instead of a yes. And I’ll just edit it midair
0:55:07 because he makes me feel comfortable enough and already have enough trust built up where
0:55:12 it’s only about getting it right. There is 0% about appearing right, which in my other companies
0:55:18 before, I think it was much, much more tied to having to feel like I needed to maintain some
0:55:24 appearance of being smart and in charge and knowing things. And I wouldn’t litigate my own
0:55:29 thoughts. I would not cross-examine them enough. And I think that led to a lot of bad decisions
0:55:34 before. And the reason I’m bringing that up is I’m feeling this is a similar thing as I
0:55:38 get a little bit older and sometimes have more success and sometimes not.
0:55:44 What I’m learning is that there’s a million different ways to get different things done.
0:55:50 And they’re like, for example, we saw go viral this founder mode thing and everyone loved it.
0:55:54 And maybe that is right for certain people. I could point to many examples of successes that
0:56:02 are not that exact opposite. It violates exactly what that person is saying is the law. And as I
0:56:08 grow and start getting to some of these decisions, I’m learning a little bit. It’s more becoming
0:56:12 them. I don’t know anything. Let’s just do what feels good. And so I guess it’s like surrendering
0:56:19 to the world of like, I know nothing. You’re kind of back to where you were when you were 18 years
0:56:23 old of like, I don’t know the right way. Whereas when you’re a little bit younger, you read all
0:56:27 these books. Like according to the startup, what’s that startup book about lean MVP?
0:56:33 Lean startup. According to the lean startup, we have to do this, this, and this. And so you just
0:56:37 do that. And sometimes it works. But there’s just, there’s so many different ways to make the same
0:56:42 thing work. Because of that, I want to get some of these decisions. I’m significantly less confident
0:56:44 in having the right answer, but I’m kind of okay with it.
0:56:47 Well, I think there’s a difference in confidence and certain. So I’m definitely less certain.
0:56:50 That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m less confident, meaning I can be confident that this is the
0:56:56 right decision to make. But I can agree that, Hey, there’s low, low certainty here that this is going
0:57:02 to work or that this is correct. One of the things that’s helped me is to figure out some words to
0:57:07 describe this. Because what I found was that one of the big leaks was that I was miscommunicating
0:57:12 my own certainty to others, meaning I talk in a very confident way, or I’ll say, let’s do this.
0:57:17 And even though in my mind, I’m like, let’s do this. And then we’ll know by next Friday or we’ll
0:57:21 try it three times. And then we’ll know after three times, whether this was the right path or
0:57:25 the wrong path. But I want to go try it three times, right? I want to go give it three weeks.
0:57:29 So I want to go give it three months. I know that for certain, but that was coming across to
0:57:33 other people like this is the way and this is the right answer. And then they got very,
0:57:36 they got a lot of whiplash when that would change. And I’m like, why are you getting whiplash?
0:57:41 We were looking for, we wanted to try it to know if this was the correct path or not. And
0:57:45 turns out we’re going to turn. And so I found that I use this phrase a lot now, which is,
0:57:48 let’s turn over another card, which is like a poker term, right? So it’s like,
0:57:53 in poker, you operate with, you have your hand, first you have your two cards. So you just know,
0:57:57 is it, should I fold here, or is it worth, worth seeing the flop? So I’ll say that let’s see the
0:58:01 flop here. What’s the flop is, let’s take the call with the person, let’s take the meeting,
0:58:07 let’s make the prototype, let’s draft the thing. Let’s write down, let’s, let’s write down the
0:58:11 plan. And then let’s see after that, if we want to do it or not. And then sometimes we’ll say,
0:58:15 you know what, let’s turn over another card, which means let’s get to the next milestone
0:58:20 of information to get to a point where we will have more certainty of whether this is the correct
0:58:25 thing to do or not. And that language at least taught kind of like my little team, which is,
0:58:31 it’s, they know now how much, like, yes, we are doing this, we’re committed to doing this step,
0:58:35 but we’re not committed to doing the next 1000 steps, because we’re going to turn over another
0:58:38 card and we’re going to find out some more information, we’re going to find out, right?
0:58:43 Oh, we think this guy’s really great. Should we hire him? Let’s turn over another card. Let’s do
0:58:47 some reference checks. Let’s give him the project, right? We don’t need to debate more. We’ve already
0:58:51 debated as much as we need to, given the information we have. At this point, it’s about getting more
0:58:56 information. And the other thing that’s helped a lot is be specific about what information. So
0:59:02 often Ben will hit me with a like, well, let’s see. Or like, yeah, I just want to like look into it
0:59:07 more or like, I want to try it out. And then we’ll just pause be like, cool, what, what specific
0:59:10 information do you think you lack right now? Like if we don’t have enough information to make a
0:59:15 decision, what is the information we need? And then you often realize you’re like,
0:59:20 and actually, it’s just I didn’t feel confident enough to make a decision right now. I don’t
0:59:24 even really know what I’m looking for. So even if I spend another few weeks thinking about this or
0:59:28 exploring this, I’m going to do it haphazardly because I don’t have clarity on even what I’m
0:59:32 looking for. I don’t know what question I’m trying to answer here. So therefore, probably
0:59:36 going to have probably going to still be as uncertain three weeks from now as I am today.
0:59:40 But when you kind of try to pin down like, well, what do we really need to make this decision or
0:59:44 what extra information do we need to know? You might be able to like make this decision that
0:59:52 afternoon. Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m become old. But like, I thoroughly enjoy it. Like,
0:59:58 like, these are the things I think about lately. It’s just like, am I making the right decision?
1:00:04 You know, like, what’s that one smart dude say a life unexamined is a worthless life?
1:00:12 What’s that dude’s name Socrates? And so I’m like examining like some of my decisions and things
1:00:17 like that. Anyway, I can talk about this stuff all day, but it gets pretty nerdy. I think I have
1:00:21 another little exercise for you. I do this thing. It’s on the wall over here. You can’t see it. But
1:00:27 I take every month and I just make a box. So it’s like a 12 box grid. And in it, we’ll look back
1:00:32 and we’ll say, okay, last six months, a 12 box. So it’s like January, February, each, each month
1:00:37 is a box. Okay, so I just make it make a calendar looking thing. And then what we do is we just
1:00:42 go and we look and we just say, what’s the one thing we did or like, what are the things we did
1:00:49 that month that were the like big, the things that actually made an impact? We worked, you know,
1:00:54 24 days out of the month or whatever, we did so many things. But like, when you zoom out,
1:00:56 and you just look back, you’re like, what were the things that actually mattered that month?
1:01:03 Similarly, we’ll say, and in that could be a decision, it could be, you know, a product you
1:01:09 launched or a thing you did, it could be a buy sell decision, it could be a hiring, firing decision,
1:01:14 it could be whatever, right? But it’s all big font. So it’s like, it’s got to be something
1:01:17 you can read from like, you know, 10 feet away, meaning you can’t just write in there your entire
1:01:23 to-do list. And when we do that, it’s amazing, because every month has like, an embarrassingly
1:01:27 low number of things that actually mattered, like one to three. And everything else was just
1:01:33 the cost of doing business. Everything else was just the noise that it took to get to those one
1:01:40 to three things that even mattered in a month. And when you do that, you start to, but the good
1:01:44 thing about going back and looking at it is, the more you go back and look at it, the more that
1:01:48 in the moment, you start to realize like, oh, this is probably going to be the thing for the
1:01:52 month that actually matters. Let me really like focus and get this part right, because it’s probably
1:01:57 going to make up for like all the rest of the random activity, the random motion that I’ve
1:02:02 been doing this month, because you start to see patterns of like, what even could make it into
1:02:07 this box? And, you know, those are the things that matter. Okay, this month, this seems like it’s
1:02:10 probably going to be the thing that we’ll end up writing in the box for the month.
1:02:12 And you never write it before?
1:02:17 Well, I don’t know before exactly, right? Like, I just on a given day, I kind of know what I’m
1:02:22 focusing on in a given week, I kind of know what would make for a good week. But when I zoom out,
1:02:30 it’s like, you know, the decision to invest in X or the decision to bring on this person,
1:02:36 this trip that we took that had those five meetings in person that would not have been
1:02:42 the same over zoom, you know, spending that two days with that person who we think is like just
1:02:46 awesome value add to our life is such a fun, awesome person, and going deep with that person
1:02:52 rather than keeping it surface level, like little things like that, or it’s the decision to stop
1:02:56 working on X project was the main thing we did that month. And that was huge, because had we not
1:03:00 done that, we wouldn’t have had the time and the bandwidth to do this thing the next month.
1:03:06 So it’s usually things of that at that level. That’s pretty good. I’m gonna start doing that.
1:03:10 Is that it? Is that the pod? Are we doing a Sarah’s list on Wednesday?
1:03:16 Next episode, we’re gonna do Sarah’s list. I got I got probably six or seven companies right now.
1:03:22 That I think are good contenders for it. And if you don’t know Sarah’s list, we’ll do the teaser
1:03:29 here. Sam’s wife, Sarah blew my mind. Me and Sam were entrepreneurs, we’re taking maximum risk,
1:03:33 we’re living off of nothing, you know, like Sam spent himself like 20 grand a year or something
1:03:38 like that at the time. And I just looked at what we were doing, which was this kind of like
1:03:44 one in 20 shot of success, mostly eating shit every day, had to be innovative, had to take
1:03:50 high risk. And then we looked at Sarah, who joined, I think Airbnb and Facebook companies that were
1:03:56 like, we I could have told you in my sleep that those were winners. And she joined as like employee
1:04:01 400 or 1000 or something like that, like not even betting on it when it was the first 10 employees.
1:04:07 And the basic math was that if you get a job that’s what to say, I don’t know her number,
1:04:10 so I’m just going to make this up. You get a job where you’re making,
1:04:15 let’s call it $150,000 a year based salary, and then they give you a stock option grant that’s
1:04:23 going to give you $40,000 a year of stock on top of that. So you get, let’s say a $200,000 ish
1:04:31 stock package that if that company just basically four X’s, five X’s in a four year time span,
1:04:35 you’ve made a million dollars without taking any of the risk that we were taking as entrepreneurs.
1:04:40 And she did it multiple times. She did that multiple times. And we realized, wow,
1:04:44 there is a set of companies that are like, they’re past the point of like,
1:04:48 they’re out of there going out of business, they’re out of the death trap of or, you know,
1:04:53 like the highly likely to die, you know, area. These are great businesses that will just keep
1:04:57 growing, keep compounding. You could join them today as employee 500, and you will become a
1:05:02 millionaire without doing any of the entrepreneurial stuff. If you could just identify the kind of
1:05:07 like 10 companies a year that fit that mold. And so we take a stab at identifying those 10
1:05:11 companies. And that’s, that’s what we call Sarah’s list. And that episode, we’re going to record
1:05:18 Wednesday. So I got to prepare for it. I got a couple, but it’s really hard. This is actually
1:05:22 a hard list to make because I don’t want to like, you’re not exactly giving advice, but
1:05:26 some people take it as such. So I want to make sure that it’s good. Well, we’ve also done the
1:05:31 look back at the last time we did it. And I think our hit, we’ll do it again. We’ll go, we’ll go look
1:05:35 at, we’ll go look at an update, see what was the hit rate of the ones we did last time. We do not
1:05:40 proclaim to be, you know, that these are all going to work. No way, right? That’s not, that’s not
1:05:45 it. And the hit rates are good because we pick things that are obvious and they get big and it’s
1:05:50 like, duh, it’s all relative to the current valuation of the company. Right. So, oh yeah,
1:05:55 that was already a billion dollar company. Cool. It’s six now. So it’s six X, right? Your $200,000
1:06:00 stock package is six X now. All right. That’s today’s pod. We’ll talk to you Wednesday.
1:06:08 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days
1:06:13 on on the road. Let’s travel never looking back.
1:06:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Episode 628: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) break down the business behind the sports bar Cosm and the massive trend coming to out-of-home entertainment.
—
Show Notes:
(0:00) Cosm’s playground virality
(10:38) The Tesla of home appliances
(18:13) $100M sleepy industries
(23:11) The rise and fall (and rise?) of Weight Watchers
(40:42) “What story is the data telling me?”
(48:54) What certainty level is needed to make a decision
(53:49) Confidence vs certainty
(57:22) Shaan’s monthly impact grid
—
Links:
• Cosm – https://www.cosm.com/
• Impulse Labs – https://www.impulselabs.com/
• Rivian – https://rivian.com/
• Brick – https://getbrick.app/
• June Oven – https://juneoven.com/
• Shark Ninja – https://sharkninja.com/
—
Check Out Shaan’s Stuff:
Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd
—
Check Out Sam’s Stuff:
• Hampton – https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp – https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That – https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey – https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List – http://samslist.co/
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano